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All the complaining about these reference is making me want to read back through the series! 
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Mar 18, 2016 00:04
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ImpAtom posted:I couldn't disagree more with the last part. Why I dislike those books is that they are cartoonishly childish views of sex and of the porn industry. Especially the latter part. They read like someone trying to be progressive who didn't do an iota of research. Characters like Trixie Vixen are loving absurd caricatures and honestly none of the characters has an iota of depth to them even by Dresden standards. Nothing beats Dresden and Titania having a conversation about his opinion on gay men.
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Mar 18, 2016 00:35
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Paragon8 posted:Nothing beats Butcher and Titania having a conversation about his opinion on gay men.
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Mar 18, 2016 02:21
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You know they make a big deal about capturing the Denarian coins and likewise the Denarians finally managing to break one of the holy swords and everything....but really, shouldn't both sides realize its an endless cycle? Neither side can permanently vanquish the other. Capture a coin and sure as poo poo some other rear end in a top hat in the Church will lose it right back. Break a sword and the Knights will reforge it...or turn it into a lightsaber. Sure its important that the battles be fought and all, but it all balances out in the end.
jng2058 fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 02:33
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Magres posted:How can you hate magic batman and his rocket skateboard? That whole segment was so much fun, cause creative application of magic is awesome. I'll take cool magic gizmos over slinging fireballs any time I liked the lightsaber too.  I just hope the sword gets addressed because there's good reasons to reference the sword and not to. If it stays like it is it will be easier to conceal and simpler to get through customs making butters more mobile than the other 2 Knights. It seems like a reforged blade would be more effective vs more mundane weapons and threats and absolutely more discreet. I would assume its not an actual lightsaber deflecting bullets and cutting through doors because that would be stupid. I like the magic rapier that glows like a lightsaber the best, it seems to suit Butters pretty well. Its too bad they can't get Luccio to Forge a magic dispelling sword out of the hilt, complete with epic quest.
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Mar 18, 2016 02:43
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I just realized that when Storm Front came out Buffy was actually still cool, airing its best seasons, that explains so many vampire things
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Mar 18, 2016 11:00
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jng2058 posted:You know they make a big deal about capturing the Denarian coins and likewise the Denarians finally managing to break one of the holy swords and everything....but really, shouldn't both sides realize its an endless cycle? Neither side can permanently vanquish the other. Capture a coin and sure as poo poo some other rear end in a top hat in the Church will lose it right back. Break a sword and the Knights will reforge it...or turn it into a lightsaber. Sure its important that the battles be fought and all, but in the end it all balances out in the end.
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Mar 18, 2016 11:31
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jng2058 posted:You know they make a big deal about capturing the Denarian coins and likewise the Denarians finally managing to break one of the holy swords and everything....but really, shouldn't both sides realize its an endless cycle? Neither side can permanently vanquish the other. Capture a coin and sure as poo poo some other rear end in a top hat in the Church will lose it right back. Break a sword and the Knights will reforge it...or turn it into a lightsaber. Sure its important that the battles be fought and all, but in the end it all balances out in the end. Is this right? The coins are only like 2k years old.
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Mar 18, 2016 15:36
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builds character posted:Is this right? The coins are only like 2k years old. The coins are, yeah, but the beings inside them are much, much older. jng2058 posted:You know they make a big deal about capturing the Denarian coins and likewise the Denarians finally managing to break one of the holy swords and everything....but really, shouldn't both sides realize its an endless cycle? Neither side can permanently vanquish the other. Capture a coin and sure as poo poo some other rear end in a top hat in the Church will lose it right back. Break a sword and the Knights will reforge it...or turn it into a lightsaber. Sure its important that the battles be fought and all, but in the end it all balances out in the end. Alternatively, the concept of balance is nonsense. Good does win out, little by little, every day. If it didn't, we would still be swinging from branches.
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Mar 18, 2016 15:36
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Rygar201 posted:Not an empty quote. I don't think the sword will be reforged while butters wields it. It would undercut Michael's whole Sword isn't the key word in Sword of Faith bit. The sword will be rebuilt when its given to king arthur who is locked in Demonreach for some reason
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Mar 18, 2016 15:53
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Blasphemeral posted:The coins are, yeah, but the beings inside them are much, much older. it's balanced more in the sense that all-powerful beings are deliberately not allowed to act freely and manipulate mankind because they work to cancel each other out instead of that the world isn't necessarily becoming a better place or not. All the angels could easily cure all hunger and disease and suffering in the world (and in the process destroy free will), but don't because of their self/god-imposed rules - the unbound denarians and Lucifer could easily take over the world and cause untold misery, but can't, because every time they escalate the angels are allowed to counter, and if they push it too far, in the end Lucifer can't do poo poo against God. The D&D sense of neutral/balance is nonsense, of course, where you have druids who practically have to kick a puppy to make up for doing a good deed in some cases, but this isn't that. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 16:33
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Exmond posted:The sword will be rebuilt when its given to king arthur who is locked in Demonreach for some reason Excalibur isn't broken though, Kusanagi is.
