57 KiB
[META] A suggested rewrite of the 'Characteristics of Rational Fiction' in the sidebar
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Author: u/ArisKatsaris Sidebar Contender*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6s2cad/meta_a_suggested_rewrite_of_the_characteristics/
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Score: 44
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Created: 2017-08-07T01:15:45
Post:
I've several times seen people in other forums whose first reaction to the current list of characteristics in the sidebar is to claim that these are the characteristics of any good fiction. Though I think they exaggerate (e.g. Lord of the Rings is very good fiction, but not 'rational' at all), I nonetheless myself feel the sidebar description doesn't really capture well enough at all what we mean with 'rational fiction'.
I propose the following description instead:
In Rational Fiction:
- The author displays respect for the value of intelligence, reason, forethought, and preparation.
- The author attempts to explore the moral and material implications and consequences of the elements in the story, and to investigate alternate solutions to presented problems, even if they violate the usual conventions of the genre.
- The author doesn't use 'narrativium'. The characters should not rely on events happening as they would happen in a story, unless there's explicitly a force conspiring to make them happen this way. (Any usage of destiny, divine providence, miracles, willpower-produced powerups, etc, must be justified in-story or not used at all.)
I also suggest adding a couple links (to a separate page) below the list for what we would consider "rational fiction", and what we would not consider such, by explaining how the above apply or don't apply.
For example:
Examples of Rational Fiction:
Edge-case/controversial examples: These stories are sometimes considered to belong to the genre by readers who appreciate their rational merits, but they'd be probably excluded because of other reasons. Also the authors themselves have explicitly rejected the claim that these stories belong to the rational genre.
Counter-examples (Non-rational fiction):
- The Lord of the Rings: spoilers
So, what do you all say? Do you feel my bulleted items summarizes what we mean by 'Rational fiction' better than the current list? Would you support using this in the sidebar instead of the current list?
Btw, I understand my third bullet may be slightly long-winded, and is probably trimmable down to "The author doesn't use 'narrativium'. The characters should not rely on events happening as they would happen in a story." (Basically the exceptions I list are possibly not worth the space needed to explicitly list them. Let me know what you think about this as well.)
Comments:
u/None [+24] (an hour later)
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u/Noumero [+13] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (17 hours later)
I agree; I talked about this definition before. Rational fiction is defined by being populated by Level One+ Intelligent characters. It's not about sending a message, or exploring a theme, or being set in such-and-such setting, or having plot with a particular direction; it's about goal-driven characters interacting with each other or environment. In a way, it's akin to a role-playing campaign, except the author is both the DM and the players.
It's not just good characterization. An author could define a good character, give them good development, then sneakily put an Idiot Ball in their hands, or have them not think about something, or make something happen to them to force them to conform to the plot. Rational fiction is fiction where characters with good characterization remain true to this characterization in spite of plot convenience.
Or, looking at it from another perspective... Yes, I suppose it would be true for any all-around good fiction. Rational fiction, then, is merely fiction that is good in certain ways; to be precise, in ways related to characters and characterization.
u/Kinoite [+4] (2 days later)
t's not just good characterization. An author could define a good character, give them good development, then sneakily put an Idiot Ball in their hands, or have them not think about something, or make something happen to them to force them to conform to the plot. Rational fiction is fiction where characters with good characterization remain true to this characterization in spite of plot convenience.
I agree with this, and think Diskworld might be a useful example.
I like Diskworld. The characters are fun. They totally make sense within the context of their stories. It's good fiction.
But the setting requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. It's stylized, rather than realistic.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
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u/Noumero [+2] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (a day later)
Very nice, we independently converged on the exact same definition.
u/ArisKatsaris [+4] Sidebar Contender (2 hours later)
As far as I can tell, the only hard requirement for something to be considered "rational fiction" is for the characters' patterns of reaction be consistent and realistic.
That would be a bad definition, because it'd just mean we want good characterization.
I believe the quotes by EY you bring up refer to the writing of intelligent characters, not rational fiction per se.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)
because it'd just mean we want good characterization
One of the things that really ticked me off at school was when the teacher would wax rhapsodic about the characterization of the most bizarre and strange people.
For example, near as I can tell none of the male characters in Jane Austen's works consistently behave like a human male would ever behave, no matter when the story was written or set. They are clearly created to fill a slot in the story for Emma or whoever to react to. But Austen's books are "great works", so Austen's characterization is automatically "good".
So when you say "we want good characterization" you need to qualify that to mean "for the characters' patterns of reaction be consistent and realistic", rather than the artistic meaning of "good characterization" that basically everyone in the literary fold cleaves to that has nothing to do with writing realistic or rational (or even credibly flawed) characters.
u/LupoCani [+2] (2 days later)
Hmm. I think this is a very accurate definition, in the sense that it allows us to easily point and say "Yep, that's rational" or "Nope, not rational".
