divabot posted:

the author's blog, from a post called 'The Benevolent Stalker' posted:

That evening, I went through her many Facebook pictures. “Maybe this one?” I asked in a chat message.

“It’s not opening,” she said. “What photo is it?”

“You’re wearing a low-cut black lace-trimmed top. On your pink lips, a mischievous smile is playing,” I described.

[...]

A couple of weeks before our University Challenge audition, she unfriended me on Facebook. I was a little shocked and asked her why.

“You’re kinda freaking me out,” she explained. “You’re a good guy but you’re being far too forward.”

“Are you still doing University Challenge with us?” I asked.

“Only as a friend, but nothing more,” she replied.

For some reason, I then decided to tell her how I really felt; that I had become infatuated with her, and that I was in love with her. With hindsight, of course I wouldn’t have done that. In fact, I would have done almost everything differently but, at the time, I felt compelled to do what I did.

She pulled out of the team. We found a replacement and failed the audition anyway (I doubt that her inclusion would have made a difference). My dream of winning University Challenge and impressing the maiden was shattered.

[...]

I wrote love letters to her. I still had her address from the forms that she filled out for University Challenge. I felt a bit guilty using that information, but I wasn’t turning up at her door or anything.

[...]

Every great romance is about two partners who are utterly obsessed with each other. Romeo, Juliet, Tristan and Isolde are people who are so passionately and powerfully in love that nothing else matters to them. But what if that feeling was felt on only one side? What if Juliet had rejected Romeo? Would he become a stalker?

[...]

Are the Beatles creepy stalkers? Of course not. How about Sting?

“Every breath you take,
Every move you make,
Every bond you break,
Every step you take,
I’ll be watching you.”

[...]

On Valentine’s Day 2014, I sent her another card, with an elaborate drawing of a wild scene. In it, she became the character Ella Tundra, and that is how The World Rose began.

Seven months later, when it was complete, I decided to try to make my book known by getting into the national news.

[...]

I would like to reiterate that I was not plotting to kidnap her. I was planning on asking her if she would be interested in pretending to be kidnapped

[...]

“How?” she said. “How are you here?” She turned and snapped me on her phone before hurrying away.

I didn’t even get to tell her about my plan.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

a new tingler tale about being pounded in the butt by his loss

catlord posted:

For a moment I thought this was supposed to be one of those Nazi Taylor Swift things. Which I must admit I don't understand, but seems like a common enough thing that I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see someone writing it.

Especially by someone who calls themselves "Fenris Wulf."

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Tingle was happy for the winner and has a new tingler tale about being pounded in the butt by his loss

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Crosspost from the terrible headlines thread; some authors do NOT take criticism well.

grittyreboot posted:

More of a boring post, but despite having won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Arthur C. Clarke, Ancillary Justice is just an ok book.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Tingle was happy for the winner and has a new tingler tale about being pounded in the butt by his loss, so it all came out okay.

Fashionable Jorts posted:

Has anyone here actually read one of his books? I want to know how these stories work. Are they anything beyond just a funny title and cover picture?

Obviously they aren't going to be great books, but how does someone write about being pounded in the butt by a mere concept?

grittyreboot posted:

More of a boring post, but despite having won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Arthur C. Clarke, Ancillary Justice is just an ok book.

Fashionable Jorts posted:

Has anyone here actually read one of his books? I want to know how these stories work. Are they anything beyond just a funny title and cover picture?

Obviously they aren't going to be great books, but how does someone write about being pounded in the butt by a mere concept?

Transmogrifier posted:

Oh my god I have been trying to read this book for almost a year now and ugh. I think I'm going to just give up on it.

divabot posted:

Mark Reads 'Slammed in the Butt By My Hugo Award Nomination'

Fashionable Jorts posted:

Well that was something magical, thank you.

