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World War Z was utter loving poo poo. The Survival Guide was stupid and poorly researched to start with, and don't loving try to write in a format where "multiple people are narrating" if you're loving poo poo and can't write in a different voice. Like a bad impressionist who can't change his voice and is like "now I'll be Batman: I am the night! now I'll be a soldier: semper fi herobravery!" in his normal voice but because his dad is a famous comedian everybody keeps going drat HAVE YOU HEARD HIS IMPRESSIONS
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:16 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 02:35 |
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:27 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I haven't read any Eddings in a while, and his last series was pretty bad even for teenage me, but those books will always have a special place in my heart. It's not good, but at least it's charming. Oh believe me I agree with you, it still holds a place in my heart as the first fantasy series I really read through properly and enjoyed. Just that whole "adult perspective" brings out some of its less well written and/or intended themes. The Elenium largely corrected the basic issues that the Belgariad had in having a competent and not boring main character and more realistic side characters. Less awful female characters (by just not having any but one female character who fortunatley wasnt an awful monster like Polgara) and having a more fun and concise goal based adventure.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:28 |
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InediblePenguin posted:World War Z was utter loving poo poo. The Survival Guide was stupid and poorly researched to start with, and don't loving try to write in a format where "multiple people are narrating" if you're loving poo poo and can't write in a different voice. Like a bad impressionist who can't change his voice and is like "now I'll be Batman: I am the night! now I'll be a soldier: semper fi herobravery!" in his normal voice but because his dad is a famous comedian everybody keeps going drat HAVE YOU HEARD HIS IMPRESSIONS Thank you for writing a criticism of World War Z that wasn't AMERICA'S BEST AND BRAVEST WOULDN'T GO DOWN LIKE THAT!!!! OOORAHOOORAHOORAH
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:31 |
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Nutsngum posted:Oh believe me I agree with you, it still holds a place in my heart as the first fantasy series I really read through properly and enjoyed. Just that whole "adult perspective" brings out some of its less well written and/or intended themes. I don't know, I thought the main woman witch in both series were similar. Apparently Eddings' wife co-wrote most of his books, and they were semi-self-inserts. It's been most of a decade since I read any of them, though. And that makes me feel old. But I agree that the characters in the Elenium were basically like if the side characters in the Belgariad weren't saddled with a couple of coming of age stories.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:38 |
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Isn't this the climax of a novel about a painting fucker that also fucks like van goghs and matisses?
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 17:51 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I don't know, I thought the main woman witch in both series were similar. Apparently Eddings' wife co-wrote most of his books, and they were semi-self-inserts. It's been most of a decade since I read any of them, though. And that makes me feel old. Nah, Sephrenia in the Elenium is a much more "sagely" and placid character. Polgara was an active dick to her father for no good reason and treated everyone like a child which became grating. The worst character moment for Polgara was getting super angry at Garion for rebelling about having to now be a "wizard" and having all this responsibility. Garion of course being a 14 year old kid who was literally a chapter ago purposely goaded into melting his parent's murderer's face off by Polgara. I think that specifically was the moment I realized she was an awful awful character. Youre right about Edding's wife as far as I know. She did get credit on later books though.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 18:23 |
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CommissarMega posted:I know you're trying to unsell the books here, but as a lover of lovely puns, I think I need these books now. Phil Foglio actually made a comic out of the first book. Or what I think is the first book? http://www.airshipentertainment.com/mythcomic.php?date=20100109 I thought it was amusing. Not earth-shattering literature but goofy and silly fantasy nonsense. Never read the books but the comic was OK.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 18:37 |
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Speaking of the Louvre, I read Da Vinci Code as a teenager. Even if I was intrigued by the (totally dumb, in retrospect) ideas behind it, ultimately it's the definition of a hack-job. It's the book version of a dumb person pretending to be intellectual. Brown is a very self-indulgent author who tries to wow the audience with facts and his impressions of a cultured person. Angels and Demons was the same. I distinctly remember the bit where Robert Langdon had an aside about his father and how he bought him a beautiful gift after Mom Langdon died and Daddy never appreciated it and he took it back. It was the clumsiest attempt to shoehorn sentimentalism into it. Oh, and he was saved from suffocation because of his Mickey Mouse watch? Did you know Mickey Mouse is Topolino in Italian? I bet you didn't! BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 14:54 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Jul 9, 2015 18:50 |
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I bought this for my husband for Christmas one year. He read the whole thing and likely hates me now. My favorite terrible book series is The Black Samurai series by Marc Olden and of them my favorite terrible book is "The Warlock". The Warlock posted:When a voodoo priest bewitches Sand’s beloved, the samurai goes on the warpath The Black Samurai is actually more of a ninja, but I mean can we truly expect a '70s blaxploitation novel written by a proto-weeaboo to be accurate in its terminology?
