(no subject)

Might have figured it'd happen. Went to look over some older dragon fic to ascertain a settei point for the fic currently in the plotting stage, and Gouen now looks like Fan Li in my head.

Luckily something like the original wanders in at radiofreebanri. Of course it confirms that Goujun all along Hasn't Had A Clue, which lowers my opinion of Goujun's intelligence; but which does make him the exact parallel of Konzen and opens the possibilities of a Konzen-like enlightenment.

Also want to know what the Japanese mean by 当て馬, that everyone translates as stalking horse, and 責任, that must have a particularly Japanese twist to responsibility. Drat. I always thought it was a bad idea to start building that tower in Babylon....
( Cut for ETAs )

Cringeworthiness

Someone over at incandescens' FL is talking about narrative squicks. I'll quote rather than link, since one never knows who has lurkerphobia these days: When people talk about "squicks" in terms of stories (be they book, movie, or TV), they usually mean things having to do with sexual content or certain kinds of violence. What I'm talking about here are narrative devices or tropes that make you cringe, upset you, or otherwise unsettle you deeply enough that it ruins the story for you.

Now I cringe a lot about perfectly ordinary things. ST-TNG, as someone famously said, made me cringe just from putting the cassette into the player. But I have a very good narrative squick and have had for years, which I call Last Battle Syndrome. ( When bad things happen to good people; with Woxin spoilers for the mid-late 20's )