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eXXon posted:That sure is a list of books from someone who doesn't seem to actually like the fantasy genre and just dabbles at the edges of magical realism/historical fiction. Epic and High Fantasy is a tough sell to people who haven't already bought heavily into the genre. Fixtures of Fantasy books like lore dumps and faux-old-timey dialogue/narration are not tolerated in other genre/non-genre fiction. So I can understand if someone who may not be the biggest fantasy nut has tastes that omit some of the genre's biggest names.
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Mar 12, 2022 20:53
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The Myst novelization being put on par with Ursula K. Leguin is preposterous, and then The Fifth Season rated above Lord of the Rings...
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Mar 12, 2022 23:52
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"Fantasy is the oldest genre of literature, pre-dating the invention of bound books by thousands of years thanks to mythology and folklore." loving kill me
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Mar 13, 2022 00:19
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BananaNutkins posted:The Myst novelization being put on par with Ursula K. Leguin is preposterous Yeah I really liked that book but I was also about 10 years old and nobody that age has good taste
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Mar 13, 2022 00:28
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The first two books in the Myst trilogy hold up well, I've read them fairly recently. I remember the third being worse though and haven't re-read that in years. Edit: They don't belong in a best fantasy list next to LeGuin, however.
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Mar 13, 2022 00:34
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mewse posted:Good for you, I tapped out after Armada which was similarly horrendous Yeah I never read that but the impression I got was that it was literally the plot of The Last Starfighter and this was addressed by all the characters saying "this is just like The Last Starfighter" I wonder which is worse. RP2 has several chapters in a row devoted to wandering around a virtual planet about John Hughes movies reciting trivia about them and using the trivia to "make corrections" to the NPC behavior to solve a riddle and oh my loving God it was the most savagely boring thing to ever exist, absolutely brutal. You'd think a big dorky fanboy could at least muster some kind of enthusiasm but it was devoid of any energy at all, even stupid energy. It goes past "too boring to hate" and ends up achieving a level of boring where you have to feel hatred just to prove to yourself you're alive in the face of such a void
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Mar 13, 2022 01:42
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:Yeah I never read that but the impression I got was that it was literally the plot of The Last Starfighter and this was addressed by all the characters saying "this is just like The Last Starfighter" I've played a game that did the whole plot of Armada better than Armada did. Also I think the post about how everything in RP1 is 80s because it makes money, not because it is liked or understood applies completely to Ernest Cline as well. He wrote RP1 as the most cynical cash grab possible. It's obvious by how it only has the most surface level understanding of the media that it claims to be an obsessed superfan of.
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Mar 13, 2022 04:28
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Kchama posted:I've played a game that did the whole plot of Armada better than Armada did. The weirdest thing about Cline's writing are the errors within his works. In Armada (I think), he writes something like 'I felt like Luke Skywalker looking over the A-, X-, And Y-Wing fighters at the Battle of Yavin.' But there weren't any A-Wings at the Battle of Yavin. What kind of Star Wars fan can name the A-Wing, a craft not named in the films, but also not understand that it didn't debut until Return of the Jedi?
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Mar 13, 2022 04:39
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The weirdest thing about Cline's writing are the errors within his works. In Armada (I think), he writes something like 'I felt like Luke Skywalker looking over the A-, X-, And Y-Wing fighters at the Battle of Yavin.' But there weren't any A-Wings at the Battle of Yavin. What kind of Star Wars fan can name the A-Wing, a craft not named in the films, but also not understand that it didn't debut until Return of the Jedi? There are tons of errors all over the place, which is exactly why I pegged him as a surface level fan at most. He's absorbed information through cultural osmosis, but doesn't actually know any of the specifics. There's no A-Wings at the Battle of Yavin, the energy weapons in Gundam are not lasers, etc.
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Mar 13, 2022 04:50
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I surveyed the X-, Y-, 3- and S- wings before me, as I gave the signal to dogecoin to the moon!
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Mar 13, 2022 05:30
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Sham bam bamina! posted:"Fantasy is the oldest genre of literature, pre-dating the invention of bound books by thousands of years thanks to mythology and folklore." Bestselling dark, gritty fantasy, The Bible.
