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WeaponGradeSadness posted:This is the funniest thing I've ever read quote:ITALIAN BOY: My story is about my dead sister and how she died of cancer and her death was very sad. Poohoo. Hyper-specific racist straw men are the best straw men
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# ? May 3, 2016 19:27 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 06:19 |
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He writes great female characters too!quote:WHITE GIRL: Friends and sex and parties and makeup! Apparently Dragons Lexicon Triumvirate is Eng's idea of actually good writing. It really reads like he tried to cram as many "badass" creatures and pretentious science/philosophy references into the smallest possible space, without worrying about little things like coherence. There's also a chapter-by-chapter review here: http://conjugalfelicity.com/dragons-lexicon-triumvirate/ Pick posted:From the children's book Slugs. I remember that from when I was a little kid! Scared the daylights out of me. I actually saw it just about a year ago, too, when my university library had a "banned books month" exhibit. Wonder why a book like that was banned...
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# ? May 3, 2016 19:40 |
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muscles like this? posted:I was reading some short story collection years ago and got to a Poppy Z Brite one. One of the earliest lines was about using an oiled human femur for sex and I was like "That's enough of that!" and skipped to the next story. Oh god, I read that same collection. Although if you stopped at the femur part you read the dog oral part and weren't put off? quote:We explored the damp alien territory between the legs of any girl who would have us, sometimes separately, sometimes both of us in bed together with one girl or more. We bound their wrists and ankles with black lace, we lubricated and penetrated their every orifice, we shamed them with their own pleasures. I recall a mauve-haired beauty, Felicia, who was brought to wild sobbing orgasm by the rough tongue of a stray dog we trapped. We watched her from across the room, drug-hazed and unstirred. E: It was "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood". FairyNuff has a new favorite as of 19:44 on May 3, 2016 |
# ? May 3, 2016 19:41 |
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Geokinesis posted:E: It was "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood". Holy poo poo, I just had a flashback of reading this story at an unhealthily young age. I'm pretty sure it was part of a collection of short stories in my elementary school library. Some kind of horror anthology, maybe? I guess the librarians were like "I'm sure it's fine, kids love ghosts". Thanks for making me remember that I guess
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# ? May 4, 2016 00:10 |
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SerialKilldeer posted:
Slugs still bothers me.
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# ? May 5, 2016 06:26 |
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Just finished The Blood Gospel. Lazarus is the first vampire and leader of the Vatican's vampire special forces and Judas is the leader of an evil organization trying to bring about the end of the world. Can't wait for book 2.
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# ? May 7, 2016 19:43 |
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I haven't read The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan, but I was delighted to see that even the other transhumanists thought it was poo poo and that Istvan was counterproductive.
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# ? May 8, 2016 14:27 |
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divabot posted:I haven't read The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan, but I was delighted to see that even the other transhumanists thought it was poo poo and that Istvan was counterproductive. This guy had a very strange (and successful) crowdfunding project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAO9YrAXrJs
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# ? May 9, 2016 21:23 |
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I'm a big ELO fan (as you can tell by my avatar), so whenever anything new ELO-related comes out, I'm there. Until this: http://www.brianpaone.com/yours-truly-2095/ It reads like the worst fan fiction you can imagine. I applaud the attempt to novelize ELO's 1981 concept album Time, but this book has nothing going for it beyond the attempt. Holy gently caress, it's awful. How the hell it got nominated for Hugo, I'll never understand. I wish I had bought the physical version of the book so that I could set it on fire. This novel did a much better job. The author admits he mistook A New World Record as a concept album about opera singers and aliens and doesn't beat the reader over the head with endless references to ELO songs/albums/lyrics/band members.
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# ? May 18, 2016 19:09 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:Holy gently caress, it's awful. How the hell it got nominated for Hugo, I'll never understand. There's some spectacularly dumb poo poo going on with the Hugo Awards this year involving MRAs or gamergate or something. I don't understand any of it because whenever someone tries to explain the situation to me, all the blood leaves my head and I black out.
