Capn_Chryssalid and Q&A at talks · 8:35pm Jul 16th, 2018
During the "Advanced Writing" panel at Bronycon 2016, I said that the "rules" about what qualities made fiction good had changed over the centuries. One example I probably gave (I'm not going to watch the whole video now to check) was that characters didn't have arcs before Shakespeare. Today, screenwriters take it as gospel that a story must be about a character changing. For most of the time between Homer and Shakespeare, change was bad, and stories like Beowulf and Antigone were about noble characters resisting change. Heroes weren't bad people who became better; they were good people who stayed good.
Another example I apparently gave was the claim that the ancient Greeks and Romans didn't value sympathy very highly.
Capn_Chryssalid came up during the Q&A (from minutes 47 to 50 in the video) and objected to both of these claims, using examples from Homer. Since then, several people have said something to me about how irritating that was for him to make a long counter-argument rather than asking a quick question.
It's true that speakers want, in the spirit of democracy, to answer many short audience questions rather than to dwell on one, and that we dread the "questioner" who wants to use the Q&A to give his own talk. But Capn_Chryssalid's rebuttal was probably the most exciting "question" I've fielded in any talk. He understood what I said, and challenged it at its weakest point (Homer), with solid evidence. I had worried before the talk that Homer didn't really fit my pattern, that his characters were all flawed, even the gods, and I'd gone over the Iliad trying to figure out whether or not Achilles had a character arc and found no definitive answer.
CC changed my mind, or at least made me aware that I was using the wrong words. I still believe that the rules of what's good and what's bad in fiction change over time, and that early classical Greek tragedy (after Homer, but before Euripides), and Roman and medieval literature afterwards, didn't rely on the flaws of its heroes as much as on displaying their virtues. But to say that ancient Greek literature didn't evoke sympathy was just wrong.
(I probably should have said that Homer and early classic Greek drama didn't evoke sympathy for the downtrodden and unfortunate, but only for people who merited sympathy. Sympathy for "common" people has been called an innovation of Judaism (which is why Nietzsche called it a "slave morality"), and may not have reached the Greeks until the time of Euripides. But I haven't read a lot of Greek tragedy, and very little Greek comedy, so that could be wrong, too.)
I don't know how to run a Q&A session so that audience members can add to the discussion without running the risk of someone talking for three minutes about his OC. But I'm grateful to CC, not irritated at him, for challenging me intelligently. If somebody has a well-informed comment that challenges a key point of what I've said, I want to hear it. And if our format for panels doesn't allow responses such as CC's, maybe we ought to try out other formats.
Some of the guest speakers at Bronycon have taken written questions in advance, and selected ones to address. A speaker might post a summary of a talk in advance on fimfiction, read the comments, and invite a few people to make responses at the talk. I don't think that would work for my upcoming talk at Bronycon, because it isn't a "claim-making" theoretical talk, but an empirical "this has worked for me" talk.
It might work for my Trotcon Aristotle talk (though I don't think anyone is actually going to attend a talk on Aristotle at 11:30 Friday morning). You've already got my outline of it. I could post a more-detailed outline and invite people going to Trotcon to post objections or responses. Is anyone interested in that?
You're going to give a talk on Aristrottle at a pony convention? Yeah, we've got some of the oddest brilliant fans in MLP.
If I was able to make it to Trotcon, I would definitely show up for an 11:30 Friday morning Aristotle talk. Unfortunately, I won't be there.
I remember that panel... but then again, I was the moderator : P
4902202
Brilliant people are often odd. Fans are odd by definition. Thus brilliant fans are odd squared.
4902682 And the square of any number is even, not odd, so by definition none of us are odd. Brilliant!
4902730 You're half right.
4902790 That's funny. You said the same thing when I claimed to be a wit.
4902862 I'm obligated by the oath I swore on receiving my math degree to tell you that the square of an odd number is odd.
4903037 Hm, that's odd. (checks) So now you know why it took me six years to get through college while taking a math course every year including summer school. (taking, not passing, although I can still factor Taylor and Maclaurin series even 30 years later)