Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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Another grievance occurred to me...
I hate dream sequences, or any other segment that is meant to be treated as metaphorical/symbolic. This is particularly frustrating when it happens right in the middle of an action sequence, and/or is meant to be a key turning point in the story. For example, the dream might convince the protagonist to finally accept his fate as the hero of desitny or else provide the hero some key insight into the true nature of his powers, etc.
My issue(s) with dreams/symbolism:
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They often often interrupt otherwise fast-paced action sequences. I want to know what happens! If you're going to put me in suspense there had better be a big payoff!
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Dreams are boring. I don't care about your dreams! Dreams are never as interesting or significant to other people as they are to you (just like any story that begins with: "This one time when I was so drunk...", is never as funny as you thinks it is).
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There is little payoff for all the mental effort. Because the dream isn't "actually" happening, you lose the entire context of the existing setting, and are thus forced to build up a disposable setting that has no impact on the story itself. This can be a gross violation of Chekhov's Gun.
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They aren't bound by constraints. The events and objects within the dream may or may not be significant and may or may not have any impact on the story, completely at the author's convenience. It's even possible for the author to decide this retroactively. This basically shifts the burden onto the reader and forces us to keep the whole dream in mind on the off-chance that some seemingly extraneous detail turns out to be important, even though most of the details are not and can be safely forgotten.
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It can be a cheap way to insert character progression without the trouble of otherwise setting up the characters/events in such a way that the protagonist can gain this insight organically. This is just lazy writing.
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At worst, it can be a deus ex machina (e.g. the protag suddenly realizes the dark lord's key weakness), that cheapens the protagonist's struggles.
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Another grievance - magic systems that depend on the power of imagination.
This can be done better or worse, but the basic issue with imagination is that it is unlimited and imprecise. You can say anything, but it's highly debatable whether being able to describe something is the same thing as imagining it.
The best analogy I can come up with is the game that young kids will sometimes play trying to name the biggest number. "I attack you with the power of one thousand suns", "Well I attack you with one million suns", "I attack you with a bajillion suns!", "I attack you with a black hole!", "I attack with the big bang!". Of course the example is a silly one, but you'll note that the numbers quickly stop being actual numbers, and the progression doesn't follow any meaningful curve nor even the laws of mathematics itself. It's nearly impossible for a sensical outcome to result from a "power of imagination" battle.
Programmers straddle this reality every day. A feature that can be described by a short sentence, might nevertheless take a week to implement. Any implementation needs to deal with all the corner cases and fiddly details that a simple description can gloss over as "common sense". But computers don't have common sense, and neither should your magic system without some really careful setup.
Without reasonable constraints the magic system easily leads to ridiculous outcomes. For example, an unrestrained teleportation ability would allow for the creation of a infinite energy that would benefit the world far more than stopping a few petty criminals, or a gravity-bomb that would be far more devastating than even the greatest super power. Etc.
This occurred to me while reading Frieren and the one character who's only middlingly powerful unless she can clearly imagine herself cutting you at which point her attack power becomes infinite. As much as I like the story of Frieren, the magic system is just a giant eyeroll at this point.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Another grievance - magic systems that depend on the power of imagination.
I'd say it can be good or bad depending on the author and the limits they put on it, or as you put it: This can be done better or worse.
It's common in LNs and western fantasy you need to visualize shaping formless mana into some effect, but there are limits like the amount of mana you can shape, how precisely you can control it, the distance over which you can maintain control, and limits to how much the mana can ignore or sidestep Earth physical laws.
JNC's Water Mage is a good example of this, and adds that it is difficult to impossible to shape mana near living beings, and those other beings might have better control over the local mana than you do. Zero Believers is somewhat similar in that mana control is a huge force multiplier.
Just having the idea of "a sword that can cut through dimensions" doesn't get you anywhere if there are enough constraints, like it taking more mana or finer control than even an OP MC is capable of. It's up to the author to create believable and entertaining limits and to stick to them.
Of course if you only enjoy reading about ritual magic or programming style magic (Death March) there's nothing wrong with that. We like what we like, and are annoyed by what annoys us :)
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@HarmlessDave said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
It's up to the author to create believable and entertaining limits and to stick to them.
Well said. This is one area where authors without a strong STEM background might want to read some physics. It's easy to accidentally come up with a system that can lead to absurdities. I'm reminded of The Belgariad's "The Will and The Word" system. Although Eddings tried to constrain things, he never succeeded.
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@unknownmat Yeah, the 'using Sorcery takes as much effort as doing things by mundane means' rule would have worked a lot better in a series where the male lead didn't end up walking around with half the power in the universe strapped to his back.
However, the Belgariad/Malloreon actually did have a restriction on the use of sorcery that I think worked pretty well - the noise it made. You can't magic your way past every problem if using it just tells your numerous enemies where to find you...
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I want to drop in on a couple of tropes with some real life experience. First of all, I am so tired of one or both of these tropes being in like almost every single novel. I agree with other people commenting on how annoying they are normally presented.
