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Perestroika posted:It's mostly just a fairly simple plot device to allow Butcher to hark more closely back towards the classic noir detective stories. It makes it easier to have Dresden need to go everywhere in person and/or end up stranded in bad spots all alone without constantly having to think of reasons why he couldn't just look poo poo up on the internet or call for backup on his cellphone. Though it's pretty fun how he managed to interweave that with the world, like at one point he mentioned that before electronics were really a thing the same effect manifested by stuff like curdling milk or making animals infertile, which eventually became associated with witches in popular culture. lets be fair, cellphones ruin stories by being waay too convenient
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Dec 15, 2017 11:30
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 I miss when the Dresden files were good. Like, the first... I dunno, eight books, were all pretty good solid pulp-urban-fantasy fun. Then gradually Dresden succumbed to power-creep, and ended up as this ridiculous demigod fighting world-scale threats, and it all got just too... big.
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Dec 15, 2017 13:00
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The_White_Crane posted:
8? At least for my taste, Harry became too powerful by the fourth or fifth book, when he starts to regularly interact with the faerie queens and takes down ancient immortal demons. Like, the entire Noir genre kind of depends on the hero being downtrodden and the underdog, and that just doesn't work when he is also regularly saving the world.
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Dec 15, 2017 13:15
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Dresden Files starts off as a pulp hero, then morphs into a superhero, then I think he sort of becomes a shonen action manga hero. I liked them a lot when I read them even in spite of their flaws, but that was a while ago. I agree it's a bit disappointing that he outgrows Chicago. Ah, well. At least the most radical relocation Peter Grant in Rivers of London has experienced so far was driving out to Herefordshire.
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Dec 15, 2017 13:52
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The_White_Crane posted:
A time that never was.
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Dec 15, 2017 14:13
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Speaking of - my wife made me both read Fifty Shades of Grey and watch the movie Get a divorce dot gif. Mr. Sunshine posted:The book was a loving slog to get through, because it was written in such a boring, unimaginative language. With the movie the actors can at least inject some nuance and uncertainty with their performance, unlike the book where it's just "No, really, this dude tracking you down and dragging your black-out-drunk rear end to his hotel room is actually good and romantic". If I recall correctly the movie also took steps to make the plot come off less like a kidnapping/rape scenario and to give Ana more agency, something James supposedly pitched a bitch about because how dare anyone slightly change a single banal second of her wholly original story that absolutely isn’t Twilight fanfic. I despise 50 Shades. Not from the scoffing “mommy porn” perspective, which is misogynist twaddle, but from the normalization of horrifically realistic (minus the money) abusive relationship it popularizes. Then again maybe that’s why it’s popular - it’s relatable?  Anyway, the Earl Grey thing: there’s a chapter where a whole menu is laid out like it’s some incredibly fanciful, expensive fare that only elites like the Gray family can afford. The reality is it’s all fairly mundane once the French is translated and the wine pairings are all over the place. I wish I could find the review where this got broken down, it’s a great example of just how poor James is at research along with how being editor-adverse will screw you.
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Dec 15, 2017 14:58
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It's kind of exactly what you get with literal glorified fanfiction.
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Dec 15, 2017 15:17
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:I despise 50 Shades. Not from the scoffing “mommy porn” perspective, which is misogynist twaddle, but from the normalization of horrifically realistic (minus the money) abusive relationship it popularizes. Then again maybe that’s why it’s popular - it’s relatable? Nah, it's popular because it's about a handsome billionaire who gets so infatuated with a woman that he can't control himself in her presence, showers her with expensive gifts and has awesome sex with her. Like, a lot of sex.
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Dec 15, 2017 16:20
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Mr. Sunshine posted:showers her with expensive gifts Like her very first email address!  
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Dec 15, 2017 16:26
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Pastry of the Year posted:Like her very first email address! Haha yeah what a realistic portrayal of a 20-something university student, so immersive
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Dec 15, 2017 16:35
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Pastry of the Year posted:Like her very first email address! How was she planning on using it for "uh...email." if upon being told she has an email address she's shocked.
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Dec 15, 2017 16:38
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Proteus Jones posted:How was she planning on using it for "uh...email." if upon being told she has an email address she's shocked. I suspect she once overheard the word "email" when she was out shopping for things like clothes and makeup.
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Dec 15, 2017 16:45
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"Well, this has full wireless N, and I've set it up with your Me account details" - a real sentence definitely spoken by a real human person
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Dec 15, 2017 16:47
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vyelkin posted:Haha yeah what a realistic portrayal of a 20-something university student, so immersive It’s full of little details like that. Like that party where she gets black out drunk and has to be rescued by the creepy billionaire? Her first time drinking. It’s also her graduation party. The character of Anastasia Steele makes a lot more sense if you assume she’s actually fourteen. Everything that relates to her character that makes her an adult - college, work, driving - is completely inconsequential to the story. Her personality, background, everything, is not congruent with her being a grown up. It started out as Twilight fan fiction, after all. 
