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Spazzle posted:Did the allusions to the world of wot being a future/past earth ever go anywhere? not really some references that the wheels of times world was the future and past earth were dropped every now and there, but nothing more than that
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Aug 31, 2020 21:46
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Spazzle posted:Did the allusions to the world of wot being a future/past earth ever go anywhere? Yeah, that was one of the things that did stick. In the first book it was blatant but it got more subtle. Some of the stuff that were mocked as derivative were meant to be hints of Earth's mythology. Mat is intended to be the genesis of a lot of Norse mythology and is a bit of Odin and of Loki including losing an eye, hanging from a tree to gain knowledge, being the trickster, and his symbol becoming the raven. Perrin fits a bit into the blacksmith myth of Hephaestus and Vulcan and his leg is wounded and/or he could be Perun, a slavic god with a big beard that carries an ax or a hammer. Many of the names of the Forsaken are similar to demonic names (Belial, Asmodeus, Demandred, Sammael). Rand is the Lord of the Morning, similar to son of the morning which is used to refer to Lucifer. He loses his hand (Tyr) and is stabbed in the side with an ongoing wound (Jesus) that is used to bring salvation. He is a promethean figure that both destroys everything but also saves them from an evil deity similar to sympathetic takes on Lucifer. Caemyln is obviously Camelot. Artur Hawkwing is King Arthur. The symbol of the One Power used is similar to the symbol for yin and yang. Rand has to acquire the sword from the stone (which is a fortress) then later puts the sword back to be pulled by the one who must follow after him. You have Galad (Galahad), the man with near perfect virtue. The wise counselor Merrilin (Merlin). They are all imperfect comparisons and they are meant to be. In the first book you have Thom talking about myths that sound like references to the old Cold War and the moon landing. The idea is that the wheel repeats the same stories with different details and that their stories are our myths and our stories are their myths. If by go anywhere you mean our earth shows up though...no.
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Aug 31, 2020 23:31
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yr new gurlfrand! posted:Even as an idiot 13 year old who regularly glazed through poo poo to mediocre fantasy books (don’t ask me about Baldur’s Gate - a book about some guys play through of the game Baldur’s Gate) one of the worst novels ever written. i believe the author said he never played the games and wrote it during the ad breaks while he was watching television. it is just unfathomably bad.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:10
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Got through the 2nd Myth novel. They aren't as bad as I feared but I am picking up on something teenaged me didn't notice. Only two in so far but what I remember of book 10 followed this pattern. Everything is going great until the protagonists suffer a setback in the first chapter or two. Conflict is established basically out of nowhere. Conflict is mostly resolved by Skeeve in a more or less uninterrupted stream of successes, a little bit at a time, everything goes right for him. He isn't really portrayed as a mary sue character wise, but plot wise oh my yes. One unresolved problem holds the protagonists back from victory. This is solved by deus ex machina, but one that is foreshadowed earlier. So it's a bunch of lovely writing nonos, but mitigated a bit.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:17
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Fantasy novels are things where plot happens in between the writing exercises assigned by a therapist.
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Sep 1, 2020 01:22
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I actually prefer a fantasy novel to not worry about creating unique names for characters and things. Not all of us are linguists so creating a whole language that is real is pretty hard as well. A lot of fantasy names when they aren't just alternative spellings of names we have, which isn't too bad, it just sounds like the writer sat around pronouncing nonsense words until they got something that sounds like what a rich white person names their kid. And I don't think a writer needs to justify why these exist. I know nerds like to nitpick but some things are not needed to be in the text of a story, and people shouldn't expect it to be explained unless it needs to be there as part of the story. Its like not everyone is going to have the knowlage to accurately model a world with a different orbit and therefor different lengths of the year and days, so if they bother to do it, they just take our own. Though I've noticed most just give vauge Midwinter and Midsummer type dates and don't get into very specific dating systems. It's been forever since I was able to read something seriously. I think it was the last Gaunts Ghosts book? That was at least a year ago if not longer. I have the first book of Malazan because goons told me it was better than aSoIaF, and i don't doubt them, but the first book is like being dumped into Clash of Kings without reading A Game of Thrones and having no idea what is going on. I have been told that it makes sense once you read the next book, but its kind of hard to get through without knowing the context for what you're reading.
