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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I like the Bob / Mo relationship because it goes on the rocks for believable reasons and you can legitimately cast either of them as the villain depending on how you read which passages. Eh. I could see "Mo primarily at fault" or "both equally at fault" but I have a hard time with "Bob primarily at fault".
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Jun 28, 2016 05:43
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The Violin and the Eater of Souls are at fault. Without either they wouldn't have any relationship issues. And of both the Violin is even more at fault, because he tricks/mind controls Mo into infidelity in her dreams/mind, which one also could classify as mind rape, which in turn makes her beat herself up the whole book. Also he tries to murder Bob. And Stross can call Mo all the strong woman adjectives, and he is correct if Mo is in normal circumstances, but that doesn't change that it is a book with a PTSD suffering main character, who simply is unlikable in the book and acts flat-out stupid. Making your only POV unlikable for a full book and making her far more stupid than the reader (even I could solve the mystery by the first third of the book and I'm not really very good at this usually) makes the book less enjoyable, especially for a series that is at its heart still a comedic farce. Which can be salvaged by making the story an interesting one, but that wasn't really the case with The Annihilation Score either. Decius fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 06:45
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Khizan posted:Eh. I could see "Mo primarily at fault" or "both equally at fault" but I have a hard time with "Bob primarily at fault". For Bob to be primarily at fault you have to assume he was an unreliable narrator and in fact slept with his ex. But there's some textual support for that, especially from Mo's narrative.
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Jun 28, 2016 13:06
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My point is that Mo isn't particularly nasty, just under stress
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Jun 29, 2016 02:15
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I also still say Angleton is NOT dead. We saw an identical time-stop bubble just a handful of pages before Angleton's "death". The one Angleton is in was probably fired off by himself, so all Bob has to do is apply the knowledge of the Eater of Souls correctly (contained in the Memex), one time-stop bubble gets turned off, Angleton gets his mojo back and Bob gets to back to relative levels of normal. But this time with a wife who doesn't have a violin loving with her head.
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Jun 29, 2016 11:34
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I'm nearly finished The Lies Of Locke Lamora. Not sure if it counts for this thread, but I'm sure I've seen it brought up here. I am really, really enjoying it and can't wait to get on to the next one. Hieronymous Alloy posted:For Bob to be primarily at fault you have to assume he was an unreliable narrator and in fact slept with his ex. But there's some textual support for that, especially from Mo's narrative. Isn't Bob's narration explictly, by his own admission, unreliable? Also didn't Stross specifically say (maybe in an interview or online, not in the books) that Bob's not a reliable narrator? Also maybe I'm weird but while it's not my favorite book in the series I still thought Annihilation Score was a good read and I felt a lot of sympathy with Mo. I certainly didn't find her character "unlikable". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 14:04
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Just marathoned the entirety of Worm in 4 days, worth it! Great read but im sad because the guys other work just doesnt grab me anywhere near as close.
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Jun 29, 2016 15:35
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AlphaDog posted:Isn't Bob's narration explictly, by his own admission, unreliable? Also didn't Stross specifically say (maybe in an interview or online, not in the books) that Bob's not a reliable narrator? Can't remember the first, but yes re: the second, reaffirmed as recently as June 21. Charlie Stross posted:A point that was becoming clear by book 3 or book 4 is that Bob is an unreliable narrator. This was (spoiler!) originally an accident, but then a bonus.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:08
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Wolpertinger posted:To be fair - I haven't actually read the book in question. I was more talking about Stross's implication that a fictional female character that people consider bitchy would be one that we would tolerate if it was a man with a similar behavior, which is an argument I've heard a few times but don't really agree with in most cases. I've seen much worse written 'tough' female characters in UF that do fit all those criteria and just come off as massive, slightly unstable assholes instead of 'tough' or 'strong'. No, that's absolutely true. You can see it in Dresden too where Dresden gets massive passes for anything he does but the same doesn't apply to Murphy or Charity or Molly. (The latter gets the most benefit of the doubt from the fans but largely because she's the least aggressive of the three.) It's an ongoing problem with a lot of fiction, especially UF, and is part of what leads to 'strong' female characters who aren't actually very strong, because a strong character by definition is going to have weaknesses and flaws because that makes them a more well-rounded and capable character. It isn't entirely gender-related. Part of it is just that people are willing to forgive protagonists things that they won't side characters even if the protagonist is acting as lovely if not moreso than the side characters, but it does sometimes come down to gender. People are less forgiving of a lady character who is smug, arrogant, gets angry quickly or makes mistakes based off their own issues than they are of guy characters who do the same. It's something you see with Rivers of London, with Alex Verus, and probably with other books I haven't bothered with too. It's just the way these fandoms shake up. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 17:11
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Kea posted:Just marathoned the entirety of Worm in 4 days, worth it!... What the holy gently caress. That is one seriously long work of fiction, and you start-to-finished it in four days?! By word count alone, that's about the length of books 1-12/13 of Dresden, all in one long story. And it's (IMO) more difficult to read than Dresden, by far. Kea posted:... Great read but im sad because the guys other work just doesnt grab me anywhere near as close. Yeah, I had the same issue. Pact was OK and had a cool premise, but ended kinda lame. Twig never caught me; at all. I think he's on to something else, now? I haven't checked back since I canceled my Patreon for him. If he ever does get Worm published, though, I'm buying that book and an unabridged dictionary lectern to place it on. (Or, more likely, that series, and clearing a shelf to set it on.)
