ALSO KNOWN AS: "NGR tells you why everything you like is terrible."

This is a little get-it-offa-my-chest rant that I felt may have some value to writers here, on things I see giving modern writers all the wrong ideas about how writing works. This will either help you improve, or convince you that I'm an old crank. Probably the latter, but it can't hurt to try.

I gotta start with a disclaimer: Just because something is a bad influence, does not mean its a bad source of inspiration. Even if the story or source medium is terrible, you can still steal ideas and make it work. I'll be reinforcing this point throughout the article.

So.

Bad Influence #1 - Comics

Comic books pretty much have taught generations of writers that you can have the absolute worst writing habits and still be successful, which of course we associate with quality--because everyone who is rich earned it fair and square, right?

Just for example, in the 1960s Marvel revolutionized comics by introducing the idea that superheroes can have personalities. Now, first, think about that... it wasn't that the idea of three-dimensional characters was at all new (literature had tread that ground for centuries), it was that it was new for comic books (and then only really for superheroes--some newspaper strips like Dick Tracy actually had some nice character bits. But people tend to forget that comics consist of more than just capes so that's what I'm focusing on here).

But it gets worse. How did Marvel write "supers with people-personalities?" They pretty much just did like that pretentious kid you knew and made everyone angsty. No, seriously. Try writing a personality profile of Peter Parker or Bruce Banner without ever once mentioning the "Parker Luck," Bruce's emotional problems, or the amount of deaths that haunt both of them. If you can, you're a genius, because as far as I can see "they suffer a lot" is pretty much the extent of their personality... and being scientists, but seriously all Marvel supers are scientists, except maybe Captain America. It's like they're all the same character. But the young readers these comics are aimed at won't notice.

Then decades later, the art student mentality increases when comics like Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen come out. The claim comes that comics from this time "grew up" because they have things like Green Lantern being accused of racism (on the shaky reasoning that he protects everyone and not exclusively black people), random supers suddenly becoming alcoholic even if it goes against everything we know about them, clear-cut issues being made out to be "moral situations" by people being willfully ignorant, and showing "interpersonal conflict" by making everyone a belligerant asshole willing to get punch-drunk over the least little thing (because that's how real people behave, right?) My favorite moment in Watchmen--which exemplifies this issue perfectly--is when Owl and Spectre, having just witnessed death on a massive scale, respond to it by... going into a back closet to have sex. "Mature storytelling," everybody.

The problem is, people grow up with this stuff, and now there's a generation of "comic scholars" who pretend that this bad writing somehow makes these stories "art," and people adopt the idea, and apply it to their own writing, and thus they end up writing works that are just as bad, and often bad for the exact same reasons--because rather than attempt to write believable scenarios or have humans act like human beings, they're satisfied with over-the-top angst and "moral conundrums" that really aren't, topped with some faux symbolism[1]. Then people grow up with that stuff, and it perpetuates the cycle of badness.

... Now, this isn't to say comics never have interesting plot elements (I kinda like the idea of wrist-mounted webshooters), or that the concept of superheroes is inherently bad. If you ignore the nonsense around them, then very often the ideas themselves are interesting. Captain America largely stars in boring, formulaic adventures, but come on... he's a guy who attacks by throwing his shield. Also, that whole ordeal with the Cosmic Cube. I loved that thing. Maybe I'll steal it for one of my own stories. The point is, do what comics do, but don't do it the way they do it.

Bad Influence #2 - Web Reviewers (and to an extent, the internet in general)

Someone else around these parts mentioned that characters like The Nostalgia Critic and their deletorious effect on culture.

I have to say I agree. The internet has created an atmosphere where we exaggerate flaws, and are trained to see problems and issues. It almost seems like the concepts of "immersion" and "suspension of disbelief" are alien these days because we're too busy analyzing technique and narrative, not trying to get lost in the world of the fiction, which is of course the whole point.

One aspect of this I have noticed is that a lot of modern works are... self aware, but not in a good way. Like I've said elsewhere, while I generally enjoyed Avatar the Last Airbender, the show never quite reached "awesome" status with me because I was bothered by how it had to keep highlighting that it was a work of fiction, mostly by the creators "subtly" winking and nodding like they were so proud of how clever they are (the episode that introduces Toph is a good case in point).

However I see a far more damning problem... the reviews have, pretty much, eclipsed their very own subject matter. Many people who watch Angry Video Game Nerd aren't even gamers, and many people who watch Nostalgia Critic have no intention of ever seeing the movies he reviews. Even if they do, there's always going to be an association with the Critic in their mind. These guys even influence the views of pop-culture. It's kind of alarming to think that Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was actually considered a good game, but now people who like it admit so only under the assumption that its a "guilty pleasure." I've also literally met people who think that seeing the review is the same as seeing the movie/playing the game.

This all wouldn't be so bad, if these guys were qualified in any way. The problem is they're not. They're people who bought webcams and started recording. Truth be told I stopped watching anything by TGWTG/Channel Awesome a long time ago because I got tired of how ignorant and superficial they were and how they clearly never did any research and weren't capable of understanding finer nuances of, well, anything. To build a full case here would dominate the article, so just for example, in the Nostalgia Chick's review of Dune, she implies that the movie is sexist... just because it talks about giving birth at one point. Frank Herbert (author of the original novel) was a feminist, and the Dune universe is one where women basically hold the ultimate power, and even when they lose it, its because of a being they brought into existence. But this clearly went over the Chick's head. Might also watch her Ender's Game video, where she basically just says "its okay to like things even when you disagree with the people who make them." NAH, YA THINK? What's your next startling revelation, that the sun is hot?

Bad Influence #3 - Modern Literature

For the sake of not having a headache, I'm defining "modern" as "anything published since 1980." I don't expect anyone to agree with my terminology, but it'll save us all a lot of confusion if you understand what I'm talking about before I start talking about it.

So why is that the cut-off point? Because that was when reading started to get just as stupid as everything else.

Let me illustrate this with a personal anecdote. When I was young, I read fantasy, a lot. Yet there were a lot of recurring trends I just didn't understand, and didn't like--particularly as I was hoping to write my own fantasy novel some day. Why did all fantasy authors have to use this long-winded, wordy prose?[2] Why did all fantasy novels have to take place in Middle-earth like fantasy realms staffed by the usual D&D variations of Tolkienian races? Why did every book have to be part of a trilogy (this part bothered me the most since my writing tends to be short and to the point)? I didn't know, and nobody else did either--as far as anyone knew, that was just how the genre was. If you couldn't play by those rules, then you shouldn't write fantasy.

By a similar token, in the horror genre I never understood why all the protagonists had to be douchebags. But again, "it comes with the territory."

Enlightenment struck when I stopped reading the modern garbage and looked to older authors--not just my man Tolkien, but to people even older than him: Lovecraft, Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Algernon Blackwood, Edmond Hamilton, Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Anonymous (author of Beowulf). I'm not saying these guys are great writers, or that everything they produced was perfect, but it was eye-opening. These guys didn't play by the rules I had assumed always existed. Blackwood's "The Willows"--which Lovecraft called the best horror story ever (and from the guy who invented Cthulhu, that's high praise) had two nice, decent people caught in a bad situation. Not douchey teenagers, but adventurous grown men who were the kind of people you might actually want to talk to. What was better was the situation was legitimately rather creepy, rather than just being blood and guts and the f-word every other second. Or how about those fantasy authors? Many of them were short story writers. When they wrote a novel at all, it tended to be less than 200 pages, and not written in flowery prose. If they had sequels at all, it was definitely not because they were planned as a trilogy--it was quite clear most of these were never meant as a series, in fact. And I mean that in the best possible way: They grew organically, rather than being forced.

