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Do I have to be the Brendon Sanderson defender? His books are fine. They're competently written and paced, and they're internally consistent. I've read most of them, I'll probably read his new books, and I don't think I've ever been tempted to reread anything he's written after finishing it. Also I too am angry when an author alludes to a characters gender or sexual orientation for any reason other than writing a weird sex scene (default gender / orientation excepted). Edit: I'm currently reading Nona so no opinion yet but I got 8% of the way through Weir's Hail Mary and I'm done good luck to you protagonist I don't care what happens RDM fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Oct 4, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 21:28
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ToxicFrog posted:The fact of someone being heterosexual is also usually "a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence", something just thrown in to add a bit of flavour to the character with no bearing on the broader plot. Personally, I quite like seeing an increase in books where someone being queer can also be used as that sort of incidental flavouring rather than something that the book needs to put front and center, and I'm not at all a fan of the implication that authors need to justify the inclusion of queer characters in a way they are never called to do for cishet ones. As a cis-male hetero dude, Gideon was a fun, likeable, deeply sympathetic person. In real life her being gay would mean that I wouldn't ask her on a date but I would still absolutely ask her to join my D&D group (You know she'd roll up a wizard necromancer to mock the poo poo out of them and it would be glorious). ToxicFrog posted:As a big ol' lesbian this read on Gideon is hilarious to me Big "Duh" on that one. I mean you'd think the bit in HtN with her commiserating with Ianthe and about wanting and not getting a "big dose of Vitamin H" would have spelled that part out.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:38
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RDM posted:Do I have to be the Brendon Sanderson defender? His books are fine. They're competently written and paced, and they're internally consistent. I've read most of them, I'll probably read his new books, and I don't think I've ever been tempted to reread anything he's written after finishing it. You definitely don't have to be, no.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:42
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Plus, Gideon does horny narration descriptions of half the female cast the first time she sees them, I'm the cissest shut-in nerd and don't know how that would fly past anyone's head.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:46
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Lord Bob posted:Plus, Gideon does horny narration descriptions of half the female cast the first time she sees So does Harrow and it's not her fault that the reader doesn't appreciate the erotic beauty of the human skull beneath the gross crawly flesh
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Oct 4, 2022 21:48
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NinjaDebugger posted:Your PhD in history is showing. I haven't got the patience for something like that, I'm just a lowly stats and research design methodologist.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:50
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RDM posted:Do I have to be the Brendon Sanderson defender? That’s like asking “do I have to be the McDonald’s defender?” when it’s the most popular loving franchise, so no. He really doesn’t need the help Eapecially when everywhere but here, when someone asks for fantasy recs, is immediately swamped by a ton of fanboys going, “Have you read Brandon Sanderson?”
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Oct 4, 2022 21:50
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Gideon and Harrow, familial? One flesh one end?? I am undone without you?? The lesbian longing book?? That book???? IDK I never read the sequel I guess. eta Not saying you’re wrong! It just read so romantically to me. Anyway, I recently finished The Death of Jane Lawrence and it ruled, not sure if this is the right thread but rec me all your Victorian gothic horror fantasy plz. mrs. nicholas sarkozy fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Oct 4, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 21:50
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Narrative gruel is a bit harsh on Sanderson imo. The Final Empire was a fun, compulsive read with a cool magic system. I haven't felt the urge to read any of his other books, but I certainly didn't hate it.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:54
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mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:Anyway, I recently finished The Death of Jane Lawrence and it ruled, not sure if this is the right thread but rec me all your Victorian gothic horror fantasy plz. Have you read Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng? It's about someone who is very definitely not Emily Bronte going to Fairyland to find her brother, very definitely not Bramwell Bronte, who was sent there as the first Christian missionary and has since vanished. It's very, very gothic and certainly not for everyone, but I've found that if it clicks for you, it clicks very hard.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:55
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Everyone posted:Big "Duh" on that one. I mean you'd think the bit in HtN with her commiserating with Ianthe and about wanting and not getting a "big dose of Vitamin H" would have spelled that part out. mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:Gideon and Harrow, familial? One flesh one end?? I am undone without you?? The lesbian longing book?? That book???? IDK I never read the sequel I guess. Well, I guess I'd assume it was never more than familial from Harrow's perspective, even after they started getting along at the end of the book. I got the impression that Gideon's tastes ran passionate, from like sad beautiful tragic to the bodacious T&A. Harrow's all bones and corpses, clinical dissection. They seemed more like sisters who grew up thinking they hated each other but once they escaped home they figured out it was the context rather than actually each other. Sisters who both happen to like women.
