OK people, I can see an issue surfacing here. Lately there seems to be many more stories involving a culture that I am particularly ignorant of. I've never done any video games, unless Flight Simulator counts. And, I never did any role playing or comic books. I don't even have TV or cable.
So what some of you new authors are dealing with here is your grandma. So, I think a little more explanation and descriptiveness is in order if you want me, or any of us olds to read your stories.
From what I can gather in the stories I have read, the writing is nice.
Either I am the dummest woman here, or the other old wrinklies just don't bother reading your stories.
Much peace
Gwendolyn
Comments
If it is not in your heritage it isn't in your heritage
Comic books have been around since at least the 1920s. Sci-Fi has been around about that long too. War of the worlds, when worlds collide etc were from the 1930s. I have read comics off an on since 1960s as a young kid but you are only about 12-18 years older than I am. Point is, it is not age, this kind of stuff just is not in your interest. I do not believe overly long explanations add much to a story and only slow it down, sometimes it just means one has to research some background to understand it. I've had to do it quite a bit as I am not a gamer either and have only played basic arcade games in the past. However, I did have a healthy interest in cultural myths as part of my schooling and watching Saturday morning cartoons. At the time I was watching Saturday morning cartoons you were only in your 20s. My eldest brother is 12 years older than I am but he still appreciated some cartoons and stuff though he probably was not interested in other cultures though there are a lot of exotic mythological stories being Chinese we are exposed to.
All it comes down to in all sorts of reading is that if it interests one, one goes out and find the understanding. In the age of google I have not found it a great hardship to do so.
Kim
By the power of Goggle!
I cast Wiki to dispel confusing cultural reference! Comic Vine is also a great place to research comic book stuff.
hugs
Grover
I think that's why I prefer to read, and to write, period pieces
...since I have a better understanding of the historical eras before my birth than anything contemporary.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
We "old" folks are not all of
We "old" folks are not all of us ignorant of video games, role playing games or certain comic books. When I was young, I wanted this boy in my 5th grade class and my 6th grade class when we passed grades, to be my boyfriend. I read all of the super hero comics he had and told him I didn't have any money, so he would take me to see a movie that had a super hero matinee. I learned everything I could about super heroes and comics books just so I could talk his language. We finally kissed when I was 17, but I am getting ahead of myself. For the two years that we had known each other before 5½ years of darkness set in, we played, read comics, went to movies, and even the zoo when it was still in Washington Park before they moved it out to Blue Mound Road.
Today I role play in www.secondlife.com where I interact with real people in real time. But as far as violent video games, I have no interest in them. In fact, if I had my way, I would remove them from the shelves, because they show violence is alright and that it is only through violence that we can exist.
"All we are saying is, give peace a chance".
So Gwen, I am not too video game savvy and I don't wish to be. Second Life is a good way to role play though. You can be young, you can be 7 feet tall, you can dance, pole dance, all kinds of of things, and what makes Second Life better than SIMS is that Second is a 3-D virtual world where real people can have the fun we no longer can.
Hugs,
Barbara
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."
Please don't do that...
I'm really getting tired of people claiming violent video games shows "violence is okay." There has not be one reputable study that can link violent video games and violence in real life. If you think violent video games only show violence in a positive light then you're completely missing the messages in many of these.
In some of the games, Modern Warfare comes to mind, yeah it's just violence. It's no different than an action movie. However, some games, like Spec Ops: The Line, shows the darker side of warfare. It's no different than a war movie that makes you think. Games like Knights of the Old Republic are RPGs that let you be the hero. It's more like a choose your own adventure book. Is there violence? Yeah, you have to kill Sith. Games like Mario are platformers, there's less of a story and more of a focus on finger dexterity. It's still violent. Instead of people, you're jumping on the heads of walking mushrooms (or something).
Violence comes in all forms in video games. Sometimes it teaches you "this is wrong" and sometimes it's just meant as a gameplay mechanic (like with Left 4 Dead, you just kill waves of undead in order to escape to safety). The level of violence is not often any different than you'd find in a book, movie, or TV show. Would you really remove all violent books too? You'd be getting rid of classics like Lord of the Rings, The Sword of Shannarah, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, War of the Worlds, etc. Not to mention those comic books you seem fond of. Last time I checked, Super Man doesn't win against the baddies by talking nicely to them.