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Jun 29, 2016 17:16
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Blasphemeral posted:What the holy gently caress. That is one seriously long work of fiction, and you start-to-finished it in four days?! By word count alone, that's about the length of books 1-12/13 of Dresden, all in one long story. And it's (IMO) more difficult to read than Dresden, by far. To be fair it was closer to five, I started sunday afternoon and finished thursday evening. I have had no work on recently so I started readin git and just didnt realise how insanely long it was until I was on day 3 or so and it was still going. edit: I would also love to buy it in print version.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:23
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ImpAtom posted:No, that's absolutely true. You can see it in Dresden too where Dresden gets massive passes for anything he does but the same doesn't apply to Murphy or Charity or Molly. (The latter gets the most benefit of the doubt from the fans but largely because she's the least aggressive of the three.)
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Jun 29, 2016 18:40
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Murphy has a severe case of penis envy in the first couple books and it's very eye roll-y. Butcher tries to brush it under the rug as magic powers envy but it doesn't work well. (on a fun side note if I try to write PENIS my phone puts it in all caps unless I write it manually) E: Random other question - does making potions actually require having magic powers? It doesn't really seem like it and I don't understand why Harry doesn't teach SI a set of basic combat potions to help them help him when it comes to the supernatural. Also a lot of Harry's stuff is mundane things applied in the appropriate ways against supernatural critters and he could teach some like "Wizard-Fu for vanilla mortals" would help SI a lot. Magres fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 19:27
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Mars4523 posted:Speaking of Dresden, Murphy gets written off as a huge bitch in the first few books when 100% of the problem actually comes from Harry. Yeah. Particularly in Fool Moon, where Murphy acts exactly like a good cop should act when her unreliable outside consultant with possible mob ties knowingly hides evidence in a murder investigation from her. Fool Moon isn't a great book, and that's not a great subplot, but it's not because Murphy is a bad character so much as because the book depends way too much on what I like to call sitcom conflict (where everything would be solved by a five minute conversation that, for absolutely no reason, the two leads don't have until the last minute).
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Jun 29, 2016 19:43
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Kea posted:Just marathoned the entirety of Worm in 4 days, worth it! Great read but im sad because the guys other work just doesnt grab me anywhere near as close. That's insane. Worm is my favorite work of fiction, and I found it through this thread, so I'm glad other people are reading it! I'd also love to have a copy of it, even though I don't much like print books anymore, just to have it on my bookshelf would be great.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:13
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OneTwentySix posted:That's insane. Worm is my favorite work of fiction, and I found it through this thread, so I'm glad other people are reading it! I'd also love to have a copy of it, even though I don't much like print books anymore, just to have it on my bookshelf would be great.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:23
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What the heck is worm? When the heck is a new Harry Dresden files coming out geez???
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Jun 30, 2016 00:02
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worm is a webnovel about superheros. It's pretty good until the poorly-thought-out Setting Rules become front and center.
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Jun 30, 2016 00:07
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Magres posted:E: Random other question - does making potions actually require having magic powers? It doesn't really seem like it and I don't understand why Harry doesn't teach SI a set of basic combat potions to help them help him when it comes to the supernatural. Also a lot of Harry's stuff is mundane things applied in the appropriate ways against supernatural critters and he could teach some like "Wizard-Fu for vanilla mortals" would help SI a lot.
