|
Kchama posted:In Rotfhuss's case, he was now a celebrity and running a charity that did little but pass through money and pay himself, so he didn't need to write any more. ugh. the penny arcade method, but worse.
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 11:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 09:39 |
|
|
The sad thing is the dude can write well (not plot or anything, just word flow). He's one of the only examples I know of where the person has a great flow and readability to their work, but their work sucks balls and they deserve to be beaten with sticks for loving up perfectly good ideas.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 12:00
|
|
|
NoiseAnnoys posted:ugh. the penny arcade method, but worse. Child's Play has a 98% on charity navigator https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/203584556
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 21:07
|
|
|
Kchama posted:In Rotfhuss's case, he was now a celebrity and running a charity that did little but pass through money and pay himself, so he didn't need to write any more. Yeah, you can really tell he likes being a famous author more than he actual likes writing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
HelleSpud posted:Child's Play has a 98% on charity navigator i meant parlaying an awful creative endeavor into a full time charity gig child’s play is fine, its creators are shitheads
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 21:19
|
|
|
Elfface posted:In the first book, I assumed "No, Kvothe is telling the story so of course he's making himself look better. He even gets called out on it by a listener." If I remember correctly the guy who snarks to Kvothe about his crush is implied to be Kvothe's son by the sex fairy because lol
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 21:22
|
|
|
This is probably going to make some people mad because the only reason I read this awful book series was due to recommendations from these forums, but the Obsidian Shadows series by Mercedes Lackey is awful. The series really suffers from making its villains extremely over the top evil. First off, the protagonist's father is ridiculously misogynist. Like even incels and PUA might tell him to chill out. He's also really a douchebag in general, but its at least at somewhat unbelievable level. It has a race of evil demons and one of the way it establishes that they are evil is by having a bunch of sex scenes between a mother and her son. There are so many sex scenes, basically every time they show up it happens. It also has a race of shadow elves which are a race of corrupted elves. They are so evil and beyond redemption they must be slaughtered to the last child. I stopped reading when the book went into detail about how it was absolutely necessary for the characters to kill babies and toddlers. Like I'm fine with a fantasy work having evil races, but there was no reason to include that in the book. On the flipside, the second book spent an excessively long time describing how great the elves are.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:11
|
|
|
Runa posted:If I remember correctly the guy who snarks to Kvothe about his crush is implied to be Kvothe's son by the sex fairy because lol Wait, what? I think I missed that. Or just didn't think it'd be possible. Like... fairy time is a real thing in the Kvothe stories. But I mean, I just didn't think about it because he's 25 at most in his 'world-weary, hyper-handsome and awesome but sad innkeeper' framing device despite acting like he's much older. IShallRiseAgain posted:The series really suffers from making its villains extremely over the top evil. To be fair, as a true crime fanatic, I have discovered that there's an... impressive amount of people in the world who really are supremely evil or misogynistic.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:22
|
|
|
Kchama posted:
I think the main difference is how it appears in real life vs in fiction - in real life terrible things happen all the time because billions of people are making trillions of decisions a day and a lot of those decisions are going to be bad ones, that result in other bad decisions in a snowball of terrible people. However in fiction when a terrible thing happens it's because a single writer, or a small group, decided it would serve the story for it to happen. So when terrible things just KEEP happening with no real breaks or levity or nuance it feels different because they could just as easily have written anything else because they are in complete control of the narrative.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:31
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:It also has a race of shadow elves which are a race of corrupted elves. They are so evil and beyond redemption they must be slaughtered to the last child. I stopped reading when the book went into detail about how it was absolutely necessary for the characters to kill babies and toddlers. Like I'm fine with a fantasy work having evil races, but there was no reason to include that in the book. God, that reminded me of the Theirs Not To Reason Why series, which is kinda "Dune but missing the point" (I think I may have mentioned it in this thread before). Basically it's a sci-fi series with lots of alien species, and one thing it makes note of is that through some quirk of convergent evolution just about every single sapient species ended up with a broadly compatible set of ethics, so everybody is getting along reasonably well. There's even a shared universalist religion and everything. And then there's one particular exception, a kind of semi-insectoid species that just absolutely loves eating other sapient species alive and positively will not stop. And it's not even a matter of some animalistic hive mind, they're an advanced species capable of higher reasoning, space travel, the works, they just love murder and cannibalism that much. And