If you don't want to play video games that show violence, that's fine. I think you're missing out on some amazing stories and experiences but there's nothing I can do about it. It's your own choice. But to think that appropriate responses are to get rid of violent video games altogether? I just find that disheartening. The fact that people still believe this 30 year old rhetoric when it comes to violence in video games saddens me.
Perhaps no general study...
Perhaps no general study, but we did a "study of one" with our (now teen) younger daughter...
She was a tad aggressive/violent. We stopped her watching of Pokemon, and the behavior quickly went away. *shrugs*
Was there a causal relationship? No way to tell. (We weren't going to start her watching the show again to find out.)
But - I agree with your comment that violence in gaming/videos/etc. doesn't (alone) contribute to violence in people. But, I think there IS a case to be made that the higher level of violence in media has "created" an environment where it's easy to "believe" that violence is an accepted thing for people to do... Without other teaching, why wouldn't some decide to do things of violence?
Annette
Pokemon and violent television...
This is different from video games. Video games provide a release. A catharsis. Television promotes things. They are very different media for very different things. Video games are for escape from reality. TV is a propaganda machine.
I never really could understand why people liked Pokemon so much. There really is very little talk of respect or protecting others or... anything really. It's just a bunch of kids beating each other and each others pets up. As a game I can respect it as being "just something I didn't need much, but some people might like the release", but as a TV program... It's definitely not something I'd let any kid of mine see.
Abigail Drew.
Agreed.
I play a LOT of RPG's. Violence is a staple of RPG. HOWEVER! No RPG I've ever played has ever FORCED anyone into the villain's role. Most have the main characters complain about having to resort to fighting.
I choose not to play FPS largely because most feel just gratuitously violent to me. I choose not to play many fighters for the same reason, though many others I do still play because the violence isn't as gratuitous or there's even a moral or two mixed in.
Violence isn't something that I personally enjoy, but there always comes a point where it really does, in my opinion, become necessary to defend yourself or those you care about. Most RPG's have stories that take place in a stage where this situation has come to pass.
Really. The problem isn't the games, I know lots of people who do play gratuitously violent games to have a healthy outlet for their daily angers and frustrations instead of exploding in real life. The problem is society as a whole. The expectations and stresses people today are expected to live under. The way that working hard and honestly is under-appreciated and underpaid. And the way that just simply committing a crime is made to look like such an easy out.
The problem and answer doesn't lie with video games alone. In fact, if anything, I'd venture a little hypothesis here that if violent video games were ever truly completely eradicated, there'd be an immediate and nasty rise in incidences of domestic violence AT THE LEAST. If not all forms of violent but not premeditated crime.
Premeditated crime is a different beast entirely, and any one who'd commit a premeditated crime honestly has something really screwed up in their head and needs help.
Abigail Drew.
Gwendolyn, I am almost fifty
Gwendolyn, I am almost fifty years old. I have had the chance to enjoy: video games, role playing, comic books and cable. No, you are not dumb by a long shot! You can start enjoying those things now. Cable TV has wonderful programs that you would love.
May Your Light Forever Shine
oldies
You children give me a real giggle you speak of being old? Come on ..come next April I will be 72 honestly so ....I am retired & still very active love to target shoot , hunt, & just walk in the woods ....Age is a state of mind nothing else as am still at 6ft 245lbs not weak & crippled old fart so I say this Enjoy your each & every day you dont get a warning as to when it will end
Race ya to tomorrow Papabru
I'm still very active
And I am trying to tactfully get some authors to understand that using terms that their audience does not know, narrows their readership base. I'm 65 and still ride my bike, hike and go camping and I'll bet I can outshoot you with a pistol! :) Too bad, we'll never meet, it would be fun to see. LOL
Of course, I am a cultural oddity and know it. I have too much to do to sit around on my dead butt and read comics, do role playing games, and video games all the time.
