[ SECRET POST #4917 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4917 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #704.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If the specific questions that you're trying to engage with are to do with the practical mechanical realistic details of the fictional world depicted in the text, I don't think that those are questions worth engaging with for a work where they are basically entirely besides the point. I think those are frankly pretty useless questions to ask.

I'm sorry if you think that's snooty or arrogant. I don't think that there's anything wrong with caring about those details in general, I just don't think it's a useful attitude to take towards some stories, and it's especially frustrating because the attitude that practical realistic details are all-important is pervasive through SF&F. This is just not the kind of story where it matters.

[(Anonymous)]

DA. The problem being, they're not beside the point. In this story, the rest of the world in the story is presumed to function much as the real one, and... People do cost/benefit analysis of the world all the time, with a shrugged "what's there to do about it, still need to eat/be clothed/get to work/ooh shiny?" People presume there's stuff going on behind the scenes.

In Omlas, it's -happiness-. Something that cannot be measured/quantified. There's no way to prove it.

The visitor in question, and thus also the reader, -has to take the word of the guide that this just works-.

You get the hugbox, then you get the ~secret truth~.

This doesn't read like a moral quandary, it reads like a stripped down cult initiation thing.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT it does not read like a cult initiation because it's absolutely not meant to be literal.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, so it isn't literal. What is it, then? How is it remotely useful as an allegory? To make it a realistic allegory comparison, you have to strip down the elements from the story and from the real world in order to get a comparison that works. You have to strip down so much that basically nothing is left of either anymore. I just don't see how this story has anything useful to say.

[(Anonymous)]

It's....literally an allegory. This whole thread is full of comparisons.

You don't have to LIKE it, but it's still an allegory and not even a particularly subtle one.

[(Anonymous)]

I just don't get how this allegory is in any way useful as an allegory for the real world honestly. There is no comparison between the story and the real world that makes any sense. We're just supposed to accept that it works as an allegory just because.

[(Anonymous)]

The allegory is that people in the real world ignore suffering that has convenient results every day, and the story makes people think about when and how they do it themselves and question if there’s things they’d be willing to give up to end the suffering of others. It’s not deep or complicated, but it is uncomfortable. Especially because in the real world it’s not one kid suffers extreme deprivation=happiness for everyone. There’s way more suffering kids and adults that no one individual (okay maybe Bezos) could rescue no matter how much comfort they eschewed.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

SA

My issue is the lack of depth. This works as a surface reading. But think about the story for even a second and it falls apart. It simply doesn't make sense. Okay, if your happy with a story intend to not be deep, that's fine. But personally I don't like shallow reading. I don't like things that fall apart when you think about them. I like things that make sense. I think a better allegory would be one that used the same idea, but was deeper and more complex and made more sense.

I guess to me this story only works when you don't think about it at all, and to me that's bad writing.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean it is a SHORT story, and I'm starting to think you're not entirely familiar with how vague allegories generally are.