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Mar 18, 2016 17:38
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Exmond posted:The sword will be rebuilt when its given to king arthur who is locked in Demonreach for some reason Also, that's not Arthur, it's The original Merlin, the guy the office is named after.
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Mar 18, 2016 17:44
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jng2058 posted:You know they make a big deal about capturing the Denarian coins and likewise the Denarians finally managing to break one of the holy swords and everything....but really, shouldn't both sides realize its an endless cycle? Neither side can permanently vanquish the other. Capture a coin and sure as poo poo some other rear end in a top hat in the Church will lose it right back. Break a sword and the Knights will reforge it...or turn it into a lightsaber. Sure its important that the battles be fought and all, but it all balances out in the end. At the same time I feel like Ursiel and Lasciel are staying where they are. Being trapped in Hades' vault is a pretty goddamned tough jailbreak Wade Wilson posted:Also, that's not Arthur, it's The original Merlin, the guy the office is named after.  (Watch it's David Hameron and he got put there to protect the innocent swine of the world)
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Mar 18, 2016 19:35
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Magres posted:At the same time I feel like Ursiel and Lasciel are staying where they are. Being trapped in Hades' vault is a pretty goddamned tough jailbreak I reckon they're in more-or-less the same situation as the Eebs. So naturally they'll show up again at the worst possible time, because that's what happens to
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Mar 18, 2016 19:47
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Wade Wilson posted:Also, that's not Arthur, it's The original Merlin, the guy the office is named after. Actual spoilers coming up Butcher has stated that it is not.
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Mar 18, 2016 20:22
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ImpAtom posted:Characters like Trixie Vixen are loving absurd caricatures and honestly none of the characters has an iota of depth to them even by Dresden standards. If you think Trixie Vixen is a loving absurd caricature then life has been uncharacteristically kind to you Also, complaining about depth of character with regard to people who would have sex on camera for money seems... appropriate for this thread. With that said, Butcher took care to show us people who did it for their kids, and the impact it had (and has) on their non-sex for money relationships In other words, yes I am white knighting White Night 
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Mar 18, 2016 20:31
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tentacles posted:If you think Trixie Vixen is a loving absurd caricature then life has been uncharacteristically kind to you What precisely do you think about people who would have sex on camera for money?
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Mar 18, 2016 22:04
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Up Circle posted:What precisely do you think about people who would have sex on camera for money? I think yo momma looked pretty good in Three's Just Right!
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Mar 19, 2016 01:07
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Acknowledging that sex workers are people shouldn't be a huge landmark accomplishment. Butcher barely does it in Blood Rites at that. The sex workers are humanized just enough to be a titillating backdrop that doesn't condone sex work at all. They're all in it for the money to support their kids or trying to get out of the industry etc. You might as well have set it in a real estate office or something but that wouldn't have been a good way to introduce Lana Raith as a supernatural vampire running around with machine guns in lingerie and high heels. Dresden is a series were sex is at best uncomfortable to read about. From the protagonist describing his best friend's teen daughter's nipple piercings to almost every woman who advocates casual sex being a literal monster I don't think Butcher has a super great handle on writing in that area.
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Mar 19, 2016 02:17
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Huh. I'm curious, are there books out there where sex isn't cringeworthily handled? I may have to admit defeat in the face of your authority in this aspect of gritty post-modern urban literature Also, what's wrong with Lara Wraith with machine guns, lingerie and high heels in a real estate office? That's probably how she wakes up in the morning
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Mar 19, 2016 02:39
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tentacles posted:Huh. I'm curious, are there books out there where sex isn't cringeworthily handled? Not many! Like, I give Butcher poo poo for this stuff because I honestly think he's decent at his craft and could be doing this stuff better, but just isn't. Most other pulp fiction books, though, so much worse...
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Mar 19, 2016 04:10
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Butcher is just very consistently cringeworthy with the way he handles sex in Dresden Files.
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Mar 19, 2016 06:14
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Blame his ex-wife for that, Butcher found sex scenes too awkward to write (because he is goon with christian upbringing) and asked her to help on them
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Mar 19, 2016 07:29
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mallamp posted:Blame his ex-wife for that, Butcher found sex scenes too awkward to write (because he is goon with christian upbringing) and asked her to help on them Everything about this sentence explains so much and yet somehow presents more questions than answers.
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Mar 19, 2016 07:32
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mallamp posted:Blame his ex-wife for that, Butcher found sex scenes too awkward to write (because he is goon with christian upbringing) and asked her to help on them Eh, if it were just the actual sex, sure, but it ain't. He tends to fall short on anything even tangentially related to the topic. darth cookie posted:Everything about this sentence explains so much and yet somehow presents more questions than answers. His first wife is also a writer. She does pulp romance, and so probably has a lot more experience writing sex scenes.
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Mar 19, 2016 09:05
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Paragon8 posted:The sex workers are humanized just enough to be a titillating backdrop that doesn't condone sex work at all. They're all in it for the money to support their kids or trying to get out of the industry etc. I don't really get the problem with this, was he supposed to portray work in porn as something to strive for?