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# ? May 18, 2016 19:17 |
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The short version is that a bunch of alt-right sorts (led by human shitstain Vox Day) got mad at the Hugos favouring stuff that dealt with what they felt to be minority issues instead of the grand adventure narratives of yesteryear, with spaceships and exploring the unknown and such (I believe they unironically used the word "swashbuckling", and decried the recent recipients as "Ivory Tower" ) because there is no room in Science Fiction for exploring new ideas or social commentary. They referred to these books as "Sad Puppies" due to their subject matter, and named their movement after it (with "Rapid Puppies" being the absolute dickhead splinter group); this lead to a bunch of weird stuff being nominated for a Hugo, including a Chuck Tingle book who proceeded to troll the ever-loving poo poo out of the whole movement, and, I poo poo you not, an episode of My Little Pony.
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# ? May 19, 2016 03:28 |
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Some time ago, Ernest Kline diversified from Ready Player One to assure people that being able to recite cult movies from memory is not the only way to measure geek cred. Knowing geek "culture" is still important, though. Otherwise, how else could you uncover the Conspiracy? Galaga, Polybius, Battlezone, Star Wars, the Last Starfighter, that latest MMO you keep playing? You know, the one where you are one of the elite pilots topping the leaderboards? They're all part of the plot by Every Geek Icon Ever (including your not-dead dad) to prepare humanity to fight the incoming alien Armada. Despite all the naysayers, all those gaming sessions in the backroom of your millionaire friend's gaming shop were totally not useless. They were literally the most important thing you could have done with your time. They were grooming you to be the Hero.
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# ? May 19, 2016 04:50 |
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hirvox posted:Polybius (And given that he's framing all these game references in the terms of cult '80s movie The Last Starfighter, he's "diversified" even less than you'd imagine.)
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# ? May 19, 2016 05:17 |
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Ugh, this bullshit too? Sham bam bamina! posted:(And given that he's framing all these game references in the terms of cult '80s movie The Last Starfighter, he's "diversified" even less than you'd imagine.) But yeah, in general the author seems to think that name-dropping or otherwise referencing geek culture somehow would make Armada better by association. There was one scene that got a chuckle out of me, though. Gaming Jesus spots an enemy ship trying to enter the friendly base through one of the fighter launch tubes. He follows and almost manages to save the base before the enemy ship could self-destruct in the hangar. The kicker is that the tubes were protected by blast doors with friend-or-foe sensors. If he had not chosen to ignore orders, the first door would have stopped the enemy.
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# ? May 19, 2016 05:53 |
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hirvox posted:Some time ago, Ernest Kline diversified from Ready Player One to assure people that being able to recite cult movies from memory is not the only way to measure geek cred. Knowing geek "culture" is still important, though. Otherwise, how else could you uncover the Conspiracy? Galaga, Polybius, Battlezone, Star Wars, the Last Starfighter, that latest MMO you keep playing? You know, the one where you are one of the elite pilots topping the leaderboards? They're all part of the plot by Every Geek Icon Ever (including your not-dead dad) to prepare humanity to fight the incoming alien Armada. Despite all the naysayers, all those gaming sessions in the backroom of your millionaire friend's gaming shop were totally not useless. They were literally the most important thing you could have done with your time. They were grooming you to be the Hero. Just assume I posted that image of Mr. Kline sitting next to George R. Martin in a Deloran. What an insufferable nerd.
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# ? May 19, 2016 06:11 |
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Klaus88 posted:Just assume I posted that image of Mr. Kline sitting next to George R. Martin in a Deloran. Edit: Ernest Kline posted:It was an old black baseeball jacket with leather sleeves, and it was completely covered, front and back, with embroidered patches, all somehow science fiction or videogame related, including several high-score-award patches for old Activision games like Starmaster, Dreadnaught Destroyer, Laser Blast and Kaboom! Running down both sleeves were logos and military insignia from the Rebel Alliance, the Star League, the United Federation of Planets, the Colonial Fleet from BSG, and the Robotech Defense Force, among others. hirvox has a new favorite as of 06:25 on May 19, 2016 |
# ? May 19, 2016 06:15 |
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Mr. Chainsaw posted:The worst book I've read is Exquisite Corpse. I bought it on a whim after someone I knew said it was their favorite. Not sure what I expected when the premise is "serial killer romance", but I put it down when I realized it wasn't going to be anything beyond fanfiction-tier gay erotica between edgy torture scenes. I thought about donating the book but I don't want to inflict it on anyone else honestly, so its still on my shelf. The best Poppy Z. Brite book is when she made the Beatles gay and drew the pictures. It's essentially slashfic. She is not a bad writer, but I'm not a fan of the artwork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Jesus_%28novella%29
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# ? May 19, 2016 06:50 |
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The book is weird, but what the hell is up with that table?