Page 109 of my 1992 paperback posted:

Engrams, then, being received in "unconsciousness" cause a partial "unconsciousness" to exist every time they are restimulated. The person who has an engram (any aberree) need not receive new physical pain to have a new moment of partial "unconsciousness" take place. Feeling "dopey"⁷ or "sleepy" or "dull" results in part from a partially shut-down analyzer. Being "nervous" or in a rage or frightened also carries with it partially shutoff analytical power.

The hypnotist has "success" where he does because he is able, by talking to people about "sleep," to put into restimulation some engram which contains the word sleep and shut-down analytical power. This is one of the reasons hypnotism "works."

_{7. dopey: tired, sleepy, foggy (as though doped).}

Page 115 posted:

You have seen some child come forth with a tirade, a tantrum. You have seen some man go through a whole rage action. You have seen people go through a whole irrational set of actions. These are dramatizations. They come about when an engram is thoroughly restimulated, so thoroughly that its soldered-in aspect takes over the organism. It may come into circuit slightly or wholly, which is to say that there are degrees of dramatization. When it is in full parade, the engram is running off verbatim and the individual is like an actor, puppet-like, playing his dictated part. A person can be given new engrams which will make these old ones take secondary importance. (Society's punishment complex is aimed squarely at giving anti-engram education.)

Page 277 () posted:

The hypnotist, with much mumbo jumbo² and hand passes, et al.,³ has something which he calls "regression." This is a very complicated business which requires being hypnotized. True enough, regression has research value since, by hypnosis, it bypasses occlusions which are not otherwise easy to get around. And regression served Dianetics well when the author was checking his data on memory banks. But it evidently had occurred to none that regression is an artificial use of a natural process.

<sub>2. mumbo jumbo: senseless or pretentious language, usually designed to obscure an issue, confuse a listener or the like.
3. et al.: and others.</sub>

Pages 300-1 posted:

The classes of commands which particularly trouble the auditor are only a few. Because the mind actually does some part of its thinking, especially when remembering, by return, even when the individual is not returning, all these commands also impede the thought processes of the mind. In therapy they are particularly irksome and are the constant target of attention of the auditor.

First is the patient-ejector species of command. These are colloquially called bouncers. They include such things as "Get out!" "Don't ever come back," "I've got to stay away," etc. etc., including any combination of words which literally mean ejection.

Second is the patient-holder species of command. These include such things as "Stay here," "Sit right there and think about it," "Come back and sit down," "I can't go," "I mustn't leave," etc.

Third is the engram-denyer species of command which, literally translated, means that the engram doesn't exist: "I'm not here," "This is getting nowhere," "I must not talk about it," "I can't remember," etc.

Fourth is the engram-grouper species of command which, literally translated, means that all incidents are in one place on the time track: "I'm jammed up," "Everything happens at once," "Everything comes in on me at once," "I'll get even with you," etc.

Fifth is the patient-misdirector which sends the pre-clear in the wrong direction, makes him go earlier when he should be going later, go later when he should go earlier, etc. "You can't go back at this point," "You're turned around," etc.

The bouncer sends the pre-clear soaring back toward present time. The holder keeps him right where he is. The denyer makes him feel that there is no incident present. The fourth, the grouper, foreshortens his time track so that there is no time track. The misdirector reverses the necessary direction of travel.

Contacting any engram causes the pre-clear to react "analytically." Just as in the case of an engram being restimulated, the commands are impinged upon his analyzer, and although the analyzer may firmly believe it has just computed the reaction all of its own accord, it is actually speaking straight out of the content of an engram or engrams.

This is the method of repeater technique.

Pages 93-4 posted:

Let us now take an example of the reactive mind's processes in a lower echelon of life: a fish swims into the shallows where the water is brackish,²⁹ yellow, and tastes of iron. He has just taken a mouthful of shrimp when a bigger fish rushes at him and knocks against his tail.

The small fish manages to get away but he has been physically hurt. Having negligible analytical powers, the small fish depends upon reaction for much of his choice of activity.

Now he heals his tail and goes on about his affairs. But one day he is attacked by a larger fish and gets his tail bumped. This time he is not seriously hurt, merely bumped. But something has happened. Something within him considers that in his choice of action he is now being careless. Here is a second injury in the same area.

