General writing question.

Is it possible/a good idea to laugh at trauma if it's something you've gone through yourself? Example: I know people who have been abused by their parents, but aren't offended by The Binding of Isaac, a game with parental abuse as part of the plot (an over-the-top example of it, but regardless).

>>373471
Black Comedy is always a gamble. If you're actually funny, it can be pulled off with gusto. But if you're not very funny, you're going to alienate a lot of people.

Really, the best option is to have a lot of people read what you write and tell you whether they thought it was funny or if it crossed the line. Try to get people who are in your target demo--comedy about kids being hit isn't as likely to be funny to new mothers or old people as it is to college-aged men, for example.

And understand that no matter how funny you are, some people are going to be offended. This isn't the end of the world (someone's going to be offended by pretty much ANYTHING you do), but just remember that for every person who complains about it, there are a hundred more that agree but say nothing, and if you seem to be getting a lot of that response from your target audience, all you're going to do is alienate your readers if you include the material.

>>373474
Also any humor can lose its kick when overdone, but specially when it's something that can be distasteful. Basically, there's the sudden "oh wow haha" and then there's stretching into "enough dude, not cool" territory.

>>373474
>>373565
It's been wreaking havoc on me morally recently because I sometimes laugh at black humor, and sometimes I cringe at it because suicide jokes just aren't as funny when real people you know actually attempt it (unsuccessfully, thank god, although there was an underclassman I hadn't met in high school who killed himself). Although the Jimquisition at Escapist Magazine successfully proved with this week's video that there's a very thick gap between real and fictional violence.

Things Shakespeare Did That Make Me Surprised That People Find His Work Boring:

>>snuck the word "cunt" into no less than four different plays
>>made a "your mom" joke in one

>>374626
Yeah, pretty much nothing that Hamlet says to Ophelia is not about her vagina. And the whole of Shakespearean canon is rife with fart and dick jokes aside.

Finished John Dies At the End.

What a weird fucking book.

>>374628
It's a good fucking book.

Read the sequel. It's wonderful.

>>374642
Only tangentally related: I have seen stuff that explicitly said "warning: this contains spiders" and seen people respond, screaming, "OH MY GOD THERE ARE SPIDERS".

>>374627
I'm actually sort of baffled that they let us read it in high school English. But then again, my teacher pointed out that I was one of the few who actually would realize that they were filthy in the first place.

Well, this was a lot less satisfying than the J. W. Wells books.

the only logical outcome

>>374642
It's definitely on the list.

>>374656
I hope this isn't POWER LEVELS, because if so...

>Jon Snow beating Barristan Selmy
>Jaime beating Ned Stark
>Drogo beating well-trained Westerosi in armor

...it is WRONG.

>>374682
all the choices are just a means to create the final ENDS IN ANGRY HATESEX battle

>Just like the books

Ah.

By the way, what do you think of this fan theory:


>Barristan Selmy told Danaerys that "Aerys took liberties with Tywin's wife on their wedding night".
>Tywin got mad at his sister for saying Tyrion was more like him than Jaime.
>Cersei is just as paranoid and unbound as Aerys.

Jaime and Cersei are Aerys' bastard children.

I've been reading a compendium of Lovecraft's works. I've been enjoying his stuff quite a bit. He is nowhere near as difficult to read as I have been led to believe, at least so far, but then I'm not even a third of the way through the collection.

It's been nice reading short stories instead of whole novels. Getting to the end of a short story is more satisfying than getting to the end of a chapter, and you can put the book down for longer periods of time because it doesn't matter if you forget small details or the names of characters. Something I like about Lovecraft's short stories in particular is that, while they are seperate from each other, there has definitely been a mythos being built up to in all of them, and it's very easy to imagine them all taking place in the same world. It's all the benefits of short stories with the world building of an epic. It's pretty neat.

>>374719
While it is possible, there isn't enough evidence to make me actually believe it. I can't totally dismiss it either though. It's an interesting idea.

>>374719
It would also kind of explain why Aerys didn't want Cersei to marry Rhaegar.

My favorite theory is that Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. What else could Lyanna have made Ned promise? She did die in a "bed of blood," probably after childbirth.

I asked a person I considered a friend to suggest a book or comic for me to read next, being that she's a librarian and knows what's out there better than I do, and she just laughed and called me an idiot and asked me if I was too dumb to know how to use Google.

