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scary ghost dog posted:difficult might not be the right word to describe the ending —- i would use “bitter.” but i think thats one of the biggest strengths of the book.......its conclusion feels inevitable. bas-lag is a much worse place than embassytown I was using another's words but this is good to know. I am definitely warming to the book now--the parallel plots and larger societal level conflicts are emerging more clearly. Side cast of characters are interesting enough too.
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May 10, 2019 13:40
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pseudanonymous posted:It seems like he picks some word and overuses it in each book of the Bas-Lag trilogy. I can't remember what they are anymore but I remember thinking at the time, like okay this is the word for this book then. Aerox posted:What a puissant observation Yes, I thought laciviously. I had a tally on my bookmark for how many times he would use certain words. In Kraken I think it was clot.
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May 11, 2019 22:51
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mitochondritom posted:Yes, I thought laciviously. I didn't notice it in Kraken, but I really liked that book, to me it seems like the best of the "magic is real you just don't know about it" sub-genre.
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May 12, 2019 00:19
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pseudanonymous posted:I didn't notice it in Kraken, but I really liked that book, to me it seems like the best of the "magic is real you just don't know about it" sub-genre. I really enjoyed it too. It was my first Mieville book, mainly because someone passed it on to me knowing how much I love squid and the Natural History Museum. Really disliked the Goss and Stubby parts though. Can't quite put my finger on why. Overall I thought it was like a better "American Gods".
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May 12, 2019 19:09
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Aerox posted:What a puissant observation People always use puissant as an example, but does Mieville ever use it to mean "powerful" as opposed to a Gene Wolfian way of referring to magic or enchantment?
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May 12, 2019 22:13
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He only ever uses it to describe the grindylow magic
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May 12, 2019 22:50
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Microcline posted:People always use puissant as an example, but does Mieville ever use it to mean "powerful" as opposed to a Gene Wolfian way of referring to magic or enchantment? it is a Wolfe type thing. he isn't using fancy archaic words to sound like a smarty pants. he does it to instill a sense of strangeness and distance to the setting.
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May 12, 2019 23:33
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uber_stoat posted:it is a Wolfe type thing. he isn't using fancy archaic words to sound like a smarty pants. he does it to instill a sense of strangeness and distance to the setting. There are definitely cases where Mieville overuses a word of the day (e.g. lascivious) as a deliberate and overwrought homage to influences like Dunsany and Lovecraft (who, admittedly, had a similar split between using archaic language for the sake of archaic language and using archaic language as a means of consistently addressing something alien which the reader can only loosely understand through context).
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May 13, 2019 01:49
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Clot, drool, brute, splay, scab. Mieville loves his yucky words. He describes mutant cactacae as "corticled with excrescence" (ew). One of his most ridiculous sentences is in Kraken, where he writes "their evil magic got stronger" as "their bad knacks waxed." mitochondritom posted:Really disliked the Goss and Stubby parts though. Can't quite put my finger on why. Overall I thought it was like a better "American Gods". Yyyyyeah, I know exactly what you mean. That said, the protective mp3 player deserves a book of its own. Hedrigall posted:He only ever uses it to describe the grindylow magic I once had a dream about a movie version of The Scar that opened with a black screen and Tanner saying the line "their science ain't ours," and it was so awesome that I woke up. I really want to see that non-existent movie, dammit.
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May 13, 2019 08:25
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Hedrigall posted:He only ever uses it to describe the grindylow magic I kind of hate that I know this, but I'm pretty sure he uses it in Perdido Street Station in reference to a musket.
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May 13, 2019 08:31
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It's a magical musket which if I remember right actually looks like it's barfing out the shot when it gets fired. Yeah, he uses "puissance" frequently in reference to magical stuff. Honestly that bothers me less than "cosseted" which seems to pop out every other chapter in PSS and I can't un-notice it now. Pretty sure I wouldn't have spotted it in the first place if not for this thread, so thanks everyone
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May 13, 2019 10:25
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I think the DnD party in PSS has some gear that's described as puissant, but I mostly associate it with the grindylow.
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May 13, 2019 12:18
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Are they the ones literally described as "fighting for gold and experience"? Such a great line.
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May 13, 2019 14:13
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Tree Bucket posted:Are they the ones literally described as "fighting for gold and experience"? Such a great line. It owns because it's completely in-universe and in-character for Derkhan to dismiss them as reactionary lumpen that way
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May 13, 2019 15:39
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I think when the gun itself is called puissant it's specifically after one of the adventurers dies, his buddy stops isaac to ask if he bothered to grab his sick gun before running away, which is so loving good and true
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May 13, 2019 18:26
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I just read that scene again the other day and no, Fighter Dude gives it to his wizard boyfriend before he does something dangerous and stupid with Isaac. Fighter dude dies, Wizard Boyfriend goes mad with grief upon hearing of Fighter Dude's death and fires it (a blunderbuss) at far too long a range, missing everything. Wizard Boyfriend then calls upon some truly nasty thaumaturgy to melt like six cactus dudes before getting cut from shoulder to navel by another cactus dude, whose arm explodes from hitting the magic dude. fake edit: I'm wrong, the magic one was Fighter Dude's pistol, which went off to no effect due to being hosed up by a slake-moth grabbing a helmet vvv: yeah Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 20:00 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 18:50
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All this is just reminding me how much Perdido Street Station owns.
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May 13, 2019 19:05
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so did I imagine the vodyanoi with the bound water spirit asking whether or not isaac picked up the magic gun or was that actually there?
