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Avalerion posted:Doesn't he basically say people should be free to do whatever it's not his business? Unless you mean just having that conversation at all was weirdly out of place. It's more than just the single sentence summary of that conversation. It's the location specifically chosen to make that conversation happen, it's the actual language and manner of both Dresden and Titania talking about gay men in the year of our lord 2013(?) and it's the way moments like that really feel not just out of place, but like the author is bleeding through in both characters. Like other people have said about some of Butcher's faults in the series, he really does not feel like he has a firm grasp on the subject to begin with. Even though the message that you could take away from that scene isn't a bad one, and I'm sure Butcher is well-meaning, it is painfully awkward to read and brought the entire book to a halt for me. And that's a scene from what is the best book since Changes. The entire topic is so, so, so out of left field for the series and if we're being honest, the series has other structural issues with sex and sexuality that even just saying "well I don't mind gay people but i don't really get it either" isn't a great moment or a particularly good look.
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Jul 4, 2019 07:12
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That's the big takeaway: Butcher means well but he doesn't get it and doesn't have the background to speak from, so the only way he could have avoided putting his foot in his mouth was to keep his mouth shut. And his series about a wizard blowing poo poo up did not need a straight nerdy white guy's opinion on homosexuality anyways.
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Jul 5, 2019 06:31
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The whole chapter was Butcher/Harry patting himself on the back for not minding the gays. It's just like, how did this get past the editor.
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Jul 5, 2019 07:03
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Scorchy posted:The whole chapter was Butcher/Harry patting himself on the back for not minding the gays. It's just like, how did this get past the editor. There's an editor? Also I'm reminded of that whole time that Butcher got flak from people in Chicago for how.. inventive his portrayal of Chicago is, since it's super clear he did about zero research on the city and the actual place that he put Dresden as living. Because he did not put Dresden in the White Guy Pub part of town. It feels like that whole scene was to head off that kind of flak (and also to brag).
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Jul 5, 2019 22:12
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IIRC, he also described a very wealthy but largely black neighborhood as a slum at one point. Not a good look. (To be fair to Butcher, I saw a talk he gave where he said the Dresden Files were originally supposed to be set in St. Louis. He was told people would think he was ripping off the Anita Blake books, so he just moved them to the closest big midwestern city he could think of. Doesn't excuse the lack of research after the first book, but it explains Storm Front at least.)
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Jul 5, 2019 22:22
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In regard to his limited knowledge of Chicago, it's worth remembering that Storm Front was written in 2000. At that time, it was much harder to get current, in-depth information about even large cities. I mean, poo poo, Wikipedia didn't even launch until 2001.
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Jul 6, 2019 15:42
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Skippy McPants posted:In regard to his limited knowledge of Chicago, it's worth remembering that Storm Front was written in 2000. At that time, it was much harder to get current, in-depth information about even large cities. I mean, poo poo, Wikipedia didn't even launch until 2001. He hasn't really gotten better about it as time's gone on, though. The Wrigley Field parking lot encounter (Wrigley Field famously doesn't have a parking lot) was in book five, and I don't think he's ever once mentioned Harry being on (or even the existence of) the L-train, which, if you've ever been to Chicago, is kind of a big loving deal. The ethnic makeup of the city is also way out of wack, and I don't just mean the relative dearth of characters of color in a city that's minority non-hispanic white; name all the Dresden characters with Polish or Eastern European last names, and then go to Chicago and walk down a street and check the business names and compare and contrast. Dresden-Chicago seems to be all generic TV-land anglo-irish, with one token Jewish Jedi and, of course, the famous combined Italian-Irish mob. These days he uses Google Street view for the locations, so the descriptions of the architecture and the geography mostly line up, but the "city-ness" of the city isn't really there. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 6, 2019 |
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Jul 6, 2019 17:54
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Yeah, being very wrong about the city in book 1 is fine in the early days of the Internet, Butcher had neither the money nor the reason to spend the money to travel to Chicago for checking out the city for a book project that might most likely amount to nothing (like most book projects). By book 5 of a now rather successful series it's quite a bit less defendable. It was not impossible or prohibitively expensive to travel to Chicago for a week or so - or buy some books about the city, or simply find some people living there to mail your script to to make sure you get the basic layout right - like he does now I think (once he publishes anything again).