Is it really moronic to ask for suggestions anymore?

>>374876
No, of course not. She was just being rude.

In other news... well I guess I should finally work on editing and touching up my short story. I've pretty much written down all the major changes I want to apply, so the only thing left is to write it up.
Eugggghhhhhhh that sounds fuuunnn.

>That last Quentyn chapter in ADwD.
>That last Jon chapter in ADwD.

WHY WOULD YOU PUT THEM NEXT TO EACH OTHER GRRM YOU FUCKER?!

>That last Dany chapter.
>That Kevan chapter.

[INTERNAL SCREAMING]

>>374895
Enjoy waiting for the next book to come out.

Because it'll be a long wait.

In fiction in general, if you hint a character is gay, the following happens:

Fangirls/boys squeal because they find gay [insert gender here] sexy.
A large chunk of other people vehemently refuse to believe any character they like could be gay.

I am not going to fetishize my gay characters, nor will I allow people to say they can't or don't exist. I will treat them like real people.

>>374904
Psh, a new chapter seems to leak every week. I read a few this morning.


Tyrion and Victarion are still massive shitheads.
Arianne and Doran are worried about Quentyn.
JON CONNINGTON ACTUALLY TOOK STORM'S END HOLY SHIT.
Theon won't tell Stannis anything because he's dumb enough to think he'll be shipped back to Bolton if he does.
Barristan Selmy is coming to terms with the fact that Yunkai and Mereen are essentially fighting with retard infantry.

>When the sun rises in the west
Dorne finally joins the war in Westeros
>and sets in the east
Quentyn Martell
>when the seas go dry
not sure about this one but potentially the narrow sea could freeze over in the depths of winter or something
>mountains blow in the wind like leaves
a certain mountain has be scattered in several pieces all over the place
>when your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.
she's certainly taking every opportunity to make it happen
>Then he will return, and not before


conclusion: Dany and ghost rider Drogo will lead the dothraki across the frozen narrow sea

>>374932
Or dark magic will reach far beyond the North of Westeros, and Drogo will rise with blue eyes.

>>374924
>Psh, a new chapter seems to leak every week. I read a few this morning.

I'm gonna need you to cite that claim, buddy.

>>374934
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4uB5dqTYBLwOVFZS19RLTFFbDA/edit

The Barristan chapter that was leaked yesterday isn't here yet, though.

>>374932
ADWD:Dany had her period at the end of the book, so yeah, that part of the prophecy has come to terms.

I'm having fun reading ASOIAF fan theories.

>Sarella Sand is Alleras of Oldtown.
>Hodor and Brienne are cousins!
>Wyman Manderly fed those three Freys to the guests at Winterfell.
>Ser Duncan the Tall was never knighted.

>>374934
but he was burnt.

...

wait, a horde of flaming dothraki skeletons vs an army of frozen corpses. fire vs ice

>>374730

What kind of brain-dead illiterate told you Lovecraft was a difficult read?

It's pulp for fuck's sake; the whole point is that it isn't.

>>374932
>mountains blow in the wind like leaves
The Dothraki Sea?

I just finished Nineteen Eighty-Four.

God, what a fucking great way to push that horrible lingering after taste of Atlas Shrugged away. That was fucking awesome. The last time I spent so much time unable to put a book down was when I read Patriot Games.

That goes up there with Fahrenheit 451, To Kill a Mockingbird, Stranger in a Strangeland, and Starship Troopers in my list of truly great classics.

>>375232
What angers people about Atlas Shrugged?

>>375233
Ayn Rand First Interview 1959 (Full)

>>375233
>>375235
I think the "Ayn Rand was a sociopath" video in the left kind of sums it up. Her "theories" are only really important for how wrong they are, and she isn't that good of a writer.

>>375237
Can you just sum it up?

>>375240
Atlas Shrugged erects the character of John Galt as a messianic figure, here to save a crumbling socialist world. He is a former child prodigy that got butthurt about how the 20th Century Motor Company doled up its pay and went AWOL because of it, stealing his revolutionary invention: A motor that is powered off of the latent static electricity in the atmosphere.

The entire book makes this naive presupposition that there are certain people in society who, without them, it would crumble and die. And for such a fucking idiotic idea, it worships an unlikable prick (John Galt), and then does so for an obscenely long period of time. Reality does not gel with the book.

After all, what happens when a CEO has blown his last chance with the board of directors?