The computation on the fish reactive level was: shallows equals brackish equals yellow equals iron taste equals pain in tail equals shrimp in mouth, and any one of these equals any other.

The bump in the tail on the second occasion keyed in³⁰ the engram. It demonstrated to the organism that something like the first accident (identity thought) could happen again. Therefore, beware!

The small fish, after this, swims into brackish water. This makes him slightly "nervous." But he goes on swimming and finds himself in yellow and brackish water. And still he does not turn back. He begins to get a small pain in his tail. But he keeps on swimming. Suddenly he gets a taste of iron and the pain in his tail turns on heavily. And away he goes like a flash. No fish was after him. There were shrimp to be had there. But away he went anyway. Dangerous place! And if he had not turned away, he would have really gotten himself a pain in the tail.

<sub>29. brackish: somewhat salty, as the water of some marshes near the sea.
30. key in: make active. A key-in is a moment when the environment around the awake but fatigued or distressed individual is itself similar to the dormant (inactive) engram. At that moment the engram becomes active.</sub>

Pages 162-4 posted:

A Clear, inexperienced in hunting, determines to shoot a grizzly.⁶ He has a fine rifle. The grizzly appears to be easy game. The man is at 3.9 or above. He feels good. He is going to get that grizzly as the grizzly has been threatening the man's stock.⁷ High enthusiasm carries him to the lair. He waits, he finally sees the grizzly. There is a cliff above the man which he could not ordinarily climb. But to get a good shot before the grizzly vanishes, the man has to climb the cliff. Seeing he was in danger of losing the game brought the man down to 3.2. Necessity sends him up the cliff. He fires but in firing falls back down the cliff. The grizzly is wounded. He starts toward the man. Necessity surges up. The man recovers the gun and shoots again. He is at 3.0 the moment he shoots. He misses. He fires again but the miss, with the grizzly charging, brought him down to 2.5. He shoots once more. The grizzly takes the ball and keeps on coming. The man shoots again but he has suddenly realized that his rifle is not going to stop this grizzly. His tone drops to 2.0. He begins to snarl and feverishly work his gun. His bullets go wild. He experiences rage at the gun, the grizzly, the world, and throws the gun away, ready to meet the grizzly, almost upon him, with bare hands. Suddenly the man knows fear. His tone is 1.2. It drops to 0.9 with a smell in his nostrils of the bear. He knows the bear will kill him. He turns and tries to claw up the cliff and get away but his efforts are frenzied. He is at Tone 0.6, stark terror. The bear strikes him and knocks him from the cliff-side. The man lies still, breathing almost halted, heart-beat slowed to nearly nothing. The bear hits him again and the man lies still. Then the bear decides he is dead and walks away. Shaken, the man eventually comes around, his tone gradually rising up to 2.0, the point where his analyzer shut off. He stirs more and gets up. His tone is back to 2.5: he is analytically afraid and cautious. He recovers his gun. He begins to leave the scene. He feels a great necessity to recoup his own self-esteem and his tone comes to 3.2. He walks away and reaches a safe area. Suddenly it occurs to him that he can borrow a friend's Mauser.⁸ He begins to make plans to get that bear. His enthusiasm mounts. But, completely aside from the engram received when the bear knocked him out, he acts on his experience. Three days later he kills the bear and his tone rises to 4.0 for the space of contemplation and telling the tale and then his mind occupies itself with new matters.

