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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 10, 2019 21:11:48 GMT -5
Hmm, I don't think the districts end up being tedious. I think it matters more when you're playing on very high difficulties, since then any small advantage like that helps. At lower difficulty levels, it doesn't matter at all (indeed, much of the strategy of Civ--any version--simply isn't necessary at lower levels, since the AI are piss stupid, especially once you know what you're doing). It's not going to ruin your game if you forgot to leave a prime spot for a particular district a millennium ago. Chances are most of your cities won't be perfect for some reason or another, but if you can optimize, do it.
While it's true Persona heavily centers around going to school, I feel like that's mostly in the sense that you get to join clubs or do social links or whatever, but the rest of the game isn't really about school? I dunno. I feel like you could transplant the basic premise outside of school and still have it work. It's not that high school characters themselves are inherently unrelatable, but their circumstances certainly can be.
What don't you like about FeMC?
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Mar 10, 2019 21:22:10 GMT -5
At any rate I've got too much coming up to be able to afford Civ 6 at this point. I've been wearing the same contacts for 3 months now because I lost vision insurance, so regardless of the cost, I've GOT to get into the optometrist. Coupled with a few other bills unfortunately coming together on the month where I lose a paycheck (hooray spring break)... I'm gonna be tight for a while. Maybe at the summer sale?
I kinda want to go back and play a small game of Civ from each one. I got into the series thanks to my dad's ancient pirated copy of Civ 1, from ye olden floppy days. Found out last week he lost the files when his HDD crashed, but I've had them on my thumb-drive for ages. I uploaded them to google drive for him. Funny how those files have survived so many different forms of storage: floppies, hard-drives, thumb-drives, and now google drive. Fun fact: the file-size is a whopping 2 megs. (I looked it up: file last modified November 19, 1991 -- lol)
As to Persona, that was kinda my point: while Persona does have more going on, I like the characters enough that even if it was just silly high school shinanagins, I'd still consider it worthy of a mindless binge. By contrast, the characters of Just Because! fail to inspire even that kind of back-handed praise. Like FeMC, whom I wrote an entire paragraph about why I dislike her (the one that starts, "the worst part is"). In summary her entire contribution to the show consists of, 'I like [person] but can't say anything until after [person] gets with somebody else'. Also the fact that she always ditches her friends to study, but always manages to make time for the core group. Like I said, the way she's portrayed displays insane levels of selfishness and indecision. Ultimately I don't think this is what they wanted her to be, but because of their crap writing, it's absolutely how it comes across.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Mar 11, 2019 11:14:30 GMT -5
I don't personally mind high school setting in anime, but seeing the direction Fire Emblem is going I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. High school is fine for something like Persona, where the characters are supposed to be normal teenagers. Forcing the same tropes on fantasy just feels weird and unnecessary.
Speaking of anime, Psycho-Pass is apparently getting a third season. Can't say I'm very excited about it, since I was satisfied with the ending of the first season and the second was bad and unnecessary. I watched the movie out of curiosity and it didn't really bring anything new to the table either. I guess I'm looking forward to what they are trying to do with it, but I'm still going to pretend it all ended with the first season.
Bought a new keyboard after spilling coffee on the previous one. Decided to go with mechanical, and it's a lot better to use than the cheap flat keyboard I used. It's really noisy though. Maybe I'll get used to it, but right now it's really distracting.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Mar 12, 2019 3:36:21 GMT -5
What did I just watch? So if it's not obvious already, stupid anime high school romances are kind-of a guilty pleasure of mine, and I'm in a phase. After the abortion of Just Because!, I moved on to the next thing expecting to be equally disappointed. It started out with MC and FeMC making embarassed faces and awkward anime grunts at each other, but then in episode 3 something amazing happened: He asked her out. And then in episode 4 she accepted, and they started dating. In episode 5 they both Google 'how to date', and awkwardly work together to figure out how to actually be in a relationship. In episode 7 MC declares himself as FeMC's boyfriend before romantic rival can get too far, thus putting an end to the chances of either romantic rival and the whole triangle/quadrangle drama before it really manifests. In episode 7 he goes for a kiss, but gets interrupted. In episode 8 they get the kiss. What the hell? When these two first started they made awkward grunts, but now they actually openly talk to each other like a real couple. They spend time together and communicate constantly, and... what IS this? Where is the stupid, drawn out drama? Where is the miscommunication that extends for several episodes? Why is all the teenage horse-crap stopped cold because every time it pops up, these two people actually work TOGETHER? I was almost relieved when episode 9 dropped the drama bomb. She's moving away: get ready for some drama! Sure enough, when he sees romantic rival confess to her (he had to try, even if it would clearly fail), he can't help but be a sulky douche. Sure, things aren't going well with his writing, his mom is nagging him relentlessly about his lack of studying, and the girl he loves is moving away, but his crap attitude sees the date end with her in tears and him angry at the world. That's enough drama for one episode, but wait, we're only two-thirds of the way through, because to make amends he silently begins studying to take the entrance exam for her top-level school. Queue episode end with unresolved feelings that will continue until the finale... ...nope, she finds out he's studying and confronts him. He confesses his plan and apologises for his behaviour, and the episode concludes with them moving past this fight together. He then spends all of episode 11 studying (his mom, on seeing his dedication, begins backing him in a fantastic episode that avoids the melodrama, 'oh my mom actually does love me' way), only to get rejected come episode 12. Turns out she really is moving away, and he really is staying behind.
