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biracial bear for uncut posted:I think you mean "poo poo song that is still cooler than anything in The Dresden Files since Skin Game". Actually isn't one of the things about the Fae that they can't really create anything original on their own, they can only copy/remix/repurpose stuff that mortals create? As for "45" ehh, it's okay. Figure Mab would have preferred The Sound of Madness IMO. Could have been worse. Could have been something from Nickleback.
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Aug 11, 2020 14:22
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Everyone posted:Actually isn't one of the things about the Fae that they can't really create anything original on their own, they can only copy/remix/repurpose stuff that mortals create? If you're referencing Shinedown you might as well reference Nickelback.
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Aug 11, 2020 14:28
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I think you mean "poo poo song that is still cooler than anything in The Dresden Files since Skin Game". Being cooler than Peace talks isn't much of a bar to clear though 
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Aug 11, 2020 14:31
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The best part of peace talks was learning Mab had a thing for Merlin.
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Aug 11, 2020 14:45
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Calidus posted:The best part of peace talks was learning Mab had a thing for Merlin. Anybody that didn't see that coming didn't pay any attention to literally any of the books prior to this one.
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Aug 11, 2020 16:10
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I think you mean "poo poo song that is still cooler than anything in The Dresden Files since Skin Game". It's foreshadowing. One of the lyrics is "send a message to the unborn child", referencing Bonnie.
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Aug 11, 2020 17:21
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UntitledGuy posted:It's foreshadowing. One of the lyrics is "send a message to the unborn child", referencing Bonnie. Except for the bit where it's "an orchestral remix" of the song with no lyrics.
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Aug 11, 2020 17:24
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Except for the bit where it's "an orchestral remix" of the song with no lyrics. It's still foreshadowing, even if it doesn't spell everything out for you.
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Aug 11, 2020 17:38
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UntitledGuy posted:It's still foreshadowing, even if it doesn't spell everything out for you. Maybe if you disregard what the moron that wrote the song said the lyrics mean. The lyrics of that song don't make any sense as foreshadowing regarding the intellect spirit living in Dresden's head at the time (especially since not even Dresden seems to give much of a poo poo about her once she's out of his head, and her relevance as anything other than a drama plot point in Skin Game is pretty well over-done). Foreshadowing in that book isn't even subtext at that level. It beats you over the head with plot points and references that make it impossible to not guess what is actually going on long before Harry's subconscious gives an exposition dump for the really dumb people reading the book.
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Aug 11, 2020 18:12
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Never heard of Shinedown before. Just scanned "45". Yeah, lame. I would expect the Fae to appreciate the talents of a virtuoso singer or instrumentalist, rather than a middle-of-the-road, power-rock ballad. They probably got tired of listening to the same Dead Can Dance albums, though, and wanted to mix it up.
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Aug 11, 2020 18:59
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biracial bear for uncut posted:If you're referencing Shinedown you might as well reference Nickelback. True. I still prefer Shinedown to Nickleback, though strippers seem to prefer the latter. In terms of favored bands, I'm really liking Disturbed. While I was late to the party, their take on Sounds of Silence was just lovely.
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Aug 12, 2020 16:09
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Benedict Jacka dropped a post explaining that his latest "Ask Luna" bit would be a little delayed due to a London heat wave. So, he's still alive and either doesn't have or never had COVID.
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Aug 15, 2020 23:51
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Everyone posted:Benedict Jacka dropped a post explaining that his latest "Ask Luna" bit would be a little delayed due to a London heat wave. So, he's still alive and either doesn't have or never had COVID. It’s been really hot and sunny the past couple of weeks here in London (record breakingly so), but now that’s stopped, and we’re having a lovely cooler rainy period, which is much needed. The UK has developed a particularly nasty bit of climate in the last few years where it does this thing of being temperate (and sometimes even just cold) but humid. So you’re fine so long as there’s a breeze, but the moment it stops...