I am not sure, however, that it is a good introductory explanation. I think there is still value in elaborating around it, what we use these L1 characters to accomplish and why. Sensible world building, rewarding the reader's thinking, solvable problems, all that. Ideally, all of these things follow from hang L1 characters, but I think it deserves explicit expanding upon.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+47] Godric Gryffindor (3 hours later)
It's certainly far better than the current list.
I'll remark that the whole phrase "rational fiction" is not something I invented or would have invented. "Rationalist fiction" makes sense. And there's another genre to point to that isn't rationalist fiction, but grew up around it, and the stories in that genre do have something in common. But I wish this genre had been called something other than rationalfic. "Rational" is a dangerous word and should only be used judiciously and probably in front of well-selected audiences who understand it as a reference to a quality of cognitive algorithms; for most people "rational fic" is just going to sound like "fic the author thinks is somehow better or correct". It's not smart to ever describe a character as "rational" because, again if somebody hasn't been introduced to the cognitive-algorithms viewpoint, the word "rational" often doesn't mean anything to them other than "correct", and whenever they see the character do something they think is incorrect, they'll go "Lol that character isn't rational!"
Empirically, if I were to try to describe what Luminosity and The Last Christmas actually do have in common, I would say the most standout literary characteristic is a hard-to-define open-world quality of thinking, like Skyrim vs. Half-Life. The character's thoughts don't appear to stay on a plot-determined railroad, they seem to think all over the place and look all over the place because that's part of what it means to be sane. Now, the masterful author will have it add up to the plot anyway, but you should still get the impression that the "rational" character lives in cognitive Skyrim. Rational!Isabella Swan sees a vampire and thinks about the global implications of immortality, not just a hot guy in love with her--although she thinks about that too and at great length!--because her thoughts aren't following what another author would have taken as the railroad. She thinks what you would think and that's a key appeal that good rationalfic tries to capture.
u/alexanderwales [+18] Time flies like an arrow (15 hours later)
Part of the problem with the branding is that there was no conscious effort involved in branding. It was literally just ... some people decided that HPMOR was in a dry spell and wanted a place to collect fiction like it, so they took over /r/rational. There wasn't really any debate on terminology in regards to public perception, attracting an audience, etc.
Similarly, the sidebar as it exists now is only slightly modified from this post in HPMOR from four years ago which dates from prior to the creation of this subreddit and any sort of community here, let alone community consensus.
u/None [+5] (16 hours later)
[deleted]
u/ketura [+9] Organizer (16 hours later)
It is slightly more involved than that. A move is possible, but requires this subreddit be locked down and the front page spammed with posts saying "this is the new home". Anything less just splits the community or breeds uncertainty.
u/InfernoVulpix [+4] (17 hours later)
I'm pretty sure we could do a thing with CSS to make /r/rational automatically redirect to another subreddit. That would be the smoothest way to get the community from point A to point B, but if you automatically redirect I think that would prevent access to all the previous threads here.
It should also be possible to have CSS put something in front of the subreddit proper with a link to the new home while we lock the original. We could also do the minimal-damage version of staying on this subreddit but changing what we call it. It'd still be /r/rational but we wouldn't say 'rational fiction', we'd exclusively say the new term. In any case, even if it isn't trivial to organize a smooth transition it's well within our abilities, and if doing so increases approachability for the genre then it's probably the smart move to do so.
The bigger problem, really, is finding a better name. Too many potential names have the exact same pitfalls as rational, so we need to be very careful that the name actually describes the genre but doesn't sound elitist.
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (17 hours later)
CSS customization is going away. Plus does nothing on mobile.This is no longer true, see link to discussion below.
u/Brain_Blasted [+8] (a day later)
Actually, a whole Pro-CSS movement happened and CSS support is staying, unless I missed a reversal on reddit's stance.
Edit: Link here.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Ah! I had seen the initial shitshow but not the followup. Thanks for the heads-up.
u/Evan_Th [+2] Sunshine Regiment (4 days later)
Thank you - I hadn't seen that either, and it's great news!
u/InfernoVulpix [+3] (17 hours later)
Oh right, though I do recall something about a different system being brought in to replace it, and maybe that will support something similar.
But even if not, that still leaves the minimal-damage option of just keeping it /r/rational but calling the genre something other than rational fiction and your option of locking the sub and forcing a migration. Both would still work.
u/General_Urist [+2] (a day later)
I'm pretty sure we could do a thing with CSS to make /r/rational automatically redirect to another subreddit.
The problem with that is that it would make viewing old posts on the subreddit impossible.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/LucidityWaver [+5] (a day later)
Not exactly.
Some time ago the rules were altered to focus more on posting fiction rather than discussion / ideas threads, which had become spammy. This is probably the change you're thinking about.
The people posting relevant content (fiction) were given an allowance to post discussion threads here and there while non-contributors were discouraged from doing so.