WHAT IS THIS SHOW? Admittedly the credits do show their relationship working out and ultimately ending in marriage, but I remain absolutely stunned at how this show managed to avoid pretty much every single low-hanging fruit of anime romance drama. Even when it does hit you with familiar conflicts, it takes all those times you scream "why didn't they just 'x'?" and actually has our characters DO THE THING THAT WAS THE SMART THING TO DO. I cannot emphasise enough how much this show just kept constantly subverting my expectations... ...which is why it pains me to say that it's also kinda boring. Not because of the lack of dumbass anime drama, but because nearly every character in the show is bland. It's hysterical to me that the romantic lead with the biggest balls in the history of anime is... a lit-boi who spends most of his nights writing. Meanwhile track girl actually has a head on her shoulders, not only answering his advances quickly, but taking an active role in keeping the relationship from falling apart later on. It's just a shame that she doesn't really do or say anything interesting outside of the relationship. I don't dislike the characters, but compared to say, Your Name's Taki and Mitsuha, these two feel flat. It's clear that they both want the relationship to work, and outside of the relationship they both have separate friends and family (point to the show: they have lives outside of each other) and even hobbies... but none of that really -goes- anywhere. He wants to be a writer (he regularly quotes Osamu Dazai: a classic Japanese writer and manic depressive who ultimately killed himself -- this latter factoid seemingly goes unnoticed given the way he quotes him on love and happiness), but all that means is that he writes and reads a lot. What does he read/write? I dunno, classics. FeMC is in track, but you'll never see her act like it outside of club. Training? Diet? What are these things? In other words, rather than being hobbies that define the characters, it's just something the characters *do*.
Hence, while a lot of the steps in the relationship are well-done, it lacks any kind of personability. Watching the two figure out how to date is excellent, but when it comes time to actually talk, the scene ends. What if she tried to nudge him to be more aware of how his writing/reading are bad for his health/posture? What if he spends time trying to convince her of Dazai's brilliance? Because the characters themselves lack personality, the relationship itself does.
It ties back into something I’ve said a million times: it’s not enough to be ‘not bad’: you have to actually be ‘good’. On the surface it does a lot of things 'right' because it avoids the pitfalls of so many other shows. Yet, if I'd not watched enough bad anime romance to recognise these frequent failings, I wouldn't be giving the show points for avoiding them. In other words, the show's value exists in how it avoids the mistakes of others: a.k.a. it cannot stand on it's own: a.k.a. it's not really doing things well, it's just doing things 'not badly'. Doing things well would involve doing all of that AND having two central characters with well-rounded personalities.
It's a shame too, because I started writing this wanting to give it lots of praise. Yet even as I started I knew I would have to end with the admission that I wouldn't really recommend the show. Now, three drafts later, here I am, gone from pleasantly surprised to mildly disappointment.
F*ck it, I'm going to bed.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 12, 2019 23:28:52 GMT -5
Oh, derp. I thought you were saying you didn't like FeMC in Persona, since you went from Persona -> FeMC, and I interpret MC in a game context always. Though, I guess it makes sense it wasn't about Persona, since it isn't like the MCs have any defined personality in that game anyway.
You are correct about having too much to lose. Why, tonight I was going to come home, go to the gym, and then write some code to finish up on some projects! I went to the gym, then hopped on Civ at 9, picked up my save from the weekend, and told myself the game would probably end in an hour. Of course it didn't. I didn't see the time until I quit the game, and yeah, I'm not getting sh*t done tonight, since apparently Tuesday officially ended while I was playing.
But, since I'm on the topic of time, may I take a detour into ranting about Daylight Savings? It's the worst. The worst. Arizona and Hawaii are the only states who are sane on the matter, in that neither of them follow it. People go on about having longer summer hours, blah blah blah. Okay, then just... keep it Daylight Savings all year round? But then it'll be dark in the winter in the morning, people cry! Who gives a sh*t? Winter sucks, and you're not going outside anyway. I argue the pain of March cancels out any benefit whatsoever gained throughout the rest of the year. This is a fact, non-negotiable, and I will fight someone over it.
Also, as for Fire Emblem, I haven't finished Fates specifically because I can't stand the characters and their dialogue. It's not like Fire Emblem was ever known for its characters, but I really didn't mind the bland princes... the new anime tropey characters are like cancer.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 13, 2019 21:54:50 GMT -5
So, two things to rant about today.
