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The Vosgian Beast posted:It's a cheap shock. You don't have to be good at writing to make people think that a rape is evil or scary so hack writers use it the way hack horror uses jump scares. A lot of these writers also have issues with women and sex in general, as can be seen by how graphic a lot of the depictions are and how they often use it to 'punish' a woman for doing something wrong. There's a lot of reprehensible actions to establish a villain and make people feel for protagonists, but the constant jump to rape and then writing it in a sexually titillating manner speaks to how hosed up some writers are. Speaking of, Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card is the biggest garbage fire I've ever read by a writer who is basically a walking garbage fire himself. You can kind of overlook how many naked young boys are in Ender's Game because it's very tangential and the book is at least pretty competent. This poo poo, though, is wall to wall boy abductions, pedophiles, pedophile red herrings, and fake out pedophile rape/murder twists that will make you question what the gently caress is up with Card. He mentions in the forward that this started as a Halloween horror story he came up with after having his son. Card's issues become real clear when you read the adaptation of Hamlet he did a few years ago, which makes Hamlet's father a pedophile that turned his son gay by raping him and has come back as a ghost to drag his son to gay hell. Yep.
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Jul 20, 2015 16:31
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Ender's Game is kind of weird morally when you scratch the surface, and it is wish fulfillment for nerds, but almost every genre novel ever fits those criteria. It's not the worst thing though, especially compared to literally everything else Card has ever written. Another great example is Wyrms, which is primarily about a fifteen year old girl's desire to gently caress a giant worm creature. At the very least, it breaks the tradition of Card's young boy obsession.
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Jul 20, 2015 20:54
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Antivehicular posted:I never even got to the gay rape pedostravaganza or whatever and this book still irritated the poo poo out of me. How did anybody finish it? I can't tell you how I finished it, but... The main kid is killed toward the last third of the book, but you don't know till the very end because he comes back as a GHOST to help solve his murder and the rape and murders of all the other boys in town. I guess it had to be a Halloween story some how, and not just an excuse for Card to write pedophile hysteria for an entire novel. The weirdo babysitter is the red herring who is ALSO a pedophile, but only gets as far as taking the family's infant girl to change her diaper and talking about smooth skin that smells like honey. He apologizes by saying he only wanted to look, and would never touch 'cause he's not some pervert or anything.' There's also a character really interested in Mormonism because he's nuts and really fixates on the whole "you get to be best friends with Jesus and create your own planet in Heaven" thing.He ends up naked on the family's lawn yelling about being God incarnate. Poor Miserable Gurgi has a new favorite as of 23:30 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 23:27
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pentyne posted:So after reading Snow Crash and starting Diamond Age, I'm starting to get the feeling Stephenson has some odd issues with young female characters. No, see, Y.T. was totally into loving the giant, radioactive guy, and she flipped him off at the end. It's totally empowering! That poo poo pissed me off. I wanted to like the whole book as some half-tongue in cheek scifi dumbness, but everything sexualizing Y.T. was just gross.
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Sep 3, 2015 23:26
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Every post about this goddamn thing has made me cringe involuntarily. No fantasy book should ever involve genital mutilation unless you're loving Margaret Atwood.
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Oct 18, 2015 00:23
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Snapchat A Titty posted:I think Demon is saying that unless you write at least as well as Atwood, don't put genital mutilation in your book. Right. Atwood knows how to write and has socially conscious points to make. Most everyone else in fantasy tackling weird sex stuff is just writing out their hosed up fantasies no one wants to read.
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Oct 18, 2015 14:35
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The musical is really far removed from the book, aside from a really skeletal version of the plot. The show veers much more back toward the original Baum books and especially the movie, and is sort of fanfiction-y in a much more bearable way. I'm in to theatre, though, so I've always liked it. I put the book down halfway through and haven't regretted it. Edit: and yeah, the tiger sex thing was weird, but made weirder by the glossing over. Like, you just wrote about how a named character was strapped to the belly of a sentient tiger in a sex club. You'd think that would get more attention than, "that guy was never the same after that night." Poor Miserable Gurgi has a new favorite as of 16:38 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 16:35
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bringmyfishback posted:I think I'll buy this. This thread is for terrible books, not works of art.
