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If anyone is curious I managed to find a picture of Zorba also the robot wedding  sorry for spoilers btw  e: oh, I forgot, the guy officiating the robot wedding is in a hover-wheelchair because the bottom half of his body melted away when he fell in a pool of acid
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Jul 17, 2015 17:36
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Thinky Whale posted:James Frey and A Million Little Pieces? I remember that. Oprah was pissed. Frey makes his living now churning out young adult fiction. He does the "I Am Number Four" series.
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Jul 17, 2015 17:52
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Some of the accompanying art is amazing; here's the aforementioned robot wedding: [e]: Beaten on the silly robot wedding picture. --- Marxism posted:If there is any sexual interaction between a human and a non human it is a bad book. Because the author did not really want to write a book they just wanted a way to publish their furry porn. On that topic, this notorious book:  More infamously known as "Venom Cock" books - basically it has a repressive caste system where women are treated like poo poo, and society revolves around dragons. The main character's sister is sold off as a sex slave, and the main charater ends up at some kind of weird dragon-worshipping nunnery (where she's loving clitorally circumsized! Which is described in detail  ), where all the nuns are addicted to a substance that dragons produce from their tongues - venom - and the only way they indulge in this is to have the dragons engage in oral sex with them. And the main character also gets off on this, despite the FGM. Oh, and the nuns jerk off baby dragons because why not I guess?!  And there's rape, and all the unpleasant other -phillias. Pesky Splinter has a new favorite as of 18:03 on Jul 17, 2015 |
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Jul 17, 2015 17:59
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HMS Beagle posted:Frey makes his living now churning out young adult fiction. He does the "I Am Number Four" series. James Frey is just a breathtaking example of human worthlessness.
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Jul 17, 2015 19:37
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spite house posted:He's responsible for it, but doesn't actually write it. Instead he pressgangs desperate up-and-comers into writing it for very little pay. Also it is terrible. Beaten to the post. I suspect Frey of being a rogue character from one of Evelyn Waugh's nastier satires, on the loose in the real world. Frey doesn't put his own name on any of this output AFAIK, not only because it carries a lingering whiff of Tiny Pieces, but because he's not actually writing any of these books himself - just coming up with 'concepts' - and because a pseudonym makes it easy to switch writers mid-series. It's not uncommon for publishing houses to commission a genre fiction series from an author (The Vampire Diaries was created like this), but Frey's operation is notorious for treating its authors like crap. Readers wanting to express their disapproval of the harsh contract by boycotting his book-packaging company, Full Fathom Five, were hampered by FFF's coyness about actually putting its brand on any of its YA novels. The backstory to this is 100% Frey: having identified a genre that seems to be selling well, he picks out as many 'bestseller' hooks as possible, and creates a book around them. As far as he's concerned, his rookie mistakes with Tiny Pieces were picking a nonfiction category, and writing the book himself. http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/69474/
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Jul 17, 2015 20:31
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loquacius posted:- All the Grand Moffs fly around on a ship together. That ship is called the Moffship. On the Moffship they have conferences. Those conferences are called Mofferences. I have just re-done my to-do list for Monday at work. First order of business is getting my group to call all meetings tele-Mofferences.
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Jul 17, 2015 21:24
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For those deluded enough to think the young Star Wars novels are good, go here for re-education.
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Jul 17, 2015 23:48
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loquacius posted:- At some point it is revealed that Trioculus isn't actually the son of Emperor Palpatine. Another guy is. This guy also has three eyes. His name is "Triclops"; this is a word meaning "three eyes." I've already been spoiled on mofferences because it became a fairly widespread Star Wars joke, but this just killed me.