One is this college admissions scandal that broke out. I'm kind of floored people paid that much money to get their kid into [insert Ivy League-level college here]? We're talking hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars. Now, I don't know about you, but if I were so fabulously rich that I could consider dropping that much money on bribing college officials, I'd probably be pretty loaded overall. Which begs the question... who cares if your kid goes to Harvard vs. a lesser, but still decent, college? Your kid is set for life because you are set for life. Why not just give the kid the bribe money in a trust fund? Seems like a better and more moral option, at least.
Obviously, having a Yale or Harvard degree on your resume is impressive, but: 1) Outside of specific fields (e.g., law), employers honestly do not care where you went to school after the first few years 2) Clearly you weren't smart enough to get in on your own merit, so your grades probably won't be all that impressive. The pedigree of the school can compensate somewhat, but... still. And, sure, you could also bribe your way into, say, Harvard Law afterward anyway, but the big name law firms hire on class rank, sooo. 3) You also can't bribe the workplace. People hire and promote on merit, so being a dum-dum from Yale effectively means you're just a dum-dum. The height of your success may very well end in college.
So, to me, what's the point? A million dollars for what? To say you went to Yale? I'm all for attending the best college you can, and I would have also shot for an Ivy League had I had the credentials. Who wouldn't, if you have a legitimate shot? But realistically, it doesn't actually matter if you attend Wake Forest or Stanford. I genuinely think someone who would actually shell out a million dollars for their kid to go to Yale over a decent, but not omgz amazing, school, is doing it not for the career opportunity or to give their kid a leg up in life, but because it is a status statement for the parent, simply put. My son goes to ~Yale~. It's not about the kids, and everything about the parents' own vanity.
Then onto my second rant. I. Hate. The. Term. Data. Science.
I loathe it. I cringe when I hear it.
Why? What the f**k even is data science? Ostensibly, it's applied statistics under another name. But it isn't, really. Data science has become this hot new sexy term that means lots of things. Some of them are really cutting edge and technical; some aren't. But firms love to throw out that they have "data scientists" on staff, whatever these data scientists are.
I've seen ads for data science positions for all sorts of things:
1) Positions more aptly described as data visualization. Literally, people's jobs is to create dashboards in Tableau, maybe know a little SQL to make the job easier. There is no modeling involved and no analysis. Python and related languages are often a "nice to have." I used to do this. I wasn't a data scientist then.
2) Positions you used to call data analysts or business analysts. Again, SQL sometimes features here, but often it's even just advanced Excel (e.g., pivot tables). Basically, the idea is, here's some data, find some meaningful business insight or answer a client question. No modeling involved, just data analysis and intuition. I used to do this, too, and I wasn't a data scientist then either.
3) Positions that are really just data engineering roles. Data engineering skills are really important for people doing AI/ML work, but you can also do straight-up data engineering. If your entire workflow is reshaping and manipulating data and building data pipelines, that's not data science. I do this job function now. Still not a data scientist.
4) Positions where you might actually use TensorFlow or PyTorch or build a neural net. We used to call these people statisticians or mathematicians. These are the people who might build a model that predicts how likely you are to purchase shoes or write the algorithm that determines what appears in your Facebook feed. (For the record, I do not and have never done this. I find software engineering infinitely more interesting, and have no interest in this field.)
4 totally different roles! 1 and 2 could be done by anyone reasonably smart and analytical; 3 requires programming knowledge; 4 I'd want someone with a heavy math/stats background, and a masters or PhD would be preferable. But they're all data scientists??? When I think of a data scientist, I only think of #4. The others are distinctly different.
On a related note, "Data Science bootcamps" have become a real thing lately. Full disclosure that I've never gone to one, so I could be talking out of my a** here. But... I honestly wonder how much of #4 they can possibly be getting? It is not trivial to learn how to program. To actually be able to problem-solve and program effectively, that takes months. You could have a bootcamp on just learning Python and data munging alone. When, pray tell, do you get time to learn statistics and how to choose the right model and why? Even if solid programming experience was a requisite for the bootcamp (I know people who went to ones that didn't have any), how do you learn everything in 3 or 4 months? People spend bachelors, masters, PhDs, on this. I guess it's better than nothing, but still.
I'm just really skeptical. I've worked with a lot of data scientists over the years. The best ones were ones who really understood how each model, approach, etc. worked and the inherent pros/cons with each. You don't get that through a cursory overview, and just being able to write the code doesn't mean it's any good. I could write up and apply a logistic regression model right now. After all, I know Python well, and I can do feature engineering in both pandas and Spark in my sleep. But that would be like me driving a car and calling myself an engineer. I have no idea how the model works, I don't know why it's the best choice over some other type of model, and I would be clueless on ways to tweak the performance. If I wanted to be a statistician, I would go back and get another degree. I simply don't have the math or statistics background. Most people don't.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Mar 14, 2019 13:12:14 GMT -5
Fire Emblem is going full weeb, but it seems like it's working out for them. I'm just not part of their target audience anymore.
