I didn't see anything about Malazan in the thread?

And the Lakers are...?

Not really, Rob Zombie kinda ruined the idea for me.

For the afternoon crowd:

There's a thing that keeps us moored to whatever's going on, a thing that grants us understanding, and that's humanity.

I kind of wish I was allowed to talk more about "humanity" in the sense of stories, as I've had to use cheat-words: empathy, sincerity, heart, etc and while those all sort of mean what I want, what I'm talking about is the thing that hits the center of us and grants us understanding of the weird.

This is also why it's really important to address ego death/ego damage either alongside or before a lot of other psychological issues, because it's easy to believe there's a "fix" or that things outside yourself will make you whole.

When I talk about the "patriarchal default," it's the concept that there's not just a cisheteropatriarchy, but that the cisheteropatriarchy governs avenues of resistance and perception of things outside of it, guiding them only along specific paths and pipelines, and this too must be destroyed.

I mean, it's easy to say. It's an absolute bitch to write and I'd be worried about drifting out of my lane.

The more essays and culture dumped into this guy, the more the map becomes the territory, and because then there were people who were screaming "the map is the territory," they're now correct and validated to continue doing that.

I feel like yes, but also I want to see the whole mess demystified. There's an idea everything has to Mean Something and Be Of Great Significance and I feel like the obsession with Doug Walker plays heavily into that.

Oh, no, but now I'm curious

All screens have Susan Collins in them* christ, Sam, this is what happens when you haven't lined up work

They should tell her that they can't because no screens have Susan Collins in them. Good way to limit screen time for kids.

Which three?

So when I talk about sentences, I talk about shit like this:

Good sentence: "His soul shot away from his body, whispering through the tall grass."

Bad sentence: "The insubstantial essence of his soul shot away from his body, whispering through the tall grass like a discarded secret on the wind."

I mean, so far the best cannibalism content I read had two cannibals and very little cannibal*ism*, so what I'm saying is, more people should read "Seasons Out Of Time" by Jeffrey Ford.

Whether or not spring is bad is structured ambiguity meant to cause unsettlement

It's Versailles but for idea landlords

Fun fact, "30-50 feral hogs" actually referred to how the guy had to shoot off his sentient extra penises with an AR-15

"Now if they have the odor, we can't stop them and get them for anything else they might be doing" yeah get fucked South Jersey cops.

They tried that where I come from! The cops were PIIIIISSSED.

Christ, if only "Winning the Green Revolution" wasn't already written.

I mean, I suppose I have enough time to write a riff on it if I get over my usual blocks, but damn.

My two greatest pet peeves with writing:

1) Shitty exposition
2) People who believe every description needs to be a sentence or more in length without anything else going on in the sentence

That's what I'm learning. There's a lot of information about Majipoor in Lord Valentine's Castle, but do we ever know anything exact about it? No. No we do not.

Works of Vermin? Builds a world. But does good exposition, so you never feel like it does "worldbuilding."

Wheel of Time? Endless reams of exposition. You learn very little that couldn't have been conveyed shorter and in better detail without the shitty exposition.

/Quietly marks down Saint of Bright Doors as "weird mantasy"

And authors that avoid "worldbuilding" somehow don't avoid being bad at exposition! It's not a mutually inclusive proposition!

Worldbuilding isn't a problem. It's not. I know it looks like one but it's not, because when you're not *fucking incompetent* you can do it organically as you describe a world and make it come alive.

What people call worldbuilding is actually a *much worse* problem of shitty exposition

Just me punching writers screaming "STOP EXPOSITING STOP EXPOSITING STOP EXPOSITING" over and over again