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The story is called The Cosmic Atrocity and if I'm remembering right a kid sees a lost finale of The Simpsons where Krusty is some sort of elder god and starts seeing him everywhere. Then the kid's parents take him to a doctor who is like, "it's all true, but his name is Luxardo and he is the bringer of the end times.". It's pretty fuckin dumb.
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Feb 24, 2020 13:11
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Untrustable posted:The story is called The Cosmic Atrocity and if I'm remembering right a kid sees a lost finale of The Simpsons where Krusty is some sort of elder god and starts seeing him everywhere. Then the kid's parents take him to a doctor who is like, "it's all true, but his name is Luxardo and he is the bringer of the end times.". I dunno I kinda love "Your child is seeing the being that will end the universe but also is very dumb and thinks it's Krusty."
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Feb 24, 2020 15:17
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Hattie Masters posted:I dunno I kinda love "Your child is seeing the being that will end the universe but also is very dumb and thinks it's Krusty." Thank goodness the doctor did a rotation in Ancient Horrors and knew that the monster is actually named after a liquor brand.
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Feb 24, 2020 15:34
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When making Aviations for your hipster friends, only use the finest Elder Gods for your cherry liqueur.
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Feb 24, 2020 20:18
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I've brought up my stubborn love-hate of Eddings before but y'all mentioned his admission of his series being derivative palette swaps of each other; I kinda respect that about him actually. He went into some detail in the Rivan Codex about that stuff as well. He was keenly and completely aware of what he was writing, down to the Belgariad being a paint by numbers hero's journey with a couple of archetypes turned on their heads, and it still turned out entertaining enough that I go back and read quite a bit of his stuff every couple of years or so. He was no better than he ought to be and I can't even mock him for it because he admitted it happily. Dreamers was bad though, y'all
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Feb 24, 2020 21:19
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Actually having a plan is probably above average when writing fantasy fiction, even if it's ripping off something.
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Feb 25, 2020 12:06
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TheKennedys posted:I've brought up my stubborn love-hate of Eddings before but y'all mentioned his admission of his series being derivative palette swaps of each other; I kinda respect that about him actually. He went into some detail in the Rivan Codex about that stuff as well. He was keenly and completely aware of what he was writing, down to the Belgariad being a paint by numbers hero's journey with a couple of archetypes turned on their heads, and it still turned out entertaining enough that I go back and read quite a bit of his stuff every couple of years or so. He was no better than he ought to be and I can't even mock him for it because he admitted it happily. I can't go back to Eddings because when I got the fifth book in Belgiawhatever and found out the ending was literally "so what happens next? Buy the next books to find out!" I got so angry I sold them and never read more Eddings.
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Feb 25, 2020 20:48
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My first exposure to Eddings was reading The Ruby Knight ie the first Sparhawk book as a standalone. Thought it was super cool as a tween. I then ran through the rest of his stuff, and it's been a steady roll downhill since. I threw in the towel after The redemption of Athalus, which I picked up since I thought he'd do something new with a standalone. I was kinda right - but also horrified. Last I heard he was still flogging dead horses, I can only think his audience is new people who've not gotten their fill yet. edit: Ahahaha, guess so! Also I will be darned, he was a lot less prolific than I thought Serephina has a new favorite as of 23:03 on Feb 25, 2020 |
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Feb 25, 2020 21:18
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Serephina posted:My first exposure to Eddings was reading The Ruby Knight ie the first Sparhawk book as a standalone. Thought it was super cool as a tween. I then ran through the rest of his stuff, and it's been a steady roll downhill since. I threw in the towel after The redemption of Athalus, which I picked up since I thought he'd do something new with a standalone. I was kinda right - but also horrified. Last I heard he was still flogging dead horses, I can only think his audience is new people who've not gotten their fill yet. He hasn’t flogged any dead horses in at least a decade, unless there’s some type of afterlife that’s based around it.
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Feb 25, 2020 21:30
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so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? edit- the dude who wrote the cowboy wizard living in urban fantasy chicago, he branched off into Stones of Shanarra ripoffs, right? Are those still going?
