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Postal Parcel posted:There's a book I once "read"(previewed on Amazon, so it's an Amazon book) a long while ago, about some space adventurer or whatever. While that may not be the most descriptive summary about the book, the important part is how the story was written. It's very...simplistic. The sentences are very short, lack flavor, and feel like they were written by someone without the ability to put real emotion in their lines. An example passage might be something like: You probably read a light novel, i.e. a low-quality YA book from Japan that's supposed to be illustrated. Unless they're incredibly popular like Haruhi, nobody is going to put any serious resources into translating them, so you'll end up with a jilted translation of already jilted text.
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Mar 1, 2016 07:54
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dpbjinc posted:You probably read a light novel, i.e. a low-quality YA book from Japan that's supposed to be illustrated. Unless they're incredibly popular like Haruhi, nobody is going to put any serious resources into translating them, so you'll end up with a jilted translation of already jilted text. Trust me, it wasn't a light novel, or Japanese. Like I said, it was an Amazon e-Book original, and the author(of which, only one was listed) had a very milquetoast-"English" name
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Mar 1, 2016 08:31
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Postal Parcel posted:Like I said, it was an Amazon e-Book original Well there's your trouble!
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Mar 1, 2016 09:17
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I bought a self published book from a website that barely bothers to moderate the quality of people's mostly amateurish output, how on earth could it be bad???
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Mar 1, 2016 09:34
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If you (my wife is working quite hard on a non-fiction book intended to be good and useful that will be going up on Amazon. this sort of thing induces despair.)
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Mar 1, 2016 11:34
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divabot posted:If you It only induces despair if you don't understand how amazon rankings work. Or indeed any rankings. That article is essentially arguing that those "#1 Dad/Mom" coffee mugs are false advertising because of course your own dad or mom will top the charts, because they are the only ones on it! The guy picked an incredibly niche category and drummed up some sales from his friends. Of course he is going to dominate it. A book of mine once sold three copies on a single day in Australia and moved up into the top 50 of the genre. I guess that makes me a bestselling author. Ask me anything.
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Mar 1, 2016 12:49
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Nanomashoes posted:Are you really going to argue that it's a well-written book? And anyways it's my favorite. Haven't read the whole thread, but is the full text actually available anywhere? Print or digital, isn't it like 15,000 pages? He's one of my favorite artists but there doesn't seem to be a way to actually read the drat thing. Even if it's awful, it's still notable for being the longest single narrative ever, right? Or am I mis-remembering that?
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Mar 2, 2016 08:02
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ArchangeI posted:It only induces despair if you don't understand how amazon rankings work. Or indeed any rankings. That article is essentially arguing that those "#1 Dad/Mom" coffee mugs are false advertising because of course your own dad or mom will top the charts, because they are the only ones on it! The guy picked an incredibly niche category and drummed up some sales from his friends. Of course he is going to dominate it. A book of mine once sold three copies on a single day in Australia and moved up into the top 50 of the genre. what exactly keeps you from killing yourself each and every day?
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Mar 2, 2016 08:36
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Is there a thread for authors who've started publishing fanfic of their own characters? I'm thinking here of Lois McMaster Bujold, who now writes the finest AO3-grade WAFF and gets Baen to publish it. The book in question is Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, the new Vorkosigan. It's perfectly lovely AO3 WAFF! Slice of life, nothing happens (really, nothing happens) and people get laid! I suppose after thirty years you get to like these characters and tire of torturing literary value out of them. But holy poo poo.
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Mar 2, 2016 12:12
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divabot posted:Is there a thread for authors who've started publishing fanfic of their own characters? I'm thinking here of Lois McMaster Bujold, who now writes the finest AO3-grade WAFF and gets Baen to publish it. The book in question is Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, the new Vorkosigan. It's perfectly lovely AO3 WAFF! Slice of life, nothing happens (really, nothing happens) and people get laid! I suppose after thirty years you get to like these characters and tire of torturing literary value out of them. But holy poo poo. I'd say respectable authors writing their own lovely fanfic is totally acceptable for this thread. Otherwise Hannibal, my favorite literary hatefuck, wouldn't be acceptable, and what fun would that be?