somehow they're such a threat that literally every single other species working together is barely capable of keeping them contained to their homeworld. And throughout the series the protagonist makes it very clear that for the rest of the galaxy to survive, the only way forwards is complete and utter genocide of that species. She's got basically Kwisatz Haderach levels of precognition, and even she cannot see any other way but wholesale eradication. And that explicitly includes destroying their young and newborn, IIRC with the protagonist making a note that re-education simply wouldn't work. She even goes so far as to psychically torture somebody else into going along with the genocide (by making him experience what it'd be like to be eaten alive) cause apparently it's just that drat important. I actually rather enjoyed most of the series, but all of this (mostly happening in the last book) really retroactively soured me on the whole thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:43
|
|
|
BioEnchanted posted:I think the main difference is how it appears in real life vs in fiction - in real life terrible things happen all the time because billions of people are making trillions of decisions a day and a lot of those decisions are going to be bad ones, that result in other bad decisions in a snowball of terrible people. However in fiction when a terrible thing happens it's because a single writer, or a small group, decided it would serve the story for it to happen. So when terrible things just KEEP happening with no real breaks or levity or nuance it feels different because they could just as easily have written anything else because they are in complete control of the narrative. I mean, that's fair. It is, unfortunately, not unrealistic for people to be that unrelentingly terrible. It just may or may not be fun to read about, depending on how it is written/presented.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:44
|
|
|
I could be wrong, it's been a while and I don't really have the urge to return to it
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:52
|
|
|
Runa posted:I could be wrong, it's been a while and I don't really have the urge to return to it I mean it's not IMPOSSIBLE. I can kind of see where you could have that theory, especially since Bast's age doesn't matter so much since fae time is weird. And it's a common theory judging by a quick Google search.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 08:57
|
|
|
Perestroika posted:And throughout the series the protagonist makes it very clear that for the rest of the galaxy to survive, the only way forwards is complete and utter genocide of that species. She's got basically Kwisatz Haderach levels of precognition, and even she cannot see any other way but wholesale eradication. And that explicitly includes destroying their young and newborn, IIRC with the protagonist making a note that re-education simply wouldn't work. Using science fiction to explore the question of "What if you had to do a genocide though? Absolutely had to. No choice. Wouldn't that be ethically and morally ok then? Now I'm not saying that Hitler had no choice but it makes you think, right?"
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 10:54
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Using science fiction to explore the question of "What if you had to do a genocide though? Absolutely had to. No choice. Wouldn't that be ethically and morally ok then? Now I'm not saying that Hitler had no choice but it makes you think, right?" I recently read a "hey we just found a planet full of robots they want to work for humans gently caress yeah happy ending hooray" story. No need to worry about the ethical implications of slavery when it's what the slaves want right. (Orphans of the Void by Michael Shaara: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50827)
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 11:09
|
|
|
Why is sci fi an endless parade of perversion and foulness? (except for the stuff I personally like, obvs.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 11:27
|
|
|
Tree Bucket posted:Why is sci fi an endless parade of perversion and foulness? I blame sci-fi authors.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 11:31
|
|
|
Tree Bucket posted:Why is sci fi an endless parade of perversion and foulness? The medium just lends itself to weid stuff. It goes like that: "Nono, it's not my weird fetish, it's an exploration of what humanity could become" "That's just a logical consequence of the setting" "You can't judge the people of Kidult VIIX by our standards" And sometimes it's even true
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 13:27
|
|
|
The greatest strength of fantasy and science fiction is the ability to explore some of the wildest ideas mankind has thought up without taking on the historical baggage that comes with those ideas. For example, Dan Simmons' Hyperion deals with what the future of humanity itself will be, as we gain more agency over ourselves, and become capable of producing other sentient beings. In the book, here's a faction of humans who've embraced modifying their own DNA to better themselves, and they're depicted in a very positive light. The book dodges the parallels to the Nazi ideologies of eugenics and racial purity by being set in the far flung future. Of course, some authors use the disconnect just to push whatever garbage worldview they have under a different name. Atlas Shrugged comes to mind.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 13:30
|
|
|
Eugenics has entirely different implications when it's done to oneself in a post-scarcity setting, without a singular idea for what a 'better' human is. No "enhanced brain for leadership for me, enhanced muscle for farming for you" but instead "I can perceive eight more colours!" "Neat! I can perceive three fewer, so I don't have to worry about them distracting me from nirvana."