Of course, Tolkien was my man, but even reading him again after enlightenment, I began to see the problem--most modern authors do what they do because "that's what Tolkien did." What they fail to understand is why Tolkien did it. The flowery prose for example--Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind (among others) both have problems of spending pages describing objects. I've seen people accuse Tolkien of that same thing. Tolkien does in fact have descriptive paragraphs... but he never spends a paragraph describing a SINGLE woman's clothes or a SINGLE tree. If you think he did, quote the paragraph. Instead his verbage tends to induce a wide range of scope and imagery, describing geography for miles around or giving you everything you need to know about the town Frodo just entered. Not only that, but if you've read Tolkien's drafts (yes, there's books of just his drafts), he wasn't always that wordy--it grew that way. As he was a linguist, he chose his words carefully, meaning to convey specific feelings. And Lord of the Rings wasn't meant to be a trilogy--he regarded it as just one book. The trilogy was his publisher's cost-cutting measure.

It's funny how things make a lot more sense when you understand the reasons behind them. Tolkien did these things for very good, solid reasons. His imitators, however, never bothered to investigate: they just saw that Lord of the Rings was good, and assumed that by imitating it, they'd be equally good. Then people grew up with the imitations, and reinforced the cycle, completely forgetting that even a lot of Tolkien's work was short fiction, and before him most of the best fantasy writers wrote stand-alone short stories (of all eighteen of Howard's Conan yarns, only one of them was a novel). The best part though, was realizing that no, I didn't have to do things the modern way if I didn't want to--these classic authors did it their own way, and I personally found their work better than the tripe published today.

It's not even just writing styles, either--some basic assumptions about fantasy will get called into question, tempered by knowledge, or even dispelled completely when you read the stuff from before those assumptions became commonplace. Particularly a lot of the assumptions we make about magic or fantasy religious cultures these days. I know so far I've only talked about fantasy and horror, but I can't imagine this wouldn't go for any other literary genre.

Bottom line, if all you ever read is modern stuff, you are doing yourself a disservice. You are literally killing your brain. And if you plan to be a writer, you can not afford to be ignorant of the great writers of the past, in whatever genre you prefer. I know this is alien advice to kids raised on the idea that older books are "what Grandpa likes," but seriously, try it. You'll be better for it.

Honorable Mentions

I thought at first of including entries for movies, television, cartoons, and video games, but then decided against.

See, for one thing, almost every problem with television and cartoons comes especially from comic book influence. Cartoons especially are mixed with a sort of revisionist history--I hate how people say the 1980s was nothing but toy-commercials, but then praise the cartoons of the 1990s (which often were also toy commercials). Lots of eighties cartoons actually had pretty imaginative and entertaining concepts--like the Dungeons & Dragons episode "Dungeon at the Heart of Dawn", or sometimes dealt with subject matter in creative or unexpected ways, like the Bravestarr episode "The Price" (drug addiction) or the He-Man episode "Trouble in Arcadia" (gender equality)--both being episodes that would never be made today. And also which, sadly, often get overlooked while people praise the psychological depth of the various comic book cartoons of the 1990s, many of which do nothing more than repeat the same bad writing of their sources (Batman: the Animated Series in particular is one I see praised a lot for its "psychological subtexts," when in reality the "psychology" mostly amounts to "all crime is caused by insanity" with no deeper examination whatsoever).

Movies I'm of two minds about. On the one hand, they seem to fall into the same thing as books, where if you go back to older eras you start to understand many of our current assumptions, how they happened, and (possibly) why they're right or wrong. At the same time though, not all current assumptions are bad, and I find absolutely nothing wrong with the notion of a "popcorn flick" or a "feel-good movie"--although it does irk me when people use those terms to defend movies that are point-blank terrible, like The Reaping. Point being, I usually watch movies when I just want quick, easy fun, so I'm not generally too concerned with them being the bestest thing ever. When genuine depth and meaning happen, it's icing on the cake.

Finally, video games (and keep in mind, I'm an avid gamer). Yes, video game storytelling sucks, for the most part (even RPGs which are supposed to be all about the story often fall flat in the telling). Here's the thing though: nobody in their right mind plays video games for the storyline (except possibly RPGs, adventure games, or visual novels--assumed VN's can even be called "video games"). The story is often just an excuse. Yeah, Doom actually has a background story if you look for it, but who cares about the UAC corporation or the hero being named Flynn Taggart when you're running around blowing up cacodemons? Also, this goes into what I said earlier about how sometimes bad stories have good ideas--I personally find that when you look at the mythologies behind some games (most often fighters and shoot-em-ups) there's actually some really interesting ideas to be had, which a writer could take and expand on.

So, To Sum It All Up

Cribbing ideas from bad sources is fine, just be sure to get your ideas on execution from good sources. If all your standards of writing come from comic books, television, or novels published in or after 1980, then you need to broaden your horizons. Trust me, you won't hate yourself for doing it.

At the very least, read Algernon Blackwood's The Willows. Lovecraft was right--it really is one of the best scary stories ever told.

Footnotes

[1] Symbolism itself is something nobody really understands anymore. It's supposed to be where the symbol itself is a conveyer of information, not just holding a mirror up to an aspect of the story. For example an early paragraph of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, describing the decline of the Han dynasty, says "hens turned into roosters." This is actually code-speak for how the administrators were becoming more emotional and petty, which were seen as "feminine" attributes (this was a patriarchal society) as opposed to the "masculine" attributes of logic and responsible leadership. That stuff is proper symbolism. Stuff like the unicorn in Rob Zombie's Halloween II is badly-done symbolism, while stuff like the girl dreaming of her womb being cut open in the movie The Unborn aren't really symbolism at all, no matter what the director thinks.

[2] Actually, sometimes I find flowery fantasy prose amusing in a "so bad its good" way. The prologue of the Forgotten Realms novel Darkwalker on Moonshae for example begins by describing the planet in terms such as "pregnant," which made me envision a cosmic woman floating in space, patting her planet-belly and yelling "Oh, I'm going into labor!" That said though, I do wish fantasy would go back to the short story/short novel days.

Bad influences..... modern literature..... MLP fanfiction is modern AND it's literature...... so according to this rant, my brain dies a little every time I read a story on this site...... yeah, I can buy it

4068827 Nothing wrong with killing your brain, just remember to pack a few Phoenix Downs first!

EDIT: .... and Kit-Kat bars....

4068799 I love XKCD.

But seriously, the point was that the problem doesn't have to be this way. Just a little broadening of horizons would reverse it.

I'd love to see an MLP fanfic that honestly feels like it was written by Lovecraft.

A lot of modern literature is trash.

Yes, I am, in fact, talking about Twilight and 50 shades, how did you guess?

As a rule, much of the books I read have been written by dead old white men.

4068783

This all wouldn't be so bad, if these guys were qualified in any way. The problem is they're not.