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# ? May 21, 2016 08:15 |
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Arivia posted:The book is weird, but what the hell is up with that table? i think its a chair with what looks like horse leather maybe. definitely some kind of animal skin
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# ? May 21, 2016 09:54 |
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A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok. IIRC everybody in Odin's team chooses to stay at the rank of Sergent, because apparently officers answer to the government but the enlisted answer to 'Murica. Odin and the scientist get it on after escaping a drone swarm, the ravens watch. I think the book just sort of ends after the characters stop a plot to destroy some US aircraft carriers with a cargo ship full of killer drones, and there's like two pages at the end where one of the cabal members gets blown up by a drone strike in Maryland or something.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 08:55 |
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Snapchat A Titty posted:i think its a chair with what looks like horse leather maybe. definitely some kind of animal skin Looks like a small metal table with chipped and rippled paint to me. Or are you going for shrimp/small pastry superstardom? C.M. Kruger posted:A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok. Clancy meets Crichton sounds about right, swarm theory automatically makes me think of Prey hackbunny has a new favorite as of 12:26 on Jun 1, 2016 |
# ? Jun 1, 2016 12:21 |
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Prey was such trash, but somehow it gave me existential terror as a child. I thought my mom was nanobots. I was a dumb child. Speaking of Crichton, Timeline is poorly-researched dogshit. I mean, my requirements for thrillers are fairly low, but it's written like he slept through a showing of A Knight's Tale one time and thinks that's how medieval Europe really was.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 16:29 |
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I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy, Ring, Spiral and Loop by Koji Suzuki, that the Horror movie Ringu was based on. Well it was based on the first book, it kinda ignored the other two. This is completely psychotic but I had so much fun reading it, I honestly recommend going in blind, but for the curious: Ring reads innocently enough - horror novel about people who die after watching a haunted video tape. OK, much like the movie so far. Main character finds the bones, attempts to lay Sadako to rest and fails, just like the movie. However the first signs of oddity come at the end of this book - Sadako is a partial hermaphrodite as well as a vengeance ghost, and she was raped just before her death by a smallpox victim just before she dies - that was who put her in the well. So she projects her anger towards the videotape and kills whoever watches it unless they copy and show it - fine. MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE BATSHIT TRILOGY AHOY! However, then Spiral happens - new revelations: Sadako is not only the fury at her own death, she has also joined with the smallpox virus, which is itself angry that modern medicine killed it by rendering it powerless. The reason for the videotape is revealed - she the reason everyone who watches the tape dies is because they get infected upon viewing by a variation of smallpox called the Ring Virus. Sadako is no longer thinking like Sadako - she only wants to reproduce, as that is all a virus wants to do. However the virus turns into two strains - the unbroken ring, which kills the victim if not copied, and the Broken Ring, which is compared to a sperm cell. This comparison is important - anyone infected with this version is made to reproduce it another way - one of the main characters is a journalist with good writing skills - Sadako makes him, through the virus's influence, write a manuscript that describes the tape so intensely, impossibly accurately that anyone who reads it gets the same effect. However if a woman who watches the tape/reads the manuscript happens to be ovulating when they watch it Sadako basically impregnates them with her genetic information. Sadako, in this book, does this once. The secondary main character of the first book, Ryuji, is discovered dead by his assistant, who reads the manuscript while there. She later gives birth to Sadako, after Sadako takes over her mind and throws her down a shaft (she wants to be reborn in the same circumstances in which she died, to overcome the obstacle that killed her). After her birth, Sadako rapidly reaches the age at which she dies, but the main character of the second book fails to recognise her at first, because she looks slightly different. This is explained by the idea that noone, unless looking in a mirror, knows exactly what their own face looks like so some details are filled in by the brain in the minds eye - the face she ends up with is the face that she pictured herself with. The book ends with the main character being confronted on the beach by Reborn Sadako and formerly deceased Ryuji - when reborn Sadako was born as a complete hermaphrodite so on top of everything else she can impregnate herself now. Ryuji is back because Sadako made a deal with him post-mortem - if he helped her she would help him return to the world of the living by taking his genetic information from his remains and literally birthing him anew. She makes the same offer to the main character - Allow her manuscript to be published and read by millions, while she also has a plan in the works to make her way into other media - she will make a videogame, movie, website, every type of media will spread her virus worldwide, allowing her to take over the world. He agrees as she offers to give him back his dead son in the same way Ryuji was reborn, THINGS GET CRAZIER! STRAP IN! In Loop it is hard to tell at first how it