Such discussions are otherwise relegated to the weekly and monthly threads including Monday General Rationality, Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread, Off-Topic Friday, Thread, Saturday Munchkinry Thread, Monthly Recommendation Thread, etc.
To go back further, the sub was at some point a different community entirely, though dead and abandoned. The HPMOR community took over moderation of the subreddit and repurposed it for rational fiction. Older posts would have been removed.
Alternatively; perhaps the turning point was when the sub contributors had already discussed a lot of the things they wanted to discuss with their 'shiny new community' so there was less interest in general.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/talks2deadpeeps [+7] The Culture (a day later)
I think something happened to your keyboard.
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (a day later)
Not from before the HPMOR community came in. That would have been at least over 2 years ago. Probably more than 3 years. I wasn't here then myself.
I'm not sure if one of the mods here already had it or if they went through /r/redditrequest to get it. I'm pretty sure whatever existed on r/rational beforehand didn't have much going on. It would have been abandoned, not been popular, had no content, the mod was missing or had lots of spam.
I remember trawling back to page 1 of this sub a couple years ago and I think I found that anything from before HPMOR community arrived had been cleared out. To be sure, you'd have to ask a mod or user who was there at the time.
If you just want an example from when the current community had more discussion outside fiction, check through the Friday and Monday threads. Otherwise you'd have to go back a lot of pages to see if you can spot such a change. It would be a change of tone or changes to the type of topics. You could use the Reddit Enhancement Suite to make this easier by enabling never-ending scroll and holding the "End" key for a while.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (a day later)
Looks like that doesn't work anyway. Stops loading more content after a while. Here's what the sub looked like six months ago and 9 months ago. http://imgur.com/a/2HYj0
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (a day later)
It was an album with three images. The first image is 6 months ago, the second and third are from 8-9 months ago. I've added three more that show some of the posts made during mid January. http://imgur.com/a/2HYj0
Edit: Individual image links in case your laptop is stressed. http://imgur.com/JgVr1iM
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (a day later)
I added individual links to the latest images to my previous comment if that helps. Good night!
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (2 days later)
One of the mods has now answered this in response to another comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6s2cad/meta_a_suggested_rewrite_of_the_characteristics/dlc6dkn/
u/General_Urist [+1] (a day later)
some people decided that HPMOR was in a dry spell and wanted a place to collect fiction like it, so they took over /r/rational.
Oh?
So what did this subreddit do before the HPMOR brigade commandeered it?
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Nothing, it was a dead sub. You can see a capture of it from the Wayback Machine here, roughly two years after it was created and two years before we (not actually me, I wasn't involved) took it over. So far as I know, those two posts are all that ever got posted to the sub in its entire history prior to December of 2013.
u/Veedrac [+3] (2 days later)
You can also, with much difficulty, filter by date. Here are the oldest posts on the sub, post-2013.
u/Sophronius [+7] The Need to Become Stronger (2 days later)
There is a common failure mode which goes like this: I like X. X should be more popular. The name of X must be turning people off.
Usually the answer is something else, however. Yes, people think that "rational fiction" is arrogant and snooty. Also: Atheists. The solution of Richard Dawkins? Refer to ourselves as "brights".
People don't think "Rational fiction" is pretentious because of the name, they think it's pretentious because we genuinely do think rational fiction is better, just as atheists genuinely do think they're smarter and more correct. If we come to websites and advertise ourselves as more rational, we'd better be able to back it up. And the fact is that many of the rationalist stories spread around are simply not very well-written as stories, and rely mainly on geek-appeal to be successful. Take those two factors together, and that's when you turn people off.
I think we'd be better off fixing the fundamental flaws of rational fiction, not worry so much about the branding.
u/thecommexokid [+8] (an hour later)
Your description of rational fiction seems fine to me other than that I don't think the edge-cases category is particularly useful to list explicitly. And I have also witnessed the phenomenon you describe where people claim that the current description just describes well-written fiction rather than carving out a unique genre.
But I also don't think that the contents of the sidebar really need to be up for democratic debate. I am in favor of the mod team having unilateral power over what the sidebar says and not spending a long time trying to reach a consensus among the entire community. One of the purposes of having leaders is to avoid the problem of 7000 people having to come to agreement on every small issue.
u/PeridexisErrant [+6] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (10 hours later)
Why, thank you - while I don't need a vote for BDFL, it's appreciated :)
Personally and as a mod though, I like having occasional meta threads. If there's a proposal that seems well-argued and supported by consensus, I'll even adopt it!
(adopting other people's good ideas is a key trick to remaining BDFL)
u/thecommexokid [+6] (13 hours later)
(Benevolent Dictator For Life, for anyone else wondering)
By all means, if the collective comments in this thread leave you and the other mods convinced that a change is better than maintaining the status quo, I say go for it. I'm just advocating that you make the changes that sound best to you rather than making any attempt to determine a consensus or majority opinion.