Okay, so what is it that makes someone qualified to be a critic?

4068783

I will only touch on one thing in reply, since I think I see the you have slipped into the 'high-minded mentality' that everything modern is bad.

I'm almost 40 and I can tell you there always has been a majority of badly written entertainment, and the gems are few and far between. If you look at the history of the fantasy and sci-fi genres especially you will find the majority of the "pulp fiction" really did suck badly. I took literary history and art history and you also find art reflects the time period it was created (including pop art) making some things seem silly or language "too flowery" but that truly reflected the way people spoke and thought at the time.

First off, Lovecraft does not predate Tolkien. They are pretty much contemporaries both releasing works in the 1920s. All of the works you reference are pretty much in the same time period. You need to check on your dates. Those authors lived in a time when the dime novels started and they were the "pop culture" of the time. Horribly written stories and sensational stories. These guys were revolutionary in that they actual wrote the types of stories that most people did badly good.

The real genres of Science-fiction and Fantasy began earlier in the Victorian era so if you want to see visionaries who started these genres read Jules Verne, HG Wells and Lewis Caroll who all predate the authors you mention. To go even further back read mythology, fairytales and legends. Then you'll see the true roots of fantasy and science-fiction.

So in summary there was a lot of bad junky literature that the masses gobbled up throughout history so your overall idea is just not accurate.

4068783

Oh I almost forgot Edgar Allen Poe. He pretty much invented the horror and mystery genres that saturate current pop culture.

I also forgot to mention Gulliver's Travels which is a fantasy that actually was a social satire that was written in the 1700s by Johnathan Swift.

4068783

You do realize that super hero comics aren't the only type of comic books, yes?

4068827

MLP fics are literature? You..you mean I have written Literature? That my fics stand alongside The Odyssey, The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, and Moby Dick?

I always knew I was destined for greatness! Suck it, Trebek! I am Literature! James Joyce reborn, that's me.

I can't wait for universities and colleges to offer classes about my fics.

4068883 Perhaps I misused the word literature.... damn you fanfiction for making me dumber!

I just feel like pointing out that The Willows is an awesome story and had a profound effect on me the first time I read it.

Also, video games used to be a major source of story conception for me. I realized a few years later how bad an idea that is.

4068886

Well, you just implied that I am a genius author, destined to pen immortal classics of the English Canon Of Literature, like Charles Dickens.

Especially since I write about futanari. I'm sure Dickens never wrote about futanari. What would a Dickensian futanari story even be like?

4068894 It would be like Jesus incarnate. You are the next evolutionary step of DIckens reincarnated, revolutionizing the genre of futanari. We shall call it.... David Clopperfield or.... Oliver Clit (pony clit of course)

4068859

Okay, so what is it that makes someone qualified to be a critic?

For one thing, you have to know your stuff, and be capable of seeing the deeper issues, and thinking about a work from multiple angles--and communicating what you find.

And then you have to put in years of experience.

As silly as it might at first sound, there is in fact some degree of a proving ground for critics and literary scholars. Just for example, Lovecraft had tons of people scholarize and analyse his works, but there's a reason S.T. Joshi is held on a pedestal above August Derleth, Lin Carter, and Robert M. Price--its because he's precise, insightful, and has also put a lot of his knowledge to practical application in discovering and preserving Lovecraft's work. On his blog he's also demonstrated the difference between himself and people who have only a superficial understanding of Lovecraft and his work. It helps that its often very entertaining. Just for example, this response to a magazine reviewer who made some audacious claims. Pay attention not just to what he argues but the way he argues it. That's a scholar at work.

For another scholarly treatment (Tolkien this time), try this one (unfortunately this is an abridged version, I couldn't find the full version on short notice and don't know if its available outside of a book). There's actually an entire book of essays about the film versions (including both pro-film and anti-film essays), and its instructive to read that tome, and then go back and watch the Nostalgia Chick's three videos about those same movies. It's revealing how shallow her commentary is by comparison.

.... Although by this point, I feel like I'm just saying "internet reviewers suck." I need to take a break.

4068783

You have some undeniable valid points in your rant.

But I think you make one mistake here.
Many actual work is a lot worse then past works in literature, comics and so on. (I don't think you claim every single modern work worse then past works.)
The reason is easy. Today we know of about 20 or 30 authors like Lovecraft, Tolkien, Poe or others from this period of time. Professionals maybe about 100. But how many people wrote in their time? How many wannabe-Lovecrafts were out there? How many works were just forgotten, for they weren't that good?

Today we have hundrets and thousands of writers - professional writers, selling actual books to more people then they know in person.
And I bet in about eighty or hundred years you'll knoe even just about 20 or 30 from our time. The good ones, that stay remembred.
The big difference is, that - thank you internet - every writer could create a bigger range with his work.

So I have partly to disagree - past writers werent that better than today. You just know the good ones, while others fell in oblivion. But its nitpicking at this point.
Your statement for using even seemingly bad stuff, just to make it good, is a very fine tip, I'll try to remember.

4068783 Wait. are we talking about the Dune movie with Patrick Stuart and all them? Because all I remember women doing in that movie was acting the part of nuns and broodmares... and the one rebel who I believe just happened to have the hots for Paul. Women were married off solely for political advantage. Love didn't have squat to do with it, and half the plot was about when Paul's mother did fall in love with Duke Leto Atreides and gave him the son she wasn't supposed to. If women were so powerful, why was the Emperor a man? Baron Harkonnen (Head of House Harkonnen) was a man. I think all the heads of the Great Houses were men. All the important members of the Guild were men. The only power women held was the POWER OF NAGGING. OH NO, they were all Coco VonDooms! I'm so scared and apparently everyone else was too (sarcasm intended). I don't even think they changed the plots all that much from the Frank Herbert novel to the screenplay (although I've only read the book once a very long time ago and might be wrong about that).

4068869 Yeah, I'm aware. They are, however, the comics that are the most prevalent, and which have had the most influence, which is what this rant was about. Don't mistake focused discussion for ignorance of things beyond and irrelevant to that focus.

4068864

First off Lovecraft does not predate Tolkien. They are pretty much contemporaries both releasing works in the 1920s.

Nope! Lovecraft was active from 1898 to 1936. 1937, the year he died, was also when The Hobbit was published--and that was Tolkien's first published novel. Yes Tolkien was writing before that, but the Hobbit was when he began writing as a career.

Those authors lived in a time when the dime novels started and they were the "pop culture" of the time. Horribly written stories and sensational stories. These guys were revolutionary in that they actual wrote the types of stories that most people did badly good.

.... And this disproves any point I made how, exactly? Like I said, the whole point was that by examining them you see that some common assumptions are patently false. This isn't wrong just because they're from the 1920s.

Also, despite how you're trying to strawman me, I never claimed all old things were better nor am I pining for some mythical golden age. In fact, here's a line from my rant you apparently missed:

I'm not saying these guys are great writers, or that everything they produced was perfect, but it was eye-opening.

4068964

Well you understand that if I were to say something like "Movies are terribly written! They just keep rebooting the same five superheroes over and over. How many times do we need to hear Batman's origin story?! Don't watch movies, people." or "Books are a terrible influence. The vampires aren't always evil now? Well whoop de do! They're still one dimensional." well, that would be vastly over generalizing.

