[HN Gopher] Chekhov's Gun
___________________________________________________________________
Chekhov's Gun
Author : thunderbong
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-09-05 08:53 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| zorr wrote:
| I've seen this principle come up a few times but I don't think I
| fully understand it.
|
| For example, assuming a passage in a story where a protagonist
| enters person X's house and a particular room is described in
| much detail. The described detail does not necessarily advance
| the story but instead does "character building" hinting at the
| personality of person X. There literally could be a loaded gun
| hanging on the wall because X is a secluded hunter living in a
| cabin. Is this then a violation of the principle?
|
| Edit: I've recognized the principle a few times, mostly in TV
| shows with lingering camera shots on seemingly unrelated objects,
| and as another commenter mentioned, it can frequently spoil a
| surprise twist. There is also a vague line between spoiling the
| twist and foreshadowing.
| [deleted]
| shakna wrote:
| The best stories frequently break the principle. There is a ton
| of worldbuilding done in even simple-reading stories like the
| Hobbit, that are largely irrelevant to the greater whole, but
| serve to give the reader a better perspective.
|
| Mindlessly following Chekhov's Gun, in my opinion, will always
| result in pulp fiction. Whether it's TV or novels, or movies.
| If you've stripped a story down to the bare basics, all you're
| left with is predictability that gives the reader an easy ride.
|
| Not to say that's always a terrible thing. After a stressful
| day, pulp fiction can be the perfect way to relax. Most people
| have something mindless that they enjoy.
|
| But it is incredibly rare that you end up with something truly
| great if you religiously follow the principle.
| flippyhead wrote:
| Also, sometimes entire movies are made about some of these
| "inconsequential" details much later. If a gun appears in
| scene one, but only goes off in the sequel, are we in
| violation of this rule?
| snickerer wrote:
| Great fanatasy (world-building) literature enhances Chekhov's
| Gun. In Tolkien's stories everything has meaning and is used
| somewhere and somewhen else. But not necessarily in the same
| story.
|
| In The Lord of the Rings there are hundreds of "guns" hanging
| at the wall, which are not directly involved in this three
| books' story. But the reader feels that they are not only
| decorations. And the reader could do some research on
| Tolkien's work to find out about their story and importance
| for the characters' backgrounds. That makes the magic I
| believe.
| pvg wrote:
| _If you 've stripped a story down to the bare basics, all
| you're left with is predictability that gives the reader an
| easy ride._
|
| I think you'd have a hard time finding a Chekhov short story
| that you can dismiss as an 'easy ride' or 'pulp fiction' and
| many of them are very, very short.
| barrenko wrote:
| _spoiler alert_
|
| My personal favorite is how in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
| the "gun" is a dog.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I hated The Hobbit for its endless descriptions that, for me,
| only evoked boredom, so I wouldn't use it as a good example.
| The meadows were very green, the forests wre very dark, and
| the spiders were very large, yes! I know! Get on with it
| ffs...
|
| I liked the descriptions of landscapes and cityscapes in
| Jonathan Franzen novels. They have the earnest and surreal
| feel of a diorama in a museum. I like dioramas for some
| reason.
| bambax wrote:
| Alexandre Dumas did, and his stories are among the best there
| are.
| watwut wrote:
| Did he? Cause his original version does not have only
| purposeful things in it. Like detailed descriptions of
| evens in tavern that have nothing to do with later
| developments whatsoever.
| samatman wrote:
| The tiny ring of invisibility which Bilbo uses as a plot
| devise to escape a few times, turns out in _Lord of the
| Rings_ to be the most important artifact in Middle Earth.
|
| About as Chekhov's Gun as it gets.
|
| I wouldn't say that leaving frequent references to the depth
| and age of the world, and then filling in the Legendaria in
| note form for the rest of your life, is much related to this
| concept. If a sword hanging on the wall belonged to an
| ancient hero, already dead, and known to everyone in the
| scene, a paragraph with "Here is hung Such-and-such, the
| bright blade of so and so with which he did $mighty-deed"
| doesn't have to carry any more weight in the story. There
| might be a whole book or chapter about so and so, there might
| not be.
| watwut wrote:
| The tiny ring is not the only detail in that book. Checkov
| gun is that everything must have purpose, not that a thing
| with purpose exists somewhere inside.
| simonh wrote:
| If a detail does character building then it's done it's job.
| The point is it should have a job to do.
|
| I think the example of a gun is an extreme one. A gun on the
| wall isn't just any old background detail, it's going to grab
| the audiences attention, and hold that attention. It's a
| serious distraction, far more than most other background
| details, an ominous threat of violence hanging over every scene
| it's in. Whether you intended that as an author doesn't change
| the fact that this is what it's effect is going to be. If your
| going to put it there, you'd better have a plan for resolving
| the tension it's going to create, whether it gets fired or not.
|
| I'm not sure I entirely buy Checkhov's point as a hard rule,
| sometimes your just doing a bit of world building, but I think
| he chose the example fo a gun on the wall as an extreme
| example. There's no dodging that one.
| bambax wrote:
| > _There literally could be a loaded gun hanging on the wall
| because X is a secluded hunter living in a cabin. Is this then
| a violation of the principle?_
|
| Yes. If the gun doesn't appear anywhere after its first
| mention, then it should not have been described. This is quite
| literally what Chekhov says, and I think he's right.
|
| It works the other way too. In order for a gun to be used in a
| story, it has to have been alluded to before. A character
| cannot suddenly find a gun in their hand and use it in any
| significant manner. If they do, the audience will feel cheated
| and be upset. But avoiding this pitfall is super easy, all one
| has to do is just present the gun a few moments before it is
| needed.
|
| It the final scene of "Sea of love" (1989), Pacino's character
| overpowers the bad guy with an object he finds under the bed.
| This object has been shown to the audience before. If it
| hadn't, the scene would not have worked.
|
| Of course, rules exist to be broken... but do so at your own
| risk.