On Data Science: I have similar feelings towards Computer Science*. I've had to take a few courses from their side, and most of them have been basically useless. The things they teach are either stuff we've learned by ourselves through practice or other courses, or stuff that's just common sense. The courses are also really easy to pass, I get perfect grades with barely any effort. There are some useful bits of information occasionally, but without the skills to apply them through programming or statistics, I don't see how anyone would benefit from them. And from my experience, the people studying Computer Science are s**t at both.
I'm sure Computer Science is useful, they wouldn't teach it at University otherwise. I just have no clue what it's used for. Ironically, I also applied for Computer Science back when I got into University, and I'm really glad I chose IT.
I haven't run into Data Science personally, but it reminds me of the Internet of Things trend. Every single company seems to be looking for people for "IoT applications", and to me the word has lost all meaning because it's being used everywhere. Maybe used to be an actual thing, but now it just seems like a buzzword. EDIT: I just realized they have one thing in common: neither of the terms have a Finnish translation. Even though I'm pretty used to the Finglish (we sometimes english words in even when speaking in Finnish because we can't think of a word in our own language, it's pretty common in our field), it's jarring to see that in official communication. Especially when they try to apply Finnish grammar to the English words.
* I find the terms really confusing. I'm officially studying Information Technology, but I often mess up the terms and call it Computer Science. Finnish term for Computer Science directly translates to Information Processing Science, so I got no clue where the computer part comes in the first place.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 15, 2019 17:02:31 GMT -5
I've asked a bunch of experienced software engineers at work if it would be worth getting a degree in computer science, and they've all said not to bother--computer science is highly theoretical and doesn't really apply very much to the actual workplace. It doesn't hurt, but you also learn a lot on the job anyway. Plus, it's very easy to do self-study, and this field is rich with free materials if you want to go down that path. For what it's worth, I haven't found that people who have computer science degrees are necessarily better than those who don't; they can recollect concepts like unsigned integers or the basics of assembly, but none of that really ever comes up in practice unless you're in a very specialized field (e.g., no one cares about assembly other than the very few people who actually use assembly).
I think one of the biggest things I find that determines quality is how well people actually, you know, write code. Is it maintainable? Is it clean and easy to read? Does it make sense in a broader architecture? Some people are honestly not very good at this, even though they're otherwise really intelligent and understand computer science concepts well. It's kind of like writing; I can write well (non-creatively), but I would never be able to write a novel, because there's a lot more involved than just writing well-formed sentences.
I haven't run into IoT much, but everything at my company is "AI" nowadays, even if it's the same sort of model we've been running for the past twenty years. It sounds sexy--and intimidating, like there's some Skynet application diabolically calculating things and making decisions at light speed. I can assure you that my company fancies itself to use AI and ML, and in some areas we do, but most of the time we just ship tedious manual work off to India and call it a day.
(Incidentally, boy, would I hate working at TCS and similar companies over in India. We really send the worst of the worst work over for those guys to do. I get that working at TCS is considered a "good job" over there, and I won't begrudge them that, but the work we "send offshore" is truly awful, like your brain would ooze out of your eyeballs because it's so boring and repetitive.)
IT has a different connotation to me, and I think in English more generally. We usually refer to IT as people who are support staff for hardware or OS issues, e.g., if you can't connect to the printer or need to upgrade our OS. Nothing you need to go to college for, just a certificate you can study for. I don't think it's a major in colleges; if there is something similarly named, it's probably more akin to syadmin/database administration or something similar?
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 16, 2019 12:53:09 GMT -5
Damn, it has gotten really nice here the past couple of days, like 60-70 degree weather. I wish there were more public places with wifi so I could sit outside.
Things are looking up job-wise, finally, and it feels like a big weight off my shoulders. I like the people I work with a lot; I haven't exactly liked the low salary (which is tens of thousands of dollars under market) or the fact that the work was starting to feel rote and unchallenging. After a certain point, those things start to grate. A lot. Like "I need to leave ASAP because this sucks" lot. Finally got a significant raise and got moved onto working on a project with Ruby and Scala. I know neither. Feels good to not know what the hell I'm doing again.
I'm very sad that YouTube has finally, after all of the years, discovered I am a massive sucker for documentaries about psychological disorders and freak medical conditions. I've wasted more time than I care to admit watching documentaries about people with no limbs, hikikomori syndrome, prematurely aging skin conditions, and more. It's trash sensationalist television, and like a moth to the flame, I click and watch, transfixed. I've long used YouTube for just music, but now these stupid documentaries pop up on the home page instead and distract me when all I had intended was to go find more music to listen to. I've even stooped as low as Dr. Phil this week, because he had a segment on childhood schizophrenia.
