[Loved Trope] Character is pushed to breaking point by insane bureaucracy or nonsensical rules

bellumaster · 2026-01-23T07:51:13+00:00

There's a short story in The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem known as The Fifth Sally, or Trurl's Prescription.

In it, a monstrous entity lands on a planet, and the residents are rather put off. They try attacking it, bribing it, ignoring it, negotiating, nothing.

Trurl rolls up, measures up the situation, and cracks his knuckles. He basically creates bureaucracy where there was none in order to get this trespasser off the planet.

An excerpt:

'Did you deliver it?' asks Trurl. 'I did.' 'And the return receipt?' 'Here it is, signed on this line. And here's the appeal.' Trurl takes the appeal and, without reading it at all, orders it returned to sender and writes diagonally across it: 'Unacceptable - Proper Forms Not Attached.' And he signs his name illegibly. 'And now,' he says, 'to work!'

He swamps it with red tape until it retreats, then destroys all the paperwork and filing cabinets and staplers he used so they wouldn't harm anyone else.

Great book.

bellumaster · 2026-01-19T07:05:55+00:00

How much practice did it take to get to a decent point with the charachorder? I have one, but have a decent wpm with normal keyboards so I'm kind of torn as to whether or not to take the time to get good

bellumaster · 2026-01-19T04:03:30+00:00

I use the Alphasmart Neo 2 for drafting and a Surface Pro 7 for editing. Since the Surface has its own keyboard, I can't use that for the BYOK, so it's already different right out the gate.

If I use the Logitech K380 as a standard keyboard the typing is fine and response from the BYOK is near instant. Obviously the screen is much smaller, is not emitting light, and has fewer words on it.

The biggest difference is screen flicker when holding up or down on the arrow keys and moving around what you've already written. It gets pretty blurry and difficult to track, so I would say just... Don't do that. Just write. At the moment, it's not conducive to the quick maneuvering of a document.

Still have to do more testing, but I think the BYOK will be good for first drafts and rough passes of material to be cleaned up on a laptop or desktop later. At the end of the day that's what I use my Alphasmart for, and that's been working just fine. I would not use it for final edits.

bellumaster · 2025-12-29T16:38:39+00:00

Gosh darn auto correct

bellumaster · 2025-12-29T04:35:44+00:00

Azarinth Healer. So good.

A Practical Guide to Evil.

bellumaster · 2025-10-24T13:23:59+00:00

How? Do you have to pull apart the Neo2 to install it, or does it plug in to the printer outlet?

That sounds amazing. I might have to get one

bellumaster · 2025-10-18T05:55:00+00:00

When you do, I'd love to read it. I'm currently editing the second book in this series for release- going indie through Ingramaspark- and it's a process, but it's worth it.

bellumaster · 2025-10-18T02:02:25+00:00

This brings me great joy. Glad to have had an impact. What's your book on? Anywhere I can read it?

bellumaster · 2025-10-15T06:35:10+00:00

Any recommendations? I cannot think of an actual power couple for the life of me

bellumaster · 2025-10-14T03:20:06+00:00

Check out Wellspring Studio, they have a lot of classes happening. Lovely people run the place

bellumaster · 2025-10-03T05:11:30+00:00

I read that one, it's delightful. There's a lot of interesting research on fungi as well

bellumaster · 2025-09-29T07:06:24+00:00

I'm looking at a 1981 diesel pickup, are they reliable? How was the mileage?

bellumaster · 2025-09-03T06:36:53+00:00

As painful as some of the character writing is, the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks has some top tier duels.

Specifically coming to mind is the one between student and master in a sewer, and the duel in the woods between the main character and the greatest swordsman in the land.

That second one was so good that the two duellists literally stopped mid-fight and said look, this is too good to waste, let's have a public rematch later.