4068957

Wait. are we talking about the Dune movie with Patrick Stuart and all them?

Yeah, that one.

Because all I remember women doing in that movie was acting the part of nuns and broodmares... and the one rebel who I believe just happened to have the hots for Paul. Women were married off solely for political advantage. Love didn't have squat to do with it, and half the plot was about when Paul's mother did fall in love with Duke Leto Atreides and gave him the son she wasn't supposed to. If women were so powerful, why was the Emperor a man? Baron Harkonnen (Head of House Harkonnen) was a man. I think all the heads of the Great Houses were men. All the important members of the Guild were men. The only power women held was the POWER OF NAGGING. OH NO, they were all Coco VonDooms! I'm so scared and apparently everyone else was too (sarcasm intended). I don't even think they changed the plots all that much from the Frank Herbert novel to the screenplay (although I've only read the book once a very long time ago and might be wrong about that).

See, you're making the same failure of analysis the Nostalgia Chick did. Seeing only the surface ("the Emperor was a man") without looking fully at the situation as presented.

Yes, the Emperor was a man... whose advisor was a Bene Gesserit. All Bene Gesserit have certain ranges of faculties, including absolute truthsense and a magical voice that compels people to do what they say (this is all more nuanced and complex in the book, but lets go with how the movie does it). They intelligently place their members in places of prestige so they maintain large amounts of influence and control, and all their breeding was intended to produce a superbeing who--if all had gone according to plan--they would have controlled.

So yes, the Emperor and all the Dukes were men.... who (with the exception of Baron Harkonnen, only because he didn't have a Bene Gesserit anywhere on his planet) could all be controlled by a woman. And they were all unknowingly following a plan concocted by these women.

Where exactly is the sexism here?

4068978 You know you're making a strawman argument, right?

4068783

On comics:

I don't really have much to say here, myself not being much of a comic book enthusiast, at least not in the "classical" sense. I never read Batman, Superman, Spider Man, Watchmen, etc. In fact, the last comic series I ever read was the freaking Sonic the Hedgehog series. And you know what? The exact same problems that you described kept popping up: plenty of good ideas, all buried under the idiocy of the plot trying to be "edgy" and "mature"...

On web reviewers:

I'll just leave this right here...

The big problem is that web culture in this field (and many others) had become overwhelmingly polarized. On one side, you have the fanboys that buy everything and love everything, regardless of actual quality. On the other side, there are the people who make a living off bitching about everything, to the point that their opinions become equally worthless. They keep claiming games are "omg durrr serious art form!!11!!1!", and according to them, one is not allowed to like AAA titles and the like, even if they are, as games, actually enjoyable. That's why I began to seek out this niche of people who try to screw with the heads of both sides by always going against the one that "gets too loud" (so they'll bash overhyped pretentious indie games just as eagerly as overmarketed crap AAA titles).

Same goes for movies, or pretty much anything else. Some middle ground is way overdue.

On modern literature:

This one I'll have to disagree with. The only reason you think anything prior to the 1980s was so much better is because over 30 years had passed since then, i.e an entire generation. This gives society enough time to filter out the garbage, so they only remember what is worth remembering. I'll bet you anything that plenty of what comes out today and is regarded as "worthless" will be remembered as classics decades from now, some of them perhaps the ones you just described as poor copycats.

Oh, and did you know that LOTR wasn't met with a warm welcome the first time it came out? The whole thing about "elves" and "hobbits" and "Sauron" didn't really sit well with Tolkien's "serious" peers. Same goes for plenty of other classics, by the way. The ideas presented in Brave New World were found to be horrifying and completely implausible by guys like freaking H. G. Wells, even though posterity seemed to prove Aldous Huxley's point.

Bottom line is: let's not get ahead of ourselves. We never know which book will end up telling the right story.

On all the rest of the stuff:

I'm a little torn about video games. In my opinion, Spec Ops: The Line is a fantastic video game (dare I say "work of art"?) even though gameplay-wise it isn't exactly very "fun" as far as "cover-based shooters" go. This one is difficult to classify on the "fun scale", however, since it doesn't exactly play as a classic shooter, plus both gameplay and story work in a meta sort of way. Point is: it's not as much "trying to tell a story" or "give you a game" as it is "trying to screw with people's heads", and while that too may come across as pretentious, I definitely wouldn't say it's using the story as an excuse.

Also, while I agree that VG stories should be secondary to gameplay, I still wouldn't write off their importance so easily. Yes, a game should, at heart, be a game, but if it has a neat story too, then I'll love it even more. I used to hate the COD series for the campaigns becoming stupider with every new release, but now I figured "people don't even care, they just want to have fun in multiplayer," and since they do seem to be having fun, doesn't that technically make them good games?

Overall:

My approach to speaking out about things is a bit like this: I almost always go against the "winning side." If everyone bitches about a story/movie/game/whatever being "bad", I try to point out good things in it. If I find that something is overrated, I do the opposite. It's not that I dislike seeing people reach a consensus, but I don't like it when said consensus is just "let's love/hate the shit out of something without questioning ourselves".

That said, I think people should steer away from extremes. People should even steer away from the opposite extremes that rise up against the aforementioned extremes. People should read this thread, think about every one of your observations, maybe even agree with most of them, and start listing every reason why they think you are wrong. Not to imply that you are, just so a debate can take place. We've heard one side talk, now it's time to hear the other. In fact, the very reason why most of the "bad things" that you listed exist is because people never stopped to think "hey, wait a minute... is this truly good/bad, or did I just let myself get duped?"

4068859

Okay, so what is it that makes someone qualified to be a critic?

Being able to criticize something that other people would just give up on and label as "perfect"

Okay guys, hold up.

I am TIRED of hearing "stuff wasn't good in the old days either" such replies.

I NEVER claimed the old days were better. I NEVER claimed the 1920s was some sort of artistic golden age.

YOU ARE TOTALLY MISCONSTRUING EVERYTHING I SAID.

In fact the very FACT that that's the message you got out of it proved the very point I was trying to make.

You guys keep making points that have NOTHING to do with ANYTHING. "Tolkien wasn't that popular when he was new"--and this has what to do with anything? "There were bad writers back then too"--and how does this relate to anything I said?

Guys, when you argue, you CAN'T just pretend the other guy said whatever you wish he had said to make it easier to refute. That's called "a strawman argument."

Please, if you're going to keep repeating the same line over and over, do us all a favor and just don't reply at all.

4068993

Am I? Perhaps I was mistaken, but you were decrying comics as a bad influence on writing and gave the argument that superhero comics were poorly written as support for it. I was trying to point out that doing the same thing with another medium would be over generalizing.

4069017 You reduced my bit about comics down to, I quote:

"Movies are terribly written! They just keep rebooting the same five superheroes over and over. How many times do we need to hear Batman's origin story?! Don't watch movies, people." or "Books are a terrible influence. The vampires aren't always evil now? Well whoop de do! They're still one dimensional."

Except, uh-uh, that's not what I said.

First off, your contention that I only ever mentioned Superheroes:

Just for example, in the 1960s Marvel revolutionized comics by introducing the idea that superheroes can have personalities. Now, first, think about that... it wasn't that the idea of three-dimensional characters was at all new (literature had tread that ground for centuries), it was that it was new for comic books (and then only really for superheroes--some newspaper strips like Dick Tracy actually had some nice character bits. But people tend to forget that comics consist of more than just capes so that's what I'm focusing on here).

