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Ornamented Death posted:This. The only people that can classify the Dresden Files as "conservative straight white male fantasy" and keep a straight face are people that have never actually read any conservative straight white male fantasy. Butcher strikes me as someone who at least sometimes votes Republican; he's definitely more conservative than the average goon, and probably more conservative than me. That doesn't mean he agrees with the current US conservative orthodoxy about every issue, or that he's obsessed with elaborate forms of pseudohistory, or anything like that; he's not a crazy person like the authors of the "conservative straight white male fantasy" you're probably thinking of. He still writes some things I find pretty ideologically unsettling, mind you. For example, he tends to exoticize Latin Americans and Southern Europeans, without even the thin veil of irony he applies when writing about Asians and (North) American Indians. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 00:14
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Zore posted:one of the reasons the Turn Coat/Changes/Ghost Story trilogy is great because every aspect of Harry's life gets absolutely shattered, and it happens because of his flaws and hubris. And then he's stuck, dead, trying to figure out how to change I didn't get any of the spoilered part at all from Turn Coat. What the are you talking about? And were those officially supposed to be a trilogy? Because Turn Coat just seemed like completely unrelated filler. And so did Ghost Story. And Skin Game... :\ E: quote:I got the feeling that Butcher isn't a proper writer but more of a game master, more preoccupied preparing set-pieces and climaxes but forgetting that he's supposed to, you know, develop the characters himself. This perfectly sums up Ghost Story and Skin Game for me, except in those ones, even the action was boring. fruit loop fucked around with this message at 00:21 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 00:16
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fruit loop posted:I didn't get any of the spoilered part at all from Turn Coat. What the are you talking about? And were those officially supposed to be a trilogy? Because Turn Coat just seemed like completely unrelated filler. And so did Ghost Story. And Skin Game... :\ If Turn Coat seemed like filler, it's because you weren't paying attention. It resolved more than a few threads and sets up several more.
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May 25, 2015 00:33
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Rygar201 posted:If Turn Coat seemed like filler, it's because you weren't paying attention. It resolved more than a few threads and sets up several more. Yeah, Turn Coat was one of the more important books in the series. Art the series I seem to recall that Butcher's statement on it was the people working on it were terrific, it boosted his sales tenfold, and he is very happy the rights have reverted back to him
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May 25, 2015 00:53
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Fried Chicken posted:Yeah, Turn Coat was one of the more important books in the series. In years passed his standard response when asked about the rights returning to him was listing the time remaining down to the hour, IIRC
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May 25, 2015 01:01
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thrawn527 posted:What's everyone's opinion of the Dresden TV show? I watched the pilot on YouTube and, while I really like Paul Blackthorne...I was not impressed. It's the reason why I started the books. I always picture Morgan as black because of it. Oh if you want more Blackthorne check out Arrow, he basically plays Harry Dresden as a cop. computer parts fucked around with this message at 01:10 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 01:08
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I don't see Turn Coat as being part of a trilogy - it's definitely a stand-alone novel, although I wouldn't call either it or Skin Game filler - a lot happens in those books to advance the overall narrative. If there is a trilogy within the series, it's Changes / Ghost Story / Cold Days. You can easily read all three of them as one long, connected story. Plus, there's a nice symmetry within them Changes is the culmination of the first half of the series, Ghost Story is the interlude, the break in the action, the time for reflection, and Cold Days is setting up the plots for the back half of the books.
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May 25, 2015 01:23
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Changes is the mid-season finale.
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May 25, 2015 01:30
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I think the TV series distilling down the premise to 'Wizard PI' case-of-the-week was a smart move for the format and really should have worked. The casting was good (casting a short Murphy never would have worked with a 6'4 male lead) and the hockey stick staff was ace. Unfortunately the writing was just all over the place and you never got a sense that it was the same people behind producing one episode to the next.
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May 25, 2015 02:01
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computer parts posted:It's the reason why I started the books. I always picture Morgan as black because of it. I already saw Morgan as black, and I didn't know why. I must have seen some scene of the TV show without realizing it at some point flipping around. Maybe a preview. All I know is, as soon as Morgan showed up in the first book, I saw him as black. Oh, and I watch Arrow already. And agreed.
