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eke out
Feb 24, 2013



Cardiac posted:

It was ok.
For some reason I felt I had read it before, cause the story seemed familiar.

yeah i like gladstone a lot (and have not read anything by el-mohtar), but it felt more like them cleverly solving the problem they created with the alternating epistolary structure than really making a novel with characters i cared about.

it was fun and clever but i'm not sure it was good.

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Drone
Aug 22, 2003

Incredible machine
:smug:


professor metis posted:

now this, this is a Good Book

I'm super duper enjoying it and I'm really sad that the last few days have been too hectic for me to take some time to sit down and just binge the thing. I'm about a third of the way through and really liking it a whole lot.

Apparatchik Magnet
Sep 25, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The_White_Crane posted:

Yes.
I found the prose very strange in a way I can't quite describe. I think it felt almost as though it had odd pacing on a very small scale; like sometimes it would skip back and forth between describing events in great, image-heavy detail and summarising fairly large movements or actions in a few words.

I think it had a weird feel to it, but I was ok with it. Like a less bonkers Library at Mount Char?

That comparison doesn't really make any sense when I think about it, but it's what my subconscious kicked up.

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Apparatchik Magnet posted:

I think it had a weird feel to it, but I was ok with it. Like a less bonkers Library at Mount Char?

That comparison doesn't really make any sense when I think about it, but it's what my subconscious kicked up.

No, I kind of get what you mean. But I do feel like Library at Mount Char was intentionally disorienting, where Steel Frame feels a bit like it needed editing/reworking in some sections to make things more clear. Like I said, I can't say it's hurting my enjoyment of the book (though I'm finding my mind wanders more than normal when I'm reading) but it was weird enough that I was curious if I was the only one experiencing it.

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

MockingQuantum posted:

Has anybody else read Steel Frame and felt like it's kind of weirdly written? Not badly, just... I feel like there are sections of the book where I'm flat out missing information or narration, or actions are happening that aren't fully explained, to the point where it's very occasionally hard to follow what's going on. Maybe it's just me, and it's not really negatively affecting my enjoyment of the book, but I feel like I occasionally have to re-read the same passage a couple of times to parse what's going on.

That’s kind of how I feel reading through Neuromancer at the moment

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
Is there a primer or cliff notes to reading Ninefox Gambit? I'm 1/3rd of the way through the book and still nothing makes sense in any way about the world. I feel like I'm reading a dairy of someone from an alternative universe where the rules of reality are totally different.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

nessin posted:

Is there a primer or cliff notes to reading Ninefox Gambit? I'm 1/3rd of the way through the book and still nothing makes sense in any way about the world. I feel like I'm reading a dairy of someone from an alternative universe where the rules of reality are totally different.

That's because you are. Treat it like fantasy: people can do magic only if their society sticks to a strict set of rituals on their calendar.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

StrixNebulosa posted:

That's because you are. Treat it like fantasy: people can do magic only if their society sticks to a strict set of rituals on their calendar.

I've read plenty of Sci-Fi & Fantasy, a book doesn't have to explain that people can conjure fire from their hands if it doesn't want to, but people still swing swords at each other, live in towns or castles, and believe in gods. I don't have to literally wonder if stuff is so screwed up do they even sit down to take a poo poo. Does mathematical calculation and poo poo happens isn't even that bad, until suddenly it's the existence of mathematical calculations somehow made people immortal, and somehow heresy to a calendar becomes reality altering extinction event. There isn't enough in the book that I'm still not sure is the Fortress in question an actual building, some sort of space station, or a day of the week?

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Also geometry (troop/ship formations) literally creates magic powers, which the book calls "exotic effects" or something. It's more science fantasy than science fiction so it might be easier to think of in that sense because a lot of things in the books just don't adhere to scientific reality, even setting aside exotic magic stuff. I think Lee wrote a blog post or something explaining that it was a conscious choice to ignore stuff like relativity in favor of spacemagic.

