Someone removed
the magnificent bastard entry for Diane Foxington in the YMMV for The Bad Guys simply saying "That is not Magnificent Bastard is about." Since we have these threads on hiatus and so we can’t argue about it now, should we just put it back?
The old threads are staying locked and we're making 4 new threads, 2 for Effort Posts and write ups, and 2 for cleanup (rewrites, cuts, quotes etc)
Yes in total, a CM effort post thread, an MB effort post thread, a CM cleanup thread, and an MB cleanup thread
Edited by papyru30 on Oct 30th 2022 at 4:59:35 AM
I kinda love that the total edits for Complete Monster Discussion Dates is 6919. LOL, 69 and all that.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
I have a concern about a common writing pattern I see repeated a lot in Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard examples. I've noticed that a lot of them make heavy use of "Doing X, the character does Y." Take this example, from MagnificentBastard.Predator:
- 1987 film: The Predator itself is a dangerous, cunning and honourable warrior. Hunting in Republic of Val Verde during a Guerrilla War, the Predator stalked and killed numerous insurgents and elite forces, including a band of Green Berets. Cautiously hunting Dutch's group, it picked them off one by one as they split up, careful not to let itself be outnumbered even with its superior technology. Avoiding their first trap, they eventually catch it in a net, which it escapes by firing its Plasmacaster rapidly. Feigning ignorance of Mac and Dillon's presence when they pursue it, the Predator turns the tables and kills them both. Finally confronting Dutch, whom had figured out how to exploit the Predator's thermal imaging tech, the creature is so impressed that, even when it had Dutch in its clutches, it lets him go and disarms itself to fight him unarmed. The hunter is finally beaten when it falls into a trap Dutch had set and only because Dutch made two traps. Noble and terrifying, the Predator hunts for sport, will not go after those it doesn't consider a threat and is an alien icon that spawned an entire franchise.
5 out of 8 sentences in that writeup follow that template. In some cases, the result ends up reading awkwardly: "Avoiding their first trap, they eventually catch it in a net" looks like it's describing the heroes avoiding the Predator's trap, when it's actually the other way around. A much clearer way to get the point across would be "The Predator successfully avoids their first trap, and though it gets caught by their second one, it manages to escape by firing its Plasmacaster rapidly."
Another problem I have with this wording is that when I read it, I imagine that the X and Y are being done simultaneously, but oftentimes, the Y happens after X. "Hunting in Republic of Val Verde during a Guerrilla War, the Predator stalked and killed numerous insurgents and elite forces" works, because the stalking and killing of insurgents and elite forces happens in the process of hunting in Val Verde. The aforementioned "Avoiding their first trap" sentence doesn't, because he only gets caught in the net after having avoided the first trap.
I hope I'm making sense here. I'm not sure what kind of rule we could write exactly to address this, if this would even be needed, but I would like to draw attention to the formulaic writing that many of that thread's regulars seem to have fallen into.
Edited by Zuxtron on Oct 31st 2022 at 8:24:52 AM
Let me flip this around. Even if this writing style doesn't inadvertently cause confusion, isn't the wording being clunky a problem in-and-of itself? It's definitely more of a case-by-case kind of deal than anything that should be codified, but if Zuxtron or anyone else wants to reword an example to read more naturally, that's a good thing, and for everyone (myself included) who does fall into this trap, it's good to cut down on the run-on sentences.

To be fair, it makes more sense to move them after the new threads are made. Right now they're being used to direct people to this discussion. And the mods haven't actually locked this thread or declared new threads were being made, so it's an active discussion. The wait makes sense at the moment, imo.
Shadow?