fits in - The main mystery is a simulation of the beginning of life that was created on a supercomputer to solve the problem of 'how we got here' - however the project failed as the life simulated became cancerous, all life, animal or vegetable became one type of organism and the simulation just stopped. Also a viral form of Cancer called the Metastating Human Cancer Virus started spreading with disastrous results. While searching for zones where the virus failed to take hold the main character learns the following: The Simulation virus was caused by three virtual entities - Sadako Yamamura, Ryuji and the main character from the second book. The first two books only took place in a simulated reality. However, as Ryuji died, but before Sadako made her pact with him, he noticed that he was being watched by something 'outside' and called out for help to 'get out'. The head scientist at the time obliged, and found a way via absolute nonsense relating to genetics, and converting binary code to amino acids. Ryuji was reborn and grew up outside the sim- to become the main character of the third book. Ryuji vows to stop the cancer virus, wshich escaped because he was a carrier of the Ring virus, by stopping Sadako before his world can b destroyed utterly - so he is put back into the simulation, reversing the process only to be given birth to by - Sadako Yamamura - he has overwritten the version of himself that made the vow witrh Sadako, so now instead of helping her, he ends the series joining with the MC of the second book to stop her. The world may yet be saved.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 17:59 |
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C.M. Kruger posted:A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok. A true victory for the terrorists. They forced America to bomb its own soil. How humiliating.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 18:15 |
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shelley posted:Prey was such trash, but somehow it gave me existential terror as a child. I thought my mom was nanobots. I was a dumb child. It was just a rehash of Andromeda Strain IMO
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 20:59 |
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shelley posted:Prey was such trash, but somehow it gave me existential terror as a child. I thought my mom was nanobots. I was a dumb child. Prey was awesome because it was about killer robots and at one point I think a Jeep was used as a makeshift firebomb. Timeline is awful on about a million levels and doesn't even attempt some kind of internal consistency or coherence. It's all different universes instead of actual time travel but somehow everyone manages to pass notes through history, the scientists' machine is so outlandish and nonsensical that it is literally hand waved as "someone in another universe got this to work and is helping us teleport people even though we have no way of communicating with them", the fact that half the dialogue reads like something you'd overhear at the smelly D&D table down at the game store, ugh. And Timeline was still better than Rising Sun.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 21:09 |
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Ryoshi posted:Prey was awesome because it was about killer robots and at one point I think a Jeep was used as a makeshift firebomb. Rising Sun was the blah blah blah Japanese corporations taking over America, wasn't it? Still better than Airframe.
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 21:41 |
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Where does Disclosure fit on the awful-Crighton scale?
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 22:18 |
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Wasn't Timeline's solution to the grandfather paradox "Um, but you wouldn't actually kill your grandfather, would you? You probably remember him fondly, I hope?" I likes how the solution to the intriguing technical mystery of Airframe was DON'T TRUST THE CHINESE
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 22:42 |
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C.M. Kruger posted:A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok. If there was a bad fiction bingo card I feel like having characters named after Norse mythology would be a square. Its prevalence in right-wing military fiction is especially troubling considering how heavily it is co-opted by white supremacists...
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# ? Jun 1, 2016 23:41 |
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BioEnchanted posted:I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy, Ring, Spiral and Loop by Koji Suzuki, that the Horror movie Ringu was based on. Well it was based on the first book, it kinda ignored the other two. This is completely psychotic but I had so much fun reading it, I honestly recommend going in blind, but for the curious:
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# ? Jun 2, 2016 00:10 |
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BioEnchanted posted:I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy Did Hideo Kojima write this or something? I half expect the series to have ended with a mysterious call to the President about nanomachines.
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# ? Jun 2, 2016 19:22 |
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I just like that the terrible weird dreamcast game that came out that shared the title was accurate - but to the books, not the movies :P
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# ? Jun 2, 2016 19:26 |
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Guy Mann posted:If there was a bad fiction bingo card I feel like having characters named after Norse mythology would be a square. Its prevalence in right-wing military fiction is especially troubling considering how heavily it is co-opted by white supremacists... Afrikaner names are a similar dog whistle IMO.