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Jul 7, 2019 06:46
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Skippy McPants posted:In regard to his limited knowledge of Chicago, it's worth remembering that Storm Front was written in 2000. At that time, it was much harder to get current, in-depth information about even large cities. I mean, poo poo, Wikipedia didn't even launch until 2001. The thing that pissed people off wasn't that he was wrong about it. It had been that he was wrong and when people corrected him he basically told them it didn't matter and to leave him alone, and when they got mad his response was more or less "How dare you get mad at me?? I did nothing wrong!!!!" Kchama fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 7, 2019 |
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Jul 7, 2019 20:07
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Kchama posted:The thing that pissed people off wasn't that he was wrong about it. It had been that he was wrong and when people corrected him he basically told them it didn't matter and to leave him alone, and when they got mad his response was more or less "How dare you get mad at me?? I did nothing wrong!!!!" It's the classic phenomenon where people get upset if details about a real city are wrong even though it's occupied by a bunch of fictional fae, wizards, and monsters. When asked about the parking lot, he should have just said "a wizard did it."
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Jul 8, 2019 00:32
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Narsham posted:It's the classic phenomenon where people get upset if details about a real city are wrong even though it's occupied by a bunch of fictional fae, wizards, and monsters. When asked about the parking lot, he should have just said "a wizard did it." To be fair, if you're not going to bother getting any bit of a real city correct, then why set it in that real city at all? It's just asking for trouble. If the contents of the city don't matter, then don't bother setting it in a specific city.
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Jul 8, 2019 01:49
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StonecutterJoe posted:IIRC, he also described a very wealthy but largely black neighborhood as a slum at one point. Not a good look.
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Jul 8, 2019 02:22
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LLSix posted:There's a mob in St. Louis? 'Cause the mob is super important in Storm Front. It sure does. Not nearly as nice or friendly as Butcher makes them out to be, either.
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Jul 8, 2019 03:01
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LLSix posted:There's a mob in St. Louis? 'Cause the mob is super important in Storm Front. There's a mob everywhere, man. One of the biggest mob wars in the latter half of the 20th century, the one that really kicked off the downfall of the Sicilian mafia in America, took place in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Jul 8, 2019 03:25
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Giordano crime family. Yep, pretty much every major city has a crime family. There is actually one in Chicago, even! Just, you now, not anywhere near where Butcher says they are. EDIT: I mean, I don't think anyone knows exactly where they are located, but it's sure not in the black part of town. Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 03:47
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Kchama posted:Yep, pretty much every major city has a crime family. And I’m sure they probably don’t only do victimless crimes and only hurt bad people who deserve it like Gentleman Johnny Marcone.
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Jul 8, 2019 03:51
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navyjack posted:And I’m sure they probably don’t only do victimless crimes and only hurt bad people who deserve it like Gentleman Johnny Marcone. This was pure Butcher wanting to have his cake and eat it too with regards to having the mob but also Dresden more or less be friendly with them.
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Jul 8, 2019 04:31
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Decius posted:Yeah, being very wrong about the city in book 1 is fine in the early days of the Internet, Butcher had neither the money nor the reason to spend the money to travel to Chicago for checking out the city for a book project that might most likely amount to nothing (like most book projects). Eh. Once you're that far in and you've been that significantly wrong, you might as well just roll with it. I imagine that changing poo poo up would be more jarring than not to a lot of readers. I mean, my only experience with Chicago is having to change flights in the airport with a ~90 minute layover, and I've never had any particular reason to go research the city. The only reason that I know anything is wrong with it is because I read about these books on a weird internet forum, so I've never had a problem with his depiction of the city. I imagine that he has more readers in similar circumstances than he has readers who are really bothered by the way that he hosed up with the city.
