Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Mars4523
Feb 17, 2014
Generation V also wins for having the female lead character be a kitsune, and also allowing her to consistently be as or more awesome than the lead dude. Not a lot of male lead urban fantasy does that.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Wolpertinger
Feb 16, 2011

Mars4523 posted:

Generation V also wins for having the female lead character be a kitsune, and also allowing her to consistently be as or more awesome than the lead dude. Not a lot of male lead urban fantasy does that.

I rolled my eyes at her at first, but she grew on me by not being stereotypical hot babe lusting after the main character or being a damsel in distress (she's the one who saves his rear end instead).

Captain Capacitor
Jan 21, 2008

The code you say?
Jim took a much-needed break from the con circuit and writing Peace Talks to do something amazing.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoCQgGp4Cw

The motherfucker actually rode up on a white horse and everything.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Azuth0667 posted:

The worst part about the Alex Verus series is that the magic system other than what the main characters use is poorly defined. Someone's a fire mage so they can basically sling fire all over the place with no limits which makes it feel really shallow.

That sort of seems to be the point. Magic users are absurdly powerful and have no real set defined limits which is why they're extremely terrifying in practice. The same thing applies to Alex whose entire gimmick is he has divination and uses it to its most absurd extreme. It works with the setting because the characters involved basically act like they have godlike power. It's more like a series about demigods than mages.

Wolpertinger posted:

It always seems weird that people are so opposed to the idea of vampires having a personality other than mindless cannibal, but a character struggling against turning into a monster is more interesting than just bam instant one dimensional sociopath.

My major complaint here is that unless it is a "never feeds on anyone ever' vampire, I can't sympathize with someone who has murdered people to extend their own life. No amount of angst and sadness can escape that fact. The alternate problem is that if they can just resist their urge to feed than they're boring as hell because it devalues the actual curse. It's very hard for a series to really manage to hit the sweet spot for me where I can sympathize with someone who uncontrollably murders.

Captain Capacitor posted:

Jim took a much-needed break from the con circuit and writing Peace Talks to do something amazing.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoCQgGp4Cw

The motherfucker actually rode up on a white horse and everything.

That is the most Jim Butcher of things.

Kellanved
Sep 7, 2009
That is goony as gently caress.

Mars4523
Feb 17, 2014

Wolpertinger posted:

I rolled my eyes at her at first, but she grew on me by not being stereotypical hot babe lusting after the main character or being a damsel in distress (she's the one who saves his rear end instead).
Not every series can make a "Hero finds female lead character on his bed, naked and only wearing one of his t-shirts" scene all about how badass she is and how everything she does is not all about him.

Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

Kellanved posted:

That is goony as gently caress.

Jim Butcher is goony as gently caress so it makes sense.

Slanderer
May 6, 2007
Wait, so he got divorced, started working out, and proposed to a cosplayer at a ren fair?

i think Butcher just became a Deep Nerd

Xun
Apr 25, 2010

Put the helmet back on!!!

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Slanderer posted:

... started working out ...

... became a Deep Nerd

Something doesn't quite fit here. :v:

torgeaux
Dec 31, 2004
I serve...

Barbe Rouge posted:

Badly written? Maybe if your reference point is actual literature. Then 99% of fantasy & SF will be badly written. But if it's Dresden, then Generation V is either equal or better than.

Wolpertinger posted:

I know that everyone has different tastes and all, but people do get a bit snobbish in the Dresden Files thread of all places, which is hardly high literature. Most urban fantasy's gunna be a little trashy and pulpy and cliche and that's the fun of it.

No, I'm keeping the level steady. It's badly written, very much so, by the standards of urban fantasy.

edit: It's Dresden book one and two level bad writing, for comparison. Maybe it will follow the same level of improvement, too.

torgeaux fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jul 21, 2015

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
So, the books I got when I was on holiday were: Foxglove Summer, The Rook, The Atrocity Archive (I literally just bought it in Chapters then went into the coffee shop, got into the Wi-Fi and came into this thread to see everybody giving it a bit of stick :v:) and Half-Resurrection Blues.

