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You probably want to reread the posts in question (there's more than the 1 line I quoted and responded to directly), as bifurcation is not an issue in my statement. "Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins?" asks Melville; "Distinctly we see the...

The setting sounds like it's worth a read to me. Typos in the press release set off a bit of a warning flag though.

I assert it invalidates them because there's nothing left to talk about but scenery. Assuming SF can fully realize another genre, like tragedy, doesn't invalidate tragedy unless you define SF as tragedy and not something distinct that can be added to it. I don't think most narratives are...

Hrmpf. Rebel scum...

I'm still not clear what you're saying then. Do you agree with Celebrim, while not taking his position--hence being in no place to defend it? Or do you think SF and F (I'm just going to go with the capitals from now on, typing them out is getting tiresome) employ some procedure, whether...

And pirates. Ninja gunslingers v. zombie pirates, round I. FIGHT.

Okay, but I'm not sure what this has to do with my response. You say that the moral and cultural biases of Star Wars and LotR are "mundane themes," I say no, they're good candidates for defining science fiction and fantasy in terms of something other than imagery. You say that science fiction is...

I agree, in that we could rewrite the diary using the "imagery" of science fiction or fantasy, yet the product itself would not be science fiction or fantasy, however much of their imagery it may have. Conversely, I think there ought to be something about science fiction and fantasy that, if we...

This is a silly argument against defining them. A bildungsroman and a tragedy can overlap as well, but that doesn't mean they aren't different kinds of narrative. I don't think any narrative can be pure, though we try to define it in its pureness to get a handle on it. (I'm not really...

That's madness man--the Jane Austin RPG has to be World of Darkness! This is exactly the way in which I've been chewing on the question, not because I think fantasy or science fiction have to be defined in such a way, but because fantasy and science fiction have to be defined in this way if we...

You aren't going to like my answer, as it consists mostly of the fact that Anakin is only a whiny brat in your interpretation, and not in, say, mine. Anakin is actually cool and badass a number of times. You can generalize from the scenes where he is rather immature, and inflate your...

Nono, I'm implying that the whole style of lightsabers doesn't work to begin with, so why get antsy over Obi-Wan swinging at the same spot he just attacked while Anakin's guard is still there? (I assume that's one of the shots you took issue with, in the final Obi-wan/Vader battle, where Obi-wan...

Actually, just in terms of the logic of myth, the relation of immaculate conception to virgin birth is sufficient but not necessary. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. The D&D-d20 analogy doesn't really work. (I say the logic of myth because obviously anybody who...

We don't have any equivalent style of combat though. The weightlessness of sabers, coupled with the fact that they can cut someone in half without much application of pressure, would make realistic saber battles mostly uninteresting, from a spectator's point of view. I think Ep III actually had...

Joshua, and anyone else interested, I have taken the liberty of uploading a short and fairly recent (1996) article, "Disputes About Art," from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I think it will particularly interest you because the author's approach to the problem of classification is...

I can't rationalize Celebrim's setup for him, but "magic" is both mystical and mechanical in my game. Well, first there are a multiplicity of magics, but the one that has access to "near infinite amounts of energy," as you're talking about here, is mechanical without having anything to do with...

The trolls, Legolas mounting the trolls, the horse, them elephants, err, oliphants, etc.

Haha yeah, my copy of Being and Time is well worn :). Don't let Akrasia hear about that though. I mentioned I think it was Deleuze in a thread a while ago, and he said something to the effect that anything south of Oxbridge was a waste of time. Actually, I have been following Heidegger back and...

Oh, I didn't really mean it like that. I often wish I could just shorthand ideas by referring to their articulations in the work of X around here, because it would save loads of time and I'd know whoever I was talking to was on the same page as me, as it would give us a common point of...

Just out of curiosity, what was the last "academic literary criticism" you read? I'm curious because most of your posts in this thread have more in common with contemporary literary criticism, for which considerations like theme and symbolism are vastly outdated, than Celebrim's, so I find your...