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  1. - Top - End - #661
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    I'm talking about information, not simple length of text. Length of text is one rough measure of how much information there is in a message, but it's not synonymous. There's no disconnect here, only a possible misunderstanding that's now been clarified.
    Yes there is. You want "there are some messages that can't correspond to a given text" to mean "biodeterminism in games isn't racist" but it doesn't mean that. I could mean that, but you would have to actually prove it by demonstrating that the message is somehow to large to correspond to the text.

    I made a separate thread for a separate discussion. That you describe it as a "troll thread" is an accusation of bad faith. My answer to that is: sit on a stick and spin on it. In any case, that discussion has no bearing on this one.
    Yes, the troll thread you created to avoid responding to problems in your argument has no relationship to that argument.

    As for your use of "absolved", I need no absolution because I'm not obliged to discuss this with you, here or anywhere.
    I think the stance "biodeteminism isn't racist" is one that is serious enough that you should either defend it, clarify that you actually disagree with it, or not participate in communities that are not explicitly racist (e.g. this one).

    Wrong. There's no circularity. In the example, we know rain is not a metaphor for grief because it is a random encounter. Hence we can show that rain does not consistently have anything to do with grief, hence interpreting it thus is false.
    Couldn't it be that our system was miscalibrated? You're producing a result without checking if it's appropriate. Randomly deciding what word to use would lead to misuse of words, but only a crazy person would suggest that the problem was everyone else.

    2) why words have meanings they have is a matter of you attending more English lessons than anything I need to do. For the record, semantic drift exists, but that means information can be lost, not that all meanings are valid for any message.
    You realize there are values between "all" and "one", right? Proving that there exist invalid messages does not prove any particular message invalid any more than X^2 - 1 = 0 having solutions proves that 5 is one of those solutions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    I think it's a good example of why you shoukdn't put stiock in interpretations you read into thinbs
    I mean, how was he supposed to know? Is there some reason the message couldn't have meant what he thought it did? Once you've accepted that the message is a function of the text, rather than the author's intent, you still have to have 100% of the debates postmodernism does, you just eventually crown someone victor and declare one message correct.

    That's the issue. "The message is the literal text" is an interpretation. If you move away from "the correct interpretation is the author's" you have to present arguments for the interpretations that you want (notably this has yet to happen at all for the topic that sparked the original interpretation -- Max, Frozen, and Segev are all conspicuously silent on what other conclusion we should draw). If you don't move away from that, you can't resolve ambiguous cases and you can have the same text taking on different meanings (which puts you in much the same place practically).

  2. - Top - End - #662
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    Yes there is. You want "there are some messages that can't correspond to a given text" to mean "biodeterminism in games isn't racist" but it doesn't mean that. I could mean that, but you would have to actually prove it by demonstrating that the message is somehow to large to correspond to the text.
    Anyone who is not Cosi, call of hands: who actually thinks I've been talking about "biodeterminism" in this thread or argued for the non-sequitur that "there's limited information in any given message" somehow leads to "biodeterminism in games is not racist"?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    Couldn't it be that our system was miscalibrated?
    In the given example? No. Or can you prove some way in which randomly occurring rain will also lead to rain that consistently symbolizes grief?

    In general? Yes, there is possibility of miscalibration: you know when you have miscalibrated when you can't extract intelligible meaning from the message. Third or so time I'm explaining this same thing to you. Again, think of an encrypted message. If your decryption key is off by one symbol, you get no message, just gibberish.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    You realize there are values between "all" and "one", right? Proving that there exist invalid messages does not prove any particular message invalid any more than X^2 - 1 = 0 having solutions proves that 5 is one of those solutions.
    Yes I do, which is why I have not actually claimed that there is just one valid message for all cases. Seriously, find a quote where I say that. You're conflating arguments again.

