Yeah, I think we have a fundamental disagreement, but I also see where you're coming from. And you make some great points about the limitations of sentence-level literary-oriented thinking.

I should clarify, because I agree with most of your response. I'm specifically talking about the "working theory" behind early modernist writing, because that's where the genre/literary divide originated. And I'm specifically talking about plot, even though I'd prefer to use the fuzzier "subject" or "content" because…

Is it weird that, of the list of foods we can't grow without bees, I would be most distressed if onions went away?

I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the basic distinction between literary and genre fiction - literary fiction is concerned with language, genre fiction is concerned with content. But I disagree that it's a silly or useless distinction to make.

Hey, University of Lagos, remember how hard we've been working to overcome centuries of racist Eurocentric thought that says your country and your entire continent is backwards, primitive, and intellectually inferior? YOU ARE NOT HELPING.

I'm not going to address the other part of your argument, but I take issue with the stance that a sovereign nation is allowed to declare anything it wants legal or illegal on two grounds.

I wish I could remember who said it, but one of the best worldbuilding quotes I've ever come across is something to the effect of, "You always have to leave a horizon."

Oh, I've read all the books. That's probably what subconsciously inspired my comment. Unfortunately, I find myself compelled to boycott the movie. For reasons.

I'm sure it was all in good fun, but I really do find the idea that a person can only enjoy art/media produced by someone else of the same race, gender, and sexual orientation incredibly depressing.

This is the saddest comment I've read all week :(

Shakespeare's Richard III. A perfect sociopath - goes evil because he can, coldly murders everyone who gets in his way, including relatives and children, charms people and then discards them as soon as they're no longer useful. Ian McKellen's version is particularly good.

But first book version, though. And only first book version :[

Too easy, but too perfect. The man literally has a robot heart.

Awesome call. The Milton version is arguably one of the first "psychologically deep" antagonists in literature - to the point where he's close to being the protagonist of the first part of Paradise Lost.

Yeah, it always seemed a little convenient that these things popped up only after the idea of extraterrestrial visitors had become thoroughly entrenched in pop culture. It's pretty hilarious that it was mostly two guys in England.

So we already have good historical data that a lot of Cold War era UFO sightings and out-of-body experiences were, before the 1940s, usually interpreted as religious experiences. People thought lights in the sky were angels, etc. What about crop circles? When was the earliest reliable report of a modern-style crop…

Y'all gonna be disappointed.

Yes, the rationale is more important than the specific rule. But I'm reasonably sure I could come up with examples of high-quality works that violate each of the rules, and possibly their underlying rationales. I just see these more as suggestions that you might want to dial up or down depending on your stylistic bent.

Interesting list! I pretty much disagree with every one of these. Or rather, I think that the majority of good fiction breaks these carefully and intelligently. The possible exceptions are 5 and 10. 1, 4, and 7 seem like okay advice some of the time. As for the rest, they might force bad writers to not write quite so…

I was sort of hoping they'd used metalbending.