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Sep 1, 2020 08:56
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Fantasy novels are things where plot happens in between the writing exercises assigned by a therapist. more like quote:Fantasy novels are things where plot happens in between the writing exercises of a rapist.
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Sep 1, 2020 09:33
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ChubbyChecker posted:more like No one said the therapy wasn’t court ordered.
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Sep 1, 2020 10:28
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Colonel Cancer posted:Someone mentioned Farseer trilogy itt is it any good? I read the first book when I was in highschool and all I remember is a sad clown and some dude being angsty about getting laid and then faking his death. Some of it is good, but the early parts of Fitz' angst fest are very difficult to get through. Sad clown is the best character ever though and I will fight you on that. The later trilogies in the series are definitely a lot better. As an added bonus, there is significantly less creepy sex stuff than in 90% of the books mentioned here.
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Sep 1, 2020 10:43
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Flared Basic Bitch posted:Parallel Earth Resources Negligible Impossibly Sexy Action Jacktion posted:Pern fans should call themselves Pernverts. 
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Sep 1, 2020 11:33
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has anyone itt read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbos_of_the_Death_Sun is it good?
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Sep 1, 2020 11:53
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twistedmentat posted:It's been forever since I was able to read something seriously. I think it was the last Gaunts Ghosts book? That was at least a year ago if not longer. I have the first book of Malazan because goons told me it was better than aSoIaF, and i don't doubt them, but the first book is like being dumped into Clash of Kings without reading A Game of Thrones and having no idea what is going on. I have been told that it makes sense once you read the next book, but its kind of hard to get through without knowing the context for what you're reading. yeah this is the problem w/ that series. and the explanatory stuff is kind of awkwardly jammed in. there are actually some prequels now written by the guy Erickson built the world with and they're actually not bad (the path to ascendancy trilogy) and serve as a much smoother introduction to the world; once that's all more or less understood getting through the main books is much easier and enjoyable
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Sep 1, 2020 12:34
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Nigmaetcetera posted:No one said the therapy wasn’t court ordered.
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Sep 1, 2020 14:16
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twistedmentat posted:I actually prefer a fantasy novel to not worry about creating unique names for characters and things. Not all of us are linguists so creating a whole language that is real is pretty hard as well. I think this is one of the things fantasy authors gently caress up a lot. Tolkien was an accomplished linguist and the stories were basically excuses to use that skill to invent Elvish. (OK, not really, but also really.) I don't think any of these other people have any sort of experience with this stuff. (For example, some of the spells in Dragonlance are apparently Indonesian words, which perhaps one of the authors perhaps learned as a Mormon missionary, perhaps.)
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Sep 1, 2020 21:00
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Empty Sandwich posted:I think this is one of the things fantasy authors gently caress up a lot. yeah, if you're not a linguist, pseudo-english names work better than gibberish apostrophe salads
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Sep 1, 2020 21:10
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Steven Erikson and the other bloke he writes with are anthropologists.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:34
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sassassin posted:Steven Erikson and the other bloke he writes with are anthropologists. Which is kinda neat. We get a full rundown of the culture of the zombie neanderthals, pre self-zombification. And they are some of the newer kids on the block in the malazan world
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Sep 1, 2020 21:44
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Saw one comment about Sword of Truth series from the totally nutso Terry Goodkind and thought I'd share this eternally great bullet pointed list of a lot of the super hosed up things in that series: http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2006/08/goodkind-parodies.html Here's a bit of a teaser: "Richard Rahl is the hero. He wields the Sword of Truth, which has the word "Truth" embossed on the handle, and is powered by rage. He is also a War Wizard, which is basically a type of rare wizard that can do all sorts of special magic. He is used as the paragon of morals and virtue, and of Objectivist doctrine. He wears what is described as a "war wizard outfit." In one book, Goodkind creates a nation of pacifists (led by a small boy) as a strawman argument to display why Pacifism is Wrong. The pacifists stage a peaceful demostration to stop Richard from going to war; Richard slaughters the protestors, who are "armed only with their hatred for moral clarity." Richard also kills unarmed council members." There are links in the list to actual exerts from the books from some old forum, I read the first book on recommendation from a friend in high school and finished it to my regret. Read page one of the second book and couldn't take it. I can assure you there is even worse in the first book and as funny as that list is do not attempt to read the books yourself, they are loving awful. Also, Wheel of Time is really lovely, read almost anything else (smooths skirt, tugs braid, sniffs). There's an incredibly funny low budget TV show pilot episode from years ago where some company made it to maintain rights on the series, it's the only thing I can ever think about when I hear anyone talk about a future show for the series. That pilot is on youtube if you really want to watch it (don't).
