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Well, crap. That killed my personal Mirror Mirror theory - the mirror universe being one where he splattered himself all over a couple of time zones oopsie-ing Little Chicago.
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Sep 23, 2015 05:58
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I also still say Angleton is NOT dead. We saw an identical time-stop bubble just a handful of pages before Angleton's "death". The one Angleton is in was probably fired off by himself, so all Bob has to do is apply the knowledge of the Eater of Souls correctly (contained in the Memex), one time-stop bubble gets turned off, Angleton gets his mojo back and Bob gets to back to relative levels of normal. But this time with a wife who doesn't have a violin loving with her head.
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Jun 29, 2016 11:34
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Twenty Palaces is proof that in media res only really works if you get around to the actual beginning inside one novel, one and a half at most, instead of dragging it out indefinitely. I understand that he was wanting to work from the POV of a minimally-informed character slowly learning how the world works, but the readers don't want to be as completely clueless as the main character. e. It also helps if your main character wants to learn how the world works. Ray always struck me as a guy who just didn't care about the world around him, he was just looking for a good excuse to get Annalise and the rest of the Society off his rear end so he could go back to being a petty criminal with his one or two neat magic tricks. rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jul 25, 2016 |
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Jul 25, 2016 07:17
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Unfortunately, getting there is going to a bitch now that we're in GRRM time.
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Sep 20, 2016 20:46
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IIRC, there was a Word of Jim about the Library of Congress and the Special Collections Department.
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Sep 25, 2016 07:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:then decided I wasn't ready to go back to such (relatively) sunnily optimistic works in the same setting, the contrast would be depressing. I remember reading The Fuller Memorandum and thinking "Wow, this is loving dark." I wish I had a time machine, just so I could go back and laugh at my younger, more optimistic self, for thinking that was as dark as the Laundry Files was going to get.
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Jul 14, 2017 08:03
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They are not less bleak and depressing, though.
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Jul 1, 2018 09:15
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Saros posted:One of the interesting takeaways is that the elder gods and various monstrosities seem to all... know each other and have some sort of agreed upon purpose? Like this is far from the first universe they've done the Koolaid man thing through the walls of reality in and they keep getting driven out or fleeing across universes from... something else. The Black Pharaoh explicitly references being at war with some unnamed enemy when bopping Cthulhu's avatar in the face and the whole point of the mission seems to be to tell Cthulhu to stop rattling the cage before the rest of the powers are ready. The Black Pharaoh specifically mentions the War Against The Cold Ones, so I'm betting the Elder Gods are an
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Nov 7, 2018 10:35
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Frankly, I've given up on Jim. If he wanted to write something, we'd have it by now. All the excuses for not writing are just that, excuses. Meanwhile, there are other authors doing better UF that deserve my attention more. e. Just read the shorts story on his site. It was cute. It was not a new full-length novel. So we're back to square one, waiting on Jim to poo poo out a new book or get off the pot and announce his retirement. rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Dec 25, 2018 |
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Dec 25, 2018 09:16
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Exmond posted:I get you, but I can also wait for more Dresden Files while giving other authors my money. Like Stacia Kane! I’m sure she will finish her downside ghosts series! I'm just frustrated, is all. Jim needs to do something, other than leave people hanging for years that is.
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Dec 25, 2018 09:33
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-Fish- posted:Unless you've somehow already paid him money for the unfinished book, it's entirely possible that you're overreacting just a bit. If you haven't paid him money he doesn't owe you a book. Chill out and read a different book. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to expect a "yeah, I'm still working on it" at least once every six months.
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Dec 26, 2018 09:41
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Jesus loving christ I'm sorry I opened my mouth on the topic. Jim Butcher owes me nothing. But a statement from the man himself saying "Sorry, here are the delays, here is a rough timetable, all of this is subject to change, I'll keep you updated" would go a long way to restoring the goodwill a lot of us have lost. He doesn't owe me that, either, but neither is he owed any faith in him at this point.
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Dec 27, 2018 06:51
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-Fish- posted:Not exactly what you asked for but hopefully close enough? Was last updated a little over a week ago. Okay, that mollifies me a lot. (dude next time go rent an office or something/fire the contractor and hire another one)
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Dec 27, 2018 07:53
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loving FINALLY, JIM.
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Jun 18, 2019 05:52
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We've already seen McCoy cut loose, he waved a staff around and hundreds of people died on the spot and he walked away like nbd, this is just Tuesday. The Blackstaff just kept it from costing his own soul for breaking the first law. Now a whole Senior Council cutting loose like that...
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Jun 26, 2019 00:44
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It's been eight years and several books, the statute of limitation on Changes spoilers has long passed. No one was at Chichen Itza specifically representing the Council, but a Warden regional commander and a Senior Council member (at least, there may have been more) were there and you're drat right the Council is claiming the kill, can't let a status boost like that slip through your fingers on a technicality.
