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Washout posted:Yea pretty much, even the protagonists best friend gets rescued and asked to be whatever she wants and just says "lol just keep me as a slave its great!". A bunch of secondary characters are just like "sure that's just the way it is we love it". It sucks that it's so loving prevalent too, the author obviously has it as some kind of sexual bondage fantasy and just can't loving stop talking about it, and it's not even a major story arc. Like, I could see it as something like the sentient-yet-totally-obedient Second Types in Armitage III where you could build a positive message about growth and independence from a reprehensible foundation, but...this doesn't sound like that.
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Feb 23, 2017 07:17
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I looked at his other kindle work and it turns out I was inadvertently crossposting from the Web Novels megathread. "90% fantasy settings, 90% repressed nerd fantasies" His other books are literally the same "self-insert given amazing powers and dropped into a fantasy setting by god" crap that people are translating from Japanese. His character even gets hit by a truck.
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Feb 23, 2017 09:41
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See I went to Goodreads and read the reviews and had no idea.
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Feb 23, 2017 21:46
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GlassElephant posted:I looked at his other kindle work and it turns out I was inadvertently crossposting from the Web Novels megathread. "90% fantasy settings, 90% repressed nerd fantasies" What does getting hit by a truck have to do with anything?
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Feb 24, 2017 04:41
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In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way.
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Feb 24, 2017 08:33
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GlassElephant posted:In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way.
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Feb 25, 2017 00:12
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It's just Stephen King fanfic, no sweat.
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Feb 25, 2017 00:13
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GlassElephant posted:In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way. coyo7e posted:holy poo poo, I never thought of it like that but yeah that does happen shockingly often! Trap sprung.
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Feb 25, 2017 01:33
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That Works posted:Trap sprung. And so much is explained.
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Feb 25, 2017 01:43
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GlassElephant posted:In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way. Interesting, I wrote a novel like that. Just in my case, the plot device was the two protagonists falling down a ravine together and cracking their heads.  Anyway, I think I've seen that plot device mostly in movies, bad and good. The only three Japanese light novels I've read were SF and didn't use that one.
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Feb 25, 2017 12:25
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GlassElephant posted:In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way. Libluini posted:Interesting, I wrote a novel like that. Just in my case, the plot device was the two protagonists falling down a ravine together and cracking their heads. Me too but a fanfic. Anyway, I popped in to ask if anyone besides me cried at the end of Asimov's Forward the Foundation and, if yes, do you remember how it ended? Because all I can remember was that I cried and I can't actually remember the ending itself or most of the plot. On the upside I guess that means I can read a great book again as if for the first time.
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Mar 6, 2017 04:05
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GlassElephant posted:In Japanese manga & web/light novels the standard plot device to kill off a character so that they can be reincarnated into fantasy land is to have a semi plow into them as they are crossing the street/pushing someone out of the way. Or getting stuck in MMOs. Also, leviathan wakes was 50% mediocre space detective and 50% mediocre space zombies. For the former I have Richard K. Morgan and the latter I have no interest in at all.
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Mar 25, 2017 21:53
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Applewhite posted:Anyway, I popped in to ask if anyone besides me cried at the end of Asimov's Forward the Foundation and, if yes, do you remember how it ended? Because all I can remember was that I cried and I can't actually remember the ending itself or most of the plot. Is that the one where Seldon dies while he's looking at the Prime Radiant (which charts his projection of history)? He realizes that psychohistory's going to work, he's achieved his life's goal, and he really misses his robot wife?I liked that ending.
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Mar 26, 2017 20:28
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I finished the Golden Age series. Despite Wright's regressive views I really enjoyed it. The 'other' society is interesting in the end and I didn't find them to be representative of Wright's politics unless I missed something. Someone suggested they were a stand-in for communism but I didn't think that was accurate. Rather it seemed they were a society that was flawed because they intentionally developed their AIs (and consequently their whole society) to be willfully ignorant or operate from flawed premises. Anyway the second book was such a slog, but the third was great in comparison.
