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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 3122581" data-attributes="member: 3649">What you have here is basically an unanswerable question, much like 'what is love' or 'why do people do evil'. I'm sure you can find other places that discuss the notions that 'everything and everyone is of equal value', but that strays too far into politics for hereI think there is a degree of quality that can be held up to most works, but I also think that not every work can use the same scale. Comparing a TV show with a deep and moving personal account novel is just not done; you're comparing apples and oranges.It isn't. There are only twists and turns on anywhere from 10 to about 35 plots (depending on the source you read). The nature and quality of those twists and turns are the important parts. Offering new insights into human nature. Showing emotion, command of language, ability to create imagery and dialog, unique characters.. those are the things that get hung on the bare tree of plot.Dismissing a work simply because it's 'youth comes from nothing and grows into great power', simply on the strength of it being that very plot, is foolish. It demonstrates a deep and abiding foolishness - a lack of good judgement. It's very much akin to people who say 'I could tell how things were going to turn out in the first five minutes, so I turned it off' or 'I figured out the plot on the first page'. In the general sense of things, this simply is not possible. When a person says this to me I hear "My desire for instant gratification did not allow me to put in the time needed to understand and appreciate all the other elements of the work". There could be amazing images, witty and insightful dialog, and this person will never, ever know that because he read the back jacket cover (like as not written in about fifteen minutes by some intern based on what his boss told him the book was about) and made a snap decision. It's much like the people who feel the need to list out plot points and then disparagingly say 'check' after every one, as if they were saying or doing something clever or insightful instead. Unfortunately, sometimes you can do just that: TV has created endless utterly predictable scripts for very specific reasons - only a few exceptional shows deviate from formula. It's trained a lot of people that if they see X then they can logically expect Y because they've seen it over and over again. It's dulled them to nuance and instilled an expectation that other forms of media are exactly the same (and some have become like that, for the same specific reason: they want people to be comfortable and so purposefully do nothing to 'rock the boat'.)</blockquote>

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