It was brought to my attention today by news of recent events that the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright, is a Scientologist. As a result I will boycott the Simpsons, and watch it no more. I have watched every episode of the nearly complete 20 seasons, and the movie, so far, so this will be the most difficult boycott I’ve made against celebrity stupidity yet. Still, I have my principles.
Yesterday I realized over the course of near unconscious thought that there is a trope in works of fiction that I dislike, and what it was, and probably why. Part of the reason is this cliche is most common among romantic stories, which I don’t care for much, but it is present in many other types of stories, as well. I am referring to the plot, boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy, boy does something, girl doesn’t like boy any more, boy spends the rest of the story getting girl back. Technically, the genders can be reversed, but it’s almost always this way.
I understand that this plot line is basically a genre unto it’s own, and it’s fine with me if the whole plot of a story is as above. Fine if you want to hear it, I don’t wanna hear it. It is very irksome, however, when it is used as a plot device. Like, I have a farm boy, I want him to go on an epic quest to become king, so I need a reason for him to leave this village, I’ll have the one and only true love chick get pissed off.
The device is unrealistic, or unlikeable. Often the male (assumed to the be the one who does something) is forced to do it. Like, the girls dad will try to kill him, and he’ll defend himself. Bam, the girl is all, “No, I hate you,” even though she obviously doesn’t and everyone knows they’re going to get together at the end of the movie and rule the country or whatever. So at this point I either think the story teller is ruining his characters by making them act out of character for plot development, or he’s telling me a story about a bitch who frankly doesn’t deserve my attention, or the love of the protagonist.
I can’t think of a single classical medium in which this trope is used that I enjoy. This may be because it’s not focused on and I just now realized it, and maybe it’s not as common as I think. I know one place it pops up a lot, video games. The described events happen in pretty much every Japanese RPG at about level 10, and sometimes again right before you beat the game. It’s not cool.
Try and think of movies or books with this plot device in them, that I might like, and see if you can catch me disagreeing with myself.
I have a cousin who’s a lineman for Michigan. I’m pretty sure lineman is an accurate term. Anyway, he get’s lots of praise, attention, and whatnot for his achievements in athletics, and I don’t begrudge him. I am always inclinded to think of brain scans, though.
And you all thought me becoming a bum was a bad idea.
During a recent discussion regarding the prayer comments posted by my aunt and myself, an idea struck me. It’s one of those story premise ideas I mentioned earlier. It’s an idea, that upon reflection, has probably been used before, but I’m sure it’s rich enough to last a few more interpretations. The idea was that prayer worked, and its working was a common fact and highly utilized. So, praying becomes a kind of resource. In my initial imagining there would be elite pray-ers, like elite scientists and elite warriors, that could sway the balance of power in global conflicts. Perhaps nations could remain powerful, despite weak militaries and weak economies, if they had strong prayers on their side. I also imagined the pray-ers, that’s those praying, being embroiled in the mundane parts of intrigue, being bought, or going rogue or flipping sides, targeted for assassination, and the like.
I’ve given the idea a little bit of time to simmer and have a few addendums. Really, options that would have to be selected depending on the type of story one wants to tell. One of these choices is whether the elite pray-ers are born with the ability, or if it’s trained, or both. And what is the nature of the training. Has the prayer industry been developed, are the secret prayer research labs developing national prayer secrets? Can certain prayers counter certain other prayers more effectively than certain still other prayers? Does a pray-er have to truly want the thing he prays for?
Another aspect of interest would be the way the prayers were answered. Perhaps powerful pray-ers essentially have magical powers, able to summon what they want with a wish. Perhaps the power never reaches that high, a powerful pray-er able only to tip events slightly in his or his countries favor. Maybe the power of a pray-er is measured by how frequently his prayers are answered, but the timing and method of reply is not certain.
Going the route of super powered pray-ers seems somewhat tedious to my mind. Essentially, writing a book about wizards, but calling their power prayer to rile up the religious. To me it would be more interesting to investigate the idea of institutional prayer, manufactured providence, grace to order.
Maybe in this fantasy world the god is a benevolent accountant, attempting to maximize happiness, with prayers as his measuring stick. He takes all the prayers, determines what will result in maximum happiness, maybe does some tweaking to favor certain individuals over others, and then the course of events unfolds accordingly.
I like the idea.
Factoid: Every movie nominated for an Oscar in 1996 featured a Zippo lighter.
Also, eggnog chocolate is not disgusting.
My site was down for a day or two a day or two ago. I trust you all survived.
Work is slowly encroaching in on me from all sides. I can feel it coming. It will crush me and drive any will to get a job from me before I graduate. Send your condolences and cash to my parents.
The gang only plays D&D for like 2 or 3 hours at a time. I dunno if they get into grooves that way. It doesn’t seem to groove right, exactly. I need that groove to improve my DMing. /sigh Still, at least they play, which is more than can be said for the game I’m in.
Perhaps on a related note, Pat’s grandpa died. Pat’s making the trek back up from Vegas, consequently. That is all I know on the subject, but I imagine Pat’s sad to some degree. So… sux0r.
Finished the first book of Dune. Not the actual book, the book within a book. You know how they divide books into books sometimes. I’m at the part where Paul attains a higher consciousness or whatever. Prekky sweet.
It was snowing outside. ForcastFox says it will some more. Right now we’ve got a slight covering, is all.
Today I swim, and shave, and shower, and various other words that start with S. Step, shimmy, shake, swallow, scramble, shamble, stagger, scamper, salivate, sashay, skip, start, succumb, stop, stroak, shed, scratch, slurp, snap, sniff, sneer, smile, slouch, slur, slump, shoot, splash, stride, strafe, sing, and possibly sneeze. But, first, sleep… snooze, snore, slumber.
It’s been what, four full days? Not a reasonable amount of time to judge by. Nevertheless, I feel comfortable expressing that I’m pleased and impressed with the new President so far. I’m sure you’re all visiting whitehouse.gov frequently and have noticed how it improved dramatically at 12:01 PM EST on the 20th? You can watch his weekly addresses there. He needs to get a teleprompter for those. We’ll see.
mobthink much?
Still, happy Bush isn’t president anymore day for the 77% of you who agree with me that he sucked it up.