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 20:20 |
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A disturbing number of these fall into the "right wing fanfiction" camp of a racially pure authoritarian society free of all that left-wing baloney like equality and civil rights and poo poo.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 21:00 |
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Glaucus atlanticus posted:I bought this for my husband for Christmas one year. He read the whole thing and likely hates me now. I'm not sure things like rear end Goblins of Auschwitz count - when someone's trying to make something that's clearly marketing itself as "BUY ME SO YOU CAN LAUGH AT HOW TERRIBLE I AM ON YOUR MESSAGE BOARDS", it's not on the same level of artistic achievement as someone who really thinks they're making a real book. Modelland, as someone noted, is basically outsider art by a millionaire whose handlers couldn't hold back her determination to poo poo the floor in public. That is a noteworthy thing.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:18 |
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These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 22:25 |
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divabot posted:I'm not sure things like rear end Goblins of Auschwitz count - when someone's trying to make something that's clearly marketing itself as "BUY ME SO YOU CAN LAUGH AT HOW TERRIBLE I AM ON YOUR MESSAGE BOARDS", it's not on the same level of artistic achievement as someone who really thinks they're making a real book. Modelland, as someone noted, is basically outsider art by a millionaire whose handlers couldn't hold back her determination to poo poo the floor in public. That is a noteworthy thing. There are books in the same vein by another author who seems to take his writing very seriously: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/?ie=UTF8&k=Carlton+Mellick+III&i=books I mean as bad as Killer Klowns from Outer Space is, the guys who made it thought they had made a truly groundbreaking film, so who knows about rear end Goblins?
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:39 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. Go ahead and write, even if it's stuff you'd never show to another living soul. Recording the words is most of the way to a finished work and I'll fistfight anyone who says otherwise.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:48 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. To be honest I'm almost tempted to start writing again just to see if I can somehow do even worse than these authors. Forget striving to be the best I want to write the worst book ever written.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:52 |
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Oh, I know. It's just too low on my priority list to do tight now. Once I finish school in 5 months, probably.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:54 |
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ToxicSlurpee posted:To be honest I'm almost tempted to start writing again just to see if I can somehow do even worse than these authors. Forget striving to be the best I want to write the worst book ever written. That is so incredibly disingenious it would loop right back into being genuinely bad.
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# ? Jul 9, 2015 23:55 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. My favourite person to think of, when I think I should never attempt to write another word, is Lionel Fanthorpe - author of over 180 sci-fi and fantasy books, 89 of which were produced during three consecutive years. To get up to this astonishing rate, he dictated and recorded his novels whilst lying in bed; the publisher would often send him a schlocky bookcover ripped from an already-published work, and he would concoct a story to fit it. His masterpieces were immediately typed up and published with no plot revision, and barely any proofreading or editing: http://www.peltorro.com/intro.htm A benign lunatic dictating from under his bedcovers posted:She screwed up the securing diagram and was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to clean her teeth. It became the be all and end all of existence for a few seconds. The desire to clean her teeth grew absolutely compulsive, she could have no more resisted it than she could have flown unaided between two planets. This was published, and someone somewhere bought and read it.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:08 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. Participate in Thunderdome! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3691539
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 00:23 |
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InediblePenguin posted:World War Z was utter loving poo poo. The Survival Guide was stupid and poorly researched to start with, and don't loving try to write in a format where "multiple people are narrating" if you're loving poo poo and can't write in a different voice. Like a bad impressionist who can't change his voice and is like "now I'll be Batman: I am the night! now I'll be a soldier: semper fi herobravery!" in his normal voice but because his dad is a famous comedian everybody keeps going drat HAVE YOU HEARD HIS IMPRESSIONS I'm pretty sre that most of the "fans" of WWZ have never actually read the book and are just going off of the title and general "woo zombies " sentiment before it got run into the loving ground. I am basing this assumption entirely on fans criticizing the movie version for being "unrealistic" unlike the book. Said book which never really explains the origin or spread of the zombie plague aside from a vague reference to organ black markets and illegal immigrants, skips over the part where zombies go from a thing that exists to a global pandemic because the author admitted he couldn't think of a way to do it with slow zombies, and has zombies that are effectively magic since they can be frozen solid in winter and them thaw in spring no worse for wear, walk across the bottom of the ocean in defiance of pressure that would destroy a human body, and have limbs that remain animated