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Jul 8, 2019 07:06
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Khizan posted:Eh. Once you're that far in and you've been that significantly wrong, you might as well just roll with it. I imagine that changing poo poo up would be more jarring than not to a lot of readers. If he had ever said "It's too late to change it" he might have gotten some grudging understanding. He was just offended at the idea that he might have been wrong. He really should have just set it in some generic city if he wanted to write it as a generic city.
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Jul 8, 2019 07:09
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Eh. I've seen writers in this genre gently caress up Los Angeles because they get enamored with the movie industry but don't know much about the city. You only notice this stuff when you live in the city in question. But sometimes research just bogs writers down and gets in the way of just writing. It's not like Butcher needs any more time-wasters at this point.
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Jul 8, 2019 07:17
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Wizchine posted:Eh. I've seen writers in this genre gently caress up Los Angeles because they get enamored with the movie industry but don't know much about the city. You only notice this stuff when you live in the city in question. But sometimes research just bogs writers down and gets in the way of just writing. It's not like Butcher needs any more time-wasters at this point. That's not really a good defense of Butcher. "Other people hosed up for equally stupid reasons." Also if you noticed, I suggested the much more powerful "Don't set it in a place you need to research, like a specific city, or a real city". Blam! Now you can have it be whatever you want without people going "drat you really don't know poo poo, do you?" And he hosed this up from book one when he was busting them out at a good clip, anyways. Of course, despite all this, as stated, his real sin was getting offended at people not happy that he was saying that the wealthy black part of town where they lived was actually slumsville and doubling down, which came out of him bragging that he doesn't totally hate gay people.
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Jul 8, 2019 13:58
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I'm not sure anyone in the market for urban fantasy really cared that much about setting versimilitude until Aaronovitch came along and just chaos dunked on the whole field in that specific area. Butcher's stuff was . . .ok . . on setting in the abstract. It just became bad relative to the field once the field advanced. There's still time for him to up his game but he actually hasn't published that many books in the past few years and that's when the shift has happened.
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Jul 8, 2019 14:06
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Kchama posted:This was pure Butcher wanting to have his cake and eat it too with regards to having the mob but also Dresden more or less be friendly with them. If by "friendly" you mean the mob boss in question is preparing deathtraps for the inevitable showdown with Dresden and instructing his facilities to cooperate with him in order to avoid having him burn them to the ground, then yes. It's clear why Butcher got invested in Chicago as a setting: he figured out something to do with Sue the Dinosaur. That kind of thing is much more powerful when it involves something people know of outside the fiction. And the whole point of the urban fantasy genre is to set it in something resembling the real world so that your worldbuilding is much simpler. Inventing your own city isn't as trivial as it appears to be. None of that excuses Butcher's lack of research. He's on record as stating that this series began with him writing out of resentment based on a writing teacher's advice, so the "this was written by an arrogant, snotty man-child" thing is well-established. To some degree, that bled into Harry and trapped Butcher: he can't change the series style too radically for fear of losing readers (Ghost Story was the biggest departure from the formula and I gather it isn't exactly beloved). His real failure, once it came out that he had gotten details wrong, was not doing some research and having Harry complain about how the White Council agitated for a Wrigley Field parking lot because they wanted to neutralize a ley line or something like that. It is hard enough dropping as many things as Butcher does into the "real world" without completely rethinking all of human history, without adding a major fictional city. At that point you may as well be on another planet and you're writing Glen Cook's Garrett series.
