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CountFosco posted:I like the alzabo soup guys well enough, but I seriously wish they'd stop mapping every single thing onto "the virgin/whore" idea. I haven't heard the lastest episode so I'll be cynical and suspend judgment for know. But the Virgin whore thing is usually one of those things that people bring up and then you end up filling a million edges off every female character in order to fit them in one of the two categories to prove...something? Honestly it usually is one of those things where people miss the point by a mile and ironically end up deny female characters there own agency in the story cause they're too busy trying to talk about how make characters see them, they never bother to bring up what purpose they serve outside that. I feel like a lot of my judgement against alzabo guys is gonna rest in their analysis of Dorcas, who I feel is a strong character with development and her own motives but a more surface level viewing of her would miss them.
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Jan 8, 2018 12:46
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ElGroucho posted:I stopped listening to the podcast, it isn't really adding anything for me. Their "no spoiler" policy isn't helping either. I already read the book twice. They won't be close for years but if you've read some of Wolfe's other work try out the gene Wolfe literary podcast. They've done a much much better job of analysis in my opinion.
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Apr 1, 2019 02:12
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Chichevache posted:The Long Sun is my favorite. Silk is my favorite character in pretty much any medium. I love silk but still haven't managed to finish long sun. It just feels so tedious reading it after a while
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Apr 2, 2019 22:51
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Your Gay Uncle posted:After the slog that was the Long Sun I am blasting through Short Sun. Just Started Green's Jungles. So much better than the previous installments. I swear to god if I ever read the word "tunnels" again my head will explode. Long sun is frustrating because the aesthetic is great, and Silk might be my favorite protagonist of any novel. But jesus the plot just gets way to convoluted, trying to keep up with all these people running around shifting allegiances. Also I couldn't understand a single thing Spider said the entire book. Short Sun is fantastic though, some of Wolfe's best work by far.
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Feb 19, 2020 03:49
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Sekenr posted:I have one question - what is calde? This word is mentioned several times and I have no idea what it means. It's the leader of virion. It's head of state, the posts been absent since the death of the last calde, and the ayuntamiento took over sole control of the state.
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Feb 26, 2020 09:40
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Appoda posted:Coming close to finally finishing BOTNS. Looking forward to actually reading this thread and seeing what everyone else thought of it! Reread the whole series first honestly. The whole you can't read wolfe you can only reread wolfe ain't a meme
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Oct 31, 2020 07:58
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Please post if you have any idea what:late book 3 spoilers: Spiderwas saying, cause I have no goddamn idea, I glazed right over that nonsense.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:29
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Aramini's takes make me feel like an idiot, I don't even know if they're right or wrong, but they're so drat compelling.
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Dec 13, 2020 05:46
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Nakar posted:I have the opposite reaction to Aramini, I feel like he's full of poo poo but I have no idea how I'd demonstrate him right or wrong, but I know the GWLP guys' take on Fifth Head makes far more sense than anything he came up with. Oh,I'm pretty with you there, sometimes, most of the time, I'm pretty sure he's so far between the lines with his reading that he misses the actual text on the page, but I still find it interesting to listen to. Compare that to Borski whose not off in the corner doing a charlie day connecting all the non existent dots together. Gene wolfe literary podcast is still the exemplary podcast in my opinion, always have some great insight, and the dude's clearly have some real intellect to back them up. Elder Sign is also great if you guys haven't listened to it. I always felt Alzabo Soup was a little trite, just a recap with some weird and not very convincing speculation.I am sort of excited to see how they read Long sun now that they've dropped the whole first read BS ReReading Wolfe is fun just to see what the lad's and Lasse's on the Urth list got up to back in the day but I find a lot of their theories kind of out there. I have this feeling that a lot of this speculation has gotten so far into the weeds that they've completly forgot that Wolfe wrote actual narratives for his works, and they've just discarded it all to go off onto their Gnostic, Allegorical, Time Travel, Multiple dimension, what have you theories.