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Mar 2, 2016 12:19
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divabot posted:Is there a thread for authors who've started publishing fanfic of their own characters? I'm thinking here of Lois McMaster Bujold, who now writes the finest AO3-grade WAFF and gets Baen to publish it. The book in question is Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, the new Vorkosigan. It's perfectly lovely AO3 WAFF! Slice of life, nothing happens (really, nothing happens) and people get laid! I suppose after thirty years you get to like these characters and tire of torturing literary value out of them. But holy poo poo. I don't understand most of this post
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Mar 2, 2016 12:29
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Cumslut1895 posted:what exactly keeps you from killing yourself each and every day? Spite, mostly.
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Mar 2, 2016 15:11
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The Saddest Rhino posted:I don't understand most of this post For those who haven't wasted their lives on (this particular form of) online degeneracy: AO3 = Archive Of Our Own, one of the main fanfiction sites, home to exactly the sort of subject matter and writing quality you'd expect. WAFF = "Warm and fuzzy feeling", a genre descriptor used by fanfiction authors to refer to stories with no plot or conflict which are solely constructed to make the reader feel good, basically the same deal as those "like dis if u cry every time" forwards.
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Mar 2, 2016 22:16
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GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:For those who haven't wasted their lives on (this particular form of) online degeneracy: The Vorkosigan section of AO3 is pretty good! (note: I have no taste or literary standards.) And filled with WAFF! This book would totally fit right in there. The last two books (Cryoburn, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance) were quite thoroughly headed in this direction, this makes it concrete.
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Mar 3, 2016 00:44
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Please, go back to TV Tropes.
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Mar 3, 2016 03:52
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Please, go back to TV Tropes. 2011 called, they want their goon hate target back.
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Mar 3, 2016 03:59
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More slang and acronyms then the goddamned military up in this thread.The Vosgian Beast posted:2011 called, they want their goon hate target back. I remember those threads. 
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Mar 3, 2016 04:50
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Reamde by Neal Stephenson is one of the few books I finished out of spite. I was on page 200, and realized I hated it, but dammit, it wasn't going to beat me! And I had also blown all of my book budget for the week on it. Anyway, it's 1000+ pages, so that took a lot of hate to power through. It's pretty much the only book I've ever read that makes a multinational terrorist chase boring. The MMO plot was more engaging, even! And it ends with a 150 page or so gunfight in the woods, which is just straight-up one of the dullest action sequences I've ever read. Just a godawful book. Also, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is pretty terrible. The mystery is pretty easily solved as it's being introduced, but the main character stumbles around for a few hundred pages not considering the obvious possibility (the "murder victim" is alive and the one continuing the tradition of sending flowers every year). It gets infuriating because he doesn't even consider it and explain why he doesn't consider it a possibility, he just bumbles around investigating and explaining sausage sandwiches and Mac tech specs in great detail. gently caress that book.
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Mar 3, 2016 04:51
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Reamde by Neal Stephenson is one of the few books I finished out of spite. I was on page 200, and realized I hated it, but dammit, it wasn't going to beat me! And I had also blown all of my book budget for the week on it. What else could you reasonably expect from a video game genre that has elevated tedium to an art form? I'm really hoping MMO stands for massively-multiplayer online and not something else.
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Mar 3, 2016 04:53
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Klaus88 posted:What else could you reasonably expect from a video game genre that has elevated tedium to an art form? Yeah, the book's plot is split between some goings in in an MMORPG, and a terrorist kidnapping plot. And the MMORPG half is somehow less lovely.
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Mar 3, 2016 04:59
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Klaus88 posted:More slang and acronyms then the goddamned military up in this thread. I too, am capable of recalling events that happened years ago.
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Mar 3, 2016 05:02
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Ugly In The Morning posted:
Agreed; I felt like I was reading the begats section of the Bible at times. I also didn't find Lisbeth Salander to be a compelling character at all. Maybe the writing was bette rin Swedish, but it just felt really flat and unengrossing to me. I Don't Even Own a Television just did Scruples by Judith Krantz, which was one of the most simultaneously revolting and enthralling pieces of "literature" I've ever read. Has anyone else here picked up that turdburger?
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Mar 3, 2016 12:44
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The Vosgian Beast posted:2011 called, they want their goon hate target back. What is wrong with completely justified contempt?
