Yeah, I do exposition a lot, and only a few people have tried to bash my head in because of it. I like to try to do it with a narrator who is sort of half omniscient, half tied to the character's perceptions. It's why the narrator in War of the Wheel acts differently based on which characters are in the chapter.

I have no idea if it actually works, though. It's just what I shoot for...

Well considering that your last few chapters have all been really good and they've been mostly a mix of backstory and philosophical conversation I think you're doing fine

And yes, Raleris does rather live for exposition.

(also my hand slipped and the story just sprouted another 400 words whoops >_< )

I mean, a lot of it boils down to execution, and a lot of it boils down to personal preference.

Moby Dick must have, what, about 300 pages of exposition on the whaling industry in New England? It's not my favorite book, partly because I'm not particularly interested in those sections, but obviously many smarter people than I would beg to differ.

Conversely, in, say, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, I'd say we get about a page at most of exposition about the history of the title character. That doesn't bother me one bit, but a lot of people hate that book because they feel like they don't know anything about these people who just show up from one page to the next and start bumping each other off.

And, again, a lot of it just comes down to execution. Compare the exposition in, say, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back to, say, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. No one seems to mind Yoda explaining The Force to Luke, but people cringe when Liam Neeson starts talking about midichlorians. They're not that different. One is just done much better than the other.

While I emphatically agree with your point, there's a LOT more going against the latter example than that...

That's very fair. I initially was going to use examples from my own stories, but that sounded awfully obscure, so I went looking for a different reference which I hoped everyone would be familiar with.

One more comparison, just because. Think about Casablanca. Compare what we get to see about Rick's time in Paris, which is fairly substantial, versus what we get to see about Rick's life between leaving Paris and coming to Casablanca, which is essentially nil, aside from this one tiny exchange:

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

We need to know what happened to Rick in Paris. We don't need to know what happened to him in the interval. In fact, as William Goldman pointed out, imagine how it would feel if Rick told us his sob story right there, how he moped around Europe for a few years, bouncing from bar to bar, trying to get over his lost love, before he washed up in Casablanca. It would hurt rather than help.

That's The Force versus midichlorians in another form.

When I think of long exposition, I think of Victor Hugo, the man begins Les Miserables by giving you the entire life story of the bishop who is never heard from again after what is essentially the first scene (and, indeed, is the first scene in the musical).

When I discuss this sort of thing, I usually default to Hawthorne. I love Hawthorne's short stories. I hate the Scarlet Letter. It's not because it's a bad story, but rather because it COULD have worked just as well as a short story, or perhaps a novella. The story he was telling, in my opinion, didn't need the length it was given.

I suppose it all boils down to quality over quantity. It's usually better to have a little that's good than a lot that isn't. Of course, having a lot that's good is always nice, too!

Yeah, I think I'm too influenced by that era of writing. I can't help it--I love inconsequential fractals of detail

Sometimes, I really enjoy it. I like how Poe's prose goes, I suppose. (That started off accidental, then I ran with it.) I also enjoy reading Lovecraft's stuff, because the way he contorts his syntax in those long, winding sentences is often really fascinating. But some of those novels from the 1800s just prove too much of a chore for me to get through. Melville's another one whose short stories I enjoy, but whose longer works, like Moby Dick, I'm just not that interested in, ultimately.

For the record, we have now surpassed the post count of Constructed.

Mwahahaha our rise to overwhelming dominance continues!

I noticed that...

Hey all I just wanted to let you all know that my time here in Las Vegas is much more limited than I thought it would be (a three- and five-year-old take up a lot of that). I'm keeping up with what I can but I've got to focus my time right now. Keeper knows what my current project is atm, if you really want to know what it is. I should be finishing it up by the end of the month.

Also, if memory serves, Welder said that [paraphrase]"With the way Gatherer works, it isn't really possible to display different card artworks in autocard; and that making autocard use http://magiccards.info is a considerable amount of work because of the way the .info database is organized."[/paraphrase]

Huh, last I heard I thought he was saying switching over to the other format would be easy... Guess not?

Hope you're enjoying Vegas

Likewise, Luna!

Hey, everyone, group apology for things I need to read/send you. I'm out of town until Saturday night, and while I have internet access, it turns out I won't have much time. I will try to get everyone everything I've promised as time permits.

Sorry!

I, too, may be a little bit scarce this weekend, albeit for the decidedly selfish reason that I have kicked my own best judgment to the curb and decided to go scrub out at Grand Prix Boston.

Given that (a) I don't enjoy playing against super-competitive people, (b) I get uncomfortable in large crowds, and (c) I carry my own Purel with me everywhere I go, this is not exactly my normal scene for playing with the magical cards. But it has been on my bucket list to go to one of these mega-events, so I'm going to cross this puppy off.

I will play burn, because I always play burn.

I always play burn because, several years ago, I fell into a trance-like state after drinking a carton of room-temperature half-and-half, during which I received a visitation from Jaya Ballard. She informed me that she was my spirit guide, and that she would teach me to walk the path of burnination in exchange for my solemn vow to sleeve-up Lava Spike in every format in which it is legal.

So, if it seems like I am ignoring you, just know that it is because I'm busy getting combo'd-out by some Twin player down in the losers bracket, and not because I no longer consider you to be one of the hippest cats around.

WAIT YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THERE'S A MAGIC: THE GATHERING GAME!? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS?!?!

(Good luck OL! And have fun with whatever you're doing Raven!)

Yes, yes. Good luck all.

Just remember, after you've scrubbed out, there are always the side events! Drafting and Commander, although I'm gonna admit, Commander can get kind of dicey. The important thing is to have fun on the charred corpses of your foes.

Oh, and I completely understand your deck building compulsion, I have played Nivix Cylops in every format it is legal in, including one extremely ill advised vintage deck.

I finished my secret project!

Probably going to port it over here after a while. The stories I'm cooking up need a bit of work and the portrait needs a lot of it. It was horribly challenging to just learn how to get the effects I wanted. Bluh.

Hello, I'm new to this section of the MTG fandom. I've been a big fan of the stories hinted at in flavor texts, especially The Theriad. Since you all have made some fan planes in the past, I'd like to know just what makes a plane an MTG setting. Looking at the cards, it seems like there's a few commonalities between expansions: mana, distinctive races tied into those colors and stringent adherence to the color pie. So would a plane incorporating these things, and using races already present in MTG, automatically be considered an MTG plane?