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Dec 13, 2020 06:08
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Finished Long Sun and...eh. Short Sun might change my opinion of it someday but overall it was just way, way too long-winded and expository for my taste. Long Sun has a really cool setting but I always got dragged down by how fast/slow it was. Bizzare pacing, the tunnels seem to go on forever and then by the fourth books things are moving so fast it's hard to keep up. Short Sun does a lot to make it better in retrospect
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Dec 16, 2020 07:33
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Always interesting to see someone's first time reading new sun. The first quote does remind me in some ways of the platonic forms. Plato and Augustine, specifically Augustine's thoughts on time and memory are two areas that always seemed very relevant to analysis on the novel, but never seem to be brought up. I cannot comment further without contaminating your reading experince unfortunately, even this short post is like running through a minefield.
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May 18, 2021 03:38
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Anybody have trouble getting into peace? I've tried twice before and always jumped a couple chapters in. Now the gene Wolfe podcast have hit it and I want to get the drat thing finished. Ive had trouble getting into his works before but never this bad.
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May 29, 2021 01:31
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Elden ring woulda been better if gene Wolfe had wrote the lore and not gurm
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Jun 10, 2021 12:10
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Let's be real Elden Ring is never coming out They really really are perfect together, whereas Gurm is all tax policy "Gritty" bullshit, when the fucker doesn't understand the first thing about medieval society.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:47
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The alzabo soup interpretation of that scene is the dumbest poo poo I ever heard
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Aug 25, 2021 03:25
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Hope to see you back when you finish Urth and especially the Long and Short Sun Saga's. People can say what they will about Wolfe, but reading his novels has profoundly impacted the way I live my life, which is something I cannot say about most prestige literature
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Oct 7, 2021 06:16
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quote:3) We're told a lot that there are other myriad races in the universe, and that humans don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Later, after Severian becomes the New Sun, Apetha sort of hints that this was a lie to take some of the pressure off of Severian. Are there even other races? Or is everything just offshoots/byproducts of humanity, like the Hierogrommates and the Hierodules themselves are As well as the Cumean, there's also the Salamander and the Nodules that summoned by Hethor for sentient creatures, and depending on your view the Alazabo itself seems to have a borrowed sentience or else it wouldn't have defended the family from the lobotomites.
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Oct 22, 2021 06:19
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When he wakes up in the inn at saltus his water trough became wine
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Jan 23, 2022 22:48
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Gotta get on that long/short sun train
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Feb 1, 2022 05:03
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The titular book, and VRT are both great, but the second part drives me nuts the way it's written.
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Feb 1, 2022 19:06
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Lex Talionis posted:Speaking of problematic female love interests, does anyone have a theory as to what is going on with Hyacinth in Book of the Long Sun? Specifically Silk's undying-love-at-first-sight thing. Horn of all people says he finds it inexplicable, which suggests Wolfe is doing it "on purpose". My best guess used to be that it was supposed to be some sort of "Christ's love for the Church" analogy, but with Alzabo Soup moving slowly through Long Sun, they made it seem like Silk fell instantly in love with her while she was possessed by Kypris. That's a bit more understandable since she's the goddess of love. So is it a bait and switch: well, I sort of couldn't help falling in love with you while you were someone else, so now being Silk I'm going to be loyal no matter who you really are? Alzabo Soup is generally dumb and wrong so keep that in mind, but that could also be part of it. Along with Silks Pas clone thing. That said it's also not all that crazy to me that he just fell in love with her. I'm guessing everyone here knows at least one person who went totally off the rails after meeting someone they fell in love with. Anyways. I finally started digging into Borges. Read the Garden of Forking paths, and Funes, his memory. Y'know I'm starting to see why people say he was a inspiration to Wolfe
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Feb 7, 2022 02:07
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You should probably read Urth. The criticism that his allusions aren't purposeful isnt very convincing once you get a bigger picture of the setting. Even the smaller ones exist to prod you into reading into the text a little deeper. Or in a different mode.
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Feb 8, 2022 19:08
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Whether that makes the story smaller or larger is purely a matter of perspective.
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Feb 14, 2022 19:11
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That was the convention for a time, but someone, probably aramini layed out a very convincing argument for the other.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:21
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Everyday I wish that Wolfe had just made a list of every work he's read and his thoughts on it.
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Feb 24, 2022 21:13
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It's by far the least interesting thing to consider in the works.
