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SV has an even problem

Farmerbob1 said:
Power Fantasy fiction isn't the same thing as Mary Sue fiction, though they can share a great deal of similarity.

Power Fantasy is not typically as self-centered. Mary Sue fiction is what you seem to be describing.
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Right. It's the difference between the character serving the plot and the plot serving the character.
 
There was this one anecdote I heard about 1st edition DnD about how because of the way the game doles out experience, it's actually potentially more rewarding and less dangerous to tackle a dungeon through stealth, trickery, and guile than to just run in and kill everything, and parties could be more than just a goon squad.

Somewhere along the way this kind of mentality was scrapped, because people prefer just running around killing things, and this shifting of mindset is ubiquitous in fiction. And for me that's the biggest problem with power fantasy. Not that people like feeling good by vicariously doing cool shit. But that it's so limited in the kinds of stories and conflicts and scenarios you can get with it.

I mean, even with a lot of super smart rational protagonists the central conflict instead of being about solving interesting puzzles or mysteries or cool scenarios tend to boil down to just munchkining your powers to beat the baddie. And this limited concept of what stories should do is what people should try to resist.

Farmerbob1 said:
Stephen King wrote a solid novel with no antagonist, for example.
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What?

It's not like not having a direct antagonist is some kind of 4th dimensional, super hardcore writing move. It's perfectly standard for any piece of fiction where the conflict is something other than a direct struggle against another person especially when it's a non-pulpy genre. Forrest Gump doesn't have a bad guy, Mary Poppins doesn't have a bad guy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory only has "antagonists" in a very indirect way. These stories are not really "experimental" except maybe Forrest Gump I guess... sorta?
 
Fandom Lord said:
Getting powers almost nobody else does, stopping murders that have the police stumped, getting friends who like and respect you,
saving the world
, etc. It's definitely a power fantasy.
And I'd already mentioned those flaws in my previous posts as being common.
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I don't think that those elements necessarily make a thing a power fantasy. I think the core thing about power fantasy is about, well, not even just unearned power-but about power being granted to a direct audience surrogate with no negative consequences solely for the sake of letting them do what they want. Basically, it's about being "you" but so much more powerful so you can do what you want without consequence.
 
Reveen said:
It's not like not having a direct antagonist is some kind of 4th dimensional, super hardcore writing move. It's perfectly standard for any piece of fiction where the conflict is something other than a direct struggle against another person especially when it's a non-pulpy genre. Forrest Gump doesn't have a bad guy, Mary Poppins doesn't have a bad guy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory only has "antagonists" in a very indirect way. These stories are not really "experimental" except maybe Forrest Gump I guess... sorta?
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Experimental fiction is fiction that goes outside the normal borders and structure of the three-act-story. Most interesting non-drek fiction has both protagonists and identifiable antagonists. You have listed additional examples of non-drek experimental fiction.
 
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Stormwhite said:
Identifiable antagonists aren't actually as ubiquitous as you think they are. Don't confuse 'antagonist' with 'source of conflict'. They're very separate things.
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I am not confused at all. The vast majority of non-drek fiction has identifiable antagonists. If there is no identifiable antagonist, a story is experimental fiction, and only someone who knows what they are doing is going to be able to make it work. There are (and have been) a lot of talented story crafters out there. Many of them have indulged in experimental fiction, and gotten away with 'breaking the rules' of the three act story.
 
Farmerbob1 said:
I am not confused at all. The vast majority of non-drek fiction has identifiable antagonists. If there is no identifiable antagonist, a story is experimental fiction, and only someone who knows what they are doing is going to be able to make it work. There are (and have been) a lot of talented story crafters out there. Many of them have indulged in experimental fiction, and gotten away with 'breaking the rules' of the three act story.
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Firstly, it's not even about the three-act story any more - the five-act setup dates back to fucking Shakespeare. I don't think it can qualify as 'experimental', any more. Secondly, 'not having a direct antagonist' is like...that's the norm for most character-centric stories? Most well-written romances are far and away from having a 'direct antagonist' - the source of the conflict there mostly comes from the relationship itself.
 
long live narratology iä! iä! screenwriting 101 classes the west died with Joyce and has been strung into undeath since the postmodern
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
I don't think that those elements necessarily make a thing a power fantasy. I think the core thing about power fantasy is about, well, not even just unearned power-but about power being granted to a direct audience surrogate with no negative consequences solely for the sake of letting them do what they want. Basically, it's about being "you" but so much more powerful so you can do what you want without consequence.
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No, that's a power fantasy done wrong.
 