And yeah, what Strix said comes up a whole lot, and the book will refer to calendrical zones and calendrical rot, that's all related to people literally observing (or not, in the case of rot) the same calendar of rituals and feast days.

I know a couple of people who felt the houses can also be confusing and hard to keep track of, but don't worry about it too much, there are two (sort of three) of them that are actually important to the story, the other three will be mentioned occasionally but you don't need to memorize what their significance is or anything.

edit: I had my issues with the trilogy but this:

nessin posted:

I don't have to literally wonder if stuff is so screwed up do they even sit down to take a poo poo. Does mathematical calculation and poo poo happens isn't even that bad, until suddenly it's the existence of mathematical calculations somehow made people immortal, and somehow heresy to a calendar becomes reality altering extinction event. There isn't enough in the book that I'm still not sure is the Fortress in question an actual building, some sort of space station, or a day of the week?

wasn't one of them, for me. The books aren't going to explain a whole lot of the calendrical effects (other than "thing A happens because of the High Calendar") so if you''re hoping for explanation, there's not really one coming. By extension I'm not sure you'll find cliffnotes. There might be a wiki up somewhere that has some details about the houses but beyond that I'm not sure what to tell you, other than I'm not sure you're going to enjoy the books if those things are bothering you right out of the gate. I'm not trying to be dismissive here, the book isn't everybody's cup of tea and it notoriously doesn't explain a whole lot of the calendar effects to more than a shallow degree. It throws less of that at you as the book goes on and the second and third book don't have as much space magic in them, but it all sort of trades on the reader's willingness to just go with the whole "High Calendar gives you magic powers" concept.

MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 18, 2019

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
Let me lay out a better example of what my problem is, when Cheris is picked to have the space ghost planted in her there is a scene with her talking to her troops about the decision. That scene involves a lot of poo poo in a short space of time, where apparently because she's moving on the whole unit will be torn down "per doctrine" (whatever that means) and some will be stripped of something which gives them their Kel-ness (again, whatever that means because despite being a faction it's something you choose if you meet the qualifications and aren't born into) which some of them indicate as being almost like a punishment or loss. Does that effect Cheris beyond a moment that can sort of be interpreted as sadness? Unclear. Maybe that whole scene isn't meant to show anything, in which case why does it exist? Especially in a short book. But if it does exist and is supposed to mean something, like maybe a internal conflict about her choice in the future, then it's completely unreadable. Was there some sort of genetic modification to give the Kel their supposed instinct? Unclear. And even if so, why does space ghosts addition gently caress that up? There is zero reference for any of this poo poo, and none of it is explained in even the most barebones detail.

I've got no clue who Cheris is, what she's feeling is supposed to mean, how she fits into society, or anything. If she's not supposed to mean anything for the story that's great, but I'm sure in the next 200 pages their will be plenty of supposed character development that's going to feel like it fell flat on it's head because I've got no reference for who or what Cheris is supposed to be, someone in that world might but I exist in this one where I need some clues as to what's right, wrong, normal, not normal, etc...

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Everything you need to understand Ninefox is given to you right on the page. There aren’t any mysteries or puzzle boxes to solve, you won’t need to deduce calendrical mechanics to understand some big decision. It’ll tell you what you need to know. If something confuses you, ignore it and keep going.

People have power where their calendar is observed. The hexarchate’s calendar is called the High Calendar. Heretics who don’t obey the high calendar are a threat. Cheris is a Kel, they have formation instinct, it means you basically have no free will when given orders. The other five factions have their own gimmicks.

Like there’s no deeper mystery to ‘how is Jedao attached to Cheris as her shadow.’ That’s it, he’s her shadow now. What’s a threshold winnower? It’s a weapon that winnows you if you’re near a threshold and if they use it they’ll explain. Everyone I talk to who finds Ninefox confusing seems to think they’re supposed to be figuring out the whole world but really it’s giving you what you need. You don’t have to decode secret messages.

Ceebees
Nov 2, 2011

I'm intentionally being as verbose as possible in negotiations for my own amusement.