Let me repeat that last part:

(and then only really for superheroes--some newspaper strips like Dick Tracy actually had some nice character bits. But people tend to forget that comics consist of more than just capes so that's what I'm focusing on here).

So not only am I aware that not all comics are superheroes, I acknowledged it--only a paragraph past the header, and even mentioned a non-super by name, and explained why I'm focusing on superheroes.

But your strawman was "Wah, all superheroes are the same!" I think I see where you're getting that:

But it gets worse. How did Marvel write "supers with people-personalities?" They pretty much just did like that pretentious kid you knew and made everyone angsty. No, seriously. Try writing a personality profile of Peter Parker or Bruce Banner without ever once mentioning the "Parker Luck," Bruce's emotional problems, or the amount of deaths that haunt both of them. If you can, you're a genius, because as far as I can see "they suffer a lot" is pretty much the extent of their personality... and being scientists, but seriously all Marvel supers are scientists, except maybe Captain America. It's like they're all the same character. But the young readers these comics are aimed at won't notice.

Except... "they're all the same" was not the point. The point was that the "characterization" introduced in this period consisted of just adding angst. That's not an opinion--you can read any comic from that era and see for yourself. So you apparently missed the real point and focused on one I wasn't even making.

Then there's that thing about "the vampires are good guys now? They're still one-dimensional" which I'm not even sure what that's a riff of. If I called anyone one dimensional, then its because they literally only portrayed one or two basic personality traits--which is what the word means.

4068914 The nature of criticism comes from critical analysis, you reference this individual post as a fine example of your standards, so lets break it down shall we?

Paragraph1:

I was initially puzzled as to why Mr. Baxter was assigned to write the review in the first place. So far as I know (and I have prepared two versions of a comprehensive bibliography of Lovecraft that lists every article written about him from the 1910s to the present day),[1] Mr. Baxter has done no original research on Lovecraft or published anything about him.

Fallacy: Argument from False Authority. The individual in question is claiming that a reviewer has no business reviewing an individual work as he doesn't have the complete scope of context. He hasn't "mastered the material" as a "fellow expert" (the author of this post) has, and therefore is somehow unqualified to speak on it.

The very nature of critical thinking is that anyone can do it. This is why we advise even the smallest of children to critically think their way through situations. A critic is one who exercises critical thinking (analysis with regards to value assessment and appraisal); whereas "good" could be a measure of consistency.

There is little evidence that Baxter has read the leading scholarship on Lovecraft (he claims to have read my biography,[2] but does not appear to have done so comprehensively or sympathetically) or is aware that the scholarly work of the past half-century has revolutionized our understanding of this author—work by such critics as Dirk W. Mosig, Donald R. Burleson, David E. Schultz, Steven J. Mariconda, Robert M. Price, Robert H. Waugh, and countless others.

Fallacy: Irrelevant Appeal (Evidence), for his(?) claims to the hereafter mentioned Irrelevant Authority, by means of Arguing from SIlence.

This work has definitively removed Lovecraft from the realm of pulp fiction and enshrined him as a canonical figure in American literature—a status endorsed by the Library of America, which published a volume of his Tales in 2005.

Fallacy: Irrelevant Authority: The endorsement of the LoA is not shown to have any relevance to the argument of whether or not the individual in question is capable of sound logical or rational thinking; nor did it directly indicated that such an endorsement undermines any premise, warrant, or conclusion made by the individual in question.

Your author opened with a fallacy after fallacy after fallacy which really a terrible start with regards to critical analysis (something both he, and you, are claiming him to be an expert in). Note, I found the the paragraph as a whole quite nicely fulfilled, you guessed it, another fallacy: Misleading Vividness.

4069014

Because you're implying that a certain age is "useless" as inspiration. Perhaps you should reword what you said. Also, the name-dropping doesn't help either. Whoever said Tolkien was the one who took "fantasy literature" and "got it right"? Same thing about Lovecraft or whoever else got mentioned here.

Oh, they get to be mentioned because they inspired lots of people? I see. Why don't they get the same treatment as what you said about the popular comic series then?

4068783

Here's the thing though: nobody in their right mind plays video games for the storyline (except possibly RPGs, adventure games, or visual novels--assumed VN's can even be called "video games").

I play strategy games for their storyline. Ever played through Starcraft 1? It's nothing but storyline!

4069038

Oh. I wasn't trying to say you made either of those arguments. I was just giving examples of how that logic would be more obviously unfair if applied elsewhere. I was trying to highlight that if you made an entry entitled 'books' or 'movies' and then talked about how bad, say, super hero movies or vampire novels and were to peg the medium as a bad influence it would be unfair and wouldn't carry the argument.

You do list 'comics' as being a bad influence and refer to comics as being bad while only talking about one genre of comics. I don't think that argument holds.

Well, I think my brain will literally BSOD if I don't take time off and get high cool down soon, so I'll handle one more and then take a powder.

4069040

Fallacy: Argument from False Authority. The individual in question is claiming that a reviewer has now business reviewing an individual work as he doesn't have the complete scope of context.

One thing you missed--the reviewer began his "review" by making broad assertions about the author, which went beyond the scope of simply reviewing the work in question. The argument wasn't that he has no business reviewing the book, but that he has no business making claims about the life and personality of a person he had not researched. If he had stuck to simply reviewing the book, there might not have been an issue.

The very nature of critical thinking is that anyone can do it.

"Can" doesn't mean "does," nor does it mean everyone's skill at doing so is equal. This guy made some clearly bad arguments, which he refused to back up with evidence, and many of which are demonstrably wrong. He tried to critically think and he came up short.

Irrelevant Appeal (Evidence), to claims to the aforementioned Irrelevant Authority, by means of Arguing from SIlence.

Joshi in this case is demonstrating that Baxter has shown no credentials for making that claim--no evidence that he's really done any research into Lovecraft, and yet he's making these broad sweeping (and often defamatory) statements about him. And yet somehow Joshi is the one committing a fallacy here, for simply asking the guy to show some credentials?

Let me get this straight: Are you telling me that if S.T. Joshi (who compiled volumes of Lovecraft's stories, letters, essays about him, and wrote a researched biography which is considered the definitive one) made a statement about Lovecraft, and some guy who hadn't even heard of Lovecraft before last year made a completely contradicting statement about Lovecraft, that they would hold equal weight? Maybe I'm mistaken, but that's exactly the message I'm getting here.

No offense man, but the only person I see making "Fallacy after Fallacy after Fallacy" is yourself. Just because something looks, at first glance, like a logical fallacy doesn't mean it is. You see, that's what separates people like us from people like him--to you, he's wrong simply because he broke some arbitrary rule of the internet, even if he knew what he was doing and may have done it for a purpose--which is clearly the case. It otherwise reads like you're just trying to find something to criticize the guy with so you can point and say "see? He's no better than the rest of us!" And yet by doing so, the difference is becoming night and day.

It almost seems like the concepts of "immersion" and "suspension of disbelief" are alien these days because we're too busy analyzing technique and narrative, not trying to get lost in the world of the fiction, which is of course the whole point.