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Mar 14, 2022 10:46
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porfiria posted:Bestselling dark, gritty fantasy, The Bible. Rothfuss did plaguerize that whole Christ thing.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:38
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muscles like this! posted:https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39385874/best-fantasy-books/ Night Circus is good.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:57
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Scholtz posted:Ready Player One is just incredibly frustrating to me, because it's one of the most dogshit books I've read and I just loathe it and what it represents about our media consumption... A big problem with RP1 is the amount of tech people today going "hey we need a metaverse like in RP1 because look how cool that is" while ignoring that said metaverse was extreme escapism because the actual world was exceptionally hosed and when these same people talk about their metaverse dream it boils down to "the internet, but in VR and I alone can monetize everything about it." I'd sooner live in the Shadowrun setting than RP1. muscles like this! posted:https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39385874/best-fantasy-books/ Considering how bad this list is, with a small handful of exceptions, it might make him happy to not be on it. I'm pretty sure LOTR and Earthsea are only on there so that the author isn't entirely written off. Like Sanderson but if you're going to list one of his books in a top 50 list WoK isn't it.
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Mar 14, 2022 20:47
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" so I can't even be mad at them or argue with them about it
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Evil Fluffy posted:A big problem with RP1 is the amount of tech people today going "hey we need a metaverse like in RP1 because look how cool that is" while ignoring that said metaverse was extreme escapism because the actual world was exceptionally hosed and when these same people talk about their metaverse dream it boils down to "the internet, but in VR and I alone can monetize everything about it." https://twitter.com/alexblechman/status/1457842724128833538?lang=en
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Mar 15, 2022 00:11
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I know this is the dorkiest complaint to have about it, but the RP1 VRMMO isn't even described as a good game -- every description sounds like Cline, at best, had an MMO described to him once over the phone. There's even loving permadeath! I suppose "lovely jank product gets huge market share because it's a dystopia" is realistic enough, but Cline clearly has no idea he's doing it.
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Mar 15, 2022 03:09
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if it weren't for the years of lovely gross nerd girl poetry he did, i'd believe that ernest cline is some sort of pen-name for a corporate board room.
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Mar 15, 2022 04:13
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Antivehicular posted:I know this is the dorkiest complaint to have about it, but the RP1 VRMMO isn't even described as a good game -- every description sounds like Cline, at best, had an MMO described to him once over the phone. There's even loving permadeath! I suppose "lovely jank product gets huge market share because it's a dystopia" is realistic enough, but Cline clearly has no idea he's doing it. It's not like it matters. Sword Art Online, which RP2 is almost completely based off of, is even dumber even before you get into the "the hardware was made to intentionally murder the user by microwaving their brain" and that doesn't stop people in the real world from going WOW I'D SUPER LOVE TO PLAY THAT GAME.
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Mar 15, 2022 21:22
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Get a job. https://twitter.com/patrickrothfuss/status/1503843372489973762
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Mar 16, 2022 00:30
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:Get a job. who the gently caress cares, jesus. not you, these weird DST people that are popping up everywhere now
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Mar 16, 2022 01:51
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I just want to go on the time standard where you spend the least amount of days getting off of work after dark and stick to that year-round. I think that would make the largest number of people happy, and gently caress everyone who comes up with weird contrarian reasons to oppose it.
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Mar 16, 2022 04:03
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Oh it was a joke. He wrote a lot there. Hm
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Mar 16, 2022 04:08
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Barreft posted:Oh it was a joke. He wrote a lot there. Hm It really sums up his oeuvre with vigor. "He wrote a lot, but it wasn't very good at being the thing he said it was."
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Mar 16, 2022 04:29
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muscles like this! posted:https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39385874/best-fantasy-books/ One problem with making a list like this is that a lot of the most influential, foundational texts of fantasy came in the form of short stories (Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, The 1001 Nights along with every collection of fairy tales and folk stories ever, and they put Angela Carter's 'The Blood Chamber' in that list anyway). Also no Gormenghast. gently caress that. Also, I like The Fifth Season and all but it's nothing super special. "What if X-Men met a dying earth story, with some elements of Mad Max and also elements from those Final Fantasy games where the characters are obviously living on a world that went through some sort of techno-magical apocalypse but they themselves are oblivious to it and there are giant floating artifacts made from magic crystals?" It's a fine and fun trilogy (with some uneven moments), but there's nothing that stands out super-strong about the prose, and the premise and setting is something you can see in a lot of webcomics. And like, since this silly list leans a lot into magical realism maybe they should have put One Hundred Years of Solitude in there somewhere?
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Mar 16, 2022 04:37
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Atlas Hugged posted:It really sums up his oeuvre with vigor. It's nearly a perfect example of the archetypal Bad Nerd Joke (overly long, not remotely funny, teller thinks it makes him the smartest boy alive), but ideally it would be a pun, and also he would retweet it five times in an hour to make sure you really appreciate his brilliance
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Mar 16, 2022 09:15
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It is a pun (or, at least, becomes one by the third Tweet), but it's a pun on something that's a mistake in the first place ("savings"), so it loses nerd points for that.
