Meme thing
Dec. 15th, 2012 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luna_manarFor Squeem: I actually had to do this twice, because what I like to read and what I like to write are very frequently two completely different things.
List three things you find compelling in setting, character type, character interaction, and interest, followed by three things that make you tune out from whatever you're reading/watching.
WRITING:
Three settings you find compelling?
1. Post- or near-nuclear Industrial. Old, filthy, deteriorating inner-city infrastructure and black, starless night scenes to go with. Sickly yellow and orange city lighting. Bonus points if the place is being encroached on by struggling plantlife due to disrepair. I love exploring patently mighty places that are tearing themselves apart because of neglect. I like the heavy atmosphere it creates for the creatures living in it, as domestically dependent on their technological advances as they are reduced to animals by the failure of governance.
2. Vast, underground alien paradises. I blame Metroid for this entirely. The idea is just so fascinating, and imagining the sorts of adaptations that would be necessary to survive in an environment like that is endless hours of fun. It gives me a home for so many of the beautiful ideas my brain cooks up that could not go anywhere else.
3. Lush, epic nature. Assume the world has all the innate energy it needs to support vast quantities and variety of life and landscape that even Earth can't because the resources simply aren't there. Evolution that is far less bound by the need to conserve those resources, as a result. Insane adaptations, giant life forms, an environment where the evolution of higher reasoning is not rare, but routine.
Three character types you like?
1. Small, passionate and rebellious. People no one notices, or if they do they dismiss them as inconsequential whiners, and no one suspects for the firebrands they are until the right situation comes along, and they shock/horrify/amaze everyone who thought they knew them.
2. Frustrated, self-sabotaging and criminal, with the best of intentions. Serious misfits who would be pegged for absolute monsters in our society, but with reasons atypical of what we tend to think motivates most murderers, rapists, dictators, abusers, etc. Not malicious at all in their activities, usually. I'd say "sociopaths," but that seems too simplistic.
3. A Fucking Force of Nature. Those whose motivations are almost a moot point because there's very little you can do to stop them at whatever it is they do. Does not have to be an insanely strong/magical individual, although that is often the case. As likely to be villainous as heroic as dispassionate influence.
Three types of character interactions you find interesting?
1. Battle. I swear up and down I hate writing fight scenes, and that's kind of true, but only because I find them so easy, and if I let myself, that's pretty much all I would write. They're kind of adrenaline porn for me, and I spend a lot of time choreographing them in my head for fun. I like them all, epic monster battles, panicked getaways, schoolyard brawls, 3-second knockouts. The only thing I don't like (and don't do) is long, drawn-out martial arts duels. Because they're pretentious bullshit and shut up no one actually does that.
2. Things going wrong. Oh so so so wrong. That moment where everything just comes crashing down between or around two or more characters, or starts to. Life is so often a domino art piece and if you ever get to finish your work before something tips over a piece, you're one in a fucking million. Things go wrong in our relationships more often than they go right, even for really smart/powerful people and I love pointing that out.
3. Synergy. I'm not sure how to define this exactly; it's just the word I use for it. It's not serendipity, although it can be. It's not the apex of a romantic scene, although it can be. It's, in contrast to (although sometimes alongside) "things going wrong," things fall into place. As much as things go wrong, I also like pointing out that things sometimes go very, very right, and they can do so in strange and surprising ways that have nothing to do with deus ex machina. Torture scenes can even count toward this idea. It's a weird one.
Three interests you find particularly compelling to explore? (e.g., spirituality, machine empathy, longing for home, relationships, political shenanigans, etc.)
1. Deconstructing moral ideas. There's a lot of them we take for granted as being universal truths, and I like to play with situations where what is generally ethical or beneficial for our human society would not necessarily apply, or apply differently.
2. Predation, parasitism and symbiosis. I maybe go overboard on this one sometimes, but it's just so relevant to a lot of the other ideas I like to explore, and I find the physical, emotional and philosophical aspects of it absolutely fascinating.