    What I have said is that in context of natural languages, when a sentence coincidentally has meaning in many languages, neither me nor my language teachers would argue that the coincindental message is the one I was sending. Same principle can be applied elsewhere: if a message has multiple meanings, you discard the one that doesn't fit the sender. If this determination cannot be made (for example, you know nothing about the sender), then the correct answer is that there are multiple plausible interpretations, but it is unknown
    which is valid. (If you can't think of when this would matter, the two meanings could be contradictory or of entirely different subjects, so while each meaning would be plausible alone, a sender couldn't have plausibly intended both).

    The joke here is that if you want to argue for more than one valid meaning for any given message, the burden of proof is on you. The idea that there might be multiple valid readings of a message does not get around the fact that each message has limited information, nor does it make it admissible to ignore parsimony. So in no case are there arbitrarily many admissible interpretations.
    Last edited by Frozen_Feet; 2017-10-15 at 04:13 PM.

  3. - Top - End - #663
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Anyone who is not Cosi, call of hands: who actually thinks I've been talking about "biodeterminism" in this thread or argued for the non-sequitur that "there's limited information in any given message" somehow leads to "biodeterminism in games is not racist?"
    You should read the threads you post in, because this tangent started when people repeatedly insisted that having racism be literally true wasn't racist because things don't have meanings. That is the side you are fighting for. If you want to fight for that position without the implied defense of the place the argument started, that is a situation where you should make another thread (as opposed to, say, trolling about racism).

    In the given example? No. Or can you prove some way in which randomly occurring rain will also lead to rain that consistently symbolizes grief?
    You have two incompatible ideas:

    1. The rain is random and has no meaning.
    2. The rain symbolizes grief.

    Your position is that it necessarily must be that 2 is incorrect. The alternative is that 1 is incorrect, and our random tables should not include "rain" because it has a specific meaning. This is the problem you (and more broadly the "nothing ever means anything") side keeps missing -- once you abandon the prospect that messages are fixed by authors, you have to actually defend the message you believe in, which none of you ever do.

    I'm not even saying that the claim I'm making is right. I'm saying that as long is your position isn't "it is impossible for that to be right", you have to give an actual reason why it is wrong.

    Yes I do, which is why I have not actually claimed that there is just one valid message for all cases. Seriously, find a quote where I say that. You're conflating arguments again.
    Then why do I care what your point is? No one has ever defended "all messages are valid". If your position is just "not all messages are valid", you are not adding anything to the conversation (which seems to be a theme of yours).

    The joke here is that if you want to argue for more than one valid meaning for any given message, the burden of proof is on you. The idea that there might be multiple valid readings of a message does not get around the fact that each message has limited information, nor does it make it admissible to ignore parsimony. So in no case are there arbitrarily many admissible interpretations.
    Again, proving that a solution exists does not prove that the solution is 5. Once you accept that the solution could possibly be "rain means grief" or "biodeterminism is racist", you have to provide some argument why it isn't that thing.

  4. - Top - End - #664
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    Default Re: Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

    This can also be applied to the Sword and Sandal genre, but the fact that formations are used for marching purposes only.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    You have two incompatible ideas:

    1. The rain is random and has no meaning.
    2. The rain symbolizes grief.
    Yeah, they are incompatible, as in they cannot be true of the same message. We know 1 is true of my games, so we can show that 2 is not. This does not preclude 2 from being true of some other message. Third time or so I've explained this exact thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    Your position is that it necessarily must be that 2 is incorrect. The alternative is that 1 is incorrect, and our random tables should not include "rain" because it has a specific meaning.
    Your understanding of "my position" continues to be wrong; see above.

    Now, the underlined part is actually interesting, but only for how absurd it is. First, is =/= ought; we can correctly determine 1 is true of my games regardless of whether you think I should be doing that. Second, come on, let's hear it: why'd you jump to that as an alternative, when the much simpler alternative is that rain is a symbol in some messages and not in others?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    This is the problem you (and more broadly the "nothing ever means anything") side keeps missing -- once you abandon the prospect that messages are fixed by authors, you have to actually defend the message you believe in, which none of you ever do.
    I've quite aptly defended what I think "it's raining" means in my games and what it does not. It's your fault that you keep thinking that I have an ulterior motive, as opposed to me using a simple example to get across a basic point about information theory and interpreting messages.