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Dec 15, 2017 16:54
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The whole email/laptop thing is one of the very early signs at how ignorant the writing is. Keep in mind not only is Steele an American college student living outside Seattle post-2010, but is specially an English Major. At no point is it said she’s so poor she can’t afford her own laptop; she works part-time at a hardware store and her father died* when she was younger leaving life insurance/accidental death money, so she’s not destitute by any means, or no more so than the average college student. I could buy her being extremely poor where she relies on the public and school libraries to write and research (which is what I did in college in a a pre-laptop/tablet year 2000) but she would at least have a student email and potentially need to access class materials via the school website. * I’ve seen one in-depth review examine the timing of his death as described in the book which implies it might have been in 9/11. Keep it classy, E.L.
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Dec 15, 2017 17:19
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Pastry of the Year posted:Like her very first email address! Does he talk like the item description section of Amazon for the rest of the book too?
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Dec 15, 2017 17:22
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FrozenVent posted:
This is like the reverse problem I had with the movie Cruel Intentions. In the movie there is a character who is supposed to be a young girl (about 14 years old) in high society. Sarah Michelle Gellar's character teaches her how to french kiss and generally manipulates the poo poo out of this young, impressionable girl. The only problem, the character is played by Selma Blair, who was 27 years old when the movie came out, and definitely looked too old to be as ditzy as her character was written. SMG is actually 5 years younger than Selma Blair which adds to the ridiculousness. I guess the casting director wanted a "big name" for the part, but holy crap is it awkward.
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Dec 15, 2017 17:38
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King of Foolians posted:This is like the reverse problem I had with the movie Cruel Intentions. In the movie there is a character who is supposed to be a young girl (about 14 years old) in high society. Sarah Michelle Gellar's character teaches her how to french kiss and generally manipulates the poo poo out of this young, impressionable girl. The only problem, the character is played by Selma Blair, who was 27 years old when the movie came out, and definitely looked too old to be as ditzy as her character was written. SMG is actually 5 years younger than Selma Blair which adds to the ridiculousness. I guess the casting director wanted a "big name" for the part, but holy crap is it awkward. I thought they were supposed to be 17, considering they are able to drive.
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Dec 15, 2017 17:50
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Dienes posted:Does he talk like the item description section of Amazon for the rest of the book too? It would have made the BDSM scenes a lot more interesting.
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Dec 15, 2017 18:02
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Dienes posted:I thought they were supposed to be 17, considering they are able to drive. I don't think anyone's ages are specifically mentioned but SMG and Ryan Phillippe's characters are around 17. Cecile (Selma Blair's character) is younger than them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Erd-Lc6RdA King of Foolians has a new favorite as of 20:36 on Dec 15, 2017 |
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Dec 15, 2017 18:13
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Pastry of the Year posted:Like her very first email address! Wow. That somehow manages to be worse than the description of every computer in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Which reminded me that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo exists, and that I wasted my time reading it, and now I'm mad.
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Dec 15, 2017 19:34
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Cruel Intentions, the movie known in Denmark as Sex Games
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Dec 15, 2017 20:46
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Remember, she drinks Earl Grey, bag out!  As an American who was living in England when that book came out, it struck me as super weird that the author stuck with the British English words for things when writing an American college student. Like, I get that a middle aged British woman might not know that, for example, a carrier bag is called a plastic bag or a shopping bag in the US, but why didn't her editors change it?
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Dec 15, 2017 22:09
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girl pants posted:Remember, she drinks Earl Grey, bag out! Ha ha ha like any publisher pays for stuff like that. Localization is something publishers expect authors to pay for now. Obviously James couldn't be bothered with that any more than she could be bothered with writing convincing characters.
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Dec 15, 2017 22:16
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A lot of the touches make complete sense when you're familiar with fanfiction, which is practically a genre of its own with its very own insular, creatively incestuous community, distinct cliches, trends and tell-tale signs of when a story is being written by a teenage girl or a bored housewife (or sometimes teenage boys). It can be 'good' in its own way; creative and literate with sometimes fun ideas, but usually badly paced and worded, with the author's fetishes and interests jarringly crammed in along with clear ignorance of many aspects of ordinary life that they only know from a narrow band of media.
