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BioEnchanted posted:I know that this question was asked like, 4 pages ago but: also the main character is a girl playing a male mmo avatar
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Dec 6, 2016 01:49
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Domus posted:I am bad with words. I'm also female. I was indeed making a cultural conditioning point. I have often been let down by the literature aimed at my gender, and Twilight carries on that tradition. Put it this way: If it were a story with a male protagonist, the fact that both a vampire and a werewolf love him would be a side issue, not the whole story, or it wouldn't get published. Guys get to have wish fulfillment that they're wanted by all women, but they also get to be strong and cool and clever and the best at everything. I've yet to read a female version of Stainless Steel Rat, for example. It's not the only thing that makes Twilight bad, but it sure contributes. Does Carmen Sandiego mean nothing to you? Here's the thing. As much as it sucks that women get pigeonholed into keepers of the feelings, emotional labor is still labor and it has value. The emotional constipation of male targeted media isn't actually something to aspire towards. Men's media needs more romance and relationship stuff as badly as women's media needs more stoic antiheroes solving crimes.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:09
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there wolf posted:Here's the thing. As much as it sucks that women get pigeonholed into keepers of the feelings, emotional labor is still labor and it has value. The emotional constipation of male targeted media isn't actually something to aspire towards. Men's media needs more romance and relationship stuff as badly as women's media needs more stoic antiheroes solving crimes. That's why I like the Vorkosigan books by Mcmaster-Bujold. A writer with Romantic leanings does her best to write military sci-fi and it comes out as a pretty cool blend.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:49
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Domus posted:I am bad with words. I'm also female. I was indeed making a cultural conditioning point. I have often been let down by the literature aimed at my gender, and Twilight carries on that tradition. Put it this way: If it were a story with a male protagonist, the fact that both a vampire and a werewolf love him would be a side issue, not the whole story, or it wouldn't get published. Guys get to have wish fulfillment that they're wanted by all women, but they also get to be strong and cool and clever and the best at everything. I've yet to read a female version of Stainless Steel Rat, for example. It's not the only thing that makes Twilight bad, but it sure contributes.  Have you tried anything by Elizabeth Moon? She writes a lot of pulp scifi action with mostly female casts. Every single one stars a stunningly gorgeous lady admiral outshooting and outthinking evil Space Texans, while shirtless ensigns with washboard abs swoon over them. They can be fun!
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Dec 6, 2016 03:38
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Domus posted:I am bad with words. I'm also female. I was indeed making a cultural conditioning point. I have often been let down by the literature aimed at my gender, and Twilight carries on that tradition. Put it this way: If it were a story with a male protagonist, the fact that both a vampire and a werewolf love him would be a side issue, not the whole story, or it wouldn't get published. Guys get to have wish fulfillment that they're wanted by all women, but they also get to be strong and cool and clever and the best at everything. I've yet to read a female version of Stainless Steel Rat, for example. It's not the only thing that makes Twilight bad, but it sure contributes. This reminds me: Meyer published a gender-swapped version of Twilight featuring "Beau" and "Edythe" and despite her claims it's the same story, there are many changes that made the female vampire more passive and the male human more active. So even with a male protagonist Meyer is already screwing that up even more because of her (and society's) limited notion of how X gender behaves.
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Dec 6, 2016 04:10
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Squidster posted:. Every single one stars a stunningly gorgeous lady admiral outshooting and outthinking evil Space Texans, while shirtless ensigns with washboard abs swoon over them. Occasionally they feature badass space-aunts showing the youngsters how it's done.
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Dec 6, 2016 04:20
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Representation is getting a little bit better at least. NK Jimison won a Hugo for best novel this year. Being a black woman she mainly writes stories where the main characters are dark skinned (and women.)