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May 25, 2015 04:46
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computer parts posted:It's the reason why I started the books. Same here, so despite it's flaws, I still enjoy it.
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May 25, 2015 05:52
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I'm two days late to the party but I'm glad thrawn finally got to the Sue payoff and posted about it.  It is also my favorite part of newbie readers in the thread and the picture of Harry riding Sue in the OP is basically the entire reason I started the series.
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May 25, 2015 18:20
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Rygar201 posted:If Turn Coat seemed like filler, it's because you weren't paying attention. It resolved more than a few threads and sets up several more. I noticed you didn't disagree on Skin Game. 
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May 25, 2015 19:59
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fruit loop posted:I noticed you didn't disagree on Skin Game. Because "Skin Game is filler" is pretty goddamn silly Here are the plot events that occur in it: Butters becomes Knight of the Cross. Nick's daughter is killed, removing one of the major Denarians from play Harry gives birth to his second daughter/spirit Harry gets access to an incredibly powerful artifact that Nick was after. Uriel hands over his power to Michael and kills a man as a mortal. Goodman Grey is introduced as a character. Harry gains access to a whole lot of personal wealth. That's discounting the things which are not inherently obvious, like the guy Harry talks to on Demonreach. We don't have the next book to say exactly what the major ramifications of those events are but several of those are major goddamn events which will have significant repercussions on future books.
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May 25, 2015 20:06
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Major events happened, but the plot itself was dumb. good guys go in cave with bad guys. bad guys betray good guys. author lazily pulls good guy victory out of nowhere in the end. I don't care what major events happen. The plot was boring. Those events could have gone into an actual good story. He can clearly write something as good as Dead Beat - he's did it before when writing Dead Beat. He could have put all those plot events into a story as good as Dead Beat's story. Instead, he put those events in a dumb boring book whose individual story didn't matter wasn't entertaining and called it "Skin Game". It's like he just wanted those events to happen as part of his great 23-book work and didn't particularly care if one of those books was boring as hell and lazily thrown together as long as it gave him an excuse to make the right events happen. The important events of Changes were the focus of the entire plot of changes. The entire book was hinting, leading right up to them. Same for book three. But with Skin Game, the important events just happened unexpectedly, and even if they were hinted at in any way before they happened, they were in no way the focus of Skin Game's story. It was boring and important events seemed to happen in parallel with the story rather than being the entire point of the story. fruit loop fucked around with this message at 21:19 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 21:17
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You seem to believe he can just decide to make a book as good as his best any time he wants. That's not how it works. I can guarantee he didn't sit down to write Skin Game one day and say to himself "this book has to loving suck".
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May 25, 2015 22:15
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sirtommygunn posted:You seem to believe he can just decide to make a book as good as his best any time he wants. That's not how it works. It should.
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May 25, 2015 22:35
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fruit loop posted:It was boring and important events seemed to happen in parallel with the story rather than being the entire point of the story. Uh. Aside from the parasite stuff, literally every single major event that happened was due to the main story. Like you're straight-up wrong here. It isn't even a case of it being like the porn studio stuff which really was barely connected to the major events. You can't remove the central heist from the story and have things happen the same way.
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May 25, 2015 23:11
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I find Peter Grant to be way worse than Dresden because I can at least look at Dresden's past and see reasons why he's hosed up. He has problems dealing with women? Well, his mother's a half-legendary sorceress nobody will talk about, his foster father manipulated him into falling for his foster sister to bind them both closer to him(and the foster sister was mind controlled into betraying him), he has a literal fairy godmother who's even more manipulative than the average fae, and the rest of his childhood was spent on an isolated farm with a man who was born more than a century ago. On top of that, he can't make eye-contact without triggering a soul-gaze and when he gets emotional his mere presence will blow out cell phones/computers/lightbulbs, cause your modern car to fail, and de-magnetize your credit cards. He basically doesn't get to participate in modern society. When he has problems with women I can see reasons why he'd be that way. Grant doesn't have anything like that going for him, which makes me less tolerant of him.