3. Resolution, or lack thereof. Personal emptiness and fulfillment. People pining for what could have been, struggling to hold onto what is, wishing and fighting for something different. Hope and relief and devastation and despair. The range of emotion between the certainty that nothing can stand in your way, and being so beaten down you don't have the strength to get up anymore.
Three things that will make you tune out of a story? (More themes or tropes, here, and not things like 'bad writing.')
I'm going to treat this as "things I hate writing and slog through if there's no way around it".
1. Describing people's clothes. Ugh, god, I hate it. WORSE if they're wearing something detailed and I have to find a succinct way to describe it that doesn't trip up the narrative with flowery language.
2. Chatterbox characters that talk a lot but don't say much. Sometimes it makes sense for someone to be this way, but man do I hate balancing their talkativeness with keeping the story moving.
3. Travelling long distances and having a lot of discussion or thinking along the way. Okay, they're walking, and there's scenery, and they're talking about stuff, and they're walking, and there's scenery, and they're talking about stuff, and they're walking......I try to spice this up as much as I can when it happens (I can't always avoid it), but it's difficult for me to do and keep myself interested.
READING:
Three settings you find compelling?
1. Idyllic, new-agey futurism. I admit, I adored the atmosphere of the Enterprise D. I love LCARS. I like the Gardens of FFVIII for a lot of the same reasons. Esthar was so cool. I guess maybe I like the idea of a future where everything looks like a pleasure cruiser.
2. Moody, horrific shells of once-populous places ala Silent Hill and Dead Space. Horrible things have happened here, more will come, and they'll come for you. (I also like writing this stuff, but didn't make it to the list there because the feeling is close to the first one in my head.)
3. Typical high fantasy environments. Guilty pleasure. It's easy, pretty, has potential for a lot of variety and I don't have to think too hard about it.
Three character types you like?
1. Non-humans sapients that actually act not-human. Nothing bugs me more when a dragon speaks fluent English despite having not been seen by any human for hundreds of years and uses its front "hands" to pick things up, but actual thoughtfulness about how that same dragon would actually act, move, live and behave will have me glued to the pages. I hate tabletop RPGs, but I read the fuck out of the monster manuals because they're full of ideas about that stuff.
2. Non-warrior, non-mental giant characters that aren't apologetic, useless pansies. I love strong protagonists, especially, whose main purpose isn't to just outsmart and beat the living shit out of every bad guy they come in contact with. I mean, that's fun too, but everyone does it and I like it better when the brutes and geniuses take a secondary role. What's that you say? Your hero is a middle-aged woman who has been a spaceship mechanic all her life and is strong and intelligent but never had any education beyond her bachelors' in spacecraft design and repair? YES PLEASE, MORE OF THAT.
3. Sapient creatures that do not talk or understand spoken language. NO TALKING. None. Everything must be communicated by gesture or demonstration or some other means. ABSOLUTE TORTURE for most writers! I LOVE reading it, if it's done well (no no, no copouts like "it gave her a look that said "I love your beautiful eyes and wonderful smile." Cheating! No "look" says that!). The epitome of "show, don't tell." Feel the buuurrrrn.
Three types of character interactions you find interesting?
1. Pleasant philosophical discussion. I know that sounds boring, but reading a non-hostile exchange of complex ideas is actually really fun for me.
2. Meaningful confessions. These are really, really rare, they're hard for people to convince themselves to do, probably because more often than not, they're messy as hell and don't go well with the poetic language of carefully-crafted admissions of undying love. Give me sputtering, transposed words, using the wrong words, not quite saying what they mean to say but desperately needing to say it train wrecks. Want some material to reference? The Perks of Being a Wall Flower; The Silver Kiss; The Psycopath Test; and just about anything by Joey Comeau. Try to have a conversation with yourself in a mirror and see how often you can actually complete a series of sentences without messing up. Not often? Write that. Write it where it hurts to do it.