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Oct 4, 2022 22:01
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VostokProgram posted:I finished Three Body Problem. That was interesting, though it has the classic trilogy problem of just feeling like a long first act. Overall I guess it was ok? I suppose I'm a little bit disappointed. I had expected a mind blowing story based on what internet people have said it has some clever and interesting ideas, but it's insanely contrived and written with both fists on the keyboard.
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Oct 4, 2022 22:18
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What does "both fists on the keyboard" mean?
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Oct 4, 2022 22:23
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mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:Anyway, I recently finished The Death of Jane Lawrence and it ruled, not sure if this is the right thread but rec me all your Victorian gothic horror fantasy plz. I loved that book! Incidentally, it's out in paperback today. Have you read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter? Or Vivia by Tanith Lee?
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Oct 4, 2022 22:24
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Cicero posted:What does "both fists on the keyboard" mean?
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Oct 4, 2022 22:43
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General Battuta posted:You can have fictional ideas in your setting without using Games Workshop style nounverbs and compounds for everything. DE is also a bit more grounded than a fantasy setting where people have a bunch of magical powers and various higher level entities actively shaping reality. It's a bad example to compare to Stormlight (Mistborn, especially era 2, would be a better comparison) and considering how it's not really an issue in other Cosmere settings it's pretty intentional for Stormlight.
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Oct 4, 2022 22:55
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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011UJM48/ The Book of Merlyn (Once and Future King) by TH White - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C7H2YHD/ The Tower of Fools (Hussite #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZZ22J48/
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Oct 4, 2022 23:06
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Stuporstar posted:Eapecially when everywhere but here, when someone asks for fantasy recs, is immediately swamped by a ton of fanboys going, “Have you read Brandon Sanderson?” This is only an acceptable question to ask if you are brandishing a bloody axe while wearing your goat-pupil contacts, tbf.
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Oct 4, 2022 23:21
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cptn_dr posted:Have you read Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng? It's about someone who is very definitely not Emily Bronte going to Fairyland to find her brother, very definitely not Bramwell Bronte, who was sent there as the first Christian missionary and has since vanished. It's very, very gothic and certainly not for everyone, but I've found that if it clicks for you, it clicks very hard. Turns out I own this and never read it! I’ll check out Vivia too 
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Oct 4, 2022 23:28
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Evil Fluffy posted:DE is also a bit more grounded than a fantasy setting where people have a bunch of magical powers and various higher level entities actively shaping reality. It's a bad example to compare to Stormlight (Mistborn, especially era 2, would be a better comparison) and considering how it's not really an issue in other Cosmere settings it's pretty intentional for Stormlight. DE literally has higher level entities shaping reality.
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Oct 4, 2022 23:29
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Evil Fluffy posted:DE is also a bit more grounded than a fantasy setting where people have a bunch of magical powers and various higher level entities actively shaping reality. It's a bad example to compare to Stormlight (Mistborn, especially era 2, would be a better comparison) and considering how it's not really an issue in other Cosmere settings it's pretty intentional for Stormlight. This post is wrong on two levels and I don't know which one to argue with, so the one I will pick, because it seems less annoying, is that the quality of your writing is in no way constrained by the genre or the lack of 'groundedness' of your setting. You can do good writing in any setting. Disco Elysium is not intrinsically more permissive of good writing, it has just been thought through far more extensively by far better writers with far more to say. The other level is about the comparative fantasticness of the setting but it just seems like it will go nowhere fun.