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Jul 18, 2015 02:36
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I read all those young star wars novels at the time, and liked them. To be fair, it was like1994 when the first wave of star wars nostalgia was at its peak. I was 10 and even though I was reading "real" books, I fell hard for everything star wars. Hell, just a couple of months ago I made a Star Wars reference at work, and nobody got it. And I work with a bunch of Star Wars nerds. Turns out my Obi-Wan quote was from the novelization of A New Hope, which I haven't read in over two decades. I guess what I'm saying is that for a kid, even crappy Star Wars stuff is awesome. Which I guess explains the prequels.
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Jul 18, 2015 02:39
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I'm pre-emptively declaring the new movie a failure if it renders all this non-canon.
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Jul 18, 2015 02:39
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I'm pre-emptively declaring the new movie a failure if it renders all this non-canon. They already did. Pretty much the entire Star Wars expanded universe is now "Legends", and it's not going to have any bearing on the new movies, or any of the new books or comics that are coming out.
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Jul 18, 2015 03:40
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Beardless posted:They already did. Pretty much the entire Star Wars expanded universe is now "Legends", and it's not going to have any bearing on the new movies, or any of the new books or comics that are coming out. That joke just flew miles above your head, huh
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Jul 18, 2015 03:47
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I'm proud of them for finally taking the Star Wars EU out back and shooting it in the head. They should have done it a long time ago and from what it sound like they are just doing that so that the new EU can come and poo poo on the floor, roll around in the poo poo and then bite a few of the kids. One step forward, One step into the massive pile of Nerd-jizz money to be made.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:04
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Wasn't there a false memoir published sometime in the early aughts by an abused and drug-addicted transgender teen from some southern or midwest shithole that turned out to be written by a middle-aged woman who got royally pissed off when her persona got outed? (pokes the internet for a while) Aha. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT LeRoy. EDIT: I long for the alternate reality where Lucas didn't get 100% merchandising rights in perpetuity and Star Wars has the same kind of cult status as Battle Beyond the Stars or Last Starfighter. I brought my Drake has a new favorite as of 04:19 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 04:14
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I like to imagine there's just a really big stupid Laserblast expanded universe in that reality.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:20
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quantumavenger posted:MZB was married to Walter Breen, who had a previous conviction for child molestation from 1954. Breen was banned from WorldCon in 1963 for being a pedophile, which caused an uproar in a science fiction fandom firmly in the grip of the Geek Social Fallacies, decades before they were formulated. This document(Edit: fixed link) is a contemporary account of the controversy. "He regularly wore his Phi Beta Kappa key as a zipper pull on the fly of his pants" Uh, nice to know? Ugh.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:35
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pentyne posted:It's been a while, and I can't remember the book, but it was the guy who was featured on Oprah's Book Club and was later found to have fabricated 95% of his life. The entire thing reeks of stdh.txt yet for some reason it was a big deal for a year or so. When it comes to stdh.txt "non-fiction" I don't think anything can top Michelle Remembers, the book single-handedly responsible for kicking off the satanic ritual abuse moral panic of the 80s that ruined countless lives, put many innocent people in jail, and put the field of psychology back 50 years by making everybody think that repressed memories were A Thing. It's a book about how, after 5 years of intense "therapy" by a creepy doctor whom the titular Michelle later left her husband to marry, she suddenly remembers that when she was 5 years old in the 1950s her parents locked her in a room for 3 months and a procession of hooded figures tempted her into renouncing Gosh and his son Jeepers and worshiping the Devil instead because Victoria, British Columbia is secretly the head of the Church of Satan. This includes things like making her poo poo in a bucket and then pulling a bucket away at the last minute and putting a Bible in its place so they trick her into making GBS threads on the Bible, or giving her a doll that turns out to be filled with maggots. Also at one point Satan himself makes an appearance trying to seduce her in person, and later Jesus and Mary show up and use their god powers to magically heal all the wounds and scars she got from three months of physical torture because something something faith and belief. There's also A Child Called It, which was a really popular piece of torture porn among the Chicken Soup for the Soul crowd in the 90s that turned out to be almost completely fabricated, complete with the author suddenly "remembering" enough material to make a sequel after the book became a bestseller.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:43
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Sleeveless posted:There's also A Child Called It, which was a really popular piece of torture porn among the Chicken Soup for the Soul crowd in the 90s that turned out to be almost completely fabricated, complete with the author suddenly "remembering" enough material to make a sequel after the book became a bestseller. It also shows up on middle/high school reading lists. And IIRC it's only a NYT bestseller because the author buys up tons of copies from the distros to sell at his speaking engagements and seminars.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:52
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The Vosgian Beast posted:That joke just flew miles above your head, huh Apprently.   