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Mar 16, 2022 09:33
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Here's my unbiased top 25 fantasy novels of all time ranking. Sorry, NoTW just missed the cut. 1. The Eye of the World 2. Gardens of the Moon 3. Deadhouse Gates 4. The Great Hunt 5. Memories of Ice 6. House of Chains 7. The Dragon Reborn 8. The Shadow Rising 9. Midnight Tides 10. The Bonehunters 11. The Fires of Heaven 12. Lord of Chaos 13. Reaper's Gale 14. Toll the Hounds 15. A Crown of Swords 16. The Path of Daggers 17. Dust of Dreams 18. The Crippled God 19. Winter's Heart 20. Crossroads of Twilight 21. Knife of Dreams 22. The Gathering Storm 23. Towers of Midnight 24. A Memory of Light 25. New Spring
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Mar 16, 2022 16:48
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eXXon posted:You see, he uses Um excuse me but he also didn't slay a dragon. No, that would be some silly fantasy legend stuff. Okay, yes, he did slay an enormous fire-breathing iron-scaled lizard, but it didn't come from the dragon region of Vint, so technically it's only a sparkling draccus.
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Mar 16, 2022 19:19
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eXXon posted:Here's my unbiased top 25 fantasy novels of all time ranking. Sorry, NoTW just missed the cut. Are these a mix of World of Warcraft quests/factions?
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Mar 16, 2022 20:01
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They're Brandon Sanderson's 2021 released titles
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Mar 16, 2022 20:23
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Scholtz posted:Are these a mix of World of Warcraft quests/factions? I recognize the Malazan series but not the others, for some reason I'm pretty sure it's another 10-12 book fantasy series though. The original list does get me curious though, for a real 50 great "all-time" fantasy list how many books on it would be from the post 2000s or even post 2010? I haven't kept up with too much new fantasy so the only one I know about is NK Jemisin and even that is a lot of social media chat and twitter wars from when she called all the SFFA guild and Vox Day personally. Like, I do like Sanderson and enjoyed Mistborn and similarly thought Abercrombie's First Law trilogy was great, but not something I'd rank as all time in the genre. pentyne fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 20:42
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Bad SciFi/Fantasy should be rated based on how many forum posts it generates. Rothfuss can't even give us garbage media to consume and complain about. GRRM hasn't written a goddamn thing in just as long but at least had the decency to provide us with a terrible TV show to sustain us. SA has produced a measly 113 pages of NOTW shitposts in the last five years whereas the Absolute Fucker has inspired over 1700 pages in the last 11 years.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:03
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Malazan loving owns.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:19
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GRRM is associated with Elden Ring and tgat's more than Rothfuss has ever done. I guess we can count that stupid trolley obsessed Numenera game.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:19
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What is one life worth? Maybe if I restate the question eighty times I'll stumble on something profound.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:27
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funkymonks posted:Bad SciFi/Fantasy should be rated based on how many forum posts it generates. GRRM has written and published a couple of books at least, just not the one everyone wants him to publish.
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Mar 16, 2022 22:09
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The unbridled nerd rage and fanboyism this thread keeps veering into are even dweebier than Pat himself.
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Mar 17, 2022 00:17
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Um excuse me but he also didn't slay a dragon. No, that would be some silly fantasy legend stuff.  pentyne posted:I recognize the Malazan series but not the others, for some reason I'm pretty sure it's another 10-12 book fantasy series though. No Dignity posted:They're Brandon Sanderson's 2021 released titles Sham bam bamina! posted:The unbridled nerd rage and fanboyism this thread keeps veering into are even dweebier than Pat himself.
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Mar 17, 2022 00:34
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Top 25 ranks are stupid anyway. What does it even mean to place Lord of the Rings higher than Book of the New Sun? They're both fantastic achievements in storytelling and whether or nor you consider one better than the other is almost always going to come down to personal taste. It makes way more sense to have a top 25 list "in no particular order".
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Mar 17, 2022 01:50
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So you've read Wheel of Time and Malazan. Which doesnt make you well read in fantasy but does make you a masochist. Gardens of the Moon over Deadhouse Gates? Come on! But I do agree with you that eye of the world is the best on that very bad and shameful list.
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Mar 17, 2022 05:39
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