The risks of derivative art

richardthinks says:

...every work of art is a selection from reality, an erasure of some of the information to be found in the real world, in order to present the remaining information in a different light. I'm all for far-reaching and profound erasures, when they're the result of deliberate choices. When they stem from ignorance, they tend to produce much less interesting results. This is what bothers me about "standard fantasy:" it consists of a set of erasures, calculated to remove any interesting reference to the real world. This is partly deliberate - when one wishes to present archetypal stories or fables one needs to avoid their being taken for metaphors or manques of current events, for instance. The standard fantasy setting, having nothing interesting about it, is therefore a useful blank canvas against which to write one's revenge drama, or coming of age rite of passage or whatever. That's fine, in one way. The problem is that when it becomes a standard, consensus background its erasures become blind spots rather than deliberate elisions. After a while it becomes difficult to see anything interesting about the merchant, per se, because the only stories he ever occupies are ones where (a) he's a greedy, amoral tyrant, (b) he's a source of missions/exchange value, (c) he's an obstacle to the acquisition of his beautiful daughter.

The risks of derivative art

richardthinks says:

...every work of art is a selection from reality, an erasure of some of the information to be found in the real world, in order to present the remaining information in a different light. I'm all for far-reaching and profound erasures, when they're the result of deliberate choices. When they stem from ignorance, they tend to produce much less interesting results. This is what bothers me about "standard fantasy:" it consists of a set of erasures, calculated to remove any interesting reference to the real world. This is partly deliberate - when one wishes to present archetypal stories or fables one needs to avoid their being taken for metaphors or manques of current events, for instance. The standard fantasy setting, having nothing interesting about it, is therefore a useful blank canvas against which to write one's revenge drama, or coming of age rite of passage or whatever. That's fine, in one way. The problem is that when it becomes a standard, consensus background its erasures become blind spots rather than deliberate elisions. After a while it becomes difficult to see anything interesting about the merchant, per se, because the only stories he ever occupies are ones where (a) he's a greedy, amoral tyrant, (b) he's a source of missions/exchange value, (c) he's an obstacle to the acquisition of his beautiful daughter.

The big bird

I've got a 5 1/2 pound free range chicken and I need to decide how to cook it. I'm thinking about baking it with some heirloom tomatoes, but does anyone have more detailed suggestions?

With a little luck, it will have more flavor than your average chicken, but I'm not sure about good ways to do it justice.

In other cooking news, I did a random fish thing which worked out surprisingly well. I cooked yellowfin tuna by sitting it in soy sauce and cooking it covered at a medium low temperature. It cooked very quickly-- probably under ten minutes. When I was eating the chilled leftovers, I realized it was a lot like kippered salmon--something I love, but which costs a fortune. It's possible that the folks who make kippered salmon are doing it the hard way.

A little research turned up that kippered salmon is made by "hot smoking"-- cooking it while it getting smoked.

The big bird

I've got a 5 1/2 pound free range chicken and I need to decide how to cook it. I'm thinking about baking it with some heirloom tomatoes, but does anyone have more detailed suggestions?

With a little luck, it will have more flavor than your average chicken, but I'm not sure about good ways to do it justice.

In other cooking news, I did a random fish thing which worked out surprisingly well. I cooked yellowfin tuna by sitting it in soy sauce and cooking it covered at a medium low temperature. It cooked very quickly-- probably under ten minutes. When I was eating the chilled leftovers, I realized it was a lot like kippered salmon--something I love, but which costs a fortune. It's possible that the folks who make kippered salmon are doing it the hard way.

A little research turned up that kippered salmon is made by "hot smoking"-- cooking it while it getting smoked.

Garmerspeak and the evolution of English

http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/550433.html?nc=43

But then another interesting thing started happening: the more sloppily I typed, the more people paid attention when I bothered to type properly. It's like cursing: if you curse all the time, people stop taking you seriously. But if you never curse and one day you do, everyone stops and rushes over because they're sure you're about to explode. There's something to be said for being able to make people pause and say, "Wow, she must feel strongly about that because she bothered to punctuate."

*****

But none of this trumped the most fascinating observation... something I noticed only a week ago when I saw a couple of my lines in succession, all without punctuation or capitalization... and I realized that while I wasn't bothering with those things, what I was bothering with was rhythm. In my head, I was treating it like free verse... like a gamer e e cummings. After that, the entire paradigm shifted. I was fascinated by the fact that rhythm mattered so much while I was framing these sentences in my head. The lack of punctuation was a feature, not a bug: you were intended to drift off into a long pause, not come to a short halt. Uncertainty was integral. It made sense of the "not wanting to communicate everything" aspect of filtering yourself, and yet it did communicate... but to the part of me that reads poetry, not prose.

And there's lots of good stuff in the comments, too.

Garmerspeak and the evolution of English

http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/550433.html?nc=43

But then another interesting thing started happening: the more sloppily I typed, the more people paid attention when I bothered to type properly. It's like cursing: if you curse all the time, people stop taking you seriously. But if you never curse and one day you do, everyone stops and rushes over because they're sure you're about to explode. There's something to be said for being able to make people pause and say, "Wow, she must feel strongly about that because she bothered to punctuate."

*****

But none of this trumped the most fascinating observation... something I noticed only a week ago when I saw a couple of my lines in succession, all without punctuation or capitalization... and I realized that while I wasn't bothering with those things, what I was bothering with was rhythm. In my head, I was treating it like free verse... like a gamer e e cummings. After that, the entire paradigm shifted. I was fascinated by the fact that rhythm mattered so much while I was framing these sentences in my head. The lack of punctuation was a feature, not a bug: you were intended to drift off into a long pause, not come to a short halt. Uncertainty was integral. It made sense of the "not wanting to communicate everything" aspect of filtering yourself, and yet it did communicate... but to the part of me that reads poetry, not prose.

And there's lots of good stuff in the comments, too.

Where's the satirical sf when you need it?

http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/740823.html

I want the story where, long about November 3, they discover that due to obscure technicalities, neither candidate is qualified to be President. And then they realize that, in fact, no one in the country is qualified except for one person who..... well, I'm not sure what that person is like, and Sheckley isn't available to figure it out.

Where's the satirical sf when you need it?

http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/740823.html

I want the story where, long about November 3, they discover that due to obscure technicalities, neither candidate is qualified to be President. And then they realize that, in fact, no one in the country is qualified except for one person who..... well, I'm not sure what that person is like, and Sheckley isn't available to figure it out.