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Jun 22, 2022 01:31
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Justify, not so much as paper over. His lies by omission are telling, but he's also got such a poor social understanding and understanding of the wider world that when author severian writes it down it seems he smooths out a bit of the frictious moments that he didn't realize were so when he was younger
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Jun 22, 2022 02:38
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Sev straight up calls the doors a bulkhead at one point
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Jun 22, 2022 03:52
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sebmojo posted:Forlesen. That one Hero as Werewolf Doctor of Death Island
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Jul 21, 2022 22:35
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Long and Short sun have gotta have some of the biggest Wham moments of all of literature. That final lines of OBW had me grinning like an idiot at what a mad lad Wolfe was.
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Sep 8, 2022 20:47
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One day I'm gonna find a battered copy of Operation Ares in a used bin and the journey will be complete
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Feb 3, 2023 01:31
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Whale Vomit posted:Alzabo Soup is the good podcast That's gonna be a no from me dog
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Mar 17, 2023 22:43
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Finally picked up A Borrowed Man, alright enough so far although I don't quite think Wolfe has an ear for Hardboiled dialgoue, of course then I think he's doing it intentionally to show Smithe is more of an impersonation than he might think or let on, and that even the original was a writer not a detective and to expect Chandler to speak like Marlowe is a bit ridiculous. Regardless, his speech is utterly charmless as is his female companion. However what I've really come to praise is the prescience he showed in portraying the horribly frustrating experience of being forced to deal with "AI's". Smithe calling the cops on Colette's abduction only to be met with useless robots who don't understand the problem, can't help, don't understand why they can't help, and don't understand that they don't understand. Is spot on with what we've got nowadays, and I'm sure cost cutting will assure a world where all of our non friend/family communications are filtered through uncomprehending software. Just giving us that little extra bit of misery with every email, text, phonecall, and message. Also got through Sorceror's House. Between that and Borrowed Man it seems Wolfe was spending a lot of time staring at blueprints and pondering the ideas of liminal phantom space. It's all over the Black house and the Coldwater residence, not that I'm complaining it's a fascinating concept. What could be more terrifying than awaking, walking through your morning routine in a haze until your eyes set on a brand new door that doesn't belong there. Gonna go out on a limb and say there's something going on with the Humans being some sort of Recloning just as Smithe is, there's talk of the population being only 1bn with Colette saying she'd reduce that by half. Something awful happened, and I'm guessing it was some sort of full reset for humanity. And the novel is perhaps one of the only things to last past it.
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Jun 2, 2023 03:41
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I need them to stop bringing up Homestuck It was actually pretty good aside from the Homestuck poo poo. Two of the people are versed in the Novels and one hasn't completed them all so you get a nice mix of discussion about how one should and should not read and dissect a Wolfe novel, how he uses character and language, what references and inspiration he is drawing on, as well as a good mix of excitement as it dawns on people that they live in a rocket or the moon landing portrait. Gaius Marius fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jun 11, 2023 |
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Jun 11, 2023 01:24
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Kind of the Marvel movie problem I guess, you get that small high when you recognize something or hear a reference and then once the glow is gone you look back and realize the thing you just watched or read was actually pretty bad.
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Aug 30, 2023 04:32
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Nope, you are on the scent
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Sep 25, 2023 17:11
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Vodalus is basically the man Severian would be at the end of the story if he didn't have any character development. Wanting power for powers sake with no regard for others or the world.
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Sep 29, 2023 03:52
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Man hasn't even finished citadel gotta give him time to draw his own conclusions
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Oct 2, 2023 20:44
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Another week another Wolfe pod. https://spotify.link/MbNCnf8CADb They're covering a story I've never even heard of so I cannot comment on how solid they are.
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Oct 3, 2023 08:26
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Levitate posted:Re-reading the long sun and about 200 pages in and drat Silk is really suicidal huh I hadn't thought about it until this post but it's an interesting contrast to Typhon and his willingness to do anything to survive. Love Silk though, such an interesting and Human character. Man gets his life flipped turned upside down, learns everything he ever learned was a lie, and still tries to go out there and help out his friends and people, even when he's emotionally and physically getting destroyed through the whole series.
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Oct 16, 2023 04:11
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