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 13:39
|
|
|
Runcible Cat posted:I recently read a "hey we just found a planet full of robots they want to work for humans gently caress yeah happy ending hooray" story. No need to worry about the ethical implications of slavery when it's what the slaves want right. If you're doing exactly what the slaves want regardless of your own feelings, then who's really the slave
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 15:00
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:I blame sci-fi authors. It's true, the genre would be much better off without them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 15:49
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Using science fiction to explore the question of "What if you had to do a genocide though? Absolutely had to. No choice. Wouldn't that be ethically and morally ok then? Now I'm not saying that Hitler had no choice but it makes you think, right?" I mean this was basically the entire point of Ender's Game. Orson Card wanted to indoctrinate kids into his weird-rear end morality of "If you're good, everything you do is good. Even genocide. Bad people can never do good, even when doing good. Because they are bad." It's funny that he got so mad about the person who make the essay about how Ender was basically Hitler (an essay his pubiisher requested be written to drum up press for the book, weirdly), and then his rebuttal basically went "Ender ISN'T Hitler because Hitler is BAD. Ender is GOOD, so his genocide was Shining Goodness. Even though he killed an innocent race. He's good, so no matter what he does, he's good." EDIT: Like I seem to remember Card actually using some sort of phrase like Shining Goodness in reference to the genocide. Card was always a loving psycho. Kchama has a new favorite as of 18:09 on Jul 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
I have made the mistake of defending the Ender books in the past, and as I’ve grown as a person and learned more about Card I’m ashamed I ever did, but….what? The genocide in Ender’s Game literally isn’t ever presented as a good thing, it breaks him so badly he wanders the universe as a broken religious figure obsessively trying to atone for it. It is, as early as the first book, presented as a horrifying abuse of power relying on lying to the global populace in order to influence international politics and relations. It’s never some “tough people making tough decisions” poo poo. There’s literally way more than enough wrong with the Ender universe already without having to make stuff up about it… e: like the whole reason Ender is supposedly innocent of the genocide is that he literally didn’t know about it and was being actively lied to the whole time, not because it was at all justified or righteous Rockman Reserve has a new favorite as of 19:09 on Jul 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 19:07
|
|
|
I am surprised he didn't use the argument "Ender killed a couple hiveminds so like, three actual individual people."
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 19:07
|
|
|
On the subject of the Ender books, this thread and forum in general are pretty aware of Card’s weird repressed gross sci fi author sexual poo poo, right? Like naked soapy boys fighting to death in the shower, Ender eventually becoming a proud religious volcel, the weird sex-and-eugenics undercurrent of the whole setting, whatever. I’m going to spoil a central premise of the last original book here: Ender, who’s now biologically close to a hundred and finally dying, uses Science Magic to accidentally bring soulless clones of his siblings as children into existence. He can transfer his consciousness out of his dying body into them to save and extend his life. He hates his brother Peter so much that he first attempts to integrate with his sister Valentine’s body, but says it felt too weird and foreign and wrong. As a trans woman who didn’t admit it to myself or come out until literally decades later, it is really funny that that part pissed me off so much when I read it, to the point where it was probably the most upset I’d ever been at a book at the time, and I just…never did any self-reflection or examination about it. 🙃. ”What the gently caress, don’t give up, you tried for like two minutes off screen, what the hell!”
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 19:27
|
|
|
Rockman Reserve posted:I have made the mistake of defending the Ender books in the past, and as I’ve grown as a person and learned more about Card I’m ashamed I ever did, but….what? The "Ender's Game is actually Hitler apologia" essay is an extremely hot take that uses similarities like "Ender and Hitler were both third children" and "Ender and Hitler both had few relationships with women" to claim that only someone with deep knowledge of Hitler's life could possibly have written it. It's stupid as poo poo. It also tries to draw a connection between the sequel books being set on a planet colonized by Brazilians and Nazis escaping to South America after the war, when this is clearly actually just because Card is a Mormon and he did his mission in Brazil. Write what you know. Card is a conservative religious republican and a homophobe, but he isn't a Nazi. Sagebrush has a new favorite as of 19:42 on Jul 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 19:40
|
|
|