3. Trust and trepidation--a certain type of power exchange in which one person is honestly afraid of what the other is going to do, but trusts them to do it. This can come up for a number of reasons, and I'm pretty fond of most of them. The "I'm going to set your broken leg" is a pretty overplayed one, but it's an example. All the fear and tension that builds up to the moment of pain (or sometimes just fear) and the shaking, heart-racing solidarity with each other afterward is admittedly a huge turn-on for me. This is another one that could've gone in the writing section as well.
Three interests you find particularly compelling to explore? (e.g., spirituality, machine empathy, longing for home, relationships, political shenanigans, etc.)
1. Again with the power-exchanges! I enjoy power-play in almost all facets of stories, except in the boring too-tired and familiar male-oppressing-female sense, even if she's okay with it (it doesn't even necessarily bother me, it's just boring). I like weird power paradigms in cultures and between individuals. I don't like most utopian, bias-free civilizations because they're usually only utopias for people who are just like the writer, and are therefore populated with a ton of slight-altered copies of her.
2. Well-researched space physics. I love this because I suck at and am bad at it, so I rarely try to write it (and tend to cheat cheat cheat I am a cheating cheater who cheats with technology when I do), but I still find it fascinating.
3. Slice-of-alien-life dramas. Not a story about saving the world, but one about interesting people in an interesting society or lifestyle dealing with an interesting problem. Stories that are as much about illustrating the day-to-day life of a new and strange person/creature as they are about an overarching conflict. A lot of animal novels are like this: Panther!, White Fang/Call of the Wild, Tailchaser's Song, Where the Red Fern Grows, Rascal, Stone Fox, A Rustle in the Grass, etc etc etc, you read most of them in Elementary School. I like animal stories, but I like it when it's done with people, too.
Three things that will make you tune out of a story? (More themes or tropes, here, and not things like 'bad writing.')
1. Arrogant, know-it-all protagonists who get away with being melodramatic and asinine because they're the protagonist. Please. The more the writer tries to convince me how awesome their hero is by force-feeding me his accomplishments and showcasing how wise and progressive he is while also making him do and say condescending, disempowering shit to people he's supposed to care about, the more I will want to choke him instead. It will make me hope the Girl he's supposed to Get at the end will punch him in the face, kick him in the knees and stalk indignantly away when he asks for her hand in marriage. And that's the end of the book.
2. Soap-operas and drama for the sake of it. This kind of thing is so contrived it completely takes me out of the actual story trying to force myself to read it. Yes, it's realistic to have people repeating mistakes and bad habits and sabotaging themselves, but it has to go somewhere and someone has to get a clue sometime, or I start to fall asleep.
3. Elaborate fantasy vocabulary. *Yawn* Unless there's a real reason to include fharadhi k'tanmasek in the middle of an otherwise English sentence, please, don't. I'm not against fantasy words as a rule, but when they look like someone's banged their head against a keyboard to create them and they're injected into every other piece of dialogue and there's a ton of them to memorize, they only serve to confuse and frustrate me. At the very least, if you're going to do it, keep the phonetics as consistent as you can so it sounds like they're speaking an actual language instead of having random micro-seizures in the speech centers of their brains.
I really could go on about the things I like/dislike to read and write, but I should probably stop. When it comes down to it, I admit that I read a lot of nonfiction anymore, and tend to enjoy it more than most fiction. When I do read fiction, it's usually adventure, dark fantasy or horror, and if the book gets into subjects that are personal to me without handling them extremely gracefully, I'll usually give up on it because I end up feeling like I could write about the idea better than the author I'm reading. A good example of someone who manages to strike a good balance of these things without making me want to chuck the book and go write is Margaret Weis. I used to think I wanted to write like her until I discovered I don't write like her at all, but I still really enjoy her work because it inspires writing out of me without frustrating me. I also enjoy a lot of Dumas for a lot of the same reasons. I am absolutely floored by the likes of A. A. Attanasio and doubt if I could ever write at that caliber (I'll try!); partially because I don't think I'm quite as insane as Attanasio--but I take great pleasure in his marriage of poetry and prose, even if it's a little overly phallic and honestly a bit sexist sometimes.