| earthbee wrote:
| I disagree. Elements in a story should help communicate
| character setting or plot, preferably more than one at the
| same time, but I think it's perfectly fine to introduce
| elements that only communicate setting and/or character
| without being part of the plot. Character and setting are
| important parts of a story.
|
| If something communicated neither character setting or plot
| then it should be cut.
| pvg wrote:
| It makes somewhat more concrete sense when you take into
| account the startling brevity of some of Chekhov's own work. I
| don't think you have to agree with the notion as some universal
| literary principle to appreciate he was a consummate and
| successful adherent to his own advice.
| Igelau wrote:
| I think it's kind of strange that people interpret this as a
| trope/rule/device. It's really just advice from Chekhov.
| dudul wrote:
| I remember watching James Bond movies as a kid. There was always
| this scene where Q gave 007 a handful of cool gadgets, and would
| you know it, by the end of the movie he had used them all! I
| always thought "WTF man, he literally gave him exactly what he
| needed for the movie, not a single one that went unused! What
| were the odds!?"
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Yea, but if Bond didn't use a cool gadget we might have left
| the theater a bit dissapointed?
| dudul wrote:
| For sure. It's just this weird balance between "real life
| realism" and not disappointing the public. I absolutely would
| have been pissed if he had not used the tiny air tank or the
| gas bomb in his suit case and all :-)
| mikewarot wrote:
| In a bit of foreshadowing we saw Chekhov's Gun on the Mantel was
| missing.
|
| We did a hard target search, finding a neologism, but nothing
| else.
|
| It eventually turned out the MacGuffin was just a Red Herring,
| and the whole thing was a Shaggy Dog Story.
| njharman wrote:
| I was disappointed the Wikipedia article didn't have any counter
| views or criticism. Article on concepts typically do.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I thought the reference to Hemingway's mockery of the concept
| was a well done hint that not everyone agrees with the
| principle.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovSGun
|
| There are articles about the other linked concepts as well:
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Foreshadowing
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedHerring
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory
| oceliker wrote:
| The image in the first link points out that there is a literal
| rifle on the wall in Shaun of the Dead. That's a pretty cool
| reference to the origin of Chekhov's gun.
| Sharlin wrote:
| (Edit, sorry. Just an attempt at some dry humor, brought to you
| by the SCP infohazard division.)
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| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Am I on reddit right now?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Sorry if I ruined anyone's weekend...
| Sharlin wrote:
| Nah, I just meant it as a humorous reference to the well-
| known cognitive blackhole properties of TV Tropes.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillR
| uin...
| epidemian wrote:
| Linking to 5 tvtropes pages --5 possibly-very-deep rabbit
| holes-- on a generally nonworking day? Truly diabolic :D
| post-it wrote:
| Not to be confused with
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/ChekovsGun
| flixic wrote:
| One my favorite subversions of this technique is in Mr. Robot,
| with a gun hidden in a popcorn machine. Using of the gun is never
| shown on screen: the show assumes that the person watching
| remembers that a gun was shown and hidden, and allows the
| connection to be made "between the lines". Excellent use of
| Chekhov's Gun, but it only works because of a certain amount of
| TV tropes literacy.
| atoav wrote:
| I think Chekov's gun should be read more as a "don't give things
| a heightened importance if they don't turn out to be important
| for the situation".
|
| What is very bad advice is: "if you show a gun it has to be
| used". If every gun ever shown in any film was used wouldn't this
| destroy the tension? Also guns can take on different functions
| within stories than just a device to kill. They can tell us
| something about the protagonist (how do they react to the
| presence of a gun), they can underline powerful moments (e.g.
| throwing away a gun in a though situation because the character
| gives up etc).
|
| Functionalizing every element of a story is a good way to rob it
| of any life. In art a lot of elements work in different, more
| complex ways than just a functional causal relationship. Think
| about gazes in paintings etc. Things just signifying themselves
| and expressing a general mood can be immensly powerful.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Maybe it takes a certain fleeting frame of mind to enjoy DFW's
| Infinite Jest, but I enjoyed it, and half of it wouldn't be
| possible with Chekhov's Gun applied.
| residualmind wrote:
| https://archer.fandom.com/wiki/Chekhov_Gun
| Vaslo wrote:
| One really great example of this is coughing in films. Once
| someone coughs for no reason, you know they will croak by the end
| of the film.
| namelosw wrote:
| In most of the best-known classic Chinese novels, like "Journey
| to the West", "Water Margin" and "Dream of the Red Chamber",
| there is usually a character that feels very important in the
| first few chapters, then nowhere to be found in the rest of the
| book.
|
| When people reading these novels, most of them wouldn't think of
| those runaway characters because there are many new characters
| and exciting plots. But it just strikes when people start to
| recall the plots sometimes after reading: one of the most
| important characters already foresee all of the conflicts, and
| they just run away and live their life rather than participating
| in the following conflicts.
|
| It turns out, most of the novels are written by frustrated
| scholar-officials. They got burnt out in reality so they wrote
| those novels. Many of them would become hermits and enjoyed their
| life happily after. It sounds escapist but there's some Zen in it
| in the context of Chinese literature.
|
| It feels like "The Shawshank Redemption" when it strikes me that
| the hammer was in the bible, and the most intensive scene was
| presented in a very calm way when people didn't know it.
| TooKool4This wrote:
| That's actually very interesting!
|
| I just got done reading the Three-Body problem which is
| translated from Chinese and there was a very strong escapist
| narrative which felt very strange for a westerner reading it.
|
| This actually adds a lot of context as I felt the book didn't
| live up to the reviews but I felt all along that it was down to
| cultural differences and the translation to English.
| whakim wrote:
| This is a really good insight - the trope of the "frustrated
| scholar-official" is extremely prominent in the Chinese
| literary tradition. That being said, the ideal of "becom[ing]
| hermits and enjoy[ing] their life happily after" was something
| of a literary conceit; in most of the actual literature written
| by people who tried to do this, there's an extremely strong
| tension between the idealized/romanticized apolitical world of
| the hermit, and the reality that farming was very hard labor
| and not something most literati particularly enjoyed. Probably
| the most famous example of this is the poetry of Tao Yuanming.