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Feb 25, 2020 21:56
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Ian Fleming. He only wrote three books that weren't James Bond: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for his son, Thrilling Cities (about travel), and The Diamond Smugglers (a non-fiction book about diamond smuggling). Every time he tried to write anything other than Bond it wasn't very successful and he did most of his writing on his annual winter vacation to Jamaica anyway, so he ended up just writing a Bond book every year and a bunch of short stories for magazines and newspaper serialization. PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Jim Butcher. He finished the Codex Alera series a decade ago and he only wrote one book of a planned 9 for the Cinder Spires series in 2015. Apparently he had a huge problem with his home and I think illness shortly after that and the last Dresden Files book, so he had to delay writing for years, so Peace Talks is only now coming out in July. His stuff has always been successful as far as I know. chitoryu12 has a new favorite as of 22:01 on Feb 25, 2020 |
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Feb 25, 2020 21:59
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Arthur Conan Doyle was so tired of Sherlock Holmes he tried to kill him off, then had to bring him back because people wanted more Holmes. Maybe not the best example, since he did write a bunch of other stuff and critics generally thought that his historical novels were some of his best work, but I always think of him when I think about being done in by your own popularity.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:14
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Feel like Thomas Harris is gonna fit in this category soon. Except I guess he must have made a ton of money already, so maybe he just vanity writes now or whatever.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:21
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tight aspirations posted:Feel like Thomas Harris is gonna fit in this category soon. Didn’t he write a bunch of the Hannibal books because the studio was gonna have SOMEBODY write one, whether it was him or not?
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Feb 25, 2020 22:24
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chitoryu12 posted:Jim Butcher. He finished the Codex Alera series a decade ago and he only wrote one book of a planned 9 for the Cinder Spires series in 2015. Apparently he had a huge problem with his home and I think illness shortly after that and the last Dresden Files book, so he had to delay writing for years, so Peace Talks is only now coming out in July. His stuff has always been successful as far as I know. oh nooooo! dude always seemed Legit aside from the weird sex stuff in his book, i checked his website and it's recently updated with a bunch of fanart, including one picture of a lady loving a werewolf and both of their chests have exploded outwards. so, hm.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:25
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:oh nooooo! dude always seemed Legit aside from the weird sex stuff in his book, i checked his website and it's recently updated with a bunch of fanart, including one picture of a lady loving a werewolf and both of their chests have exploded outwards. After all the poo poo I’ve read for these forums, The Dresden Files are like gold to me. People who think they’re bad don’t know what “bad” truly is.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:32
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Didn’t he write a bunch of the Hannibal books because the studio was gonna have SOMEBODY write one, whether it was him or not? Ah, that sounds like it would probably explain Hannibal Rising at least. Pretty lovely contract he must've signed though. Fe: Hannibal, the Early Years by KJ Anderson would have been an interesting read.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:35
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chitoryu12 posted:After all the poo poo I’ve read for these forums, The Dresden Files are like gold to me. People who think they’re bad don’t know what “bad” truly is. yeah they're only bad in that they aren't trying to dress up their dopamine-button-pushing with literary pretentions, which everyone else was trying to do at the time. the dude knows his fanbase. he's basically an ascended fanfic author with sufficient clout to roll around in their wizardtiddy fetish like a pig in especially potent slop.
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Feb 25, 2020 22:40
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:
Shanarra, at least the first book and to a lesser extent the next two, are just lotr with the serial numbers filed off. Imagining a knockoff of that just brings to mind eye of argon, and I’m sure it can’t possibly be that entertaining
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Feb 25, 2020 22:50
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Ambitious Spider posted:Shanarra, at least the first book and to a lesser extent the next two, are just lotr with the serial numbers filed off. Imagining a knockoff of that just brings to mind eye of argon, and I’m sure it can’t possibly be that entertaining It wasn't a Shanarra knock off tbf. It was explicitly inspired by 'Pokemon meets Lost Roman Legions' and uh lives up to that overall. Also the Zerg from Starcraft are the bad guys
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Feb 25, 2020 22:56
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Dan Brown is a good example. All of his books are about his author insert character uncovering a religious conspiracy through interpreting coded messages.
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Feb 25, 2020 23:11
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:oh nooooo! dude always seemed Legit aside from the weird sex stuff in his book, i checked his website and it's recently updated with a bunch of fanart, including one picture of a lady loving a werewolf and both of their chests have exploded outwards. To be fair, that just sounds like a combination of scenes from two different dresden Files books. Thaumaturgy can be a bitch.