Rockman Reserve posted:I have made the mistake of defending the Ender books in the past, and as I’ve grown as a person and learned more about Card I’m ashamed I ever did, but….what? The genocide in Ender’s Game literally isn’t ever presented as a good thing, it breaks him so badly he wanders the universe as a broken religious figure obsessively trying to atone for it. It is, as early as the first book, presented as a horrifying abuse of power relying on lying to the global populace in order to influence international politics and relations. It’s never some “tough people making tough decisions” poo poo. Yeah, that's why it's loving weird-rear end morality! OSC wanted to prove that even genocide is good as long as it is done by a good person, because that would be the absolute affirmation of his moral code. But he's uhh, he absolutely couldn't get it across. You were SUPPOSE to think that Ender was good because he can't do bad, so even murdering children and genociding innocent species was good in the long run. But people didn't see it that way because well, OSC sucks. Instead people saw pretty much exactly what you said for the most part. OSC had a REALLY weird view of his own writing that very rarely, if ever, matched what other people got out of it. Like as far as I'm aware from what he said in the article, 'justification' and 'righteousness' don't really exist to his view of good or evil. You physically can't do bad if you are Good, so no matter how bad you are, it's just somehow Good. It'll be good in the end. And Evil people can't do good, so if they try to go good, it'll turn out Evil anyways. Anyways, Ender's 'innocence' was more to trick the reader than anything else. All of his bad things he is plainly aware he is doing something bad, but people step in and make sure he doesn't suffer the direct consequences of his actions and to hide his culpability from the reader. Hell, even when he blows up the alien home world, he's not really innocent even if he thinks it is training. Because just before he blew up the home world he started to recognize that something was very wrong, and it just made him more desperate to use the planet-destroyer weapon on the alien home world. Rockman Reserve posted:On the subject of the Ender books, this thread and forum in general are pretty aware of Card’s weird repressed gross sci fi author sexual poo poo, right? Like naked soapy boys fighting to death in the shower, Ender eventually becoming a proud religious volcel, the weird sex-and-eugenics undercurrent of the whole setting, whatever. Don't forget the book about the gay boy and man lovers, because OSC didn't see it as 'gay' somehow. Sagebrush posted:The "Ender's Game is actually Hitler apologia" essay is an extremely hot take that uses similarities like "Ender and Hitler were both third children" and "Ender and Hitler both had few relationships with women" to claim that only someone with deep knowledge of Hitler's life could possibly have written it. It's stupid as poo poo. It also tries to draw a connection between the sequel books being set on a planet colonized by Brazilians and Nazis escaping to South America after the war, when this is clearly actually just because Card is a Mormon and he did his mission in Brazil. Write what you know. It was basically written to be some strawman for OSC to tear apart for publicity. Like, OSC even had a rebuttal in the exact same issue of the magazine. That's why it was really baffling that OSC basically went "Wow that's wrong! He's not Hitler because Hitler was bad and did genocide bad. Ender is good so his genocide was good." He whiffed a softball. EDIT: I should clarify. I'm not accusing him of being a Nazi. His entire thing was "Yeah Hitler was evil and sucked", but apparently wanted to prove that you could be good while doing the ultimate worst act. Kchama has a new favorite as of 20:47 on Jul 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 19:47
|
|
|
Same morality as Dominic Deegan
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
OSC probably thinks Frodo should've just given the One Ring to Aragorn.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
NoiseAnnoys posted:i meant parlaying an awful creative endeavor into a full time charity gig Does Child’s Play pay the PA authors? I thought it just paid for its separate administration staff, hmm.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 22:12
|
|
|
Sagebrush posted:Card is a conservative religious republican and a homophobe, but he isn't a Nazi. OSC posted:Where will he get his “national police”? The NaPo will be recruited from “young out-of-work urban men” and it will be hailed as a cure for the economic malaise of the inner cities. In other words, Obama will put a thin veneer of training and military structure on urban gangs, and send them out to channel their violence against Obama’s enemies. Instead of doing drive-by shootings in their own neighborhoods, these young thugs will do beatings and murders of people “trying to escape” – people who all seem to be leaders and members of groups that oppose Obama.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 22:34
|
|
|
Fascist yes, but uses a different strawman from the Nazis, so subtly distinct. Lemon vs lemon-lime. Not bothering to look it up now, but the fore/after word in my copy of Ender's Game said something about how he was created as an 'Innocent Killer' because from the genocide to beating his bullies so badly they died, he didn't know he was killing and had been manipulated by adults into being in that situation. I figured it was some 'a good person even after doing horrible things because it wasn't their fault' which is blaming the Trolley Problem on the guy with the lever, and not whoever tied people to the tracks. But instead it's some "He's fundamentally good, so can't do evil, but they needed him to do evil, so they had to disconnect him from the evil"? Did anyone ever understand the book they were involved in?