- Female bust size jealousy
- Rice/soy sauce/wtfever food
I was born and raised in midwestern farm town and live in Chicagoland right now. I went to Japan in 2005 for the first time and had a blast (toured Production I.G. studio in fact). Some time later, I met a Japanese lady and eventually married her. We've been married over 15 years now.
Now related to 1 and 2 above:
- While dating, she discussed getting a boob job as soon as she moved to the U.S. because she felt small.
- If we go more than 5 days without an authentic Japanese dish things get gloomy. I have a subscription to Cookpad on her phone because of this.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I'm reminded of The Belgariad's "The Will and The Word" system. Although Eddings tried to constrain things, he never succeeded.
I think the Belgariad series worked extremely well with it's magic system. Now this is also because there was not "modern knowledge" injected onto something as simple as the will and the word. Because as a teenager reading those books the first time around, I absolutely thought of ways to use it better and/or abuse it.
@kuali said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
However, the Belgariad/Malloreon actually did have a restriction on the use of sorcery that I think worked pretty well - the noise it made. You can't magic your way past every problem if using it just tells your numerous enemies where to find you..
This restriction was situational and thus only worked well in the series because most of the time that sorcery was important, it was in combat or stealth type missions where there were opponents that could detect it.
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@unknownmat in somewhat fairness to the Belgariad, there were some good ideas about constraints and consequences, like controlling the weather to make some fancy lightning strikes could destabilize the weather across the continent and take months to fix. Or that trying to unmake (vs. destroy) anything would unmake you instead.
Wasn't there also the chance that failing to have a strong enough will or strength to gather the power to enact the word would ...kill you? turn you into a newt?... it's been too long since I read the books :)
I agree that there weren't very predictable limits to what anyone could do beyond "whatever the plot requires."
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
This restriction was situational and thus only worked well in the series because most of the time that sorcery was important, it was in combat or stealth type missions where there were opponents that could detect it.
If the rules let the powers be useful and cool while keeping them from breaking the plot, that's really all they need to accomplish, no?
@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
While dating, she discussed getting a boob job as soon as she moved to the U.S. because she felt small.
Suddenly finding yourself outclassed by everyone and wanting to fit in seems way more normal than instant envy any time an individual happens to be better endowed than you are...
@HarmlessDave said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Wasn't there also the chance that failing to have a strong enough will or strength to gather the power to enact the word would ...kill you? turn you into a newt?... it's been too long since I read the books :)
Overexertion was a 'Kill you' thing. They also raised the possibility that it could strip you of the power of Sorcery at one point. Neither ever happened on-page, though (and Belgarion explicitly exceeds this limit by using the Orb), so it wasn't much of a restriction in practice.
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One of the larger issues I have is so many authors not even attempting to understand time. I'm blanking on naming a specific series or example right now, but I'll describe the issue.
You have long lived races elves/dragon but treat 100 years ago as ancient history. Even if your entire human population is dumber than a box of rocks, the long lived races still know everything that happened. Basically anything less than a generation for your longest lived race will not be forgotten.
How hard is it to actually scribble out a timeline on a piece of paper and then follow it. When you want to add something a book or two later refer to the timeline.
I do not write coherent narrative stories, but 10 years ago I decided to spin off my D&D campaign from the shared world that I had started the game inside of in 1999. Our original "realm" we called it the Forgotten Mess since it was a pieced together planet mostly based on Toril. But when I split into my new multiverse I wrote up simple timeline of major events that I wanted to have as background knowledge for the players. As the games have proceeded since then I have added more detail to the timeline as the players go in their various ways, or as players create new character and want a new history added.
So, when a players asks about the legend of the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, I look at the timeline and pick the fall of a dwarven mountain to invaders 5000 years ago as the last time it was seen. Did I plan that out? Heck no, world building is hard. But Just a little planning can make expanding or adding easy without being stupidly unrealistic.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
One of the larger issues I have is so many authors not even attempting to understand time. I'm blanking on naming a specific series or example right now, but I'll describe the issue.
You have long lived races elves/dragon but treat 100 years ago as ancient history. Even if your entire human population is dumber than a box of rocks, the long lived races still know everything that happened. Basically anything less than a generation for your longest lived race will not be forgotten.Ironically, one of my pet peeves is the about the opposite: pretending that memory is unlimited and indelible. It's not. Memories fade and blend together. Details are lost and twisted. In the end, only the patterns remain.
That's what journals and diaries are for, to start with. And then treatises, history books, etc. Alas... immortality does not mean your possessions are immune to house fires, or your books to rot and decay.
The only time it's really escalated to a grievance though is w/ Sword Art Online. So many aspects of Alicization's plot rely on the conceit that Fluctlights have limited capacity that fills up with memories.
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@Gamen said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
That's what journals and diaries are for, to start with. And then treatises, history books, etc. Alas... immortality does not mean your possessions are immune to house fires, or your books to rot and decay.
Yes, but most of these stories take place in societies that have history books and schools.