| (Note: I wrote my Master's thesis on depictions of eremitism in
| ancient/early medieval China.)
| plafl wrote:
| Quite dull. That's why I love The Big Lewobski. It's full of
| irrelevant details. There is a story too but the movie it's about
| the little things.
| wander_homer wrote:
| Yeah, yesterday I watched Star Trek Beyond and I hated all
| those foreshadowing events and almost everything else.
| Spoilers: There's a supposedly useless artifact, which gets a
| big camera zoom when getting archived and oh surprise, it turns
| out to be a weapon of mass destruction. There's a huge space
| station, which gets introduced with long camera shots full of
| happy people and oh surprise, it's about to get attacked later.
| There's some relationship drama and discussion about a stupid
| gift, which later gets used as a tracking device to save
| everyone. The captain notices a motorcycle on a spaceship,
| which later gets used to make a stupid stunt show to save
| everyone. The captain, for no apparent reason, plays a video
| log showing the crew of an old space ship and oh surprise,
| later this video is used to reveal the identity of the villain.
| Some alien found some old music tapes from our time and we get
| to hear them loudly, and of course this music is later used as
| a super weapon to save the day. ...
| joko42 wrote:
| Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| You could say that it's the little things that help to really
| tie the film together (even though they don't really have a
| significant impact on the main plot). In most cases they aid in
| defining the characters.
|
| Jesus being a pederast doesn't have much of an effect on the
| storyline, but it provides context into the background of the
| character, so he's not just merely a competing bowler.
|
| Another example of an even more seemingly irrelevant detail is
| when Jackie Treehorn starts sketching something on a pad upon
| receiving a phone call. When it's revealed to the audience what
| it is, not only is it surprisingly funny, but it hints at who
| Jackie Treehorn is. Maybe he's in his line of business because
| it means more to him than just a lucrative enterprise.
|
| These kinds of "irrelevant details" are fairly common in films
| by the Coen brothers. When I think of their film _Raising
| Arizona_ , I'm pleasantly reminded of how it's revealed that
| the evil nemesis just happens to have that same tattoo as HI.
| bigdict wrote:
| Right but all those things play a role.
| plafl wrote:
| They play a role in a different sense: if you see a rifle it
| may be there because it's going to be fired or maybe because
| the character likes rifles. Could you imagine The Big
| Lebowski without bowling? And yet bowling has nothing to do
| with the story.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| If The Dude was not otherwise occupied listening to bowling
| casettes, Jackie Treenhorn's goons (the rug pissers) might
| not have caught The Dude off guard, and the case of
| mistaken identity (which drives the whole plot) might never
| have occurred.
| samatman wrote:
| If I were to watch a documentary about _The Big Lebowski_ I
| 'd want it to be called _Bowling, Interrupted_.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It's not a universal requirement of "good" writing. Contrast it
| with the shaggy dog style, basically the antithesis of Checkov's
| gun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story
|
| IRL is probably more like the shaggy dog.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Its a polemic really. The terseness and immediacy of Chekhov's
| stories and plays made them 'modern' and set them in contrast
| to older art. It was a very powerful shtick at the time.
|
| Of course today's times are very different. Our lives have so
| much content and immediacy now that is beyond Chekov's
| experience that people seek out exactly the opposite.
|
| Still I think the way he carefully and deliberately constructed
| things has a lot to teach us. In the software world he'd be a
| builder of lean core libraries and a hater of the bloatware
| apps that use them.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Agreed, But:
|
| Wikipedia cites it as a "dramatic principle", not merely a
| style. I've seen it advocated as "the way things should be
| done". That's why I think the contrast is important to note:
| it's not a principal of good writing, it's merely one style
| of telling a story.
| manquer wrote:
| In art there are no absolutes like in management you can always
| find good examples proving the principles wrong.
|
| The principle is more a guideline for new writers not to ramble
| and maintain focus especially if there are word limit
| restrictions typical to published short stories of the era, you
| cannot afford to waste words on things that don't matter to the
| story.
|
| Established authors like Hemmingway or Asimov can get published
| with shaggy dog stories most regular authors cannot.
|
| Even those authors can get a way once in a while, however most
| of the time they too have to follow the principle like everyone
| else too.
| scrame wrote:
| Chekhov Gun discussions always remind me of this Vonnegut
| passage:
|
| "I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the
| painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his
| meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with
| millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice
| Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers
| to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor
| characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it
| had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a
| middle, and an end.
|
| "As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more
| enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my
| countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I
| understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so
| abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing
| their best to live like people invented in story books. This was
| the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a
| convenient literary device for ending short stories and books."
|
| (from Breakfast of Champions, by an author who often tells you
| the end in the beginning and puts the journey in the details)
| jonahx wrote:
| Vonnegut drawing graphs of famous story plots:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ
|
| I saw him do this bit in person in the early 90s and never
| forgot it.
| scrollaway wrote:
| This is fantastic. Do you have a link to the full talk by any
| chance?
| sacado2 wrote:
| 1889. It's so old I don't think it's very relevant for a modern
| fiction author. It's older than 99.99% of popular, genre fiction.
| Older than the cinema, than radio, and than pulp magazines. Even
| Wells hadn't starting writing yet. Conan Doyle had barely
| started. Fiction and storytelling evolved a lot afterwards.
| tmountain wrote:
| Twin Peaks, season 3 is the antithesis of Chekhov's Gun. So many
| false starts and seemingly meaningless dead ends. That said, it
| feels like art, and if your willing to take it as such, it's a
| fun ride. Tightly focused narrative is a reasonable default but
| certainly not a hard and fast rule.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| They seem like points to a season 4 to me
| sdze wrote:
| Good rule that applies well to software development. :-)
| thrown wrote:
| Probably applies well to many things in life
| mongol wrote:
| In the movie Fargo, there is a substory where Marge Gunderson,
| the female police officer, meets with a highschool class mate
| Mike Yanagita. They eat dinner and he makes a romantic advance,
| and she leaves. This substory never made sense to me within the
| general plot of the movie. Should Chekhov's gun have been used,
| or did this episode play a part that I have not realized?
