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They're under no obligation; it's just weird to see stuff that I aged out of like PA, South Park, or Kevin Smith films still ticking along because I wonder who they're for anymore.
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Jun 30, 2015 05:48
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Fried Chicken posted:While it is true that every year more people age out of their target demographic, it is also true that every year more people age into it. Do they though? It's been my experience that most younger people are into their own sophomoric poo poo and could give less than a gently caress about the sophomoric poo poo their folks were into.
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Jun 30, 2015 18:26
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ImpAtom posted:Stuff like Batman or Transformers has remained relevant across multiple generations due to being reinvented and represented constantly. Of course, of course, plenty of things are broad enough in their appeal to jump from one generation to the next, but we're specifically talking about stuff like PA here. Content created by a specific group of man children catering to a specific group of man children; I'm not really sold on its intergenerational appeal. It's like showing a teenager a Kevin Smith film. I just can't imagine their idiot brains latching onto it the way our idiot brains did when we were that age.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:11
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Fried Chicken posted:Canterbury Tales has a joke where one guy farts in the face of another guy. I guess. I just sort of assumed that younger generations would move on to newer iterations, but thinking about it I suppose there isn't another web comic that corners topical poo poo about video games the way PA does. Oh, and they've got PAX, which probably helps a ton. Fried Chicken posted:Failing to remember this is the first sign of getting old, soon you will be complaining about not understanding slang, then music being too loud, and finally that the kids these days don't show any respect and need to get off your lawn In any case, this has been me for as long as I can remember, so I'm more or less resigned to it at this point. I seriously remember my brother telling me when I was about fifteen years old that I was destined to be one of those old geezer who would refuse to give the kids their ball back whenever they kicked it over my fence. Maybe if I play my cards right I can be the antagonist in someone's coming of age story.
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Jul 1, 2015 09:15
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Ornamented Death posted:It's there through the whole book, though it becomes less common after about the halfway point. ^ If I recall, it drops off pretty heavily after her first day back at work, then only crops up again for the occasional quick expo moments.
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Jul 26, 2015 18:09
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Mars4523 posted:Large parts of what's wrong with Ascher have to do with Jim Butcher, however. He apparently wanted his lead to have one more book's worth of being a creeper before he gets tied down with a relationship. Hah, jokes on you if you think he's done with the male gaze bullshit, whether or not Harry's in a stable relationship. It's always been there, it's always gonna be there. Here's a fun game, list a single female villain in all of Butcher's work that wasn't a femme fatale. I guess maybe Kumori? For all ten seconds of screen time she's had. And maybe there's one in somewhere in the comics? I haven't read them. Point is that evil ladies in Butcher-land come in two flavors, dangerous and sexy or mysterious and sexy. Hannah Ascher was just a particularly lazy nadir of a common trend in his work.
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Aug 5, 2015 13:09
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Mars4523 posted:So, you can be dangerous and sexy, mysterious and sexy, or a literal desiccated corpse. Options! I'm not saying they literally don't exist—I already pointed out Kumori—just that they are the rare, rare exception. ConfusedUs posted:The female Eeb was weird looking, I think. Esmerelda Eebs was described as being outwardly attractive and defiantly fell under the 'creepy sexy' heading. Remember when she crawled into Harry's lap and was getting all NC-17 when trying to decide if she and Esteban should eat him? Troll was clearly set up for a Heel-Face turn, so I wouldn't count that.