We're not, so far as I can tell, debating what is rational fiction—I'd want to see as much community involvement as possible in a conversation like that. But I think we all kinda know it when we see it, and we're just deciding how to vaguely gesture at it in a couple of sentences in the sidebar here.
u/HelperBot_ [+0] (13 hours later)
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u/LupoCani [+1] (23 hours later)
While I agree that unilateral mod authority over the sidebar is reasonable, I find "no need for democratic debate" is misrepresenting the issue.
A genre is, ultimately, defined by its audience. That is not to say it's a democratic process, but that's because there is no system of rule, not because people aren't involved. It's not democratic, it's just demonic.
The sidebar should be accurate to the reality of what the genre is, which it can influence, but not decide. This can be accomplished via democratic means, but we can also do like all of the rest of literature, and put a couple of academics (mods) to the task of writing lots of papers on how they think it is.
Either way, while we don't need a democratic debate, the question is fundamentally demonic, and we do need a debate, even if just a demonic one.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+7] fear of last pages (8 hours later)
I think the sooner this problem gets addressed the better, because the current version will only be keeping gaining momentum if it’s left untouched. It’s much easier to change something now when there’s only yet ~7,000 readers here than further down the line when the number of active participants will increase.
I can also see fans or authors trying to label a story as a rational one even if it’s full of your regular bad writing tropes just for the additional bragging rights and\or marketing opportunities (e.g. advertising through TVTropes.org/RationalFic, through relevant goodreads bookshelves, etc).
One problem I can see is that different people will have different definitions of what they consider a rational story. One thing that can help with this is trying to collect a bunch of different definitions and see which ones become “adopted” the most.
Another thing would be formulating the definitions in such a way that they will allow for a “sliding scale” of rationalism on multiple axes. If we try to break down the “rational” genre into smaller “sub-tropes”, then here are some of the themes (regardless of how “justified” they are) that are usually prevalent in the stories that people often associate with this emerging genre:
- rational protagonists
- rational inhabitants — an expectation that all characters in the story will be acting in a rational manner
- straw Vulcan pseudo-rational characters
- or, in contrast, perfectly rational characters — an example of a story suffering from this was HP:MoR, in which the protagonist had, for instance, near-perfect emotional intelligence and control.
- intelligent protagonists
- intelligent inhabitants
- straw intelligent characters
- lack of plot railroading
- lack of out-of-character reactions
- lack of zombie characters — characters that at best don’t act like humans. Or ones that act like videogame NPCs (no real intelligence, no peripheral vision, no attention to their surroundings, or to the weird things happening around them, etc)
- lack of bad writing tropes; lack of simplistic plot design, character designs, worldbuilding, etc; high-quality writing; etc
- character actions (and discussions) relevant to morality, ethics, pragmatism, and ruthlessness
- deconstruction of the genre, the worldbuilding, the canon-material, etc
- highly ambitious protagonists, gradually improving protagonists
- munchkining,
- high-conflict environment
- technological uplift
- emancipation of the masses, fighting for equal rights, etc
- ersatz mimicry of rationality sub-tropes, which can be confused for an actually rational story and generate something like a cargo-cult reaction (see EroGamer for a recent example)
- and so on.
So just giving the genre a one-sentence (or even a several sentence-long) definition and then interpreting that definition by the letter of the law would not solve the underlying problem. Instead, these “sub-tropes” should be collected and then combined into different flavours of a rational story, with the faulty ones being discussed and eventually pruned out of the “meta-definition”.
Another problem is that it can be unclear sometimes whether or not the story’s trying to abuse plot devices (e.g. deus ex machina) or characters’ decisions (e.g. “was that character’s behaviour an OoC moment for railroading the plot or would such a reaction from him be a reasonable one in the given circumstances even if it seems to be in-congruent with his past actions?”) or if the author sees those developments as the natural, unforced outcome for whatever reasons. But maybe that’s something that should be addressed as a separate discussion of its own.
u/Dragonheart91 [+1] (a day later)
I like these descriptions the most. Rational fiction has a lot of key points to it and sometimes just hitting a few is enough.
u/ketura [+9] Organizer (16 hours later)
I can appreciate the sentiment but I'm not a fan of your definitions as laid out. One of the primary benefits of the current sidebar list is that it's straightforward to identify: Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. Any factions are defined and driven into conflict by their beliefs and values, not just by being "good" or "evil". The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources. The fictional world has consistent rules, and sticks to them.
These are concise and contain zero jargon. I can take any work and see if they do or don't do these things. By contrast, comparing a work to three bullet points that go "the author displays respect for X", "the author attempts to explore X", and "the author doesn't use narrativium" might be helpful when explaining the concept to someone but does not feel conducive to actually judging a work. Does an author who has a low view of intelligence while yet having characters who are actually intelligent mean the work is not ratfic? Should we care so much about the author and their intent or focus when identifying works that would be enjoyed by those who also enjoyed HPMOR or Luminosity or Metropolitan Man?