You... you mean we're actually supposed to try to enjoy stories for what they are instead of picking them apart for tiny details like capitalization and improper use of em dashes, all the while complaining about how much the author's choice of spacing makes our eyes bleed?

4068991 Well to me, the notion that women can only influence from the shadows or behind a man's back is sexist. The leaders are the ones who get the praise and the perks. They say behind every man is a good woman, but who supports the good woman? Compare it to Star Trek where women can be Starfleet Officers of any rank as well as hold positions of leadership. That is a gender neutral society with no glass ceilings... well at least in the Federation. The Cardassians and Romulans seem to be more fair about gender as well. But most races like the Klingons and Ferengi are extremely sexist (Ferengi won't even let their woman wear clothes). Even the borg don't seem to place any weight on the gender of a drone.

4068914
Thanks for that S.T. Joshi link. I think that's the first thing I've ever read that can be justifiably described as an "epic literary smackdown". And I know a lot more about Lovecraft now than I did an hour ago, which is pretty cool.

I very much agree with your points on superhero comics and the internet, though I'm personally much more tolerant of modern fiction. There are (and always have been) many horrible models out there to draw from, and there are a lot of writers (myself included, I'm sure) making decisions more because of what they've seen done than because they understand why it has been done. And if you're looking for models of artistic merit, older works that have become received classics are almost certainly the best thing to look at. But a lot of modern media—movies and music, but also books—have tried to move toward optimization for popularity. What do watchers/listeners/readers most want to experience? What hooks them best and keeps them coming back for more?

My view is that a lot of novels (specifically a lot of YA novels) written in the last 5-10 years key into these techniques, but without paying much attention to anything else. That has a tendency, I think, to make people assume that these techniques are themselves bad, rather than being an effective way of propping up mediocre writing to make it into something readers find engaging. Personally, I think a better approach is to try to find what authors are doing both wrong and right—in the modern era, or in any other era. What's coming out today isn't uniformly bankrupt, any more than 19th century literature was uniformly awesome. Trying to figure out what works and what doesn't—in any piece of work—is, I think, a goal that could benefit all aspiring writers.

4068851

I'm overgeneralizing your argument here by necessity, but the overall bearing of your post is itself a heap of generalizations against "Comic Books", "Modern Literature", and "Video Games," with a fairly overt preference for media from the good old days. Y'know, from when men were men and women were women and writers were actually good.

Socrates felt much the same way about those accursed modern youngsters.

The problem is that most of these generalizations are simply wrong, and there's nothing to be gained by telling people that their current media is just "modern garbage." It's a) not true, and b) absolutely not true. Lots of media has been (and continues to be) produced that make fantastic examples of storytelling, and while there's certainly a lot to learn from the Old Masters, they just aren't the one true path to Enlightenment. Pointing to all of the worst examples of modern media and claiming that things sure have gone downhill just isn't a productive exercise.

This is probably why people are telling you that there was a bunch of garbage in ye olden days too, because the primary thing that they're drawing from your post is how little good there is in modern media relative to older media... when, y'know, pretty much every era of media since the dawn of history has been subject to Sturgeon's Law.

4069074

One thing you missed--the reviewer began his "review" by making broad assertions about the author, which went beyond the scope of simply reviewing the work in question.

I can not "miss" what is not provided. At no point in the first paragraph was the work of the author in question referenced. And yet, this author does exactly the same thing with regards to the author of that review. Albeit with a slightly more scholastic vocabulary.

"Can" doesn't mean "does," nor does it mean everyone's skill at doing so is equal.

Since we agree on this premise, I find it funny that you're willfully disregarding it in your arguments.

This guy made some clearly bad arguments

I'm neither refuting or addressing the other guy's arguments since your citation of quality in this author (S.T.Joshi) is not contingent upon the quality of this other author. I am simply refuting your claim that Joshi is, somehow, arbitrarily more qualified to logically address a topic than anyone else.

I have done so by pointing out the glaring flaws in his logic, which by definition make them bad arguments, and you return with the kids stuff of "But mom he started it!" which itself is not an argument.

If he had stuck to simply reviewing the book, there might not have been an issue.

If your cited author had simply stuck to critiquing the other author's critique I might agree with you. But, as it stands, this is another irrelevance since he(?) did not.

This guy made some clearly bad arguments, which he refused to back up with evidence, and many of which are demonstrably wrong.

I am not seeing the distinction from what you're claiming he did, and what you are now doing.

Joshi in this case is demonstrating that Baxter has shown no credentials for making that claim

One does not demonstrate logic through a chain of fallacies. They are by definition antonyms. That naturally indicates that Joshi's credentials are themselves irrelevant as they could not help him string a logical thought together.

And yet somehow Joshi is the one committing a fallacy here, for simply asking the guy to show some credentials?

Credentials are, by our shared definition of critique, unnecessary if the logic holds up; and irrelevant if it doesn't.

They are an excuse by which we can point to and say "this person's logic must be valid, because this person has been validated" rather than logically validating the claims, warrants, and conclusions ourselves. (The purest essence of the fallacy: Appeal to Authority.) The reality is that the two are separate and distinct things that do not necessarily coincide.

In logical discourse it does not matter who says a thing, what matters is that thing is logically solid, and as I have easily demonstrated (and you have failed to refute) that the statements issued are fallacious.

I did want to add that nothing of the author in question, that this author is responding to, was referenced in the portion of the critique that I referenced. Rather, a very creative Strawman Argument was constructed whereupon your red-herring perches. I know you know what the Strawman fallacy is since you've referenced it ITT.

In simplest terms it may be true that "two wrongs don't make a right", but it doesn't excuse the two wrongs either. To claim some exhaled standard one must, by definition, ensure one's standard raises itself above the failings of those other standards.

4068883 Possibly yes to one, no to the other. Yes, there have been classes on Twilight fanfic as literature. No, that does not mean they're magically initiated into some Hall o' Great Lit. People do study fanfic for a variety of reasons: as a reflection of pop culture or of the zeitgeist, for the technical abilities it does and does not demonstrate, for its engagement with its audience and participation in a discourse community . . . etc.

As for Dickens writing futa--no, because he wrote stuff that would sell well, and it doesn't have the same commercial appeal. Doesn't today, either, since while 50 Shades is porn, it barely qualifies. It's really, really soft core. However, the basic concept of "girl suddenly sprouts a dick" sounds like a lot of what would have been called hermaphrodite lit., and it really is ringing a bell. I know I rang across it somewhere when I was researching adolescent male roles meant to be played by women.

4068783 All I'm going to say is that your rant sounds exactly like every other rant that has been ranted about literature going down the shitter since at least the sixteenth century. It's always been true that the amount of good stuff has been vastly outweighed by the bad stuff. And a lot of the worst modern literature has been written by people who clearly have no direct connection with video games, internet critics, or comic books.

4069129 *Cough* Longer than that. We've got literature being ranted about farther back than Euripides and Aristotle (500+ BCE) [in the form of responses to Greek plays].

4068964

My point is that if you are writing a rant from a supposed historical point of view you need to get your information correct.

You Wrote:

Enlightenment struck when I stopped reading the modern garbage and looked to older authors--not just my man Tolkien, but to people even older than him: Lovecraft, Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Algernon Blackwood, Edmond Hamilton, Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Anonymous (author of Beowulf). I'm not saying these guys are great writers, or that everything they produced was perfect, but it was eye-opening. These guys didn't play by the rules I had assumed always existed.

