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This thread is intense, man, I literally had a dream last night where I was explaining out loud to nobody why Ready Player One was such a bad book.
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Aug 6, 2017 18:11
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queserasera posted:I had to put down Libromancer because the protagonist, a cataloger for a public library, did his job by standing at the front desk zapping ISBNs. Dude, really, you couldn't have just shadowed or interviewed an actual cataloger or other back-of-house staffer to find out what they actually do? I had a summer job as a cataloger, and my job was only and exactly this, except usually in a back room with the same insufferable hip-hop station being played all day, every day.
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Aug 25, 2017 00:36
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Nckdictator posted:
From a little ways back, but: This book is free on Amazon Unlimited, so I'm going to have to read it now.
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Sep 12, 2017 06:36
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Update on THE BEAR KINGDOM TRILOGY: BOOK ONE: THE HOWLING TOWER: I downloaded it onto my Kindle, and left it in the living room while I slept. My roommate read the whole thing while I was in bed, and says it is "really bad." This bodes well!
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Sep 12, 2017 22:46
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Laserjet 4P posted:Late reply and it’s not really guerilla but there is David Malki’s “Machine of Death” duology which I really like a lot. there wolf posted:Those "write about this specific topic" anthologies have been around for a while; I used to have one that was stories about Zombies against stories about Unicorns. But that one looks interesting regardless. I'll keep an eye out for it. Good news, the first book is available entirely for free on the internet, and it's quite good. http://machineofdeath.net/ebook
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Oct 9, 2017 10:02
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Tiggum posted:IIRC, The Culture isn't a species, it's made up of basically whoever wants to join, and none of them are humans. The setting is totally disconnected from Earth so questions like "how far in the future is this?" or "what modern-day society eventually evolved into The Culture?" don't arise. There's actually a short story where the Culture finds Earth, but in like the 1960's. The Culture's a lot like Star Trek's Federation; it's comprised of a bunch of races and most of them are humanoid. It's also like the Federation in that it's generally, even excessively benevolent (although most of the books don't show that, for drama's sake. Usually the books involve Special Circumstances agents, the government workers who work in areas that would involve a lot of ideological or ethical arguments). And I'll echo that one shouldn't read Consider Phlebas first, or maybe even at all.
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Oct 19, 2017 00:34
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outlier posted:Aside: I had the impression that the Culture was largely humanoid but I don't know if that's ever explicitly said. Certainly almost all the narrators are humanoids or Minds. I mean, it's noticeable enough to comment on when a character has a really long neck, or like a hundred dicks all over their body, so I was just assuming that Spiderians or blobs of sentient gaseous matter would also be commented upon, and they rarely are. outlier posted:* Late in the series, there is an idea that the Culture is something special. Civilizations are supposed to "transcend" or fall into chaos and the Culture is supposed to somehow have avoided either fate, perhaps due to being able to adapt. The deal here is that it's not fully explainable by/to non-ascended beings, but it's kind of a collective-will-of-the-group thing, and the Culture has collectively decided not to ascend to the status of Full Gods just yet, because matter and the current universe are fun. John Lee has a new favorite as of 22:25 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 21:45
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DigitalRaven posted:Don't bother with Asimov Mods?!
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Oct 25, 2017 20:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:This is the part where I smugly explain that you're a big dumb baby because um actually characters don't have to be perfect and furthermore Counterpoint to your sarcasm: People who proclaim that a book was objectively bad because it had characters who act in a negative fashion are super lovely to deal with, and they're popping up more and more. Please don't be one of them.
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Nov 2, 2017 06:57
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I came into this thread to be like "I'm actually a fan of the sporadic 'rationalfic.' Some are acceptable, by my low standards at least." But holy poo poo that MLP story
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Jan 4, 2018 17:46
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grittyreboot posted:https://twitter.com/Devon_OnEarth/status/1234229657702207490?s=19 ...Magic, surely?