<sub>6. grizzly: short for grizzly bear: a large, ferocious, brownish, grayish or yellowish bear of western North America, having a shoulder hump and long front claws.
7. stock: cattle or other farm or range animals; livestock.
8. Mauser: a brand of military or hunting rifles.</sub>

Pages 340-2 posted:

For the ally computation, above all things, encysts the life force of the individual. Here is caught and held the free feeling, the very heartbeat of life itself. A preclear is only placed in apathy by ally computations. The body can be almost dead in the presence of antagonism and still rally and fight. But it cannot fight its friends. The law of affinity has been aberrated into an entrance into the reactive engram bank. And that law, even when twisted with the murky shadows of unreason in the reactive mind, still works. It is a good law. It is too good when the auditor is trying to find and reduce engrams which are making the preclear ache with arthritis or bleed internally with stomach ulcers. Why can't he "get rid of his arthritis? Mama said, when she gracefully fell over a pig, "Oh, I can't get up! Oh, my poor, poor baby. Oh, my baby! I wonder if I hurt my poor, poor baby. Oh, I hope my baby is still alive! Please God let him live. Please God let me keep my baby. Please!" Only the God to which she prayed was the Reactive Mind, which makes one of its idiot computations on the basis of everything is equal to everything. A holder, a prayer for life, a thoroughly bruised baby's spine, Mama's sympathy, a pig grunt, a prayer to God, all these things are equal to the reactive mind and so we have a fine case of arthritis, particularly since our patient sought "survival" by marrying a girl with a voice just like Mama's sounded when he was in the womb. Ask him to get rid of his arthritis? The reactive mind says "NO!" Arthritis is a baby is a pig grunt is a prayer to God is wife's sympathy is being poor is Mama's voice and all these things are desirable. He's kept himself poor and he's kept his arthritis and he married a wife who would make a harlot²⁵ blush and this is pro-survival: wonderful stuff, survival, when the reactive mind computes it! And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she uses assorted household instruments thrust into the cervix²⁶ to do it) and some of the holes are through and through his baby's abdomen and stomach: he will live because he is surrounded by protein and has a food supply and because the sac is like one of these puncture-proof inner tubes that seals up every hole. (Nature has been smart about attempted abortion for a long, long time.) It so happens that Mama in this case was not a monologist, although most of Mama's activity on this line is a dramatization and has conversation with it; but it also so happens that Grandma lives next door and she comes over unexpectedly, shortly after the latest effort to make baby meet oblivion. Grandma may have been an attempted abortionist in her day but now she is old and highly moral and besides, this baby is not giving her any morning sickness: she therefore finds much to censure²⁷ when she sees a bloody orangewood stick in the bathroom. Baby is still "unconscious." Grandma berates Mama: "Any daughter of mine who would do such a horrible thing should be punished by the vengeance of God (the principle of, don't do as I do, do as I say, for who gave Mama this dramatization in the first place?) and driven through the streets. Your baby has a perfect right to live: if you don't think you can take care of him, I certainly will. Now you go right on through with your pregnancy, Eloisia, and when that baby is born, if you don't want him, you bring him to me! The idea of trying to hurt that poor thing!" And so, when our bleeding ulcer case gets born, there is Grandma and there is security and safety. Grandma is here the ally (and she can become an ally in a thousand different ways, any of them based on the principle that she talks sympathetically to baby when he is out like a flounder,²⁸ and fights Mama in his favor when he is "unconscious"), and when he grows to boyhood he can be found placing a large dependency on Grandma, much to the parental wonder (for they never did anything to little Roger, not they). And Roger will, when Grandma is dead, develop bleeding ulcers to get her back.

Whoever is a friend is to be clasped to the bosom with bonds of steel, says this great genius, the reactive mind, even though it kills the organism.

_{25 harlot: a prostitute.
26 cervix: a neck-shaped, anatomical structure, as the narrow outer end of the uterus.
27 censure: criticize severely.
28 out like a flounder: in a faint, unconscious. (Flounder is a slang term for the corpse of a drowned man.)}

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

I won't lie, it was hard to get into but I think maybe a third of the way through it picks up and things start making sense and then it was actually really good (I thought).