The unit isn't being torn down 'per doctrine, whatever that means', it's being torn down because they obeyed Cheris' borderline heretical orders. If she had stayed (or been allowed to stay), maybe she could have defended them, but those orders that doomed her troops made her useful to her commanders (as a space ghost holder). Also, this implies that her superiors would have preferred that her unit be slaughtered rather than deviate from said doctrine - as far as being 'good Kel' goes, the ones that rebelled against her and had to be executed were "correct". The troops being sad isn't there to make you ask why, it's there to tell you that being 'processed by Doctrine' is a bad thing that worries even people who cheerfully march face-first into magic death lasers and commit mid-battle fratricide over quibbles of theology. It's never made extremely clear how the Kel are modified, but you're supposed to get a sense over the course of the book of the ways in which they've been intentionally twisted from normal people into a soldier caste for an insane fundamentalist empire. (And, to a lesser degree, the madnesses of every caste.)

And from all of this, one interprets that Cheris is a maverick, an unusual talent who adapts to changing rules and uses them to her benefit in a society where the idea that the rules can change at all is heresy. Yet, at the same time, she isn't far enough outside the mold to actually resist when the toll for her decisions comes due - she regrets that the empire is wasting her troops that did nothing but obey her orders, but in the end is as resigned to her fate as they are to theirs.

The words don't make sense, but the points they're trying to get across aren't that complicated. In the end, Ninefox isn't a book about weird technology and space magic. It's about broken people and why they do the things they do, and the rest is just window dressing. And if that's not something that interests you or clicks with you, then that's perfectly valid.



They are in space though, they explicitly say that at some point. The Fortress is a space station.

Ceebees fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Nov 18, 2019

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Ironically I liked Ninefox the most out of all three books in large part due to how much poo poo it just threw at the reader, it felt like a really unique setting to me, and the other two books didn't quite have the same impact for me (though admittedly both were more plot- and character-driven than setting-driven)

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

MockingQuantum posted:

Ironically I liked Ninefox the most out of all three books in large part due to how much poo poo it just threw at the reader, it felt like a really unique setting to me, and the other two books didn't quite have the same impact for me (though admittedly both were more plot- and character-driven than setting-driven)
Same here. I suspect the primary reason for that would be that Jedao just isn't that interesting a character once you scrape off the initial mystery.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Ritual observance patterns build the underlying magical terrain which you can then act on in whatever ways work for it. So you do high calendar rituals and get the appropriate terrain and use Kel formation instinct and formations to magic all your ships invulnerable until your enemy observes the ritual of blossoms a week early (massacring millions) and now your formation blows up all of your ships because the terrain's different. I really want a videogames based on this

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Ceebees posted:

It's never made extremely clear how the Kel are modified

It is, sort of. at one point it's made clear that (if I remember right) it's a combination of chemical injections and psych surgery, the former for physical conditioning reasons, the latter for formation instinct. I know its explicitly said somewhere in the book that most crashhawks come about because the psych surgery doesn't take, for whatever reason. In any case, I may be misremembering things but the books definitely do make it clear that the Kel are both physically and mentally mutilated to make them better soldiers. I think Cheris talks about the Kel "intake" process at some point and yeah, it's only vaguely hinted at, but Kujen also makes it clear that the Kel are more heavily manipulated, on an individual, physical level, than any other branch of the Hexarchate.

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



anilEhilated posted:

Same here. I suspect the primary reason for that would be that Jedao just isn't that interesting a character once you scrape off the initial mystery.