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Mar 3, 2016 13:49
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:What is wrong with completely justified contempt? Wow you sound like you just came from Ebaumsworld and voted for H. Ross Perot
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Mar 3, 2016 14:53
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The TVTropes threads got really interestingly insane. They ended up fostering their own tiny culture that occasionally broke off into completely incomprehensible derails about how, to give one memorable example, liking turn-based combat in video games makes you racist
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Mar 3, 2016 14:57
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Don't forget the time they doxxed a child rape victim.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:21
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I think the first one started out as a sincere Tropes thread  e: Like I can understand that mock threads go insane BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 16:17 on Mar 3, 2016 |
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Mar 3, 2016 15:37
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Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Royal bastard is trained as royal assassin in fantasyland, and is bedevilled by two cartoon villains. Characters are called Shrewd, Verity, Patience, and the like. Hobb wants to write about an everyman teenager who just happens to be a ruthless trained killer. How do you reconcile writing about a teenager who's mostly normal with also writing about a profession that requires ruthlessness and extreme control? You don't. So Hobb hems and haws around the actual business of assassination. The main character recounts stuff like "this noble was a abusive rear end in a top hat, I'm glad I used extra poison on him" instead of something dramatic like a scene of actually loving assassinating someone. The worst part is that the story is still somehow compelling, so I can't just call it mediocre. It's a failure thats worse for its strengths. BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 18:13 on Mar 3, 2016 |
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Mar 3, 2016 15:55
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Don't forget the time they doxxed a child rape victim. BravestOfTheLamps posted:Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Royal bastard is trained as royal assassin in fantasyland, and is bedevilled by two cartoon villains. Characters are called Shrewd, Verity, Patience, and the like. Hobb wants to write about an everyman teenager who just happens to be a ruthless trained killer. How do you reconcile writing about a teenager who's mostly normal with also writing about a profession that requires ruthlessness and extreme control? You don't. So Hobb hems and haws around the actual business of assassination. The main character recounts stuff like "this noble was a abusive rear end in a top hat, I'm glad I used extra poison on him" instead of something dramatic like a scene of actually loving assassinating someone. Also the one remotely assassiny scene in the series is near the start of book three where he tries to sneak into the main villain's house and kill him, fails and gets shot in the leg and spends the next 300 pages crying about how much it hurts to get shot in the leg.
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Mar 3, 2016 16:24
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:haha what I don't remember that. Elaborate? I'm sure I wouldn't have missed it. I actually registered here because I was really bored in lectures, mock threads were really entertaining time passers and the paywall kept going up because of a Let's Play or something, so watching that one go insane in real time was extra entertainment. Some ex-tropers formed an offsite forum where they talked about their problems with TvTropes. SA came up sometimes, and a few of the ex-tropers talked about posters on the mock thread they liked or disliked. One of the guys they disliked got so loving mad he accused two of them of being pedophiles on no evidence whatsoever and a lot of evidence to the contrary and posted their real names and faces in the thread. It came out that one of these two people had actually been raped as a child during the fallout. Those threads got loving disgusting towards the end, and every time people talk about bringing them back, I have to assume they are just remembering the good times where they made fun of people being aroused by teletubbies and not the times when the thread had stopped being about tropers and started being about a bizarre ur-troper strawman goons had formed out of everything they disliked about themselves.
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Mar 3, 2016 16:34
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:You forgot the homoerotic tension with every single other male character This sounds like a redeeming feature though.
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Mar 3, 2016 16:45
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Jeez-o-Pete, I was just throwing out a random site where people post about fanfiction. Should I have said LiveJournal instead? (Tumblr would be a more current option, but if I can't even mention TV Tropes without being part of the Goon Hivemind...)
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Mar 3, 2016 16:46
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:This sounds like a redeeming feature though.
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Mar 3, 2016 16:50
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Some ex-tropers formed an offsite forum where they talked about their problems with TvTropes. SA came up sometimes, and a few of the ex-tropers talked about posters on the mock thread they liked or disliked. I don't remember any of this :o Also they used to call me the arbiter of acceptability for some reason but it was p funny On books has anyone read The Girl On the Train. It's not awful but lol its plot is generally Protagonist : I should not do the wrong thing Protagonist: I'll do it anyway!!!! Everyone: wtf ! Protagonist: oh poo poo that was a bad idea Protagonist: I can either be honest, or do even more wrong things to gently caress up even more Protagonist: guess I'll do those wrong things!!!! Everyone: jfc!!!!!!!!!!!!! Protagonist: somehow doing all those solved the mystery Everyone: you're still a loving failure Protagonist: I'm too drunk nvm
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Mar 3, 2016 16:57
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:well, it was kind of funny, but it included family members and particularly sexy horses iirc This is sounding better by the second.