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Mar 2, 2020 07:29
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packetmantis posted:one of the major characters in the Inheritance books is the god of love/sex who takes the form of a prepubescent boy and regularly has sex. That's a spicy hot take, because it's entirely made up bullshit. He's the god of children, tricksters, and innocence, so he almost never has sex, ever. The book mentions that pedos took an interest in him when he spent a thousand-plus years as a slave, because pedos are interested in an immortal child (and many of them die for their hubris), but on the limited occasions he has sex he is either fully pubescent (when looking like a human) or a totally intangible god-form fusing with other gods in something that I guess could be described as sexual relations, if you want to stretch. He has sex twice in the book focused on him, both times not as a tiny child, and neither time is it described in explicit detail. One of the times he looks like a sixteen-year-old, but that's a far, far cry from looking like a six-year-old. You're not only being overly alarmist, you're being the kind of, yes, bad-faith alarmist who either deliberately makes poo poo up or doesn't actually give a poo poo and reports things based on half-remembered third-hand accounts.
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Jul 13, 2020 02:20
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packetmantis posted:I didn't tell a lie, I misremembered. "There's a god of childhood who doesn't like having sex" becoming "There's a god of sex who is a child who loves having sex, boy these books sure are pedobait" is a hell of a misremember.
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Jul 13, 2020 04:09
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Nucleic Acids posted:Didn’t Gamemaster Anthony give the movie a negative review in some magazine? I need to know more about this.
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Nov 27, 2020 20:06
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BioEnchanted posted:For those that enjoy Steven King, I'd recommend the recent books written by CJ Tudor, the Chalk Man and The Taking of Annie Thorn. They have a lot of Steven King energy, including an ancient evil that plays a part in both books but something I appreciate is that the supernatural element isn't the main antagonist in the stories - it's a catalyst, but the human element of the situation is always a bigger threat. He apparently released other books after that I haven't got around to yet. Worth noting that the US version of The Taking of Annie Thorne is titled The Hiding Place.
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Nov 30, 2020 11:24
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Strategic Tea posted:Are the Dirk Gently books anything like the show? FWIW I enjoyed it but boy did they make some bold decisions, especially the second season. The show does not follow the plot of the books in the slightest. It IS a quite good show, though - I will give it props for entirely changing the demeanor of Dirk, while still making him very noticeably Dirk. Just, in the show he's like twentysomething, straightforward, and often chipper, and in the books he's like mid-to-late-forties, depressed, and a broke trouper, and you could very easily track how the one became the other over the course of years.
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Jan 18, 2021 21:27
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Yeah, sure, I'll go see a play. Except I won't because I'm an out-of-shape redneck with untailored clothes who can't afford a hundred bucks to go be given the stinkeye by everyone in the theater.
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Jan 24, 2021 00:53
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:You can watch entire Shakespeare performances on YouTube for free you dolt. Except that's not going to the theater, is it? Nobody says "To really, truly experience Shakespeare, you have to watch him on Youtube."
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Jan 25, 2021 19:20
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Don't most cities have "Shakespeare in the Park" shows that are free and public? We had them all the time in St. Louis before the lockdown. 'Most cities' This isn't really related to the subject at hand, but an awful lot of people don't live in a city! Like, a quick google search says ~65% live in a CITY city and ~80% live in some kind of urban area, but I'm not in either of those groups, and I have zero way of getting this data but I feel confident that 'most' municipalities do not have publicly performed Shakespeare. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but the closest city is reasonably well populated and doesn't advertise a Shakespeare in the Park event. On the other hand, an area traveling theatre group does advertise a wine tasting with 'Eat, Drink, and Be Hairy,' so maybe my uncouth appearance wouldn't be as unwelcome as I imagine?
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Jan 25, 2021 21:27
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Ugly In The Morning posted:This is the kind of attitude people have when they’re talking themselves out of going to the gym because “oh, I’m so out of shape, everyone will laugh at me”. No, no one is going to give a poo poo unless you’re being actively disruptive. If it’s something where it’s obvious that you’ve never been to a play before, someone might give you recommendations for other stuff to check out too. I don’t know why people love to assume hostility in new environments like that but it’s almost universally wrong. Go to a play! You’ll probably enjoy yourself! Bring friends! That way you have people to talk about what you just saw and can share perspectives on it! (Mandatory coronavirus disclaimer here) Sham bam bamina! posted:Yeah, you don't need a tailored suit to see a play. When I was an undergrad, I went to the symphony hall every other weekend or so with my student discount, and I never wore anything fancier than a polo and khakis from Kohl's. I types up a big page-long rant here and then thought better of it. (Then got a paragraph into a SECOND one immediately after that sentence.) Suffice it to say that I've absolutely experienced hostility in new situations, numerous times, including times when people repeatedly insisted I would not, and that while I can't detect any real difference in my style of casual-formal-polo-and-khakis, other people definitely have.