I definitely had a moment where I realized that Jedao slaughtered millions specifically to get stuck in the Black Cradle so he could come back hundreds of years later and unmake the Hexarchate, and I'm not sure exactly when it was in the course of the books, but after that I felt a bit like I was just watching the inevitable play out, and Jedao had lost a lot of the intrigue surrounding him. Also while the reveal that it turns out Jedao didn't take over Cheris's body, it was just Cheris, was initially sort of cool, but then kind of lost its impact when I realized that in retrospect it didn't really change much. And yeah, I got very fatigued reading the clone-Jedao chapters in Revenant Gun, waiting for him to inevitably turn on Kujen.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Ceebees posted:

The unit isn't being torn down 'per doctrine, whatever that means', it's being torn down because they obeyed Cheris' borderline heretical orders. If she had stayed (or been allowed to stay), maybe she could have defended them, but those orders that doomed her troops made her useful to her commanders (as a space ghost holder). Also, this implies that her superiors would have preferred that her unit be slaughtered rather than deviate from said doctrine - as far as being 'good Kel' goes, the ones that rebelled against her and had to be executed were "correct". The troops being sad isn't there to make you ask why, it's there to tell you that being 'processed by Doctrine' is a bad thing that worries even people who cheerfully march face-first into magic death lasers and commit mid-battle fratricide over quibbles of theology. It's never made extremely clear how the Kel are modified, but you're supposed to get a sense over the course of the book of the ways in which they've been intentionally twisted from normal people into a soldier caste for an insane fundamentalist empire. (And, to a lesser degree, the madnesses of every caste.)


I'd need to re-read the opening sequence to double-check but I didn't get any of that. I don't remember her borderline rebelling, just personal grumbling with internal thoughts like anyone would expect of a soldier and I don't remember any troops actually disobeying beyond expressing whether they should be there or not in the moment. And her superiors made the call to pull them back before the mission was done with basically just a couple lines of dialogue back and forth with Cheris. And if some were going to be executed (also not clear) then their reaction is so outside the normal expected responses that just throwing out there and expecting the reader to understand or empathize is insane. Intellectually I can imagine how your statement of events can be reached with some help of outside statements by the author or some extensive discussion with others who know the author's style but trying to reach that interpretation by just reading the book is mind boggling to me.

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


nessin posted:

I'd need to re-read the opening sequence to double-check but I didn't get any of that. I don't remember her borderline rebelling, just personal grumbling with internal thoughts like anyone would expect of a soldier and I don't remember any troops actually disobeying beyond expressing whether they should be there or not in the moment.

It seems pretty obvious to me, and did the first time I read the book, with no discussion and no prior knowledge of the author, too. The book isn't a puzzle to be solved, you don't need to spend ages turning over every stone, but you do need to actually read all the words on the page; YHL doesn't ever sit you-the-reader down and give you a big expository dump explaining what's happening, but all the information you need is there, so he shouldn't have to.

In the opening battle, you have this:

quote:

Her soldiers weren’t going to like her, but that didn’t matter as long as they lived. “Formation override,” Cheris said into the relay. Her breath was silver-white in the air. She barely felt the cold, bad sign. “Squadrons Three through Six, adjust formation.” She wrote the equations on one hand with the other, letting the kinetic sensors pick them up for transmission.

A minor test first. Then, based on the results, additional tests to see what the deviations were and whether they admitted any good options. There was a certain amount of heresy in working with heretical mechanics, but her orders told her to work with the resources she had, so she was going to do exactly that.

The formation staggered. She couldn’t see it clearly from her position, but the formation icon came up bright and prickly, warning her that the formation’s integrity was failing. The grating tone in her head suggested that she order a retreat or have her soldiers modulate into an alternate formation, something, anything to conform with Doctrine. Her vision was reddening at the edges.

“It’s part of the plan,” she said in vexation, and overrode the warnings.

That wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was her soldiers’ hesitation. [...]

This clearly establishes that:
- What she's about to do is, or at least could be seen as, heretical.
- Heresy is bad and preventing heresy is the responsibility of Doctrine. Her implants/armour/whatever warns her that she's about to do a heresy, but she can override it.
- The soldiers under her command don't want to do a heresy.

quote:

Squadron Four was resisting the order. Pir’s Fan was something they knew and understood. The modifications she had sent them were not. The sergeant protested formulaically, all but quoting the Kel code of conduct. The formation didn’t belong to the Kel lexicons. Unconventional thinking was a danger to a well-tested hierarchical system. Her orders did not advance the best interests of the hexarchate. And so on.

[...]