    Also, since you seem unable to grasp this: no-one needs to have an interpretation nor defense of such to show that someone else's interpretation or defense of such is full of crap.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    I'm not even saying that the claim I'm making is right. I'm saying that as long is your position isn't "it is impossible for that to be right", you have to give an actual reason why it is wrong.
    I've explained several times now why "rain is symbol for grief" cannot be true of my games. I've also explained boundary conditions for what it'd take for "rain is symbol for grief" to be right, and some ways how to check if it right.

    Your problem, time and again, is that you think I'm arguing for something else than what I am, and refusing to admit I'm correct on the most trivial of points.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi
    Then why do I care what your point is? No one has ever defended "all messages are valid". If your position is just "not all messages are valid", you are not adding anything to the conversation (which seems to be a theme of yours).
    My point, targeted at Xuc Xac, VitruvianSquid and some others, was that though all pieces of intelligible fiction are messages, not all messages make a big damn point of the outside world. Additional to that point was that not all "whys" and other things you can infer from a message are part of the message, and where to draw the line.

    I've entertained your questions insofar as they've been good questions about how that works in the context of the example, "why does it rain in Frozen_Feet's games?" For example, "why use just English, instead of English plus added symbolism?" was a good question, and I hope the answer was interesting to other participants in this thread.

    So why do you care? Hell I know and based on all proof you do not, as you seem more interested in making feeble ad hominem accusations than reading what I write.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Anyone who is not Cosi, call of hands: who actually thinks I've been talking about...
    I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect I'm not alone when I say I stopped paying any attention to you, Max, Segev, and Cosi arguing about messages, literary criticism, or post-modernism. When I see the thread has new replies, I just check to see if it's a new answer to the OP or if it's just more of you guys talking past each other.

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    That's fair.
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    Default Re: Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

    On that note:

    Lack of Spears: Seriously, it was one of the most common weapons for thousands of years, the fact that most warriors arent using them or axes always drives me a bit nuts. Also the lack of main characters in western fantasy who use spears. Kinda annoying.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Yeah, they are incompatible, as in they cannot be true of the same message. We know 1 is true of my games, so we can show that 2 is not. This does not preclude 2 from being true of some other message. Third time or so I've explained this exact thing.
    And my point is that you are begging the question. If you get to decide what rain does or does not mean, you have already accepted the core premise of postmodernism. If you do not, you have to provide some argument why rain doesn't symbolize grief and therefore should be randomly generated, rather than occurring non-randomly when there was a bunch of grief. All you've proven is that you use rain to not mean grief, but that doesn't make that correct any more than you using "cat" to describe a dog would make you right if you did it frequently enough

    My point, targeted at Xuc Xac, VitruvianSquid and some others, was that though all pieces of intelligible fiction are messages, not all messages make a big damn point of the outside world. Additional to that point was that not all "whys" and other things you can infer from a message are part of the message, and where to draw the line.
    And my point is that you do not have the authority to say that any more than you have the authority to say that 01000001 definitively means "65" rather than "A". Just because you tried to make a point and were misunderstood doesn't make the other person wrong. It means you wrote something with more than one message, because if it only had one message there would only be one message for people to find. Again, you have two options -- either there is a single correct method that other people are not using (e.g. it means what the author says it means), or you have to give substantive reasons why it is correct ("because random" doesn't count because it is fundamentally a statement of authorial intent, which puts you back at one).

    You could even have some midrange approach where some values are entirely invalid while others are possible, but not necessarily correct. For example, you can definitively say without checking that "balloon" is not the root of a polynomial with an integer root, because "balloon" is not an integer. But you would have to check "7", because "7" is an integer and therefore might be correct.