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Aug 5, 2015 15:04
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Wade Wilson posted:Mother Winter. Not a villain. Not nice, but not exactly evil.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:18
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Exmond posted:I dunno man, people came up with a lot of examples to counter your argument. Are we about to kick off the "Is Dresden files full of misogyny" argument again? Even I gave an example, and I said in a later post that I wasn't speaking in absolutes. From that point on I was just going along with the carefree pedantics because this is the internet and that's how one rolls. But anyhoo, yeah Dresden files is full of misogyny. It's not even an argument so much as an empirical fact, and hey I still like the books, but it's important to be critical of media. Even the media you enjoy, hell, I would argue especially the media you enjoy. That said, based on this post: Exmond posted:No, Hannah Ascher is actually pretty okay and the twist was interesting. Once she goes into full evil mode she has some really dumb reasons to go after dresden. I'm not sure that we're going to see eye to eye here, but in Hannah Ascher case: Evil sexpot with (attempted)rape as her backstory is not 'pretty okay'.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:10
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docbeard posted:Though the reason Ascher turned warlock being that she was a rape victim because, broadly, That's What Happens To Women wasn't exactly Butcher's finest hour, I guess. And yeah, the way the narrative treated her was kind of creepy at times. But I still thought she was a good character. This is sort of the crux of the issue though, if just you stripped out all the creep-hattery she'd be an all right character, because Jim Butcher is actually a decent writer and understand stuff like characterization and dialogue. But because he's Jim Butcher he doesn't seem to be capable of writing about lady characters without a certain amount of unfortunate baggage. And the "It's just Dresden's character" thing doesn't fly, because there's no shortage of it in Codex Alera as well. It's frustrating, because if he was a complete hack writing two-dee bimbos then it'd be easy enough to just chuck the books away and forget he ever existed. But because he's got some talent and spent a lot of time honing his craft he's able to turn out stuff you want to read, only you can't without noticing the bits where he falls short. And it niggles at you because you look at the quality of is work and it seems like he ought to be capable of doing it better.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:18
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Mars4523 posted:Lasciel is pretty terrible in this book, though, with all of the woman scored bullshit. And yeah, that still sounds like more hollow excuses for Butcher to justify having a sexy sexpot for Harry to ogle again, and again, and again, and again. Harry stripped, but it was actually even better than that. Harry disrobed for the the fire gate, and then the entire party did as well to follow him, but then they all get dressed because why wander around naked? Only Ascher strips down again to show up for the final confrontations stark loving naked for absolutely no reason. Like, in one scene she's fully clothed and hanging back, then in the next she shimmies out au naturale to reveal herself as Lasciel. I guess because she hopes nipples will distract Dresden enough to make him gently caress up? I dunno, it's just bad. This is also the state she's in when we get her "I only became a badguy cause some dudes tried to rape me" exposition. It's just... it's bad man, real bad. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 18:32
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Thorpe posted:She disrobes because otherwise the fire in the gate of fire would burn all of her clothes off or some such. So pretty much "just some bullshit" in a series with magic. Correct, but she put her clothes back on again afterward, so she strips a second time before showing up in the vault for the final fight.
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Aug 5, 2015 18:34
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An sustained prejudice against women isn't misogyny? Seems like it fits pretty well to me, but whatever, I'm not interested in semantics. Call it latent sexism if it sounds better to you. The point is that Butcher has a problem with the way he writes, and the way he writes about women. Some if it is the character of Harry Dresden, and that's not a problem, but some of it is very clearly the voice of Jim Butcher, author and real person, and that is a problem.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:08
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Wade Wilson posted:People keep forgetting Hannah's bit about also getting revenge against Harry for all the people he killed when he annihilated the Red Court, many of whom were the only people that treated her with any sort of compassion, since the Order of St. Giles was also annihilated when the Red Court went up. Nah, I didn't forget. That was good poo poo. Like, Hannah was a complete, well rounded character. That's what makes it suck so much. If you only just tone down the general creepy-eyes from Harry a bit, and hack off the parts at the end where she shows up for the boss fight minus her pants and reveals that attempted rape was the defining moment in her life... Then everything would have been fine, good character boom-done. But because that stuff is there it spoils whole thing like a turd on top of an awesome ice-cream sunday.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:19
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Megazver posted:Pandering to a particular audience, whether it's making women hot or dudes hot, isn't sexism or misogyny. It's just pandering to an audience and the world is better place when everyone has their own books that pander to them. Pull the stick out of your rear end. I don't mind some fan service, but there's a line between that and abject exploitation, one that DF has crossed over a few too many times to just be totally harmless fun. I'm not saying you have to hate the books, or send Jimmy B scathing hate mail. I'm just saying that it's there, and that as a critical reader you'd have to be obtuse not to notice it. Also, gently caress off. I like the stick up my rear end and I'm arguing in good faith, if you don't have a point to engage with then save the personal attacks and just don't post.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:25