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May 13, 2019 20:20
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My biggest complaint with PSS is that it has fight scenes that you just itch to tell people about, only you can't without sounding completely insane. The handlinger fight-!! The sunspear!!-!!-!!!! (The factory, clotted with puissance, drooled brute pugnacity into the water)
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May 13, 2019 22:19
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andrew smash posted:so did I imagine the vodyanoi with the bound water spirit asking whether or not isaac picked up the magic gun or was that actually there? Don't think so, but I have a nasty habit of kinda skimming action sequences to make them go faster (like a movie!); guess you'll just have to re-read it.
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May 13, 2019 22:50
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uber_stoat posted:it is a Wolfe type thing. he isn't using fancy archaic words to sound like a smarty pants. he does it to instill a sense of strangeness and distance to the setting. I dig the puissant/thaumaturgy/etc. stuff for this exact reason - it’s Wolfe-esque worldbuilding. At the very least I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on it. 
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May 13, 2019 22:53
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She totally does, it comes a bit after that action set piece though. quote:When Pengefinchess returned from some unstated errand ... she gathered herself slowly to leave, checked through her equipment, oiling her bow to keep it safe under the water. She asked what had become of Shadrach's pistol, and clucked regretfully when Isaac told her he did not know. "A shame. It was a powerful piece," she said abstractedly, looking out of the window and away. "Charmed. A puissant weapon." page 592
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May 13, 2019 23:17
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ah, I stopped for the night at Yag's italic interlude this city is gross also im a sad bird wot ain't got wings no more and a rapist i really want to go and paraphrase PSS paragraph by paragraph in the dumbest possible way now
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May 13, 2019 23:30
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Grand Prize Winner posted:ah, I stopped for the night at Yag's italic interlude Doooo iiiiiiiit! It's even appropriate to the story. The Remakers excuse their bio-sadism with a lot of waffle about law and justice. Yag implies to Isaac that he lost his wings for some weird alien bird crime that humans can't understand. Fancy talking is the enemy! A dumbified Construct Council speech would be amazing.
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May 14, 2019 03:43
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Holy poo poo, he kinda deals with the same theme in Embassytown, doesn't he?
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May 14, 2019 04:41
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Remaking is legit one of the most hosed up things in any novels I've read and sets a horrifying stage for all of the Bas Lag books. The scene with the remade whore house in PSS is horrifying
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May 14, 2019 04:56
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Quandary posted:Remaking is legit one of the most hosed up things in any novels I've read and sets a horrifying stage for all of the Bas Lag books. The scene with the remade whore house in PSS is horrifying To be honest: I haven't actually re-read PSS in about ten years because of that scene; there's some stuff I don't necessarily want in my head. It really is the most relentlessly grim drat book.
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May 14, 2019 04:59
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andrew smash posted:She totally does, it comes a bit after that action set piece though. lol, i put part of this through an AI text generator and it produced the following: (the bold part is the input, the rest is AI generated) quote:When Pengefinchess returned from some unstated errand ... she gathered herself slowly to leave, checked through her equipment, oiling her bow to keep it safe under the water. She had heard the rumours - of the creatures of the deep, of monsters of the underworld, of evil creatures who lived in the darkest recesses of the moon, of fiends of the depths, of the creatures who stalk the streets of London.
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May 14, 2019 12:45
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What was the training data for that?
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May 14, 2019 17:45
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Goddam the last few posts in this thread have reminded me just how much crazy poo poo is crammed into PSS. You guys haven't even mentioned the singing interdimensional spider monster or the fact that Issac's vacuum cleaners gets a virus and becomes sentient.
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May 14, 2019 22:03
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Whoa spoilers on too much crazy poo poo as I am reading this now. Or I guess I'll ignore the thread until finished I guess
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May 14, 2019 22:55
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The only restraint in PSS is the metal one attaching you to a surgical bed in the Remaking factory.
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May 15, 2019 04:12
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a foolish pianist posted:What was the training data for that? That was almost certainly from https://talktotransformer.com
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May 15, 2019 17:22
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just lolled to myself at the idea of someone trying to adapt PSS and having to pitch khepri to an hbo exec.....i would straight up die to watch a show where the female lead is a red skinned woman whose head is just a weird bug that talks by farting
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May 16, 2019 08:16
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scary ghost dog posted:just lolled to myself at the idea of someone trying to adapt PSS and having to pitch khepri to an hbo exec.....i would straight up die to watch a show where the female lead is a red skinned woman whose head is just a weird bug that talks by farting There you go mixing up khepri and anophelii, you racist.
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May 16, 2019 13:19
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Dienes posted:There you go mixing up khepri and anophelii, you racist. Lol khepri are the beetle-women dude. Anopheles are the mosquito people who are exiled on a desert island.
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May 16, 2019 14:25
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withak posted:Lol khepri are the beetle-women dude. Anopheles are the mosquito people who are exiled on a desert island. Yes, I know. The Khepri ladies speak primarily through sign language. The male anophelii have sphincter mouths that only allow them to speak in fart sounds.
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May 16, 2019 15:09
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I though the beetle-women communicated with each other through smells and with humans through sign language.
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May 16, 2019 15:13
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withak posted:I though the beetle-women communicated with each other through smells and with humans through sign language. They do. The male anophelii have butthole mouths but their spoken language is described as whistling and hooting sounds iirc. So a kind of fart I guess
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May 16, 2019 15:43
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toot toot
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May 16, 2019 17:10
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