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Dec 16, 2017 04:19
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Inescapable Duck posted:A lot of the touches make complete sense when you're familiar with fanfiction, which is practically a genre of its own with its very own insular, creatively incestuous community, distinct cliches, trends and tell-tale signs of when a story is being written by a teenage girl or a bored housewife (or sometimes teenage boys). It can be 'good' in its own way; creative and literate with sometimes fun ideas, but usually badly paced and worded, with the author's fetishes and interests jarringly crammed in along with clear ignorance of many aspects of ordinary life that they only know from a narrow band of media. The funny thing is that in the world o' fanfiction, people will localize your poo poo for free, so apparently the author couldn't even be bothered to do that.
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Dec 16, 2017 04:27
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girl pants posted:The funny thing is that in the world o' fanfiction, people will localize your poo poo for free, so apparently the author couldn't even be bothered to do that. Finding someone remotely competent or who won't get bored and disappear after five minutes is hard, though.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:27
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girl pants posted:The funny thing is that in the world o' fanfiction, people will localize your poo poo for free, so apparently the author couldn't even be bothered to do that. Something tells me that E. L. James isn't the type to attract/accept betas who will do more than check for typos. Also a reminder that there are successful working authors who started out in fanfiction, but you'd never know it because they bothered to hone their skill and adapt the styles of published fiction. When people talk poo poo about fanfiction writer breaking out of their hobbiest ghetto, they don't bring up Naomi Novak.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:31
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i wanna write a fanfic of a lovely book that nobody remembersquote:–But Jacob! the countess breathed, almost fainting.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:32
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there wolf posted:Something tells me that E. L. James isn't the type to attract/accept betas who will do more than check for typos. Also tons of authors dabble in dumb fanfic stuff, usually just for fun because writing other people's characters can be fun sometimes. And sometimes they even have it published if its an IP in the public domain (A Study in Emerald for instance).
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Dec 16, 2017 05:34
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There's some old adage about every writer who gets published has 5 worse novels in a drawer somewhere. Now the drawer is the internet.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:38
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It's not unheard of for fanfic writers (and fan artists, and other such derivative workers) to eventually end up getting to write what they wrote fanfic about for real. Though this usually has negative connotations.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:41
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Inescapable Duck posted:It's not unheard of for fanfic writers (and fan artists, and other such derivative workers) to eventually end up getting to write what they wrote fanfic about for real. Though this usually has negative connotations. Those early Star Trek novelizations really burned it for everyone.
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Dec 16, 2017 06:07
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PJOmega posted:I should correct that a little. I've read Slaughterhouse-five and loved it too much to marathon his other works. I don't consider myself to have read an author via only one if their books, especially someone as heavily praises and published as Vonnegut. If you enjoyed Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast Of Champions is the book directly after that and builds on some of the structural conceits in fascinating ways, so I'd recommend reading that one even though Mother Night is also a good read.
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Dec 16, 2017 06:11
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there wolf posted:Those early Star Trek novelizations really burned it for everyone. Tie-in novels are called 'official fanfiction' for a reason.
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Dec 16, 2017 06:17
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Inescapable Duck posted:It's not unheard of for fanfic writers (and fan artists, and other such derivative workers) to eventually end up getting to write what they wrote fanfic about for real. Though this usually has negative connotations. See also: Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episode
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Dec 16, 2017 06:37
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Wow. That somehow manages to be worse than the description of every computer in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I like you
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Dec 16, 2017 10:10
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when you think about it, all literature is basically fanfic of the author's ideas
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Dec 16, 2017 10:18
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Inescapable Duck posted:It's not unheard of for fanfic writers (and fan artists, and other such derivative workers) to eventually end up getting to write what they wrote fanfic about for real. Though this usually has negative connotations. Geoff Johns is the most interesting case by far. He has published letters-to-the-editor in 90s Superman comics with plotlines he would use a decade later. He also literally broke the entire continuity of DC multiple times in order to have his preferred paradigm set up--bringing back old characters and concepts he liked as a kid. The weirdest part was that he had proven himself a capable writer who had embraced DC's then-current milieu and made great contributions to it, but the moment he gained enough creative control his instincts turned septic. The guy who runs Doctor Who also has documented UseNet posts of fanfic ideas he had that he would eventually make official in the show. Serial pulp media can suck so drat much.
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Dec 16, 2017 11:53
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Sherlock Holmes was so huge in the late 19th century that magazines would accept what was basically fanfiction hacked out by jobbing writers and publish it with the names changed. Which is why characters like Sexton Blake and Harry Dickson had their rooms on Baker Street, but in a different house number. Lord Peter Wimsey originated as Dorothy L. Sayers's Sexton Blake fanfiction.
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Dec 16, 2017 11:59
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