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Sham bam bamina! posted:I was actually impressed by how well it was handled in Boku no Harem: Perfect Ravish. When you lose your last nekomeido and get a game over, there's a cutscene of you waking up in bed with all eight still happily snuggling you and sucking you off. Was that supposed to be a burn on people for talking about comics?
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Nov 18, 2019 05:08
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The Lone Badger posted:Was that supposed to be a burn on people for talking about comics? Edit: A good book that is all a dream is The Man Who Was Thursday. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 05:34 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 05:26
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look if you wanted to talk about excellent literature this probably isn't the thread you're looking for
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Nov 18, 2019 05:43
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And that's not even in the top 30 craziest poo poo about the Archie Sonic comics. Dream endings work in comedies, mostly because you have an excuse to hit the reset button after taking things past the point of no return.
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Nov 18, 2019 05:56
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Dabir posted:look if you wanted to talk about excellent literature this probably isn't the thread you're looking for
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Nov 18, 2019 05:58
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https://www.amazon.com/WORMHOLE-HELL-Gloria-Clark-Jackson-ebook/dp/B07Z5JJPX7 I read this with KU, and honestly, I think it's bar none the second worst story I have ever read. I feel like a few brain cells just committed suicide after I finished to help me avoid having strong memories about this thing.
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Nov 19, 2019 04:12
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:https://www.amazon.com/WORMHOLE-HELL-Gloria-Clark-Jackson-ebook/dp/B07Z5JJPX7 isn't that font from one of the Kindle cover generators? I've seen it on bottom of the barrel blogposts published to KU.
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Nov 19, 2019 11:52
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Dabir posted:look if you wanted to talk about excellent literature this probably isn't the thread you're looking for No light without shadow and all that. I'd rather us stick to our remit of roasting terrible books, their authors, and the people who love them, but if someone wants to go with a "this reminds me of something actually good" derail, that's fine. PYF: Derails Welcome.
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Nov 19, 2019 12:19
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Or even 'this reminds me of something not necessarily good but interesting'. As much as I hate to acknowledge my downlow TVtropes addiction, they are right in that tropes are indeed tools, and a lot of literary devices have their place when used correctly. Having it all be a dream is a pretty clear admission to your audience of 'I can't think of a real ending' or 'I've written myself into a corner', or even 'Obviously we're just gonna go back to status quo', but then the point of a story that takes place in someone's head should be that what's going on in their head is interesting and important. Bad and trashy fiction can sometimes have some interesting ideas (often worth stealing) buried in them. I got given a trash fantasy novel (Here In Cold Hell, I think it's part of a series?) where a Conan-esque protagonist is dead and in a strange, surreal afterlife where he's being subtly punished in daily, pointless warfare, and befriends an angelic guy who eventually admits this is actually his heaven, since he was a heavily disabled child who barely lived past ten but the priest considered him worthy of a warrior's afterlife since he fought every day just to survive.
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Nov 19, 2019 12:36
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Did you make it to the part where he talks about his word processor and his internal monologue has a link to the word processor itself? It was baffling. Why would you put that in there? I don't remember that but it's gloriously terrible. Did he get a kickback from the software company? Tiggum posted:It's fine so long as the events of the story still mean something. Like, if the protagonist learned and grew through the experience. Yeah, the protagonist learning something from it can work. Though I suppose even the weird-poo poo-thrown-together approach could work in an entertaining-pointless-shaggy-dog-story way with a good enough writer - someone mentioned The Man Who Was Thursday, which would fit into that category. Ghost Leviathan's post reminded me that the "you're actually in Hell hahaha!" twist ending is a cousin of the "all a dream!" approach and has the same problems. The Third Policeman does it well, but most... don't.
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Nov 19, 2019 12:56
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Basically, a twist ending should make the rest of the story more interesting, not less.
