Oh no! A logical series of events leading to a conclusion makes it predicatable?! -.- how terrible.
Those gosh darn governments that are more beneficial than terrible. How dare they not be better. Perfection or Pure satanism is not a great stance to take.
Yeah, those tend to be self involved or outright selfish assholes who think rules are for other people.
When you say you agree with the decision made, and then you express that you want her and the entire human race to suffer for it, that suggests that you don't actually agree with the decision made.
Nope, what it suggests is that I enjoy reading tragedy, because it makes for great character moments.
At best, and only if I'm being generous, it suggests that you're a huge fan of grimderp suffering for suffering's sake and you don't understand what tragedy-as-catharsis actually is. TL,DR: you're supposed to come away from a tragic story uplifted and with a greater understanding of the world (character made the wrong choice and this was the result of that choice), and the only understanding that you can derive from "I destroyed this tech because I didn't want to genocide an interstellar empire, and my entire race suffered for it" is that genocide is and was the correct choice.That's not tragic, that's grimderp on the scale of Warhammer 40k.
Well, apparently I got out of Rationalist Fiction before it went full Xiania, then. My primary association with the trope you describe is popcultural osmosis about Xianxia while here on QQ, not ratfic.
From what I recall, most/some of that was the MC deliberately not using their new power to its fullest extent, having recently been given the particulars on how it worked, because they didn't want to become a detached god being of eldritch inability to empathize or understand normal people. because that would be the logical endpoint of "I have infinite willpower and will somehow always find a way to accomplish any goal I put my mind to. It might be difficult or unlikely but as long as I set out to do something, keep trying, I will ALWAYS succeed." That sort of thing fucks with your mind after a while. The premise was always all encompassing, even if the MC didn't know it so the power wasn't buffed, overgeneralized, expanded, etc, its just that the MC knew what it was and decided to apply it differently but also in less overblown ways.
That sure sounds incredibly... proscriptivist? Declaring that all tragic stories ought to be cathartic and uplifting is... amusing?
No yeah, I came into the story late, so I knew all of that "unlimited power" stuff before I even started reading. I didn't realize the "fucks with your head" part until it was pointed out in-story, but that was clear once it was pointed out and was also always true.
That's... that's literally grimderp, not tragedy.
Yeah, at worst you usually just end up with shades of grey in most Sci-Fi.
Err... what? What do you think grimdark stories are, comedies?
Firstly, the more tired I am, the more waspish I am. The less time I've had since my morning caffeine has kicked in means the more. And coping strategies of music, or sadly realising I can't wear a fez and headphones at the same time, at that early stage don't work.
From what I've gathered from this thread since I decided Rational Fic was a rotting rancid dead cow that it has now gone Xianxia-like and makes me want to read it even less? Does not make me forget why I left that dead cow to the biohazard teams to clean up.
So you're claiming that something that applies to a lot of fiction in general applies to this fanfic? [Sarcasm]Say it isn't so![/Sarcasm]
The Shadowrun fic wasn't small groups of dissidents, it was nearly all the effing corporate leaders of the corps wanting more money. While in the Rifts fic, you have the nazi-like group which is the biggest major power as opposition, even if there were other groups.
And I can't argue this without violating the rules, because using a fictional example is just a fictional example. If you can't use a fictional example, then can you please not bring up stuff we cannot talk about?
Can someone who knows more about rational fic answer this? I don't know enough, but from what others have said in thread that is not what fics that call themselves rational fics have evolved into.
Lawful Good, is a shorthand for not writing at least a whole paragraph about a society or civilisation or such.
Can't use a fictional example for this of the top of my head, so could you please stop bringing up things we can't talk about?
So Rational Fic is not Rational Fic and Fics that are not Rational Fics are actually Rational Fics? If an elephant is not an elephant then why do people call it an elephant? Are you going to call the First Rational Fic not a Rational Fic then? At which point the whole thing breaks down into even more rotting and putrid beef from a dead cow.
Ah.
Be aware that ranting is hard and I have typed too many words with my poor typing fingers. I am only human. Regardless of how I want that disc drive upgrade and firmware update.
You haven't read his Rifts fic then. I understand competely why that fic is dead, but that still doesn't mean the heart doesn't miss what the brain knows is gone. If you want a competent evil empire that you want punched into a duck by a passing sidereal if the universe was to be kind, that's the fic for it.
I feel the need to quote the first chapter:
The Genius Patrol is Earth trying to survive, take every advantage they could have and use it to punch the Vilani in the nose.
It's you're compalaining about near effective omnipresent tropes when regarding genius, like you're complaining the word apple has an A in it. And this is Forge Granted Genius, the perks as written imply those tropes at the very least.
So you're suggesting he doesn't listen to his reader base when he wants to, and to just completely ignore his readers? Also, the thing I'm not talking about is one of those stories that ended due to reasons I'm not going to go into to not invoke them.
And as someone who isn't seeing the flaws you're pointing out, I feel the need to argue against it. Because I like the story too much not to do so.
Can you take your cynicisn/nihilistic pedantry and lock it up or fuck off please.
That's not really cynical or nihilistic? It's more 'D&D alignments are extremely reductive and give a false idea of how the people they are supposed to represent actually think and act'.
That one might be my fault? I was aiming to insinuate that the other person had gotten their genres confused, but their reply implies that I accidentally hit the nail on the head. (And/or that nobody who calls their own story a rationalist fic understands what a rationalist fic is anymore, but I'm not completely convinced that anyone ever did so that might not be new.)
Point of order, five of your seven items are specific to one particular story. I mean, hate that story (goodness knows it doesn't live up to itself, much less to its proponents' opinion of it), hate the genre; but using those items to talk about hating the genre is like saying you hate Shadowrun fics on the basis of one particularly bad one.
Not really. There's a reason that there are three types of Good alignments, and there are definitely parts of the world where less rules would be for the better, because of what they are declaring illegal.
That was a description of Methods of Rationality, the first of the 'Rational' fics ever written.
And it started off hilariously. I enjoyed it as complete crack. For a small handful of chapters, that is. One of these days I may force myself to finish reading it, but I don't hate myself that much yet.
Wizard of Woah! on Spacebattles has a full read through with commentary that I used to get the full story, that is much better for sanity than trying to read the whole story. It shows just how different the method of writing uses really doesn't match up with what's written here.
And I wasn't even participating this time!
lul.
Click on their name and then click the nice little ignore button. It's super easy.