after being cut off as of they have minds of their own. Also all the goofy comic-book poo poo like Japan being kept safe by blind samurai and their otaku protégé. But it's presented as an oral history so it's totally grounded! The Vosgian Beast posted:Thank you for writing a criticism of World War Z that wasn't AMERICA'S BEST AND BRAVEST WOULDN'T GO DOWN LIKE THAT!!!! OOORAHOOORAHOORAH Him making the soldiers be so comically ineffective at Yonkers was just as masturbatory as any right-wing military fiction since it was only there to continue his faux-populist narrative with the nerdy armchair generals know more than the real thing and are stuck shaking their heads and clicking their tongues when they're proven right. The whole book has this whole juvenile "NO YOU SHUT THE gently caress UP DAD" attitude where everybody in power is incompetent and stupid and nerds are all rad under-appreciated geniuses and since the zombie wasteland is a perfect meritocracy the cool nerds get to run things while the old guard ia relegated to (literal) poo poo-shovelers and the suburban dads die in the woods because they don't even know what kind of sleeping bag is the right one. Sleeveless has a new favorite as of 01:27 on Jul 10, 2015 |
# ? Jul 10, 2015 01:25 |
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Sleeveless posted:I'm pretty sre that most of the "fans" of WWZ have never actually read the book and are just going off of the title and general "woo zombies " sentiment before it got run into the loving ground. I hate having to break this to you, but books and movies aren't real life.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 01:43 |
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I hate having to break this to you, but books and movies aren't real life. Tell that to all the people who hold WWZ up as some paragon of tactical realism.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 02:31 |
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Sleeveless posted:I'm pretty sre that most of the "fans" of WWZ have never actually read the book and are just going off of the title and general "woo zombies " sentiment before it got run into the loving ground. you are a terrible poster with a strange aggressive attitude that sparks of anger problems, and projections of your own life failings onto other people by virtue of their subjective taste in media items which are of little interest to you. perhaps, consider therapy.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 02:33 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. 22 Eargesplitten posted:Oh, I know. It's just too low on my priority list to do tight now. Once I finish school in 5 months, probably. lol @ this failson for thinking there's time to write when u start work. chortling at my desk kneedeep in wet spreadsheets and contracts to vet through. they are wet from my tears
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 02:44 |
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King Doom posted:This post made me angry, because yeah, it's all true. The first book in the series, River God, is loving amazing. Read it when I was a kid, it's one of my favourite books of all time. Set in Ancient Egypt it is from the viewpoint of the Eunuch Taita, that Ancient Egyptian Wizard mentioned (he's more of a wise man than a wizard at this point) and the book is really entertaining and at the same time feels like it could all have happened and that Wilbur Smith did a metric ton of research. Everything that happens (barring possible the main character using something called Red Sheppen to go on a vision quest type thing) could realistically have happened. There's action, adventure, a tragic romance (Taita the eunuch is in love with his owner, Queen Lostris) and she dies in the end of the book, lamenting they could never be together. It's all very sad. That writer really mystifies me. I never read any of the books but from the way people talk about River God and the way people talk about its sequels makes me think this guy almost could have had a classic if he didn't immediately drive into crazy "unmentionable in decent company" town.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 02:57 |
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Sleeveless posted:Tell that to all the people who hold WWZ up as some paragon of tactical realism. Who are these people? I want their names.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:07 |
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I just found the standard of writing to be very poor with WWZ. The different voices read like very facile impersonations and some are comically bad. Which is probably the worst thing for a book that is a collection of interviews. Looking past that it's the hamfisted social commentary and masturbatory nerd fantasy stuff (blind Japanese swordsman, etc) that's no better than all the rest of the pulp comic book/fantasy/sci-fi shite out there.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:11 |
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Nanomashoes posted:Isn't this the climax of a novel about a painting fucker that also fucks like van goghs and matisses? i forgot to respond to this but yes
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:14 |
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A Classy Ghost posted:Participate in Thunderdome! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3691539 Not until I get more practice, I haven't written since 2010. The Saddest Rhino posted:lol @ this failson for thinking there's time to write when u start work. chortling at my desk kneedeep in wet spreadsheets and contracts to vet through. they are wet from my tears I'm already working full time. That's why I'm not writing now too.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:18 |
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The Saddest Rhino posted:you are a terrible poster with a strange aggressive attitude that sparks of anger problems, and projections of your own life failings onto other people by virtue of their subjective taste in media items which are of little interest to you. perhaps, consider therapy. You're really defensive, is it your favorite book or do you just have a beef with that poster?