What ever, I tried. So, you authors that complain about Kudos and Comments need to realize that if you limit your base because of your writing, then you get less of those.
Gwendolyn
Hey, I resemble that
Hey, I resemble that description. Hi Gwen. Yep, I'm one of the oldsters, but in the 1970's I got introduced to RPG (No, Role Playing Games, not weapons), as well as games simulating warfare of varous types, usually trying to duplicate units and see if different decisions might make different outcomes, rather than repeating history.
As far as the RPGs, basically you played-- you suspended disbelief and took on the personna of a character from an adventure set up by a Games Master. Your character was usually set up by chance (die rolls and look up the number on a table of possible results), and outcomes of battle or other events and so on were usually determined by dieroll as well. It was playing, and I mean playing or pretending in every sense of the word, playing at being someone else in a world that just could not possibly be real. Or Could it? And that is what some of these new stories are about. "What if" they could be real, and your actions in that new real world were in part controlled by the characteristics of your pretend person, right down to their gender and the hormones obligated by the gender -- anger and temper maybe by testosterone and in particular someone not used to it feeling it for the first time, for example.
But when you get right down to it, in a way isn't that what an author does? Set up the players of his story, and then take them down the events plotted for the story, and I think some people talk about the way their characters sometimes take on "lives" of their own, or a intended bit player becomes much more dominant to the story, eh?
Anyway, that is what those stories are about. Groups gathering for a friendly game of pretend, and it all goes pear shaped and the game reality becomes the players reality!! Wow!!! Where the Avatar concept comes from, it is the gateway you use to enter your players into the world inhabited by the pattern of the Avatar. It's a neater way in tech world for doing the entry into the world and its different life ways, customs, etc. "Magic" is the other way, and some of the stories have that as the gateway.
The RPGs are for fun, and yeah, there is a certain amount of learning involved too, learning about yourself and your basic personality and that of your friends as well. In our games, I was mostly loyal to the group, would take actions to advance the goals of the group, while others liked to take wild chances and actions that might advance themselves rather than the group. I suppose it was the way I lived my real life as well, and it is kinda feminine too. Sigh. Occasionally random chance would change the scope of my permitted actions, and I would have to push beyond my real personality to carry out those actions in the game. It was--- interesting.
Sadly, in all the RPGs I was part of, I never played the part of a woman, and I wondered if I would be exposed for the real me if I had. Would have been interesting, no?
That's sorta also what the computer "Second Life" and it's avatars are -- you enter into a computerized world with buildings, properties, clubs, other avatars, social settings, etc. and you can live as another gender while you are part of that world.
I'm told it gets to be addictive.
CaroL
CaroL
Yeah...
I make a living supporting gaming addicts... The only reason I have a clue. Its kinda weird knowing tips and tricks for stuff you'd never bother playing...
My gaming is fairly sedate... Driving stupidly fast or even my latest addiction... Some brilliant soul thought to mix air racing and dogfighting...
Wheeeee!!!!
Abby
Don't have the time to do gaming!
Crazy bitches like me don't have time for gaming so naturally Gwen, if I don't understand the context of a story I tend to lose interest. There are plenty of other stories involving stuff that I understand so it's not the reader's loss, it's the authors'. Your right Gwen, if writers don't at least put some sort of info and explanation in occasionmally, they'll not attract so many readers. Put it down to the generation gap!
I've crossed my own generation thingie and my younger friends have no interest in gaming either. (Well, not THAT sort of gaming!!!)
Skype you soon Gwen. XX Bev.
I've not written for a while...
Something I really need to get back to... but... I try not to make an understanding of my "culture" necessary to enjoy the main story. I'll put in little easter eggs and perhaps even hints and foreshadowing that only people who have an understanding of certain cultures will get, but you should always be able to at least grasp the essentials...
At least, that's how I try to write.
Abigail Drew.
Sometimes I write Muslim.
A couple of my stories have had Middle Eastern characters, or settings, and I have used words like Imam, Fatwa, Alhumduallah, Haraam, Halal, Niqab, and many others. When I use words that I know will confuse the Kafir,I almost always explain the word once or the word is so strongly embeded in the context that it is easy to understand.