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Mar 29, 2017 05:47
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I agree that the second book was very clearly The Second Book Of A Three-Book Contract, but that the third really had the over-the-top finish that the series needed and deserved. I thought that what people were mostly reacting to was the bit (again, in the second book) where a bunch of low-resources people all try to steal some of the hero's magical technology bullshit stuff, claiming that "he didn't deserve it" and "he should share with the less-fortunate". On my first read I interpreted the hero's attitude of "gently caress off you assholes I EARNED THIS and you don't DESERVE IT" as being indicative of his hubris and arrogance (while still somewhat justified by circumstances). As I learned more about Wright's attitudes, I started to wonder whether I actually was supposed to see anything bad about the hero there...
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Mar 31, 2017 05:21
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I might have misunderstood someone's comment to be about the Silent Oecumene. But yea everything that happens in Ceylon is definitely Wright propaganda. Phaethon muses to himself that poor people are poor because they're lazy. And it's not even just him in the book that thinks that, but it's accepted truth of a post singularity society lol. Also every last Ceylon resident is amoral, and they do stupid poo poo like eat the smartmatter from Phaethons suit. They're pretty much mentally ill but Oecumene ethics won't allow them to get help. AND THEN Phaethon tries to improve their system when he takes over that other dude's exploitative business. He attempts to treat them fairly and transparently instead but it doesn't work out, the poor people are too hosed up to engage in a mutually beneficial business relationship. So I guess Wright thinks poor people need to be exploited or coerced into benefitting themselves? At the very least he thinks poor people are poor by choice and laziness.
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Mar 31, 2017 06:02
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The Golden Age is a horror series. The monster is your slowly-dawning realisation that the author considers the setting to be a utopics.
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Mar 31, 2017 07:14
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I finished Caliban's War, the second Expanse book last night and I'm a little hung up on one point. Everyone's afraid of Venus and treating it like a growing apocalypse, why not just, uh, shoot it? There are several references to these battleships being capable of "destroying planets" so why did they all wait around for this Cthulhu thing to emerge instead of bombing the planet to hell? e:spoiler tag ROFLburger fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 16:17
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ROFLburger posted:I finished Caliban's War, the second Expanse book last night and I'm a little hung up on one point. Everyone's afraid of Venus and treating it like a growing apocalypse, why not just, uh, shoot it? There are several references to these battleships being capable of "destroying planets" so why did they all wait around for this Cthulhu thing to emerge instead of bombing the planet to hell? The PM is able to gently caress with space-time at a fundamental level, as evidenced by its behavior on Eros. So I imagine any conventional attacks would do gently caress-all other than piss it off. And base on what little they know of it, the uncertainty of bombing the poo poo out of it falls under "DO NOT PISS IT OFF". That's not even taking into account the balancing act the UN, MCRN, and OPA have going. If the UN and/or MCRN were to focus their big guns on Venus, it might embolden one or all of the others to kick off system wide war.
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Apr 10, 2017 16:52
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Based on this thread I picked up the Golden Age trilogy and am 2 chapters into Phoenix Exultant. It's got some really interesting and fun ideas but lol at the hero. It reads a little like a Mary Sue fic set in the future of Atlas Shrugged where John Galt has rebuilt society.
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Apr 16, 2017 01:51
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flosofl posted:Not sure what the rule is for five year old books, so... yeah... later in the series you'll see what that stuff does when it thinks you're a threat. it's a good thing they didn't attempt to harm it.
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Apr 16, 2017 01:55
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Applewhite posted:Based on this thread I picked up the Golden Age trilogy and am 2 chapters into Phoenix Exultant. It's got some really interesting and fun ideas but lol at the hero. It reads a little like a Mary Sue fic set in the future of Atlas Shrugged where John Galt has rebuilt society. So would you recommend reading it?
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Apr 16, 2017 13:02
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That Works posted:So would you recommend reading it? I would. It's very fun. It reminds me a lot of the later Sword of Truth books in theme if not style. If you've read the Culture books this has a similar sort of setting and tech level except ultra anarcho-capitalist instead of socialist.
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Apr 16, 2017 13:41
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Finished Scalzi's new book yesterday, The Collapsing Empire. Posted a bit more detail in the just-finished thread, but my conclusion is ho-hum. If you've read a space feudalism book before, you know all the characters and plot beats happening.