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Jun 28, 2019 05:42
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That's the big takeaway: Butcher means well but he doesn't get it and doesn't have the background to speak from, so the only way he could have avoided putting his foot in his mouth was to keep his mouth shut. And his series about a wizard blowing poo poo up did not need a straight nerdy white guy's opinion on homosexuality anyways.
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Jul 5, 2019 06:31
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I'm aware of that, it just feels like a super duper cop out. Mostly because it is. The dividing line seems to be "has free will". Like killing a Fae or a ghoul or something similarly supernatural is okay because they have natures they must obey, and can't choose not to obey. But mortal humans get free will and preventing the exercise thereof is Very Bad and Frowned Upon By Above and Not Allowed. Which falls apart when you get to Thomas, who is obviously, being a vampire and all, is a creature with a nature he must obey, but is also demonstrated to possess and utilize free will. And as far as hitting a few home-runs on Cassius, I think there is an implication that killing someone is icky for your soul, full stop. But there are more abstractions for killing them with a knife or gun, which absorb some of the blow to your soul. OTOH, killing them with magic, no matter how you fancy it up with SFX, is essentially just making them die with nothing but willpower alone, and that skips a bunch of abstractions and puts your soul in direct contact with the horrible poo poo you just did. A good analogy is the Sight. If you see something, there is eyes and brain-meat in the way, so there's enough uncertainty you can lie to yourself that you were mistaken. If you See something, your soul was directly the thing looking, you saw it in perfect detail, and you can't forget. There's nothing for uncertainty to get traction on, so it's the awful truth until you die. Same with killing, any other way you can tell yourself it was a mistake or that they really deserved it or that it served a greater positive purpose, but if you do it with magic then your soul directly did the killing and there's no forgetting you directly willed someone to death, and the ends don't justify the means. e. (but lets face it, the way Butcher writes the First Law, it comes off very much like a GM punishing you for killing a PC or GMPC, but NPCs or bad guys, who the gently caress cares, gotta get that sweet XP.) rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 05:47
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docbeard posted:This is just my take, but I think the Laws started out as someone (possibly the original Merlin) saying "Okay, doing these seven things is REALLY DANGEROUS and can gently caress YOU UP if you aren't careful" and the White Council, being a legalistic and authoritarian body, turned them into Capital-L Laws. This seems like a good interpretation. After all, loving with time is #6 on the Big List Of Things That Make Morgan Do The Choppy-Choppy, but the OG Merlin himself did just that to build Demonreach. Harry didn't kill Justin and then have to fight off an inexplicable urge to murder more, he just honestly believes right down at the bottom of his soul that killing to protect the people cares about is justifiable, and that is a very slippery slope. Molly didn't gently caress with her friend's heads and then became a mind-loving monster, she just really believes that stopping people from making wrong choices is okay - almost like a kid with a dad who does just that, but still too young to see the nuance in his actions. Hell, #7, Thou Shall Not Open The Outer Gates, well Rashid is part and parcel of a Fae operation that does just that on a tiny scale to conduct ongoing warfare.
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Jul 10, 2019 22:32
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Kchama posted:Tell Butcher and the books that, since Butcher has confirmed that it's not just Legalistic Laws but "The Universe Punishes You For This With Evil Karma". Death of the Author is a thing too.
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Jul 10, 2019 22:38
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Omi no Kami posted:So wait, I just finished the third Laundry Files book (you guys were right, it was way better than #2), and how did Bob survive the ending? After the ritual recursively bound his soul to his own body, wasn't he essentially just a disembodied consciousness puppeteering a corpse with a swiss-cheese brain? Did Angleton just magically fix him after they were disentangled or something? Goddamnit I'm having to bite my tongue to keep from spoiling this because it's loving brilliant.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:34
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I always took it that the dangling pointer picked up another separate eater of souls. This one just happened to inhabit a Bob-shaped brain, so it's very convinced it's still Robert Oliver Francis Howard, but it is definitely not. The reason why he seems to share a "package" of abilities with Angleton is that our reality is only big enough for one eater at a time to manifest, so the two are having to share one space.
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Jul 28, 2019 02:13
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Mars4523 posted:it draws on completely bunk knowledge of animal social hierarchies to justify domination fantasies and regressive gender dynamics. Alpha males and females don’t work that way, as it turns out. There's a half-formed TTRPG setting in my head about the first publicly acknowledge US agency dealing with the supernatural, and a handful of bit characters/deployable backup is a pack of werewolves - the most cheerful (and devoutly Catholic) Mexican man in the world, his smoking hot wife, and their horde of kids, grumpy grandad, and Uncle Tony (who is Sicilian but they adopted him) who isn't a were-anything, just badass enough to keep up with and fight alongside the rest of the pack. Jokes provided by Pratchett (don't play with your food, etc.) rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 01:51
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MalleusDei posted:I like them a lot too. I was a bit concerned about power creep for October, but it seems to be ok as far as I've made it. I think I started reading them based on an earlier recommendation from this thread, but I'm not 100%. I stayed away from October Daye for a long time, because female protagonist + fae spelled bad paranormal romance not good urban fantasy in my head. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:But were you really, I said to my magical kittykat boyfriend I like Tybalt, so I'll give him a pass. It could be worse, the author could be Laurell K Hamilton.