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Jul 18, 2015 04:53
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Marxism posted:I'm proud of them for finally taking the Star Wars EU out back and shooting it in the head. They should have done it a long time ago and from what it sound like they are just doing that so that the new EU can come and poo poo on the floor, roll around in the poo poo and then bite a few of the kids. One step forward, One step into the massive pile of Nerd-jizz money to be made. The second to last big series was nothing more then a flamewar between 2 feuding authors who kept contradicting each other out of spite. For example - author A writes about how Mandolorians are expert Jedi killers and feared by all - author B writes his novel where one Jedi murders the poo poo out of a bunch of Mandos - A replies with the next book mentioned they weren't real mandos just thugs wearing mando armor, Mandos now a feared galactic power - B has the evil force drop a plague tied to mando genetic code that will kill them if they leave their planet - A then cures the plague in the intro to her book because the mando's are just so smart they were capable of doing what the rest of the Galaxy couldn't. - B meets with the people managing the SW book contracts, gets A fired. Quality of the next series of books get slightly better but are still garbage
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Jul 18, 2015 06:43
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pentyne posted:The second to last big series was nothing more then a flamewar between 2 feuding authors who kept contradicting each other out of spite. For example Karen Traviss really was a special type of dumbass, and that's saying a lot when the license had seen Mofferences and what ever the gently caress was going on in the Dark Nest trilogy.
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Jul 18, 2015 08:35
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pentyne posted:There was also some book written as a bio of some hardcore black female gangbanger with some excruciatingly bad lines. Think "So this ghetto ho tried to jack my rock, so I popped her in the head with a fo-fo and let the block know who ran the streets" but it turned out is was some middle-upper class white girl and when outed she tried to claim it was a true to life depiction of what the lower classes experience. These "Read about my/someone I know's totally not made up horrible life" books are all so obviously fake. They're always so cliche and stereotypical that you gotta wonder why anyone's surprised when the truth comes out. Celery Face has a new favorite as of 08:51 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 08:43
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KiteAuraan posted:Karen Traviss really was a special type of dumbass, and that's saying a lot when the license had seen Mofferences and what ever the gently caress was going on in the Dark Nest trilogy. She's been burning all her bridges and rolling further and further downhill in terms of book deals. Her last big score was writing a random Halo trilogy. Back when she started she made a lot of drastic changes to the SW "culture" by making a ton of Jedi look like assholes and tell stories from the pov of soldiers and grunts it was controversial but a breath of fresh air from the "everything is about Jedi and no one else". However she became wholly obsessed with her details being the only accurate ones, even when she was hilariously wrong and developed a fetish for Mandolorians that she worked into everything she wrote. She also could not stop herself from taking to the internet and raging against her critics, either professional or trolls. Celery Face posted:Would that be Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival? What's more surprising is how many book reviewers fall over themselves to proclaim it as a great work and a gripping true to life story. quote:“Love and Consequences” immediately hit a note with many reviewers. Writing in The Times, Michiko Kakutani praised the “humane and deeply affecting memoir,” but noted that some of the scenes “can feel self-consciously novelistic at times.” In Entertainment Weekly, Vanessa Juarez wrote that “readers may wonder if Jones embellishes the dialogue” but went on to extol the “powerful story of resilience and unconditional love.” I can't believe the NYT writer just sat there raptly listening to this poo poo coming out the mouth of this lily white girl and going "Wow, you're so amazing and completely believable." pentyne has a new favorite as of 10:35 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 10:24
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pentyne posted:She's been burning all her bridges and rolling further and further downhill in terms of book deals. Her last big score was writing a random Halo trilogy. Sadly, IDW has given her the reigns of the main G.I. Joe title, and it's turned out just as well as you can imagine.