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Exmond posted:I like latent sexism better than misogyny. Ill be honest that his writing doesn't bother me, but I can see how the way he writes women can annoy others. I don't think its an EMPIRICAL FACT that dresden files is filled with misogyny though and will object against statements like that. Fair enough, if the softer langue suits you that's fine, I'm just trying to get across that it's an issue. It doesn't bother me most of the time either, after the seventh or eight rendition of "tips of her breasts," you just sorta gloss over most of it. But sometimes it's something blatant enough that it really sticks in my craw and drags down my enjoyment of the book. Hannah Ascher is the most recent instance, but Harry constantly fantasizing about how great it'd be to rape all his female acquaintances or the ludicrous dissertation on "here's what Harry thinks of gay dudes," both in Cold Days, jump out in my mind as other egregious examples. Re. Codex Alera: It's a little less pronounced, because as has been pointed out some of the stuff in DF is deliberately inserted for the sake of Harry's unique perspective, but it is there. Things like the primary female love interested being a (sometimes literally) naked savage, or the bit where every single woman in the setting is either young or has magical powers that allow her to look like she's 25 at the oldest. There's a fair number of grizzled or elderly'ish dudes but, and maybe I'm forgotting someone here(?), I don't think there is a single non-gorgeous female character with a spoken line of dialogue. Even the alien borg/zerg hive queen that leads the final evil horde looks like a sexy lady because she stole the female love interest's DNA. There's also a thing with slave collars that are able to control your emotions and make you want to be raped. That's not portrayed as a good thing mind you, and there's also a whole cavalcade of dudes stuck in the things who've been trained into unrelenting assassins because pain just causes them of get off, but there's still some bits involving the female cast that are, for lack of a better term, uncomfortably rapey. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 19:43
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Like any other cliche I think the magic vs. technology thing works fine provided you do enough work on the back end to earn it. Dresden and Rivers of London are two good examples, where the author has done just enough fill-in to help you suspend disbelief without trying to get too technical and having it all collapse under its own weight.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:16
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HisMajestyBOB posted:Harry Potter as written by Raymond Chandler. I wouldn't mind seeing something like this. A legit pulp noir story is something that seems like a perfect fit for Urban Fantasy, and so far as I know it hasn't really been done properly. Storm Front kiiiinda went down that road, but even before that novel was finished Butcher had veered away from the aesthetic and never really looked back.
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Aug 12, 2015 03:10
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Slanderer posted:gently caress nerds forever What's that Grant Morrison quote about adults failing at fiction because they can't stop asking questions? I'm all for having an internally consistent set of rules for your world, but yeah, screw nerds and their fetishistic obsession with details.
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Aug 12, 2015 05:09
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:I pulled the ejection cord at the Sluggy Freelance reference in book one and never looked back. Wait, really? Like, really?
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Aug 17, 2015 09:45
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:In order to show that they are give-no-fucks complete badasses, the unit of elite monster hunters at the beginning of the book show off their "Bun-Bun holding a switchblade" combat patches to the main character. This can't be real. Like, does he pause for an expositional bit of prose or does he just take it for granted that both groups of characters and the reader will be well acquainted with the random first-gen web comics? I just... my mind boggles. I want to believe you are lying, because I don't want to live in a world where people are so lacking in self awareness. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 11:51
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I ended up reading the Grimnoir Chronicles before I knew anything about Correia. In fact, it's the only reason I ever found out who they guy is, because by the end of the second book I'd spotted one too many instances of what sounded like the author talking over the voice of his characters. I went looking to find out what the real guy was like and decided to never even glance at his MHI series after I'd found out. So I knew it was bad, but name dropping loving Sluggy Freelance is an entirely different strata of terrible writing beyond even being a libertarian nut-bag who can't keep his rant out of his write. I don't even hate Sluggy Freelance, read it for years, but holy poo poo there are some things you just do not do, and one of them is name-dropping your kitschy little nerd crushes that nobody has ever heard of. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 15:48
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Codex fell apart at the end because the Vord weren't half as interesting as all the politicking that made up the earlier books. It was also super rushed. I expect roughly the same thing to happen when Butcher gets to the end of the Dresden Files. Jim has strengths as a writer, but paying off a long running series is really loving hard to do well. To the point that is almost never happens even.
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Sep 1, 2015 01:47
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Khizan posted:The way people talk about Marsters in this thread I sometimes I think that I'm the last person left who actually reads these books, as opposed to listening to them. It's really the best way to consume the content. Not only is Marsters an excellent narrator, but the pulpy overwrought narrative suits the olde tyme radio drama format quite well.
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Sep 17, 2015 23:49
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jivjov posted:People like to "bawl" orders, both in Alera and Aeronaut Still not nearly as bad as all the snarling people do in the Dresden Files.
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Oct 7, 2015 08:54
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Magres posted:I'm guessing it's because Harry has an enormous amount of power under his belt (don't they say at one point that he has like senior council grade firepower and just doesn't know how to use it well yet?) and little control over it. Dude's probably constantly just unknowingly emitting magic and frying technology with it. This makes the most sense. It has indeed been mentioned a few times that Harry is at or just below members of the Senior Council in terms of raw power. We also know that wizards have a greater effect on tech the more power they happen to be dumping. Those two things, together with Dresden's lack of experience and self-control, probably make him hell on machines compared to any other wizard alive. Klungar posted:He's basically Naruto I dunno about power gained at birth. He's got the silly Star-Child thing that he and Elaine have going, but I don't think that's directly linked to the level of magical muscle he's got. It's more that he just has some natural talent he has been honing it since he was in short pants. From Dumorne, to Leanansidhe and McCoy his entire childhood was spent in the none to gentle instruction of some of the most powerful practitioners the world had to offer. After that, he was thrown into a nearly endless series of fights, battles, and contests will that have continued to the current day. He's less like a chosen one, and more like a prize fighter who was born with a talent and started training early. He's good at it because that's what he's spent his whole life doing. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 05:10
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Undisciplined and sloppy, but with a near inexhaustible power source (likely gained by being tied to a darker power at birth) that allows him to outlast and overwhelm his opponents.