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Apr 16, 2017 17:04
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Cythereal posted:Finished Scalzi's new book yesterday, The Collapsing Empire. Posted a bit more detail in the just-finished thread, but my conclusion is ho-hum. If you've read a space feudalism book before, you know all the characters and plot beats happening. It was good but felt more like act 1 and 2 than a full novel even if definitely going to be a series.
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Apr 16, 2017 17:17
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Just got to the part in Phoenix Exultant where our hero is explaining to the ghetto dwellers how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. "If there are no jobs, why not start your own business?"
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Apr 17, 2017 01:52
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Adam Smith would be proud
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Apr 17, 2017 18:10
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Expanse books: I'm about 220 pages into Abaddon's Gate and it's really not moving the needle as much as the first two books did. I'm not super disappointed or anything but I hope it gets better
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Apr 17, 2017 21:47
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ROFLburger posted:I'm about 220 pages into Abaddon's Gate and it's really not moving the needle as much as the first two books did. I'm not super disappointed or anything but I hope it gets better I'm very sorry.
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Apr 17, 2017 21:49
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ROFLburger posted:Expanse books: It and Cibola Burn are pretty boring. Nemesis Games is fantastic, though. A good summary of books 3 and 4 will cover 70% of your needs if you want to skip them. I didn't skip them and I'm glad I didn't, but they aren't good.
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Apr 17, 2017 22:36
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I skipped books 3 and 4 and still feel like it was the right decision. I haven't read book 6 yet (actually picked it up last week) but everything I've heard says it pretty much just picks up from book 5.
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Apr 18, 2017 08:50
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ROFLburger posted:Expanse books: I will say finish AG since you're so far in. Enough characters recur in meaningful ways in books 5 and 6 that it'll pay off. The only stuff that matters in book 4 is the investigator interludes and a couple of hilarious main chapter scenes with him. Even that doesn't matter to the rest of the series , though.
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Apr 18, 2017 13:58
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So I bought Hydrogen Sonata a few years ago and then realized it was the last book of what looks like a good series. Am I good to start with book 1 (Consider
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Apr 18, 2017 17:22
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VelociBacon posted:So I bought Hydrogen Sonata a few years ago and then realized it was the last book of what looks like a good series. Most Culture books are completely stand alone, involving new characters, new locations, and usually set decades or centuries apart. The only thing that the later books lack is a full fleshing out of the background and motivations of the Culture, but you'll never lose any plot or characterization from starting with a later one.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:29
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VelociBacon posted:So I bought Hydrogen Sonata a few years ago and then realized it was the last book of what looks like a good series. The first is tonally very different from the rest, he hadn't quite developed his ideas of what the Culture was supposed to be yet. Standard recommendation is to start with Player of Games and then do whatever, with Use of Weapons generally considered to be the best of the bunch and Sonata being a great book to end on.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:39
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VelociBacon posted:So I bought Hydrogen Sonata a few years ago and then realized it was the last book of what looks like a good series. Phanatic posted:The first is tonally very different from the rest, he hadn't quite developed his ideas of what the Culture was supposed to be yet. Standard recommendation is to start with Player of Games and then do whatever, with Use of Weapons generally considered to be the best of the bunch and Sonata being a great book to end on. I'd second this. Only thing I'd add is to get around to reading Consider Phlebas before Look to Windward as there's a few more references between those two. It's not necessary, but you'll understand Look to Windward more easily and it was definitely my favorite one of the series.
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Apr 18, 2017 17:56
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Cool thanks for the advice, I'll pick that up.
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Apr 18, 2017 18:03
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VelociBacon posted:Cool thanks for the advice, I'll pick that up. Also, please do, don't leave this for later or anything. I love the Culture, I try to get people to read it all the time (when they're into sci-fi). I love it when someone gets into it.
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Apr 18, 2017 20:33
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Consider Phlebas reads like a grimdark rpg setting. I happen to like that, but The Player of Games is a better starting point and "literature".
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Apr 19, 2017 10:19
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Biomute posted:Consider Phlebas reads like a grimdark rpg setting. I happen to like that, but The Player of Games is a better starting point and "literature". Consider Phlebas won my heart with the line "The Idiran carried a plasma rifle the size of a small field artillery piece... in his other hand, he held a slightly bigger gun" when describing the Idiran breaking through the wall to rescue Phlebas.
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Apr 19, 2017 13:40
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