The sergeant reiterated his protest, stopping short of accusing her of heresy herself. Formation instinct should have forced him to obey her, but the fact that he considered her actions deeply un-Kel was enabling him to resist.

Cheris cut contact and sent another override. Lieutenant Verab’s acknowledgment sounded grim. Cheris marked Squadron Four outcasts, Kel no longer. They had failed to obey her, and that was that.

This further establishes that her troops have something ("formation instinct") which is meant to mean that they are incapable of disobeying her orders, but Four's sergeant believes so strongly that what she's asking is heretical (even if he stops short of saying that outright) that it no longer works on him, presumably because he no longer sees her as his commanding officer. (In the following paragraphs Four is annihilated to the last man as a result of not joining the new (heretical) formation, so the fact that she basically just gave them all dishonourable discharges in the middle of a battle is ultimately irrelevant, although it does establish both the difficulty, and consequences, of disobeying formation instinct.)

If all you got from that was "personal grumbling with internal thoughts like anyone would expect of a soldier [and her troops] expressing whether they should be there or not in the moment" you really weren't paying attention.

quote:

And her superiors made the call to pull them back before the mission was done with basically just a couple lines of dialogue back and forth with Cheris. And if some were going to be executed (also not clear) then their reaction is so outside the normal expected responses that just throwing out there and expecting the reader to understand or empathize is insane. Intellectually I can imagine how your statement of events can be reached with some help of outside statements by the author or some extensive discussion with others who know the author's style but trying to reach that interpretation by just reading the book is mind boggling to me.

I have no idea where you're getting that from:

quote:

“I have bad news,” Cheris said. “They’re breaking up the company.”

They were staring at her, even Verab, who should have guessed. “Doctrine,” he said. His voice cracked. Verab was fifth-generation Kel. His family would take it hard.

“You may be able to serve again, some of you,” Cheris said, aware of the inadequacy of her words, “but that depends on the magistrates’ assessments. I’m sorry. I don’t have details.”

[...]

They weren’t looking forward to the future. Most of them would lose Kel tradition and formation instinct. They might remember the mottoes and formations, but the mottoes would give them no more comfort, and the formations would no longer have any potency for them.

This, again, makes it very clear that being "processed by Doctrine" doesn't mean that they're going to be executed, but that the company as a unit will be disbanded, and most of the troops in it expelled from the military and the modifications that make them Kel revoked.

ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Nov 19, 2019

Orv
May 4, 2011
Ninefox Gambit: Do The Heresy Again

I finished Revenant Gun just last night and while I agree that there is somewhat of a lesser emphasis on the bizarre universe of the second and third novels I think it holds up to the end. Interestingly my favorite bit all the way through the series was the servitor stuff, though all of it was some level of engaging for the most part.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
I passed over it before but this talk about Ninefox Gambit is making me want to go back and reconsider.

Currently reading Gideon and liking it. I can see how the tone and style might turn some people off though.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

nessin posted:

Let me lay out a better example of what my problem is, when Cheris is picked to have the space ghost planted in her there is a scene with her talking to her troops about the decision. That scene involves a lot of poo poo in a short space of time, where apparently because she's moving on the whole unit will be torn down "per doctrine" (whatever that means) and some will be stripped of something which gives them their Kel-ness (again, whatever that means because despite being a faction it's something you choose if you meet the qualifications and aren't born into) which some of them indicate as being almost like a punishment or loss. Does that effect Cheris beyond a moment that can sort of be interpreted as sadness? Unclear. Maybe that whole scene isn't meant to show anything, in which case why does it exist? Especially in a short book. But if it does exist and is supposed to mean something, like maybe a internal conflict about her choice in the future, then it's completely unreadable. Was there some sort of genetic modification to give the Kel their supposed instinct? Unclear. And even if so, why does space ghosts addition gently caress that up? There is zero reference for any of this poo poo, and none of it is explained in even the most barebones detail.

