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Dec 12, 2021 22:38
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Cicero posted:I'm sorry dude, but this is basically like trying to assert that Portland isn't part of the Pacific Northwest. uh what? Cultivation novels and progression fantasy novels ARE different. They're similar, and have some overlap, but there's nothing wrong with what the General is saying.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:38
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A N Y W A Y S For comfort food I'm reading Jane Lindskold's The Dragon of Despair because it's the third book in her fantasy series and I'm enjoying how it's shifted from "feral child integrates into medieval politics" into a fulltime heist/adventure story with occasional politics and magical talking animals because it's fun. They're getting longer with each volume too, but at this point I don't care because my favorite characters are here and we're gonna figure out how to stop the big bad, and Firekeeper is going to wish she was a wolf instead of a human and I can't wait. There's also slowly developing info on how magic and history have developed in the setting and it's interesting to me. This book is like, if I had read the series when I was 15 I'd write fanfic about it
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Dec 12, 2021 22:41
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No, cultivation novels are a subset or type of progression fantasy. Progression fantasy just means, "focuses heavily on the main character(s) gaining martial/magic power and skill, including training blah blah blah" which virtually all cultivation novels fall into.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:42
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Cicero posted:No, cultivation novels are a subset or type of progression fantasy. Progression fantasy just means, "focuses heavily on the main character(s) gaining martial/magic power and skill, including training blah blah blah" which virtually all cultivation novels fall into. You gotta read more of them, then. Way of Choices, Library of Heaven's Path. They have elements of "power/skill go up" but the focus is definitely not on those things.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:You gotta read more of them, then. Way of Choices, Library of Heaven's Path. They have elements of "power/skill go up" but the focus is definitely not on those things.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:48
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Yet again, if only there was a thread - or two! - for this interminable discussion to take place in.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:48
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Yet again, if only there was a thread - or two! - for this interminable discussion to take place in. I'm trying! I'm trying! I am also reading Hogfather! The SA Book of the Month! It's about a man who decides to delete Christmas forever by killing Santa Claus! Except that Death Hates That! It's very good!
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Dec 12, 2021 22:49
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Yet again, if only there was a thread - or two! - for this interminable discussion to take place in. What are you reading?
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Dec 12, 2021 22:51
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I started reading one of the Skyward novellas to get it done before reading Cytonic. Is this a general trend to have little novellas to flesh out secondary characters between the main books in a series? It feels like it's becoming more common.
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Dec 12, 2021 22:54
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StrixNebulosa posted:You gotta read more of them, then. Way of Choices, Library of Heaven's Path. They have elements of "power/skill go up" but the focus is definitely not on those things. Yall are not gonna make me read enough of these to understand this distinction I don't care what reports get filed I won't do it! I won't!
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Dec 12, 2021 22:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yall are not gonna make me read enough of these to understand this distinction I don't care what reports get filed lmao we should try to make you read these because they're all 500000 pages long. Even the "short" ones like Cradle have 10+ books in 'em.  Anyways the funniest character in the Dragons of Despair by Jane Lindskold is the Bertie Wooster-clone who was transplanted into the series as a joke character. He says "I say!" a lot and is kind of an oaf, but a well-meaning one. He's nobility and sneaks after the group in one book to try to join them and...succeeds because he's not half bad with a sword or with drawing maps. He has no Jeeves, which is his one true fault.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:02
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i hate world building lol. or rather I hate world explaining. but I absolutely love something like goblin emperor or healer's road or the Commonweal where it feels like I'm reading about something that could be a real place, because everything lines up according to it's own logic, but the book doesn't usually waste my time explaining any of it. it's there if I want to see it. in the painting vs photograph idea, I guess you could say this is the Renaissance style. very photorealistic, but everything pictured is open to interpretation.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:07
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Larry Parrish posted:i hate world building lol. or rather I hate world explaining. but I absolutely love something like goblin emperor or healer's road or the Commonweal where it feels like I'm reading about something that could be a real place, because everything lines up according to it's own logic, but the book doesn't usually waste my time explaining any of it. it's there if I want to see it. I'd say huge info dumps from the narrator are usually bad, but there are ways you can kind of sneak it in that don't feel as on the nose. E.g. there's an interlude in Stormlight from the perspective of someone who's researching spren (little magical representations of emotions or ambiance).
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Dec 12, 2021 23:11
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With this definition of Progression Fantasy nearly everyone has read some. Don't worry HA. Ekindu and Shamhat probably manage to make it into the genre with how broad the definition seems to be.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:11
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This just seems to boil down to "I like good worldbuilding". Though the take that people who write bad worldbuilding are inherently bad people is probably the most laughable thing I've read in some time.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:27
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quote:A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:35
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Kchama posted:This just seems to boil down to "I like good worldbuilding". this might be a hot take but I prefer good writing too
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Dec 12, 2021 23:36
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Speaking of Discworld I’ve started “Wee Free Men”. For some reason I skipped the Tiffany Aching books, probably because they were classified as YA, but it’s Pratchetts signature style just with a younger protagonist.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:36
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Larry Parrish posted:this might be a hot take but I prefer good writing too Good writing is good, but sucking at world building doesn't make you a bad person.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:53
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Read through Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear, yesterday. It was an extremely Greg Bear novel, with that tinge of "lightwieghtness" in the narrative which sci-fi authors tend to get when they hit their twilight years. Pretty good yarn, nothing earth-shattering. Kinda miffed there's nobody writing really crunchy-hard speculative sci-fi like Bear or Wolfe or Vinge did, these days, at least until Peter Watts drops whatever he's working on. I'm running out of genre backlog.  Gonna dive into A Memory Called Empire next and see what all the hype is about.