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Dec 6, 2016 04:58
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Dabir posted:Why not read the Mercedes Lackey/Piers Anthony collab, If I Pay Thee Not In Gold? Ughhhh, I read that as a teenager who was big into Lackey and never read anything by Anthony. I have incredibly low standards for basic entertainment and was at the age where "sex comedy" is like the world's most powerful magnet. And yet, even then, I knew it was so bad. Basically gently caress you for reminding me it existed.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:25
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Isn't there some series where the lead is an admiral and has a telepathic space cat or something? I just remember a cover where the artist used a nerf Longshot rifle as the base for the blaster thing. Can't remember the name and I haven't read them, but the lead is a woman and apparently she's pretty badass. Nothing against women admirals personally, I just don't really dig space battle ship sci fi that much.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:07
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Honor Harrington series by David Weber. It's basically a pastiche of the old Haratio Hornblower books, with the lead changed to a woman and in the future.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:08
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Wow, honestly didn't know most of these books existed. They sure didn't get their own dump at the end of the aisles when I was a bookseller.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:37
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muscles like this! posted:Representation is getting a little bit better at least. NK Jimison won a Hugo for best novel this year. Being a black woman she mainly writes stories where the main characters are dark skinned (and women.) wow racist
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Dec 6, 2016 06:55
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LibrarianCroaker posted:also the main character is a girl playing a male mmo avatar Yes, I was aware. I chose my words deliberately to avoid spoilers - Because she's been stuck in a male body for so long in the MMO, by the time she is asked who she is in reality she replies that "Obvoiusly I'm a boy dumbass", as she has forgotten her physical form entirely
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Dec 6, 2016 07:01
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The first Honor Harrington books are pretty good, but she gradually morphs into a Mary Sue (eg, IIRC in the early books she's good at fighting and shooting because of practice and training, this gets retconed in favor of her just being a gene-modified super soldier), and the series gets bogged down with increasingly long descriptions of missile technology and/or play-by-play battle narration. I think I quit the series around book 9 or 10, and I see a lot of "that's it, I'm done with the series" comments on the more recent books. Also wtf.   "okay we need to make her whiter and have huge boobs. and make the cat look more hosed up."
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Dec 6, 2016 07:43
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C.M. Kruger posted:
It's interesting/neat that the royal family in these books is explicitly black. It's blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but it was mentioned.
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Dec 6, 2016 08:42
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muscles like this! posted:Representation is getting a little bit better at least. NK Jimison won a Hugo for best novel this year. Being a black woman she mainly writes stories where the main characters are dark skinned (and women.) Unfortunately she's a hack and Hundred Thousand Kingdoms at least belongs to this thread.
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Dec 6, 2016 09:36
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flosofl posted:Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Those books throw me off because it looks like the title should be alliterative. But HON-er HA-rington.Feels weird, and 'onor 'Arrington makes it sound like a book about space cockney.
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Dec 6, 2016 11:19
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Unfortunately she's a hack and Hundred Thousand Kingdoms at least belongs to this thread. It was her debut novel. By all accounts, she's improved a lot since then. I've seen a lot of folks who didn't like 100KK, but are really into The Broken Earth (the series starting with The Fifth Season).
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Dec 6, 2016 11:26
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The Honor Harrington series is legit great but the space libertarian preaching gets a little bit annoying. It's not that blatant and it's pretty trivial to look past, but it will take you out of the story for a moment. Pretty racially progressive and even decently feminist for a series that came out in '92 though. also by the end of it you're pretty desperately rooting for the bad guys to get a win but that's for a whole nother set of reasons. Decent book series overall. I liked it quite a lot, but could never get past books 8 or 9 or so. Honestly they're not terrible. Not great, and definitely a bit schlocky in that military sci-fi way, but not terrible enough for this thread. The Iron Rose has a new favorite as of 11:30 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 11:27
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Cat Army 
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Those books throw me off because it looks like the title should be alliterative. But HON-er HA-rington.Feels weird, and 'onor 'Arrington makes it sound like a book about space cockney.
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Dec 6, 2016 13:20
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Nellies Quest
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Dec 6, 2016 14:12
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The Iron Rose posted:The Honor Harrington series is legit great but the space libertarian preaching gets a little bit annoying. It's not that blatant and it's pretty trivial to look past, but it will take you out of the story for a moment. It's basically a space opera version of Horatio Hornblower. Which I suppose is why the villains are the French Revolution IN SPACE.
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Dec 6, 2016 14:32
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Wheat Loaf posted:Which I suppose is why the villains are the French Revolution IN SPACE. http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_Pierre Rob S. Pierre lol just lol
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Dec 6, 2016 15:02
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Yeah, the leaders of the main villain faction are even called the Committee of Public Safety, aren't they?
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Dec 6, 2016 15:54
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Darth Walrus posted:It was her debut novel. By all accounts, she's improved a lot since then. I've seen a lot of folks who didn't like 100KK, but are really into The Broken Earth (the series starting with The Fifth Season). Yeah, I flicked through her first couple of books and was pretty immediately sure they weren't for me. The Broken Earth series is pretty bloody good, however. There are a couple of moments where she gets pretty anvil-like with the allegories for American racial discrimination, though. The magic users are Orogenes (abbreviated "roggas" as a derogatory term (sigh)). They can easily lose control of their powers and accidentally destroy entire villages, and one argument used in favour of basically forcing them into slavery is "But they're so dangerous, we have to control them!" which is a bit... there are moments where she seems to be trying to draw a parallel with lovely arguments you sometime see in reality, both about "criminal black people" and muslims, and it just doesn't really work because she's set them up as being a genuine existential threat and kind of undermined the comparison. Even so, it's a cool setting with cool characters and some really neat worldbuilding, and well worth reading.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:28
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Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: "White people, amirite?" FIfth Season: 
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Dec 6, 2016 18:47
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Wheat Loaf posted:I thought it was any service to the state, not just military service. The narrator points out that the alternate services are all things that are probably more likely to kill you than the military. Hazardous waste disposal, medical experimentation subject, etc. I don't remember if human target practice was one of the examples thrown out but that was pretty much the tone laid out. One way or another, you had to let the government try to kill you before you got any say in your government.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:52
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: "White people, amirite?" I might pick up these books they sound interesting.