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That's all the plot has revealed it to be, yeah. There's never been any indication that it contributed to Dresden's raw aptitude. Hell, Elaine supposedly has the same gift and while she's no slouch, she can't come close to throwing punches on the scale Dresden can. The only non-Senior Council folks we've seen who can match him in the gloves off fight-wizarding department are Cowl, Morgan, and probably Luccio before she lost her first body.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:30
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Maybe, probably, though we never got to see everything she could do in her old body before it got capped. If we're talking not just combat wizardry, but raw "how much can you bench" magical muscle I'm not sure we've seen anyone other than McCoy, the Merlin and Cowl who can arguably outdo Dearden. Dude is wicked strong, but that only counts for so much in practical terms. Plenty of the people Dresden's killed were stronger than him at the time he bumped up against them, and it didn't do them much good in the end.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:50
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Not all the holes in that part of the backstory are filled in, but the big benefit to being a "star-child" is that Dresden's magic is much more effective against outsiders than that of other wizards.
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Oct 21, 2015 10:19
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I hope it's something tiny and mundane. A choice just consequential enough that Dresden remembers making it, but so minor that he never even considered the alternate path having an impact on his life. On the flip side, if Butcher decides to go with something big, then have it be Harry performing the Darkhallow. That's easily the biggest "could have," of any choice he's been offered and if there's one thing Butcher loves to do it's raise the stakes.
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Nov 25, 2015 15:23
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Megazver posted:Stories can work on both levels, of course. I rather enjoyed Pride and Prejudice as the latter but I am told there might be one or two female readers around who are into Mister Darcy, I dunno, just something I've been told. Unfortunately, most romance authors don't even seem to be aware of the distinction, much less bother to try and do both. To expand on this a bit, I've often heard it described by saying that with Romance the relationship is the story. Not that you can't have other plot threads interacting with that main line, but all of it should help to define and grow the connection between the couple (or menage if that's your thing) because that's the flavor of wish fulfillment that group of readers is specifically looking for. A lot of Romance authors are quite aware of the distinction you make, but you're right in that they rarely try to do both. Readers of the genre are notoriously voracious, known for sometimes consuming two or three novel length books a week. As a result, many authors have found that they can get a lot more value out of writing half a dozen merely okay'ish books in the same about of time it would take to pen and polish one truly high-quality piece of work. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 12:11
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Well, on the one hand, those pod-casters aren't exactly wrong and a lot of the pandering that the predominantly male audience of UF expects is horribly sexist. But on the other hand, plenty of the pandering that the predominantly female audience of Romance expects is also horribly sexist. We're talking about the pulpiest of pulp here and asking people to step outside their comfort zone while reading indulgent fiction is probably asking a bit much. Either way, in this instance I don't think it's a case of women being unwilling or unable to make their work appealing to the target audience. Rather, I think it's just that nearly all UF authors, irrespective of gender, are just... bad writers. A lot of people don't move on from Dresden because there are very few people working within the genre who are worth giving the time of day to. Butcher himself is no master, but he's at least honed his craft to the point that his output is consistently readable. People don't avoid Laurell K Hamilton books because they're full of vampires fuckin' or because the plots don't appeal to a male audience, they avoid them because they're badbadbad books.
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Mar 2, 2016 13:05
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Megazver posted:Predominately male audience of UF? Lol. Sorry, did I miss something? Most Urban Fantasy readers are dudes, as I understand the term and what it entails. I'm talking about stuff like Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Grim Noir, The Rook, etc. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 13:24
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I'm mean sexist in particular reference to a lot of a pandering and fan service you see in both genres. I.E. scantily clad lady-folk who get described in cringe-worthy detail in UF or, as you point out, the creepily possessive, almost rapey 'alphas' of PR. Beyond that, the point I'm getting at is that both sub-genres are wish fulfilment at their core, with PR being focused on fantasy relationships and UF on power or hero fantasies. The terrible tropes in Romance have plenty of equivalents in UF, but they exist largely as a function of bad or lazy writing, rather than anything inherent to the focus of the story.
