(I forgot to mention this in the clip above, but here is the tweet that originally set me thinking about this.)
I think the trend towards fatalism in American art is problematic. Our stories about politics and entertainment are very dark.
— GothamGirlBlue (@GothamGirlBlue) July 2, 2017
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One of the best things you can say about a work of fiction is that it changes how you think about life. To my mind, what makes something truly great Art is if it gives you a new perspective on everyday life.
This might be why a some people don’t think video games are Art. Nobody does anything different after playing, say, Pac-Man.
This is where Chris Avellone‘s games come in. Avellone’s design philosophy is heavily focused on “reactivity” in gameplay. Last year I wrote about why this means the plots, characters, and mechanics of his games are so thematically integrated.
To summarize briefly: “reactivity” means that the game world reacts to the player character’s choices. Rather than just being a set series of tasks the player performs to advance the story, a reactive game environment means the player can influence what happens in the game world. This means a game has multiple endings at a minimum, and usually different ways to complete tasks or different story arcs to follow as well.
Reactivity makes for a satisfying game experience. You feel like you are really participating in the game-world, rather than just pressing buttons to turn the pages in someone else’s story.
This is where the “applicable in real life” part comes in: people like reactivity in the real world, too. We don’t typically think of it in those terms, but it’s true. People like to feel like their actions mean something.
Usually, people are at their most unhappy when they feel powerless. We want to feel like we have some measure of control in our lives, and some input in what happens in the world. We never have total control, of course, just as the player of a game doesn’t either–there is always the possibility of losing.
For example, people like it when other people listen to them. If somebody presents an idea, they like other people to engage with it, rather than just dismiss it. At a basic level, listening to people’s ideas is a kind of a reactivity–it sends the message that their input matters.
The fact that people like it when you listen to them isn’t a revelation. A guy named Dale Carnegie wrote at length about it in the 1930s. So did Stephen Covey in the 1980s. But reactivity is a handy way of understanding the concept. If you think of everyone as a player character in their own video game, you know that what they are looking for is the opportunity to influence the world.
I won’t even attempt to give a summary of this book’s plot. It’s too madcap to describe. I’ll simply say that the protagonist is Ray Parisi, a former sports analyst with a serious gambling addiction, and the book chronicles his increasingly outlandish attempts to win back his ex-wife.
This is the plot in brief, and to realize that it can be laid out so simply is stunning to me, because that doesn’t even begin to do the book justice. Parisi’s mis-adventures lead him to encounter all sorts of memorable characters and surreal situations.
At times, the book reminded me of John Kennedy Toole’s classic Confederacy of Dunces. The plot is not as intricate, and its final act is not as satisfying, but it has that same tragicomic charm.
For all the strange (and sometimes awkwardly contrived) scenarios, the book never loses touch with reality in terms of how its characters behave. The plot may be implausible, but the human interactions are as true-to-life as can be.
And make no mistake; the plot really strains credulity. Parisi is on the run from the law throughout the book, and it seems hard to imagine he could evade capture as long as he does; especially given his downright reckless behavior.
Credulity is imposed upon further by the segment in which Parisi inherits some $600,000, increases it to over $1 million by playing Blackjack in Vegas, loses it all in a fit of despair, then somehow gets all the way back to $2 million through yet more gambling. (His comeback requires, among other things, successful bets on 11 and then 23 in roulette, followed by more uncanny wins in Blackjack.)
Plots that hinge on things like specific cards being drawn at a given time are always in danger of seeming ridiculously contrived. (See Gayden Wren’s criticism of the opera The Grand Duke, for example.) But Tambakis manages to keep us invested enough in Parisi’s epic, ill-advised quest that we forgive the byzantine coincidences it takes to sustain it.
I suspect that most readers care more about characters than they do about plot. They will forgive an unlikely coincidence, or two, or even more, if at the end of it they have a compelling situation in which they can fully engage with a character. Implausibility is the cornerstone of all fiction–if it were plausible, it would cease to be fiction.
And it is because of its engaging characters that Swimming with Bridgeport Girls truly shines. Parisi is, by any objective measure, a bad man, and yet we cannot help liking him all the same. In the Las Vegas section of the book, there are several memorable passages in which he clearly explains the logic of an addict. It’s so well-written that you can almost see his point of view, even as you wish he would stop destroying his life.
Each chapter is written from Parisi’s perspective, but prefaced with a quote from his ex-wife’s journal. These quotes offer a different perspective on events in the novel, and help remind us that as likeable as he is, Parisi is also terribly selfish.
The ending–which I won’t spoil too much here–is not a happy one, though not completely tragic either. In fact, it feels like more of a tragic ending than it truly is, if you know what I mean. I just can’t help thinking that it should have ended on a more hopeful note. Parisi hardly deserves a fairy-tale ending, but he also doesn’t deserve the really gloomy note on which his story ends, either.
The book is both extremely funny and intensely sad; hopeful and despairing–sometimes in the same chapter. I think it’s best if you can read it in a short period of time, and allow yourself to get caught up in it, just as Parisi himself is, and rejoice at all his triumphs, short-lived and short-sighted though they are. It makes the pathos of the ending that much more powerful.
Ok… check this out.
“My new blog project
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[link removed because duh]
feminist economic theory free games online for girl political ideology define women in islamic society french maid plus size material shops in cape town wedding dresses glasgow dictionary for student”
This seems to be from a series of decidedly “adult” spam comments that I received lately. But what’s up with that list at the end? It strikes me as a bunch of search terms strung together.