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Feb 25, 2020 23:21
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Didn’t he write a bunch of the Hannibal books because the studio was gonna have SOMEBODY write one, whether it was him or not? I sincerely hope the "Harris wrote the post-SotL Hannibal Lecter books as deliberately awful and bizarre to try and spite the studios" story is true, because it's the only thing that makes Hannibal make sense to me.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:13
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Konstantin posted:Dan Brown is a good example. All of his books are about his author insert character uncovering a religious conspiracy through interpreting coded messages. Dude wrote a solid 300-page story in 689 pages and made mint.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:30
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chitoryu12 posted:Jim Butcher. He finished the Codex Alera series a decade ago and he only wrote one book of a planned 9 for the Cinder Spires series in 2015. Apparently he had a huge problem with his home and I think illness shortly after that and the last Dresden Files book, so he had to delay writing for years, so Peace Talks is only now coming out in July. His stuff has always been successful as far as I know. The Codex Alera was surprisingly decent, Jim Butcher always wanted to be a classic swords-and-magic fantasy author, which is why I think the Dresden Files went so terribly far off the deep end from a solid original premise. E: I should clarify for those who haven't read The Dresden Files; it goes from a campy 'down-and-out private dick' mystery trope, but also wizard! Which is fun, to straight-up weird fairy sex magiks over the course of about a million books. It seems like this stems a lot from the concept for the series being a one-off short story that exploded in popularity, so Butcher decided to make it into a series, then ran out of anything to do with the story except make it take a "Sword of Truth" turn towards his preferred genre. Elviscat has a new favorite as of 00:50 on Feb 26, 2020 |
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Feb 26, 2020 00:39
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Wait, are we pretending the Cormoran Strike novels haven't been successful?
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Feb 26, 2020 00:53
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Elviscat posted:The Codex Alera was surprisingly decent, Jim Butcher always wanted to be a classic swords-and-magic fantasy author, which is why I think the Dresden Files went so terribly far off the deep end from a solid original premise. That... does not really describe how the books have gone.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:53
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Senior Woodchuck posted:That... does not really describe how the books have gone. How would you describe it then?
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Feb 26, 2020 01:01
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Elviscat posted:How would you describe it then? You are definitely thinking of Patrick Rothfuss with the fairy sex thing. There’s shitloads of fairies in Dresden but no boning as far as I know. There’s also sex vampires but they’re presented as horrifying.
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Feb 26, 2020 01:16
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food court bailiff posted:You are definitely thinking of Patrick’s Rothfuss with the fairy sex thing. There’s shitloads of fairies in Dresden but no boning as far as I know. There’s also sex vampires but they’re presented as horrifying. There's exactly one fairy sex thing in The Dresden Files as far as I remember, which is Mab having sex with Harry to make him the Winter Knight, which is described as being less like sex and more like making passionate love to a hurricane. The one weird sex thing is when he has sex with a half-vampire Susan, which I think he did on a dare from someone who said you can never write a passionate, romantic sex scene involving BDSM. The books hit a large scale pretty quickly. The first few were about smaller individual jobs like a rogue warlock killing a few people or conflict between the different types of werewolves in Chicago, but I think it only took 4 books for the fae to get involved in it and we're now at 16 this year. I do appreciate that after so many books of the women rolling their eyes at Harry's chauvinism and "chivalry" they finally slapped him upside the head and told him to seriously knock it off, so he doesn't do that poo poo anymore.
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Feb 26, 2020 01:23
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I guess I overrepresented the sex stuff, probably because Harry won't stop talking about how much sex energy he has after getting banged into the winter knight but in my defense the entirety of fairydom is presented as sex-crazed, and a bunch of them also want to bone-down with Harry. I will give Butcher credit for not having Harry enter in to a super creepy groomer relationship with Molly since that's pretty much a bad sci-fi fantasy trope at this point. You can't deny the books have strayed pretty far from putative Detective novels to straight-up fantasy world building though. I'm not saying I don't enjoy them either, and some of the imaginations of mythological figures in modern times Santa/Odin Businesslady/Valkyrie are very fun.