ONE MORE THING: I don't know where this would have gone, but I thought I'd mention it. I like it when characters bleed. I'm a weirdo, I like blood. Doesn't have to be gore, but gore is okay too. I'm not specifically into vampires, either, but I'm okay with them if they're done well.
Uh, I guess that's it!
List three things you find compelling in setting, character type, character interaction, and interest, followed by three things that make you tune out from whatever you're reading/watching.
WRITING:
Three settings you find compelling?
1. Post- or near-nuclear Industrial. Old, filthy, deteriorating inner-city infrastructure and black, starless night scenes to go with. Sickly yellow and orange city lighting. Bonus points if the place is being encroached on by struggling plantlife due to disrepair. I love exploring patently mighty places that are tearing themselves apart because of neglect. I like the heavy atmosphere it creates for the creatures living in it, as domestically dependent on their technological advances as they are reduced to animals by the failure of governance.
2. Vast, underground alien paradises. I blame Metroid for this entirely. The idea is just so fascinating, and imagining the sorts of adaptations that would be necessary to survive in an environment like that is endless hours of fun. It gives me a home for so many of the beautiful ideas my brain cooks up that could not go anywhere else.
3. Lush, epic nature. Assume the world has all the innate energy it needs to support vast quantities and variety of life and landscape that even Earth can't because the resources simply aren't there. Evolution that is far less bound by the need to conserve those resources, as a result. Insane adaptations, giant life forms, an environment where the evolution of higher reasoning is not rare, but routine.
Three character types you like?
1. Small, passionate and rebellious. People no one notices, or if they do they dismiss them as inconsequential whiners, and no one suspects for the firebrands they are until the right situation comes along, and they shock/horrify/amaze everyone who thought they knew them.
2. Frustrated, self-sabotaging and criminal, with the best of intentions. Serious misfits who would be pegged for absolute monsters in our society, but with reasons atypical of what we tend to think motivates most murderers, rapists, dictators, abusers, etc. Not malicious at all in their activities, usually. I'd say "sociopaths," but that seems too simplistic.
3. A Fucking Force of Nature. Those whose motivations are almost a moot point because there's very little you can do to stop them at whatever it is they do. Does not have to be an insanely strong/magical individual, although that is often the case. As likely to be villainous as heroic as dispassionate influence.
Three types of character interactions you find interesting?
1. Battle. I swear up and down I hate writing fight scenes, and that's kind of true, but only because I find them so easy, and if I let myself, that's pretty much all I would write. They're kind of adrenaline porn for me, and I spend a lot of time choreographing them in my head for fun. I like them all, epic monster battles, panicked getaways, schoolyard brawls, 3-second knockouts. The only thing I don't like (and don't do) is long, drawn-out martial arts duels. Because they're pretentious bullshit and shut up no one actually does that.
2. Things going wrong. Oh so so so wrong. That moment where everything just comes crashing down between or around two or more characters, or starts to. Life is so often a domino art piece and if you ever get to finish your work before something tips over a piece, you're one in a fucking million. Things go wrong in our relationships more often than they go right, even for really smart/powerful people and I love pointing that out.
3. Synergy. I'm not sure how to define this exactly; it's just the word I use for it. It's not serendipity, although it can be. It's not the apex of a romantic scene, although it can be. It's, in contrast to (although sometimes alongside) "things going wrong," things fall into place. As much as things go wrong, I also like pointing out that things sometimes go very, very right, and they can do so in strange and surprising ways that have nothing to do with deus ex machina. Torture scenes can even count toward this idea. It's a weird one.
Three interests you find particularly compelling to explore? (e.g., spirituality, machine empathy, longing for home, relationships, political shenanigans, etc.)