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Nov 19, 2019 14:21
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:https://www.amazon.com/WORMHOLE-HELL-Gloria-Clark-Jackson-ebook/dp/B07Z5JJPX7
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Nov 19, 2019 14:25
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Basically, a twist ending should make the rest of the story more interesting, not less. Exactly. A good twist ending have you going "wow, now I get those weird parts earlier in the book!"
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Nov 19, 2019 17:16
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 This book is bad. And it's even worse because I want to like it. A novel about nonviolent protest against a facist regime is apropos at the moment. A book that pays tribute to Dr. King and Gandhi while showing how their methods could be extended to fight against modern surveillance states could be powerful and meaningful. That book is not this book. This book is an anarcho-socialist wet dream. It is Atlas Shrugged stood on its head, a book where perfectly talented captains of The book starts with a large family of Maine farmers standing around and frantically discussing the state of the country. It seems like everything's going wrong: the right-wing government is controlled by corporate interests, civilian food supplies are being rationed to support the troops overseas in a long-standing (and unspecified) war, and the government just closed the border because of "terrorism". In the middle of the discussion, one of them pulls out a piece of paper snuck over the border from Canada, a revolutionary screed decrying the government's oppression written by the enigmatic Man in the North. As they're passing it around, one of the women gasps. She recognizes the handwriting. It belongs to her son, Charlie Rider. Just as they're starting to yell at him for taking risks like that, Zadie Byrd Gray, the super hot girl that got Charlie into the revolutionary writing business (and who Charlie has had a crush on for, like, ever), bursts into the room, tells him that they've got to go before the government finds him, and drags him off to New York. Here's the problem: all the bad stuff the government is doing here is only discussed in abstract. The biggest issue that this family has with closing the border is that one girl has a wedding in a couple weeks and if the border is closed she won't be able to go (it's not discussed in terms of "my fiancee is on the other side of the border and I'll never see him again." It's "I can't get married!") Other than that, it's all a bunch of hearsay that none of them has experienced personally. The book will continue in this vein: oppression is discussed as something that happens to somebody while our brave heroes fight against it. They will meet with poor rural farmers, with inner city blacks, with suburban Latinos. But they will only ever meet with the organizers who are fighting the good fight on behalf of the other people who aren't as well off as they are. Everywhere in the country, people are being sent to mysterious work camps that nobody's ever returned from. We'll never see them, and the main character's relatives who are sent there are totally fine. The ugly face of oppression and discrimination is never shown directly, only implied. And yet. The book takes it further. The government doesn't merely suppress poor ethnic minorities. It also uses a fearsome set of surveillance tools to track down the protagonists while they run. Cell phone conversations are tapped, the internet is strictly monitored. Anywhere the heroes go they are constantly hounded by police, the National Guard, PMCs brought in by the plutocrats to track them down at any cost. They never get close. Oh, there's a couple scrapes. Once they get arrested, but the cop just lets them go because he's on of the good ones. The government's massive internet surveillance net is overthrown by one hacker in a basement who not only makes Tor (but better) but also creates a new antivirus that instantly wipes every computer in the country clean of government surveillance software. The climax of the book is a sham trial where the government declares that they'll try the protagonists in absentia. The main characters decide that they'd rather go to the trial than get convicted without thechance to speak. So they show up, make a couple of speeches, and of course win because the government-selected jury and the judge are all supporters of the revolution. This actually seems like its insulting the memory of everyone who's been a victim of kangaroo courts under oppressive regimes. It whitewashes the danger that any revolutionary faces when standing up for their rights, instead choosing to focus on a few champions who are immune from all retribution. Because it's well known that the police left Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi totally alone, even while they smashed the unimportant and faceless protestors surrounding them, right? In short, this book is entirely composed of 
