Interesting Links for 17-04-2019

[andrewducker]

Stonehenge: DNA reveals builders were descended from people from Turkey

(tags:Turkey stonehenge genetics )

Pelosi: No UK-US trade deal if Good Friday undermined

(tags:usa uk NorthernIreland ireland borders trade doom )

Why The Other Side Won't Listen to Reason

(tags:morality psychology )

As Ebola outbreak rages, vaccine is 97.5% effective, protecting over 90K people

(tags:vaccine GoodNews )

Work harder or the communists will win!

(tags:society work business china usa working_hours OhForFucksSake )

Why the phrase "chick flicks" should be retired

(tags:women movies comedy relationships language society )

What to Expect From Sony's Next-Gen PlayStation

(tags:PlayStation consoles thefuture )

30 Animal Panorama Fails

(tags:animals photography fail funny viaElfy )

From the MCU to Star Wars: In Praise of Poorly Built Worlds

Creators leave cracks in their worlds so that silliness and wonder can get through.
(tags:design fantasy StarWars marvel movies writing )

A lovely personal story about George R. Martin

(tags:gameofthrones GeorgeRRMartin )

We still have three Brexit options, and no sign of a decision

(tags:UK europe doom )

Wonderdraft - an amazing looking map designer

(tags:design maps fantasy )

Pro-Brexit Leave.EU group accused of faking videos and forging images of migrants committing crimes

(tags:uk europe fascism fraud immigration )

Colorado Tried a New Way to Vote: Make People Pay???Quadratically

(tags:voting )

Scotland post-surgical deaths drop by a third

(tags:death scotland nhs surgery )

Long-distance running and evolution: Why humans can outrun horses but can't jump higher than cats.

(tags:humans evolution sports running viaFanf )

Comments

[calimac]

Arguer against the term "click flicks" says there aren't sweeping categories specific to men.

But there are. The same stereotyping that says only women want to see rom-coms (hence "chick flicks") says that only men want to see action flicks. Each sex being bored to tears by the other's preferences is a standard joke.

The stereotypes aren't true, of course. But they do both equally exist as stereotypes.

From the MCU to Star Wars: In Praise of Poorly Built Worlds

[jack]

I agree with what the author likes, but I think the examples illustrates a different point than the author does.

Long Walk (I do love King's earlier stories) has great worldbuilding for everything *in* the story. The measure of worldbuilding isn't how many details there are, it's whether the details that come up are thought through, or not.

Everything that happens on the walk feels just like you could see it. You're not constantly confused about stuff you should know but don't, you have a good idea of the sort of lives people had, the sort of different opinions different people have about the race, etc. It doesn't make any difference to the story if we know the details of the dictatorship, only that we know it exists. Even if it had been hitherto unexpected scifi dystopia, it wouldn't raise any significant problems, because whatever technology was available it wouldn't affect what was possible in the walk.

Star Wars has great worldbuilding in some ways. It's great at drawing the picture of a whole character and plot from a few images. And it conveys a lot by borrowing from older tropes: princess=good, stormtroopers=bad, etc. That's all worldbuilding, and it's something Star Wars does amazingly well. And it has a harder job than Long Walk because the audience already understands walking, but doesn't know what spaceships are and are not capable of.

But in other, ways Star Wars doesn't really do the worldbuilding. It does juuuuuust enough that people know what's going on, again, often implicitly: we know what Luke can and can't do with the force because we can see him struggle with it, whether or not that reflects a consistent set of rules. That's enough that it makes the story succeed, and it's not something starwars is focussing on.

But it is a problem that it's only just enough. You can see the problems when people write *new* stories in the universe. If people wrote much long walk fanfiction, I don't think there'd be much doubt about what was faithful to the story and what wasn't. People might write very different past lives for the characters, but they'd know they were equally valid. They wouldn't get into arguments about "can this character walk this fast or not". But with new starwars stories, people argue CONSTANTLY about whether that was consistent with the original or not, because the original didn't really describe any number of things about the galaxy the characters would readily interact with if the plot were only slightly different. How fast do ships go? What kinds of planets are there? What's the administrative structure of the empire? People found answers to all these questions, but they weren't in the original.

That's the downside of figuring out the answers for the exact places the characters encounter (what's a dodgy space bar like?), but not asking anything beyond that (what do people smuggle? how?).

So I agree that the examples the author cites are written well, but (a) I think some of that IS good worldbuilding, even if it isn't "lots of details", and (b) I think leaving that stuff out of the place where the characters actually are, rather than somewhere in the same world they never see, is in fact less good, it's just that Star Wars can't be good in EVERY way.

[nancylebov]

Those man vs. horse races-- the horse is carrying a rider. I wonder what the equivalent backpack for the human would be.

[andrewducker]

A pony? 😉

[sravakavarn]

The DNA info from early Neolithic are fascinating bits of data.