He gets replaced.

What happened when John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

He got replaced.

What happened when Pope John Paul II died?

He got replaced.

What would happen if I were to slam one of my school's Cessna's into the ground at 160knots?

The Cessna would get replaced and (after some grieving), I would be to shortly thereafter.

No one reads it, at least no one that espouses its greatness or its intellectual depth. It's the libertarian bible: A big, impressive looking tome that no one reads.

Confession time.

I was greatful that my mom gave me a lot of her classic books from when she was a kid, and one of them was The Wizard of Oz and its first sequel. I loved them. I haven't seen Wicked or Oz: The Great and Powerful, but I hate the original film. Not because I like the book better, because I actually read the book second, wanting to know if it was any better, but I guess the film is too saccharine for me, or that many musicals just kinda grind my gears.

>>375292
>many musicals just kinda grind my gears.
Oh my. Do you suffer from s-e-v-e-r-e c-h-r-o-n-i-c p-o-s-t -t-r-a-u-m-a r-e-l-a-t-e-d, a-n-x-i-e-t-y r-e-a-c-t-i-v-a-t-e-d m-a-n-i-c a-g-o-r-a-S-P-O-N-T-A-C-A-N-T-I-P-H-O-B-I-AAAAAA~?!

>>375313
The reference is lost on me, apologies.

I do like some musicals, but unless they're horror (Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, Repo!) or Disney, they grind my gears. Although to be fair, for years I insisted I would hate Rocky Horror, and I ended up watching it twice.

It's just ones like Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, and Grease that annoy the hell out of me.

>>375326
It's from a sketch on the State. They burst into song while singing about their kid's condition, which if my rudimentary understanding of latin isn't failing me, is "The fear of suddenly and publicly bursting into song."

>>375349
Ah, okay. Unfortunately, I haven't seen The State, but maybe I should go check it out now.

Just picked this up, looks pretty intimidating being 981 pages and all. Tell me, why does /lit/ shit all over it?

>>376602

Wallace used to teach at my university! This was long before I attended, though. His name comes up in a number of my classes. I think our English Department generally likes him.

Also, there's no telling why anyone on 4chan does anything. I'd give it a read to see what's up. I kinda want to, honestly.

>>376602
Because hipsters and psuedo-intellectuals dickride it, most likely. Probably a hype-backlash.

>>376626
your dickery keeps people on the internet honest
thanks for that

>spend months writing/rewriting/editing/stress crying over thesis
>finally all done
>have free time
>nothing much to do until graduation

>go back to the library and write more

what the fuck is wrong with me

>>376910
perhaps you have ideas to express

This book was horrible. Usually I get really wrapped up in reading shitty YA books because they can be fun but this actually had me yelling at it. It's supposed to be dystopian, so something bad happens and then the US decides to split into five factions that each represent truth, peace, intelligence, bravery and selflessness.

Not only did it have 200 pages of useless romantic confusion between two characters with almost no personalities that dragged on even after it was resolved, it turns out the faction of intelligent people is evil and is attacking the faction of selfless, religious people. Can people be selfless and intelligent? This book says nope, someone can only be one or the other (otherwise they're special divergent people... or something, I still seriously don't understand what was happening).

The love interest of Beatrice, the main character, actually says something along the lines of "I have a theory that sometimes you need to be selfless in order to be brave" which I think was one of the stupidest things I've ever read in a book. No fucking way, dipshit.

I liked the name "Four" (the love interest's name) but lost my shit upon learning his real name is Tobias, to which I could only picture a blue Tobias Fünke walking around, taking off his shirt, trying to look hot, having ~brooding blue eyes~ etc

tl;dr: 0/10 would not recommend even to fellow lovers of bad YA books

As Gatsby is being released, I took some time to reflect on the book and how it was one of my favorites in high school.

It shaped my decision of never wanting to be a petty rich person, or chasing after things I know I could never have.

>>read fanfic
>>I ship X with Y, but fic writer ships X with Z instead
>>Z is horribly out of character and you could just as easily replace all instances of Z's name with Y and it would be identical

I can tolerate it if you ship differently than I do, but if you write Z identical to Y, there's no point. They have totally different appearances and personalities in canon, show me how their relationships would differ. Convince me X would be better with Z than Y.

I did not expect the Dexter novels to have so much food porn.

So many Cuban pulled pork sandwiches and crullers.