Self-Indulgence

[urbeatle]

So, quite by accident, I watched another M. Night Shyamalan movie, "The Village". I'd heard rumors about this movie, but thought at first that maybe they were exaggerated; the opening of the movie had a bunch of quick scene changes, which might seem jumpy to some (a couple people told me it felt really disjointed.) But I kind of liked it, even if

Comments

[mmcirvin]

"The Village" is one of those dumb mysteries that depends on keeping the audience in the dark, rather than the characters.

aka The Lobster Story ("...and they were ALL LOBSTERS ALL ALONG!").

Turkey City Lexicon calls it "The Jar of Tang": http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/

[jwgh]

It's like a mini TV Tropes!

[mmcirvin]

TV Tropes incorporated all of them onto a page, with links to TV Tropes equivalents (the Jar of Tang is, I believe, regarded as a subset of Tomato Surprise).

[urbeatle]

I've never read any Orson Scott Card novels, but I read one non-fiction book he wrote on how to write science fiction. He divided stories into four types: Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event stories, with mysteries and surprise endings belonging to the Idea category. He had some pretty harsh words for contrived "mysteries" where the characters deliberately withhold information from the reader, but not each other.