I'm about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through The Children of Hurin (so far he's gone about being an rear end in a top hat to everyone and then shags his sister - it's basically the plot of Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy in reverse) but after I'm finished it, I think I'll read the Aaronovitch one first, since it's what I've been waiting for longest. Of the others, The Rook seems to get the most favourable attention, the Stross seems is divisive at best and Half-Resurrection Blues is an unknown quantity. I'll probably leave The Rook till last.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Half-Resurrection Blues is okay. Strong voice, somewhat simplistic story. Author is hardcore into your silly American internet social justice circlejerk and it spills into the book a bit, but I mostly found it amusing.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Most of the Stross-related poo poo that cropped up recently is aimed at his latest book in that series, Atrocity Archives is good.

SavTargaryen
Sep 11, 2011
I still haven't read through Annihilation Score but yeah, Atrocity Archives is good. Also the vampires in that book own because vampires don't exist.

Masonity
Dec 31, 2007

What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?

anilEhilated posted:

Most of the Stross-related poo poo that cropped up recently is aimed at his latest book in that series, Atrocity Archives is good.

And even then it's not that the book is terrible. It has a different pov to the rest of the series though and the pov character is pretty terrible in the book.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


ImpAtom posted:

My major complaint here is that unless it is a "never feeds on anyone ever' vampire, I can't sympathize with someone who has murdered people to extend their own life. No amount of angst and sadness can escape that fact. The alternate problem is that if they can just resist their urge to feed than they're boring as hell because it devalues the actual curse. It's very hard for a series to really manage to hit the sweet spot for me where I can sympathize with someone who uncontrollably murders.

I dunno, I think that I'd talk myself into it pretty easily if you put me into a situation where I had to choose between killing somebody in cold blood or dying myself. I'd find myself outside some lovely meth shack out here in the sticks saying "Really now, I'd be doing the community a favor..." or surfing the sex offender registry and going "This dude's got 4 counts of fondling six-year olds, I'm pretty sure I'm more deserving of life than he is...".

In a life or death situation, I think most people would find a way to justify it to themselves.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
I think a lot of more modern vampire fiction has the idea that they can subsist on the blood of warm-blooded animals (usually cows) though human blood is seemingly better. I'm curious how old that is; it must be at least as old as Modern Vampire MythologyTM or so I would imagine.

Like, I remember one episode of Buffy where Angel visited a slaughterhouse or a butcher's shop he was buying cow's blood from (and another episode where vampire's attack a hospital to steal the donated blood, which I thought was quite novel). I think a similar thing happened in an episode of Forever Knight, where Nick Knight is under investigation for a murder and the police find these bottles of cow's blood in his fridge (his excuse is that he uses it as paint-thickener). On the other hand, there's True Blood, where the vampires are still mostly murderous assholes when there's a source of completely synthetic blood being mass produced for them.

Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jul 21, 2015

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

anilEhilated posted:

Most of the Stross-related poo poo that cropped up recently is aimed at his latest book in that series, Atrocity Archives is good.

Also don't read the short story about unicorns he put up on Tor.

Three words: Underage tentacle rape.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Khizan posted:

I dunno, I think that I'd talk myself into it pretty easily if you put me into a situation where I had to choose between killing somebody in cold blood or dying myself. I'd find myself outside some lovely meth shack out here in the sticks saying "Really now, I'd be doing the community a favor..." or surfing the sex offender registry and going "This dude's got 4 counts of fondling six-year olds, I'm pretty sure I'm more deserving of life than he is...".

In a life or death situation, I think most people would find a way to justify it to themselves.

I can completely understand why it happens, I just don't sympathize with it if that makes sense? Like it's interesting but I can't really feel empathy for the angst.

Tunicate posted:

Also don't read the short story about unicorns he put up on Tor.

Three words: Underage tentacle rape.

What? God drat it.

awesmoe
Nov 30, 2005

Pillbug
what is the age of consent for a tentacle?

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


Wheat Loaf posted:

I think a lot of more modern vampire fiction has the idea that they can subsist on the blood of warm-blooded animals (usually cows) though human blood is seemingly better. I'm curious how old that is; it must be at least as old as Modern Vampire MythologyTM or so I would imagine.