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Feb 26, 2020 01:32
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Elviscat posted:I will give Butcher credit for not having Harry enter in to a super creepy groomer relationship with Molly since that's pretty much a bad sci-fi fantasy trope at this point. IIRC, this is even set up with Molly coming onto him and Dresden dumping cold water on her and telling her its gross and inappropriate.
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Feb 26, 2020 02:08
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Djeser posted:Arthur Conan Doyle was so tired of Sherlock Holmes he tried to kill him off, then had to bring him back because people wanted more Holmes. Maybe not the best example, since he did write a bunch of other stuff and critics generally thought that his historical novels were some of his best work, but I always think of him when I think about being done in by your own popularity. I wish his ghost stories took off more, I’ve been big into ghost stories the past few months, especially the Victorian-ish-era ones, and “The Captain of the Polestar” is one of my favorites in the genre
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Feb 26, 2020 02:47
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Dienes posted:IIRC, this is even set up with Molly coming onto him and Dresden dumping cold water on her and telling her its gross and inappropriate. Yeah, Butcher has actually been a really good author when it comes to avoiding creepiness in fantasy. Even when Dresden was being a chivalrous douche, the women were calling him out for having an outdated and misogynistic stance on them and after a while Butcher finally had him realize that he really was being an rear end in a top hat and quit it. I honestly can't think of any female characters in The Dresden Files who could be described as damsels or "weak" because he writes all of them as intelligent badasses, to the point where it starts stretching credibility just because no room could have this many awesome and competent people in it at one time.
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Feb 26, 2020 03:27
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there's no need to downplay how raunchy these books are, even if Harry doesn't gently caress the naked 18 year old the author still saw fit to lovingly describe her pierced nipples. harry and butcher aren't the same person, just because harry doesn't gently caress the sexy naked sexwitches with their bonerdemon lustslaves doesn't mean the dude wasn't rocking chub the entire time he was writing it. like. . . come on y'all. it is catholicism 101 to take an object of lust and publically deny your lust for it, while enshrining it in a guilded glass-fronted Lustbox (tm.) edit- hey, hey guys, how hosed up would it be if like a huge big titty sorcerer demon just poofed in here, right now, and was like, "gimmie the D" and i was like "no! no!!! that's not what tenchi would do!" but she kept on grabbing at it? it would be pretty cool of me to NOT bone down if i had the opportunity. that's just the kind of adultm, mature character development i have.
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Feb 26, 2020 04:19
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it's the classic fanfic "two people but only one bed" scenario except the two people are harry dresden and "pointless self-sacrifice despite there being a multitude of better options."
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Feb 26, 2020 04:22
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the middle point of every harry dresden novel is when he begins to describe himself as magically exhausted and totally tapped out. in the 700 pages of book 5, this comes shortly after page 100. VVVVV exactly! female characters need agency beyond "will/won't gently caress" VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
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Feb 26, 2020 04:23
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Yeah, I honestly find "sexy ingenue throws herself at her male mentor and he rebuffs her with a lecture about how it's Not Appropriate" to be nearly as obnoxious as the alternatives, albeit not as repulsive. It's still sexualizing the relationship, just with an extra helping of See What A Good Person My Protagonist Is.
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Feb 26, 2020 04:23
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:so aside from rowling and goodkind, what other (not obligatorily genre) authors got hugely successful, failed to branch out, then went back to rehashing what made them famous in the first place? Rowling apparently writes a thriller series under a pen name. This is where her really terrible opinions started to come out (other than Twitter.) Edit: Also thread favorite bad book The Mister just got a movie deal.
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Feb 26, 2020 04:40
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, I honestly find "sexy ingenue throws herself at her male mentor and he rebuffs her with a lecture about how it's Not Appropriate" to be nearly as obnoxious as the alternatives, albeit not as repulsive. It's still sexualizing the relationship, just with an extra helping of See What A Good Person My Protagonist Is. I'm willing to accept it in this case because Molly is someone rebelling against a stifling Christian upbringing and is suggested to have engaged in a lot of irresponsible sex and drug usage as a teenager. Harry is the first guy that she's actually felt some kind of connection to, but she mistakes their relationship for a romantic one because she has no good examples of proper adult relationships except the parents she's been ignoring. Molly doing it and Harry telling her to cut that poo poo out makes sense when it happens.
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Feb 26, 2020 04:42
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