1. Deconstructing moral ideas. There's a lot of them we take for granted as being universal truths, and I like to play with situations where what is generally ethical or beneficial for our human society would not necessarily apply, or apply differently.
2. Predation, parasitism and symbiosis. I maybe go overboard on this one sometimes, but it's just so relevant to a lot of the other ideas I like to explore, and I find the physical, emotional and philosophical aspects of it absolutely fascinating.
3. Resolution, or lack thereof. Personal emptiness and fulfillment. People pining for what could have been, struggling to hold onto what is, wishing and fighting for something different. Hope and relief and devastation and despair. The range of emotion between the certainty that nothing can stand in your way, and being so beaten down you don't have the strength to get up anymore.
Three things that will make you tune out of a story? (More themes or tropes, here, and not things like 'bad writing.')
I'm going to treat this as "things I hate writing and slog through if there's no way around it".
1. Describing people's clothes. Ugh, god, I hate it. WORSE if they're wearing something detailed and I have to find a succinct way to describe it that doesn't trip up the narrative with flowery language.
2. Chatterbox characters that talk a lot but don't say much. Sometimes it makes sense for someone to be this way, but man do I hate balancing their talkativeness with keeping the story moving.
3. Travelling long distances and having a lot of discussion or thinking along the way. Okay, they're walking, and there's scenery, and they're talking about stuff, and they're walking, and there's scenery, and they're talking about stuff, and they're walking......I try to spice this up as much as I can when it happens (I can't always avoid it), but it's difficult for me to do and keep myself interested.
READING:
Three settings you find compelling?
1. Idyllic, new-agey futurism. I admit, I adored the atmosphere of the Enterprise D. I love LCARS. I like the Gardens of FFVIII for a lot of the same reasons. Esthar was so cool. I guess maybe I like the idea of a future where everything looks like a pleasure cruiser.
2. Moody, horrific shells of once-populous places ala Silent Hill and Dead Space. Horrible things have happened here, more will come, and they'll come for you. (I also like writing this stuff, but didn't make it to the list there because the feeling is close to the first one in my head.)
3. Typical high fantasy environments. Guilty pleasure. It's easy, pretty, has potential for a lot of variety and I don't have to think too hard about it.
Three character types you like?
1. Non-humans sapients that actually act not-human. Nothing bugs me more when a dragon speaks fluent English despite having not been seen by any human for hundreds of years and uses its front "hands" to pick things up, but actual thoughtfulness about how that same dragon would actually act, move, live and behave will have me glued to the pages. I hate tabletop RPGs, but I read the fuck out of the monster manuals because they're full of ideas about that stuff.
2. Non-warrior, non-mental giant characters that aren't apologetic, useless pansies. I love strong protagonists, especially, whose main purpose isn't to just outsmart and beat the living shit out of every bad guy they come in contact with. I mean, that's fun too, but everyone does it and I like it better when the brutes and geniuses take a secondary role. What's that you say? Your hero is a middle-aged woman who has been a spaceship mechanic all her life and is strong and intelligent but never had any education beyond her bachelors' in spacecraft design and repair? YES PLEASE, MORE OF THAT.
3. Sapient creatures that do not talk or understand spoken language. NO TALKING. None. Everything must be communicated by gesture or demonstration or some other means. ABSOLUTE TORTURE for most writers! I LOVE reading it, if it's done well (no no, no copouts like "it gave her a look that said "I love your beautiful eyes and wonderful smile." Cheating! No "look" says that!). The epitome of "show, don't tell." Feel the buuurrrrn.
Three types of character interactions you find interesting?
1. Pleasant philosophical discussion. I know that sounds boring, but reading a non-hostile exchange of complex ideas is actually really fun for me.