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Oct 4, 2022 23:43
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Selachian posted:Huh, Alan Garner is still alive and writing? I'd assumed he had passed away long ago. I'll always go to bat for Elidor, because I grew up in Manchester and I clearly remember the light-up map in St Peter's Square where the book begins. It's almost a dry run for The Owl Service, except owing its debt to Irish mythology rather than Welsh. And yes, it's easy to assume that Garner is dead because the literary depth of Weirdstone makes people think he was middle aged when he wrote it. In fact he began the work when he was 22, and it was published when he was 26. He is up in his late 80s now, and he publishes very rarely; after Red Shift he didn't write a novel for over 20 years. I think it's definitely the case that Treacle Walker will be his last word, but if it is he'll have achieved the rare feat of going out at his peak.
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Oct 5, 2022 00:00
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Is there any sci Fi series that are just Conan but in space. I need a giant muscle bound spacebarian busting heads
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Oct 5, 2022 00:02
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Gaius Marius posted:Is there any sci Fi series that are just Conan but in space. I need a giant muscle bound spacebarian busting heads it's technically a web novel and honestly not that close to Conan as it's noir, but The Featherlight Transmission's protagonist is a hulked out cyborg who's really loving good at cracking heads so it tends to end up being a solution. otoh since it's a noir its really more of a detective story. Hard Luck Hank is mostly played for laughs but the titular Hank is basically just an indestructible brick poo poo house on a space station and solves many problems the only way he knows how. usually by smashing it.
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Oct 5, 2022 00:08
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Yea, gotta second Hank. His default is basically shooting a massive blaster and yelling EAT SUCK SUCKFACE, along other things. It doesn't always end well for him.
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Oct 5, 2022 00:53
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RDM posted:Also I too am angry when an author alludes to a characters gender or sexual orientation for any reason other than writing a weird sex scene (default gender / orientation excepted). I mean, it's all relative. If there's a ballroom scene and a dude and his husband is introduced we don't have to see them banging in the kitchens later on, but Gideons whole thing is talking about her porn mags and how she wants to get off this rock so she can gently caress some cool ladies and then she just blushes at a girl before being shanked. I would say that incidental heterosexuality, be that having "a case of the not-gays" or low-stakes romance with no payoff is equally boring. I lean towards trashier stuff though; I never claimed to be policing authors or other readers.
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Oct 5, 2022 01:47
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. thotsky posted:Oftentimes it is a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence. I prefer stuff that is set up in my fiction to have more of a payoff. I get that it is hard; make it too subtle and people might assume according to the heterosexuality is default trope, but having like "oh, and by the way I am gay, but you are from a seductively evil empire so we can never be together" or "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" in the last chapter is very unsatisfying to me.  you've been jumped on by enough people in this thread, so all I'm gonna do is reiterate this:ToxicFrog posted:I'm not at all a fan of the implication that authors need to justify the inclusion of queer characters in a way they are never called to do for cishet ones. and also stress that this applies to any other kind of representation. I would include that link to that Tweet where an author received a manuscript back from an agent that had a character's description circled with the annotation "Why Asian?" but alas I can't find it. Why Asian? Why queer? Why female? Why <insert anything that isn't the default of white cishet male>? Because it just is. It is an intrinsic attribute that does not require justification in the form of plot payoff in the same way that someone's existence does not require justification. I mean, crit away for poorly written character or badly handled plot or inconsistent tone and foreshadowing if you went in to read Gideon the Ninth expecting a romance HEA  and therefore didn't like the ending, but none of those things have anything to do with the character's attributes. People are people.Phanatic posted:A friend recommended Sanderson's Stormlight series to me. I trust him, his recommendations had not yet failed me, and I liked how Sanderson got Wheel of Time moving again and then finished it off, so I started it. Stormlight Archive is Sanderson's self-indulgent epic to end all epics so he basically gave rein to every single thing he ever wanted to do in an epic fantasy novel and that trad publishing said no to. If his nomenclature annoys you, then no, this will not get better, though at this stage you've already learned most of the terms. If you don't like the pacing in The Way of Kings, then this too, won't get better. Of the four published novels that are out, I personally think Words of Radiance is the best; Oathbringer is probably second, The Way of Kings third and Rhythm of War I think is the weakest of the lot. There are two novellas as well: Edgedancer which is eh for me and Dawnshard which I liked. Assuming you've finished the first book: every single book has an emotional moment like Dalinar giving up his Shardblade in exchange for Kaladin's freedom and the freedom of every single slave running Sadeas's bridges. Sanderson is pretty good about doing that. But if that ending was meh for you then this is probably not the series for you. If you still want to try Sanderson, maybe start off with Mistborn: The Final Empire. Leng posted:I have now made it through to the end of The Bone Ships. So the sequel just came in at my library which means I guess that's going to be my next read after The Oleander Sword. That way I can move straight onto The Black Company afterwards.