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 17:39
|
|
|
Elfface posted:Fascist yes, but uses a different strawman from the Nazis, so subtly distinct. Lemon vs lemon-lime. I mean one of the things that's interesting about authors like OSC is that they reveal a lot more than they intend via the way they present a story - and interpreting Ender's Game through an actual human mind gives rise to different things than whatever insanity was going on in OSC's head when he wrote it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 18:22
|
|
|
Kchama posted:Anyways, Ender's 'innocence' was more to trick the reader than anything else. All of his bad things he is plainly aware he is doing something bad, but people step in and make sure he doesn't suffer the direct consequences of his actions and to hide his culpability from the reader. Hell, even when he blows up the alien home world, he's not really innocent even if he thinks it is training. Because just before he blew up the home world he started to recognize that something was very wrong, and it just made him more desperate to use the planet-destroyer weapon on the alien home world. (a) he believes (and has been repeatedly explicitly told) that it's all a simulated "final exam", not live-fire, and (b) he hates it, and makes an intentional decision to go Maximum Warcrime in the simulation because he thinks that will guarantee they never let him anywhere near control of the real fleet. He's completely blindsided when they all start cheering rather than going "what the gently caress was that".
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2023 12:12
|
|
|
ToxicFrog posted:It's been quite a while since I read it, but IIRC that scene is pretty clear that For A, yes that is what he's been told, but he starts to notice that things aren't lining up for that in the lead-up to the final battle. And B) Never made sense as that is exactly what he was training to do. It's why he had the Doctor Devices, to wipe out the 'Buggers'. He even brings this up about using them on the homeworld before the final battle because it is what he was planning to do. Mazer tells him to think hard before deciding to do it because 'the Buggers never targetted civilians, which sure doesn't match up with the Scouring of China convincing everyone that the Buggers will kill them ALL. (I know in sequel books he lays out that the 40 million they killed and the agriculture they wiped out were somehow only military, but uhh...) He could have just decided to fail there, in fact, he contemplated it, but he decided to fail by winning too hard I guess. Which is apparently what Mazer and Graff were counting on, I guess. Also the whole 'We needed to trick you because you're just like, so compassionate and loving that you could understand the Buggers and anticipate them' was the biggest crock of poo poo ever, because that compassion never comes in up the battles. At no point does he use love and compassion to defeat his enemies. It's used to explain why commands so much respect from his underlings, but he basically commands just like HIS commander, just with the words "Remember, the enemy's gate is down." The entire book is just to manipulate the reader, and the chapter where they find out they genocided a race ends on a "and everyone laughs". It only has one good message (having a mental illness is not shameful), and I'm not even sure they keep it for the sequels. Captain Monkey posted:I mean one of the things that's interesting about authors like OSC is that they reveal a lot more than they intend via the way they present a story - and interpreting Ender's Game through an actual human mind gives rise to different things than whatever insanity was going on in OSC's head when he wrote it. Yeah this is the case. I'm not even sure the 'Mental illness is not shameful' message is actually intended as a result. EDIT: Also, "the Buggers never deliberately attacked civilians" is a weird retcon happening in the same book because the whole point of the Buggers is that they didn't understand the concept of 'civilians'. They were a hive-mind where only the queens were actually sapient. So they had no problem killing everyone before them as they just thought they were killing mindless drones. To them, no one of intelligence was being harmed. Kchama has a new favorite as of 09:21 on Jul 12, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2023 09:01
|
|
|
I remember one weird passage in Ender's Game where I think Bonzo slapped Petra so hard with the back of his hand that little trickles of blood were left from his nails. I still think about it. It sounds absurd.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2023 12:56
|
|
|
Brawnfire posted:I remember one weird passage in Ender's Game where I think Bonzo slapped Petra so hard with the back of his hand that little trickles of blood were left from his nails. The bad kid has to be super effete, don'tcha know? Also there is some weirdness about Bonzo's age and how long he's been a commander. Since like, it's said that unless you're a really good commander, you'll likely lose your slot to a new kid. And you graduate at 14 to a specialized school. But Bonzo is fifteen when he dies and it's harped on constantly by Ender that he sucks as a commander. Does OSC just forget his own worldbuilding constantly?
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2023 13:45
|
|
|
I never gave Ender's Game much thought because what should have been awesome to learn about, Serious Summer Space Camp, turns out to be really boring. All they do is play handball all day before turning in for a non-homoerotic shower. The subplot where the two kids become pundits was incredibly hard to take seriously.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2023 13:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 09:39 |
|
|
Inspector Gesicht posted:I never gave Ender's Game much thought because what should have been awesome to learn about, Serious Summer Space Camp, turns out to be really boring. All they do is play handball all day before turning in for a non-homoerotic shower. The entire point of the book originally was to connect the original Ender’s Game short story to the Speaker of the Dead, which were originally unrelated stories. Also, the kids become bloggers thing is amazing because somehow world leaders listened to these two idiot kids because they knew how to use sockpuppets.
|
|
#
?
Jul 12, 2023 14:08
|
|