If I was to take your proposal and attempt to rework it into a set of guidelines that are easier to use for evaluating fiction, I think they would look more like this:
Characters utilize intelligence and reason while applying their resources to overcoming their obstacles, and incorporate a reasonable amount of preparation and forethought into their plans.
The premise of the setting is respected and sufficiently followed through: rules breed limitations, actions lead to consequences, and events propagate and echo through the world proportional to their actual impact.
Characters react to the world with something resembling realism: they explore and experiment with the rules of the world, challenge unfounded restrictions, and investigate and react to alternate solutions to their problems.
The plot flows around the events of the world and not the other way around: plot is the effect, and not a cause.
Personally I am also against listing specific examples in or associated with the definition. Doing so is a form of anchoring and doesn't actually let us know if our definition is any good; I'm sure eventually we would like to have moved away from any definition that has "something like HPMOR" as fundamental, and unnecessarily restricting ourselves (and newcomers) does not move in that direction.
u/LucidityWaver [+2] (2 days later)
Just throwing in my support here.
I find these points to be more accurately descriptive of what rational fiction is than points suggested in the op. This also addresses the issues and points I've seen raised in previous discussions on this topic, and the definition of rational in general.
u/ArisKatsaris [+1] Sidebar Contender (17 hours later)
. One of the primary benefits of the current sidebar list is that it's straightforward to identify: Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'
Do you really think this is straightforward to identify?
The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources.
Any Batman story would qualify as ratfic then, since the character is considered to be intelligent.
But Batman is not ratfic because it doesn't bother exploring whether this is really the effective usage of Batman's resources. Batman is intelligent within-the-story, but the authors don't truly want to explore how an intelligent Bruce Wayne would really utilize his resources.
Does an author who has a low view of intelligence while yet having characters who are actually intelligent mean the work is not ratfic
Yes, IMO. Consider a story where the intelligent characters are there effectively to be mocked as cowards who use their calculations to be defeatists or whatever, while the story instead admires only the people who stay the course via faith and perseverance alone instead. That's not what ratfic is about.
u/PeridexisErrant [+8] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (21 hours later)
Batman is intelligent within-the-story, but the authors don't truly want to explore how an intelligent Bruce Wayne would really utilize his resources.
In short: the story tells us he's intelligent, but doesn't show us. IMO that disqualifies it from the rational[ist] genre[s].
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (17 hours later)
Do you really think this is straightforward to identify?
In the moment almost never conclusively; could be enemy action, could be the workings of an evil god, could be an unknown wrinkle in the world's rules. But when all is said and done, it's usually easy enough to take the work as a whole and identify if it contained magic plotsauce or not. And even if some of those holes are only obvious in retrospect, a work can still potentially make it obvious one way or the other.
Any Batman story would qualify as ratfic then, since the character is considered to be intelligent.
I didn't say "everyone in universe says the characters are considered intelligent" or even "the characters are intelligent" but "knowledge and resources are applied intelligently". That is something that we can evaluate on the outside free of the whims of how the author says things are, and matches with your next Batman paragraph neatly, so I'm not sure why that was brought up as a counter-example.
Yes, IMO. Consider a story where the intelligent characters are there effectively to be mocked as cowards who use their calculations to be defeatists or whatever, while the story instead admires only the people who stay the course via faith and perseverance alone instead. That's not what ratfic is about.
I think there is a miscommunication here: an author saying someone is intelligent followed by the character doing something unintelligent without a good reason means the author lied. I do not care what the author says something is about if the work itself clearly states differently, and I also don't care if the author calls something stupid something smart. Mere labels are insufficient; if the characters truly act intelligently, and react in such a way that we ourselves would call intelligent, do we care if the author tries to play them off as idiots? Likewise, if the author has someone dumb and tries to act like they're intelligent and then mocks the poorly done caricature, are we fooled? If Spock claims that there's a 1% chance of success every single mission and is wrong every time then Spock is an idiot.
To badly paraphrase the sequences, intelligent characters should be rational, and rational actors win.
u/beetnemesis [+7] (16 hours later)
I've only read a handful of what this community generally calls rational fiction, but a LOT of it seems to sync up with Deconstruction,.
(Deconstruction: breaking down a a story (or aspect of one), seeing how it works, thinking about how it would work in the real world, etc).
Rational fics seem to often incorporate Reconstruction, as well.
Worm, for instance- deconstructs TONS of superhero tropes. It takes elements that are common in a superhero story, and goes, "What if this was true in the real world? How it work? How would people react to it? Would it be justified, or would people never do that in real life?"