But that’s not near as good as what came next:
“You’re so cool! I dont suppose I’ve learned anything like this before.”
Now, this may not seem particularly funny… but the “name” of the “commenter” was “best psychic medium”.
Even better, then we have:
“Many thanks, I have been searching for info regarding this
subject matter for a long time and yours is the greatest I have discovered so
far.”
That’s from “free psychic call now”. You wouldn’t have thought it would take psychics this long to stuff something out.
I was worried the psychics might get upset that I’m making fun of them, but then I realized they already knew I was planning to, so they must be ok with it.
First of all, thanks are in order to loyal reader Natalie of boatsofoats.com. She notified me about a problem with the annotations on this page. I’m not even sure if I’ve completely fixed it yet, but I figure if not, I can at least make it up to her by directing some traffic to her excellent blog.
As for the annotations: I know nothing about HTML. But doing the original annotations for that page was not bad–it was just this:
<span text=”Whatever blithering comment I had”>Actual story text</span>
I then highlighted it in red to make it obvious which parts to mouse over.
But the problem was, it wouldn’t work on mobile devices–tablets, phones etc. And this bothered me. I tried to tell myself it was ok. But it was the sort of thing that would nag at me.
There must be a better way, I thought.
After consulting with a family member who does web design, downloading some plugins, and experimenting with CSS and JavaScript, I think I’ve got something.
Mind you, I said I think. I’m not actually sure if it works on all devices yet. It definitely works on my iPad, which it didn’t originally when I was just using HTML.
That’s where you come in. I am calling on readers to come to my aid and check out the page to see if the annotations work for them. In exchange…
Uh…
Let’s see,… I will teach you something about weird fiction from the 1890s?
How’s that sound?
Oh, another thing; some of the modifications I did seemed to (temporarily) play merry hell with the comments. (e.g. reducing my all-time comment count to zero, removing comment ‘likes’, stuff like that.) I think it’s fixed now, but if you notice any comment issues, let me know… unless the issue is that you are unable to comment, in which case you can use the form below or tweet at me
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As long-time readers know, I love the story The Repairer of Reputations, by Robert W. Chambers. I wanted to write an analysis of it, but it’s such a carefully-constructed story that I didn’t know how to do it without quoting huge sections at length.
Then I had an idea. The story is in the public domain. (It was published in 1895.) So, I thought, why not post the story with my comments included? That will be an easy way for people to read the story and for me to comment on specific things that I think make it work so well.
So that’s what I did. It’s so long that I put it on its own page rather than do it as a blog post. You can read it here. I hope it’s useful to anyone who wants to write weird fiction.
So I started reading Paradise Lost by John Milton. But before I even got to the poem itself, there was this:
“The measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious eares, triveal and of no true musical delight: which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem’d an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover’d to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.” [All the typos are in the Wikisource text, and I assume are as found in some original. I think they are due to the fact that English spelling had not yet been standardized.]
Clearly, Milton was not a fan of rhyming. Or rimeing.
I think it’s sort of funny that he started out his Biblical epic by kvetching about rhyme and meter. I like to imagine that some poor sap saw a draft of Paradise Lost and asked, “Why doesn’t it rhyme?” And it set Milton off.
I particularly enjoy the “It may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers” bit. That’s brilliant! I think I’m going to put a disclaimer at the start of all my writing from now on: “Readers, if you don’t like this, it means you’re stupid. It’s a work of genius.”
Paradise Lost may be a great poem, but I think it’s fair to say English rhyme is still going strong in spite of Milton’s objections.
Earlier this year, I set up a YouTube channel to post recordings of me reading fiction, poetry and miscellaneous other videos.
I don’t get a lot of views, but today I received a spam comment on this video that was even funnier than any I ever got here at WordPress:
Hey, A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight! I love your video! Keep it up. 🙂 I want to start making YouTube videos soon, too. [Link to Patreon page here, removed for obvious reasons] It would be so great if you could support me with a dollar to get things started because I need equipment for my videos. There’s no need to feel bad if you can’t, I still think you’re great and I wish you the best for you and your channel. This comment will be marked as spam because of the link, I’m sorry about that. Peace & Love, [Name withheld, again, obvious reasons]
Now, I am all for helping fellow YouTubers who are down on their luck. I might even have done it, too, except that despite the person’s professed love for my video, they didn’t bother to actually “like” it. My feeling is that if they couldn’t be bothered to do that, I really can’t pay them a dollar.
Am I too harsh?
The central thematic conceit at the heart of The Lego Batman Movie is–
Oh, who am I kidding? It’s Lego Batman, for Pete’s sake. So I’ll spare you my usual line of in-depth socio-philosophical analysis. The only thing you need to know here is that it’s a really funny family-friendly movie, with tons of humorous references to various other incarnations of Batman–especially the late, great Adam West.
It’s true to the spirit of Lego, in that it is good-humored and full of crazy, giant battle scenes with characters from different franchises fighting each other all willy-nilly. It’s exactly like the way I played with my Lego as a kid. And it’s a lot of fun.
The one way in which it can perhaps be analyzed as something other than an entertaining trifle is the part involving the new Gotham city police commissioner’s plan to make the police force less dependent on Batman. She even uses the phrase “It takes a village” to emphasize the collective effort. Given when the movie was released (late January), I can’t help but wonder if they were expecting that line would have more political relevance.
But never mind that stuff! It’s a nice, entertaining movie. Sometimes the action moves too fast for anyone but a hyperactive child to follow–but then, that is the target audience. And there are plenty of jokes that will keep everyone entertained throughout, even when the battles become incoherent.