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Jun 30, 2016 02:28
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Tunicate posted:worm is a webnovel about superheros. Is there an audiobook? Reading War and Peace on a computer screen seems no fun.
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Jun 30, 2016 02:52
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darthbob88 posted:I don't recall a lot on potions but I think so. Isn't it basically "combine symbolic ingredients, cook it for a bit while channeling power into it, bing bang boom you've got a love potion"? That last step would be difficult without magic, though I expect Butters has worked out some method. Good news! It just finished recently: http://audioworm.rein-online.org/ Bad news! It's amateur. It's mostly good, but the quality varies quite a bit, especially because it has rotating readers, and they make some strange pronunciation choices.
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Jun 30, 2016 03:00
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darthbob88 posted:I don't recall a lot on potions but I think so. Isn't it basically "combine symbolic ingredients, cook it for a bit while channeling power into it, bing bang boom you've got a love potion"? That last step would be difficult without magic, though I expect Butters has worked out some method. Butters uses Bob as a power source. They talk about it briefly in Skin Game. It annoys me that Dresden has largely stopped using potions because, as best I can tell, you can use potions to do drat near anything a spell can (the way I'm reading the wiki page on them they're essentially a spell in a bottle) and after a over a decade of having his otherwise mostly uneventful life punctuated by sweeping catastrophes, you'd think Dresden would learn to have a rainy day fund of a whole shitload of "just in case" potions. Half the time he's griping about having no cases and being bored when a book starts. Get your rear end down in your lab and make some potions for when Mab shows up for the favors you owe her you nincompoop! Consumable items you can just manufacture are ludicrously powerful because you can more or less siphon off your excess magic into little bottles and save them for when you need them.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:13
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Magres posted:Butters uses Bob as a power source. They talk about it briefly in Skin Game. Yeah, that's exactly why he no longer uses potions. And also why the bear belt that gave him a full-night sleep never showed up again. They were part of the ridiculously formularic part of early Dresden (Here, let me go down to my lab and make exactly two potions that I will use in really fitting circumstance) and robbed a lot of narrative tension. I'm pretty sure Butcher's said on the record if he could re-write the early books he'd leave out the potion-making entirely.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:18
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That's fair. The series would almost certainly be better without potions ever having been mentioned, I just wasn't sure if he had ever given a reason for not using them more, mostly because Butcher mentioned potion making like once every couple books. Changes was the last time Harry used them though
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Jun 30, 2016 04:20
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Zore posted:Yeah, that's exactly why he no longer uses potions. And also why the bear belt that gave him a full-night sleep never showed up again.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:21
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Zore posted:Yeah, that's exactly why he no longer uses potions. He used one in Changes to make them all floaty when they were breaking into that one place.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:21
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Mars4523 posted:What exactly was the point of the love potion anyways? Besides forcing a female character into a pointlessly compromising situation. And the "recipe" for making it was pretty hosed up as well. "Girls just care about diamonds, money, and romance novels!" is like the epitome of fedora-tipping gooniness. to be fair, that was bob the lust-spirit's recipe, and he's consistently portrayed as being pretty hosed up.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:39
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I think in-universe Dresden once said that potions only kept for a few days before spoiling anyway, so that's another reason why he can't have a stockpile of potions for the next big catastrophe.
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Jun 30, 2016 04:40
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Grimson posted:My point is that Mo isn't particularly nasty, just under stress Absolutely. And there are many, many female protagonist who are written as strong, assertive characters without veering into "bitchy". Same as there are many strong assertive male protagonists that don't veer into "dick" territory too much (most male characters are dicks from time to time, because being so is more forgiven for men, even seen as positive trait). Stross just did the character of Mo no favour by introducing us to her POV during a time where she was simply a bad character because she was in a bad place. Understandably bad, since she was basically suffering a mental breakdown throughout the book, but it is still something that makes the book simply a less enjoyable read. A better writer probably would have managed to make you not despise/pity Mo during the book, but Stross isn't that writer, as much as I like his stuff. He tried something new and interesting, but basically failed at it- for me at least. The same story written by - for example - Bujold - that might have worked.
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Jun 30, 2016 05:38
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Tunicate posted:worm is a webnovel about superheros. Thats cool is there a link to the web zone with it?