Worm also reconstructs a ton, providing good, in-universe reasons as to why people do these superhero tropes.
Rational fanfic, especially, shows this off- the writer wants to pick apart and deconstruct the original canon, but if you make it too different you often lose the feel of the original. The trick seems to be, examine, explain, justify. Put it back together better than it used to be, without losing the original spark. (Good example of this would be Pokemon: The Origin of the Species IMO.
So, after all that said... I guess I'm just agreeing that this is a tough genre to define?
Or, how about this: If we just called all "rational" stories, "Deconstruction" stories, what would we be missing?
u/None [+5] (16 hours later)
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u/ArisKatsaris [+2] Sidebar Contender (17 hours later)
If you wanted to phrase it as honorable mentions, that would make more sense.
Right, I wanted to list examples which are NOT ratfics because of a very important reason, even though each of them seems to satisfy atleast one of the other criteria.
I didn't know how best to title that section though. They are not meant to be ratfics, they were meant to be subtler cases where they aren't.
u/narfanator [+0] (19 hours later)
Worm and Unsong are definitely part of the genre; you may be being tripped up because neither of the main characters are defined by their intelligence.
But, in both stories, most characters (and, importantly, the "winning" characters) are actively thoughtful and creative about their world and capabilities. Similarly, there are large organizations designed around features of the world, run by characters thinking about existential threats.
There are also ranges of idiots in both stories; but the idiots are still "intelligent" within their world-views, even if their world-views are... wacked.
Examples:
- Tailor's first and second actions as a super are: a) Cardio b) Armor. Her third action is to go straight for the vitals of the biggest threat from around the corner.
- The main placebomancer acts strategically to make a better story because that is literally the source of his power.
The universes have influential rules that we do not have that makes many weird or dumb things smart for the characters to do. But, a universe can only be irrational if it's rules are inconsistent; this is not the case in either work.
u/ArisKatsaris [+4] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
Worm and Unsong are definitely part of the genre
Their authors reject the claim.
u/LucidityWaver [+1] (2 days later)
I agree that this means we shouldn't use these stories as primary examples of rational fiction. It could be harmful to both the /r/rational community and the author to classify their story as such against their wishes.
I also agree that these stories don't entirely fit. They're best described as rational-adjacent as they do fit some of the descriptions of rational fiction and a significant portion of the community finds value in them for those reasons.
However, an Author's opinion doesn't actually change whether their story fits a given description. As a counter-example, if I were to write a story that does not fit any of the given descriptions of rational fiction in this thread, then it would not be rational simply because I call it such.
This is part of why I find the points in your original post do not fit well as a description of rational fiction. Once the story is written, the author's intent while writing has little to no weight on what the story actually contains.
u/tonytwostep [+3] (an hour later)
I've several times seen people in other forums whose first reaction to the current list of characteristics in the sidebar is to claim that these are the characteristics of any good fiction.
I think many people conflate the term "good fiction" with the concept of "fiction I personally enjoy."
There's plenty of fiction that's widely regarded as good (by critics, fellow authors, and/or readers in general), but clearly does not fit the characteristics of RF. But if an individual sees those RF characteristics as requirements for "good fiction," it's likely they're just personally drawn to stories with those traits.
Basically, I don't think this reaction to the characteristics really speaks to any issues with the characteristics themselves.
u/ArisKatsaris [+6] Sidebar Contender (2 hours later)
But if an individual sees those RF characteristics as requirements for "good fiction," it's likely they're just personally drawn to stories with those traits.
No, these people weren't really fans of rational fiction, it's just that the rules as currently written don't really communicate the distinctions of the genre. For example 'The characters solve problems through the intelligent application of their knowledge and resources.' Does that mean no stupid people are allowed in these stories? Does it mean that the character are not allowed to fail? Does it mean that they're never allowed to have luck contribute?
I think my bullet point that the story displays a respect towards the use of intelligence actually captures the point we want to make better than the one we currently have.
And the other 3 rules seem to mostly sneer at non-rational stories. Things that happen must have a reason, is that really the best way we have to express what we want to say? Gandalf coming back from the dead did have a reason, God made it happen. But that reason doesn't actually suffice for rational fiction...
Basically, I don't think that reaction to the rules really speaks to any issues with the rules themselves.
If the rules don't communicate well enough the category of stories we are talking about that's an issue.
u/narfanator [+3] (19 hours later)
I don't think your controversial examples are reasonable (except that they are controversial).
I would say instead that there's a difference between stories about intelligent actions of characters, and stories with intelligently acting characters.
Worth The Candle, HPMOR, Drop of Poison, etc - these are all in the first category.
Worm, Unsong, etc - these are all in the second category.
I don't think I know a single piece of mass-appeal fiction - or fiction that wasn't explicitly written to be "rationalist" - that fits the first category.
