New Formulas

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It's SB. She is always a "victim". How typical! She wants to blame everything on "white, male" privilege. She even assumed that I was a straight guy at one point. Funny as hell for a bi guy, I assure you.

White, male privilege don't mean jack shit when you're a cracker from the Appalachians, Bubba. Show me a guy who can't afford meat most days of the week until he turns thirteen and then tell him that he's privileged. Well, I was that kid. I had a year of my life when I didn't regularly eat meat from twelve to thirteen, because I was too damn poor!

Despite which, it was not such a bad year. I have a lot of good memories of tasty meals of beans and cornbread (though I did miss the meat and fruit). Yeah, I was so fucking privileged.....but only in the sense of having a great (not perfect) but great, family. Including parents who still, despite their fundamentalist delusions, are great folks.

Being white and male didn't have a damn thing to do with it. I can guarantee you that at that level, black and white live on much the same diet and standard of living. Male and female, too.

Hey, there's a great new formula....redneck meets rural black girl, hits it off, etc. A nice rebuff to those who think that everyone from that side of the tracks is a racist prick.

I ate lotsa macaroni and diced tomatoes. On many occasions I ate what was left from people's plates. White man priviledge is the Great Myth of America, more than Paul Bunyan. I knew plenty of girls who went to college using daddys VA benefit, but I never met any guys who did the same.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Maybe not Octo. Some zoologists say a squid has 10 tentacles, others say 8 arms plus two tentacles.

More interestingly a squid has three hearts. It could serve as a non- formulaic plot for an erotic horror story if say, three lit people; I nominate sr71plt, lovecraft68 and Safe Bet/Amy had their hearts miraculously transported into a squid.

The Amy heart could decide whether their squid should be the deep sea variety well known for having/being the biggest pricks(relatively) in the animal world, or whether their new home should be the shallow water squid which has a vestigal penis and never has sex, but transfers a spermatophore, literally at arms length with a specially adapted tentacle. Your preference madam?

But maybe that would be too much 'horror' and not enough 'erotic' for readers.

Shut up, Ishtat! I forgive you for boasting about Southern hemisphere rugby in that Scottish Widow thread Steve so kindly set up for me. ROFLOL!

JBJ - I forgot to say that I loved that analogy of the author being a musical composer and the readers being musicians who play the piece according to their interpretation of it. I thought it was much better than Barthes's killing us authors all off and giving the readers total supremacy. If you read the Barthes, you might write that up as a short review/commentary on it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Shut up, Ishtat! I forgive you for boasting about Southern hemisphere rugby in that Scottish Widow thread Steve so kindly set up for me. ROFLOL!

JBJ - I forgot to say that I loved that analogy of the author being a musical composer and the readers being musicians who play the piece according to their interpretation of it. I thought it was much better than Barthes's killing us authors all off and giving the readers total supremacy. If you read the Barthes, you might write that up as a short review/commentary on it.

Aye aye.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Aye aye.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The post-structuralist thinker Roland Barthes called this The Death of the Author. In his essay, just as you say in comparison to music, he argued that the person in control of the text is not the writer but the reader, who can read it in different ways from other readers and even from how the author imagines. In the same way, some artists will say that how the person looks at their painting is the piece of art, not the material object that is the painting. I forget her name just now but one artist put up labels under empty spaces in a gallery referring to pictures which had been stolen and invited the person standing in front of the space to note down what they could remember of the painting - that became the missing work of art.

I read the essay, thanks for the tip.

I'm more of an idea looter than a philosopher, so let me briefly comment on what I read. It seems to me that God or the author (creator) reveals the path but those who take the path experience it, and what they experience cant be the same for everyone, so creators do kinda perish with their creations. Making a baby isnt even close to the experience of a baby.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I read the essay, thanks for the tip.

I'm more of an idea looter than a philosopher, so let me briefly comment on what I read. It seems to me that God or the author (creator) reveals the path but those who take the path experience it, and what they experience cant be the same for everyone, so creators do kinda perish with their creations. Making a baby isnt even close to the experience of a baby.

I think philosophers are idea looters. They pick up an idea and follow it and refine it, then someone else refines on their refinement and so they go. E.g., Wright got the concept of 'frog's perspective' from Nietzsche and Paul Gilroy has written further about it. I love tracing the ideas back and seeing what got carried forward from the original presentation of the idea, what got added on and then writing about it myself, although for various reasons I don't do as much academic writing these days as I would like.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think philosophers are idea looters. They pick up an idea and follow it and refine it, then someone else refines on their refinement and so they go. E.g., Wright got the concept of 'frog's perspective' from Nietzsche and Paul Gilroy has written further about it. I love tracing the ideas back and seeing what got carried forward from the original presentation of the idea, what got added on and then writing about it myself, although for various reasons I don't do as much academic writing these days as I would like.

Now I gotta checkout the FROGS PERSPECTIVE.

Done right philosophy oughta be a process identical to engineering, where a good idea is the foundation for something else. Trouble is, any dolt can see a pile of rubble for what it is but cant recognize a heap of BS for what it is.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Now I gotta checkout the FROGS PERSPECTIVE.

Done right philosophy oughta be a process identical to engineering, where a good idea is the foundation for something else. Trouble is, any dolt can see a pile of rubble for what it is but cant recognize a heap of BS for what it is.

Too true.

