I love things that I enjoy.
Some things that are good are not always enjoyable.
Lemme give examples from movies. I’ll pick on Spielberg. Schindler’s List is a good movie. So is Saving Private Ryan. ‘Good’ may be understating it a bit.
However, I can’t really ENJOY these movies. They’re a beat-down, emotionally. God, that moment where Mr. List is talking about he could have saved a few more… I cry like a little non-gender-specific girl.
I can’t watch these movies more than once. I know they’re GOOD, I just can’t ENJOY them. I know quality when I see it, usually. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Probably a great book. I refuse to find out.
But Jurassic Parque and the Indiana Jones trilogy? Those are good AND fun. I can watch those, love those, base romantic relationships around those, et cetera.
So the ideal stories are good and fun. But the latter is more important to me than the former.
Some examples of good stories I dislike:
- The Dark Knight
- Anything by Neil Gaiman
- The Name of the Wind (But I enjoyed Wise Man’s Fears)
- Most scif/fantasy by Stephen King (Most recently 11/22/1963 – The poor man does not know how to end a book)
- Minority Report
Some examples of flawed stories I like alot:
- Pacific Rim
- The Harry Potter books (I’m probably not going to hurt her readership by calling her stories flawed)
- Most movies starring Will Smith
- Books by Dean Koontz where the villain is a monster and not a human/pedophile
- Pirates of the Caribbean (it has a zombie pirate monkey! This might require a new category)
- The stuff that I write.
Coming soon: Write conflict on every page. But for the love of god, stop doing it by adding unnecessary asshole characters (I’m looking at you, The Walking Dead)
Second Chair Kazooist 