Author Habits That Annoy You
- Thread starter Captain Dax
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I've never understood the need for a cast in a story to so often be a best of compilation from other series. So far as randomly displacing some in time just so they can be there. The latest comic series being the cringiest example.
Now I love crossovers and many times it can be and is done beautifully but so often it seems like that was an author's desire and there just wasn't a strong enough story to facilitate it.
Unless of course there were instructions passed down from the publishers in which case it's their fault for wanting a small universe and authors just have to make the most entertaining story they can out of it.
Now I love crossovers and many times it can be and is done beautifully but so often it seems like that was an author's desire and there just wasn't a strong enough story to facilitate it.
Unless of course there were instructions passed down from the publishers in which case it's their fault for wanting a small universe and authors just have to make the most entertaining story they can out of it.
Actually, he responds, in so many words, that he's lived in San Francisco his entire life, and then inwardly muses that there were Chinese restaurants "every third corner" there, but that Phlox "wanted to have something on him."
I didn't get a sense of anybody in that conversation assuming that it meant that you can't get Chinese food there; that would be an absurdity. I will admit that my taste in Chinese food runs to variations on custom made-to-order stir-fry (e.g., "Mongolian Barbecue," which is of course neither Mongolian nor barbecue), but by reputation alone I know that San Francisco probably has both the best Chinese food east of Fuyuan and west of Kashgar, and the worst Chinese food east of Fuyuan and west of Kashgar.
In other words, your threshold of "excessively purple" in prose is a very pale shade of lavender.
I'm guessing you're not an ADF fan.
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It’s more about them taking multiple pages to describe a certain object or a location.
That's why I think it's an example of Carey's contempt for the scriptwriters making her go out of the way to interpret everything in the worst possible light. As in, "These idiots Berman and Braga don't know you can get good Chinese food in San Francisco, how am I going to make this conversation makes sense where Archer admits he's not as well-traveled as Phlox?" even though Archer is clearly communicating, "Yes, I, too, am familiar with and enjoy Chinese food, as I also live in this area where it is abundant." So she contextualizes it as Archer lying-without-lying by saying he's only lived in San Francisco, leaving out that of course there's plenty of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, and allowing Phlox to think he had more experience of Earth than he does, even if it's false.
It's bad faith on top of bad faith on Carey's part, but so is assuming that Barclay was misusing "literally" rather than concluding that Janeway actually had written a book about the Borg. It's kind of amazing that there's someone who thinks B&B's writing wasn't overt, blunt, or artless enough, but that's the conclusion we're left with.
And I get the precise opposite vibe from DC's take on the scene: Archer's convinced that Phlox wants to one-up him, but they both know Chinese food is ubiquitous, especially in SF. And living one's entire life there doesn't mean he doesn't get around. I've lived in Fountain Valley, California, since I was three, but I've traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada.
At any rate, on page 69, DC did treat the whole breadstick business as ridiculous, because was ridiculous.
Page 159: liquid phosphorescence?!? How did that get past the copy-editor? Was it in the episode (And I will note that while white phosphorus is luminescent, it's chemoluminescent [from slow oxidation], not phosphorescent [which is what a very-slow-decay phosphor, like zinc sulfide, does]).
Page 161: the examples of composites are a complete non-sequitur. Especially the reference to aircraft carriers.
At any rate, while it's hardly DD, GC, or CLB, I would hardly call it bad.
At any rate, on page 69, DC did treat the whole breadstick business as ridiculous, because was ridiculous.
Page 159: liquid phosphorescence?!? How did that get past the copy-editor? Was it in the episode (And I will note that while white phosphorus is luminescent, it's chemoluminescent [from slow oxidation], not phosphorescent [which is what a very-slow-decay phosphor, like zinc sulfide, does]).
Page 161: the examples of composites are a complete non-sequitur. Especially the reference to aircraft carriers.
At any rate, while it's hardly DD, GC, or CLB, I would hardly call it bad.
T'Pol says "Liquid phosphorous" in the episode.
Maybe I'm dense for asking, but...how so?
Apparently there was a scene everyone but me remembers where Spock or Tuvok ate finger-food.
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Thanks, @Tosk
Refusal to touch food with one's hands while eating (and attempting to eat something hard, dry, clean, like a breadstick, or a pretzel, or a cookie, or a cracker, with a knife and a fork) is illogical and impractical. As well as reminiscent of a memorably sarcastic reply to a "Miss Manners" question about potato chips, i.e., that they should be eaten with "a fruit knife and an oyster fork." It also, as I recall, goes against established canonical precedent about Vulcan behavior.
I believe that was the point. T'Pol is intentionally showing that she won't be swayed from her course by these annoying Earthlings. Dedication and persistence wins the day.
Did someone on one of the shows once state that all Vulcans from a century (or more) ago always felt free to eat with their hands?
Good point. It makes no sense to assume that an entire species has only one culture even in a single time, let alone in different centuries. Indeed, that's the best thing about ENT's portrayal of Vulcans -- it showed that their culture was considerably different in the 22nd century than in the 23rd, and thus added depth and believability to the portrayal of the species. It even gave them different subcultures coexisting at the same time, like the V'tosh ka'tur, the melders, and the Syrannites. If the entire civilization's attitudes toward melding, the military policies of their government, or their understanding of Surak's teachings could change as radically as they did between ENT and TOS, it's hardly implausible that their dining etiquette could've evolved as well.
also i think to a degree, trying to espouse the idea that Novel writers shouldn't be treading on the prerogative of the showwriters when it comes to creating families for major characters. even if Burnham was a vulcan, she wouldn't have been in violation of Fontana's statement, because it was the decision of the show creators to make her part of spock's family. they have the authority to make those sorts of choices for a character. novel writers working with a licensed franchise on the otherhand, should be wary of adding details like that because not only does it open up the problem of the show writers deciding to go another direction, thus turning such things into jarring continuity issues for the novel, but also risks other writers with similar ideas creating contradictory novel depictions.
you can see the end result of such stuff (if taken too seriously) in the Star Wars Legends/old Expanded Universe 'continuity', where a lot of writers spent a lot of time after the original trilogy trying to fill out stuff like the clone wars, Luke's mother's identity, when and how the empire started, etc via references and plotlines in novels, comics, etc.. only for George Lucas to come out with the prequels which totally ignored all that and did their own thing. resulting in a further expanded universe continuity snarl when the novel, comic, etc writers then spent book after book trying to fit their old stuff into the universe created by the prequels.. often with two or more authors trying to tackle the same thing and resulting in multiple contradictory retcons. frankly canning the whole thing as "legends" and starting fresh with tighter oversight was the smartest thing Lucasfilm ever did.
Trek has never really tried to pretend that all its RPGs, novels, comics, etc are part of one wider reality the way that star wars did, the closest they got was with the 'relaunch' series of novels, but even there they never tried to pretend all of the trek novels were part of it, just specific novel lines.
And even in the Novelverse, we sometimes had to retcon things from earlier novels to fit canon established in Enterprise, say, like adjusting the portrayal of Andor/Andoria after it was revealed to be a frigid Jovian moon. We established that there had been some terraforming to make Andoria more temperate in the 24th century than it had been in the 22nd.
I suppose it's a little easier to excuse the different climates of a planet, which you could claim were altered by natural or applied forces, as opposed to erasing previously created relatives who now have been said never to have been born (though time travel shenanigans and now the Loom (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Loom) could explain that)
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