PYF terrible book: Freud molesting a thesaurus.

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The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Well let's be fair: he was a gay pedophile in the original too.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 15:58

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 14:53

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I thought we were talking about Neal Stephenson, not Piers Anthony!

:downsrim:

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 15:36

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

this was my favorite change

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 18:33

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

AKZ posted:

Coldheart Canyon. gently caress you, Clive Barker for tricking me into reading furry porn. Actually, all contemporary Clive Barker.

Let's be honest here: you never need to be tricked to start reading furry porn.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 03:33

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

artsy fartsy posted:

lol are you seriously saying that you won't read a classic because you think it's for children?

I mean it's cool if you're not into Jane Austen, but you just got through explaining how you read trashy zombie fiction

He meant he didn't have to because he wasn't assigned to read it in a class, don't jump to conclusions.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 01:40

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

YggiDee posted:

While we're at it, I'd like to present Wuthering Heights as the Worst Book. The only book, to date that I fell asleep reading, and the only book where I needed Sparknotes for a school assignment (I finished it later out if stubborn pride, but there was no part of that book that I liked) it's about a bunch of horrible people who are bad for each other in the middle of goddamn nowhere and the happy ending is incest. Tada!

Okay guys, this is the post you thought that other post was.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 15:48

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Literally The Worst posted:

ready player one is a poopshit book by a man who thinks references double as comemntary and depth, and armada is even worse. those are terrible books.

Water is wet, and fire is hot.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 20:57

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Snapchat A Titty posted:

Peter Watts is generally really good and he even puts his books online for free after he's made "enough money" I guess?: http://www.rifters.com

Anyway the third book of the Starfish/Maelstrom/Behemoth trilogy has these awful intensely explicit chapters about a sexual sadist. Luckily they're all named "Portrait of the Sadist as [some age]" and you can easily skip them.

For some reason, sci-fi authors tend to be really into writing out their sexual hangups.

I was going to say weird poo poo about sexual sadist rapists was A Thing amongst neuroreductionist SF writers, but then I remembered several fantasy books I've read and decided it was more of A Thing amongst people who write grim-rear end nerdfiction.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2015 16:38

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I forget, has anyone mentioned the Left Behind books yet? Because those are terrible as gently caress.

Say what you will about Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, but at least it wasn't interminably loving boring.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 16:19

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Senior Woodchuck posted:

Fred Clark has built a minor Internet feifdom out of explaining, in minute detail, how terrible the Left Behind books are on every conceivable level.

I have a similar reaction to it to Twilight. Like, I get WHY something LIKE this might be popular, but surely there is a less bland nothing version?

# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 23:32

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

queserasera posted:

The footnotes prevented me from enjoying Dr Strange and Mr Norrell. Footnotes in fiction and creative nonfiction piss me right the gently caress off. It's like that one person you know who's always dropping asides only humorous to him or her.

Look at this rear end in a top hat who doesn't like Bartimaeus or Discworld or Infinite Jest or I could go on

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 02:06

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

coronatae posted:

You wanna scar your kids for life take them to see the musical adaptation of Struwwelpeter, Shockheaded Peter. Some really creepy puppets in there.

For other terrible books, I have to say anything by Gregory Maguire. I wanted to like his books, especially the ones dealing with classic fairy tales (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and Mirror, Mirror) but they're just...badly written and confusing. Mirror, Mirror especially has this hosed up moment where Snow White wakes up from her enchanted sleep to find she has already undergone puberty, and then she suddenly experiences like, seven years' worth of menstruation at once. The prose in Mirror, Mirror is also really confusing and switches styles and perspectives with no warning, and reading it made me feel kind of dizzy. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister isn't quite as bad, but it's still not great. And gently caress Wicked. The musical is alright but that book is horrible and confusing.

Wicked is edgy teenager as poo poo.

The musical is also pretty teenage, but in a more likable way.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 03:07

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I think in the book a dude has sex with a tiger, in a scene that is bizarrely glossed over.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 15:50

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I feel like you can't throw having sex with a tiger in as a throwaway detail, unless you are William S. Burroughs.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 16:03

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

outlier posted:

Despite most of his books having no ending, I enjoyed Neal Stephenson's early output: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, etc. I even thought his technothrillers were - while not great books - decent reading.

But Cryptonomicon was where the smell started. Everyone was praising it, while I was plagued with the idea that it was much less than the sum of it's parts. And that some of the parts were very bad indeed:

* Amy Shaftoe: barely has any personality or impact on the book. Exists only to develop a strange and unexplained attraction to schlubby computer programmer.
* The heroes of this novel (in the modern day anyway) are basically looters and tax dodgers.
* Digressions upon digressions. Which are fun and amusing but piled on so much that the plot disappears.
* it's long, oh so long
* Mysterious character Enoch Root pops up, acts enigmatic and disappears again. What?