    Once you put information theory into the mix, you lost, because information theory says that there are a range of possible solutions and the only way to know if to have the right template, but the rightness of your template is something you have only been able to define circularly ("parsing the message as if rain doesn't mean grief is correct because it is the simplest set of assumptions to get the correct answer, which is correct because we know rain doesn't mean grief"). Hell, you're only able to find a flaw in the idea that "rain means grief" by assuming additional context, which is exactly the problem you had with the methodology that produced that answer!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackhawk748 View Post
    On that note:

    Lack of Spears: Seriously, it was one of the most common weapons for thousands of years, the fact that most warriors arent using them or axes always drives me a bit nuts. Also the lack of main characters in western fantasy who use spears. Kinda annoying.
    well good news: Way of Kings has Kaladin. he wields a spear.

    what bothers me is a lack of crossbows. like, the existence of supernatural beings far more powerful than the crossbows should've stopped the fear of them cold and made people invest into them more, but apparently everyone thinks bows are cooler, because when did you ever see a main character wield a crossbow?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    what bothers me is a lack of crossbows. like, the existence of supernatural beings far more powerful than the crossbows should've stopped the fear of them cold and made people invest into them more, but apparently everyone thinks bows are cooler, because when did you ever see a main character wield a crossbow?
    I think Fiddler has one in Malazan.

    The Nuban has one in Prince of Thorns, and IIRC it gets used to take out the big bad of the first book.

    In Empire in Black and Gold crossbows are an important part of the setting (again, IIRC -- it might be air rifles).

    Various MTG card art has people wearing crossbows, whatever that's worth to you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Xuc Xac View Post
    I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect I'm not alone when I say I stopped paying any attention to you, Max, Segev, and Cosi arguing about messages, literary criticism, or post-modernism. When I see the thread has new replies, I just check to see if it's a new answer to the OP or if it's just more of you guys talking past each other.
    You're definitely not alone in that.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    You should read the threads you post in, because this tangent started when people repeatedly insisted that having racism be literally true wasn't racist because things don't have meanings. That is the side you are fighting for. If you want to fight for that position without the implied defense of the place the argument started, that is a situation where you should make another thread (as opposed to, say, trolling about racism).



    You have two incompatible ideas:

    1. The rain is random and has no meaning.
    2. The rain symbolizes grief.

    Your position is that it necessarily must be that 2 is incorrect. The alternative is that 1 is incorrect, and our random tables should not include "rain" because it has a specific meaning. This is the problem you (and more broadly the "nothing ever means anything") side keeps missing -- once you abandon the prospect that messages are fixed by authors, you have to actually defend the message you believe in, which none of you ever do.

    I'm not even saying that the claim I'm making is right. I'm saying that as long is your position isn't "it is impossible for that to be right", you have to give an actual reason why it is wrong.
    I believe several people have already cited parsimony as a reason
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    I think Fiddler has one in Malazan.

    The Nuban has one in Prince of Thorns, and IIRC it gets used to take out the big bad of the first book.

    In Empire in Black and Gold crossbows are an important part of the setting (again, IIRC -- it might be air rifles).

    Various MTG card art has people wearing crossbows, whatever that's worth to you.
    They become a staple of combat in Wheel of Time over the course of the series. They're particularly useful against Trollocs who are poorly armored large melee combatants, they can cut down dozens when they start developing the crank mechanisms to launch barrages of bolts at a time.

    Though none of the main characters are really known for using them themselves, I suppose. That's more of a matter of them not really needing to by the time they became ubiquitous.