On that note, why do people go onto Dr. Phil? For one, you're broadcasting all of your dirty laundry for millions of people to see, and two, you can't possibly solve half the issues people bring up in a single episode. Granted, I watched one segment one time with a severely anorexic woman where the parents, I think, did it because they were quite literally out of options to keep her alive (and, in turn, a residential treatment center offered to treat her for free as a result of the episode). I guess that makes sense in their case; they had tried to solve the problem on their own, and going onto Dr. Phil was a "we've tried EVERYTHING else, what do we have to lose" thing. But I think in the case of the segment I watched about schizophrenia, the parents--who are both pretty horrible people, in my opinion--went on because they hate each other and hope to drag the other parent through the mud for public humiliation. A "told you so!" I don't think their kids benefitted at all.
Literally, the entire segment was all about how the mother believed their autistic son is also schizophrenic in addition to their daughter, and the (divorced) father insisted she was doctor shopping for a diagnosis and giving him medication he shouldn't have. The kid has been seen by countless psychiatrists at UCLA. What the f**k does Dr. Phil have to offer in that conversation? Not much, other than a publicly place to air their mud-slinging.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Mar 16, 2019 20:10:39 GMT -5
On that note, why do people go onto Dr. Phil? For one, you're broadcasting all of your dirty laundry for millions of people to see... What the f**k does Dr. Phil have to offer in that conversation? Not much, other than a publicly place to air their mud-slinging. I think you answered your own question there. If the internet has proven anything, it's that everyone wants a platform, even if it's to injure themselves.
I don't really have much to say or contribute to the nature of so-called data sciences. I've mentioned several times that most of my favourite artistic ventures are discovered not because of an algorithmic recommendation, but rather by sheer odd luck. That said, I definitely prefer my Amazon home page to be full of recommendations for Japanese novels than the latest trends in fashion. (I'm aware there's more to it than just this, but it's really not my forte)
The other night my friend and I watched a few movies. Among them was Fifty Shades Freed, which I think was the most I've laughed at a movie in ages. Seriously, Twilight I wouldn't ever recommend because it was downright boring -- a bunch of angsty teenagers sit around angsting for an hour while the plot goes nowhere. Fifty Shades Freed? Not only is it just hilariously stupid, but the sheer popularity recontextualises everything about the film. It's not just, 'this is stupid', it's, 'people ENJOYED this stupid'.
I think context is a bigger deal than we give it credit for. Take another movie we watched, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. On it's own it's a fine movie, but this won the Oscar for best animated film. I know that the Oscars don't care about animated films, and I know that they have a western bias. But this year a Horchata film was nominated, so I don't think it's unfair to expand the scope beyond western animation. Which brings us back to Spiderverse: what would otherwise be a fun superhero cartoon is now contextualised as 'the best animated film of 2018', which changes the way I view it. I wouldn't think 'the best animated film of 2018' would lack character development for all but two of its characters. I wouldn't think 'the best animated film of 2018' would resolve the main character's conflict with little more than a rousing speech from his dad. I wouldn't think 'the best animated film of 2018' would have villains who, with one exception, completely lack motivation.
"Wow", you might be thinking, "Spiderverse sounds like a really bad movie!". It's not. A lot of movies make similar kinds of mistakes. Much as I love Your Name, I still think it's weak how their relationship is developed in a montage or that we never see Mitsuha convince her father. All in all though I think Your Name does enough right that these two points are easily outweighed. By contrast, I find Spiderverse tends to fall apart when you start picking at it critically. It's not terrible, but surely there must have been a better animated movie in 2018 (FWIW I haven't seen Mirai, but if it's like Horchata's other films it's not exactly an award winner either).
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 16, 2019 21:15:18 GMT -5
I just read the plot summary of Fifty Shades Freed. Well. Uh.
On the plus side, sounds like they had two kids in the end. So I guess that means no more Fifty Shades? I'm of the understanding that things get pretty unsexy once there are kids in the mix...
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Mar 17, 2019 3:09:00 GMT -5
It was my understanding that Fifty Shades was always a trilogy. This is also based on my understanding of Fifty Shades, which is about as limited as one might expect. Unrelated, but is there anything left that the 'guy/girl meets girl/guy dying of an illness' story left to mine? I get it: having death so near heightens human emotions. But it also really limits the number of stories you can tell because, fun fact, we all know how things are gonna end. I just don't feel like I've seen an original take on the issue in ages. Nothing that had anything new to say, or new emotions to explore... It feels really weird to say, "hey, do you think you could do something new with the whole terminal illness thing because it has a been-there, done-that quality", but ffs if the goal is to make me relate to the brevity of life and the significance of what we do with it, but all I feel is bored, then I think it's safe to say your art is failing on some level. You know what I haven't seen? A story about two people who come together because he/she has a terminal illness, but in fact he/she ends up being the .01% who *survive* it. In the aftermath of this recovery, as life resettles into somewhat normal patterns, this couple realises that their entire relationship was based on a relatively brief burst of emotion. The entire thing can be based around the struggle of not wanting to deny those emotions, of feeling like you owe/are owed something (even if that something is impossible to attain), and could end any number of ways. Personally I'd go with the two separating, but trying to remain close in spite of it. Then again, on a personal level I don't think I could remain friends with someone I had that kind of a relationship with... which I guess makes me either a coward or an assh*le. Or both.