I've got no clue who Cheris is, what she's feeling is supposed to mean, how she fits into society, or anything. If she's not supposed to mean anything for the story that's great, but I'm sure in the next 200 pages their will be plenty of supposed character development that's going to feel like it fell flat on it's head because I've got no reference for who or what Cheris is supposed to be, someone in that world might but I exist in this one where I need some clues as to what's right, wrong, normal, not normal, etc...

If you're not feeling Ninefox Gambit, there's no shame in dropping it.
Cheris gets sidelined fast as a main character, which sucked because I found her way more interesting than the mary-sue space ghost.
Personally only kept reading Ninefox Gambit for the world-universe building details (space moths, weird calendar stuff, etc).

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

nessin posted:

I'd need to re-read the opening sequence to double-check but I didn't get any of that. I don't remember her borderline rebelling, just personal grumbling with internal thoughts like anyone would expect of a soldier and I don't remember any troops actually disobeying beyond expressing whether they should be there or not in the moment. And her superiors made the call to pull them back before the mission was done with basically just a couple lines of dialogue back and forth with Cheris. And if some were going to be executed (also not clear) then their reaction is so outside the normal expected responses that just throwing out there and expecting the reader to understand or empathize is insane. Intellectually I can imagine how your statement of events can be reached with some help of outside statements by the author or some extensive discussion with others who know the author's style but trying to reach that interpretation by just reading the book is mind boggling to me.

The difference between the way you expect people to react and the way they actually react is how you learn the way their society and psychology differs from yours.

quantumfoam posted:

If you're not feeling Ninefox Gambit, there's no shame in dropping it.
Cheris gets sidelined fast as a main character, which sucked because I found her way more interesting than the mary-sue space ghost.
Personally only kept reading Ninefox Gambit for the world-universe building details (space moths, weird calendar stuff, etc).

Forum ate my post but ‘Mary Sue’ is a meaningless criticism, as empty as ‘show don’t tell’ or ‘forced diversity.’ This is not to say its wrong to dislike Jedao as a piece of craft, but Mary Sue is not a useful symbol for whatever you want to communicate.

e: Let’s not forget the necessary “goons overhype books it is simply mediocre” post we will soon receive

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 19, 2019

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Mary sue just means boringly perfect.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

sebmojo posted:

Mary sue just means boringly perfect.
Sure, but there's a lot of discourse around whether it gets overapplied to female characters for being baseline competent. It's a term so well-loved by Twitter Dudes With Star Wars Opinions that it has become basically meaningless. It's tainted by association at this point.

SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Nov 19, 2019

Tokamak
Dec 22, 2004

General Battuta posted:

e: Let’s not forget the necessary “goons overhype books it is simply mediocre” post we will soon receive

goons be overhyping though

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Sure, but there's a lot of discourse around whether it gets overapplied to female characters for being baseline competent. It's a term so well-loved by Twitter Dudes With Star Wars Opinions that it has become basically meaningless. It's tainted by association at this point.

I’ll be damned if I let whatever it is that I don’t pay attention to on twitter taint anything for me

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
there are a hell of a lot of sci fi/fantasy writers who dont know how to write a failure unfortunately. Usually the closest you get is some kind of 'bad guy wins the fight but he forgot about Quirky Sidekick who slides in at the last second to even the odds'. so maybe mary sue complaints are overused but it's also generally pretty valid

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Yeah the guy who famously went insane, killed his own crew, spent a zillion years locked in sensory deprivation and ultimately don’t read this if you haven’t finished Ninefox died at the hands of his own captors without accomplishing his plan really fits that description. I mean that facetiously, he doesn’t fit at all.

The term has no meaning. It was originally supposed to indicate an authorial self-insert but now it’s been debased into some kind of vaguely litRPG shibboleth for ‘this character does not fit an arbitrary notion of systemic balance imposed on the story by readers who believe a character’s successes and failures should obey a normal distribution.’ When Achilles is a Mary Sue it’s just a useless word. Choose something specific, like, “This character appears to face no consequences for actions” or “this character constantly receives praise in a way that does not feel diegetic to the setting” or “this character seems to be acting out an authorial wish fulfillment fantasy.” Christ why am I awake

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
well i hate to break it to you but that is in fact what mary sue means. it's being perfectly successful at everything.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Basically, yea.