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Jul 8, 2019 15:53
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Narsham posted:If by "friendly" you mean the mob boss in question is preparing deathtraps for the inevitable showdown with Dresden and instructing his facilities to cooperate with him in order to avoid having him burn them to the ground, then yes. Ah yes, that one thing in book seven. So crucial to the series that the dinosaur be named Sue. The point isn't that it's simpler, the point is that you may as well if you're not even going to do basic research on the setting, because you're pretty much just inventing it. And it's not like the first few books are all that beloved either. I've never met a Dresden File fan who told me to read the first two books. It's always been "start at book 3 or 4". Also lol no one even suggested he rethink all of human history. No one even hinted at that. So I don't know where you're getting that from. I even said I would have accepted "I hosed up and it's too late to change it now".
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Jul 8, 2019 16:36
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I really don't care how accurate Chicago is, like, at all. It's funny that Wrigley doesn't have a parking lot IRL, but does in the book. I just can't bring myself to care about the existence of a parking lot in a series about a literal wizard.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:39
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ConfusedUs posted:I really don't care how accurate Chicago is, like, at all. It's funny that Wrigley doesn't have a parking lot IRL, but does in the book. Yeah. I get people who are familiar with Chicago getting taken out of the story by weird inaccuracies, but personally I don't know enough that it makes a difference. The only real thing I've noticed is that Harry "my car is constantly broken down or destroyed" Dresden never takes the El.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:52
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ConfusedUs posted:I really don't care how accurate Chicago is, like, at all. It's funny that Wrigley doesn't have a parking lot IRL, but does in the book. DarkHorse posted:Yeah. I get people who are familiar with Chicago getting taken out of the story by weird inaccuracies, but personally I don't know enough that it makes a difference. The only real thing I've noticed is that Harry "my car is constantly broken down or destroyed" Dresden never takes the El. I just personally think his response to it was trash garbage is all. Also doesn't his thing specifically trash all technology newer than a certain point? Except for stuff in hospitals I guess.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:55
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DarkHorse posted:Yeah. I get people who are familiar with Chicago getting taken out of the story by weird inaccuracies, but personally I don't know enough that it makes a difference. The only real thing I've noticed is that Harry "my car is constantly broken down or destroyed" Dresden never takes the El. I've always chalked that up to Harry's "fucks with technology" field. It is a little odd he hasn't explicitly mentioned it (like he has for airplanes), but whatever. Same principle, more or less. Edit: No he doesn't like going to hospitals, either. That comes up explicitly a few times.
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Jul 8, 2019 16:59
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I believe Butcher has said that he wrote Sue into the series after watching a Discovery Channel special on her and realizing she was in Chicago. He was already writing the series at that time.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:00
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To be fair Harry "all of my magic explodes things and I constantly have people trying to kill me, also I'm weird about people" Dresden not being on public transit makes a lot of sense, just like Verus being on public transport does ( although he stops after that one thing happens ). Most of Jim's dumber things just strike me as someone who literally does not understand why X is offensive. His most problematic writing is a product of ingrained cultural perspective that he isn't conscious of and doesn't think about. That doesn't really excuse it though and holy poo poo do I cringe whenever I'm re-reading the series and get to the gay panic stuff with Thomas or Thomas acting like a huge French queen or Harry playing up The Gay to not get arrested and commenting smugly on making use of society's bigoted perceptions I mean. I guess I prefer Jim's stupidity to other series where gay people don't exist and aren't represented at all, but by the thinnest margin.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:26
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I can understand not using it habitually, but some of those systems are as old or older than his VW and I would have expected him to try to use it during exigencies. Maybe ticketing consoles would flake out but the El itself should be fine It's just weird that it's one of the distinctive things about Chicago and it's hardly ever mentioned let alone used or discussed  Edit: yeah I can get him also not using it because he's a misanthrope of sorts, but if you have to get across town NOW and you don't have wheels it seems like it should at least be a consideration
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Jul 8, 2019 17:29
