http://www.richardkmorgan.com/2016/04/gratuities-at-your-discretion-2/
Is he right? Or is he just a narrowminded genre fag?
>>7893176
Ask /v/
>>7893182
It's a good rumination on genre fiction, if you'd read it you'd know.
>>7893182
>didn't read the article
>>7893176
How is this narrow minded, its purely common sense. Did he really need to bother writing this or am I missing the point entirely.
>literary works are not often lauded for their cracking pace or plot that grips like a vice and doesn’t let go. Instead, their readers revel in other flavours – lyrical style, perhaps, or intense sense of place; acute social commentary; harrowing descriptions of poverty and suffering
>repeat content addiction of fixating nerd hordes who will keep on stumping up cash for yet more of what they’ve already seen a dozen times, however dilute and weak-ass the carrier wave for the next helping inevitably turns out to be. It doesn’t matter how poor the movie (or series novel) is – it’s got my desired content in, and lots of it!
Of course he's right.
>>7893222
Narrow minded in a sense that he uses 'gratuitous' as a bit of an umbrella term, he manages to lash out at puritans in a very precise manner - his point about their complaint about lack of plot and a comparison with lowly-regarded genre fiction is spot on - but he proceeds to use the term as a crutch for both style and plotting. It rubs me the wrong way a bit.
I am not a patrician, but comparing 'belching' at opera to, say, dancehall twerks and moans is a gross(!) simplification. High art forms exist for a good reason and you can't conjoin them with exploitation via 'gratuitousness'.
>Instead, their readers revel in other flavours – lyrical style, perhaps, or intense sense of place; acute social commentary; harrowing descriptions of poverty and suffering (yes, as entertainment – deal with it); depths of emotional turmoil; post-colonial malaise; urban ennui.
this guy sounds like a first year student
>>7893260
You mean as run of the mill genre fiction writer. His style not gratuitous enough for you?
>>7893233
Well Finnegans Wake is often lauded as one of the most significant experimental works in the English language and is one of the most gratuitous books ever written.
Ulysses almost even more so can be considered gratuitous due to the amount of allusions made that really have zero impact on the actually story.
Lolita is gratuitous, using the same logic as above.
>acute social commentary
>harrowing descriptions of suffering
Without gratuity(?) Ulysses would read like a 2 page long diary entry.
Semantics.
He's obviously right, just saying almost nothing.
People like different things and their aesthetic tastes are reflected in the different cultural media they consume. His "novelty" comes in trying to compare those different tastes (for prose, for bullet time fighting, for porn, for arias) as fundamentally the same -- expressions of "gratuity."
>>7893292
I don't think it's fair to compare top tier literature with dime fiction and Chandler's advice on catching the reader's eye. Because then you're forgetting the whole framework that, funnily enough, Morgan stresses when discussing video games as inavoidable - in sense of vidya, gameplay, in sense of fiction, quality of writing.
He is right. Movies and vidya gaems have shitty storylines that are just for the dudebros and retarded housewives. And I'm glad he lumped in Jane Austen with them because she wrote some boring ass books.
>>7893308
Its a semantic argument, I'm agreeing with you, we need a new word like shitlike to describe all new shitlike movies, games and videos.
I particularity like shitlike like because its exactly how I would imagine the average person describe one of these movies if they hadn't enjoyed it
>it was shit, like!
So not only does it imply the movie was resembling shit in some way, its a play on the traditional word like and the new modern, like, bastardised version of the word like like.
But all this is about as arbitrary as discussing the word gratuitous.
>>7893334
>A-am I fitting in guys?
Kys
>>7893399
Yeah, umbrella terms are lazy but overall I like Morgan's article. Though he comes off as more of a buffoon the more I think about it.
>>7893222
>Of course he's right.
Right about what? That the masses are unrefined animals worthy of extermination?
>>7893292
>Ulysses almost even more so can be considered gratuitous due to the amount of allusions made that really have zero impact on the actually story.
"Gratuitousness" is not defined relative to the plot - that's what you and Morgan are missing.
If you randomly inserted a double-anal scene in the middle of "War and Peace", it would be gratuitous for reasons other than merely disrupting the storyline. (By doing so, however, you would probably increase its appeal to the unwashed masses that constitute Morgan's readership.)
The (disturbing) sex scenes in "Lolita" were central to the novel as a work of art - neither gratuitous nor serving simply "to advance the plot".
>>7893489
I think Morgan's answer would be that you find your particular breed of gratuitous while reading War and Peace's battle scenes and high society intrigue - brushing away Tolstoy's skill as a storyteller and use of language away as if it's the same as your average Amazon digital romance.
Morgan seems to be a human embodiment of tvtropes.
He's basically conflating gratuitous with "things you like"
So if you like violence and sex that's what you'll write about, if you like poetic prose and shit that's what you'll have etc,
>>7893222
>literary works are not often lauded for their cracking pace or plot that grips like a vice and doesn’t let go
jesus christ. clearly this piece was written out of a place of deep insecurity rather than any thought
He's massively buttflustered by the accusation that his sex scenes are gratuitous.
>everything is gratuitous therefore nothing is gratuitous
The director Tarkovsky often included long, drawn-out scenes to bore the audience and force intellectual engagement. If something rubs your genitals and solely exists to make you feel good, it's gratuitous. Things of high worth aren't good solely because of a certain, cherished kind of gratuity, but because they challenge the reader, force a re-evaluation, make you think and feel beyond primitive excitement, and that's where Richard Morgan seems to be engaging in self-deception, as he wants to create an equivalence with his genre-shit and esteemed literature. The bigger question is: who are these fucking morons reading science fiction and fantasy and complaining, oooh, that sex scene is a bit gratuitous? What's caused Richard Morgan's confusion is he's taken the hypocrisy of those idiots as standard.
>>7893659
>Tarkovsky wanted to bore the audience
IT'S CALLED SCULPTING IN TIME YOU PLEBEIAN
>>7893176
Read about 60% of it, seems pretty spot on. Also seems like a rehash of things Icycalm has said... But still good.
Bottom line is that all art and entertainment boils down to pleasure seeking. People don't like this statement because they think it services lower standards or promotes brain dead hedonism, but this is just an implication that you think is there. It's not.
>>7893659
Well stated.
>>7893334
You're a pleb tbqhwy
>>7893176
That's actually kind of weird and coincidental because I have been sort of wanting to get into video game writing and I didn't really know how. My original plan was to eat some alphabet soup, prepare my A4 paper, prepare my ass, and then let loose a deluge of inspiration onto aforementioned paper. After that, I take a picture and then send it to [insert developer] with a handwritten note on an index card that simply said "pls higher me."
>>7893730
Just download renpy
>people still trying to push story in videogames
This needs to end.
>>7893625
But that sentence is right, plot doesn't matter, only prose, themes, and characters do.
>>7893400
u mad?
>>7893727
go put on a dress and raise your pinky when you drink your tea britbong
>>7893176
That's not very good writing
>>7893755
The question whether "plot matters" (whatever that means) has nothing at all to do with the definition of "gratuitousness" in literary art.
>>7893730
how can you even write for a video game without taking part in the actual game development process?
>>7893805
I didn't read the article, just the thread, which is why I only mentioned the quoted sentence.
>>7893699
>>7893659
>>7893832
Ask anyone else in the industry.
>>7893832
you don't need talent to work on a video game
