Erfworld 77, page 71

[Arkenputtyknife]

I had to sit on my hands for a long time before responding to this. Hopefully my reply is sufficiently polite and reasoned.

So new = good?

No, new = necessary. A work of art (in any medium) that doesn't break new ground, that doesn't break any rules, that doesn't go somewhere that hasn't been explored before, isn't worth bothering with. But whether it's good can only be decided afterwards. More often than not, the result is bunk, and the work is thrown in the trashcan of history to be forgotten. But enough makes the grade for art to progress.

A work of art that does attempt something new will be bunk 90% or more of the time, but at least some of the time, something worthwhile will emerge. It's better than being bunk 100% of the time, which is what you get if you slavishly follow the tropes and always adhere to expectations.

Incidentally, it's amusing that Krellen tells me not to be “that man”. I'm not “that man”. “That man” is made of straw. Nothing in the post that Krellen was replying to claimed that new = good.

There is a reason there are certain expectations in stories - it's because the expectations work, and have been proven over millennia to make for engaging, entertaining, and fascinating stories. And when you break from these expectations, you jar the senses of your audience, and will more often than not lose their interest, because you've disconnected yourself from their communal experience. Your story no longer resonates with them, and gets lost in the chaos - and that means the death of your story.

The funny thing is that my experience is the exact opposite. The works that I most enjoy are the ones that do break my expectations, that do jar my senses; the ones that make me ask, “What the boop is going on here? What is this nutcase trying to do to me?” It's the same in movies, literature, music… name the art form of your choice.

Edit: History abounds with examples from the world of music (sorry, but I know a lot more about music than literature, so it's easier for me to argue in those terms). Beethoven in particular didn't achieve his position as one of the most important figures in the development of modern music by sticking to the laws laid down by history; he did new things. He made a point of breaking the rules. And in the end, his music endured, because it was both new and good. If you dig through the history of music, you'll find it littered with the forgotten corpses of composers whose music was good but not new, and with those of composers whose music was new but not good.

It may be that this is something that Krellen (and those who think like him) and I will never agree upon. We want different things out of the story. Krellen wants his expectations met; I want my expectations to be shattered. It seems that I like Erfworld, at least in part, precisely because it's doing things that Krellen finds unsatisfactory.

One central theme in virtually every successful story ever told is overcoming adversity. But Ansom has failed to do this, because he's never faced adversity.

Tension and resolution. True enough so far, which is probably why Ansom isn't the protagonist. If I'm understanding Krellen properly, the complaint here is that so much of the story recently has been focused on Ansom that it's no longer about Parson and company. Yet it seems to me that it's missing the important point, which is that it's the effect that these events are having on Parson that matters. Parson is the one who's having to face and overcome adversity, and I really don't think it's reasonable to judge the story at this point just because his best efforts so far have fallen short of the mark.

In other words, the phat lady hasn't sungh yet, and we shouldn't be acting as if she has.

Another expectation I see being broken is the idea that The Battle for Gobwin Knob is about the battle for Gobwin Knob. A great many of the complaints I've read have centered around the amount of time being taken for this battle to reach conclusion. Well, wrap your little heads around this: I couldn't care less if the battle for Gobwin Knob is never resolved, because it's not what the story is about, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's a backdrop against which the real action—the interaction between the primary characters—is taking place.

Does anyone cheer when the 20-point favourite leaps into the lead, or do they cheer when the underdog unexpectedly pulls to the fore?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

Mm. And the one critical word in it is “unexpectedly”.