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Sep 1, 2020 22:00
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Manzoon posted:Saw one comment about Sword of Truth series from the totally nutso Terry Goodkind and thought I'd share this eternally great bullet pointed list of a lot of the super hosed up things in that series: Goodkind also takes the completely original tact of having the series end with Richard exiling everyone who is ideologically impure to another world along with all of the people who kill magic by existing to another world. It is clear this world is meant to be Earth and magic was quickly stamped out after they arrived (punishment for rejecting the wisdom of Ayn Rand) and that our anti-Objectivism stems from bad parentage. This completely original approach is similar to the one Gygax used to blow up the Greyhawk world (sending all the good and neutrals to be reborn on Earth). Presumably Gygax did this because he was booted from TSR and wanted to burn the world on the way out.
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Sep 1, 2020 22:13
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Xenocides posted:Goodkind also takes the completely original tact of having the series end with Richard exiling everyone who is ideologically impure to another world along with all of the people who kill magic by existing to another world. It is clear this world is meant to be Earth and magic was quickly stamped out after they arrived (punishment for rejecting the wisdom of Ayn Rand) and that our anti-Objectivism stems from bad parentage. This completely original approach is similar to the one Gygax used to blow up the Greyhawk world (sending all the good and neutrals to be reborn on Earth). Presumably Gygax did this because he was booted from TSR and wanted to burn the world on the way out. Hahahaha, that is loving hilarious.
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Sep 1, 2020 22:16
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Xenocides posted:Goodkind also takes the completely original tact of having the series end with Richard exiling everyone who is ideologically impure to another world along with all of the people who kill magic by existing to another world. It is clear this world is meant to be Earth and magic was quickly stamped out after they arrived (punishment for rejecting the wisdom of Ayn Rand) and that our anti-Objectivism stems from bad parentage. This completely original approach is similar to the one Gygax used to blow up the Greyhawk world (sending all the good and neutrals to be reborn on Earth). Presumably Gygax did this because he was booted from TSR and wanted to burn the world on the way out. Were they all forced to watch brainwatching movies? Was a volcano involved?
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Sep 2, 2020 00:30
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ChubbyChecker posted:has anyone itt read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbos_of_the_Death_Sun Oh sweet Jesus I read this decades ago.  Literally all I remember about it is the cover.
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Sep 2, 2020 00:45
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ChubbyChecker posted:yeah, if you're not a linguist, pseudo-english names work better than gibberish apostrophe salads
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Sep 2, 2020 00:48
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Terry Goodkind had one book in his series where the Hero carves the most beautiful statues ever and they are unveiled in the capital city of Communism Land. This instantly spurs the poor to revolt and overthrow Communism. He also had a lot of rape. Like, a whole loving lot of it, including demon rape. Lots of it.
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Sep 2, 2020 00:49
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Sometimes Tolkien's explanations for what the 'actual' names of things presented as English names were like, 3 fictional languages deep in puns.