1) You credit Lovecraft with being a visionary that predated the more influential authors on today's sci-fi and fantasy authors. My point is that Lovecraft and Tolkien are historically (ie when discussed in a history of literature) contemporaries living during same era of history and publishing works during the same years. You seem to argue that Tolkien is some sort of dividing line and everything afterward went down in quality of imagination.

The time period is known as the birth of these genres since there was an explosion of works. There were works predating this period but the authors producing their largest body of works in the early 20th Century are viewed as the creators of the genres by many incorrectly as you have done so here. I have no idea where you are getting your dates:

Lovecraft’s Fiction
(Publication Order)
------=-O-=------
Below is a list of Lovecraft’s fiction, revisions, collaborations, and miscellaneous minor works, in the order they were published. It is based primarily on S.T. Joshi’s H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography, but includes some changes based on Mr. Joshi’s ongoing research. This list is also available in both alphabetical order and chronological order.

1916, November: The Alchemist (The United Amateur, 16, No. 4)
1917, November: A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (The United Amateur, 17, No. 2)
1918, June: The Beast in the Cave (The Vagrant, No. 7)
1919, June: Memory (The United Co-operative, 1, No. 2)
1919, October: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Pine Cones, 1, No. 6)
1919, November: Dagon (The Vagrant, No. 11)
1919, November: The White Ship (The United Amateur, 19, No. 2)
1920, May: The Statement of Randolph Carter (The Vagrant, No. 13)
1920, June: The Doom That Came to Sarnath (The Scot, No. 44)
1920, September: Poetry and the Gods (The United Amateur, 20, No. 1)
1920, November: The Cats of Ulthar (The Tryout, 6, No. 11)
1920, November: Nyarlathotep (The United Amateur, 20, No. 2)
1920, December: Polaris (The Philosopher, 1, No. 1)
1920, December: The Street (The Wolverine, No. 8)
1921, March: Ex Oblivione (The United Amateur, 20, No. 4)
1921, March: Facts concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (The Wolverine, No. 9)
1921, April: The Crawling Chaos (The United Co-operative, 1, No. 3)
1921, July: The Terrible Old Man (The Tryout, 7, No. 4)
“1919, July” (1921, summer): The Picture in the House (The National Amateur, 41, No. 6)
1921, October: The Tree (The Tryout, 7, No. 7)
1921, November: The Nameless City (The Wolverine, No. 11)
1922, February–July: Herbert West—Reanimator (Home Brew, 1, No. 1–6)
1922, March: The Music of Erich Zann (The National Amateur, 44, No. 4)
1922, March: The Tomb (The Vagrant, No. 14)
1922, May: Celephaïs (The Rainbow, No. 2)
1923, January–April: The Lurking Fear (Home Brew, 2, No. 6 – 3, No. 3)
1923, May: Hypnos (The National Amateur, 45, No. 5)
1923, May: What the Moon Brings (The National Amateur, 45, No. 5)
1923, November: The Horror at Martin’s Beach (Weird Tales, 2, No. 4)
1924, February: The Hound (Weird Tales, 3, No. 2)
1924, March: Ashes (Weird Tales, 3, No. 3)
1924, March: The Rats in the Walls (Weird Tales, 3, No. 3)
1924, April: The Ghost-Eater (Weird Tales, 3, No. 4)
1924, May–June–July: Under the Pyramids (Weird Tales, 4, No. 2)
1924, May–June–July: The Loved Dead (Weird Tales, 4, No. 2)
1925, January: The Festival (Weird Tales, 5, No. 1)
1925, April: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind (Weird Tales, 5, No. 4)
1925, July: The Unnamable (Weird Tales, 6, No. 1)
1925, September: The Temple (Weird Tales, 6, No. 3)
1925, November: In the Vault (The Tryout, 10, No. 6)
1926, April: The Outsider (Weird Tales, 7, No. 4)
1926, June: The Moon-Bog (Weird Tales, 7, No. 6)
1926, September: He (Weird Tales, 8, No. 3)
1927, January: The Horror at Red Hook (Weird Tales, 9, No. 1)
[1927, Spring]: The Green Meadow (The Vagrant)
1927, August: Two Black Bottles (Weird Tales, 10, No. 2)
1927, September: The Colour out of Space (Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 6)
1927, October: Pickman’s Model (Weird Tales, 10, No. 4)
1928, February: The Call of Cthulhu (Weird Tales, 11, No. 2)
1928, March: Cool Air (Tales of Magic and Mystery, 1, No. 4)
1928: The Shunned House (The Shunned House, The Recluse Press)
1928, November: The Last Test (Weird Tales, 12, No. 5))
1929, January: The Silver Key (Weird Tales, 13, No. 1)
1929, April: The Dunwich Horror (Weird Tales, 13, No. 4)
1929, November: The Curse of Yig (Weird Tales, 14, No. 5)
1930, August: The Electric Executioner (Weird Tales, 16, No. 2)
1931, August: The Whisperer in Darkness (Weird Tales, 18, No. 1)
1931, October: The Strange High House in the Mist (Weird Tales, 18, No. 3)
1932, March: The Trap (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, 2, No. 1)
1932, October: The Man of Stone (Wonder Stories, 4, No. 5)
1933, July: The Horror in the Museum (Weird Tales, 22, No. 1)
1933, July: The Dreams in the Witch House (Weird Tales, 22, No. 1)
1933, November: The Other Gods (The Fantasy Fan, 1, No. 3)
1934, March: Winged Death (Weird Tales, 23, No. 3)
1934, June: From Beyond (The Fantasy Fan, 1, No. 10)
1934, July: Through the Gates of the Silver Key (Weird Tales, 24, No. 1)
1934: The Battle that Ended the Century (The Battle That Ended the Century, Robert H. Barlow)
1935, April: Out of the Aeons (Weird Tales, 25, No. 4)
1935, July–August: The Quest of Iranon (The Galleon, 1, No. 5)
1935, Summer: “Till A’ the Seas” (The Californian, 3, No. 1)
1935, September: The Challenge from Beyond (Fantasy Magazine, 5, No. 4)
1936, February–April: At the Mountains of Madness (Astounding Stories, 16, No. 6 – 17, No. 2)
1936: The Shadow over Innsmouth (The Shadow over Innsmouth, Visionary Publishing Co.)
1936, June: The Shadow out of Time (Astounding Stories, 17, No. 4)
1936, Winter: The Night Ocean (The Californian, 4, No. 3)
1936, December: The Haunter of the Dark (Weird Tales, 28, No. 5)
1937, January: The Thing on the Doorstep (Weird Tales, 29, No. 1)
1937, January: The Disinterment (Weird Tales, 29, No. 1)
1937, May: The Horror in the Burying-Ground (Weird Tales, 29, No. 5)
1938, January: Ibid (The O-Wash-Ta-Nong, 3, No. 1)
1938, February: The Diary of Alonzo Typer (Weird Tales, 31, No. 2)
1938: Collapsing Cosmoses (Leaves, 2)
1938: Azathoth (Leaves, 2)
1938: The Descendant (Leaves, 2)
1938: The Book (Leaves, 2)
1938: History of the Necronomicon (A History of the Necronomicon, The Rebel Press)
1939, January: Medusa’s Coil (Weird Tales, 33, No. 1)
1939, April: The Evil Clergyman (Weird Tales, 33, No. 4)
1939, October: In the Walls of Eryx (Weird Tales, 34, No. 4)
1940, Summer: The Very Old Folk (Scienti-Snaps, 3, No. 3)
1940, September: The Tree on the Hill (Polaris)
1940, November: The Mound (Weird Tales, 35, No. 6)
1941, January: The Thing in the Moonlight (spurious, Bizarre, 4, No. 1)
1941, May & July: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Weird Tales, 35, Nos. 9 & 10)
1943: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Arkham House)
1943: Sweet Ermengarde (Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Arkham House)
1944: The Transition of Juan Romero (Marginalia)
1959: The Little Glass Bottle (The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House)
1959: The Secret Cave or John Lees Adventure (The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House)
1959: The Mystery of the Grave-Yard (The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House)
1959: The Mysterious Ship (The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House)
1959: Old Bugs (The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House)
1994: Discarded Draft of The Shadow over Innsmouth (The Shadow over Innsmouth, Necronomicon Press)
1994: The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast (The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast and One Other, Necronomicon Press)
1994: The Slaying of the Monster (The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast and One Other, Necronomicon Press)

