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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2480 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 13, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Have you ever read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'd Never Do Again? It's vintage David Foster Wallace and is quite good.

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

What does it mean that I both love cruising and still find that to be one of the best writeups of a cruise I think I've ever read. I guess I'm a philistine.

It's very well crafted but all the wit in the world can't disguise the fact that it's written by a clinically depressed neurotic. I too have sometimes looked down and seen the gaping maw of existential dread, but outside those temporary moments of madness I have very little patience for wallowing. I want to shake him.

Interesting take. As a person who could also be described as clinically depressed and neurotic, I actually don't mind this part of his personality leaking into his writing. I don't mind depression or neuroticism leaking into anyone's writing so long as the writing is still entertaining or amusing. It's when you have the dull self-pitying storytelling that I get impatient and bored.

It's good writing, I just find his tendency to see a cloud for every silver lining a bit off putting.

Speaking of depression, you might like Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's the story of an abandoned human colony that has fallen to medieval tech levels, and would be a standard 'impetuous princess teams up with wizard to save the kingdom' story except that the wizard is the last of the Earth anthropologists sent to monitor the colony. He's been alive for centuries waiting for contact from earth that hasn't come, he's clinically depressed in a world that has absolutely no way to understand such concepts, and he's going on the quest essentially as a way to take his mind off things. It really works as a story. The wizard's POV is sad but not whingy or dull, and the overall character interactions end up being really good. It's one of my favourite novellas.

Awesome. Appreciate the rec. I'll check it out.

lol my thoughts exactly.

Nope.

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