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Nov 12, 2015 03:18
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Lamprey Cannon posted:Pounded in the rear end by stock photo models coming to terms with their fear of their own latent homosexuality. I believe you mean in the butt.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:11
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Klaus88 posted:Yeah, I tend to abandon books when it involves people below the American age of consent loving, no matter the gender. You've just ruled out a disturbingly large amount of all scifi and fantasy.
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Nov 25, 2015 23:22
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pentyne posted:Still not the most unprofessional writer in the SW EU. Knowing only as much as those posts say about the situation, I'd say the one writing about graphic Tarantino death scenes and bug orgies with Han and Leia's daughter was more unprofessional than going "my pet warrior race is awesome". But I'm guessing they both did even worse stuff. I can see why so many people were devastated that Disney said "gently caress this" to the EU.
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Nov 27, 2015 23:29
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TheKennedys posted:I dunno if I'm the odd one out here, but I watched the first six episodes of The Magicians on SyFy, then picked up the ebook - the book seems so incredibly slow and dull compared to the show. It's one of those books that's described as "sublime" in reviews but I just couldn't get into it. The show took some serious creative liberties to the point it's barely even the same story, but I feel like the show version would have made a much better book. Maybe I'm just jaded on urban fantasy at this point. I thought the setting and magic was interesting in the book for a while, and that carried it longer than it should have. I don't really like "lovely people do lovely things" stories, but it felt like almost a satire on Harry Potter and monomyth stories where the main character realizes he's not that special and he fucks up his life and relationships with his own inferiority complex. That seemed interesting, until I started to get the feeling Lev Grossman was as petty and vindictive as his characters. Then the end fucks up any point the book may have had by having a bunch of forgotten characters show up out of nowhere to tell the main character, who has earned nothing and deserves nothing, that he actually is amazing and needs to come be a badass magical king with them. I honestly expected it to be a loving dream sequence, it felt so hollow and tacked on just to open up for sequels.
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Mar 1, 2016 04:25
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grittyreboot posted:[SPOILERS] Well, how's he supposed to jerk off to scenes of himself-eh, I mean Endymion loving a 30 year old? That's gross, man.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:21
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canis minor posted:While this review is closest to my heart, there's apparently this happening in the book: Wow, that's some serious Rashomon poo poo, right there. canis minor posted:
Was this written by an insect that learned human speech?
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Mar 28, 2016 01:45
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aside - there are many sex scenes in this book and every time it's maleness, and every time it's awkward:
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Antivehicular posted:If you need to make a ham-handed joke about equal restroom accommodations, wouldn't it make more sense for it to require women's restrooms to have urinals? I mean, it's not funny either way, but at least that'd make more sense, even if it wasn't a precious emasculation joke. I mean, logically it would make sense, and if MRAs were the more old school misogynist that made fun of women for trying to be like men there would probably be a joke about women standing up to pee in there. But the whole big thing for these guys is how all feminists want is to oppress men. So a feminist lawyer, who for some reason also manages a band, making men sit down to pee is the obvious joke in that hosed up way of thinking.
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Aug 21, 2016 00:44
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, it makes sense in its stupid "lovely joke by lovely dude" way; I suppose it's just bothering me for some reason. (Maybe because it makes me think of all the guys I've known who would be perfectly happy with all-stalls restrooms even if it meant sitting down to pee.) The ultimate humiliation for these guys is being made to do anything feminine, not seeing the irony as they shout about how men are being treated as second class citizens.
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Aug 21, 2016 03:00
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Ryoshi posted:Uh considering it's a comic and it's only funny at all if you read it as an indictment I'm going to say that you're wrong there. If it's making fun of the book, it fails as there's no punchline or even build. The last panel is the most mundane example. And knowing those guys, I think it being a sincere endorsement isn't that big a stretch.
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Sep 1, 2016 00:52
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:This is that blue/white/gold dress all over again. I can't possibly see how that's an endorsement, but I believe you when you say you do. Honestly, I could see it being satire and just failing at joke construction. Those guys do that constantly. They've put out book collections before, yeah? This still counts as terrible book discussion.