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Oct 5, 2022 02:07
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Queer romances written by straight writers can be great, but sometimes I worry that they're missing the little quirks and changed dynamics that make queer relationships different from straight ones.
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Oct 5, 2022 03:30
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. re: gideon is it incidental lesbianism if the author identifies as lesbian? to me that means they're just writing their truth and maybe aren't choosing to focus on the romantic aspects of their relationships. it's easier to write about the kinds of relationships you yourself have experienced. i mean you could pretty easily mirror this statement by saying that you've read a lot of award winning books where there are incidentally hetero characters, and that's pretty boring, and that would be a very fair statement to make imo given the relative proportions of each Kesper North fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Oct 5, 2022 |
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Oct 5, 2022 04:11
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Cicero posted:What does "both fists on the keyboard" mean? Clumsy, inelegant, artless, awkward, bad, sucky, frowny face
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Oct 5, 2022 05:09
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sebmojo posted:Clumsy, inelegant, artless, awkward, bad, sucky, frowny face That said I do like the sense of reading something from a different cultural context, the cultural revolution bit is great and the ideas are clever. But as a universally recommended novel it was a disappointment.
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Oct 5, 2022 05:11
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lol I thought 'written with both fists on the keyboard' meant 'completely sexless and nonhorny' also 
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Oct 5, 2022 05:18
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I thought it might mean really angry, like you're slamming your fists down to type
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Oct 5, 2022 05:22
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Author banging didactic story out without any attempt of subtlety.
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Oct 5, 2022 06:38
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Are there any authors known to write, like with a pen?
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Oct 5, 2022 06:47
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Sibling of TB posted:Are there any authors known to write, like with a pen? The Entire Terrifying Heap Of Neal Stephenson's Handwritten Baroque Cycle https://www.wired.com/2009/01/the-entire-terr/
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Oct 5, 2022 06:52
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MartingaleJack posted:Author banging didactic story out without any attempt of subtlety. yes it's this lol NoneMoreNegative posted:lol I thought 'written with both fists on the keyboard' meant 'completely sexless and nonhorny' also this
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Oct 5, 2022 07:10
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Sibling of TB posted:Are there any authors known to write, like with a pen? Neil Gaiman for most of his stuff since Stardust.
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Oct 5, 2022 07:54
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Kesper North posted:The Entire Terrifying Heap Of Neal Stephenson's Handwritten Baroque Cycle This is insane! 17k pages. Christ he’s lucky nothing went wrong halfway through (unless he was scanning as he went or something). Even if I wanted to write this way I’d live in fear of something happening to the manuscript.
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Oct 5, 2022 07:55
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Sibling of TB posted:Are there any authors known to write, like with a pen? Since we just mentioned him: Alan Garner does his first drafts in longhand.
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Oct 5, 2022 08:20
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