    Discworld uses crossbows as straight stand-ins for guns as well. Fairly common among guard and assassin characters.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    My point, targeted at Xuc Xac, VitruvianSquid and some others, was that though all pieces of intelligible fiction are messages, not all messages make a big damn point of the outside world. Additional to that point was that not all "whys" and other things you can infer from a message are part of the message, and where to draw the line.
    I haven't responded on the topic for awhile because it seems obvious by now that the side repeating the ideas I find destructive are either arguing belligerently on bad faith or are hopelessly prejudiced, but since I'm mentioned by name here, let's drag this dead horse out and give it a thorough beating:

    I don't know why this point would be targeted at me, because this point has nothing to do with the points I was arguing against, which were:

    1. You should read books and think nothing, because applying literary criticism is a waste of time and literary critics take orders from a cabal that make arbitrary declarations on what books are about.
    2. There are a great many books that are enjoyable because they have no message.
    3. I, personally, am a mean, terrible person who wants to force people to look at books the way I look at books

    On the subject of all pieces of intelligible fiction being messages We are in agreement. They are all messages.

    On the subject of not all messages being "a big damn point of the outside world," I have already written the following:

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    It is reasonable and mature to understand that not all texts are meant for you. But the way you are characterizing literary criticism, as your teacher threatening to fail you if you don't get the "Big Darn Point," is not fair. You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Just because a book does not seem to have a unified, single message, that does not mean the book is totally bereft of messages nor does it mean it is worthless to try to understand what messages there are. Many authors write books to make or communicate meaning of the world as they see them (J.R.R. Tolkien, once again), which will entail multiple messages getting sent, after all, J.R.R. Tolkien will have a unique view about warfare, about what is right and wrong, about how men should deal with struggles, about early Medieval epics, and so on. So your analogy to the Trojan horse is half accurate - a story is a wrapping for ideas - but think of it more like the Trojan Horse with many big and small angry Achaeans sitting inside - each soldier is an idea that works together with the others to make a complete package that must be delivered together. They wouldn't have build the Trojan Horse if they didn't need it to enter Troy.
    We are once again in agreement. I do not think most messages within fiction - critically acclaimed or otherwise - revolve around a "big damn point of the outside world," most stories are more like a cocktail mix of many points.

    On the subject of how not all things you can infer exist within the original message:


    Well duh, that's why I wrote:

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    It is perfectly reasonable to read a book and leave it thinking "I didn't understand that at all, there seemed to be no message in there." Not all books are written for all people. You can imagine that heterosexual men might not really get the point of the Twilight series after reading it, that people who have had no education whatsoever in western history wouldn't understand most of Lord of the Rings, and so on. There is something to be said for endeavoring to put yourself into the mindset of a different person in order to try to understand the book's perspective and something to be said about how a good text will try to explain its perspective to absorb more readers, but if I'm writing a novel specifically about the experiences of an extremely small minority (let's say, vampire-obsessed ethnically Hmong intersex teenagers) then it is very possible most people won't get it.
    This is to say that yes, people make unlikely inferences all the time.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    That's what literary criticism is - there is my evidence, you are allowed to dispute it with your own evidence, nobody's asking you to believe anything on the critic's words just because he's got a piece of paper saying he has a degree.
    This is to say, the extremely outlandish inferences tend to get weeded out by discussion, but there could be multiple points of view in contention within one school, or within one mind about a fictional story (example: I might read Lord of the Rings and think, "J.R.R. Tolkien has written a series of novels about WWII, only he swears up and down they are not about the war, but also I see these other elements that suggest the war elements only exist to mimic earlier epic stories, and I haven't decided yet which interpretation I like better.")
    Last edited by Vitruviansquid; 2017-10-15 at 11:58 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    well good news: Way of Kings has Kaladin. he wields a spear.

    what bothers me is a lack of crossbows. like, the existence of supernatural beings far more powerful than the crossbows should've stopped the fear of them cold and made people invest into them more, but apparently everyone thinks bows are cooler, because when did you ever see a main character wield a crossbow?
    We are in an English language forum, exposed to a lot of primary English language fiction drawing often on Britain and its history.

    The English and the Welsh never were really heavily invested in crossbows, but in bows. In other countries that is different and fiction originating there might very well use other firearms more often. In Europe Italians had a lot of really famous and prestigious crossbow units and many other countries have at least some. In Asia China was really big on crossbows and you will find them accordingly in fiction or legend.