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Sep 1, 2016 01:03
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divabot posted:Reading Chuck Tingle and thinking "that's surreal genius" and "I could do that", without realising that Chuck is legit schizophrenic, and his work is only as readable as it is because his son Jon edits it into shape. I'm almost entirely certain the reddit AMA that his "son" did was a giant joke on people taking his poo poo too seriously.
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Sep 8, 2016 18:50
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The problem with reading Shakespeare in English classes is that you're not supposed to read Shakespeare. It was never meant to be consumed as words on a page, and it's really unfortunate that that's a lot of people's first introduction to his plays. Going to see a good production would obviously be best, but is pretty hard in most places. And there's almost nothing worse to sit through than a bad production of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is also way loving overused in classes, because unimaginative teachers think "teens just have to relate to these dumbass kids who kill themselves". Titus Andronicus actually would be a great intro. It's his shlockiest play, and the Julie Taymor film with Anthony Hopkins from the 90s is pretty great. I saw a production in England that had a fifteen foot high blood spray at the end before almost everyone on stage was massacred. poo poo was amazing.
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Sep 10, 2016 02:26
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pookel posted:I'm thinking of all the long-awaited sequels to cult classic/fan favorite books, and I can't come up with a single one that wasn't terrible. Has it EVER been done well? Tehanu was awful, everyone said the new Harry Potter book was awful (I haven't read it myself) ... The new Harry Potter wasn't really a book, and it also wasn't actually written by Rowling. The play was pretty well received I believe, but no one who read it seemed to understand that play scripts aren't really meant to be read to get the full effect. The script was okay. It felt like it was a screenplay rather than meant for stage, which is a problem a lot of modern plays have. e:b, and yeah, the Shadow series just kept getting worse. I was young enough that I bought into them as they started to come out. I wanted more political intrigue and war games like the original novel, so the Bean books seemed more my speed than the Speaker for the Dead books. I know now it's all awful, but I think everything that happened to Petra pissed me off the worst. Poor Miserable Gurgi has a new favorite as of 18:00 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 17:56
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Considering the original novel came out of rampant xenophobia of swarthy Europeans invading Britain and defiling white women, there really should be room for a more modern take on it. The only people willing to write it just want to gently caress a vampire, though.
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Oct 30, 2016 22:05
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They're going big by having a companion TV series with the movie. Not sure why it took decades just to start producing Dark Tower with Stephen King's and Ron Howard's names attached, but this poo poo gets a whole franchise right off the bat. I'm sure it's gonna bomb hard, which won't be great for Lin-Manuel Miranda's rising star.
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Dec 1, 2016 01:30
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there wolf posted:Well, Game of Thrones showed there's a market for big, very adult, fantasy epics and this is just how long it's taken for people to start jumping on whatever's out there to make into movies. Dark Tower is the obvious choice, but it's not going to be the only one. Love it or hate it, Name of the Wind is popular, it's modern in a way Sword of Truth and Shanara aren't, and it's unfinished which means they get a built-in audience of book fans but still get to write whatever ending they want if it proves successful. But that t.v. spinoff just has the stench of failure all over it. You could see it as one series getting a whole franchise while another only gets a movie, or like one series over-confidently cashing in on too much crap while the other goes the conservative, more prestige route. I mean, you're right. Studios needed to see Game of Thrones' success to jump on the fantasy bandwagon. And Rothfuss's books are an obvious choice, since everyone is comparing them to Martin's. But the audacity of launching a multiplatform franchise off an unfinished trilogy is so loving dumb. I know Miranda is a giant nerd, but I expected better of him than to put money behind a guy who hasn't been able to finish three trashy fantasy books within a decade.