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Jargon is omnipresent in this book - I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a third of the word count is used according to Hubbard's personal definitions. It's all clearly introduced and explained, but it doesn't make the pages and pages loaded down with gunk about "demon circuits" or the "file clerk" or "keying in" any less irritating, nor is it any less of a hassle to decipher sentences whose every other word was arbitrarily redefined countless chapters earlier.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Sham bam bamina! posted:

While migrating my books to new shelves yesterday, I found something that I'd forgotten I had:



I'd also forgotten why I had it, so I spent a few minutes reacquainting myself. The reason was obvious immediately: This book is weird. Specifically, its writing is weird, independently of the kooky ideas, and especially coming from the author in question. If anyone here is familiar with Hubbard's science fiction, this thing has almost the opposite of those books' straightforwardly pulpy prose, as if actively rejecting that in favor of... oh, God Xenu knows what. It feels like it's trying to seem imposingly intelligent but approachable, without demanding more than junior-high-level literacy - aimed at suckers, basically. The sentences and paragraphs are rigidly linear, like Kant for idiots, but broken up with numbered lists and parentheses and patronizing little footnotes, to an effect that was probably supposed to be excitingly modern in 1950, and periodically tempered with contractions and the second person. The register shifts restlessly, as if Hubbard's afraid that sticking to one tone for more than a few pages at a time will lose the reader's interest. He also really, really likes to "use" "quotation marks" for "reasons" that completely elude me, as if there's some difference between a person who's "confused" and one who's merely confused. Italics are everywhere too, but at least they tend to be reserved for words with specifically indicated senses. Here, have a few examples:

quote:

“Dianetics” is way off the reservation in this department. Certain motifs keep recurring with a compulsive regularity that suggests Hubbard himself was anything but clear of past traumas. Eventually, these recurring images and examples gel into a sad and scary narrative that must have had particular power for Hubbard, since it keeps cropping up throughout the book.

It involves an adulterous wife and a brutal husband. The wife becomes pregnant (presumably by her lover) and fears discovery of the affair. She tries repeatedly to abort the pregnancy on her own, using orange sticks and other household objects. Her husband, suspecting the truth, beats her, punching her pregnant belly, calling her a “whore” and “no good.” When the child is born, the parents pretend it was wanted, but the child’s only true ally is a grandmother, who thwarted the mother’s attempt to abort him and cares for the child when he’s sick. Eventually, the mother starts beating the child, using many of the same insults her husband has flung at her.

This horrific tale never appears in its entirety in “Dianetics,” but the book is haunted by it. Every time Hubbard reached into his mind for an example of how a fetus might come to feel pain, or how an engram “keys in,” or how engrams are passed on through generations, he came up with a piece of this story.

The prevalence of physical violence — almost exclusively domestic violence — in “Dianetics” makes itself felt early on. Among the first examples in the book (meant to illustrate the condition of “unconsciousness”) describes a woman being knocked down and kicked by her husband, and beaten women appear throughout with bizarre regularity. Hubbard also seemed to be obsessed with attempted abortion, which he believed to be widespread. Admittedly, when “Dianetics” was written, legal medical abortion wasn’t available in the U.S., but even so, the assertion that “twenty or thirty abortion attempts is not uncommon” among women who aren’t Clears is simply demented.

grate deceiver posted:

Yeah, from what I heard from people who went through the Scientology programs, it's ALL about dumb jargon and redefining common words to mean something else.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Crosspost from the terrible headlines thread; some authors do NOT take criticism well.

flosofl posted:

I can remember when there use to be a TV campaign on all the poo poo-tier local stations when I was a kid in the 80s. Do they still run these?

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

Sham bam bamina! posted:

While migrating my books to new shelves yesterday, I found something that I'd forgotten I had:



I'd also forgotten why I had it, so I spent a few minutes reacquainting myself. The reason was obvious immediately: This book is weird. Specifically, its writing is weird, independently of the kooky ideas, and especially coming from the author in question. If anyone here is familiar with Hubbard's science fiction, this thing has almost the opposite of those books' straightforwardly pulpy prose, as if actively rejecting that in favor of... oh, God Xenu knows what. It feels like it's trying to seem imposingly intelligent but approachable, without demanding more than junior-high-level literacy - aimed at suckers, basically. The sentences and paragraphs are rigidly linear, like Kant for idiots, but broken up with numbered lists and parentheses and patronizing little footnotes, to an effect that was probably supposed to be excitingly modern in 1950, and periodically tempered with contractions and the second person. The register shifts restlessly, as if Hubbard's afraid that sticking to one tone for more than a few pages at a time will lose the reader's interest. He also really, really likes to "use" "quotation marks" for "reasons" that completely elude me, as if there's some difference between a person who's "confused" and one who's merely confused. Italics are everywhere too, but at least they tend to be reserved for words with specifically indicated senses. Here, have a few examples:




Jargon is omnipresent in this book - I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a third of the word count is used according to Hubbard's personal definitions. It's all clearly introduced and explained, but it doesn't make the pages and pages loaded down with gunk about "demon circuits" or the "file clerk" or "keying in" any less irritating, nor is it any less of a hassle to decipher sentences whose every other word was arbitrarily redefined countless chapters earlier.

On the other hand, being a storyteller by profession, Hubbard liberally peppers Dianetics with colorful illustrations of its various concepts, a welcome (?) break from all the dry abstraction:

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Friend txtd me to tell me he discovered a book called "I Married A Ghost".

With a title like that, you know what you are in for. Kinda like "Pregnesia".

Thursday Next posted:

Edit: I also read the Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. It's been a while, and I didn't finish them, but I remember a pleasure slave with a magical cock-ring that his masters could use to deliver pain if he didn't do what they wanted him to do. They're just thinly-veiled porn and not worth anyone's time.

hackbunny posted:

What's the deal with visual novels? They're still a mystery and a "young people these days" thing to me, but I get the impression that they're a big deal

there wolf posted:

All the pleasure slaves had magical cock rings. You're just thinking of the super pretty, super powerful one who breaks his causing a magical backlash that destroys a city.

Also they have almost no actual loving so strange and somewhat obtusely veiled porn might be more accurate.

there wolf posted:

Pregnesia had loving, didn't it? I once read some of a ghost/girl romance and the whole ghost thing was a convenient excuse to never do more than stare longingly at each other. There were at least four more books in the series.

Thursday Next posted:

I actually really enjoyed the Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin. They're definitely kids' books, make no mistake - I wouldn't even qualify them as "YA fiction" or whatever the modern classification is.

Thursday Next posted:

Here's another lovely book: Pillars of the God drat Earth, by Ken Something or Other. This book also sucks. I made it about halfway. When the author has literal sentences stating how a character feels, you know you're grading remedial English essays all over again: "She was very pretty, but she was mean. This made him feel angry."

Thursday Next posted:

Edit: I also read the Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. It's been a while, and I didn't finish them, but I remember a pleasure slave with a magical cock-ring that his masters could use to deliver pain if he didn't do what they wanted him to do. They're just thinly-veiled porn and not worth anyone's time.

InediblePenguin posted:

The paperback set I had, there were an awful lot of real huge titties on the covers, like, waaaay more balloon cleavage than I'd expect for a kid's book, which kind of set the tone for how I read them, honestly

Tagichatn posted:

I don't have much to add about the ridiculousness of this series but I was given this book by one of my sister's friends who thought I'd like it. That got me a serious wtf once I got into the book that was compounded by the fact that the friend read this book at age 12 or something. And I know she finished it because my sister said she had the sequels too. The main thing I remember is some dude given the aphrodisiac drug and loving a zombie or something.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Arcsquad12 posted:

Just watch HBO's Pillars of the Earth miniseries. It's better than the book solely because it has Ian McShane hamming it up in every scene he's in.

Leavemywife posted:

I'm afraid to ask, but can someone make a list of all the poo poo Piers Anthony has written in his books? I think there was a post about it earlier, but I don't remember.

Leavemywife posted:

I'm afraid to ask, but can someone make a list of all the poo poo Piers Anthony has written in his books? I think there was a post about it earlier, but I don't remember.