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Jul 18, 2015 14:08
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Davros1 posted:Sadly, IDW has given her the reigns of the main G.I. Joe title, and it's turned out just as well as you can imagine. That implies that G.I. Joe wasn't anything other then jingoistic America gently caress yeah bull, but I do feel sorry for anybody who grew up with it seeing it worked over by an inferior writer. 
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Jul 18, 2015 14:25
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Klaus88 posted:For those deluded enough to think the young Star Wars novels are good, go here for re-education. This is a pro-read, because instead of just vaguely remembering things from when he was ten like I did, the OP has an in-depth plot recap complete with notable quotes  "I am Grand Moff Hissa, and to my fellow grand moffs, and to the grand admirals, other officers, stormtroopers, bounty hunters, slavelords, and slaves, I bid you all Dark Greetings!  "You can't make this poo poo up. "Dark Greetings" is even capitalized.
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Jul 18, 2015 15:55
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No Such Thing posted:The Andromeda Strain is pretty uniquely flawed and terrible to read. 7/8ths of the book is spent nudging the audience about how ridiculously deadly the virus is and how it's exhibiting all sorts of weird geometric behavior and how something terrible is going to happen. But then the virus just mutates and now it's inert. Gaunab posted:A Song of Ice and Fire.
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Jul 18, 2015 17:09
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The word nihilism, appropriately enough, does not mean anything.
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Jul 18, 2015 22:31
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Nothing has warmed the cockles of my heart quite like the moment I opened the TVIV thread after the last finale and discovered that the show-watchers had realized that the 
BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 18:15 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 19, 2015 11:21
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Nothing has warmed the cockles of my heart quite like the moment I opened the TVIV thread after the last finale and discovered that the show-watchers had realized that the show was terrible. They were super eager to get to the point where they could turn the tables and 'spoil' the book-readers while not realizing that almost all of the book readers did not give a gently caress what the show did. As the show ends (7 seasons is the target) things are just going to go completely crazy because the showrunners have been following a script for so long all they know how to do its tits and excessive violence. My favorite response to the latest GoT finale were some of the book readers saying "Huh, I guess it is pretty hard to actually write a good story. Looks like GRRM isn't as bad as we thought, he's clearly much better then the showrunners". I think a lot of the ASOIAF hate comes from the insanely long breaks between books and the crazy bloat going on with the series. What was book 4 in its entirely became book 4/5, and we got tons of chapters about Darkstar and Dorne that had literally no influence on the major plots. There's no telling how the last 2 books will be, but I think in the end barring some complete batshit insanity (my friend who didn't read the books but watches the show read about the online insanity and thought it be hilarious if the series ends with an alien invasion) the series will go down as a contemporary fantasy epic in the vein of the Wheel of Time/Shanarra but nowhere near a LOTR or Book of the New Sun. Speaking of crazy popular bad fantasy, the loving Kingkiller series. The author has succumbed to his fame so hard that 2/3 of the way through an trilogy that promised to show the rise and fall of an epic hero book 2 ends with hero still in his mid teens at magic school and hopelessly in love with a courtesan who sees him as a nice guy. Also sex ninjas and the hero bangs every girl he comes across and is so good at sex his first time he beds a fairie goddess known for killing people via sex and overwhelms her. And the third book is essentially non-existent as the writer takes on tons of RPG/D&D/Kickstarter writing projects and attends every con in existence. Oh, and I forgot, the "unreliable narrator" is the defense used by fans for the terrible scenes. pentyne has a new favorite as of 11:58 on Jul 19, 2015 |
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Jul 19, 2015 11:53
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pentyne posted:Oh, and I forgot, the "unreliable narrator" is the defense used by fans for the terrible scenes. The "unreliable author" theory needs a lot more play in critical studies.