    So basically we lack crossbows in English language fiction fo the same reason as Robin Hood being more famous than Wilhem Tell.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    I haven't responded on the topic for awhile because it seems obvious by now that the side repeating the ideas I find destructive are either arguing belligerently on bad faith or are hopelessly prejudiced, but since I'm mentioned by name here, let's drag this dead horse out and give it a thorough beating:

    I don't know why this point would be targeted at me, because this point has nothing to do with the points I was arguing against, which were:

    1. You should read books and think nothing, because applying literary criticism is a waste of time and literary critics take orders from a cabal that make arbitrary declarations on what books are about.
    2. There are a great many books that are enjoyable because they have no message.
    3. I, personally, am a mean, terrible person who wants to force people to look at books the way I look at books
    Ok, let's discuss this.
    On the subject of all pieces of intelligible fiction being messages We are in agreement. They are all messages.
    I disagree with that. I think it is perfectly possible to create something intelligible without a message. I don't claim that any particular piece of famous fiction is an example of that, but a message requires conscious effort to communicate something to someone. Works that were never intended to be published or even shown and came only into existence as excercise or even leasure activity (like many poems) can't contain a message per se.

    And no, unconscious bias of an auther that might show in his work is not a message. If an author reveales something unwillingly about himself, that is not a message.
    On the subject of not all messages being "a big damn point of the outside world," I have already written the following:
    As i and others have stated, while you can infer several plausible meanings into a text, only what the author really wanted to tell is a message of the text. Everything else are not messages of the text.

    And that a work can make more small points intead of one big, yes, that is a given.


    Not knowing what the author wanted to tell can allow you to make statements what might plausibly be a message. But it always stays a guess. And as soon as you get contradictory plausible interpretations, you know that some of them must be wrong. You still don't know which ones.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2017-10-16 at 01:35 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kitten Champion View Post
    They become a staple of combat in Wheel of Time over the course of the series. They're particularly useful against Trollocs who are poorly armored large melee combatants, they can cut down dozens when they start developing the crank mechanisms to launch barrages of bolts at a time.
    Speaking of WoT, doesn't either Mat or Perrin have a spear as their personal weapon?

    Also (at least on TV) Oberyn has a spear. I think one of the Sand Snakes too?

    I can't think of any armies of spear wielders off the top of my head, but I can't think of any armies of sword wielders off the top of my head either.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    Speaking of WoT, doesn't either Mat or Perrin have a spear as their personal weapon?

    Also (at least on TV) Oberyn has a spear. I think one of the Sand Snakes too?

    I can't think of any armies of spear wielders off the top of my head, but I can't think of any armies of sword wielders off the top of my head either.
    That's Mat. His is special. Also, the Aiel refuse to use swords and dominantly (almost exclusively) use spears. And they're one of the more potent forces on the WoT battlefield until the channelers start ramping up.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Anyone who is not Cosi, call of hands: who actually thinks I've been talking about "biodeterminism" in this thread or argued for the non-sequitur that "there's limited information in any given message" somehow leads to "biodeterminism....



    Think?

    I don't even understand the sentence.

    If anyone cares here's the Wikipedia entries for

    "biological determinism"

    and

    "non-sequitur",

    both of which (especially "non-sequitur") go down into a rabbit hole of unfamiliar references, making them effectively unintelligible, as if they're extended sentences in multiple foreign languages mixed in.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cosi View Post
    Speaking of WoT, doesn't either Mat or Perrin have a spear as their personal weapon?

    Also (at least on TV) Oberyn has a spear. I think one of the Sand Snakes too?