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May 26, 2015 00:36
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Well, I'm sure that growing up in a poor biracial family with a heroin addict father didn't do Peter Grant any favors, but he doesn't really strike me as supremely hosed-up either. He's easily distracted, but he's not an idiot, he's not incompetent, he's really a more-or-less average guy in a distinctly un-average situation. And he's pretty good with people, which is more than you can say about Harry Dresden.
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May 26, 2015 00:54
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fruit loop posted:Major events happened, but the plot itself was dumb. Skin Game came out the way it did because Butcher wanted to flex his artistic license and write a heist story, which is a pretty significant departure from the established dresden files formula. A heist formula unfortunately doesn't lend itself well to mysteries or an intricate running plot we're used to. We knew Nicodemus was looking to steal some sort of powerful artifact from the vault of Hades when we opened the front cover, and in that way it reminds me of Changes where we also knew the main plot on page 1, but where Changes is a midseason finale Skin Game is a "flavor" episode. The one place I do want to give serious literary criticism on Skin game though is in the vault when Harry reveals that he actually hired Gray off camera back at the start of the book, thus the tables are turned at one of the book's major setpieces. It just feels lazy. That literary device worked great at the end of Turncoat because Harry hinted at it with the PI, and the result came off as really clever when he blew the lid on Peabody's cover. In Ghost Story/Changes the device also worked because the memory magic logically would have given us access only to what Harry knew/remembered, but in Skin Game there was no explanation behind the missing scene and it didn't come off as a surprising twist or even somewhat "clever".
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May 26, 2015 02:29
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DrFrankenStrudel posted:The one place I do want to give serious literary criticism on Skin game though is That part was the worst. It ruined the book for me.
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May 26, 2015 02:36
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docbeard posted:Well, I'm sure that growing up in a poor biracial family with a heroin addict father didn't do Peter Grant any favors, but he doesn't really strike me as supremely hosed-up either. He's easily distracted, but he's not an idiot, he's not incompetent, he's really a more-or-less average guy in a distinctly un-average situation. And he's pretty good with people, which is more than you can say about Harry Dresden.
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May 26, 2015 02:45
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DrFrankenStrudel posted:The one place I do want to give serious literary criticism on Skin game though is in the vault when Harry reveals that he actually hired Gray off camera back at the start of the book, thus the tables are turned at one of the book's major setpieces. It just feels lazy. That literary device worked great at the end of Turncoat because Harry hinted at it with the PI, and the result came off as really clever when he blew the lid on Peabody's cover. In Ghost Story/Changes the device also worked because the memory magic logically would have given us access only to what Harry knew/remembered, but in Skin Game there was no explanation behind the missing scene and it didn't come off as a surprising twist or even somewhat "clever". The scene is hinted at though. Right after Harry leaves Nick they mention he is going somewhere else. It's explicitly foreshadowed and Harry even brings up shortly after that he has another thing going on that he can't tell Murphy about. As far as an explanation: The Dresden Files are written by Harry Dresden and it is explicitly one of his character points that he gets off on keeping things secret until he can do a dramatic reveal. I believe he specifically referred to it as "heroin for wizards.' It's the exact reason that he doesn't inform the 'viewers' of the Turncoat thing. docbeard posted:Well, I'm sure that growing up in a poor biracial family with a heroin addict father didn't do Peter Grant any favors, but he doesn't really strike me as supremely hosed-up either. He's easily distracted, but he's not an idiot, he's not incompetent, he's really a more-or-less average guy in a distinctly un-average situation. And he's pretty good with people, which is more than you can say about Harry Dresden. Peter is absolutely incompetent. He is straight-up bad at being a cop and would have been shifted off to a location where he can't do serious damage except he got lucky. He isn't a blithering idiot but he absolutely lucked into a job that happens to work in his favor and even then he slacks off and gets distracted way more than he reasonably should for someone in his job. I think it hurts more because Leslie is there and is basically a more interesting character than Peter in every way. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:07 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 04:02
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DrFrankenStrudel posted:The one place I do want to give serious literary criticism on Skin game though is in the vault when Harry reveals that he actually hired Gray off camera back at the start of the book, thus the tables are turned at one of the book's major setpieces. It just feels lazy. That literary device worked great at the end of Turncoat because Harry hinted at it with the PI, and the result came off as really clever when he blew the lid on Peabody's cover. In Ghost Story/Changes the device also worked because the memory magic logically would have given us access only to what Harry knew/remembered, but in Skin Game there was no explanation behind the missing scene and it didn't come off as a surprising twist or even somewhat "clever". I kinda agree with this, although it didn't bother me that much. There should have been more hinting at it. In particular, on reread, he didn't really do the code phrases with Gray that much. It would have been nice if there were more relevant exchanges with that, and if there were scenes that kinda don't make sense until you read the flashback.