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:20 |
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InediblePenguin posted:You're really defensive, is it your favorite book or do you just have a beef with that poster? The Saddest Rhino sighed as he drew his blind Japanese master's anti-zombie katana...
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:23 |
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InediblePenguin posted:You're really defensive, is it your favorite book or do you just have a beef with that poster? Well you could just look at Sleeveless's post history and decide for yourself.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:27 |
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Sleeveless posted:The Saddest Rhino sighed as he drew his blind Japanese master's anti-zombie katana... anime is book
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:28 |
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Sleeveless posted:The Saddest Rhino sighed as he drew his blind Japanese master's anti-zombie katana... what a silly insult, since anime is bad
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:28 |
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mycot posted:Well you could just look at Sleeveless's post history and decide for yourself. Don't you need plat for that? I'm a gay poor
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:34 |
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The worst part of World War Z for me was the bit about how the military nicknames their anti zombie rifle the "Meg" because it looks like the old Megatron toy. Ugh, no, nobody would ever do that. The last Tom Clancy book to just have his name on it was completely terrible, "Teeth of the Tiger." That's the one where Jack Ryan Jr joins an NGO which specializes in assassinating people. Because they're not the government they don't have to go through any of that red tape whenever someone needs to be put down. Also they don't have any of the pesky "oversight" and if any of them get caught, why Jack Ryan Sr just happened to sign a bunch of blank undated pardons as get out of jail free cards. Probably the strangest part of the book is how ole Clance (or his ghostwriter) decided for some reason that 9/11 still happened and everyone acts like its a big deal, despite the fact that his version of the world has had a bunch of terrorist attacks on the US, up to and including a goddamn nuke going off or how in a previous book like 90% of Congress was killed when someone flew a jet into the Capitol building.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 03:35 |
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Sleeveless posted:Tell that to all the people who hold WWZ up as some paragon of tactical realism. To be fair, if the US military was presented with an enemy force that defied all conventional notions of strategy and force projection rather then breaking it down and going back to basics they would dig in, refuse to change and scream about how bureaucrats are trying to destroy a historical institution. For those unaware, in the book carpet bombing, tank shells, MOABs, etc. aren't really effective against a massive zombie horde (although just lining up tanks and running them over should work but nevermind) so when the reformed USA bunkers down on the West Coast the guy made SecDef guts the military because $2 billion stealth bombers have no purpose anymore and faces massive resistance from the military brass for it.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 07:25 |
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Sven Hassel's first book, The Legion of the Damned, is a surprisingly sober and believable war novel. The rest of his books aren't. In the second book he basically goes: "Oops, nearly forgot! Our unit also included an eight foot simpleton and a francophile muslim eunuch legionnaire. gently caress it!" They get really, really bad and make you realize that Hassel was full of poo poo the whole time. They make you feel like an rear end in a top hat for having liked the first book.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 09:19 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 02:35 |
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Pro-click right here Robert Lionel Fanthorp posted:The darkness all around him was thick, black, stygian. It was a stifling, overwhelming, suffocating darkness. A horrifying terrifying darkness. A darkness of the nethermost pit of hell. Indescribable. It seemed an oppressive darkness, like the darkness of some foul underground dungeon, to which the blessed light of the sun never gained access. It was velvety, almost tactile. He was inhaling it; it was penetrating the pores of his skin; it seemed that the world had always been darkness, that the world alway would be darkness. It was a timeless darkness, a weird, horrifying, overwhelming eternal blackness. He felt as though this was the darkness of a tomb, and that he had been buried alive. . . It was dark, yo. Robert Lionel Fanthorp posted:The co-pilot was right. Even with the eyes shut a blueness was still everywhere. The world had suddenly turned into a vast blue phantasmagoria, a panoply of blue that was everywhere. A vista of blue desert, of blue twilight. A blue glitter, a blue sparkle, a coralescing, scintillating blue that seemed to have no end and no beginning. There was no escape from it. It was an inevitable blue, an unescapable blue. They could smell it now, it seemed to be penetrating their nostrils, their lungs, the pores of their skin. It was seeping into their bodies as thought they were immersed in a bath of it. They felt that it was invading them, that somehow it was penetrating to the innermost depths of their souls, their minds and their bodies. There was no stopping that blueness. It was blue, yo.
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# ? Jul 10, 2015 11:13 |