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Sep 2, 2020 00:53
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Mozi posted:yeah this is the problem w/ that series. and the explanatory stuff is kind of awkwardly jammed in. there are actually some prequels now written by the guy Erickson built the world with and they're actually not bad (the path to ascendancy trilogy) and serve as a much smoother introduction to the world; once that's all more or less understood getting through the main books is much easier and enjoyable I'm not sure why Erikson chose to write it this way. It's fine to start a story in the middle of a big event but you need to spend a bit of time explaining what is going on. It's written assuming we know where Flabberton is and why they're at war with Blobitynor, and why Goobis is running away from it. I still should give it a read, but reading is similar to podcasts, I don't have any long periods where I can just sit so I don't have time to enjoy either unless I make specific time for them. Empty Sandwich posted:I think this is one of the things fantasy authors gently caress up a lot. Yea, I think that's why GRRM has so many European names because his big thing is history so he's going to corrupt Lancaster into Lannister and York into Stark and borrow from the War of the Roses. Too bad he didn't have that knowlage of non-euoprean history and was able to create more interesting non white peoples. I do really like how he explicitly says that Westeros was colonized in the past first by the First Men, who murdered the Children of the Forest and then realized that was pointless and made peace and lived in harmony with them until the Andels showed up and burned everything and forced everyone to convert to their religion. In a lot of fantasy everything feels very static that these people have been here forever and they always will be, though people do move around a lot due to war and famine and all kinds of bad stuff. LeGuin's dad was an Anthropologist which is why everyone but the Labyrinth people are non-white. Manzoon posted:Saw one comment about Sword of Truth series from the totally nutso Terry Goodkind and thought I'd share this eternally great bullet pointed list of a lot of the super hosed up things in that series: The thing that really should of clued me and everyone else into that SoT novels were going to go real bad real fast was in the first book where the princess is being a brat to Richard and he kicks her super hard in the face, and everyone just kinda goes "Well, Richard is a man, and a super important man, so that was totally cool and good for him to do, also can I suck your dick because all women in this series wanna bone down with Richard". I have to admit that the central conceit of Wizards First Rule, that the first rule is "people will believe anything" is true, and can be build upon explaining the world view of this story. Though Goodkind seems to think that in reality its used for people who believe that being a horrible shitgoblin only thinking of yourself is somehow bad. Also, Faith of the Fallen has Richard taken to the Jajang's homeland where its a very thinly veiled strawman for communism. Richard is attacked because he fixes the broken step that leads up to the lovely longhouse he lives in with a woman and a bunch of other people. His great sin by doing work that he wasn't assigned to do, he took work away from someone else, and that's baaaad. Goodkind thinks communism is everyone sitting around being lazy in poverty because no one actually wants to work because working is bad. Only hard Objectivists understand the value of work and creating capital. Also Richard Rahl is literally God at the end of the series, like it straight up says that he is why people think God is a man with a beard. OH god i just realized his name at the start was Cypher because get it, he's a cypher! It's worst than Hiro Protagonist, and don't tell me that is clever good satire, its not.
