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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4079 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I see what you mean better now, thanks. I was partly confused by your use of "artist," which is more often used for visual arts and a bit musicians, where it seems like you mean something more like storytellers, for the most part.

I'd include the visual arts if I thought they were likely to be impactful at all. IDK if our culture has moved on, or if it's always been this way, but visual art doesn't seem to have the same reach or emotional impact as other forms of art. I do include musicians, but know much more about writing than music, so writing is what I've been talking about.

It would be interesting to try, though I'm pretty skeptical. The way you describe it, it sounds sort of like offering sabbatical opportunities to non-academics, in exchange of some expectation that the person will create stories, and then like you say, that isn't necessarily compatible with many people's career paths. Would it be somewhat like Scott's grants projects, where it's posted somewhere that interested people are likely to see the opportunity and apply? Or maybe someone knows a person who has something in mind, and offers it personally? I could see Brandon Sanderson organizing something like that, but just for fun storytelling, rather than Culturally Important Art.

Yeah, I'd do it on a personal level, but honestly it's not well thought-out yet.

I used to read a lot of low brow fantasy (spent a whole winter alone in Alaska with Edgar Rice Burroughs novels). The morality seemed... fine, I think? Lots of emphasis on courage, anyway, which is fine.

I'm not super impressed with low-brow fantasy books (despite them being essentially all I read nowadays, lacking better alternatives), but Tolkien for example had:

  • A cursed magical artifact the heroes could only resist through moral strength, nothing else
  • Other cursed magical artifacts with similar lessons
  • In the end their own strength couldn't save them, but the mercy they showed along the way did
  • "I can't carry the ring, but I can carry you," a good analogy for compassion and charity in general
  • Lots of background noise morality--Sam gets married and has about a dozen kids, which is straightforwardly presented as a good thing

and so on.

Interesting. Have you written stories before?

Not really, but I'm excited to try. I started writing/posting short stories this year with the goal of improving that skill. Currently I'm not a good writer at all, but I still think with some practice I can do better than the drivel that's popular on Royal Road these days.

I kind of liked the subplot in That Hideous Strength where Jane is on birth control, and is super bored alone in her flat, trying to work on her dissertation. And then later Merlin says that they could have had a child who would have been super important and amazing, but the time for that is past, idiots! My guess would be that the book reading population (or at least the population willing to read a book written by a Mottizen) is significantly more likely to be in that kind of situation than the (more numerically common, but unlikely to be affected by this meme space) "never married 19-year-old with three children, below the poverty line" mentioned by an article I just looked up on the statistics. Or the young underclass women Theodore dalrymple is known for writing about.

I like that, though it's probably too on-the-nose to work the way I'd like it to. That story won't reach mainstream audiences nowadays.

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