| namdnay wrote:
| When Marge finds out from her friend that nice guy Mike is
| actually an unstable liar, she starts to question whether the
| "nice" Jerry might have similar secrets
| Vaslo wrote:
| Never realized and I've probably seen this movie 100 times. I
| suspect there may have been a little scene that connected the
| two more explicitly but may have been cut. Great information
| - I'll go to Pancakes House now.
| jwilk wrote:
| Another theory is that the scene was included to support the
| impression that this is a "true story":
|
| https://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/fargo-ufo-meaning-
| explanat...
|
| > _the movie says, 'This is a true story.' They put it in
| there because it 'happened.'_
| kkielhofner wrote:
| There's probably slightly more to this. When I was 10 years
| old my family moved from Chicago to a small town in
| Wisconsin. My dad commuted to the city four days a week and
| we still maintained many connections to Chicago. This town
| was about 90 minutes from Chicago (in the Midwest we don't
| measure travel in distance units, we use time). To this day I
| have friends in this town that literally haven't (ever)
| removed their keys from their car and leave it unlocked.
| People also leave the doors to their homes unlocked for
| extended periods of time. I imagine Brainerd was/is very much
| the same.
|
| Growing up I had many, many interactions with people who were
| amazed that not only did my dad travel to Chicago 4x a week,
| my entire family visited Chicago at least once a month. The
| reaction in this small town was something like "Wow, you went
| to CHICAGO last weekend!?!"
|
| Many of these people had never been to the world-class city
| that was 90 minutes away and easily accessible. Especially
| now, with the various high profile news stories coming out of
| Chicago (two police officers shot in the head in the last
| month[0], lots of gun violence, etc) the fear of "the big
| city" is pervasive (and somewhat understandably so). Many
| people view "the big city" as inherently vicious, wicked,
| evil, etc and again, somewhat understandably so (from their
| perspective) especially considering other random acts of
| violence [1]. That said, having never been there Chicago
| seems so distant and otherwordly that it might as well be
| Kabul. Many people (quite literally) view Chicago as a war
| zone. Needless to say, violence and crime to this level are
| (essentially) complete unheard of in small town life.
|
| I think the trip to Minneapolis to visit an old classmate
| reminded Marge of the "wickedness" and "evil" that exists in
| the world and caused her to reframe her thinking and approach
| to people and what they are capable of even though she had
| just seen the bodies of multiple people who had been
| murdered. Especially considering that even as a police
| officer Mike was able to successfully hide the darker
| portions of his life from Marge in their brief interaction
| even though most people would know immediately that something
| wasn't right with him. Marge likely had a realization that
| her "small town" perspective (and resulting approach to
| interviews, investigation, etc) needed to be re-framed. This
| can be seen in her subsequent interview with Jerry where she
| is much more aggressive and skeptical.
|
| [0] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-2-officer
| s-s...
|
| [1] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chase-bank-teller-
| stab...
| mongol wrote:
| Here is the scene of that interview. That is some stellar
| acting!
|
| https://youtu.be/u4Je2WxsqWA
| mongol wrote:
| Ok, I never realized that. I think I need to see it again ...
| bnralt wrote:
| I never really liked Chekhov's Gun, as it tends to make the world
| feel artificial and barren. Details unrelated to the story at
| hand make the world feel much more vibrant and interesting. It
| gets worse as a story's length increases - for instance TV shows
| that go on for years where the main characters only seem to have
| relationships with 5-6 other people in the entire world.
|
| Of course there's a separate issue where a fictional work will
| artificially emphasize the importance of something and then
| ignore it. For example, people say something's impossible, then
| there's a close up shot of someone's face, he slowly says "It's
| not...I know a guy" and loud dramatic music starts playing.
| There, the creators are telling the audience that this is
| something important, and it will be odd if it's not followed
| through (though even then, I've seen some creators not follow
| through in interesting ways).
| xaedes wrote:
| "The Room", by Tommy Wiseau, is a movie where Chekhov's gun isn't
| applied. It contains lots of small happenings with no further
| relevance. It has lots of other issues, technically speaken.
|
| But together they make this film not only amateurish, but it also
| gives it a certain kind of realism. In real life stuff happens
| and still may have no further relevance to the "story" after all.
| In real life there is nobody enforcing Chekhov's gun.
|
| Together with the other charming mistakes and bad acting the film
| feels quite authentic. It gives this impression that someone just
| wanted to tell his story, despite not being as professional as we
| are used to. Like a little child coming home from playing in the
| woods that excitetly blabbers out the story of what he just
| experienced.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| Same with the Big Lebowski, but in a much more deliberate (and
| professional) way. The Dude, imagining himself in a film noir
| story, thinks that every detail is some clue relevant to
| Bunny's disappearance, but turns out to be completely
| irrelevant: the guy following the Dude in the VW, the essay in
| the Dude's car, Jackie Treehorn's note, etc. Instead, basically
| every single event in the movie after exposition is a red
| herring when it turns out that the Dude's initial hunch that
| Bunny kidnapped herself was true all along.
| mason55 wrote:
| The Coens do it a lot, in fact it's basically the entirety of
| Inside Llewyn Davis.
| epilys wrote:
| Well, he _was_ on a strict drug regiment during the whole
| thing.
| [deleted]
| enkid wrote:
| But some of those things that are dropped don't make any sense
| to have no impact on the characters, like someone having
| cancer. It's just mentioned and never brought up again.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I think I see the argument for why that's 'charming', but
| I've seen far more enjoyable media that does it better.
|
| Details that build characters is good. X has cancer is fine,
| albeit heavyhanded. Certainly enough of a characterization to
| work in low-plot action movies for example.
|
| Not everything needs to be relevant to the plot. But I'm not
| convinced that a 2 hour movie has the room for this kind of
| storytelling.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > charming mistakes
|
| One character being played by three different actors (either
| that, or three characters being so similar I confused them as
| the same character despite being three different actors) is
| hardly charming IMO.
|
| Longer form stories, such as Game of Thrones (where Azor Ahai,
| and other such plotlines are literally killed off) are probably
| more entertaining. It sucks to see a fan theory turn out to not
| matter at all, but not everything ends up being relevant to the
| conclusion.
|
| I don't think a 2 or 3 hour movie has any room to dwell on
| unimportant details. Anime and miniseries do have that time. We
| can watch Goku mess around with Princess Snake or Krillen get
| his Namekian power up (which doesn't matter for any fight, but
| is good development for the character in isolation).
|
| That's probably the charm of Cowboy Bebop. There's so much
| detail and none of it really matters. The interesting story
| happened like 10 years ago (in universe time). That's be my
| pick for a show / story with very little Chekhov gun going on.
|
| -----
|
| Chekhov gun is probably contrasted with Red Herring, which is
| explicitly a detail that not only doesn't matter, but purely
| exists to mislead the audience. Any Chekhov gun heavy plot
| needs red herrings to balance things out, otherwise it's too
| predictable.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " Red Herring, which is explicitly a detail that not only
| doesn't matter, but purely exists to mislead the audience."
|
| There is also the McGuffin which _appears_ to matter, but
| exists entirely to elicit character action. For instance, in
| "Psycho" the plot line about the stolen money is dropped
| almost as soon as it is established, but it did its job by
| getting Marion on the run and into the motel.
| mbreese wrote:
| The MacGuffin isn't just there to elicit a response
| though... it's a primary motivator for the characters. It's
| usually (but not always) a physical object, but that
| matters less than the fact that the characters are trying
| to obtain it (usually unsuccessfully). It's also rarely
| explained -- it is an object that simply exists.
|
| Hitchcock loved the MacGuffin, but Psycho isn't the example
| I'd use. The money in Psycho is a useful plot device, but
| is not a MacGuffin. Money is too common ofna motivation.
| The briefcase in Pulp Fiction (which is of unexplained
| importance, but clearly something they want to obtain) is a
| classic example of a MacGuffin.
| self_buddliea wrote:
| With regards to Pulp Fiction, is the Gold Watch another
| MacGuffin?
| dragontamer wrote:
| The Pulp Fiction briefcase is more of a "pure MacGuffin",
| where the film director / scriptwriters are playing with
| the concept of MacGuffin more than actually using it as
| its intended purpose.
|
| After all, its a Tarantino film. He basically expects the
| audience to be familiar with film theory (or at minimum:
| expects the audience to already be familiar with "typical
| plotlines").
|
| ----------
|
| Your typical action movie / popcorn movies: Raiders of
| the Lost Arc (The Arc of the Covenant), Mission
| Impossible (The Rabbit's Foot), and Men In Black (Orion's
| Belt), and pretty much every James Bond movie, has
| MacGuffins galore and are better examples of it.
|
| The scriptwriter doesn't care about the MacGuffin. But a
| well written story has the __audience__ care deeply about
| it. Otherwise, the escalation and conflict has no
| purpose. Pulp Fiction / Tarantino used the briefcase as
| an exercise in how to make the audience care for an
| object, despite never really explaining why that object
| is the center of all this conflict.
|
| -----------
|
| Golden Fleece, Apples of the Hesperides (aka: Heracle's
| 11th task), Holy Grail. It doesn't really matter what
| these objects do, we just use them as storytelling
| devices to get the characters thrust into conflict.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| the Pulp Fiction briefcase is actually a deconstructed
| MacGuffin, stripped of everything except the plot device
| itself - no explanation for why it's important, no
| inherent meaning, no payoff, just a thing that drives the
| plot. A lot of Tarantino's work has this kind of
| postmodern element to it.
| mbreese wrote:
| I don't know if I agree that the audience needs to care
| about the MacGuffin for it to be a well written story
| though. I think in some circumstances it can help, but
| it's not _necessary_ (or sufficient) for a good story.
|
| I mean, I read that Lucas thought of R2D2 as the
| MacGuffin of "A New Hope", and thought that it was
| important for the audience to care deeply about him. And
| it worked. However, as a film device, I think it's more
| important that the audience cares that the protagonist
| cares about the MacGuffin. I still don't know why I
| should care about the Maltese Falcon, but I know that
| Bogart certainly cared. And for me, that was enough to
| make the story compelling.
|
| I do agree though about Pulp Fiction. The briefcase was a
| very meta reference where the audience is assumed to know
| what is going on. And in that case it helped to provide a
| common thread through the different plot lines. But from
| a higher level, it was done with a wink and a nod to the
| audience. It was basically using the MacGuffin as a foil
| to use as the "typical linear storyline" when what
| Tarantino was really doing was playing with time lines
| and points of view.
| vlunkr wrote:
| The movie that comes to mind for me is Napoleon Dynamite. My
| first impression was that it was just aimless slapstick, but
| really it's about a group of misfits becoming friends. The
| events that lead there sometimes pay off and are sometimes are
| seemingly random. This really makes it feel charming and
| realistic.
| justsomeuser wrote:
| I also think that the rifle can "set the frame" for the
| character or scenario.
|
| E.g. that the character is the kind of person who owns guns.
|
| It does not go off or get used, but the viewer will use that as
| input to make a judgement about the character.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Gun isn't literal here. Gun is a metaphor for details; if the
| details don't serve the plot (if the gun doesn't go off) then
| the details should be removed (don't show the gun)
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| Maybe the rifle/gun is just a bad example today? I watch
| movies all the time where there are guns or rifles which does
| not gow off. And I sure don't feel like some promise was
| broken.
| pavlov wrote:
| Chekhov used this example of a rifle on the wall in 1889,
| years before the invention of the movie camera.
|
| It shouldn't be taken as advice on movie production design.
| goto11 wrote:
| In good writing, details serve multiple purposes. Just
| showing a gun because it will be used later will seem ham-
| fisted to an audience. A good writer will introduce the gun
| as a character moment _and_ as setup.
| chris_j wrote:
| One of the things that made Quentin Tarantino's early films,
| particularly Pulp Fiction, such a breath of fresh air is that
| they did this with abandon. John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson
| would chat away about McDonald's in France or whether or not
| they were prepared to eat pork and it was of no consequence
| whatsoever to subsequent events, other than to give characters
| a bit more depth. Too many films and novels have things happen
| for no other reason than that the plot is going to require it
| in the next act and it's great when a writer takes a different
| approach.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Speaking of that movie, I can recommend anyone who is familiar
| with The Room, but who hasn't seen The Room, to watch the movie
| The Disaster Artist (2017) instead. I've only watched the
| latter and not The Room itself but watching the latter instead
| was a nice experience.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521126/
|
| The Disaster Artist is based on the book "The Disaster Artist:
| My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made" by
| Greg Sestero, and it's got James Franco portraying Tommy.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| I had high expectations for that movie but it didn't turn out
| as good as I expected.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > In real life there is nobody enforcing Chekhov's gun.
|
| Of course not. Which is sort of the point. We already have real
| life. Stories are something different. Checkov's gun isn't a
| statement of some kind of platonic ideal of fiction
| construction, it's a _convention_. We like stories with
| "tight" framing because it's easier to watch and keeps our
| attention on the things that matter. And that's all it means.
|
| You can tell other kinds of stories. Art is art. But if you
| want people to _like_ your stories (or whatever other artwork
| you 're producing) you'll probably be better served y adhering
| to convention and violating it in small, targetted ways than
| you will be throwing out long-held standard assumptions.
|
| (Note that the fact that these conventions exist is itself
| ammunition for creativity, btw. A "realist" story where nothing
| necessarily matters is going to have a very hard time
| delivering a creative twist at the end. A conventional plot,
| though, can leverage the fact that the audience is conditioned
| to expect things based on rules like Chekhov's, and subvert
| those in interesting ways.)
| watwut wrote:
| I don't think that rule expresses universal truth. These
| rules come and go. You have great writers who wrote famous
| books which don't follow these Storytelling that follows then
| becomes boring and predictable when they are widely used.
|
| The junk adventure/vampire what not literature tend to follow
| all the structural rules and is as forgettable as it gets.
|
| The argument with real life matter. Because when your
| storytelling rules make it impossible to tell real stories,
| then there is something wrong with them.
| antattack wrote:
| Chekhov's gun treatment can remove an element of surprise, or
| worse, reveal whole plot-line. It's a convention that is an
| art in itself, too much and too little can ruin the
| experience.
| nicbou wrote:
| Properly blending it in is a form of art, and a surprise in
| itself. For example, [spoilers] the rock hammer in The
| Shawshank Redemption, or more literally, the rifle on the
| wall in Shaun Of The Dead. A good gun makes you go
| "oooooh!"
|
| On the other hand, building up readers' expectations with
| details that turn out to be irrelevant is just deception.
| See the last season of Game of Thrones, for instance. All
| those characters that were carefully built over the last
| seasons get discarded without any explanation.
|
| There's sometimes stuff like that in Tarantino movie, like
| the outlaw lady in Django.
| mmaunder wrote:
| It's also celebrated as the worst film ever made.
| poetaster wrote:
| Probably suicidal to say so, but I thought I made the most
| awful films. https://poetaster.de/vendetta
| morganvachon wrote:
| I've never seen _The Room_ so my opinion may change if I ever
| do, but there is another movie that I have seen (though only
| by proxy of MST3K) called _Manos: The Hands of Fate_ that
| also has been referred to as the worst movie ever made, and I
| wholeheartedly agree.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manos:_The_Hands_of_Fate
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Not to be confused with "Room", which I recommend.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(2015_film)
| mrec wrote:
| The one that always gets me is Luke's lightsaber in the
| original _Star Wars_. It 's introduced as a connection to the
| father he never knew, making it hugely significant. There's a
| whole scene on the _Falcon_ of Ben training him to use it. And
| then he never takes it out again for the remainder of the
| movie.
| LanceH wrote:
| He has blinders on and is learning to use the force, which he
| does use again. _his_ lightsaber isn 't used again, but they
| are used again in a master's fight.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Wow I never realized that. Did they already intend to film a
| sequel and call back to his lightsaber, or was that just a
| random detail they worked in later?
| mrec wrote:
| Lucas definitely had sequels in mind, but it was very much
| in doubt whether the movie would succeed. There was an
| official sequel novel by Alan Dean Foster called _Splinter
| of the Mind 's Eye_ released in '78, which was explicitly
| designed to be filmable on a very low budget if the
| original didn't do too well. That does feature Luke
| duelling Vader with his saber.
| jhbadger wrote:
| It also (rather uncomfortably in light of later
| revelations) features Luke & Leia as a romantic couple!
| Apparently Lucas signed off on Foster's manuscript, so he
| hadn't had the idea that they were siblings yet.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Luke and Leia were teased as a romantic couple in Empire,
| she kissed him on the lips to draw Han's ire, and then
| it's hinted that she's his sister in the final scene of
| Dagobah/when he calls out to her via the force. The
| incest thing is something that Lucas was deliberately
| playing with, whether Splinter took that into account or
| not.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| How do you get "deliberately" from that?
|
| The comment you're replying to is correct; there's plenty
| of evidence that Lucas made up both the plots and crucial
| details of all the Star Wars films as he went along,
| rather than plotting it all out in advance. Telling
| people he had, or at least allowing them to believe so,
| was just another inspired marketing trick.
| zuminator wrote:
| Even though _Luke_ never uses his saber again, its
| introduction and exposition gives some heft to the later
| fight between Kenobi and Vader.
| [deleted]
| xattt wrote:
| You see this in lots of long-play shows/properties. Adventure
| Time comes to mind. A number of seemingly irrelevant details
| become central to the main plot in much later episodes
| (years/seasons later).
|
| I am wondering, however, whether there is some sort of plot
| bible that lives with the "keepers" of the storyline, or
| whether some details are just randomly sprinkled here and
| there as hooks with the hope that writers will weave them
| into the future plot.
|
| Either way, this type of writing is extremely rewarding to
| long-time fans of a show.
| JadeNB wrote:
| _Archer_ is also known for this sort of thing.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2015-03-21-massive-archer-easter-
| eg...
| dcow wrote:
| As someone who constructs imagery in their head while reading for
| leisure, these details help maintain immersion and are anything
| but irrelevant. Imagine a Redwall novel without the craving
| inducing feasts! Are there any e.g. fantasy novels where
| Chekhov's gun is applied?
| SergeAx wrote:
| How many Trekkies were clickbaited here?
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| Obligatory Star Trek trivia: in "Spectre of the Gun", from the
| original series, Chekov finds a six-shooter pistol at the
| beginning of the show, making it a literal Checkhov's Gun.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_of_the_Gun (Warning: this
| was not one of the better ST-TOS shows)
| jsilence wrote:
| Good luck applying this to the "Lost" series!
| odiroot wrote:
| Or last two seasons of Game of Thrones.
| blago wrote:
| They were serial offenders.
| avindroth wrote:
| I wonder how much this principle holds with respect to real life
| stories, which is filled with irrelevant details. Of course you
| can render true stories to have a dramatic version.
| neals wrote:
| Real life stories are never really done, any small detail can
| still eventually come back as a main feature.
| mlang23 wrote:
| As a rough guide for new woke hollywoold this might be useful.
| For as a general principle applied to everything? Nah. I can
| imagine pretty dull movies where everything that happens can
| already been projected into the future. Remember these movies
| where you can say after 10 minutes: "She is going to get in
| trouble, and he is going to rescue her and get her at the end."
| Those are fucking dull.
| goto11 wrote:
| The principle is older that Hollywood itself, so I don't know
| what it has to do with "new woke"?
| umvi wrote:
| Huh? Chekhov's Gun has been around for decades, not sure what
| "new woke Hollywood" has anything to do with it.
|
| Camera zooms in on a pistol that someone pockets. Therefore,
| that pistol will be used later.
|
| It happens in nearly every movie made since the 60s.
| Borrible wrote:
| "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't
| going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to
| keep." Anton Chekhov
|
| Reality is full of false promises. So why not in fiction as well,
| Mr. Chekhov?
|
| Why does an author owe his readers consistency or coherence? Make
| it Lynchian. People love to puzzle over mysteries.
|
| Just sell it as one.As a mystery. They'll build in the wrong and
| unnecessary parts themselves.
| goto11 wrote:
| _Especially_ mysteries need to be coherent and consistent,
| otherwise the audience will just feel cheated. In a mystery
| every detail matter.
|
| > Reality is full of false promises. So why not in fiction as
| well, Mr. Chekhov?
|
| Well, as Mark Twain said: _It 's no wonder that truth is
| stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense._
|
| Of course a false promise is fine, as long as you subvert the
| expectations with something more interesting. But just adding
| details with no purpose is bad writing.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| George Saunders' _A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In which Four
| Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life_ [1]
| is highly recommended. I thought I had a good idea of how to read
| a short story before reading this book. I was wrong. Saunders
| (with the help of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol) show how
| it's done - and in so doing also show how to write a short story.
|
| [1] https://www.georgesaundersbooks.com/books/a-swim-in-a-
| pond-i...
| iddan wrote:
| At least in Israeli media. This principle has become a cliche
| quoted in countless works
| lovemenot wrote:
| Israel needs stricter Chekhov's gun control.
| watwut wrote:
| How to make stories predictable, part 12. Every time I read these
| rules, I get closer to understanding why professional
| storytelling is so often boring and predictable these days.
| Razengan wrote:
| This seems like the antithesis of worldbuilding.
| ape4 wrote:
| In a movie this doesn't work. If only the gun is important a
| living room would have no furniture, carpet, curtains, etc.
| umvi wrote:
| I think it's more like "if the camera zooms in on it or
| otherwise draws attention to it".
|
| If everyone leaves the room and the camera zooms in on a piece
| of furniture then you would expect that piece of furniture to
| have some sort of importance or role to play later. If, as a
| character is leaving a room, a piece of trash falls out of
| their pocket and the camera focuses on that piece of trash then
| you expect that detail to be important to the plot later.
| croes wrote:
| This principle kills surprises because a soon you see the rifle
| you know what will happen. A little bit of misleading is not a
| bad thing.
| watt wrote:
| A cough means blood in the napkin. Blood means cancer. If a
| character coughs, they die.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| This is thoroughly ridiculed in A Series of Unfortunate
| Events (the Netflix TV series and presumably also the books
| that they're based on). (Mild spoiler alert) The bank manager
| has a noticeable cough the whole way through. If anything it
| gets worse and other characters comment on it, and it seems
| for sure that it will be a plot point. Of course, it
| ultimately comes to nothing.
| 1986 wrote:
| Mitchell & Webb did this even quicker with "A Man who has a
| Cough and it's just a Cough and he's Fine": > A woman,
| called Kylie, repeatedly exits a train, as a man greets
| her, who has a cough. The cough gets worse, until one time
| Kylie leaves the train to find no-one there. She believes
| he has died of TB, but he walks up behind her, stating "No,
| it was just a cough."
| amelius wrote:
| Also, this makes stories different from real-life. The famous
| quote "a reader lives a thousand lives" is thus not true.
| ben_w wrote:
| I attended a talk from _Digger_ webcomic author and artist
| Ursula Vernon, and she seemed to have a different approach. If
| I remember right, she said that instead of planning the whole
| thing in advance and placing specific Chekhov's Guns as needed,
| she put in a lot of small detailed world building everywhere,
| allowing her to choose from whatever seemed appropriate at the
| time.
|
| Chekhov's Guns are important for short stories (which is what
| Chekhov was famous for), but short stories are not the only
| type of fiction and they don't fit everywhere.
| goto11 wrote:
| Chekhov wrote short stories and plays. It is harder to apply
| the same principle to serialized narratives like tv-shows and
| comics, since you don't know how everything pans out and you
| cant go back and edit.
| pvg wrote:
| _On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up
| at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop
| was coming on. He 'd dreamed he was going through a grove of
| timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an
| instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt
| completely spattered with bird shit_
|
| 'knowing what will happen' is not in itself a limit on good
| literature. You know what's going to happen in every
| Shakespeare play long before you've seen or read it.
| mcphage wrote:
| "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
| for people unfamiliar. It's a very good short book.
| [deleted]
| bambax wrote:
| Surprise is overrated. Suspense is superior. The best
| explanation of the difference is given by Hitchcock in an
| interview with Truffaut.
|
| We see two characters talking for 45 seconds. Then a bomb goes
| off, that was under the table. The audience didn't know there
| was a bomb: big surprise; but the dialogue between the
| characters is completely irrelevant and eclipsed by the
| explosion.
|
| Now imagine the same scene, but before, we see a terrorist
| placing the bomb under the table. Now the scene is totally
| different, and every word that comes out of one of the
| characters' mouth is fascinating. Does either one of them know
| about the bomb? Will they find out in time? Will they survive?
| Etc.
|
| Suspense > surprise.
| Grimm665 wrote:
| Inglorious Basterds does this very well, its opening scene is
| very close to what you describe, as well as a number of other
| scenes in the film.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| That is interesting, I hadn't thought of that before.
|
| I think a recent series which bucked this trend was For All
| Mankind. Rather than building suspense, bad stuff just
| happened with no warning. And it wasn't a jump scare, it just
| happened. The entertainment for me then came from the
| characters reactions and how the plot then unfolded.
|
| I actually class it as one of the best shows I've seen. I
| feel it managed to be very wholesome while also having some
| major emotional highs and lows. In particular, it didn't
| build drama just for the sake of keeping the audience
| engaged.
|
| I could talk about that show for ages.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I don't but that one is better than the other: you surely
| need both for a good story.
| croes wrote:
| You see a man putting a bag under a table. Two man arrive,
| sitting at the table, you wait for the bomb to explode
| because the bag must have a meaning. The meeting ends, the
| men stand up, one is killed by headshot.
|
| And your scene depends on the characters. Is one the main
| character? Highly unlikely he get killed.
|
| It's even worse if it's a TV series. Main character is
| strapped to a bomb? No problem. Guest star is strapped to a
| bomb? Might get killed. Unknown supporting role strapped to a
| bomb? Sure death. I think that was part of GoT's success.
| Surprise deaths. And nudity of course.
|
| If everything has a meaning even the chosen actor is
| important. Known actor in a minor role? Surely gets
| important.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >I think that was part of GoT's success.
|
| At the beginning of the show. A few seasons in, lots of
| people developed plot armor.
| co2benzoate wrote:
| By that point the show was popular enough for them not to
| need a compelling story or nudity; fans would watch
| either way.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| yet in OPs example, the "surprise" consists of a threat not
| being enactioned, therefore it is an instrument of suspense
| krsdcbl wrote:
| I'd argue that if the gun is shown to lead the audience on, but
| it not beeing fired is a twist to the plot or a relevant
| conclusion, then in the sense of the metaphor it still "has
| gone off"
| goto11 wrote:
| No, it just tells you that _somebody_ will fire the rifle at
| some point. This increases tension but does not really tell you
| much about what is going to happen except it is going to get
| dangerous and violent.
| zaat wrote:
| Salman Rushdie is an example of a master writer who will eat
| this cake and still have it. He often states preety early in
| the book something like "this was Y, X's wife, who will later
| kill him in his sleep, in his room, with a bread knife", and
| when the time of killing comes he will still manage to surprise
| you.
| Igelau wrote:
| This reminded me of a particularly grisly character
| introduction in Cormac McCarthy's _Blood Meridian_. It 's
| played to the opposite effect where it's not going to be a
| surprise at all. It's hardly even suspenseful, but hangs
| another helping of dread over the story.
|
| > Toadvine glanced at the man's forehead but the man's hat
| was pushed down almost to his eyes. The man smiled and forked
| the hat back slightly with his thumb. The print of the
| hatband lay on his forehead like a scar but there was no mark
| other. Only on the inside of his lower arm was there tattooed
| a number which Toadvine would see in a Chihuahua bathhouse
| and again when he would cut down the man's torso where it
| hung skewered by its heels from a treelimb in the wastes of
| Pimeria Alta in the fall of that year.
|
| It's not really the gun on the wall, the bread knife, or the
| tattoo. It's the narrator revealing a kind of untrustworthy
| omniscience by spoiling future details of the story.
| michalbugno wrote:
| Also in "Russian guns" category:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alekhine%27s_gun
| vinceguidry wrote:
| I recall an instance when I was doing improv classes where we
| were doing freeform scenes with a partner with a given input.
| When the scene began, I tried to engage with my scene partner,
| but she kept saying 'leave me' in response to anything I said.
| After giving it three chances, I exited stage left, end scene.
|
| Our instructor then explained the scene with, "anytime something
| is talked about three times in a scene or play, it pretty much is
| immediately invoked into being."
|
| Nothing was better for me in helping me understand the art of
| storytelling than the 6 months or so I spent there. You hear
| about the 'rules of stories' and whatnot, but it's not until I
| was up on stage, grappling with it, that that whole world started
| opening up. I don't know anything better other than actually
| studying it in school.
|
| Ignoring the rules just makes for harder-to-watch scenes, you
| just can't make sense of the why.
| Ariez wrote:
| Has anyone read Infinite Jest?
|
| The whole book feels like Chekhovs gun but it is fun to read!
|
| (I haven't finished it)
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