Bismuth posted:

Its such a good thing none of these are popular enough to have as much fan art as modern stuff does. Can you imagine like, hazbin hotel level fanart but for Gor?

Bismuth posted:

I wont abide by people dissing Le Guin

Cowslips Warren posted:

I remember a book from high school where there were humans and angel-like creatures, and every few years or so, a match between both groups would be picked by some god on high (turns out it was some ancient spaceship or some poo poo), and the pair had to sing some special song to keep the god happy. And then they'd have to stay together to do it again next time or something. And the angels could not get together or they'd make demons, so they could only gently caress humans. IIRC the story was about a human slave who had just been freed, and then was captured by the angels and told nope, you have to be with this one angel or the world ends, so you better be able to sing this song or we all die.

I cannot remember what the title was. Still better than The Hobbit.

No Pants posted:

i'm channeling the book barnyard poster who tried to read the dispossessed and had to put it down SHAKING with RAGE because she obviously had no understanding of the immaculate science of economics

No Pants posted:

i'm channeling the book barnyard poster who tried to read the dispossessed and had to put it down SHAKING with RAGE because she obviously had no understanding of the immaculate science of economics

No Pants posted:

i'm channeling the book barnyard poster who tried to read the dispossessed and had to put it down SHAKING with RAGE because she obviously had no understanding of the immaculate science of economics

Batterypowered7 posted:

Has anyone read the Coldfire Trilogy? It wasn't amazing, but it did have some things I did like. The planet the series takes place* in has some quirk where a person's mental state/thoughts affect the outcome of things, so things like firearms are super risky to use because even thinking about the possibility of a misfire can make one happen. In one of the books, the main character comes across a group of people so indoctrinated by a church to believe that their god protects them, that they can fire guns because they have absolute faith that nothing wrong will happen.

HelloIAmYourHeart posted:

I know this post is from a couple days ago, but this is the edition of The Hobbit that my dad read to me when I was little, and he put masking tape over the illustration on the cover because he didn't want to taint my imagination. I peeled it off when we were done and man was he correct.

Comstar posted:

Well that's going to make my job of IT support and troubleshooting both much harder (the user causes the issue by thinking about it) and then I get to solve the issue by thinking I fixed it and convincing the user it's fixed.




...um, I think we're living in that universe.

Blurry Gray Thing posted:

Sanderson is alright, but I'm getting really confused by people acting like he's The Most Important Fantasy Author Of The Modern Era, on account of his revolutionary, trailblazing idea of Hard Fantasy.

It's good to have consistent rules to your magic, but a lot of his action scenes are just incredibly dull. It turns into a series of supertechnical Uses Of Power about as exciting as reading a combat log in a videogame. He did this, but the other character did this, and so he responded with a [Power] used on the wall behind him and this happened, and so... He also breaks his own Rules, for all that people make a big deal of them. Sooner or later, super-gods who don't follow the established rules show up, and the heroes will discover a new powers, and things get solved by a brand new solution that conveniently appeared just in time to solve the big problem.

His Hard Magic also tends to read like superhero superpowers more than anything else. That's not a coincidence, either. He did write a love-letter-to-superheroes type of YA series. The powers were handled the same exact way, and it felt way more natural in a world full of skintight spandex.

Mind, you really have to respect just how incredibly prolific he is. He's just constantly writing new books, new stand-alones, and new settings.

CPA Hell posted:

Two books that I didn’t get what all the fuss was about : The Black Company by Glen Cook and Night Watch by Lukyanenko. Both have really awesome concepts and do some interesting world building in the narrative. But almost all of the awesome action takes place off screen.

“Our factions are lead by once-human-almost-immortals with sweeping powers, and while they battle, I, the narrator, will go off to make a sandwich, and occasionally mention the flashes of fire and lightening I notice outside... Oh, and later it will come out that me makings a sandwich was just the diversion our side needed to tip the scales.”

If I’m off base, someone please set me straight about why. Maybe I’m just deaf to the themes, tone, mood etc. I want to like these books, but found them more mundane than I expected.

Galewolf posted:

Ravenloft, iirc, had special rules about making kenders sad and horrified.

Galewolf posted:

Ravenloft, iirc, had special rules about making kenders sad and horrified.

quote:

Habitat/Society: The kender vampire is a solitary creature that exists only to do the bidding of Lord Soth of Sithicus. He is the father of their race, and, although they despise him for what he has done to them, they are unable to turn against him or act in any way contrary to his interests.

