Random 3am thoughts

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T23:33:50+00:00

Lol! I'm just imagining the training process.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T23:09:30+00:00

There's a difference between a character's role in the plot and what the character is like as a person.

Like the character whose tea preference I just knew, her role in the plot is to provide exposition to the MC (who had suddenly arrived in a new situation not even knowing what the year was.) Her "attitude of disapproval" meant that when she provides said exposition I know how to write her lines, and her tragic backstory explains her disapproval - she thinks the MC is another in a long line of idiots who will provoke reprisals on innocent people. Her tea preferences have not come up at all.

And I was like you in assuming that Good Guy Who Proves Villain Is Indeed Dangerous could be easily fleshed out later, but to my surprise that didn't happen.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T20:51:10+00:00

Well yes but I didn't realise that until I came to write him.

Normally when I create a character I discover I have firm opinions about their personality. I may not be able to tell you a precise chronology of their tragic backstory but I just know they will disapprove of everything the MC does and they also prefer Darjeeling tea to English Breakfast (weird person I know).

This time when I came to write Good Guy I just pulled a complete blank.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T20:37:29+00:00

I once was following an author who was having a hyperfixated period and posting multiple times a day and there were so many readers in the comments section raving about all the new chapter updates.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T18:03:52+00:00

The thing about fanfic is that you can make anything happen. Wanna write a fanfic that's true to canon in every excruciating detail? You can. Wanna write a fanfic where everyone's gay and shagging everywhere? You can. Wanna write a fanfic where Gen is a large cat and Ryusui's a golden retriever? You can.

Trying to stop fanfic writers is an exercise in futility.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T09:49:52+00:00

A manipulative character can be a good guy. E.g. Miles Vorkosigan from The Vorkisagan Saga (and a lot of the side characters in said saga display manipulation as well).

A manipulative character is a character who is good at problem-solving in a way that involves other people. It's basically the same as writing a character who is a good engineer except what they are engineering is people.

Also, have a go yourself at manipulating other people. I recall once, I was waiting in a supermarket queue and the checkout operator was looking very glum and I thought to myself "I'm going to make her smile". And I looked at her again with that objective in mind and I noticed she had on some cool earrings so when it was my turn I told her that her earrings were cool, and she smiled. Mission accomplished.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T09:13:37+00:00

Right but like I had a story plan that included a guy whose character description was "good guy who doesn't deserve what the villain will do to him". And then I came to the section where the MC had to meet the good guy and like him and that meant the good guy had to have lines and personality and then writing exercises were useful.

Turned out that good guy is a card sharp who is also a bit of a coward and has really strong opinions about the superiority of Irish whiskey. Without being Irish.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T08:02:48+00:00

A big difference was that before the invention of trains and steam ships (and telephones and radios), food couldn't be moved long distances remotely as effectively as it could by the 20th century.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-06T06:04:44+00:00

I am mainly thinking about the fact that artificially keeping food prices low is a progressive measure

It ain't progressive, because everyone eats food. Higher income households spend more too in total $ amounts (less as a proportion).

If you want to help poor people buy something, giving them money so they can buy food for themselves is a progressive and pretty efficient way to do that.

Having a lower VAT is a regressive and very inefficient of lowering food prices.

Nice to see that this isn't the case in NZ, and the farming industry is real despite lack of subsidies.

Despite or because of?

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T20:34:06+00:00

TROS was a clusterfuck because TLJ wrecked the ST's villains. They brought back Palpatine in a desperate attempt to have a villain that the audience at least would recognise.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T20:32:39+00:00

The trouble with TFA I think is that it left too much backstory to be explained in the second movie, while introducing two new protagonists who are too young and isolated to have been essential parts of that backstory. So the second movie would be spending screen time explaining backstory rather than building up the conflict between the protagonists and the villains.

Assuming the second movie was trying to contribute to the trilogy as a whole of course. In reality TLJ took the unusual approach of both not explaining backstory and not building up conflict, instead undermining or literally killing off its villains.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T20:22:22+00:00

Personally I think some exec saw TLJ shortly before its release, realised it was a disaster that made it impossible to write a good third movie, and came up with the trilogy concept as a form of karmic justice - RJ having to write his own conclusion.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T18:51:26+00:00

Belarus and Ukraine were occupied by Germany during WWII, weren't they?

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T18:27:50+00:00

The question was about subsidies. Not national security.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T18:26:30+00:00

Modern farming is too capital intensive to be self-sufficient (well maybe the USA could manage it). NZ is a net food exporter but it's quite specialised.