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Oct 9, 2019 23:26
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Necrotizer F posted:but you could easily start the series with Grave Peril and not miss much. I'll be honest, I was 100% ready to drop Dresden after Grave Peril. I decided to give it one more book, and Summer Knight finally fully clicked for me - specifically the scene where Harry finally drops the juvenile mysterious wizard act and clues Murphy in all the way. It also helps that Death Masks is by far my favorite book in the series. "Remember. God sees hearts, boy."
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Oct 14, 2019 06:50
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There's a lot of mileage in the monster struggling to be human, and I see what Butcher is going for with Thomas. But sex and consent is a hot button topic, rape is thought of as a particularly evil and vile act, and it touches the lives of a huge number of people, more than you might realize. So it was a poor choice of Butcher's to make his struggling monster a sex vampire. Pretty much any other choice would be far more sympathetic.
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Oct 25, 2019 08:08
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There is the implication that Eb didn't teach Harry much in the way of magic because Justin had already trained him up into a competent if violent wizard. Ebenezer spent his time teaching Harry how to not be Justin's murder slave, and cut him loose when he thought Harry could at least minimally handle his life.
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Nov 6, 2019 06:50
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I was getting into the Codex series until someone here told me that one of the villains was way into rape and that combined with the women being super emotional had me ejecting faster than an asthmatic from an F-35. OTOH, Brencis getting his poo poo shoved in because he thought with his dick and Bernard didn't was worth the admission price. And Butcher had the decency to never portray the domination collars as anything but monstrous.
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Mar 19, 2020 06:21
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BabyFur Denny posted:It's not about Thomas's choices, it's about Jim Butcher's choices Butcher made this choice before sex and consent became such a hot-button topic, so I'm willing to cut him some (but only some) slack. That being said, Butcher my dude it's 2020 this poo poo doesn't fly today, fixing the issues with Thomas needs to be done yesterday.
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Mar 29, 2020 08:08
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I feel like I should bitch about Butcher taking forever to write the next book, it would be a less touchy topic  Except I can't do that, either, turns out he was pulling a Sanderson (had to write the next book before he could write this one) instead of a GRRM and I'm getting two books this year and yeah, nice save. Just don't get remarried and/or remodel your house before the next one, man.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:41
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Ramadu posted:wheres the fuckin book butcher Someone's behind on the news. Peace Talks is out July 14. Battle Ground is out September 29. Yes, that's right, two Dresden Files books this year.
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May 10, 2020 09:55
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I'm ready for more Cinder Spires books, The Aeronaut's Windlass scratched an itch I didn't know I had.
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May 14, 2020 09:43
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Waltzing Along posted:Two new books in the next 3 months? Or 1 new book and another something Dresden book? As Butcher tells it, Peace Talks was supposed to have a major swerve halfway through and he had 4/3rds of a book and difficulty editing it down, so he just split the story at the major swerve and filled in the missing third of each book. So it's two Dresden books this year, but they are a duology making one complete double-length Dresden story. We will see how well this works in a month's time.
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Jun 14, 2020 11:39
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Harry was also trained to be a highly unsubtle combat wizard, so fine control just isn't his thing.
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Jul 11, 2020 07:45
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30 TO 50 FERAL HOG posted:Just finished Peace Talks and......it's definitely half a book. My take as well, but Battle Grounds is looking like it's gonna be a hell of a book.
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Jul 14, 2020 08:24
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Khizan posted:That aside, I also liked the part where the four Wardens stopped Harry's car and they had their little showdown. I'm so used to seeing Harry as the underdog that it was nice to see how nervous the other Wardens were when they were confronting him. This scene actually made me angry. Yoshiko goes "You've had sex recently!" and Harry gets irrationally angry at the four giving the guy who just left Lara freaking Raith's house a funny look. When the appropriate response is Harry giving Ramirez a smug look and saying "Yeah, I had some fun with  MY GIRLFRIEND earlier, btw Karrin says hi."
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Jul 15, 2020 23:25
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Thomas opening a way (into a strip club) is still pretty plausible though. He is his mother's son, he does have at least some magic available. Just not enough to override his WCV splat.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:37
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Thats the big difference between early and later books. Later in the series you can only open ways in certain locations, not wherever you want. But it's still plausible that Thomas knew of this one way in particular.
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Jul 17, 2020 03:42
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Remember Even Hand? I don't think Justine came back from the Fomor without a passenger in her head.
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Jul 19, 2020 23:01
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