Knowing the revulsion that the elves who live in his domain feel for all manner of unnatural things, Soth felt that he could find no better slaves than a band of undead. Aware that undead elves might pose a threat to his own power, Soth set about the creation of a new breed of undead. Drawing a small kender village through the misty veils of Ravenloft and into his domain, he had them killed one by one so that he could study their sufferings and invoke carefully designed magical rituals over their bodies in attempts to make them rise as undead. By the time he had finished with these sad kender, fully half of them had died horrible deaths and suffered unspeakable torment at the hand of the dreaded deathknight. The results of his experiments were, however, satisfactory to Soth, for he discovered a formula that would create a race of vampires utterly loyal to him. It is believed that Soth has created no fewer than 10 such monsters and no more than 30, although hard evidence to support any given estimate is hard to come by.

Ecology: Kender vampires can exist only within the confines of Lord Soth’s domain of Sithicus. They are tied to that dark land in some mystical way that, no doubt, relates to the evil magic used in their creation. It is possible that Lord Soth was required to invoke the favor of the Dark Powers in his creation of these dreaded monsters and, thus, that he has paid some horrible price for their loyalty to him.

Despite their links to Sithicus, the vampire kender are not natural creatures and, therefore, have no place in the biology of the world around them. The elves in Sithicus can sense the presence of one of these creatures whenever it comes within 100 yards of them. At first, the elves feel only a curious sense of concern or dread; but, as the monster draws nearer, the feeling intensifies into one of loathing and horror. The elves describe these sad creations as vile pollutants that foul the living by their mere presences. It is unclear why only those elves native to Sithicus can sense the kender vampire so easily.

Unlike the other vampires in Ravenloft, these creatures do not grow more powerful with the passing of time. It is a part of their curse that they must forever remain as they are, denied the pleasures of curiosity or the wanderlust that once gave their lives meaning. It is said that the rising of the full moon reminds these tragic souls of what they have lost and that, on that one night each month, they are unable to do anything but sit and weep beside the coffin that now serves them as both home and prison.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

Whoever wrote that really hates kender

Xenocides posted:

They even have a special variant kender:


Lord Soth did nothing wrong.

Shageletic posted:

I read these books! Well the first one. It was fuckign awesome!

e: I was so disappointed with the Disney movie Black Cauldron.

Colonel Cancer posted:

The Night Watch (Russian one not TP) had a hilarious movie back in maybe 2003. The bad guy pulls out his spine and beats people up with them while good guys use fluorescent light bulbs as lightsabers

Xenocides posted:

They even have a special variant kender:


Lord Soth did nothing wrong.

Bismuth posted:

I seriously dont get why these assholes didnt just leave. My theory is that Pern was actually an australia-style prison colony where earth shipped all their perverts to.

Prince Reggie K posted:

I know this is an old thing to quote but that's basically the plot of Jane Yolen's Pitt Dragon books. ( The planet is called AustarIV) I read those at like age 7 or 8 and barely remember a bunch of cringey stuff that maybe others can verify or not.

Main character ( a boy) has an effeminate, fawning boy lusting for him the whole first book and it's weird. He also goes to try to save a (underage?) girl who specifically stated to be a prostitute. The girl is also his slavemaster's daughter and he basically says he can bone her if he saves her? People crawling into dragon vaginas to do like a rebirth thing to gain psychic powers? uh, lots and lots of weird stuff.

Empty Sandwich posted:

Empty Sandwich posted:

bonus:

https://lexicon.dragonlancenexus.com/index.php/Tickelmop_Toothfang

Galewolf posted:

Many people I know hated Baxa but I always found his Darksun art fitting to the setting and it grew one but a kender vampire will never not be lol.

Prof. Crocodile posted:

i feel like they missed an opportunity by not making the sling on top of the hoopac bat-shaped

ZeusCannon posted:

I read dragonlance for a while when young and all I remember is the mage guy being an insufferable prick who needed a wedgie.

ZeusCannon posted:

I read dragonlance for a while when young and all I remember is the mage guy being an insufferable prick who needed a wedgie.

Galewolf posted:

Raistlin was the perfect storm of edgelord-ism and 90s/00s angst (imo). (I know the books were like late ish 80 iirc.)

Surrounded by bunch of slamchads with bulging muscles, hot pristesses and elven ladies and he was like "Studied the Blade Magic Missile" and his reaction to allegedly having a half -hot- ogre daughter is "Lol if I had sex with a 2 metre tall blue goddess, I think I would've remembered"

I swear the books started playing Trapt in the background during his sections.

Galewolf posted:

Peak Raistlin is him losing his goddamn mind over fake Caramon being able to cast lightning bolt and being like "Oh, this? I was always able to do it but never thought it would be useful" during his test.

Him going super saiyan and obliterating his own brother but getting Red Robes instead of Black ones is some "gently caress you, fifty points to Gryffindor" poo poo.