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DarkHorse posted:I can understand not using it habitually, but some of those systems are as old or older than his VW and I would have expected him to try to use it during exigencies. Maybe ticketing consoles would flake out but the El itself should be fine Harry does talk about taking the train from time to time for cross country trips, but he always sat as far from the engine as possible and even then he was worried. I just assumed Harry is just paranoid about causing an accident even if he won't actually do anything to the train. It should still have the El as background, but not taking trains was sort of dealt with.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:37
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:To be fair Harry "all of my magic explodes things and I constantly have people trying to kill me, also I'm weird about people" Dresden not being on public transit makes a lot of sense, just like Verus being on public transport does ( although he stops after that one thing happens ). I genuinely think he doesn't get why Thomas in general is crazy awful and keeps trying to find the magic button that makes him tortured but likable instead of Dominic Deegan levels of justifying why THIS rapist is okay.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:38
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Honestly, the Wraith family of the White Court is by far my least favorite thing in the series. Almost everything to do with Thomas is various shades of gross: both his actions and the (weak) justifications for them, and Laura isn't much better. Justine's entire thing just skeeves me out. I hate all of it. Blood Rites is my least favorite book in the series. Fool Moon is a mess, but at least it's not gross. Emotion/experience vampires are a cool concept, but I wish he'd centered it around fear or greed or wrath or anything other than lust. We got a hint of that in Proven Guilty, and it's so much better.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:43
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seaborgium posted:Harry does talk about taking the train from time to time for cross country trips, but he always sat as far from the engine as possible and even then he was worried. I just assumed Harry is just paranoid about causing an accident even if he won't actually do anything to the train. It should still have the El as background, but not taking trains was sort of dealt with. Yeah, he made a point in Small Favor (I think) of talking about how he takes trains when traveling long distances because he doesn't want to be responsible for people getting hurt if his magic knocks a plane out of the air.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:51
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ConfusedUs posted:Honestly, the Wraith family of the White Court is by far my least favorite thing in the series. Almost everything to do with Thomas is various shades of gross: both his actions and the (weak) justifications for them, and Laura isn't much better. Justine's entire thing just skeeves me out. I hate all of it. Blood Rites is my least favorite book in the series. Fool Moon is a mess, but at least it's not gross. I mean Thomas raped and murdered children. This is an explicit onscreen statement. "He couldn't control himself" doesn't justify poo poo. I really don't think Butcher understand that making a character a pedophile murder rapist is a real hard line to walk back.
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Jul 8, 2019 19:30
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ImpAtom posted:I mean Thomas raped and murdered children. This is an explicit onscreen statement. "He couldn't control himself" doesn't justify poo poo. I really don't think Butcher understand that making a character a pedophile murder rapist is a real hard line to walk back. Literally tortured into temporary insanity until the point his inner demon thing took over but still kind of a uh It kind of throws an atrocity-shaped monkey wrench into the narrative. Thomas does those things and then like three books later he's over his guilt and having a threeway while ghost-bro claps. And that's part of a problem I have with the series. A lot of hay is made of Harry using magic to kill Justin in a legitimate self-defense scenario, and I get that it's a huge taboo in Dresden, but... Harry and other characters around him do way more heinous things that might get a temporary spotlight thrown on them, but then they just sorta fade into the background. The books would be better if Butcher would stop trying to write beyond his depth or took time to get better at it if he really wanted to write it. Or if someone just slapped the poo poo out of his hands every time he started typing something about sex.
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Jul 8, 2019 19:58
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Kchama posted:I just personally think his response to it was trash garbage is all. Can you point us to his response, either on YouTube or an account of it? Because you're reacting strongly to something I've never encountered or heard of.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm not sure anyone in the market for urban fantasy really cared that much about setting versimilitude until Aaronovitch came along and just chaos dunked on the whole field in that specific area. Aaronovitch's research is great. He doesn't get everything perfect, but I think he visits places, and he's constantly asking questions like "UK folks: Where you would get your dry cleaning done that's near a pub in Brumwitch-on-Balls?" on Twitter
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Jul 8, 2019 21:23
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Literally tortured into temporary insanity until the point his inner demon thing took over but still kind of a uh  I clearly need to do a re-read because I don't remember this at all.
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Jul 8, 2019 21:27
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