Anathem was long and dorky and silly (it largely uses the tropes of a Harry Potter story, with lots of made up words and a ninja fight scene thrown in) but was entertaining enough that I give it a pass. Reamde however: this is what I said elsewhere in the Book Barn:

I finished the whole of Cryptonomicon, but in retrospect, the scene where Stephenson has his stand-in totally pwn a stupid postmodern hipster who doesn't even science was a really bad sign.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 15:54

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Hogge Wild posted:

Orson Scott Card good?

I know we all need to hate him now because he's a colossal, cartoonish shithead, but Speaker For The Dead is pretty solid.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 03:17

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I actually really liked Tales From Jabba's Palace as a teen, because I thought seeing the same event from the perspectives of multiple characters, each of whom has their own agendas and concerns, was kinda cool.

Probably wouldn't hold up today.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2015 23:53

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Nanomashoes posted:

Every visual novel.

It ain't a book unless I can kill a spider with it.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 23:26

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Given the fairly gross Star Wars self-inserts and fiction wars from "professionals" discussed upthread I don't see how what I'm guessing is some robot navelgazing from the skinny robot in the Rogue Squadron games could be worse.

...it's worse, isn't it.

Mostly it's just bad fanfic

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 00:17

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

The worst book is, of course, the Bible :reject:

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 00:18

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

When I was a tween who cared about Star Wars, the fact that the droids lived under a system of legal slavery that no one, good guy or bad guy, ever questioned, always bugged me.

Mind you, that story is hilarious garbage.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 03:25

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

This is one of those things, like Christian Rock, where there are many great books written by Christians dealing with Christian themes, but they aren't "Christian Literature", because that's all written by people who have never left a compound.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 17:39

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Please, go back to TV Tropes.

2011 called, they want their goon hate target back.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 03:59

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Klaus88 posted:

More slang and acronyms then the goddamned military up in this thread.

I remember those threads.

I too, am capable of recalling events that happened years ago.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 05:02

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

What is wrong with completely justified contempt?

Wow you sound like you just came from Ebaumsworld and voted for H. Ross Perot

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 14:53

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Don't forget the time they doxxed a child rape victim.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 15:21

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

haha what I don't remember that. Elaborate? I'm sure I wouldn't have missed it. I actually registered here because I was really bored in lectures, mock threads were really entertaining time passers and the paywall kept going up because of a Let's Play or something, so watching that one go insane in real time was extra entertainment.

Some ex-tropers formed an offsite forum where they talked about their problems with TvTropes. SA came up sometimes, and a few of the ex-tropers talked about posters on the mock thread they liked or disliked.

One of the guys they disliked got so loving mad he accused two of them of being pedophiles on no evidence whatsoever and a lot of evidence to the contrary and posted their real names and faces in the thread. It came out that one of these two people had actually been raped as a child during the fallout.

Those threads got loving disgusting towards the end, and every time people talk about bringing them back, I have to assume they are just remembering the good times where they made fun of people being aroused by teletubbies and not the times when the thread had stopped being about tropers and started being about a bizarre ur-troper strawman goons had formed out of everything they disliked about themselves.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 16:34

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

The Saddest Rhino posted:

I don't remember any of this :o

Also they used to call me the arbiter of acceptability for some reason but it was p funny

On books has anyone read The Girl On the Train. It's not awful but lol its plot is generally

Protagonist : I should not do the wrong thing
Protagonist: I'll do it anyway!!!!
Everyone: wtf !
Protagonist: oh poo poo that was a bad idea
Protagonist: I can either be honest, or do even more wrong things to gently caress up even more
Protagonist: guess I'll do those wrong things!!!!
Everyone: jfc!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Protagonist: somehow doing all those solved the mystery
Everyone: you're still a loving failure
Protagonist: I'm too drunk nvm

And you left, so clearly the thread was going to descend into madness, there was no one left to arbite acceptability. :colbert:

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 17:09

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Speaking of bad bestsellers, [b]The Da Vinci Code[/b ] is an utter trainwreck of amateurish bad writing built on a foundation of a D- understanding of history at best.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2016 20:09

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

Don't worry, TVTropes is still bad, although now that they've banished Troper Tales, Fetish Fuel, and all the pages about individual works of porn and pedoshit, it's merely the normal sort of nerd badness rather than horrifying abyssal badness.

Yeah mostly it's just boring now.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 01:05

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

IconicIronic posted:

Probably gonna get poo poo for this, but I loving despise Faust, whatever format. It's often used as a major inspiration for anything about ambition and deals for power, but it's clearly about a guy who actually doesn't have any ambition and completely squanders his power. In all formats, he literally does nothing. I agree with Hannibal here, I root for Mephistopheles for having to deal with such a poo poo-heel for 24+ years, and have nothing but contempt for Faust. Fucker deserves to suffer for all eternity.