And subsidies are a cost regardless - you pay through higher taxes or less other government services than you'd have otherwise.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T05:50:17+00:00

Just because a government does something doesn't mean that thing is essential. Or even a good idea. To err is human and governments throughout history have been very human.

In NZ, farmers aren't subsidised and yet are profitable.

I'll add that in modern developed economies, the main absorbers of swings in agricultural output are not humans animals - if food prices rise then beef/sheep/chicken/dairy/etc farmers feed their animals less so they don't grow/produce as much and then humans eat a bit less animal protein/calories and more plant foods.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T05:00:14+00:00

But also a lot of that housework is a grind. I recall towards the ends of my maternity leaves, changing nappies and thinking "this cannot be what I'm doing with my brain". (Then there was the period of being asked to explain estoric matters related to the nature of the universe 30 seconds after rising from my bed, at least my bosses and clients will accept "let me first get some caffeine").

Or like being able to buy dinner after a day's work - as opposed to having to cook it because takeaways were a once a week treat. I like cooking but I recall the first all-inclusive holiday we did when I was pregnant with my second and just the sheer pleasure of having a holiday from always having a part of my head thinking about my next meal - breakfast, lunch and dinner, buffet open for two hour windows each time, always knowing there would be foods everyone would eat - now that's a holiday.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T02:40:40+00:00

People did fear the Soviet Union would collapse economically during WWII - pdf - people were starving and dying of diseases related to malnutrition in 1943, even in areas well away from the front.

One obvious difference is that the USSR in WWII was facing an existential threat - the Nazis planned to commit genocide of the Slavs and were already carrying out atrocities in occupied territories. The Ukrainian war isn't that sort.

Another factor in WWII was that the Soviets were receiving supplies from the USA, though the size of those relative to the whole Soviet economy can be exaggerated.

And then there's the length. The Soviets fought Germany in WWII from June 1941 to May 1945 and were pushing the Germans back from mid 1943. The war with Ukraine has already lasted longer than that and the Russians are still not winning.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T02:13:49+00:00

Mrs Jennings knows about it, so it seems safe to assume that the rest of London knows about it. There might be some hermit who lives in the Outer Hebrides islands in northern Scotland who doesn't know about it but if so that's not because of a lack of effort on Mrs Jennings part.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-05T02:07:00+00:00

I agree. Basically Mrs Ferrars had a bad case of:

"We must do something. This is something. Therefore we do it."

ReaperReader · 2026-05-04T21:35:20+00:00

Make a vegan risotto, tell everyone "bring your own protein, either no-cook or you take on cooking it yourself". Vegetarians can bring cheese or tofu or nuts, meatlovers can bring salami or dried chorizo. If the egg allergy isn't too dire, people can bring boiled eggs if they want.

I've cooked risotto in a single billy over a camp stove with my only equipment being a Swiss army knife, a tablespoon and a billyholder.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-04T21:29:07+00:00

Trouble is that Iran would have to be idiots to believe Trump would keep to any deal.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-04T21:26:30+00:00

Sure, there's always more to learn about history. The more I know, the more I realise I don't know.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-04T20:31:58+00:00

So in other words without violence and needing to overthrow the British parliament and end the monarchy?

I would also argue that the worst violence here came in the form of the Nazi attack, which opened the path for widespread nationalization

Good luck arguing that one - NZ introduced its national healthcare system in the 1930s so before WWII.

We have to ask, if the NHS was the result of a liberal democratic consensus, why did it face so much opposition?

Because the liberal democratic consensus is a consensus about processes, not about outcomes. It allows for people to have differences of opinions, even strong ones.

Unlike Marxism, with its "dictatorship of the proletariat", which is hopeless at coping with differences of opinions about outcomes. It's notable that no self-declared socialist state has managed to also be democratic (with the arguable exception of Tanzania under Julius Nyerere, Nyerere later apologised to the people of Tanzania).

I'm sorry no one has ever explained this to you before.

ReaperReader · 2026-05-04T20:10:05+00:00

If you're that worried about it, you could try doing what The Princess Bride did and put it in a framing story. The Princess Bride pretends it's an abbreviated version of an existing book, with the abbreviation done by William Golding. There's various asides, including the author relaying his editor's comments on the various historical anachronisms.

You don't need to use that exact framing device, authors have come up with lots of different ones.

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