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Dec 12, 2021 23:56
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I don't think I'd call Wolfe hard sf.
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Dec 13, 2021 00:05
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Kchama posted:This just seems to boil down to "I like good worldbuilding". I thought he said that people who write worldbuilding are inherently bad people, period, in general
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Dec 13, 2021 00:20
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Kesper North posted:I thought he said that people who write worldbuilding are inherently bad people, period, in general I was being nice and generous since that's just an even worse take. Kchama fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 00:26
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Hey Battuta, what would have happened had Tain Hu had extra points in breath holding and endurance? Do you think Torrindic heredity conveys extra levels in physical skills to offspring for the more physically adroit races? Think of all the ways you could codify this numerically in the books! This could be huge!
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Dec 13, 2021 00:32
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What the hell are you doing, the conversation was already over edit: \/\/\/ you were the one asking to stop Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 00:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:What are you reading? I just finished "Leviathan Falls" but I've started on "What, I Was Hit By A Truck And Now My Sister Is A Talking Wolf In This Magical World?!" It might not sound like it, and you have to look past the protagonist healing his HP (hit points) by slamming his head in between his sister's breasts, and the fact that said sister wears very little clothing, but it's actually a fascinating deep dive into the concept of 氣.
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Dec 13, 2021 00:44
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Cicero posted:What the hell are you doing, the conversation was already over the grey forums are epic because some people get insanely mad if you talk about anything but they won't actually read the discussion they got mad about
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Dec 13, 2021 00:47
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I enjoy explorations of Qi and the insane ramifications thereof, can you give us a sample?
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Dec 13, 2021 00:49
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I'm a big fan of books. Love the things.
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Dec 13, 2021 00:55
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Anias posted:I enjoy explorations of Qi and the insane ramifications thereof, can you give us a sample? Absolutely. In Chapter 7, the protagonist has a crush on his hero academy classmate because she has tig ol' bitties. However, he must prevent his other classmates from breaking into the hot springs to peep on her and the other girls. He does this by using an over level two-hundred battle punch but this depletes his HP (hit points) and he falls unconscious. Later, he awakens in the hot springs with the female classmates, albeit blindfolded. This represents the serene wisdom of the Buddha as described in the Canki Sutta: "Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus."
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Dec 13, 2021 00:56
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Chuck Tingle's Straight is a good horror novella.
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Dec 13, 2021 00:57
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When I think of good world building, I think Perdido Street Station, where all the world building stuff is directly in service of the story (even though there’s a lot of it!).
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Dec 13, 2021 01:23
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Larry Parrish posted:i hate world building lol. or rather I hate world explaining. but I absolutely love something like goblin emperor or healer's road or the Commonweal where it feels like I'm reading about something that could be a real place, because everything lines up according to it's own logic, but the book doesn't usually waste my time explaining any of it. it's there if I want to see it. How does a writer even come up with a place which feels like a real place where everything lines up according to its own logic unless they do a ton of behind the scenes worldbuilding?
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Dec 13, 2021 02:06
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Larry Parrish posted:this might be a hot take but I prefer good writing too It's a bit of a truism, isn't it? Nobody likes bad things and outside of the anhedonic few*, people like good things. Like say, people who agree with us are beautiful intelligent people, and those who disagree are literally Hitler. *Radiohead fans.
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Dec 13, 2021 02:15
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Kchama posted:I was being nice and generous since that's just an even worse take. His books have things like made up geography and sociopolitical systems and stuff, so he's not going so far as to say you literally shouldn't set your story in a world. I think what he's rejecting is the "world-building" as a deeper writing philosophy. a foolish pianist posted:When I think of good world building, I think Perdido Street Station, where all the world building stuff is directly in service of the story (even though there’s a lot of it!). I remember there being frequent one-off things just there for fun that never had any specific importance in the same book, like the Ribs and the allusions to foreign nations, or the particular's of the city's political parties.
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Dec 13, 2021 02:23
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What's it called when it's Checkof's gun except it just sits there on the wall and never ever shoots anyone?
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Dec 13, 2021 02:29
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Chekov's blueball.
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Dec 13, 2021 02:36
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FPyat posted:His books have things like made up geography and sociopolitical systems and stuff, so he's not going so far as to say you literally shouldn't set your story in a world. I think what he's rejecting is the "world-building" as a deeper writing philosophy. The idea that you're an inherently evil monster for having a bad writing philosophy is still outright wrong, and he was outright saying that.
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Dec 13, 2021 02:38
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FPyat posted:I remember there being frequent one-off things just there for fun that never had any specific importance in the same book, like the Ribs and the allusions to foreign nations, or the particular's of the city's political parties. I think the districts and politics of the city were important to some of the actions - the union activities, the ethnic enclaves, etc. all related to something important happening.
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Dec 13, 2021 02:55
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