See? I'm already thinking more about life than any of these shows/books/movies have managed. C'mon guys! You aren't telling bad stories, you're just telling the same stories that we've already heard! Surely your talents would be better spent on something more original?
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 17, 2019 9:56:50 GMT -5
I think that's a realistic outcome. Call me a pessimist? Although I was thinking about it from the other way around. Not about being owed, but that some people feed off feeling needed. A "friend" who swoops in when you're terminally ill might enjoy--perversely--the idea of being a caretaker and the position of adulation and responsibility that comes with it. If their friend recovers, can healthy friend still be a caretaker who is relied upon for every whim? Does their relationship still make sense? Sick-and-now-healthy person might resent the hovering that they appreciated while ill.
Some people are like this. Their call to action is when someone is sick or out-of-luck. I think most are well-intentioned, but there is an underlying self-serving need being fulfilled in selflessly throwing themselves at other people.
I think most shows/movies/books are afraid of ending on anything other than a happy note, all loose ends wrapped, everyone singing kumbaya in the distance. Life doesn't really work that way, though. Looking back on my life and the things I've read/watched, the ones that haunted me the most after were the ones where things didn't end perfectly. Either the ending was open to interpretation, or it was honestly a horrible ending for those involved. But that was sort of the point.
Speaking of leaving books up to interpretation, The Giver was a book I read in 4th grade and loved. It's a kid's book, so it's not particularly subtle with its messaging and has more than a handful of logical problems (utopian societies, I think, are difficult to write, because they are inherently unrealistic). It's not a book I would choose now if I wanted to read a dystopian novel, but in 4th grade, it was great. One thing I liked about the book was it wasn't clear whether the protagonist died in the end. The book has a very different feel, I think, if you choose to believe he died escaping from his dystopian utopia, than if you believe he found peace Elsewhere.
I thought that was indeed the ending of the book until years later, when I discovered that Lois Lowry had written several loosely related sequels. This was kind of like watching a Disney direct-to-VHS sequel. It has the same characters! It feels familiar! But wait! There's nothing in here that made the original so enjoyable. In fact, everyone is horrible and this is like watching a bad trainwreck. Please stop, I wish I didn't know this sequel existed.
The good thing about Disney sequels is that I pretend they don't exist, and it works out great. Finding Lois Lowry's other books ruined my interpretation of The Giver's ending and built upon Jonas's character, making him into someone I didn't even like. (This is literally like if you took kid Simba and made him into Lion King 2 Simba. I hate adult Simba, especially in LK2.)
I think part of the reasons I hated the sequels so much fell into a couple buckets: 1) The Giver had a lot of legitimate logical problems, which are a separate issue, but one thing it did well was it also just... didn't explain certain things. It's really not necessary to explain everything in a book. Sometimes it's just better if you don't, because it's not important to the story or is better left open to interpretation. For instance, it is never explained in The Giver why Jonas, Gabriel, and the Giver can "see beyond." They just do, and it doesn't matter why. It would be distracting from the plot's actual purpose had they explained why.
There is a lot more exposition given in the later sequels about why things are the way they are. Indeed, it went a bit Stephen King-ish, and I think you all know my opinions about Stephen King's writing. The details are not particularly compelling, either, and, moreover, they distract and detract from the original point. It wasn't that The Giver had magic; it was that living in a utopian society with no real choice or emotion isn't as good as it sounds, and everyone has traded in all wondrousness and pain that comes with reality in return for living a humdrum lie of a life. Who the f**k cares about magic?
2) The other sequels all dealt with dystopian societies. This may just be a me thing, but I really liked that The Giver was ostensibly utopian. Again, The Giver's representation of utopia isn't perfect, but to its credit, it's a lot easier to write an objectively dystopian society. Blatant dystopia's takeaways are right there in front of you--dystopian societies suck, and they need to be made better. The Giver, on the other hand, it takes a while for the shallowness of society to fully unfold, and when it does, it's still not an awful place. You could make an argument that perhaps the trade that the Elders made in suppressing the highs and lows of the human experience wasn't a terrible one, and it certainly wasn't evil.
