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All possible plots by major authors (2020)

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121–130 of 143 posts

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#121

The only one of these parodies that makes me want to read the author being parodied is Hemingway. Apparently, dude could write.

Hemingway: All of life’s problems start and end with a drink. You drink because there’s something inside you that’s broken, something you can’t fix—or at least not yet. Anxiety gnaws at you, born from problems you can’t solve, or the weight of old trauma. The bottle seems like a way out, a moment’s peace from the storm in your head. And for a while, it works. The drink quiets the noise, softens the pain. Soon enough, the drink that was supposed to save you is the very thing pulling you under. The problems you were running from don’t disappear—they grow, just like your need for the next drink.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But first - a series of congratulatory online interviews between myself and various creators who do appreciate me and that I, in turn, appreciate.

I have no idea what you're doing here but I am impressed enough to have got to the end. (No meta here, I assure you.)

this is the first of my congratulatory interviews with people who admire me with I_complete_me, in which I talk about how I was the first originator of the character Jerry Cornelius and how he is I, while Gideon Stargrave is just a cheap ripoff by a no talent hack, later I shall take out a massive loan on my future creative output to buy enough drugs to allow me to stomp about the countryside flattening cottages in the hope of squishing Grant Morrison who is an agent of Chaos.

on edit: it may appear that I am easily hurt and somewhat petty, but given that I am stomping about the countryside flattening cottages it follows I am actually very strong and the far bigger man.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#124
post #40

#All possible codebases by major programmers Linus Torvalds: you take a week-long swing at a problem you find annoying, fascinating, or both. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by some alternative from the GNU project that, pinky promise, is coming out any day now. Grace Hopper: BEGIN a framework that powers critical government functions, AND has se…

Fabrice Bellard: A problem with several competing solutions catches your fancy. Within a week you have a gleaming, state-of-the-art solution that is flexible, reliable, and extensible—all written in pure, efficient C. Everyone begins to build on your work. Donald Knuth: While writing your magnum opus, a minor irritation arises. You invent a new subfield of computing and spend two years developing a highly idiosyncrat…

> Fabrice Bellard

Working on (a medium-sized team that is working on) an LTE base station in the late 2000s and then I'm introduced to his work. It was a very humbling experience. Over the decades I've met a handful of people who were, at times, within reach of Fabrice but he is truly in a league of his own.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#125
post #56

To summarize Dan Brown books by describing the characters fundamentally misunderstands them. The characters are about as important as the characters in a porno. The point of a Dan Brown book is to chart the stupidest possible path through history and pop science, and he's uniquely capable of this.

Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown.

https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-f...

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#126
post #56

To summarize Dan Brown books by describing the characters fundamentally misunderstands them. The characters are about as important as the characters in a porno. The point of a Dan Brown book is to chart the stupidest possible path through history and pop science, and he's uniquely capable of this.

Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown. https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-f...

I actually kind of like renowned author Dan Brown, the same way I kind of like the acclaimed historical drama National Treasure

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#129

I need an "Every possible comment by Hacker News users"

Creator of $COMPETING_PRODUCT here.

This product is really cool and congrats to the team for pulling this off. The rest of my paragraph is full of euphemisms of why my product is actually better, and why this product is actually shit.

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Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#130

What does it say about me that I've only actually read 14 of the 56 authors in the second list [1] as an adult (i.e. by choice)? I know of quite a few, but haven't read most of them. Here's my list (++ indicates more than 1): Fitzgerald Hemingway ++ Shakespeare ++ Christie ++ Brown ++ Dickens McCarthy ++ Wodehouse ++ Steinbeck ++ Stoppard Kafka Conan Doyle ++ Seuss (of course) ++ Lee A missing classic author is Rober…

A friend of mine has been reading Ulysses since 2022, I've stopped asking him about it.

Since 2022, I'm [only] on page 400 of Infinite Jest (D.F.Wallace). In particular, the intoxicated flashbacks (with no paragraph breaks for ppaaggeess) just make it difficult to plow through...

Meanwhile, I've concurrently read 70+ other "lesser" classics (i.e. less than Jest's 1300 pages + citations) in those same two years. This includes all of Vonnegut, most of Steinbeck, and half of Gárcia Marquéz.

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