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May 26, 2015 04:06
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ImpAtom posted:Peter is absolutely incompetent. He is straight-up bad at being a cop and would have been shifted off to a location where he can't do serious damage except he got lucky. He isn't a blithering idiot but he absolutely lucked into a job that happens to work in his favor and even then he slacks off and gets distracted way more than he reasonably should for someone in his job. I think it hurts more because Leslie is there and is basically a more interesting character than Peter in every way. it causes me physical pain every time you conflate 'being great and amazing at things and everyone's favourite' with 'being an interesting character'
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May 26, 2015 04:20
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awesmoe posted:it causes me physical pain every time you conflate 'being great and amazing at things and everyone's favourite' with 'being an interesting character' That's sure putting words in my mouth. Leslie is interesting because of the combination of her being legitimately motivated and talented and suffering from a severe horrible malady that forces her to deal with serious issues in her life. I'm more interested in seeing how Leslie deals with being the victims of the darkest magic while trying to rebuild her life than I am in seeing Peter gradually stumble his way towards competence. Peter Grant is 'average' but average in that very specific way I don't find very interesting on its own. His flaws are interesting but his flaws also happen to be something I find really gross. The way he views being a policeman means he is exactly the kind of person I don't think should have that sort of power or responsibility. Those flaws could be really interesting in a book that sympathized with Peter less. It's obviously critical of him (or as critical as something written from his narration can be) but it leans way too hard on the idea that I'm supposed to want Peter Grant to become a good copper instead of wanting him positioned far away from where he can abuse his power. Dresden is pretty hosed up in that regards too. A lot of Urban Fantasy is. (It's how you get something like Alex Verus in the first place since Alex isn't honestly that different from a lot of Urban Fantasy protagonists except in terms of self-awareness.) I just find Peter the exact right mix of boring and gross for him to drag down what is otherwise a really strong series. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:36 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 04:24
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I'd be more okay with it if he actually showed some sign of becoming a good copper. I don't know how long Aaronovitch plans the series to go, but at the moment I feel like Grant might in fact be worse at the job than when he started, in that he's gained in power and influence, but regressed in terms of personal responsibility. I don't hate him or anything, but I do thing think there's a line to be walked between sympathetic every-man and incompetent boob, and that Peter verges a little too often toward the latter.
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May 26, 2015 04:33
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ImpAtom posted:That's sure putting words in my mouth.
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May 26, 2015 04:43
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awesmoe posted:Yeah that's fair actually. For some reason whenever you talk about that I read it as you talking about Leslie without the injury. Sorry. Yeah, that's fair, it wasn't really clear and pre-injury Leslie was a lot more boring. (For the, uh, one book that was in.)
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May 26, 2015 04:46
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Eh, I like that Peter isn't the best cop in the world; it makes him interesting and relatable at least for me because I doubt I'd be that great a cop either. I don't think he's objectively *bad* at his job, though. It's pointed out somewhere explicitly (I think by Leslie?) but he has flashes of really brilliant insight., he's clever and creative, and good at thinking up non-linear solutions. He's just correspondingly not--good at linear, methodical problem solving. It makes for an interesting spin the police procedural because the typical police procedural protagonist is very much a Leslie type -- professional, methodical, plodding.
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May 26, 2015 04:48
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I think it's pretty clear that Peter is objectively bad at being a cop. Those occasional flashes of brilliance don't make up for the 99.5% of the time that he's busy loving up the job because he saw a butterfly or wanted to read some graffiti.