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Aug 16, 2020 00:02
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Peace talks stuff: Did it feel like this was 1/6 of 6 different books or short stories that were forced together to anyone else? We had: 1. The mystery of the attempted assassination of the svartalf leader, 2. White court, white council and grandpappy drama, 3. A meeting of the supernatural league of nations, 4. A prison break/heist, 5. A god threaten and somehow goku a bunch of other gods, 6. Knights of the cross combating some new world ending evil. Literally a focus on any of those plots would have been a better book than the amalgamation of what seems to be 6 different short stories. I suspect this latest book might have been a desperation publish to just get something out before he loses a huge chunk of his audience. From what I remember Butcher bragged about how this would be the most violent and intense book of the series and it certainly does not deliver. I really wanted more of the happenings at the accords meeting. I also don't understand how some grand eye testicle was supposed to overpower all of the primordial forces of the universe. Doesn't Hades have anything to say about a titan getting out of tartarus? This book was a bit of a letdown after waiting almost half a decade for it.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:44
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That seems to be the killer here. It is a poo poo sandwich of a book, all setup no payoff. If this had come 18 months after Skin Game, we could deal with it better. But it hasn't been 18 months, it's been six years, it's not enough of a payoff. Battle Ground is going to have to be one hell of a payoff to make Peace Talks worth it. E. It also doesn't help we've had six years to thoroughly deconstruct Butchers writing flaws and compare him against better authors. Peace Talks is pretty standard Dresden fare, just with a missing climax. We've just gotten older and become more critical in our tastes. rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 03:35
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rndmnmbr posted:That seems to be the killer here. It is a poo poo sandwich of a book, all setup no payoff. If this had come 18 months after Skin Game, we could deal with it better. But it hasn't been 18 months, it's been six years, it's not enough of a payoff. Battle Ground is going to have to be one hell of a payoff to make Peace Talks worth it. As an experiment, try reading half of one of his other books. Figure even with one of my faves (Dead Beat hands down), it'll probably come off a lot like this. Butcher tried to set-up a proper break in the action in terms of the book's ending, but it couldn't disguise that this was still very much half a story. We'll be able to do a proper judgement of this story once Battle Ground comes out. In the meantime as has been said before, what we have so far is all set-up and no resolution.
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Aug 16, 2020 08:47
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rndmnmbr posted:Peace Talks is pretty standard Dresden fare, just with a missing climax. We've just gotten older and become more critical in our tastes. I don't think that's entirely correct, or at least it isn't for me. I re-read Cold days and Skin game just before Peace Talks, and I'm now re-reading the entire series (on Dead Beat now) and I've enjoyed every book more than PT. I think PT is just the worst Dresden book. It's poorly edited, the action isn't fun, it's both short as a book while also being too padded out as a half-book with too many plot threads, and it doesn't deal with a few things I had been looking forward to - such as details about Bonetia or much reaction to Harry's return to life and changes. Speaking of Dead Beat, I notice Cowl talks a lot like Sharkface from Cold days (not suggesting they are the same entity, I just wonder if it was intentional), and apparently he was the one who gave Lea the Nemesis-infected knife, but both he and especially Kumori are much less hostile/evil than I would expect from people who work with Outsiders to end all life. I hope this eventually makes sense and isn't just a pile of ret-conning and ad hoc writing.
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Aug 16, 2020 09:46
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Darkrenown posted:apparently he was the one who gave Lea the Nemesis-infected knife, Mavra gave Lea the knife at Bianca’s party, IIRC.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:17
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It's a bit confusing because Lea mentions swapping the sword for the knife and Mavra got the sword, and yet:quote:In Dead Beat, Harry Dresden meets Cowl for the second time, where he's searching for Die Lied der Erlking and The Word of Kemmler with Kumori, his assistant. Harry recognized them from Bianca St. Claire's ball as the ones who gave the Leanansidhe the athame. which is the bit of the book I just read, but I looked it up to confirm.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:00
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I won't look this up to bother confirming it but I do think there are two cloaked figures hovering around Bianca during the party doing unexplained sinister stuff.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:05
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Huh, I just read that awful short story at the start of the Dresden omnibus, the one where he's fighting a troll. Butcher mentions that it was a student project for a creative writing class... but it's not, like, the adventures of Larry the wizard and Mary the cop, it is straight-up Harry Dresden, Murphy, and all the other weirdos. Most universities own the IP of any projects you complete and hand in as class work, so I wonder how he got around that.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:14
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Omi no Kami posted:Huh, I just read that awful short story at the start of the Dresden omnibus, the one where he's fighting a troll. Butcher mentions that it was a student project for a creative writing class... but it's not, like, the adventures of Larry the wizard and Mary the cop, it is straight-up Harry Dresden, Murphy, and all the other weirdos. Most universities own the IP of any projects you complete and hand in as class work, so I wonder how he got around that. My guess is "we own your ip" wasn't policy when he went to school twenty years ago. That's sketchy as *hell* considering you're paying the university, not vice versa.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My guess is "we own your ip" wasn't policy when he went to school twenty years ago. That's sketchy as *hell* considering you're paying the university, not vice versa. Well, we gave you the writing prompt that preceded the story, now didn't we? Wouldn't have happened if we hadn't put these loose constraints on what you were supposed to write  But yeah that IP thing is shady as hell.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:32
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It's definitely shady as hell, also some quick googling seems to indicate that writing is a lot murkier than other stuff- I've definitely had friends whose literature professors aggressively stressed that they should never develop stuff in class that they intended to take commercial, but it appears a lot more variable than patents and inventions, which was my experience- I had engineering faculty very explicit warn us that anything even remotely commercially viable shouldn't go anywhere near coursework, because the instant it touched university systems, courses or resources things got a lot more complicated.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:40
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I listened to the audiobook for that story and even Butcher’s intro was “this isn’t that good but I worked it into a little intro to Harry”
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Aug 19, 2020 21:24
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Been reading Faust lately and I don't know why but my brain decided Corman and Bentley are Wally and Gus from Mission Hill.