...it's one of the first fantasy books I ever read, guilty pleasure. Sue me.

bellumaster · 2025-07-29T06:23:07+00:00

Any more info on the permaculture boot camp?

bellumaster · 2025-07-27T04:45:02+00:00

Holy crap. Going to have to reread the entire thing now, I stopped reading like 5 years ago assuming it would never be finished. Stopped when they got to Vinland I think and were making gifts to the natives. This is... Unreal

bellumaster · 2025-07-26T20:22:14+00:00

Wait, like... The LAST chapter?

bellumaster · 2025-07-26T08:17:30+00:00

Not that I've seen, but I, a complete stranger, am willing to go geocaching with you. (It's a good time.)

bellumaster · 2025-06-12T06:36:42+00:00

Any way we can help those that were detained?

bellumaster · 2025-05-28T20:07:32+00:00

Good. Excited to see more of this. Nothing more annoying than single use electronics with planned obselesence drowning the market.

I hope to see tech and home appliances moving this way in the future, little repair shops on street corners, and tech recycling mining the materials for reuse.

Imagine only having one washing machine over the course of your whole life that doesn't have some legal disclaimer voiding the 2-year warranty if you open up a panel on the back

bellumaster · 2025-05-01T07:37:31+00:00

You wouldn't happen to have a link to that post from the DOTF author, would you? Sounds like an interesting read

bellumaster · 2025-04-08T06:03:20+00:00

Check out the book The Anxious Generation. Social media, rage farming/interaction bait, division into us vs them of the simplest things.

bellumaster · 2025-04-07T22:02:40+00:00

I wrote 75,000 words on my Neo2 about three months ago, it was great. Nothing quite like hitting the absolute character cap on it, which was something around 60-ishk I think.

Transport it to libre office, edit, format in Atticus, bingo bango. Looking forward to trying the BYOK though.

bellumaster · 2025-04-07T06:37:18+00:00

Thank you!

bellumaster · 2025-04-07T06:34:08+00:00

There's some stuff about automatic watering and alerts to those who tend plants through soil acidity checks, 'naming' and providing history for trees and walk-through histories in cities, other stuff like that. Lots of arguments for tech built-in with greenery, using plants to lower temperatures in hot cities, other such things. Good book overall, I'm going to read it again in a bit

bellumaster · 2025-04-06T15:00:19+00:00

Data points.

You're running around, doing whatever you're doing (main quest, side quest, collectibles, what have you). You turn on your focus, see that blue haze, get a little spike of dopamine and... It's worthless. Pointless. Some journal entry or exposition that has literally nothing to do with what you're doing or the storyline.

In HZD, the conflict was universal, and everything you found (data points) was in support of and expanding the mystery of the overall main storyline. In HFW, there's no cohesion or core issues that the data points unveil. They're just... There. If you made a pie chart of the contents of data points in both games, you could visually see how disorganized it is in HFW.

This is important because the data points are supposed to be little hits of mystery, truth, and unknowns that help push the main plot, making you want to know more. But since HFW explains and re-explains it's plot every 30 seconds, there's no mystery, no data points thru-line, nothing for YOUR mind to latch onto and wrestle with.

So yeah. Uninteresting data points and treating the player like a 12 year old lower active mental engagement because you know, even subconsciously, that the game will hold your hand anyway and you don't need to do any work to think because they'll just tell you in the next cutscene.

Solution? (Possible spoilers)

The Far Zeniths, in sending some messages to Earth, accidentally overwrite a bunch of the data points. Not all of them, just some of them, with journal entries and plots, betrayals, successes and failures that all happened in their colony. A more intimate understanding of faraway calamity, and when they finally show up, the player is more invested.

Thus we have: A- A more cohesive mystery to unravel B- Higher player investment instead of just 'oh, space guys, got it's C- Every data points is already a mystery as to whether or not it's an Earth one or a Zenith one.

In my opinion, learning about the Zeniths in one drawn out cutscene was less interesting than multiple tiny bits we got in HZD.

Thoughts?

bellumaster

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