2. Meaningful confessions. These are really, really rare, they're hard for people to convince themselves to do, probably because more often than not, they're messy as hell and don't go well with the poetic language of carefully-crafted admissions of undying love. Give me sputtering, transposed words, using the wrong words, not quite saying what they mean to say but desperately needing to say it train wrecks. Want some material to reference? The Perks of Being a Wall Flower; The Silver Kiss; The Psycopath Test; and just about anything by Joey Comeau. Try to have a conversation with yourself in a mirror and see how often you can actually complete a series of sentences without messing up. Not often? Write that. Write it where it hurts to do it.
3. Trust and trepidation--a certain type of power exchange in which one person is honestly afraid of what the other is going to do, but trusts them to do it. This can come up for a number of reasons, and I'm pretty fond of most of them. The "I'm going to set your broken leg" is a pretty overplayed one, but it's an example. All the fear and tension that builds up to the moment of pain (or sometimes just fear) and the shaking, heart-racing solidarity with each other afterward is admittedly a huge turn-on for me. This is another one that could've gone in the writing section as well.
Three interests you find particularly compelling to explore? (e.g., spirituality, machine empathy, longing for home, relationships, political shenanigans, etc.)
1. Again with the power-exchanges! I enjoy power-play in almost all facets of stories, except in the boring too-tired and familiar male-oppressing-female sense, even if she's okay with it (it doesn't even necessarily bother me, it's just boring). I like weird power paradigms in cultures and between individuals. I don't like most utopian, bias-free civilizations because they're usually only utopias for people who are just like the writer, and are therefore populated with a ton of slight-altered copies of her.
2. Well-researched space physics. I love this because I suck at and am bad at it, so I rarely try to write it (and tend to cheat cheat cheat I am a cheating cheater who cheats with technology when I do), but I still find it fascinating.
3. Slice-of-alien-life dramas. Not a story about saving the world, but one about interesting people in an interesting society or lifestyle dealing with an interesting problem. Stories that are as much about illustrating the day-to-day life of a new and strange person/creature as they are about an overarching conflict. A lot of animal novels are like this: Panther!, White Fang/Call of the Wild, Tailchaser's Song, Where the Red Fern Grows, Rascal, Stone Fox, A Rustle in the Grass, etc etc etc, you read most of them in Elementary School. I like animal stories, but I like it when it's done with people, too.
Three things that will make you tune out of a story? (More themes or tropes, here, and not things like 'bad writing.')
1. Arrogant, know-it-all protagonists who get away with being melodramatic and asinine because they're the protagonist. Please. The more the writer tries to convince me how awesome their hero is by force-feeding me his accomplishments and showcasing how wise and progressive he is while also making him do and say condescending, disempowering shit to people he's supposed to care about, the more I will want to choke him instead. It will make me hope the Girl he's supposed to Get at the end will punch him in the face, kick him in the knees and stalk indignantly away when he asks for her hand in marriage. And that's the end of the book.
2. Soap-operas and drama for the sake of it. This kind of thing is so contrived it completely takes me out of the actual story trying to force myself to read it. Yes, it's realistic to have people repeating mistakes and bad habits and sabotaging themselves, but it has to go somewhere and someone has to get a clue sometime, or I start to fall asleep.
3. Elaborate fantasy vocabulary. *Yawn* Unless there's a real reason to include fharadhi k'tanmasek in the middle of an otherwise English sentence, please, don't. I'm not against fantasy words as a rule, but when they look like someone's banged their head against a keyboard to create them and they're injected into every other piece of dialogue and there's a ton of them to memorize, they only serve to confuse and frustrate me. At the very least, if you're going to do it, keep the phonetics as consistent as you can so it sounds like they're speaking an actual language instead of having random micro-seizures in the speech centers of their brains.