Books like Eragon/Twilight/50 Shades are godawful, but Faust, in all formats, is the only literature I flat out despise.

9th grade is tough on all of us.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 04:27

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

I have not read Rising Sun but this is a great write-up on the movie https://web.archive.org/web/20150726012421/http://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/121-the-once-controversial-rising-sun/

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 16:36

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

flosofl posted:

Wha? That poo poo is straight up hard-core BSDM porn. I'm curious as to what kind of story is left after they sanitize it for TV. If you cut out all the whipping, bondage, and hard-core sex there's probably only 20 to 30 pages you can adapt out of few hundred.

It's also not very good and was surprisingly boring. I have no idea about the sequels.

Hey they made a movie of 50 Shades of Grey

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 03:04

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Whenever Duncan Idaho appeared in the movie version of Dune, I just imagined a studio audience reacting like they'd just seen Onion Bubs

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 01:38

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

gradenko_2000 posted:

A literal clone of Luke Skywalker

Named Luuke.

There was a third clone named Luuuke.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 13:42

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Max posted:

You should all be aware that Chuck Tingle is now an official Hugo Award Finalist for Best Short Story, "Space Raptor Butt Invasion."

http://midamericon2.org/home/hugo-awards-and-wsfs/2016-hugo-finalists/

I am 100% this is part of the prolonged temper tantrum against this story winning a Hugo.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 22:21

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Cumslut1895 posted:

Also �If You Were an Award, My Love� lol

Toldya. Insane amounts of anger about a pretty good story, basically just because one of the many far-right nutjobs weaponizing nerd culture told them to be angry.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 00:59

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

Antivehicular posted:

I just read this story, and oh my God, how are people this angry about this? It's just tribalism, right? Nobody is legitimately arguing in good faith that this story is bad enough to destroy fantasy fiction, right?

Let's look at the comments for the story, shall we?

Some angry dudes posted:

The funny thing is that if you change those five blustering gin-soaked pool players into demographic profiles more reflective of who is relatively most likely to beat someone senseless�.
�.then this story stops being funny at all, and starts being hate speech.
Funny how that works � how whether revenge-murder porn is just that, or Art, or something worse, depends chiefly on whose gory death is being fantasized.

Drivel. Neither science fiction NOR a story. �If you give a mouse a cookie� was more riveting and had the added advantage of having beautifully rendered pictures that catered to my apparently slavish tastes in literature. It is a good thing Ms Swirsky was blessed with an XX Chromosome otherwise this drek would not get a second glance.
Heinlein wept.

The one good thing about this horrid tripe of a story is that it�s one of the things that gave us �Sad Puppies�.
I suppose the world should at least be thankful for that.

Wow, such bigotry in a story. Such ignorant fear of the unknown, of the working people you have never deigned to speak to, so never understood outside the arrogant prejudices of the �educated� left. Sarah Hoyt (a far better writer) was quite right about this nasty, childish little tale.
By the way, I am a graduate of an older, better-known university than any of those commenting here attended, ironically in Earth Sciences which includes palaeobiology, but one who has worked with and made friends of more working men and women than academics or writers. None has ever so much as commented negatively upon my education except in positive terms, nor on anyone else�s skin colour or background. The only bigotry I ever see is from the educated people, especially the socialists.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 11:23

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

DStecks posted:

I thought the Hugo nomination process was supposed to have been fixed so this couldn't happen again?

It hasn't gone through yet so we have to suffer through this until next year, when it's properly fixed.

James Garfield posted:

I like how they are saying "gin-soaked" is racist.
Since when does the stereotypical blue-collar white dude drink gin?

They are reacting in a way that they think the strawman sjw who likes this will respond to by feigning exaggerated anger at supposed classism.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 15:39

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 14:53

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

grittyreboot posted:

I finished Ready Player One about a week ago. Read most of it in two big sit downs. The whole thing reads like a YA novel with f-bombs thrown in to make it seem more adult.

What I don't think anyone else touched on is that the stated moral of the story is that you shouldn't rely on escapist fantasies. This is thrown in at the very end after the main character wins billions of dollars based on his encyclopedic knowledge of escapist fantasy. The darker implications of everyone in the world relying on a virtual world to live their life is so lightly grazed upon that I feel it was a publisher note that Cline begrudgingly added in as an afterthought.

Really, Ernest Cline wrote a Tumblr-esque treatise on why fandom is the most important aspect of any person's life. No one is rewarded for having an original thought. No one in the book ever makes anything of their own, they just steal from the people that had the imagination and drive to create something unique. I once laughed out loud because the main character ironically criticized the bad guys as having no imagination. Pot, meet kettle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71VFzClEoG0

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 03:56

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF terrible book: Freud molesting a thesaurus.

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