{"id":1937,"date":"2008-07-23T06:37:05","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T11:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2008-07-23T06:37:05","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T11:37:05","slug":"on-tortured-similes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1937","title":{"rendered":"On Tortured Similes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I frequently read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penny-arcade.com\/\">Penny Arcade<\/a>.  The creators bring a snarky eye to pop culture and video games, and the web comic rarely fails to amuse me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.penny-arcade.com\/comic\/2008\/7\/23\/san-diego-sketchbook-vibroblades\/\">Today&#8217;s strip concerns, of all things, literary criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the tendency in science fiction to invent <i>really<\/i> complicated similes for <i>really<\/i> simple comparisons.  Throwing in random, made-up words &mdash; or even real, scientific words &mdash; doesn&#8217;t make the writing <i>better<\/i>.  It just makes it more opaque.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Penny Arcade tells me that <a href=\"http:\/\/kotaku.com\/5027237\/gears-of-war-novels-get-new-author\">Karen Traviss, author of the <i>Republic Commando<\/i> novels, will be writing the <i>Gears of War<\/i> novels for Del Rey<\/a>.  About a year ago, Boom! Studios had announced a <i>Gears of War<\/i> comic.  I don&#8217;t think it ever materialized, as it looks like Wildstorm is tackling the property this autumn.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never actually played <i>Gears of War<\/i>.  Odd, when you think about it, as I know the team at Epic that worked on the game.  Funny, that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I frequently read Penny Arcade. The creators bring a snarky eye to pop culture and video games, and the web comic rarely fails to amuse me. Today&#8217;s strip concerns, of all things, literary criticism. Specifically, the tendency in science fiction to invent really complicated similes for really simple comparisons. Throwing in random, made-up words &mdash;<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1937\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Tortured Similes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4114,4102],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-games","tag-star-wars","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}