I really could go on about the things I like/dislike to read and write, but I should probably stop. When it comes down to it, I admit that I read a lot of nonfiction anymore, and tend to enjoy it more than most fiction. When I do read fiction, it's usually adventure, dark fantasy or horror, and if the book gets into subjects that are personal to me without handling them extremely gracefully, I'll usually give up on it because I end up feeling like I could write about the idea better than the author I'm reading. A good example of someone who manages to strike a good balance of these things without making me want to chuck the book and go write is Margaret Weis. I used to think I wanted to write like her until I discovered I don't write like her at all, but I still really enjoy her work because it inspires writing out of me without frustrating me. I also enjoy a lot of Dumas for a lot of the same reasons. I am absolutely floored by the likes of A. A. Attanasio and doubt if I could ever write at that caliber (I'll try!); partially because I don't think I'm quite as insane as Attanasio--but I take great pleasure in his marriage of poetry and prose, even if it's a little overly phallic and honestly a bit sexist sometimes.
ONE MORE THING: I don't know where this would have gone, but I thought I'd mention it. I like it when characters bleed. I'm a weirdo, I like blood. Doesn't have to be gore, but gore is okay too. I'm not specifically into vampires, either, but I'm okay with them if they're done well.
Uh, I guess that's it!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 10:59 pm (UTC)Oh man, yes. Yes yes yes. I realized recently that, uh, this is the sort of person I very much would like to be. Although, uh, for the characters I write, it's more of "once they start being violent, there's little you can do to stop them." Some of them are very stoppable in other environments. I'm making that distinction because I'm not entirely sure that's what you meant, but regardless: forces of nature, yes. ^__^
The only thing I don't like (and don't do) is long, drawn-out martial arts duels. Because they're pretentious bullshit and shut up no one actually does that.
I laughed. XD
Your interests (for writing) are things I all find really fascinating, but the description of resolution pings really strongly for me (and a story I'm still trying to write (about one of those forces of nature, as it turns out XD)).
OH MAN I love(d) reading the monster manuals! I always found them super interesting.
The "I'm going to set your broken leg" is a pretty overplayed one, but it's an example.
My brain automatically went to another example starring two of your characters. XD
It will make me hope the Girl he's supposed to Get at the end will punch him in the face, kick him in the knees and stalk indignantly away when he asks for her hand in marriage.
I want to read this now.
Regarding elaborate fantasy vocabulary, I have this problem with cyberpunk sometimes, too. It drives me nuts and is especially relevant to me right now because I ended up not buying a book that looked fascinating but had too much of this in it.
I like it when characters bleed.
Oh, yes. Or, uh, more accurately for me, I like it when characters are injured in some way, particularly blunt trauma (in addition to blood).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 03:05 am (UTC)To be honest, I wish I were, too! I try to be...but I'm afraid that I've become too domesticated. Maybe I just am not sure what I'd be without my technology, which keeps most of my inclinations pretty entertained. I like to think that if I couldn't write, I'd probably a much more...active...about the ideas that interest me. But I'm not sure that would be a good thing, at all.
But I don't think someone's discounted from this sort of thing just because they're stoppable in x-environment. Everyone is stoppable (and if you make a munchkin who isn't, you're a damn liar). But I think there's a difference between doing something because you want to do it and doing something because there's no way you can't. When pretty much the only way to stop you, or to have ever stopped you, is to kill you, that's when you become a force of nature.
My brain automatically went to another example starring two of your characters. XD
I'm really curious. XD
Regarding elaborate fantasy vocabulary, I have this problem with cyberpunk sometimes, too. It drives me nuts and is especially relevant to me right now because I ended up not buying a book that looked fascinating but had too much of this in it.
That reminds me, I really wish I'd found a way to include "Heavy Metal" in the writing settings. Not really anything related to the music genre itself, but more the environments often depicted in heavy metal art (see Luis Royo). It's kind of close to CyberPunk in a lot of ways, but colder and dirtier.
Oh, yes. Or, uh, more accurately for me, I like it when characters are injured in some way, particularly blunt trauma (in addition to blood).
Being sent flying and sliding across a floor leaving a trail of blood on the tiles is one of my favorite things to happen to the characters I like. =D Things I try not to overdo but it happens more than it probably should.