Do I dislike dystopian novels? Absolutely not; I actually quite like them. Dystopian novels are pretty common, though. I've read more dystopian dystopias than dystopian utopias, though, and Lois Lowry enjoys the benefit of lower competition with the latter. The former, well, I've read better, even in the same genre (children/YA). Lois Lowry's dystopias just aren't that good, and it shows. Her books beat you over the head with the points they try to make, and in dogged pursuit of the plot, her characters have little time to develop. Most are sterile and unlikable, either blatantly evil to support the constant "omg this is a dystopian society", or perfectly good, kind and just as a juxtaposition against evil society. I don't think The Giver has a star-studded cast, but, critically, no one is good or evil. They're just people.
3) Relatedly, the writing was pretty bad in some books. There is an entire book dedicated towards Gabriel's mother, and how she gave him up and blah blah blah. There was nothing added in that book, other than that Lois Lowry wanted to vomit some words onto some pages. I can't think of a single thing the book did. I didn't like the other sequels, either, but this one was particularly egregiously bad. The other books borrowed a few characters, but could have been read stand-alone. Son went directly back to the source of the Giver and stole its characters and settings from that. It was like bad fanfiction, unable to stand on its own as a separate book and yet adding nothing to its source material. Familiar characters are all there, but none of them are recognizable or likable, and see point #1 that some things are better left unexplained. Ultimately, what was the point of the book? Did it need to exist at all? I appreciate that at least Gathering Blue was like the flip of the Giver, someone different thriving against all odds in a dystopian society. What did Son accomplish?
Incidentally--and this goes back to point #1--Son actively hurts The Giver in some ways. One of The Giver's strong points, as I've already mentioned, is that it never explicitly says the Community is evil. You are led to that conclusion over time alongside Jonas that the Community, in its quest for eliminating pain, has eliminated a lot of joy as well. But is that a bad thing? The book doesn't lead you to that conclusion, although it also leaves you welcome to come to that conclusion on your own. In any case, even if you decide, like Jonas, that he'd rather live in a society that has both joy and pain, you still can't say his society is malicious. They are well-intentioned. I don't think there's a single villain in the book.
The Community definitely feels malicious and evil in Son, meanwhile, which has the net result of 1) feeling like the past three dystopian novels in the series, with similar conclusions, 2) tainting the way you interpret the Community in The Giver. The Giver does not work well if you believe the underpinnings of that society are inherently evil. Then it just becomes indistinguishable from the other books in the series. Lois Lowry has, at that point, already beat the dystopian society to death at that point, and there is nothing new to wring from her POV.
Blah. I didn't meant to write so much about that. It was just a tangential thought that then exploded. I dunno. I'm still mad about those sequels all these years later.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Mar 17, 2019 14:28:40 GMT -5
I think also there's something inherently different about relationships that move quickly and those that don't. Everyone I know who goes from dating to marriage in under a year ends up separated somewhere down the line. It's a fact that people change over time, so I think part of dating is discovering not just that you like the person as they are now, but you are in sync with their core values and will remain compatible 10, 20, 40 etc. years down the line. But again, I've never been on a date, so what the hell would I know? Did I not do a write-up on The Giver? I read it for the first time earlier this year, so I thought surely I did a write-up? Nope, just searched, no commentary. Okay, so The Giver was recommended to me heavily in elementary school, and like most things heavily recommended to me in elementary school I avoided it like the plague. However a few months ago I was helping the librarian organise several copies for the ELA classes and realised just how short it is, so come lunch I decided to read it. It took two days. The long and short of it is that it felt like 1984 for children, complete with many of 1984's problems. For instance, the book spends half of its pages setting up the society before the actual plot starts. It's not that any of these scenes are particularly bad unto themselves, but when Jonas' interactions with the Giver take up less than half of the book, it feels like misplaced priorities. On the whole Jonas' transition felt less like a gradual awakening and more like, "hey wait a minute, everything is kinda sh*t, isn't it?". Maybe this is just my adult mind speaking because as an adult I want more emphasis on the characters. Perhaps children are going to bored by that and more engaged by the world-building. However I just can't shake the feeling that it could have been handled better. Much like how we truly don't need to know why Jonas can see colours but others can't, I feel like there was a better way to imply or suggest much of what is just blatantly spelled out. It's great that the author has such a vivid idea for her world, but I'm more interested in how the world provides context for the characters than reading what each and every single person gets when they turn a certain age. Then again, this is exactly why I can't enjoy so much modern sci-fi or fantasy, so maybe it's just me. I had other thoughts on The Giver, but they've really faded with time. As you said, it's very much a children's book, so reading it as an adult left almost no impression. I think I just wanted to finally give it a shot since it's managed to remain relevant for over 20 years. I've never heard anything good about the sequels, so FWIW you aren't alone in that boat. It is nice, however, to have the opportunity to reject what came next. You can tell me the Persona spin-offs are cannon until your breath gives, idgaf -- the only cannon to me are the numbered entries.