I'd call the first category "rationalist" - as that's a thing it's attempting to be - and the second "rational", as it accurately describes the fiction.
u/ben_oni [+3] (21 hours later)
Perhaps it would be useful to provide a list of counterexamples? Not on the sideboard, but perhaps in the wiki, we could expound upon each bullet, what makes it rational, what well-known works have the trait, and in particular, what well-known and respected works do not have the quality. This would make it plain that these qualities are distinct from "good" fiction. If there are no counter-examples, then perhaps we don't need the bullet.
Also, I'd like to see something about how rational character often reveal their knowledge and plans to the audience, showing their reasoning in the process.
u/LupoCani [+4] (a day later)
- Worm: spoilers
I realize this is tangential, but wherefrom comes this infernal idea that Worm is lesser for "merely" building a classical-looking universe instead of "truly" exploring the idea?
Deconstruction and reconstruction are different things. Normally, I'd try to elaborate on each and try to demonstrate why they are different things or equal value, but it's almost 04 in the morning. I'll have to settle for something more aggressive to convey the same emotion.
Deconstruction has been done. Yes, supervillains should just sell their inventions on the market. Yes, Superman should fly grain to Africa. Yes, armies of vigilante enforcers is trouble, and yes, between injuries, expenses, and government crackdown it's all unsustainable. We know.
Looking at this situation, where a thousand people have let the cart loose and seen it go into the ditch, of course you should add steering wheels to it. You shouldn't "truly" explore its path by sending it into the ditch again, as opposed to "merely" keeping it on the damn road. Anyone can nail together a house per blueprint band watch it collapse. Changing the blueprint so you still have a house, but it doesn't collapse, is hard. Worm is not lesser for setting out to solve the problems of classical heroes instead of watching them play out for the umpteenth time. Problem solving is the next, more advanced step to problem observing, not a lesser copy.
- Unsong: spoilers
Again, objection. Rationality can only amount to describing reality. If you live in a reality where NIEAC, then NIEAC is a real thing that you can and should work with. It does not detract from its rationality.
Finally, as for the definitions you propose... Nah. Like the sidebar, it hits on some points and completely misses others. It's just a question of what is which. Too much emphasis on world exploration, too little focus lvl-1 intelligence. To enthusiastic on some points, and a tad exclusive.
u/ArisKatsaris [+1] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
I realize this is tangential, but wherefrom comes this infernal idea that Worm is lesser for "merely" building a classical-looking universe instead of "truly" exploring the idea?
I never use the word 'lesser'. Neither Worm, nor Unsong, nor Lord of the Rings are 'lesser' for not being in the category of stories we are talking about.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why both the Worm author and the Unsong author have said these stories indeed do not belong in the genre.
u/LupoCani [+4] (a day later)
Then, substitute "lesser" for "less rational". It is a stronger claim, but I stand by that as well- reconstruction, as seen in perhaps Worm, is exactly as much a form of rationality as deconstruction, or in your words, 'fully exploring' an idea.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why both the Worm author and the Unsong author have said these stories indeed do not belong in the genre.
Should I? Authorial intent does not seem like it would affect the genre of a finished work.
u/ArisKatsaris [+1] Sidebar Contender (a day later)
Should I? Authorial intent does not seem like it would affect the genre of a finished work.
A story doesn't belong in a comedy genre just because it made you laugh, it belongs in the comedy genre because the author's primary intent was to make you laugh. A comedy that failed to make you laugh would still be in the comedy genre, if the author had intended it to be so.
Every time I hear a person saying that authorial intent doesn't matter, I want to scream at them that it does. Authorial intent affects everything in a story, and I'd much rather discuss authorial intent to figure out a story's placement in a genre than anything else whatsoever.
EDIT:
Then, substitute "lesser" for "less rational".
Better yet, "less clear membership in the 'rational' genre".
"less rational' implies we're criticizing them. If we're defining a genre (which means we're trying to pinpoint what it is we're talking about), we should define it with as little hint of condemnation towards stories that are doing something different as possible. Else we're leading back to "That's just what every good story should be doing."
I consider "Lord of the Rings" a much superior piece of fiction than "The Misenchanted Sword", but I'd place the latter in the rational genre, and the former clearly not in it.
u/LupoCani [+1] (a day later)
A story doesn't belong in a comedy genre just because it made you laugh, it belongs in the comedy genre because the author's primary intent was to make you laugh. A comedy that failed to make you laugh would still be in the comedy genre, if the author had intended it to be so.
Naturally, bad comedy is still comedy. But not for those reasons, I think.
Compare to fantasy. Good or bad, we can easily point and say "Yep, that's definitely a wizard, this is fantasy". That is, the defining pattern (wizards) is clearly a separate thing from the sliding scale of quality (which is just quality in general). Comedy isn't so lucky, the defining pattern (telling jokes, one way or another) is directly intertwined with the sliding scale of quality (causing laughs).