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May 26, 2015 05:09
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Skin games main plot was pretty weak. Like it was said, Butcher wanted to go outside his usual area and try a crime novel, specifically a heist. I've seen many other authors do the same and comment on it later, the consistent remark is that writing a good crime novel is much much harder than you would expect. It has the research requirements of hardcore physics-driven hard SF, combined with the characterization requirements of literary fiction, and tighter plotting requirements than any other genre. On top of that a heist novel is harder than a regular crime novel because you simultaneously need the plan to go off without a hitch, while having it appear that it went to poo poo so you have dramatic tension and a plot. You end up needing to have a huge twist, but it needs to be a good one rather than a hackneyed "what a tweest!" one. Basically contrast Ocean's Eleven with The Italian Job to see a good difference. Heist-within-a-heist worked well because there was the conflict between pulling two at the same time, that one failing could blow the other, the character tensions from the selfishness, and that it got you to focus on the smaller character driven heist that worked while failing, they were able to slide the twist of the bigger heist past you. Heist-and-here-we-have-mobsters-ex-machina-to-beat-up-edward-norton sucked for obvious reasons. I'm rambling and hopping media, but the point is Butcher decided to try and write what is probably the hardest subtype of the hardest genre without any practice and it struggled as a result. It was still a fun read, but he was out of his element and it showed.
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May 26, 2015 07:09
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There was nothing that terrible about Skin Game's twist. It was foreshadowed and made sense. If anything that was really the problem with it. It was a sensible plan, and a heist should be slick. Skin Game's plot might not have been the strongest, but I think any of those flaws pale in comparison with everything involving Butters. Just, gently caress Butters. That poo poo was awful. On the other hand, I think the best parts of the book were the character interaction parts. Especially Dresden's talk with Michael. There has been so much upheaval in recent books and so little good conversation between characters. The title Peace Talks would make me really excited about seeing more conversation if Butcher hadn't already said it's the most violent book of the series so far.
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May 26, 2015 07:39
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There was no way a book titled "Peace Talks" was actually going to be peaceful.
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May 26, 2015 07:45
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Fried Chicken posted:I'm rambling and hopping media, but the point is Butcher decided to try and write what is probably the hardest subtype of the hardest genre without any practice and it struggled as a result. It was still a fun read, but he was out of his element and it showed. I wanted to like the book, but Dresden's "Have I mentioned I'm playing my cards close to my chest in the past five minutes?" Batman impersonation and the lightsaber took me right out of it. No idea why that last one didn't work, since Sue was okay, but something about it just comes off as overly self-indulgent Loved almost every other part though. Parkour!
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May 26, 2015 08:11
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the twist in Skin Game I liked most was it was all a plot between Mab and Marcone to pay back the Denarians for the events of small favor it showed her true character.
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May 26, 2015 15:14
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The big problem with the heist is that it just wasn't an interesting heist. It was more like a series of video game challenges. Rather than talented people necessary for a job you basically just had Harry Dresden's JRPG Party.
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May 26, 2015 15:21
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ImpAtom posted:The big problem with the heist is that it just wasn't an interesting heist. It was more like a series of video game challenges. Rather than talented people necessary for a job you basically just had Harry Dresden's JRPG Party. This right here. If you look at something like Ocean's Eleven of The Italian Job, it's about getting your team of specialists together with unique skills. poo poo goes entirely wrong and you apply your team's skills to the new challenge, but then the readers/viewers discover that poo poo loving up was according to plan and that the unique skills play right into that but in a totally new way. Skin Game had a series of linear game checkpoints that had to be overcome and lacked the entire last half of the traditional heist genre. There was a twist, but it had nothing to do with the plan and didn't use the "plan within a plan" strategy to its fullest. Most of my friends hold it up in the top 4 or 5 and I have no idea why.
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May 26, 2015 16:10
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Mortanis posted:Most of my friends hold it up in the top 4 or 5 and I have no idea why. I think it gets a lot of positive attention because it does have some really strong moments (Harry and Michael) and also is just a genuine return to positive and somewhat light action after the last 3/4 books being "Harry's life is goddamn suffering and everything is lovely for everyone." It's the first book since pre-Turncoat where Harry and friends don't get completely poo poo on with a Pyrrhic victory. I suspect once we get a few books down the line it'll be remembered a bit less positively but for the moment it is "Harry Dresden Actually Wins" which I think is something people really were looking for.
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May 26, 2015 16:20
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