pookel posted:

Yikes, yeah. I didn't even know it was a widely known book. Someone loaned it to me and I thought it was pretty cool. I like it for all the reasons I like Stranger Things, basically.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I dunno, the "mystery novel with a clairvoyant protagonist" idea earlier in the thread seems inherently self-defeating. Maybe you could do some kind of post-modern comedy with that, but I think that would end up counting as a substantially different premise anyway; you certainly wouldn't see it on the same shelf as Agatha Christie.

there wolf posted:

I don't understand why Valdemar gets hit with being a bunch of creepy rape poo poo by so many people, and then I realize most people probably have forgotten everything else because it's all so very boring. Alternately they've never read any Anne Bishop and thus have a poor frame of reference.

there wolf posted:

Nice moral standard but it doesn't explain why everyone thinks Valdemar is some crazy rape-fest. Most of those drat books past your standards with flying colors, and the ones that don't aren't any more gratuitous or exploitative than contemporary novels of the same time. I guess she portrays rape as a violent act instead of couching it behind coercion like mind-control and soul bonds with dragons so everyone's twelve year old brain thinks of it as extra-bad.

Indigo Raven posted:

Are you talking about Save the Pearls? It's some really trashy YA novel where due to increased UV radiation, white people (pearls) have died out and have to wear honest to god blackface to survive in a society dominated by black people (coals) and other people of color (each race had its own cutesy precious stone based nickname).

I remember the author was planning to launch a huge ad campaign trying to turn it into the next Hunger Games but considering that I haven't heard anything about it other than a few snark sites cackling at it, we can see how well that went.

Xarbala posted:

is that david mitchell

WickedHate posted:

Sounds like the TV show was the perfect adaption.

I Killed GBS posted:

it also has the sexual politics of a viking attack

Dienes posted:

I like reading Kvothe's lines in Zapp's voice.

"Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played."

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

The latest episode of I Don't Even Own a Television reviewed some godawful piece of poo poo Five Nights at Freddy's novel...


...written (ghostwritten?) by a girl I had a huge crush on in high school.


I don't know how I feel about this. Um, I guess it sold well, so that's good! Ironically, she was exactly the sort of person who might say she doesn't own a TV, and mean it.

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

I could, if you think it would be interesting, but I'd be very cagey about details because there were only, like, fifty people in our entire high school and I would be easy to identify. Do you have to pay for an account?

Pastry of the Year posted:

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Or not write genre.

Antivehicular posted:

Holy poo poo, seriously? The initial rape put me off ever reading those books as a teen, but somehow I never heard about there being a second rape, complete with (accidental?) incest. The level of wretchedness people put up with in nerdlit is still astounding to me, even now.

Clench racing is loving hilarious, though. It makes me miss the Eye of Argon sessions of my youth, although we always deployed lovely fanfic instead of the classic Theis.

Agents are GO! posted:

That series has one of the most unsympathetic protagonists of all time. I read the first three books, and I wanted my money back even though I checked them out of the library.

Serephina posted:

Wow, I didn't feel like responding since I'm sure someone else would point it out, but the sex was totally consensual, with Tom ignorant of her parentage (he's been gone for what they feel is 30 years), but Elena knowing fully who her dad was but didn't bring it up. Tom was horrified when he later finds out iirc. The 'rape-as-a-whole-concept' thing was put in very early in the first book, to show Tom as an anti-hero when everyone in the world assumes he's Jesus mkII, and his difficulty handling their expectations with his self-loathing. It's super-jarring, but sexuality is really not brought up ever again of a trilogy so Donaldson get a pass.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Good old GAFF, my gateway into horrible fanfic and sporking. There's another old site that is still up, "Bad Fanfic, No Biscuit!" that has some short example "trollfics" written as examples of what not to do/poking fun at bad fanfic tropes of ten-plus years ago.

I still can't see "Celebrian" written out without cringing a little.