    I can't think of any armies of spear wielders off the top of my head, but I can't think of any armies of sword wielders off the top of my head either.
    It's described closer to a Naginata or a Guan Dao, but it's still a polearm so it's in the right direction
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackhawk748 View Post
    It's described closer to a Naginata or a Guan Dao, but it's still a polearm so it's in the right direction
    I guess it depends on how literally you mean "spear". There's at least a mention of them in Prince of Thorns, and Empire of the East has pikemen mentioned a couple of times.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackhawk748 View Post
    On that note:

    Lack of Spears: Seriously, it was one of the most common weapons for thousands of years, the fact that most warriors arent using them or axes always drives me a bit nuts. Also the lack of main characters in western fantasy who use spears. Kinda annoying.
    When I tried to create a game back in the 90s (JRPG full conversion for Quake, got about 40% of the way done) literally the first thing that I did was give the main character a spear for this reason. Well and because I wanted the dash attacks to be based on a thrust rather than a slash as so many games have them. And because the main character was in the navy. Okay there were a lot of reasons why I gave him a spear but that was definitely one of them.

    On the lack of crossbows brought up I think there are more main characters with wrist crossbows than full size units lol. The reload time and awkwardness really cuts down on the crossbows suitableness for main characters though. Main characters tend to mow down mooks and it's hard to look dignified when reloading an archaic crossbow.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blackhawk748 View Post
    On that note:

    Lack of Spears: Seriously, it was one of the most common weapons for thousands of years, the fact that most warriors arent using them or axes always drives me a bit nuts. Also the lack of main characters in western fantasy who use spears. Kinda annoying.
    I remember hearing that this is the result of associating swords with the European nobility somewhere down the line. I might imagine (I'm by no means an expert on historical asian cultures) that the katana might have a similar association over there, leading to the "noble" heroes using swords across the genres.
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    One thing that annoys me;


    Stupid banal Evil. I like rping as evil but that evil must have depth. Too often you get people without any depth, moving in a straight predictable line. DMs who have had to suffer through it say "no evil!" and so a third of interesting chasracters never see light.


    Another is;
    Always selling your soul. I expect better of my villains than to be so weak as to sell their soul in every evil game that comes across. It's always towards the beginning if not the first thing you do.

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    The Born-into-Destiny thing, aka I'm special because of fate and/or things other people, not because of me.

    There have been a lot of really great stories told where the central focus is on a character who was "the one who was prophesized" or who is "the son of the dark lord/the savior/the previous generations hero"; I loved Rick Riordan's Young Olympians series (where the characters are literally half-god). But lately I've been getting the feeling that this trope is being overused. As a kid I bought into it hook, line, and sinker- I'm sure I wasn't the only one who imagined a letter arriving to invite me to wizard-school. As an adult though, the idea that our greatness is determined more by accidents of birth instead of our actions actually comes across as a little depressing. I'd love to see more stories that were about your average Joe-Smoe that stepped up when it really counted instead.

    Think about nearly ever recent pop-culture phenomenon- Harry Potter was "the boy who lived", who survived the killing curse as a baby and was targeted because of a prophecy/stable time-loop. The X-Men and Marvel superheroes are 99% born into their powers (with the exception of Cyborg, Hawkeye, and Black Widow). Naruto had the demon-fox sealed inside him as an infant. Natsu was trained by a dragon. Steven is a human/gem hybrid. etc etc etc

    But the one that REALLY set me off, that had me punching walls in frustration, was RWBY. We have 3 seasons of Ruby, the main character, being adorkable and kicking ass, for no other reason than because she can and she's good at it. And then come the season 3 finale, we find at that her "silver eyes" mean she's born to be a warrior and fight Grim on behalf of humanity. ****. That. ****. It was almost enough to make me stop watching the series. It seemed totally unnecessary at that point, and IMO only served to detract from the beneficence of her actions.


    So yeah, if we could just cool it on that for a little while, I'd think that would be seriously chill.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    Anyone who is not Cosi, call of hands: who actually thinks I've been talking about "biodeterminism" in this thread or argued for the non-sequitur that "there's limited information in any given message" somehow leads to "biodeterminism in games is not racist"?
    My hand is remaining down.