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Jul 19, 2015 12:14
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divabot posted:The "unreliable author" theory needs a lot more play in critical studies.
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Jul 19, 2015 13:46
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Klaus88 posted:That implies that G.I. Joe wasn't anything other then jingoistic America gently caress yeah bull, but I do feel sorry for anybody who grew up with it seeing it worked over by an inferior writer. Yeah, I know. But one of the hallmarks of the G.I. Joe premise was "Bad guys attacking? G.I. Joe to the rescue!" In her first arc, it's "G.I. Joe sent to assassinate foreign leader." Chuck Dixon did an awesome job with the title before she came on. What she's trying to do just comes of as a poor knock-off of what Cristos and Gage did on the Cobra series.
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Jul 19, 2015 14:03
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FactsAreUseless posted:The popular "faking the death of the author as part of a massive heist scheme" approach to criticism "We faked the faking. You can thank us now."
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Jul 19, 2015 14:43
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Davros1 posted:Yeah, I know. But one of the hallmarks of the G.I. Joe premise was "Bad guys attacking? G.I. Joe to the rescue!" In her first arc, it's "G.I. Joe sent to assassinate foreign leader." Traviss has very strong opinions and when hired to a job will openly tell people that she does not give a gently caress about canon and continuity and will write whatever she wants. Prior to her Star War tenure the standard procedure was each incoming author would get a massive packet of what was the current canon, and for each major series all the authors would meet up and collaborate on the series to make sure everything was consistent. I remember in 2002 reading about the New Jedi Order series, the first of the 9-10 book sagas that every single writer worked together to write an overarching outline for who does what when and kept in touch with the other writers that covered similar material. Then Traviss rolls in, tells the other authors to gently caress off, and spends 3 books of a 9 book series in a slap-fight with the only "big-name" Star Wars author left. That she gets jobs writing Gears of War or Halo books is solely because as a Star Wars author she's a NYT Bestseller and that's a great thing to splash at the top of your genre fiction.
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Jul 19, 2015 15:36
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I was just reading a summary of the "Tom Clancy" novels, written after he quit and thought it was funny that one of the first things the ghostwriters did was make Jack Ryan president again.
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Jul 19, 2015 17:33
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Davros1 posted:Sadly, IDW has given her the reigns of the main G.I. Joe title, and it's turned out just as well as you can imagine. How does that even work? What's the special Warrior Culture that's so much better than the good guys? Ninjas?
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Jul 19, 2015 18:59
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Celery Face posted:Would that be Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival? "Go ask Alice" still gets on the english lit lists here because it's thin and deals with drugs, it's sequel is about cults of course.
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Jul 19, 2015 19:11
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iirc, the Karen Traviss thing got dicy because nerds being nerds, they just had to bring her gender into it. She is a pretty bad writer though, but it's not like Star Wars and Gears of War tie-in fiction is a hallowed genre.
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Jul 19, 2015 19:16
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pentyne posted:Speaking of crazy popular bad fantasy, the loving Kingkiller series. The author has succumbed to his fame so hard that 2/3 of the way through an trilogy that promised to show the rise and fall of an epic hero book 2 ends with hero still in his mid teens at magic school and hopelessly in love with a courtesan who sees him as a nice guy. Also sex ninjas and the hero bangs every girl he comes across and is so good at sex his first time he beds a fairie goddess known for killing people via sex and overwhelms her. And the third book is essentially non-existent as the writer takes on tons of RPG/D&D/Kickstarter writing projects and attends every con in existence. After that, he goes north to the realm of the sex samurai, who teach him the art of war and also free love. He's like 15. SurreptitiousMuffin has a new favorite as of 19:40 on Jul 19, 2015 |
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Jul 19, 2015 19:37
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