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Dec 1, 2016 02:27
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there wolf posted:Umm...Martin didn't finish his either, and I do that that's actually a selling point for franchising because it gives a lot more flexibility. I do agree with you that Rothfuss himself is the weak link here. Marin managed to put out books at a successively slower rate as he went along, but he was five-six door stoppers in before things started to really get slogged. Rothfuss was struggling at book two for something that was already supposed to be done. Who knows, maybe with a deadline and team of underling writers to he can throw plot points at he'll flourish, but my hopes aren't very high. I'm aware, but you've kind of already made my point for me. Martin has gotten slower, but he was never fast and there was already years of material. Rothfuss's series is at most half the size, a much smaller scope, and he lied about it being done already. I'm sure being a producer on a movie and a show will help.
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Dec 1, 2016 05:38
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Dienes posted:Its okay, though. She grows up faster than a human, so the werewolf only needs to raise her until she's 7 years old. My mother apparently read these books and watched the movies for the first time a couple months ago. She was embarrassed to admit it, but she likes relationship schlock, so I wasn't too surprised. I was surprised she actually tried to defend the imprinting thing and used the "she grew up really fast" argument. I just kept saying "and she's 7."
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Dec 4, 2016 20:36
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Given Luci-pires, I'm gonna guess vampire angel. This one just happens to be a Viking. Who fights ISIS. And is a foodie. I think this lady just did a mad libs with all her sexual fantasies and made it a book series.
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Jan 11, 2017 00:50
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The whitest of all names.
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May 9, 2017 17:05
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I mean, I probably would have considered Mormonism if Joseph Smith read minds, killed deer with his bare hands to drink their blood, and turned to marble in the sun.
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May 10, 2017 04:56
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BrigadierSensible posted:Counterpoint: that was almost the plot of The Last Starfighter and that movie was rad. Don't worry, Cline's second book Armada is literally just The Last Starfighter, except awful. He lifts the entire plot and makes it basically RPO again except more video game focused.
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Aug 5, 2017 16:22
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there wolf posted:Are people saying that Stevenson is some revolutionary writer shaking up the genre? Why? I like his stuff and all, but it's not groundbreaking. I think that comes entirely from Snow Crash, which people still act like was something new and different, despite just being Neuromancer except dumber and with more sexualized teen girls.
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Oct 22, 2017 07:35
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Safety Biscuits posted:Gothic literature is hardly a reaction to the Romantic; it began at the same time or earlier... The supernatural was almost always a metaphor that could be explained away by a character being hysterical or insane in a lot of Gothic works. They're still pretty supernatural in tone.
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Nov 6, 2017 07:58
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Getsuya posted:I think Garth Nix has come up in this thread, but I’m not sure. I read a bunch of random MG stuff to help me write for that market, and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read except his stuff. The name of the series was Keeper of the Keys or Keys to the Kingdom or something. It was a textbook case of passive MC who basically just got shunted from setpiece to setpiece so Nix could show off the (admittedly fairly interesting) world he had built. From what I can tell, Nix has three good books, which are the first three Abhorsen books. There are some fans of his other work, but most everything else is panned at varying levels.
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Dec 20, 2017 20:25
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A3th3r posted:right, but.... Dragonriders of Pern is about storm-chasing dragons? That's the whole plot? I guess as an adult I don't find that concept too stimulating Yeah, from what I remember of the couple of those I read, nature only ever really showed up as an antagonist when McCaffrey wanted to force characters to hide in caves from falling poison string so they'd realize they really wanted to bone.
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Dec 24, 2017 04:21
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Sagebrush posted:Ah, phew, I'm glad someone else noticed that. There's one scene in particular where that characteristic of his writing really stood out to me: The thing is that Cline can't describe the scene, or he'd be getting dangerously close to crossing the line of fair use. There could be a way to actually show the action of the scene vaguely enough that it wouldn't be literally transcribing War Games, but it would be almost the same as telling the stakes and then immediately resolving them as you quoted. It would be kind of brilliant if Cline meant to set it up that way as a reasonable excuse for the laziest writing ever. Which is why I'm pretty sure it wasn't on purpose.
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Mar 15, 2018 07:07
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I think it's just that she's described as attractive punk girl, and the 'emotionally stunted, self-hating' part of her character exactly describes the kind of guys on the internet who latch onto a tough alternative girl to jack off to while trying to convince people she's actually a feminist icon for wearing boots and having piercings.
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Mar 17, 2018 00:21
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