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Sep 2, 2020 01:00
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This thread was made for me. As an awkward teenage girl, weird fantasy was my bread and butter. I even did a bunch of Pern email roleplaying. (I still have a shameful bias towards books with dragons.) Pern was super rapey in the first few books. The female protagonist also had vague mind controlling powers(?) that were somehow related to her ability to talk to ALL THE DRAGONS because she was so special. Also there was lots of focus on how tiny she was in comparison to the big strong man, F'lar I think (oh yes all male dragonriders had apostrophes in their names for... some reason) whose dragon schtupped her dragon, which therefore meant they had to gently caress. She was at least interesting in that she was murderous and kept trying to kill the noble who killed her family. Things got really weird when they discovered AIVAS, the computer system from... I think a colony ship? that had dumped all their ancestors on the planet. At that point you had dragons teleporting to the Red Star that produced the evil fungi, dragons discovering they could use telekinesis as well as teleportation and time travel, it turned out the dolphins of Pern were also intelligent and could be used as living ultrasound machines for the people... I stopped reading after McCaffrey died and her son Todd took over. He wrote a book about these other draconic creatures, the whers, who had stunted wings, and argued that well actually they were able to fly all along because air is thicker at night Okay, Todd. Another author I got really into that I haven't seen mentioned yet was Mercedes Lackey. Behold, the most angsty protagonist to ever angst.  This is Vanyel Ashkevron and his Companion (magical horse who is actually a reincarnated human) Yfandes from the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy. Vanyel is beautiful. So beautiful. We are told this at great length and given loving descriptions of his jet black hair and silver eyes. He is also gay and this makes him very sad, and his dad is an rear end in a top hat abuser about it. So Vanyel runs away to the capital to go to wizard school, and he meets a boy! Yayyyy. They have a super special soulbond, yayyy. The boy turns out to be evil and draws on Vanyel's magic to summon demons or do necromancy or someshit, and then commits suicide, and Vanyel is so traumatized that it blasts all his magical channels or whatever open and he now has EVERY MAGIC POWER EVER. Also he soulbonds with aforementioned magic horse (not the sexy kind of soulbond). Then his uncontrollable psychic powers let him hear the thoughts of everyone around him, and of course they all think he's a nasty whore who was stringing dead boyfriend along and he should have died instead, and he just leaks grief and pain all over the place until everyone goes oh no we were wrong and falls down before his beautiful suffering. (He also has exotic white streaks in his hair now.) Anyway, there is more angst for three books. Vanyel makes out with Death and Death is like 'You suffer so beautifully I could never take you.' Vanyel hangs out with magical Native Americans and their magic wolves. Vanyel foresees his death and angsts about it. Vanyel encounters the reincarnation of his dead lover except now he is OLD and the lover is TOO YOUNG and they can never be together, so sad, blah blah. Everyone is constantly awed by the tragedy of his life. Vanyel eventually dies and ends up haunting a forest for five hundred years to keep the Evil Whatevers from beyond the borders from getting in rather than passing on, because he is Just So Noble. (The horse and the reincarnated lover end up with him, though, so it's not all bad.) The sad thing is that for 1989, this was actually good LGBTQ representation in the fantasy genre. There's also a book in this series where the protagonist has the sexy kind of soulbond with his horse. And one in a prequel where a griffin tries to get it on with a human. All that to say that if any of y'all have an awkward teenager in your life who needs some fantasy recommendations, Tamora Pierce is always a good bet. Pinball fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Sep 2, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2020 01:07
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Pinball posted:This thread was made for me. As an awkward teenage girl, weird fantasy was my bread and butter. I even did a bunch of Pern email roleplaying. (I still have a shameful bias towards books with dragons.) Seconding Tamora Pierce, though, I still keep up with her work because it's solid.
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Sep 2, 2020 01:25
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ChubbyChecker posted:has anyone itt read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbos_of_the_Death_Sun Sure, it's a fun murder mystery. The protagonist is a computer nerd college professor who writes a lovely scifi novel called "Bimbos of the Death Sun" which I think was his publisher's idea? He goes to his local science fiction convention to promote it and also gawk at computers with the other turbo-nerds. Anyway, the corpse was a big name scifi author who wrote a Conan-esque series and pisses off everyone around him. It has a sequel called "Zombies of the Gene Pool." Its portrayal of small, local fan conventions is very accurate, as far as I can tell from being drug along to a few by a friend when we were in high school.