-edit- I think most shows/movies/books are afraid of ending on anything other than a happy note, all loose ends wrapped, everyone singing kumbaya in the distance. It's funny you say that, because stupid romance anime aside (which, after abandoning my latest attempt, I think I've had my fill of) everything I've read or watched lately has generally ended on a pretty sour note. I remember a while back commenting on how frustrated I was that it seemed the protagonist was as likely to die as get a happy ending. Between happy and sad I prefer happier endings, but this is only in the shoddy writing context where it's either Kumbaya or Shakespeare. I think the best endings offer a little of both, or aren't easily quantifiable as 'good' or 'bad'.
Yet, even this feels like over-simplifying things the more I think on it. I've argued that endings are the most important part of a story, so they should reflect the kind of story being told. I'm going to use three of Makoto Shinkai's movies here because they actually serve as perfect examples (sorry that he's coming up a lot lately...). Your Name has a happy ending, with only one caveat that the movie doesn't treat as a major problem. Your Name posses a fairly straight-forward plot, so the fact that it feels earned is enough to make it a satisfying conclusion. Garden of Words ends with the two characters not ending up together (because it would've been weirder for a 20-something and a 15 year-old to hook up), but it still feels very satisfying because the crux of the show is how meeting each other helped the two grow as people.
Which brings me to 5 Centimeters Per Second. I have a very hard time re-watching this movie because it feels very-much like a waste of time. See, it hovers over the entire movie that things don't work out for this guy. The entire first story, which includes at least 15 minutes of hellish train rides, feels so pointless. But here's the thing: it's not specifically that the two characters don't end up together so-much as the fact that the main character never learns or gains anything. I understand that, in many ways, this is the point: it's a story about someone who wasn't able to move on as things drifted apart. The thing is though, while I can watch it once, I find it hard to ever want to revist a story that's essentially "a miserable guy goes nowhere for an hour".
However, as I alluded to earlier, my favourite endings tend to be more complicated than simply 'good' or 'bad'. A large part of what made Kore-eda's After the Storm so enjoyable was its ending. Things weren't magically better, but it offered a nugget of hope. Whether or not the character will act on it... well, that's up to the viewer to decide. There's also Murakami's Killing Commendatore: a story about an artist who has spent his entire life doing portraits, but his wife's abrupt request for a divorce drives him to the mountains where he experiments with a different kind of art. In doing so he discovers something about himself and the power art holds over people. But here's the weird thing: at the end, he returns to doing portraits. It flies against everything one would expect, since it was the auto-pilot attitude of creating portraits that lead to his divorce in the first place. It feels so out-of-place, yet I think Murakami istrying to say that even if he returns to portraits, he himself is the one who is changed.
Neither of these endings are particularly good or bad, happy or sad. They run the gambit of emotions, bringing something of life's complexities to them. To that end, I think they're my favourite endings. However, I still can't think that, say, Your Name would be improved by such an ambiguous ending given the type of story it's trying to tell (and the type of point it's trying to make). I suppose the true long-and-short of it is that, like everything else in life, endings are very complicated.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Mar 17, 2019 21:06:02 GMT -5
I think this is probably due to two things--one being the obvious, that you actively root that type of content out, and, in the case of books, books just don't really have this problem as much. Books are much easier to write bad endings for. It's much less of a production to write--a one-man effort (well, aside from the stuff involved with publishing) that doesn't take millions of dollars to produce, and it's not alwaysa multi-year deal. There's a lot less on the line if a book flops, and you need to sell a lot less books in order to break even and see success. Ten or twenty thousand books sold is pretty good. That same number is horrific for TV or movies. Due to the lower production costs and revenue targets, it's a lot easier, I think, for books to meet every possible niche, and to accept that a novel might be an honest-to-god Shakespeare for a group of readers and totally uninteresting to everyone else. You like more complex books, so you seek them out and are able to find them.
Movies and TV have way higher stakes, so they're more likely to go for mass appeal. Kumbaya endings have mass appeal. The shows that buck that trend can be runaway successes (e.g., Game of Thrones, although I contend this was the case for only the first 4 seasons*), but it's a big risk, so for every Game of Thrones there is, there are countless other shows pitched that never see the light of day.
*I've really soured on Game of Thrones as the weeks have gone by. I don't dislike the series, but the more time I've had to think about it, the more I'm disappointed by it. I don't think I would have watched it had I known from the start it tanks after the 4th season, and I'm pretty sure I probably would have dropped it had I started watching when it first came out and had years to stew over the show's decline. I only have a season left at this point, so I'm going to watch it, but I would hesitate to recommend the show to anyone else. They had a great thing going, and they threw it away. I don't see later seasons as being particularly different from TV shows on the air right now that I don't bother watching. The entire reason I liked the show was because it was different and took risks, killed people and kept me on the edge of my seat. Once Jon became the chosen one, f**k that, plenty of mediocre shows pull that gimmick.
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