Adventure Time meme
Responding to darthhowie. Bah, haven't LJ posted myself enough lately.
1. Do you ever think not enough people are getting sued?
Absolutely. I also think too many people are being sued. The trick is to get more of the right people used and less of the wrong people which will require a bunch of really ethical lawyers to change the laws.
I will say that as far as getting more people sued, change the rules on class action cases. Ripping off 5 dollars from a ton of people should be easier to punish, but then don't give the money to the lawyers / nobody in particular. I think that attempt to encourage lawyers to file class action suits mostly backfired and gets the exact wrong kind of lawyers running those cases.
As far as reducing bad cases, I'd give judges more discretion to throw out stupid cases on the spot, with some kind of speedy appeals process for when that happens.
2. Which food product most needs to be the title for a Google project?
Chocolate cake. If you hear this title, you know you want it, even if it might not be good for you. Temptation!
Fried Greeen Tea ice cream gets honorable mention. I'm really not sure what it'd be. Some kind of experimental project, prolly, like the self-driving car.
3. Do writers owe it to their readers to give them detailed explanations for everything? When is leaving something mysterious OK?
Well the hedge answer is "it depends." If I am reading a murder mystery, the answer is "almost never;" every damn clue better have an explanation, including the red herrings. If I'm reading China Mieville being weird & portentious, it's probably fine to leave lots of details misty.
To be more specific, some factors I think come into play...
* Sequel / potential for a sequel. Obvious, no shame in leaving some material unexplored for a sequel if you really have plans to do one. Especially applies to villains who escape - it's okay to not reveal their backstory & plots yet then. (Star Wars Ep. 4 Darth Vader.)
* Realism. The more "realistic" a style being gone for, the more it's okay to leave stuff unexplained. Sometimes we just don't have enough information.
* Plot vs. subplot. Leaving the main plot unexplained raises more eyebrows than a subplot. (Shepherd Book in Serenity clause, basically. If the movie had somehow revolved around him, then leaving that hanging would not be cool.)
* "Mystery" vs. "The Unknown." This is kind of vague, but for a horror movie like Alien, it's fine to not explain very much about the Alien (although we still learn a fair deal!). Same deal with Cthulhu-esque opponents, we learn a little but it's an unknown foe, and if we know too much it stops being scary. The more the plot & experience revolves around the chase, the closer we get to mystery, which is a genre which requires many more answers.
* Epilogues / visions of the future. Go ahead and be as vague as you want here unless this is hedging on some other key plot point. (And if you are, have it be an interesting hedge at least - FF7 Red XIII epilogue, perhaps.)
I bring up mystery a bunch because it's where this comes up in a relevant fashion. If your average romance or drama has major parts left unexplained, that sounds like an incomplete plot more than an artistic decision in general. I'm also mostly ignoring background stuff that is obviously there to set up the plot - how the precog's powers in Minority Report work is hand-waved, it's irrelevant, assume you're in a Star Trek TOS episode where we have a new amazing device to set things up.
A notable non-factor to me:
* Narrative style. I don't care that this is a first-person only narrative, and the author thinks it would make no sense for Our Hero to find out the truth about something. Find some excuse to have the character find out if it's important, or have the clues in the background where a reader can put the pieces together even if the character remains clueless. A good example of this are Sansa's chapters in Feast for Crows - it's a little odd for Littlefinger to be letting Sansa into his confidence, but there's a solid excuse, and more importantly it lets the reader in on some Littlefinger motivations & machinations that we deserved to know.
And a notable booby prize:
* If your explanation is idiotic, then maybe it'd have been better never to tell it so we could assume something else. (Midichlorians, please take your bow.)
4. Who is more annoying: objectivists or communists?
Touch question. I know both objectivists and communists I like, but dang if the average creature of the breed isn't annoying as all heck. I'm going to go with Objectivists being more "annoying" though. (Commies are slightly more likely to either be naive and/or nice, or else rage-inducing crazy people. Objectivists mostly focus on annoying gadfly that isn't worth raging about seriously.)
5. What would Ronald Reagan do?
Hard to tell, he's invisible. Whatever Nancy & James Baker told him to, most likely. Then give a stately wave to the crowd, which somehow feels inspired despite being entirely unable to see him.