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You know, it's been 20+ years since I read The Belgariad. I can't remember it all that well.
Eddings absolutely tried to put restrictions on the system. You guys mentioned many of them, and I agree with this.
But I think you're missing the other key ingredient that usually makes "the power of imagination" magic systems fail to cohere - namely the idea of what it actually means to "conceptualization" something. There are plenty of things I can "conceptualize" happening where the outcome is relatively simple and well-defined, but that - were they to actually happen - would completely break fundamental constraints about the world. Authors will typically structure the narrative so that nothing world-breaking occurs (and maybe the authors themselves are not even aware that such constraints are being violated). But nevertheless, it affects my willing suspension of disbelief.
Within the Belgarath universe, I seem to recall a humorous scene where Ce'nedra was pregnant with bizarre craving, and Garion just will-and-worded those dishes into existence for her. Things like that are completely broken because it ignores constraints like how to identify the ingredients that go into the dish (e.g. this breaks the law of entropy - and why we can't reverse engineer the Coca Cola formula), the time needed to cook the food (e.g. energy-change/time where time->0 would require vast amounts of power), etc.
Above, I gave the example of Frieren. The idea that a character can cut any object regardless of its hardness, thickness, etc., as long as she can imagine herself doing it is completely world-breaking. Sure, for most things, it might only require the same effort as operating a pair of scissors, or a chainsaw. But it might also require as much energy as a stick of TNT or even as a nuclear weapon. Actually cutting through certain substances might generate so much heat that it wipes out everything in a kilometer radius, for example. And I suspect that the author is completely unaware of just how ridiculous this ability is. It makes for a fun little sub-plot in one of the arcs. But it also renders the magic system completely beyond sensibility (i.e. no point in speculating/predicting - you just have to accept whatever outcome the author decides on).
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
namely the idea of what it actually means to "conceptualization" something
I mentioned that as the only reason it was not completely broken. Since there was no injection of "modern knowledge" giving better conceptualization in the those books.
An example of a LN series that bound conceptualization magic in a good way is The Magician Who Rose From Failure. The MC is still OP and all, I mean it is a LN, but even though he can conceptualize things from the modern era of his previous life, he has to find the right magic words in the various ancient scripts that will work with his concept.
I won't say how good or bad the series is here, just that this series is an example of a good way to both use conceptual magic and set limits.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I won't say how good or bad the series is here, just that this series is an example of a good way to both use conceptual magic and set limits.
Sure. I'm not saying that it can't be done well, and I love OP MCs. And I even like magic systems to be slightly ambiguous and mysterious. It's just that - in the spirit of "hate on what you love" - when "the power of imagination" is done without enough care, the implications can easily escape the author's grasp. It can knock me out of the story at least long enough to roll my eyes.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
One of the larger issues I have is so many authors not even attempting to understand time.
Good call. I have a similar observation but from the opposite direction.
We tend to conceptualize time logarithmically. So while we realize that a million years is more than ten-thousand years, we tend to lump them both into the category of "a long time ago" and fail to grapple with the implications that come with an extra 990,000 years.
I also can't think of any specific examples at the moment. But it's not uncommon for writers to write about some ancient civilization that existed an arbitrary large number of years ago, as if more zeros just adds to the mystique.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But it's not uncommon for writers to write about some ancient civilization that existed an arbitrary large number of years ago, as if more zeros just adds to the mystique.
In light novels it seems to always be less than 500 years though and that is what annoys me. Because they have long living races and educational institutions in almost all the series also.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
We tend to conceptualize time logarithmically. So while we realize that a million years is more than ten-thousand years, we tend to lump them both into the category of "a long time ago" and fail to grapple with the implications that come with an extra 990,000 years.
... it's not just fiction authors that suffer from this. Archeological/Paleological news reporting does too with their casual use of century and thousand year time spans...
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
In light novels it seems to always be less than 500 years though and that is what annoys me. Because they have long living races and educational institutions in almost all the series also.
Are you thinking of something like Frieren? For example, there's the elf warrior who performed some marvelously heroic deed... but so long ago that, although there are still statues commemorating his achievement, nobody knows who he was or what he did. In the present he's just some unremarkable guy walking around - even though there are other elves still around who presumably ought to remember him.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But it's not uncommon for writers to write about some ancient civilization that existed an arbitrary large number of years ago, as if more zeros just adds to the mystique.
In light novels it seems to always be less than 500 years though and that is what annoys me. Because they have long living races and educational institutions in almost all the series also.
Some authors treat this properly by having the MC actually go and talk to the elves. Realistically, they might or might not have known or cared about specific events happening at the time in question.
Even in the past twenty years in our connected world you could ask me about many events and I'd have to go to Google to find out, because I wasn't paying attention to them at the time. Many others I'd only have vague knowledge.
An author ignoring libraries and colleges is more of an oversight to me, though better authors make the effort to explain lost history by saying something like that kingdoms and their libraries were destroyed and only fragments remain. In Chise's world (Making Magic) there was a planet-wide catastrophe.