And people complain about academic writing being dense and requiring careful reading, as well. They don't expect to understand straightaway when the writing is about atomic physics, even though they're made up of atoms, but think that anything from social sciences ought to be written as if three year olds could get it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think philosophers are idea looters. They pick up an idea and follow it and refine it, then someone else refines on their refinement and so they go. E.g., Wright got the concept of 'frog's perspective' from Nietzsche and Paul Gilroy has written further about it. I love tracing the ideas back and seeing what got carried forward from the original presentation of the idea, what got added on and then writing about it myself, although for various reasons I don't do as much academic writing these days as I would like.

Found it. Read some of it.

I recall a painting from my childhood. I examined it for many weeks before I saw that it was a representation of a bull fight. Gerald Edelman asserts that recognition is all we have, and minus the right recognition templates we're blind to the obvious. Our blindspots are exploited by predators and digested outta the gene pool.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Too true.

And people complain about academic writing being dense and requiring careful reading, as well. They don't expect to understand straightaway when the writing is about atomic physics, even though they're made up of atoms, but think that anything from social sciences ought to be written as if three year olds could get it.

My first discovery upon completing grad school was how much more everyone knew about my major than me. Even retarded teens were quick to set me straight about my deficiency. No one wants to assist with an amputation or skull reconstruction but psychotherapy is everymans playground. Oh! Everyone scatters when the crisis is a time-bomb suicide. Few mentors then!

 

[chocolatecookie3]

A formula I've used before is;

1)Protag is minding their own biz, etc
2)Hot person walks in.
2a)!Problem! they are a gender/age/look/have preference for something that protag has never considered.
2b)!Dilemma! does Protag fuck the hot person even though ?
2c) !Resolution! the decision yes, via seduction or reasons or introspection or sex pollen.
3)they fuck -- for better or worse (I always write better, personally)
4) in the aftermath, protag realises they have changed in some way.

Hmm, I'm not sure how to have the protagonist change. I don't see sex as transformative on its own, even when there is some novelty involved. Maybe the person realizes how much they love interracial sex/anal/tentacles and goes on to have more of that kind of sex?

And I could not write about pregnancy based on my experience. It would be a horror story, and not the sexy kind!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Hmm, I'm not sure how to have the protagonist change. I don't see sex as transformative on its own, even when there is some novelty involved. Maybe the person realizes how much they love interracial sex/anal/tentacles and goes on to have more of that kind of sex?

And I could not write about pregnancy based on my experience. It would be a horror story, and not the sexy kind!

Rape can do it. I know a woman who was lifted from the abyss of depression after she was raped, convinced that someone needed for something! A country bumpkin I knew was raped after he picked up two women at a redneck bar (their boyfriends sodomized the guy); the experience changed him. Too much sex with too many partners corrodes peoples' souls. I could rattle on with more examples.

 

[Handley_Page]

I think philosophers are idea looters. They pick up an idea and follow it and refine it, then someone else refines on their refinement and so they go. E.g., Wright got the concept of 'frog's perspective' from Nietzsche and Paul Gilroy has written further about it. I love tracing the ideas back and seeing what got carried forward from the original presentation of the idea, what got added on and then writing about it myself, although for various reasons I don't do as much academic writing these days as I would like.

I like to do the same thing, but with stuff about Radios and aerials.
Transmission Line theory is littered with it.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Hmm, I'm not sure how to have the protagonist change. I don't see sex as transformative on its own, even when there is some novelty involved. Maybe the person realizes how much they love interracial sex/anal/tentacles and goes on to have more of that kind of sex?

And I could not write about pregnancy based on my experience. It would be a horror story, and not the sexy kind!

I find it almost impossible to write about sex if it isn't a transformative experience. If there isn't some sort of emotional conflict going on, I feel like I am just using coming up with various ways of inserting tab A into slot B.

Doesn't mean that all sex is like that, of course, but conflict is where the drama is. Cops rarely get in shoot outs either but there is a reason it happens all the time on TV shows.

There are lots of ways to work this into sex. BDSM, non-consent, etc. have inherent conflicts happening. Then there is the good girl falling for the hot guy who is everything she was told to avoid; the married man resisting a seduction from his wife's sister and discovering he doesn't want to; the man convinced his wife is cheating on him who pays a private eye to test her while he watches, realizing he wants the PI to succeed; the milquetoast husband in a failing marriage who discovers his wife's online viewing habits and plans a last ditch attempt to save his marriage by fulfilling her rape fantasy. If you get the conflict right, the sex scene almost writes itself.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I find it almost impossible to write about sex if it isn't a transformative experience. If there isn't some sort of emotional conflict going on, I feel like I am just using coming up with various ways of inserting tab A into slot B.

Doesn't mean that all sex is like that, of course, but conflict is where the drama is. Cops rarely get in shoot outs either but there is a reason it happens all the time on TV shows.

There are lots of ways to work this into sex. BDSM, non-consent, etc. have inherent conflicts happening. Then there is the good girl falling for the hot guy who is everything she was told to avoid; the married man resisting a seduction from his wife's sister and discovering he doesn't want to; the man convinced his wife is cheating on him who pays a private eye to test her while he watches, realizing he wants the PI to succeed; the milquetoast husband in a failing marriage who discovers his wife's online viewing habits and plans a last ditch attempt to save his marriage by fulfilling her rape fantasy. If you get the conflict right, the sex scene almost writes itself.

Indeed, I spent the day writing 50 pages of sexual conflict...middleage couple, husband is paralyzed, caretaker couple...early 30s...wife has a bad pregnancy. Lotsa stress and tension and risks and guilt and turmoil.