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# ? Jun 5, 2016 21:19 |
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BioEnchanted posted:I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy, Ring, Spiral and Loop by Koji Suzuki, that the Horror movie Ringu was based on. Well it was based on the first book, it kinda ignored the other two. This is completely psychotic but I had so much fun reading it, I honestly recommend going in blind, but for the curious: I knew about how dumb the Ring books were but lol I had no idea about Loop. Those books sound rad as hell
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# ? Jun 6, 2016 07:12 |
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I had fun reading through this thread, and it got me to pick through the shelves for the terrible books I haven't discarded yet. Turned up a depressing number, even trying to skip over licensed material, but here's a couple of starters. Also, it's been about a decade since reading some of these, so if anybody recognizes something and has more details to share, please chime in. Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye. Jody Lynn Nye, who as her Amazon bio for this book describes, "is best known as a collaborator with other notable authors" including Anne McCaffrey, Robert Asprin (author of the Myth Adventures books mentioned earlier in the thread) and Piers Anthony, wrote this very light novel with the following jacket synopsis: Mythology 101 posted:Meet Keith Doyle—weirdo, business major, nerd, believer in myths. To his joy—and horror—Keith has just learned a legend is real... Mythology 101 posted:"Hmmhmmhmmhmmhahahahaha ..." laughed Borget in as sinister a tone as he could manage. Mythology 101 posted:On the benches around the wooden meeting table, the Folk shifted to position themselves comfortably. It wasn't often the whole Council attended a village meeting, so though the benches were long, the regulars had to suck in their sides to make room for their more erstwhile companions. It was a sign of the seriousness of the situation that there was no banter, no friendly arguments between the young Progressives and the older Conservatives. Mythology 101 posted:"Mr Doyle?" inquired Dr. Freleng, holding a thesis paper in the air with disgusted thumb and forefinger. The teacher's grey mustache lifted on one side as his lip curled. "This is Sociology 430. Don't you think this paper should better have been submitted to your fiction writing teacher instead?" Mythology 101 posted:"See," crowed Carl, breaking the silence. "He didn't deny it. For the sole purpose of bugging me, he threat—" Mythology 101 posted:"It started the day you got thrown out of class. Maybe a lot sooner, I don't know. Carl said something insulting to me. I really hate him. He's got such an ego. Enoch jumped on him for it. I think he would've hit him if Carl hadn't backed off. Carl was really surprised. I was, too. He's been . . . protective of me, lately. Enoch, not Carl." She was having to fight to get the words out. "I . . . I feel, I don't know . . ." Honorable mention goes to The Book of Words, Volume I: The Baker's Boy, by J.V. Jones. Back-side synopsis: The Baker's Boy posted:A thrilling new voice in fantasy adventure introduces THE BOOK OF WORDS, where the lethal conspiracies and deadly intrigues of the mighty can be countered by only one power: magic. The Baker's Boy posted:His attention returned to his task. He was nervous at first, but there was not a flicker from the queen, so he continued on more forcefully. He knew the quickening of desire and was surprised by its familiarity. As his excitement grew so did his abandon, and he pushed into her with all his strength. He had not expected to enjoy it and was surprised when he did. Eventually he reached his climax and his seed flowed deep within the queen. Darthemed has a new favorite as of 22:58 on Jun 9, 2016 |
# ? Jun 8, 2016 18:33 |
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Darthemed posted:
If this thread ever gets a vanity title it should be this quote. Good hell, it reads like an accountant wrote it.
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# ? Jun 8, 2016 21:55 |
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Darthemed posted:Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye. things not to do, according to the TCL posted:“Said” Bookism I mean, the whole thing sounds comprehensively dreadful, but that tic is just the worst.
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# ? Jun 8, 2016 22:32 |
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Darthemed posted:Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye. After reading those excerpts, I found myself wondering who the hell her target audience was. It reads like a book for 6th-graders. Was she hoping to ride the Harry Potter gravy train?
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# ? Jun 9, 2016 00:23 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 06:19 |
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Mildly Amusing posted:If this thread ever gets a vanity title it should be this quote. Good hell, it reads like an accountant wrote it. As an accountant and an author I take offense. I managed to make my book stupid without discussing elven economics, thank you very much.
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# ? Jun 9, 2016 00:37 |