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Nov 19, 2019 18:55
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Karia posted:
My God, that sounds insufferable. Although it seems like a pretty good encapsulation of what bougie "activists" think a revolution is. I'll be the idea man of the revolution! All the glamour of being an outlaw hero of the people without any of the hardship or danger.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:40
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Elpato posted:I'll be the idea man of the revolution! Someone who REALLY loves bolded text posted:Rivera Sun is a change-maker, a cultural creative, a protest novelist, and an advocate for nonviolence and social justice. She is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, The Way Between and other novels. Her study guide to making change with nonviolent action is used by activist groups across the country. Her essays and writings are syndicated by Peace Voice, and have appeared in journals nationwide. Rivera Sun attended the James Lawson Institute in 2014 and facilitates workshops in strategy for nonviolent change across the country and internationally. Between 2012-2017, she co-hosted nationally two syndicated radio programs on civil resistance strategies and campaigns. Rivera was the social media director and programs coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence. In all of her work, she connects the dots between the issues, shares solutionary ideas, and inspires people to step up to the challenge of being a part of the story of change in our times.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:42
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Oh, she went to Bennington 
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Nov 20, 2019 00:51
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God *drat*, that is white.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:56
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The Philip K Dick novella Flow my Tears The Policeman Said has an infuriating "dream" ending where, after the main character has had all his wealth and power stripped and is thrust into the grim real world, it turns out that it was all someone else's dream because they took loads of drugs and it warped reality . So it all goes back to "normal" and the main learning for the protagonist is "being poor sucks, glad I'm not actually poor irl but am in fact rich and handsome lol". I mean I assume Dick was just winding everyone up here. Or I missed the subtext or just flat out remembered it wrong. Edit: from the plot summary on Wikipedia: quote:The coroner explains to Felix that, as Alys was a fan of Taverner, her use of the drug caused Taverner to be transported to a parallel universe where he no longer existed. Her death then caused his return to his own universe. The Police General decides to implicate Taverner in Alys' death to distract attention from his incest. I forgot about the "oh and the policeman was loving his sister" bit that flies out of nowhere. Powerful Two-Hander has a new favorite as of 01:40 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 01:37
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Senior Woodchuck posted:God *drat*, that is white. Vermartians are weird, weird people.
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Nov 20, 2019 01:38
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:The Philip K Dick novella Flow my Tears The Policeman Said has an infuriating "dream" ending where, after the main character has had all his wealth and power stripped and is thrust into the grim real world, it turns out that it was all someone else's dream because they took loads of drugs and it warped reality . I uh wow no No
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Nov 20, 2019 01:38
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Pastry of the Year posted:I uh wow It was actually a parallel universe but that's basically a dream. Anyway turns out it was "really" about quote:Dick also recounts an unusual dream he had when writing the book, and how he felt compelled to get it into the text of the novel.[7][8] Years later, he came to interpret this dream as the key to understanding the real meaning of the story, stating:
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Nov 20, 2019 01:45
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I mean, nothing you said there was wrong - PKD's brain was absolutely being jazzed with all sorts of biochemicals incompatible with normal functionality, but the message of Flow My Tears is not "welp, it's good to be rich."