Farmerbob1 said:
Experimental fiction is fiction that goes outside the normal borders and structure of the three-act-story. Most interesting non-drek fiction has both protagonists and identifiable antagonists. You have listed additional examples of non-drek experimental fiction.
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I want to be absolutely certain here before I come in swinging: By 'identifiable antagonist' are you limiting things to only characters -- i.e., intelligent actors in opposition to the protagonist?
 
foamy said:
I want to be absolutely certain here before I come in swinging: By 'identifiable antagonist' are you limiting things to only characters -- i.e., intelligent actors in opposition to the protagonist?
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No. Identifiable antagonists can be asteroids, a disease, starvation, or any number of things that are clearly identifiable, and also antagonistic, but not intelligent actors.
 
Leila Hann said:
What fandom are those in?

Whatever you answer, if they don't follow the canon characterizations they're shit and I don't want to read them.
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At first I laughed with your deeper point.

But then I started thinking about it more and can't help but feel that if someone actually did make a meal of Holly Golightly something terrible should probably happen to them...
 
In essence, there is nothing wrong with power fantasy inherently, just how it's done.

For my definition of power fantasy, it is simply a piece of media overcomes obstacles by overpowering them. There are many different draws for different people. Some come for catharsis, something especially prevalent in our Rambo/Disney princess culture of liking grimdark, but liking it even more when things turn out ok. This is when some altpower Taylor nut punches Coil. Some come for numbercrunching or vs. battle stuff. Some come for the fight scenes.

But a lot of people like a specific type of 'power fantasy': the Hero's journey. You have a character that starts out weaker that the opposition, and by some means, becomes stronger. They overcome their opponent, who may or may not even be a person. This is how you do proper power fantasy. Your character becomes stronger through facing opposition, but the moment they're top of the heap, someone bigger and badder comes along, or the story ends. This adds an element of real tension and conflict a typical SV vanilla power fantasy lacks, which gives you actual stakes and reader investment.
 
Farmerbob1 said:
That seems broken. I'll poke them in a PM then. Thanks.
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Terrabrand said:
I infer that the alerts are only checked for new posts and not edits, and thus to fix the issue (assuming you consider it one, which you personally at least clear do) would require altering the system to do alerts on edits.

This would, among other things, probably cause you to receive multiple tags per post that got edited while having your name in it the whole time.
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Farmerbob1 said:
I understand how it might work, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved. Rather than simply sending out tag notices, only send out new tag notices. Comparing a list of tags in the old post to the new post and only sending out new tags should be a relatively easy fix, and should not be terribly processor intensive either.
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This is a design limitation, XenForo does not track if you've been sent an alert from a piece of content. It has no ability to track what is "new" for sent alerts.

When we move to XenForo 2, this is fixed with an in-house developed XenForo 2 add-on. And it was not simple due to integration complexity with not just stock XenForo functionality but other add-ons we use.

This new functionality (for a version of XenForo we aren't using) has effectively cost several thousands of dollars, and is only possible because we have subscribers.
 
Leila Hann said:
What fandom are those in?

Whatever you answer, if they don't follow the canon characterizations they're shit and I don't want to read them.
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Wow, what humorous and insightful criticism of my point, by taking something completely different and mocking me out of nowhere. You sure showed me there :rolleyes:

Also by definition those works in question have canon characterisations because they are their own canon because they are the works. I mean... I feel like you should know something this basic and obvious already, but given the way you just insulted me out of nowhere to continue an already dropped argument, maybe that's too kind of me?
 
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