Like, I remember one episode of Buffy where Angel visited a slaughterhouse or a butcher's shop he was buying cow's blood from (and another episode where vampire's attack a hospital to steal the donated blood, which I thought was quite novel). I think a similar thing happened in an episode of Forever Knight, where Nick Knight is under investigation for a murder and the police find these bottles of cow's blood in his fridge (his excuse is that he uses it as paint-thickener). On the other hand, there's True Blood, where the vampires are still mostly murderous assholes when there's a source of completely synthetic blood being mass produced for them.

Interview with a Vampire has Louis drinking the blood of rats. If there's a reference earlier than that, I'm not aware of it.

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

torgeaux posted:

No, I'm keeping the level steady. It's badly written, very much so, by the standards of urban fantasy.

edit: It's Dresden book one and two level bad writing, for comparison. Maybe it will follow the same level of improvement, too.

I know tastes are very different but I didn't see this at all. And I didn't like the first two Dresden books either, the only reason I read the third is cause everyone was saying that that's where it gets good.

Mars4523
Feb 17, 2014

Tunicate posted:

Also don't read the short story about unicorns he put up on Tor.

Three words: Underage tentacle rape.
Equoid is great. Pretty loving disturbing (you'll never think about unicorns the same way afterwards) but still great.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


I don't know if I could call it tentacle rape, really. If you want to use a human as a hand puppet you only have so many orifices to choose from.

torgeaux
Dec 31, 2004
I serve...

Barbe Rouge posted:

I know tastes are very different but I didn't see this at all. And I didn't like the first two Dresden books either, the only reason I read the third is cause everyone was saying that that's where it gets good.

I know. I never get it when people don't like books I like. I hope it gets better, I'm intrigued by the setup. The annoying names don't help, though.

Mars4523
Feb 17, 2014
Generation V for the most part has better writing than Dresden, and the emotional payoff that makes The Dresden Files worth reading comes much faster. Fort is also much less going and annoying than early (up to book 4) Harry is. Plus, there are no out of nowhere spiels about how totally okay the protagonist is with the gays, guys (written by an author who has not a single male homosexual character and set, in all places, in a park with lots of gay men trolling for hookups because of course), no lovingly detailed descriptions of a teenaged sidekick's nipples, and no super sexy bisexual (mostly female) White Court Vampires who were all raped by their father and, as is explicitly described, wear flimsy diaphanous clothing with no bra into combat scenarios so the protagonist can describe in detail how being soaked in gore makes their clothes cling to their figure.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Tunicate posted:

Also don't read the short story about unicorns he put up on Tor.

Three words: Underage tentacle rape.
I really think he does it justice in how disturbing it is. It's a good story. Also, if you happen to know any bronies, I imagine it's great for detox.

tentacles
Nov 26, 2007

Tunicate posted:

Also don't read the short story about unicorns he put up on Tor.

Three words: Underage tentacle rape.

This besmirchment of my likeness without a cent of royalty will not stand

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

ImpAtom posted:

My major complaint here is that unless it is a "never feeds on anyone ever' vampire, I can't sympathize with someone who has murdered people to extend their own life. No amount of angst and sadness can escape that fact. The alternate problem is that if they can just resist their urge to feed than they're boring as hell because it devalues the actual curse. It's very hard for a series to really manage to hit the sweet spot for me where I can sympathize with someone who uncontrollably murders.

The Protagonist in GenV doesn't feed on anyone, besides his mother-vampire on occasion.

darthbob88
Oct 13, 2011

YOSPOS

Khizan posted:

I don't know if I could call it tentacle rape, really. If you want to use a human as a hand puppet you only have so many orifices to choose from.

On the other hand, given that the monster in question is all about reproduction, it probably did intend tentacle rape, and it had already been heavily manipulating the girl's mind, so physical hand-puppetry was unnecessary. On the gripping hand,

anilEhilated posted:

I really think he does it justice in how disturbing it is. It's a good story. Also, if you happen to know any bronies, I imagine it's great for detox.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

ImpAtom posted:


That is the most Jim Butcher of things.

Whoa, what happened to his marriage?