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Jun 30, 2016 15:24
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Tunicate posted:worm is a webnovel about superheros. Yeah. It's probably the best treatment of a superhero setting I've ever seen. It's fresh and a new take. Ramadu posted:Thats cool is there a link to the web zone with it? Check it out, free, here: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/ Tunicate posted:It's pretty good until the poorly-thought-out Setting Rules become front and center. I thought the way the setting worked was actually pretty fascinating and new. Rather than the typical comics fallback of "How or why is this guy so fast?" "Oh, I dunno, the 'speed force' or some poo poo. Yeah, sure, that's it," instead Worm's got real world building and unified, thought-out mechanics. MeLKoR posted:Is there an audiobook? Reading War and Peace on a computer screen seems no fun. Yes. Do not listen to it, though. It's all-captials BAD. Mars4523 posted:What exactly was the point of the love potion anyways? Besides forcing a female character into a pointlessly compromising situation. And the "recipe" for making it was pretty hosed up as well. "Girls just care about diamonds, money, and romance novels!" is like the epitome of fedora-tipping gooniness. According to Bob (and, by extension, twelve-year-old Harry) they do. Remember how Bob works? He projects the personality you expect him to have. That's why he's so much more terse and to the point with Butters as his boss. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 15:47
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I can also see Harry getting a lot warier of potions after the "supercoffee" one he used in Fool Moon drat near got him killed and left him nearly powerless for the climax of the book.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:51
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Blasphemeral posted:] Everything with the titular worms was bad, and the unified power handwave was just really dumb. "no, you don't have telekinesis over glass, that's ridiculous, what you have is an uplink to a nearly omniscient multidimensional creature which is constantly scanning all the substances around you to determine if they're glass, then using interdimensional energy bursts to selectively move them." "Also it totally could do more with its near omniscience and omnipotence, but a bunch of nerfs were added to give you a balanced power, so we could determine how to... make stronger powers? Except as previously established, we're just faking the effects of something far more limited through brute force? And the most powerful ability is also the oldest one?" Like, the setting works when it stays at street level, because it avoids all that bullshit and actually has stakes. Once it escalates it just turns into  and changes the solutions from clever tactics to technobabble.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:59
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Tunicate posted:Like, the setting works when it stays at street level, because it avoids all that bullshit and actually has stakes. Once it escalates it just turns into I disagree.
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Jun 30, 2016 16:04
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Having finished The Nightmare Stacks, I'm torn between being impressed at how dark the climax is and frustrated at how easily a ton of human casualties could have been prevented if the Laundry had people who could think more than a few steps in advance.
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Jun 30, 2016 17:04
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Almost no one thinks more than a "few" steps in advance even about routine events with predictable outcomes. What obvious strategy do you think would have short circuited that cluster gently caress?
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Jun 30, 2016 17:26
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Turdis McWordis posted:Almost no one thinks more than a "few" steps in advance even about routine events with predictable outcomes. What obvious strategy do you think would have short circuited that cluster gently caress? Mars4523 fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 17:51
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They had literally no information about the invasion (size, capabilities, intent, etc.) other than a text message claiming there was one by a 24 year old math geek who had been in training for 6 months. That's not a shut everything down situation. Preventing civilian deaths on the roads was pretty much impossible. They never did get accurate reports of what was happening, just a growing zone of silence. The OCCULUS teams are the Laundry QRF and they have wards. Integration of magic with the armed forces in a widespread basis is counterproductive. For a huge threat it won't be enough, and the act of preparing and leaking magic's existence on a wide basis risks accelerating CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Turdis McWordis fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 18:13
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Turdis McWordis posted:They had literally no information about the invasion (size, capabilities, intent, etc.) other than a text message claiming there was one by a 24 year old math geek who had been in training for 6 months. That's not a shut everything down situation. The OCCULUS teams are meant for recon into a low threat environment only. When the poo poo hits the fan, the Laundry has always turned to the military (see Trident missiles in book 2). Hell, mobilizing an Army QRF is part of the Laundry's own contingency plan for dealing with an an extradimensional incursion, but the Laundry does not possess the means to equip that QRF to effectively combat threats that might be encountered during an extradimensional incursion. That doesn't really scan.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:32
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Probably best to use spoiler tags since the books only been out a few days, but my two cents: The real clusterfuck was that the Laundry wasn't prepared for invasion by a quick-moving army with widespread basilisk gun & electronic surveillance countermeasures. They had a plan in place, it just didn't survive contact with the enemy.
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Jun 30, 2016 19:16
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