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Sep 2, 2020 01:26
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PetraCore posted:The things I liked about Pern were weird worldbuilding I felt could be, like... torn apart and reassembled in a way I like. I really liked the one with the mutant white dragon and his rider who wasn't allowed to be a formal rider bc of weird nobility issues. But in retrospect it like... wasn't good. Even stuff like I thought Lessa was cool and tough but in retrospect it's all about how she's fiery and emotional and F'lar or whatever has to 'tame' her and it's like, drat, can't a chick just want to punch things with dragons. probably one of the biggest shames of a lot of fantasy is that a good deal has a handful of really cool ideas that could go somewhere (that isn't porn or child rape)
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Sep 2, 2020 01:29
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holy shiiiiittt this has set off so many memories. when I was a teenager, the local fantasy convention had various creative writing categories. I won one of her books in one of those categories, but it was a sequel, so I never ended up reading it (no matter how much it was autographed (once))
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Sep 2, 2020 01:37
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oh hey I remember that guy's impossibly sad and handsome face from seeing that book advertised and in stores
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Sep 2, 2020 01:39
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Black August posted:probably one of the biggest shames of a lot of fantasy is that a good deal has a handful of really cool ideas that could go somewhere (that isn't porn or child rape) * Fanfic is also for porn
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Sep 2, 2020 01:39
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Pern is considered a bad fantasy book?  I loved it. Even though looking back literally organizing dragon’s *intelligence, personality and even gender* by the color they came in is a kind of yikes in 2020.
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Sep 2, 2020 02:28
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extra row of teeth posted:Pern is considered a bad fantasy book?
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Sep 2, 2020 02:31
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Octavia. E. Butler
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Sep 2, 2020 02:33
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It's an interesting Author/Title combo, I'll give you that. Do their other books follow a similar convention? Marionette's Minion, Troll's Thrall, Fellow's Follower?
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Sep 2, 2020 02:37
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PetraCore posted:It's not even just that, there's a lot of rape that's glossed over bc dragons made them do it and a lot of homophobia. I'd be fine with weird in-setting gender roles and telepathic dragons and the ancestors of Pern being the stupidest motherfuckers ever, but there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't just bad for 2020 but was uncomfortable even when I was reading it as a teen. So... yeah, I'd say Anne McCaffrey is bad, but I'd also say it's fine to grab her settings and run. Wasnt a lot of the homophobia stuff after her son took over? I heard the series got a lot more chud-flavored after that
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Sep 2, 2020 02:48
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Did Marion Zimmer Bradley get brought up as a monster yet, because that one loving hurt. Mists of Avalon was for the longest time one of the bigger successes in feminist, female-written fantasy. I really, really liked a modern fantasy series she wrote that was written towards the end of her life and may or may not have been just written using her name to sell more copies. But she's a sex monster who hosed her kids up royally, and molested/was complicit in their molestation, IIRC. Soooo gently caress.
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Sep 2, 2020 02:57
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PetraCore posted:It's not even just that, there's a lot of rape that's glossed over bc dragons made them do it and a lot of homophobia. I'd be fine with weird in-setting gender roles and telepathic dragons and the ancestors of Pern being the stupidest motherfuckers ever, but there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't just bad for 2020 but was uncomfortable even when I was reading it as a teen. So... yeah, I'd say Anne McCaffrey is bad, but I'd also say it's fine to grab her settings and run. Pern as a setting is really interesting, but a lot of what McCaffrey chose to do with it and her homophobia make it pretty awkward. She gave what seemed like a lot of thought to the social structure of the dragons and modeled them after eusocial insects, but then never thought oh, if I say the only dragons that can be ridden by women are the female golds, and that leaves all the female greens to be ridden by men, and the greens will be chased by the blues and the browns that are also ridden by men... She tried very hard to ignore the dragon-imposed homosexuality she'd written into her own books. When asked, she said, among other things, that having anything put up your butt automatically made you gay (based on someone she knew being raped with a tent peg, which therefore made him gay?), that green dragons were ridden by "feminine" gay men while blues were for "masculine" gay men, so on and so forth. When I stopped reading, women were at least riding green dragons. I don't think she ever had a protagonist who rode a blue or a male protagonist who rode a green. McCaffrey was also notorious in fandom circles for being incredibly controlling of her IP. This isn't necessarily bad, but she'd do things like have her lawyers write to Pern roleplaying games that had the temerity to add new dragon colors, write outside a certain point on the timeline, or let "unapproved" genders ride certain colors of dragon. Which, when you're dealing with a bunch of teenagers trying to have fun, came off as a bit heavy-handed.
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Sep 2, 2020 02:58
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