1. Do you ever think not enough people are getting sued?
Absolutely. I also think too many people are being sued. The trick is to get more of the right people used and less of the wrong people which will require a bunch of really ethical lawyers to change the laws.
I will say that as far as getting more people sued, change the rules on class action cases. Ripping off 5 dollars from a ton of people should be easier to punish, but then don't give the money to the lawyers / nobody in particular. I think that attempt to encourage lawyers to file class action suits mostly backfired and gets the exact wrong kind of lawyers running those cases.
As far as reducing bad cases, I'd give judges more discretion to throw out stupid cases on the spot, with some kind of speedy appeals process for when that happens.
2. Which food product most needs to be the title for a Google project?
Chocolate cake. If you hear this title, you know you want it, even if it might not be good for you. Temptation!
Fried Greeen Tea ice cream gets honorable mention. I'm really not sure what it'd be. Some kind of experimental project, prolly, like the self-driving car.
3. Do writers owe it to their readers to give them detailed explanations for everything? When is leaving something mysterious OK?
Well the hedge answer is "it depends." If I am reading a murder mystery, the answer is "almost never;" every damn clue better have an explanation, including the red herrings. If I'm reading China Mieville being weird & portentious, it's probably fine to leave lots of details misty.
To be more specific, some factors I think come into play...
* Sequel / potential for a sequel. Obvious, no shame in leaving some material unexplored for a sequel if you really have plans to do one. Especially applies to villains who escape - it's okay to not reveal their backstory & plots yet then. (Star Wars Ep. 4 Darth Vader.)
* Realism. The more "realistic" a style being gone for, the more it's okay to leave stuff unexplained. Sometimes we just don't have enough information.
* Plot vs. subplot. Leaving the main plot unexplained raises more eyebrows than a subplot. (Shepherd Book in Serenity clause, basically. If the movie had somehow revolved around him, then leaving that hanging would not be cool.)
* "Mystery" vs. "The Unknown." This is kind of vague, but for a horror movie like Alien, it's fine to not explain very much about the Alien (although we still learn a fair deal!). Same deal with Cthulhu-esque opponents, we learn a little but it's an unknown foe, and if we know too much it stops being scary. The more the plot & experience revolves around the chase, the closer we get to mystery, which is a genre which requires many more answers.
* Epilogues / visions of the future. Go ahead and be as vague as you want here unless this is hedging on some other key plot point. (And if you are, have it be an interesting hedge at least - FF7 Red XIII epilogue, perhaps.)
I bring up mystery a bunch because it's where this comes up in a relevant fashion. If your average romance or drama has major parts left unexplained, that sounds like an incomplete plot more than an artistic decision in general. I'm also mostly ignoring background stuff that is obviously there to set up the plot - how the precog's powers in Minority Report work is hand-waved, it's irrelevant, assume you're in a Star Trek TOS episode where we have a new amazing device to set things up.
A notable non-factor to me:
* Narrative style. I don't care that this is a first-person only narrative, and the author thinks it would make no sense for Our Hero to find out the truth about something. Find some excuse to have the character find out if it's important, or have the clues in the background where a reader can put the pieces together even if the character remains clueless. A good example of this are Sansa's chapters in Feast for Crows - it's a little odd for Littlefinger to be letting Sansa into his confidence, but there's a solid excuse, and more importantly it lets the reader in on some Littlefinger motivations & machinations that we deserved to know.
And a notable booby prize:
* If your explanation is idiotic, then maybe it'd have been better never to tell it so we could assume something else. (Midichlorians, please take your bow.)
4. Who is more annoying: objectivists or communists?
Touch question. I know both objectivists and communists I like, but dang if the average creature of the breed isn't annoying as all heck. I'm going to go with Objectivists being more "annoying" though. (Commies are slightly more likely to either be naive and/or nice, or else rage-inducing crazy people. Objectivists mostly focus on annoying gadfly that isn't worth raging about seriously.)
5. What would Ronald Reagan do?
Hard to tell, he's invisible. Whatever Nancy & James Baker told him to, most likely. Then give a stately wave to the crowd, which somehow feels inspired despite being entirely unable to see him.