Again, I acknowledge that most literary prophets have this problem, when viewed from the POV of the people inside the story. But most readers, historically, don't adopt that interior viewpoint. It may be that my exposure to more interactive media makes me more prone to "put myself in their shoes".
It's notable that the discussion with rickthefightguy where the "prophets should all be shot in the face" concept came up kept slipping into LARP territory. He is, after all, a Boston Player, so when confronted with an Unhelpful Prophet when he is within a story, that's his response :-)
This may also have a lot to do with my being a product of a scientific, skeptical (sub)culture. I tend to value ideas based on their predictive power, tested under rigorous conditions. And even the big classical ones, like Delphi, totally fail those criteria :-)
[Even more tangentially, this scientific attitude, when applied to the body of Greek Myth, is what led to Alexx's Principle of How Best To Deal With Greek Gods. "Don't."]
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Useless Prophets
Date: 2005-07-11 07:41 pm (UTC)It's notable that the discussion with
This may also have a lot to do with my being a product of a scientific, skeptical (sub)culture. I tend to value ideas based on their predictive power, tested under rigorous conditions. And even the big classical ones, like Delphi, totally fail those criteria :-)
[Even more tangentially, this scientific attitude, when applied to the body of Greek Myth, is what led to Alexx's Principle of How Best To Deal With Greek Gods. "Don't."]