    I'm not even sure where this notion of "racism" as supposedly inherent in different fictional species being different is coming from, other than fantasy gaming's blinkered insistence on using "race" as a misnomer for "species".

    Well, I guess I do know where it's coming from... the even more blinkered insistence that non-human but intelligent/sapient/sentient species in speculative fiction always and only exist as allegory, and cannot be just an exercise in worldbuilding and/or fostering a sense of wonder.

    No one would bat an eye if you wrote that cats and dogs are different -- not better or worse, just different -- but write about two entirely fictional intelligent species where one is faster and the other stronger... and suddenly certain sorts will insist that you've written some sort of veiled allegory.

    Which probably tells us more about them, than it does about the text or the author.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-10-16 at 10:20 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    Well, I guess I do know where it's coming from... the even more blinkered insistence that non-human but intelligent/sapient/sentient species in speculative fiction always and only exist as allegory, and cannot be just an exercise in worldbuilding and/or fostering a sense of wonder.
    You forgot a sense of dread, by the way. Through I think the reason races become an allegory for well...Races, is that there are a lot of high profile work (such as Lovecraft and Star Trek) that go that route so people see it even when it's just supposed to highlight how not human these other people are.

    I wonder if it's possible to string these people along by giving races certain traits and see how long they take in deciding which allegory is present.
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    I think the racism aspect more comes from the common, though increasingly subverted, portrayal of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls and the like, as a sapient species that is inherently stupid, brutish, and evil. I agree that basic differences between races or species are not racist, and that most examples in fiction are not meant allegorically- the complaint, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the discussion, arises more from the worry that these portrayals show an attitude that is very problematic if it's kept in the real world. How strongly it translates out of fiction is the most likely point of debate, then- assuming a goblin your character runs into is an enemy is probably a very far cry to making similarly disparaging assumptions about real-life minorities, even if it does stem from the same basic mental process.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gideon Falcon View Post
    I think the racism aspect more comes from the common, though increasingly subverted, portrayal of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls and the like, as a sapient species that is inherently stupid, brutish, and evil. I agree that basic differences between races or species are not racist, and that most examples in fiction are not meant allegorically- the complaint, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the discussion, arises more from the worry that these portrayals show an attitude that is very problematic if it's kept in the real world. How strongly it translates out of fiction is the most likely point of debate, then- assuming a goblin your character runs into is an enemy is probably a very far cry to making similarly disparaging assumptions about real-life minorities, even if it does stem from the same basic mental process.
    Yeah. nevertheless I want to stay away from that thought process as far as possible. Not because I think its thought crime or anything, but because I personally don't like it and want nothing to do with thinking that way. I do not want to add such negative things to the world when there is already too much. I have entire book series on orcs being heroes so I'm covered there at least, probably not the best series but I like it anyways. doesn't need to be, its something I want and does it well enough for me to like it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    My hand is remaining down.

    I'm not even sure where this notion of "racism" as supposedly inherent in different fictional species being different is coming from, other than fantasy gaming's blinkered insistence on using "race" as a misnomer for "species".

    Well, I guess I do know where it's coming from... the even more blinkered insistence that non-human but intelligent/sapient/sentient species in speculative fiction always and only exist as allegory, and cannot be just an exercise in worldbuilding and/or fostering a sense of wonder.

    No one would bat an eye if you wrote that cats and dogs are different -- not better or worse, just different -- but write about two entirely fictional intelligent species where one is faster and the other stronger... and suddenly certain sorts will insist that you've written some sort of veiled allegory.

    Which probably tells us more about them, than it does about the text or the author.
    Most of the objections in this thread were less about different species being different and more about the inherent evil races and the concept of morality as hereditary trait and a universe based objective moral value judgement of racial traits.

    That is also a concept that was very common in fiction from the first part of the last century and got less and less common as decades went by. Because it reminds people of racial arguments how about certain kind of humans without measurable meaningful physical differences were bound to develop bad behavioral traits and thus were inherently inferior. That is where the racism angle comes from. Justified i think.

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