Mary/Gary Stu is exactly what you said. Perfection in a character that is completely unrealistic to the story.

Orv
May 4, 2011
Jedao is none of those things, though?

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:
Not sure how this affects the sue maths but here, have a jedao pony:
https://twitter.com/deuceofgears/status/745711925367967744

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Never read the book, so I have no idea who that is. Just saw the discussion of Mary/Gary and thought I'd lob in an opinion grenade.

In other news, the new Wolf Hunt book is out by Jeff Strand! Wolf Hunt 3!

Just came out, so I haven't read it yet, and I have to wait for my kindle to charge because we live in the most retarded timeline. Ah well, gives me something to do tomorrow.

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:
Naomi Kritzer wrote a (YA) novel sequel to Cat Pictures Please called Catfishing on CatNet.

Just thought you should know.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Safety Biscuits posted:

I've posted the Book Barn Secret Santa thread; pop over to sign up! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3903265

If you're interested in this, please decide quickly whether or not you want to take part. Signups close in about 24 hours!

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Never read the book, so I have no idea who that is. Just saw the discussion of Mary/Gary and thought I'd lob in an opinion grenade.

Please don't do this, if you haven't read the book, then all you're doing is dogpiling for the sake of dogpiling, which is childish.

The problem with a term like Mary Sue is that if it's wide enough to represent all those separate nuances Battuta pointed out, then it's wide enough to not mean anything. It's a lukewarm criticism that's not much more specific than just saying a book is bad. It also smacks of the kind of low effort internet criticism that is really just shorthand for "I didn't like this popular book but can't tell you why other than by using a buzzword" that infests Twitter, Reddit, and Goodreads.

And honestly, if you didn't care enough about a book to actually put forward a considered criticism beyond what amounts to "it bad goon" then I think your input is going to be ignored most of the time anyway. That's not discussion, it's just noise.

This is all setting aside the fact that regardless of what dozen of definitions people give the phrase Mary Sue these days, it isn't even accurate in this case. I honestly didn't like much of the Machineries of Empires books and they probably wouldn't be in my too five recommendations to someone looking for new sci fi, but calling Jedao a Mary Sue is pointlessly reductive. it's not critical, just dismissive.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

The way that Yoon Ha Leee presented Jeado through most of Ninefox Gambit didn''t land for me.
Cheris got the annoying and mysterious space ghost, everyone not-Cheris got a zomboid that was effortlessly perfect at whatever it did (duelling/fleet formations/diplomacy/ground formations/calenderic timing/etc) with a omnious history that was constantly alluded by creeped out side-characters.

Biggest issue I had with Jeado as a character was Yoon Ha Lee's decision to cram all the backstory for Jeado and the motivations for what Jeado did centuries ago into the last 40 pages of Ninefox Gambit. By that time, it was too late. After 200+ pages of reading Ninefox Gambit you were either already fully vested into Jeado as the main character(and that backstory reveal just made Jeado more compelling to you). Or you didn't give a gently caress about Jeado (raises hand) as a main character, had been reading Ninefox Gambit for the interesting universe setting/reveals instead (raises other hand) and the Jeado backstory reveal came off as too little-too late (somehow raises third hand).

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Basically, yea.

Mary/Gary Stu is exactly what you said. Perfection in a character that is completely unrealistic to the story.

Noted literary failures and reprehensible Mary Sues: Achilles, Sherlock Holmes, Jesus of Nazareth

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quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

Didn't expect my dashed off mary sue reference to cause a thread derail, but I'm all for it.


{Mods, Admins}
Please rename this thread to Science Fiction & Fantasy MegaThread 3: Mary Sue Battle Royale

I think Fanzines popularized the term Mary Sue. Technology like mimeographs and xerox machines aided the spread of the Mary Sue virus. Dreading the eventual Mary Sue AI wars.

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