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Dec 6, 2016 20:36
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Since we just had a big derail about a romance book and women's agency, here's an article Jezebel put out about on the subject that goes into the history of the genre and it's relationship to feminism. http://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-sweet-savage-sexual-revolution-that-set-the-romanc-1789687801 I kind of want to dig up a cope of A Gentle Feuding just for the title.
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Dec 6, 2016 21:18
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Straight White Shark posted:The narrator points out that the alternate services are all things that are probably more likely to kill you than the military. Hazardous waste disposal, medical experimentation subject, etc. I don't remember if human target practice was one of the examples thrown out but that was pretty much the tone laid out. One way or another, you had to let the government try to kill you before you got any say in your government. All I recall is something like 'oh by the way if you were blind and didn't have any legs we'd still give you some pointless busywork like counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch'.
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Dec 6, 2016 21:20
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CharlestheHammer posted:I might pick up these books they sound interesting. I'd recommend Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, because Fifth Season is not even amusingly stupid. Just the kind of stuff people praise for ~*world-building*~ HTK is about a world where one god has enslaved the others, and rules through a theocratic dynasty of White People. They're elitist assholes who enforce a cartoon version of Christianity and suppress other faiths, because New Agey attacks on Abrahamic religion are really relevant and important in today's world. It's all very silly and miserably serious at the same time. The protagonist is mixed-race warrior princess and marginalized grand-daughter of world's earthly ruler who gets involved in the family business. You think it might lead to some interesting storytelling, but everyone and everything involved in the story is so flat and dreary. I think you'll love Nahadoth, the beautiful Nightlord quote:I turned to find that Nahadoth stood behind us. BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 01:27 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 21:52
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All your complaints make me more interested
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Dec 6, 2016 22:14
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Just read the Jane Eyre/Wide Sargasso Sea combo instead. It's the exact same themes, but good.
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Dec 6, 2016 22:21
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BioEnchanted posted:I know that this question was asked like, 4 pages ago but: Anyone who has to ask that question has probably not ever actually played an MMO. There's a huge chunk of players who basically treat them as bad single-player games and either never group at all or only use the automatic group assembler and pretend that they're just playing with bots that have odd AI. WoW's latest expansion has two dungeons that can only be done by manually assembling a group (through an in-game tool that also doesn't require much in the way of socialization) rather than queuing for an automatic group and it's produced a steady stream of complaints from people who apparently will never be able to do those dungeons at all as a result. MMOs being full of asocial loners is pretty much the only part of that genre of stories that has much of anything in common with reality.
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Dec 7, 2016 00:02
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Pastry of the Year posted:If this isn't a thread title My proudest moment.
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Dec 7, 2016 01:35
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Plorkyeran posted:Anyone who has to ask that question has probably not ever actually played an MMO. There's a huge chunk of players who basically treat them as bad single-player games and either never group at all or only use the automatic group assembler and pretend that they're just playing with bots that have odd AI. WoW's latest expansion has two dungeons that can only be done by manually assembling a group (through an in-game tool that also doesn't require much in the way of socialization) rather than queuing for an automatic group and it's produced a steady stream of complaints from people who apparently will never be able to do those dungeons at all as a result. TO be fair, actually interacting with your typical MMO player is torture beyond belief.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:06
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I can't believe Bravest of the Lamps just outed himself as a neo-nazi
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Dec 7, 2016 05:09
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If I wasn't an asocial loner who despises human contact why would I be sitting in a basement playing video games?
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Dec 7, 2016 05:13
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Wapole Languray posted:TO be fair, actually interacting with your typical MMO player is torture beyond belief. That's one thing I'll give Sword Art Online a nod for. Right after the plot kicks in, there are a load of people who start/keep killing other players even though they know that those players will actually die. That was the most believable part of that entire thing.
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Dec 7, 2016 13:35
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Alaois posted:I can't believe Bravest of the Lamps just outed himself as a neo-nazi Wait, wut?
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Dec 7, 2016 17:32
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