I am completely sure that one day, a human will be looking right at someone from a galaxy 100 million light years away. I hope that they explain some of their strange words.
:)
Gwendolyn
Get Chrome.
One of the best ways to learn something you don't know is to get the web browser Chrome. Highlight any word you don't understand, right click, and select "Search Google: _____". It'll probably give you an immediate list of results and it'll help you understand whatever is being said. If you aren't interested in learning about the "youth culture of today" then there's not much any author can say to hook you to their story.
It's never too late to try something new. Why don't you get a video game and try playing it? They're pretty easy to learn and they can be an awful lot of fun. What genres are you into? There's a game for every one. Who knows, you might actually spark an interest somewhere.
Even if it's not something you want to do all the time that's okay. Not everyone is obsessed with video games. I have a few friends that only play one video game, Civilization, and do so maybe once a week.
My mum liked playing Animal Crossing and the point and click murder-mystery 11th Hour. My dad loved playing Mario Golf on his Nintendo Entertainment System (yeah, it's 30 years old but it's still great). My brother and I played World of Warcraft and Mario 64 together as kids and young teens.
My point is, there's something out there for everyone. Why not try it out? One of the best ways to learn is by doing. Plus it has the added advantage of keeping your mind quite active.
I liked Flight Simulator
I used to play FS a bit, but when I got a new computer with Vista that all went away. Well, I finally got rid of Vista, and bought FSX but have not bought a joy stick yet. Maybe I should? I do not like violent games, and lets face it most of them are.
I was actually just trying to push some of these young people to be better writers; not using so much jargonese, which limits readership.
Gwendolyn
Wippersnapper!!
I hate it when these youngsters think they can speak for us oldsters. I remember listening to Orsen Wells 'War of the Worlds' on my crystal set. I heard the first report on Pearl Harbor from FDR... and you think you are old!!!
You are only as old as you feel. SOOOOO Be YOUNG and get back to your writing!
Zip
When is one OLD?
I'm 51 and while my body is starting to fail me... I don't FEEL old. I'm still 25ish on the inside.
Comic books and video games have been around for decades and you certainly had every oppurtunity to read them especially since the popularity of the internet took off, but lets face it... some of us have had other things on our minds.
I never got into comics/anime/manga/etc... I can't force myself to repeat a level over and over and over just to get a higher score. I would much rather play paint ball than any video game on the market. Comics never apealed to me on anywhere near the scale they are popular now. When my tastes were being formed and becoming more and more hard to ignore... only geeks and nerds played video games and only idiots brought their comic books out where people could tell they were still reading that...isn't that for KIDS!
Since my tastes don't move in these areas I tend to just let the meanings hang in the air and enjoy the story as if unknown background was not needed to be explained. I still get most of the value of the story and don't really miss the details.
Dayna.
When I'm 64...
Which I am. And I still read comic books, heck, I write them. I play video games, tho not the ones that require good hand eye coordination, I suck at those, but then I always have. And I play role-playing games at tables. Just within the last ten days, I've played four RPGs, one in which the youngest player was 10 and one in which the oldest player was 69.
In the last few months, I've attended three conventions for games, comics and science fiction. And there were all ages at those cons.
Your problem is not your age, it's your cultural context. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I always try to bridge the gap.
Oh, I am not dissing on games and things. My life has always just been very different for some reason. And, when I write, I really try to bring people into my experience and promote understanding. Several of my stories have Middle Eastern, or Muslim characters and when they speak using words and ideas that are common to them, I try to explain the context to bring the reader into the body of the story, but still make it interesting.
I've just been trying to point out to some of these writers that by making their writing too culturally specific, and not explaining, they limit their readership, thus depriving them of Kudos and Comments. It's their choice really.
A while back, I decided that if I read a story, I would comment on it, unless I just could not figure out what was going on.
Oh, and really don't consider myself so old that I am finished. I have just been engaging in some self depricatory manipulation so hopefully any insult to anyone can be avoided. :)
Much peace
Gwendolyn