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
She got mad because Jim wouldn't let her write the sex scenes in the Dresden Files any more.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
In other news, I've read the first issue of the Rivers of London comic. The art is passable, if not great, the writing is decent. Gonna read the rest of it.

Wade Wilson posted:

She got mad because Jim wouldn't let her write the sex scenes in the Dresden Files any more.

I mean... wasn't there, like, one in the entire series?

Megazver fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Jul 23, 2015

Blasphemeral
Jul 26, 2012

Three mongrel men in exchange for a party member? I found that one in the Faustian Bargain Bin.

Megazver posted:

In other news, I've read the first issue of the Rivers of London comic. The art is passable, if not great, the writing is decent. Gonna read the rest of it.


I mean... wasn't there, like, one in the entire series?

Three...? But that's not actually the reason, I hope. I assumed Wade Wilson was being sardonic.


[Edit]
The rope scene, the Table scene in Faerie, and the one in Skin Game? Did I miss any?

Some Pinko Commie
Jun 9, 2009

CNC! Easy as 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣!
Werewolf murder orgy, faerie rope bondage, Luccio/Sheila heavy petting (but no loving on the pages), Stone Table sex and Murphy wet dream.

Blasphemeral
Jul 26, 2012

Three mongrel men in exchange for a party member? I found that one in the Faustian Bargain Bin.

Wade Wilson posted:

Werewolf murder orgy, faerie rope bondage, Luccio/Sheila heavy petting (but no loving on the pages), Stone Table sex and Murphy wet dream.

Id didn't think the werewolf orgy was actually described, though? Like, it said one of them mounts another or whatever but that was it? Goddamn that was a lovely book.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Khizan posted:

I don't know if I could call it tentacle rape, really. If you want to use a human as a hand puppet you only have so many orifices to choose from.

quote:

<Kazz> Do vampires have anuses? Cause that's why I wouldn't let this kid invade a vampire's anus in this RPG, right, I was GMing, and his character was an Anus Shade, with the power to possess and control the anuses of people and animals.. and I figured that vampires don't have anuses.
<Zaratustra> a vampire's anus is present, but non-working.
<Zaratustra> like a network card without the appropriate driver.
<Kazz> Wow. You're the biggest dork on Earth.
<Sharkey> And you're DMing an rpg with Anus Shades.

torgeaux
Dec 31, 2004
I serve...

Mars4523 posted:

Generation V for the most part has better writing than Dresden, and the emotional payoff that makes The Dresden Files worth reading comes much faster. Fort is also much less going and annoying than early (up to book 4) Harry is. Plus, there are no out of nowhere spiels about how totally okay the protagonist is with the gays, guys (written by an author who has not a single male homosexual character and set, in all places, in a park with lots of gay men trolling for hookups because of course), no lovingly detailed descriptions of a teenaged sidekick's nipples, and no super sexy bisexual (mostly female) White Court Vampires who were all raped by their father and, as is explicitly described, wear flimsy diaphanous clothing with no bra into combat scenarios so the protagonist can describe in detail how being soaked in gore makes their clothes cling to their figure.

No, but V does have sexy prostitute assassin bodyguards (with hearts of gold), and the descriptions of (and reactions to) his ridiculously named brother. And it's not fort, it's fortitude, the character whose primary trait is resisting temptation. And yes, the main character is less annoying personally than Dresden was, you've got me there. I can't argue on the emotional payoff, as I only read 75%, per kindle.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mars4523
Feb 17, 2014

torgeaux posted:

No, but V does have sexy prostitute assassin bodyguards (with hearts of gold), and the descriptions of (and reactions to) his ridiculously named brother. And it's not fort, it's fortitude, the character whose primary trait is resisting temptation. And yes, the main character is less annoying personally than Dresden was, you've got me there. I can't argue on the emotional payoff, as I only read 75%, per kindle.
Suzume isn't a prostitute, although she is sexy and does have a heart of gold. She's more like risk management for prostitutes like Sin City's Miho. And still, there are no gratuitous descriptions nipples or curves or what have you despite Fort being around a race of invariably attractive women who regularly take their clothes off in public (to shapeshift).

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply