• V0ldek@awful.systems
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    19 hours ago

    My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there’s fat chance it’s universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.

    Like I can’t imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that “Someone trapped this chest!” instead of the 100% more natural “This chest was trapped!”

    • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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      19 hours ago

      @V0ldek That’s an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I’ve lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)