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Aug 20, 2020 03:34
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Reading the Rivers of London shorts now. I thought I'd read them all, but the first three have all been new to me. Which is great.
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Aug 20, 2020 15:09
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the_steve posted:Would Thomas even be able to wield any of the swords, considering they're items of True Faith? The White Court is the most human, they're really not terribly bothered by quite a few things that screw with the other courts. I seem to remember that even the Red Court isn't really bothered by items of faith, it's a pretty solidly Black Court thing.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:08
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The Red Court is specifically bothered by faith items. During the ball, several vampires got burned simply by coming into contact with Micheal's armor.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:37
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When Michael was touched by a Red Court vampire, the vampire wasn't very happy.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:38
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Susan was burned by one of the Swords in Death Masks. But she was later able to wield Amoracchius in Changes because she was acting out of love for her daughter. We know the Raith side of the White Court are particularly vulnerable to even mundane sources of love, so I'd imagine the Sword of Love would do a serious number on them. I'd guess the other families that feed on fear and despair have similar vulnerabilities that map to Faith and Hope, because Butcher obviously loves those sorts of patterns.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:00
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Hasn't Harry used his mom's pentacle necklace as a faith item before? I mean, yeah, obviously it doesn't pack the same amount of Oomph as "sword with an angel stuffed inside of it", but, he did make a point to mention that faith in anything is sufficient as long it's sincere.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:55
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the_steve posted:Hasn't Harry used his mom's pentacle necklace as a faith item before? I think so. Of course, it's been a long time since he's needed to do something like that instead of just "Set Magic staff to Incinerate!" and nuking whatever-it-is. I believe the Red Court were affected by Faith items too, but it's been over 10 years since they were relevant to the series (Changes was published in April of 2010).
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Aug 21, 2020 20:37
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I've ran through most of the Daniel Faust books in like three weeks and I'm honestly surprised they don't get more talk than they do. Books good.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:26
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Same, i burned through the entire series in like a month. Schaefer has a knack for writing locations that Butcher doesn't. Slash either has lived in or bothered to do actual research on said locations.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:50
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I've ran through most of the Daniel Faust books in like three weeks and I'm honestly surprised they don't get more talk than they do. Books good. Eh. I find them readable but they don't make me want to buy the next one. Instead, they're the kind of book that I'm entertained enough to buy the next one in a lull.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:54
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I've ran through most of the Daniel Faust books in like three weeks and I'm honestly surprised they don't get more talk than they do. Books good. I haven't read them because I don't really want to read a screen. I suspect others haven't for the same reason.
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Aug 22, 2020 23:03
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Beachcomber posted:I haven't read them because I don't really want to read a screen. I suspect others haven't for the same reason. What does this mean? E: Oh, they are only on Kindle? They're lovely to read on though
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Aug 22, 2020 23:26
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Darkrenown posted:What does this mean? Even the Kindle app on a computer (or big enough smart phone) is pretty good. Preferred is iPad app followed by my Kindle Oasis. I'm at a point where I pretty much don't even consider a book unless there's an ebook version available. Last year, I finally pulled the trigger and got rid of almost 3 decades of book purchases (a little under 3000 books) and completely reclaimed 3 walls in my house. Most of it was paperbacks stacked two books high and three deep per shelf. At this point the only physical books I have are entirely hard-to-find or out-of-print reference materials that relate to work. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Aug 23, 2020 |
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Aug 23, 2020 00:26
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Beachcomber posted:I haven't read them because I don't really want to read a screen. I suspect others haven't for the same reason. Except they're all available in paperback? Am I misunderstanding this?
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Aug 23, 2020 01:11
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