Still, I think the same logic applies. Comedy that doesn't make one laugh (bad comedy) still carries the defining pattern of trying to make you laugh. Not as a ghost in the Author's brain, but in how the text is set up and structured. Generally, it's easy to tell a boring joke from a non-joke. Furthermore, I would argue, an attempted comedy book where you can't even tell it's trying to joke, has simply failed and is not a comedy at all, however much the author wants it to be.
If we're being personal, then I too would like to label myself as generally pro-intent. My general stance is that the author is the only thing that separates fiction from reality, and in removing them, asking "For what is Mody Dick a metphor?" becomes on par with "For what was WW2 a metaphor?" Genre classification, however, is an area where I think it makes sense to not count it. Genres are a system from classifying what works are, not what they were intended to be.
Better yet, "less clear membership in the 'rational' genre".
"less rational' implies we're criticizing them. If we're defining a genre (which means we're trying to pinpoint what it is we're talking about), we should define it with as little hint of condemnation towards stories that are doing something different as possible. Else we're leading back to "That's just what every good story should be doing."
I consider "Lord of the Rings" a much superior piece of fiction than "The Misenchanted Sword", but I'd place the latter in the rational genre, and the former clearly not in it.
Right.
By both 'lesser' and 'less rational' I meant, roughly, "less clear membership in the 'rational' genre". Challenging, or implying you challenged, the quality of these works as a whole was never my intention, I apologize if my wording implied otherwise.
That said, no. Working to construct a (superficially) functioning superhero universe, as opposed to taking a wholly conventional one and watching it break down, does not constitute less clear membership of the rational genre. Writing about a universe where nothing is ever a coincidence, and having characters correctly conclude that nothing is ever a coincidence, is also a perfectly rational-y thing to do.
If I may, I will accuse you of looking at the conclusions of these stories in a vacuum. Yes, rational thinking usually allows us to conclude that "superheroes don't work" and "narrative logic doesn't work". But it seems like, since Worm and UNSONG both ask "But that if they/it did?", we're labeling them as 'edge cases' because they rationally explore absurd situations we're not used to.
u/General_Urist [+1] (a day later)
Like everyone else's attempts this will be imperfect, but:
One possible definition for RatFics is that the majority of the characters are intelligent (TRUE intelligence, not Cartoon Intelligence), and that the thought processes that come from that intelligence are a major focus of the story. In other words, a "rational story" is a story in which people's (REALISTIC!) thoughts are the main thing the reader is interested in and the author focuses on, with actions resulting from those thoughts being a mere follow up.
To contrast with Lord Of The Rings (the standard "not-rational" comparison): LOTR is a story where the thoughts beyond why the characters decide to do the actions they do are not in focus. The focus, the "big deal" of the story is the actions themselves. The trials and tribulations of the quest to get the Ring to Mt. Doom, not the particularities of why that course of action was chosen. The viewers are there for the fighting and struggle, not for the thinking. (This is NOT to say that a non-rational story cannot provoke the viewer into deep thought, just that the character's thought processes are not significantly focused on.)
u/Kinoite [+1] (2 days later)
The author displays respect for the value of intelligence, reason, forethought, and preparation.
I'm unsure about this one. Are we talking about Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3 characters?
There's a cluster of stories where the story's payoff is the hearing a character explain their especially-clever reasoning. Take 'A Rationalist in the Zombie Apocalypse'. The story's major mystery was, "why is this person carrying that?"
Some of the defining works go even further and have message-fiction scenes to impart some tools of rationality to the reader:
"Great Scott!" said Harry. (This was an expression he'd learned from the mad scientist Doc Brown in Back to the Future.) "Were you also thinking that when I bought the Feather-Falling Potion, the Gillyweed, and the bottle of Food and Water Pills?"
"Yes."
Harry shook his head in amazement. "Just what sort of plan do you think I have going, here?"
'Displaying respect for the value of preparation' seems like a good way to describe both of these works. And there's definite value in having a phrase that means, "Fair play mystery with some competence porn." That's a genre unto itself.
Based on the defining works, I can see how that (somewhat specific) genre might claim the label 'rational.'
On the other hand, there's a sense in which Unsong or Worm respect intelligence. The characters aren't meant to be Level 2+ geniuses of planning. But they're Level 1 intelligent.
And there's a sense in which the settings themselves respect intelligence. In Worm, I'm allowed to notice stuff like, "The Powerful people sure do spend a lot of time punching. That's weird." And in Unsong, I'm allowed to notice stuff like, "Theodicity is legitimately hard."
This sets these works apart from lots of popular fiction. Harry Potter, for instance, was a great book. But the answer to, "Wait. This school has like 80 students. How big could this society be?" is that JK Rowling isn't great at math and you shouldn't think too hard about it.
This is a kind of respect-for-intelligence, but I'm not sure it's what's meant by the bullet point.