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Mar 3, 2016 17:04
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The Saddest Rhino posted:I don't remember any of this :o And you left, so clearly the thread was going to descend into madness, there was no one left to arbite acceptability. 
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Mar 3, 2016 17:09
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Also, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is pretty terrible. The mystery is pretty easily solved as it's being introduced, but the main character stumbles around for a few hundred pages not considering the obvious possibility (the "murder victim" is alive and the one continuing the tradition of sending flowers every year). It gets infuriating because he doesn't even consider it and explain why he doesn't consider it a possibility, he just bumbles around investigating and explaining sausage sandwiches and Mac tech specs in great detail. gently caress that book. Ah, Lisbeth Salander and her Deeply Alternative bisexual hackerpunk autistic-loner lifestyle. Here's Salander, as we first meet her in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; it's hardly the worst book ever, but it certainly has its moments. No-one I've discussed this with -- including some serious Larsson enthusiasts -- has believed that the description can be as dire as this, until they read it again: Stieg Larsson posted:
Utterly inexplicable  At some stage after writing the first book, Larsson must have re-read his early descriptions of Salander, and thought about them a bit more, because by the second book, she's spent some of her hacking cash on breast implants, and had a frankly worrisome holiday fling with a 16-year-old boy (one year over the Swedish age of consent; Salander is about 24 at this stage). I suppose the point was to prove, albeit clumsily, that the appetite of this free spirit is not improbably restricted to cool lesbians and older male journalists, and that she definitely doesn't want to be thought of as physically immature. It doesn't get round the problem that someone who weighs 40kg/88lb is a deadly combatant who repeatedly beats and maims men who are literally twice her size (granted, she's usually armed with something, but I can't recall it ever being anything as odds-levelling as a gun). But most readers seem to love this aspect of Lisbeth, so I'll let it slide. What I couldn't let slide was that the start of the second book, Salander has become obsessed with a famously elusive mathematical problem; it's no spoiler to reveal that inevitably, it's Fermat's Last Theorem. But spoilers ahead. And amazingly but inevitably, Lisbeth does indeed manage to come up with the missing proof – not the Andrew Wiles one, but the one that supposedly wouldn't quite fit in the margin. Upon which, she's almost immediately shot in the head. She survives, but can't remember this sweetest of all proofs, one that had the power to not only make her internationally famous (which is probably pointless to her) but to propel her to a university where she can study all the maths she wants with minds of her own calibre (a possibility she simply must have considered at some stage). Although not particularly taken with Salander, I did feel for her at this point. What a devastating blow; how will she cope? Answer: Fermat's Last Theorem is never referred to again. I'm convinced the only reason all this stayed in the books is because of the difficulty of getting someone to revise their work from beyond the grave. Carnival of Shrews has a new favorite as of 17:48 on Mar 3, 2016 |
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Mar 3, 2016 17:45
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Royal bastard is trained as royal assassin in fantasyland, and is bedevilled by two cartoon villains. Characters are called Shrewd, Verity, Patience, and the like. Hobb wants to write about an everyman teenager who just happens to be a ruthless trained killer. How do you reconcile writing about a teenager who's mostly normal with also writing about a profession that requires ruthlessness and extreme control? You don't. So Hobb hems and haws around the actual business of assassination. The main character recounts stuff like "this noble was a abusive rear end in a top hat, I'm glad I used extra poison on him" instead of something dramatic like a scene of actually loving assassinating someone. As I was reading this I found myself wondering which came first -- this book, or Pyramids by Terry Pratchett, where the main running gag is a royal assassin who likes everything about his profession, apart from the bit about killing people. (Looking on Wikipedia, Pyramids was published in 1989, AA in 1995. I really thought it would be the other way around.)
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Mar 3, 2016 17:58
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Don't know if it's been mentioned and I don't care. This book deserves to be dumped on 24/7. Out of the Dark by David Weber It starts out as a fairly basic alien invasion book. Then near the very end it's revealed that one of the characters is actually DRACULA. He's been secretly turning into mist and loving up Aliens bases for half the book. Then a bunch of vampires cling to the outside of the Alien ships (because they don't need to breath) and take them over once they're in outer space.
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Mar 3, 2016 18:37
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7c Nickel posted:Don't know if it's been mentioned and I don't care. This book deserves to be dumped on 24/7. I think you accidentally posted this before you got to the part of the book that's terrible, because everything you've said makes it sound awesome.
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Mar 3, 2016 18:40
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