Comment by mewse
Comment by mewse 3 days ago
I can't stop thinking about this throwaway parenthetical at the start of the blog post:
> [...] for many writers, writing a book is about the last thing they should do (unless they feel a book bursting out of them, much like a facehugger).
Now, as we all know, the aliens that burst out of people in the Aliens franchise are called 'chestbursters'. "Facehuggers", by comparison, are hatched from alien eggs.
So in this metaphor, since we're told that novels are facehuggers, the writers must be the eggs. And by process of elimination, we can deduce that the innocent starship crewmembers being attacked by facehuggers (novels) are innocent readers.
The metaphor actually contradicts the author's main thesis, since every egg (writer) does in fact contain a facehugger (novel). But contrariwise, all the human characters (the rest of us) would be much better off if those novels just stayed inside the writers and didn't insist on being written or read.
Metaphors are like scissors; they're twice as much fun when you run with them!
Considering how tooth-achingly boring the original post is, this is the best kind of feedback for it.