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Nov 20, 2019 01:58
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Elpato posted:My God, that sounds insufferable. Although it seems like a pretty good encapsulation of what bougie "activists" think a revolution is. I'll be the idea man of the revolution! All the glamour of being an outlaw hero of the people without any of the hardship or danger. Reminds me of Ender's Game, in which a child becomes president of the world because folks like his forum posts just that much.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:09
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Dienes posted:Reminds me of Ender's Game, in which a child becomes president of the world because folks like his forum posts just that much. Yeah, I think there's a certain age/maturity level where complex human interactions among billions of people with their own wants, needs, and ambitions seem super simplistic and predictable, and if only they would just stop and listen to me me ME all their problems would just disappear. Most of us grow out of it, but... yeah.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:29
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Pastry of the Year posted:I mean, nothing you said there was wrong - PKD's brain was absolutely being jazzed with all sorts of biochemicals incompatible with normal functionality, but the message of Flow My Tears is not "welp, it's good to be rich." Dude was a schizophrenic that loved drugs. If you go into a PKD book and aren’t willing to accept different realities than you saw in the first fifteen pages, you’re reading the wrong book. E:Which reminds me, Ubik is incredible and only 180 pages, check that out. Double E: Or his afterword to A Scanner Darkly, which tears me up more every year after all the friends I’ve lost to heroin/fentanyl. Ugly In The Morning has a new favorite as of 02:35 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 02:31
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It is possible Rivera's just a terrible writer. I don't want to make any judgements on her activism prowess, that's not relevant to the text. I could see an argument that the main male protagonist is supposed to be bland and not really be exposed to real oppression so that readers can insert themselves into their shoes. His love interest at least has some backstory: she had to have an illegal abortion and it didn't go well. The male protagonist's sole reason to support the revolution is because Zadie Byrd Gray is really hot. And she does go out and "mothers the revolution" (i.e., she actually does groundwork, though it is only described in extremely abstract terms) while Charlie sits in a cabin and writes. So she seems like the author-insert, and Charlie is the reader-insert... I didn't say it was a good argument.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:41
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Double E: Or his afterword to A Scanner Darkly, which tears me up more every year after all the friends I’ve lost to heroin/fentanyl. Yep, this. quote:If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:
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Nov 20, 2019 02:42
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Pastry of the Year posted:Yep, this. quote:These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. That afterword gut punched me like nothing else. I lost one of my best friends to a drug problem long before it killed him and that whole part gave me some kind of peace when I read it after his funeral.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:47
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I lost one of my best friends to a drug problem long before it killed him That's terribly and beautifully well put. I'm sorry.
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Nov 20, 2019 03:02
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Pastry of the Year posted:That's terribly and beautifully well put. I'm sorry. It's dumb but that means a lot. And if anyone is going through anything similar, they're free to PM me. As far as content goes, I haven't made it too far in buuuuut... https://www.amazon.com/Doug-J.-Cooper/e/B00F7IJBP0%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share My intensely dull intro to engineering professor from UConn has a sci-fi series out and it's on Kindle Unlimited. I bought the first one a few years after I graduated as a curiousity and gave up when one of the characters was nicknamed "Juice" which is a thing I'm pretty sure no human being has ever called another. E: It has continued for many more books. Ugly In The Morning has a new favorite as of 04:37 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 04:33
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Ugly In The Morning posted:one of the characters was nicknamed "Juice" which is a thing I'm pretty sure no human being has ever called another. Justin McElroy erasure ITT
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Nov 20, 2019 04:39
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OJ Simpson was called The Juice.
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Nov 20, 2019 05:22
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PJOmega posted:OJ Simpson was called The Juice. I feel like there's a big difference between being called THE juice and just "juice"
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Nov 20, 2019 08:19
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I feel like there's a big difference between being called THE juice and just "juice" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=726Ujz_KOHE
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Nov 20, 2019 08:31
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Why did that make me so profoundly creeped out?
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Nov 20, 2019 08:41
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Elpato posted:My God, that sounds insufferable. Although it seems like a pretty good encapsulation of what bougie "activists" think a revolution is. I'll be the idea man of the revolution! All the glamour of being an outlaw hero of the people without any of the hardship or danger.  "tee hee i'm gonna be the red army's hugo boss!"
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Nov 20, 2019 09:07
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Pastry of the Year posted:I mean, nothing you said there was wrong - PKD's brain was absolutely being jazzed with all sorts of biochemicals incompatible with normal functionality, but the message of Flow My Tears is not "welp, it's good to be rich." Oh right I see what you mean, no I know that that's not the message of the book itself (much as there is one), but the character as written . Not that he was exactly sympathetic in the first place. And I completely forgot about the "incest out of nowhere" bit at the end. I think this sums it up well: quote:
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Nov 20, 2019 09:28
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Ugly In The Morning posted:one of the characters was nicknamed "Juice" which is a thing I'm pretty sure no human being has ever called another.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0DK-0fIKCw
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Nov 20, 2019 09:29
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Didn't PKD have a... thing for incest, or am I thinking a different sci-fi author's weird fetishes?
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Nov 20, 2019 11:13
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