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Mar 19, 2016 11:09
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Barbe Rouge posted:I don't really get the problem with this, was he supposed to portray work in porn as something to strive for? You could depict it as a valid life choice instead of something for the desperate and the pathologically vain.
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Mar 19, 2016 12:08
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Magres posted:You could depict it as a valid life choice instead of something for the desperate and the pathologically vain. I don't know about the vain part, but isn't it mostly for folks who can't get a job that isn't porn and pays as much as porn? I know there are porn stars who've left legitimate careers to work in porn but I've always seen them as a very small percentage.
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Mar 19, 2016 12:27
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I more meant that Butcher's depiction of women in porn boiled down to the desperate and the pathologically vain (ie the single mom trying to feed her kids and trixie goddamned vixen) No idea about the real world, though to be frank your differentiation between a career in porn and 'legitimate' careers is kind of the point I'm getting at, because it's clear that Butcher doesn't think sex work is legitimate work - everyone involved is either deranged (Trixie Vixen), a supernatural sex vampire, or people desperate for money who are trying to escape their current job. Magres fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Mar 19, 2016 |
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Mar 19, 2016 12:33
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Barbe Rouge posted:I don't know about the vain part, but isn't it mostly for folks who can't get a job that isn't porn and pays as much as porn? I know there are porn stars who've left legitimate careers to work in porn but I've always seen them as a very small percentage. Most people who work in a profession do so because they can't get a job in a different profession that pays more. So I'm not sure what your argument is. And what makes a career legitimate?
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Mar 19, 2016 12:35
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It's been a while since I've read Blood Rites but I think its problems mostly don't revolve around the porn studio. Most of the people working on the film were just treating it like a job, maybe a job they were a bit defensive about (which makes sense) but, with the exception of Trixie, none of them felt especially weird to me. Relatively few of those characters were fleshed out in any satisfying way though; you had Insecure Bully dude, Actress With A Kid, Cool Dude, uh, Other Actress, and then there was Trixie, who felt like she'd wandered in from a Looney Toons adaptation of Sunset Boulevard and Filmmaker Stereotype #348 (for all that we got an earful about how he was apparently the most progressive porn director on the planet, the actual character we saw was basically a one-dimensional caricature). But really, the book was just too crowded, and none of the plots really gelled together. The porn star ex-wives murder cult was certainly not enough to carry the book on its own, but as a backdrop for an exploration of the White Court's methods and power struggles, it could have worked. But then we had Let's Kill Mavra and the Kincaid stuff and the revelations about Thomas and Ebenezar, and the introduction of Mouse, and they all felt like separate (decent enough) stories colliding rather than anything that made sense as part of a unified whole. It's not the worst-plotted book of the series (since Proven Guilty exists) but it's definitely weak in that area, and, unlike Proven Guilty, none of the book's relative strengths serve to elevate it enough for that not to be a problem. White Night was like a thousand times better in every respect, but I was so sick of the White Court by then that it was hard to engage with. "The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault" remains one of the great opening lines of modern Western literature, though.
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Mar 19, 2016 12:51
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I suppose I'm as uncomfortable with sex work as Butcher is. On the other hand, so is the rest of society.
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Mar 19, 2016 12:57
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Barbe Rouge posted:I suppose I'm as uncomfortable with sex work as Butcher is. On the other hand, so is the rest of society. I didn't want to get into this stupid argument but please don't speak for the rest of society. I'm part of the rest of society and you don't speak for me.
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Mar 19, 2016 13:01
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Barbe Rouge posted:I suppose I'm as uncomfortable with sex work as Butcher is. On the other hand, so is the rest of society. On the other hand, you don't put forth pornography as a valid life choice, which means you have a functioning brain and and/or have spoken with an actual female person at least once in your life, and think of them as people
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Mar 19, 2016 13:08
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darth cookie posted:I didn't want to get into this stupid argument but please don't speak for the rest of society. I'm part of the rest of society and you don't speak for me. You know what I mean, you're being obtuse on purpose.
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Mar 19, 2016 13:11
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Barbe Rouge posted:You know what I mean, you're being obtuse on purpose. No I'm not. I don't care what you personally believe about sex workers. You are entitled to your opinion, whatever that may be, but you don't get to claim that everyone agrees with you or shares that opinion. On that note, I'm out of this thread.
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Mar 19, 2016 13:15
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darth cookie posted:No I'm not. I don't care what you personally believe about sex workers. You are entitled to your opinion, whatever that may be, but you don't get to claim that everyone agrees with you or shares that opinion. Godspeed, you beautiful creature! Sex workers everywhere will cheer your noble crusade to perpetuate their institutionalised degradation!
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Mar 19, 2016 13:22
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darth cookie posted:No I'm not. I don't care what you personally believe about sex workers. You are entitled to your opinion, whatever that may be, but you don't get to claim that everyone agrees with you or shares that opinion.
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Mar 19, 2016 13:50
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This thread jumps from one shitshow into another.
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Mar 19, 2016 13:53
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