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Mar 2, 2016 14:17
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KellHound posted:So question, where is the line to you between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance? Where would something like Buffy fall? There is a serious plot there that's not romance but the romance is important. What about Seanan McGuire's stuff? She was mentioned above has having low key romance but usually there is mystery to be solved. Also do you have stats? Cause most of the signing I've seem pretty even. And a lot editors/publishers/authors I've talked to say the fanbase usually relates to the gender divid of the cast. So like the books you are declaring 100% urban fantasy might be mostly dudes it's probably more like 60/40 rather than a HUGE tip one way or the other. I haven't read anything by McGuire, so I can't comment there, but Buffy falls firmly into Urban Fantasy. When you get down to brass tacks, it's simply a matter of what the story is about. Buffy is about, well, Buffy. It's an adventure serial. She's The Slayer, and she kills the poo poo outta vampires for the betterment of mankind. More stuff happens, obviously, but if you took all of the romance out of Buffy the core of the narrative is still there. As I mentioned above, in Romance the relationship is the story. If it's a Romance novel, you cannot remove the relationship and still have a functioning narrative. If you stripped the love story out of The Notebook, for example, you wouldn't have a lot leftover afterward. And no, I have no stats on hand, but I don't think it's reaching to say that most consumers of Urban Fantasy are men. You mention a 60/40 split, which is a clear majority, and I'd wager the divide is a fair bit bigger than even that. In any case, clearly not all the readers are male, and the issue I'm talking about relates directly to your gripe. A lot of UF and PR both contain some pretty awful tropes, but they exist largely because of poor writing quality. As Mars4523 points out, there are at least a handful of example in UF or authors who treat women with a modicum of respect and, presumably, there are some PR books in existence where the male love interest is merely a literal monster, rather than a figurative one.
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Mar 3, 2016 10:53
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Paragon8 posted:I think it's easy to get into a pedantic rabbit hole contrasting urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The borders between the two overlap hugely for marketing purposes especially now when physical retail space isn't as important. I think the temptation for a lot of male readers is that anything that has a lady protagonist hooking up with a creature is paranormal romance which is unfair. There is a lot of overlap, no question. Genres and especially sub-genres are always nebulous things at best. I'd also agree that there is a unfair bias on the part of male readers to shy away from anything categorized as romance.
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Mar 3, 2016 11:03
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KellHound posted:As someone who writes urban fantasy and keeps up with what's going on in the industry and hits a lot of conventions and signings, I think you would lose that wager. Especially if you are saying Buffy falls in the Urban Fantasy side of the line. I think Paragon8 is probably right in that Dresden is the outlier, and it is probably the other way around. Fair enough. I'm willing to concede the point since my main issue is with the lovely, sexist cliches that pervade, well, I was going to say genre fiction, but I think I can just go ahead and say fiction in general and non-fiction too I guess... Well, now I'm depressed!
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Mar 3, 2016 12:05
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It's the same approach that Sci-Fi takes, where humanity has an easy time getting along because now they've got green people to hate on. Not entirely implausible, but I think it's a shame that more fictional works with long-lived characters often fail to address the friction caused by shifting cultural norms. Even in real life, you see the tension created by the standards and prejudices older generations but what happens when those people don't simply die off? How would you cope with someone who was alive during the height of Rome and owned slaves, hell, how would they cope with it? What about the Antebellum South? How far back would something have to happen for "that's how it was then" to be an excuse; is it ever an excuse? One of my favorite things about Gaiman's Sandman is that you get to see a character struggle with that dissonance and eventually come apart at the seams because he's unable to reconcile with that past. Another example that jumps to mind is Paarthurnax in Skyrim. The Blades want you to kill him for crimes that he unquestionably committed, but that took place eons in the past and he's for which he's spent centuries atoning. How do you apply codes of justice and morality to deeds that occurred before those edicts event existed? Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 11:56
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I'm struggling to remember if anything relevant even happened in Fool Moon. I guess it gives you a bit more groundwork for the relationship between Harry and Susan. Oh and Murphy's partner gets gutted, but I think that's about it.
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Mar 15, 2016 14:51
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mallamp posted:are you really discussing politics in ubergoon Jim "League of Legends" Butcher thread Less a discussion of politics and more a talk about aspects of his work that some people find bothersome. Just because he's a turbo nerd who writes pulpy wizard fiction doesn't mean Butcher's work should be immune to criticism. That's the literary equivalent of the bullshit "just turn your brain off" argument that people trot out to excuse dumb crap in movies.
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Mar 16, 2016 11:38
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