This was copied from just one site but I can't find any evidence for your 1898 to 1936 dates.

2) I sited HG Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe and Johnathan Swift because they predated Lovecraft. You seem to think Lovecraft is over-looked and hasn't influenced anything at all. Oddly enough I see him mentioned by a lot of current horror writers. He didn't invent the wheel though.

Oh I did want to give you a cookie for mentioning Dunsany because he is often over-looked and cited by the early 20th century authors as a large influence. Did you read The King of Elfland's Daughter? Its my favorite by him.

You sited Lovecraft as a contemporary of Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Lovecraft published after the 1800s so that makes them precede him and influences on him.

3) You ignored my pointing out that pop culture badly written consumables began with comics in the 1930s. It goes way back to "dime novels". At no point in history have the good authors outnumbered the bad. The public always has consumed a far larger mass of bad works.

You spend a great amount of time on this in your rant so everything that is being said on this point is in fact very relevant.

4068783
Harry potter. First published in 1997. That is all.

4068783

Bottom line, if all you ever read is modern stuff, you are doing yourself a disservice. You are literally killing your brain. And if you plan to be a writer, you can not afford to be ignorant of the great writers of the past, in whatever genre you prefer. I know this is alien advice to kids raised on the idea that older books are "what Grandpa likes," but seriously, try it. You'll be better for it.

That's where I have to stop listening to what you are saying. You bring up good points, don't get me wrong. But Tolkin, Lovecraft, all those other guys, they may be masters of literature, but they aren't the only masters. Times change. People change. Like the book series I mentioned above, there are, in fact, great pieces of literature in our "modern society." To understand how literature is written and how to improve onto it, we must read all realms of literature, not just the past greats, but the modern greats as well.

No matter how you word it, you claim we can learn nothing from what we read today, which is complete false! I don't know what else to say without repeating myself. You claim that those authors didn't follow the rules when writing literature, yet we as the new age of authors need to look to these old greats for our own work. The irony in your rant is strong.

4069308 **Applause**
4069397 Also, J.K. Rowling stands on the backs of giants, and she knows it. There are places where she is clearly drawing from Malory, Wyatt, Petrarch, Spenser, Tennyson, Austen and Shakespeare--which is one reason I teach a college-level Harry Potter class.

I think possibly the problem is that most of us simply don't read as much as avid readers used to. Even I don't read as much as I used to. And it's helpful sometimes not to stick to whatever someone tells you are "the greats." I always teach a couple of Shakespeare plays many of my students haven't even heard of, just to change things up, and I actually prefer Wilkie Collins to Charles Dickens.

There's something to be said for reading really old books. I've gotten a lot out of it, obviously. But we're talking a lot older than "what Grandpa used to like."

4069496

There's something to be said for reading really old books. I've gotten a lot out of it, obviously. But we're talking a lot older than "what Grandpa used to like."

You mean like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein back in the 1800's? Because I just got done reading that for my course, and that was pretty good, in fact, more surprised by how good and clear it was.

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Pop lit is pretty much always terrible, regardless of genre or time period. A few gems might shine through, but all in all it is empty calories and vapid fluff.

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I am quietly horrified to think about my Deadpool/MLP:FiM crossover as being actual literature.

What should we do next: Something good, something bad? Bit of both? - Starlord

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I love you.

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Apparently, you are now Literature. Make of that what you will. I envision statues being raised, in your honor.

Here is your Laurel Crown.

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I think possibly the problem is that most of us simply don't read as much as avid readers used to. Even I don't read as much as I used to. And it's helpful sometimes not to stick to whatever someone tells you are "the greats." I always teach a couple of Shakespeare plays many of my students haven't even heard of, just to change things up, and I actually prefer Wilkie Collins to Charles Dickens.

This is, indeed, a serious issue.

The Internet prevents me from reading. It severely hampers my free time.

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What... what have I done?

What should we do next: Something good, something bad? Bit of both? - Starlord

I'm gonna go ahead and kick the hornet's nest here, as per my usual style - which has earned me the (unfairly bequeathed, I feel) label of troll, but there is a Serious Problem with Classic Literature, at least, Western Classical Literature. A few serious problems, perhaps. A sticking point, if you will.

I won't say it prevents people from reading them. I am not a white male, yet I have vigilantly done my best to read the books of the Western Literary Canon - the books that some people sign up for extra semesters at their college, just to make sense of them. You can quiz me about the books I have in my influence list, in my profile; I'm not a tiresome hipster who merely carries around copies of Kafka, but doesn't even know what The Metamorphosis was about.

As an aside, I think it's really sad that people have to read Sparknotes or Cliffsnotes about these books. I feel like something may be wrong with you, developmentally speaking, if you are over 18 years of age and still can't figure out what Moby Dick is about.

But it seems like a lot of modern people just don't want to read things by Dead White Men. And, unfortunately, these Dead White Males do very little to endear themselves to a modern audience. Take Lovecraft, for example. He is actually an excellent example of some things that are potentially distasteful about the Dead White Males who penned the vast bulk of Western Classic Literature.

EDIT:

I am not taking aim at 18th century people in general; this issue stretches right back into Antiquity, with Aristotle making claims about the Superiority of Lighter-Skinned Individuals. If you read the Western Literature Canon, you will find yourself running smack-bang into this kind of stuff, and that, I think, is what repels a good deal of modern readers.

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I'm not a fan of the writing of Moby Dick. I find it to be overly verbose, and almost painful to read. I don't have much experience with fiction that was written prior to the second half of the last century, but what I have read, just seemed to be a hell of a lot more accessible.

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I'd be lying if I said Moby Dick was a fun read.

The parts where they eat clam chowder really appeal to me, speaking as a Gourmand. I read them and immediately feel like making some clam chowder. The fact that I live on the Northeastern Seaboard of the US may have something to do with this.

The sheer wealth of words in this thread makes me feel intimidated.
I am not a learned lemon.