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Jan 25, 2021 23:14
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Spoiled the stupid meltdown so nobody has to read it if they don't want to, actual half-assed thread content below I dunno, maybe I have resting rear end in a top hat face or something, but I get these reactions, like I said, from people I do not know and have never spoken to, and I'm certainly not being an rear end in a top hat to any kids. That's mostly "Oh?" and "Cool!" type stuff from little girls wanting to tell me they got new socks or whatever. Whether I'm being an rear end in a top hat now is, I suppose, up for debate, but it's not because of 'resistance' to trying challenging things, it's specifcally that people are lovely assholes to you when you do. I tried new things all the time, back in the day, and got shouted down constantly, constantly, for being insultingly lovely at them. It happened at least a dozen times that somebody would beg, repeatedly, over the course of several times, for me to X (usually dance, sing, draw, or, oddly specifically a few times, bake bread), and I would say that I was very bad at X, and they would say that nobody cares if you're bad, and besides, nobody can BE bad at those things because they're all so easy! And then I would fearfully attempt to X, and they'd get pissed and say I was deliberately doing it badly to spite them, and if I actually tried I'd be doing it perfectly, and then I have to listen to smug pricks say, like I've heard a dozen fuckin' times before, that actually nobody cares if you're bad at things, just Do Them, and leave unsaid that you're obviously supposed to actually Do Them Well. I've lost friends because I was so bad at dancing, or rather because I "didn't care enough to actually try," and it's so goddamn tiring to push myself to trust somebody that tenth or eleventh time or whatever, but this new person says they're really for sure not going to be upset if I do it badly, and then guess what, they WOULDN'T have been unhappy but I'm obviously singing poorly on purpose because anybody can do it, it takes no effort at all and if you really cared you'd be good at it, and I cry in bed because I believed another person who lied, again. And then I watch movies where the wise teacher or friendly master or whatever is like "You have a long road to walk, but everybody was a beginner at some point!" and presumably those people must exist in real life, but I've never met them for drat sure. I mean, obviously this is all barely related to going to see a play, because I doubt anybody would tell me I saw the play wrong on purpose, but people might very well tell me I went to see the play dressed wrong, or that I sat in the wrong seats, or something. And even if my clothes are fine, I'd still have to buy a new pair of shoes, and shoes are goddamn expensive and I'd have to save up for a couple months because I have no money and dress shoes also hurt like a motherfucker and I wouldn't be able to hear the fuckin' play anyway because on the few public performances I've been to back in high school, you can't hear a drat thing because it's people on stage standing an entire theater's distance away. Look, I'd like to go see a play hypothetically, but every step involves spending money and having people hate me for it, so I haven't done it. In fact, I actually know two of the theater people who perform in town**, and one's somebody I used to date and the other's a creepo who tried to bang everything he sees and is REALLY unpleasant about it. I didn't even think of that until right now, but I don't want to go see a semi-ex and Weird Todd* perform. *Last I checked, anyway **not his real name And all of this is totally beside the point of the thread, which is lovely books, so here's a lovely book, grabbed right out of the box of books I'm turning in to the used bookstore but can't right now because of COVID:  All the Shannara books. The cover art is honestly the best thing about these, the books themselves are largely bland with very few interesting bits. edit: Autistic, stressed, broke as poo poo, unable to see a doctor (or a therapist could you tell), had a meltdown, leaving it up for the curious (morbidly or otherwise), but spoiler'd it so it doesn't poo poo up the thread quite as much. Sorry if I made anyone unhappy, it's just a thing I'm particularly sensitive about and haven't found a way to deal with it yet. John Lee has a new favorite as of 08:45 on Jan 26, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 08:28
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Screaming Idiot posted:I can recognize the technical skill in covers like that, but they look so bland and emotionless. I can almost hear the bearded guy mutter, "Is he done painting yet? I've been holding this drat pose for twenty minutes and I have to pee." I honestly like the composition and the artistic style a decent amount! But the people's faces just look different varieties of uninterested. nishi koichi posted:this is incredibly depressing to hear, because i’m the patient tutor-type to my friends, and everyone should have that. i sincerely love teaching people. i’m sorry that happened to you Thank you, I appreciate that a huge, huge amount, probably like a weird or unsettling amount. I won't say any more because, you know, trying to get the thread back on track from where I threw it, but thanks.
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Jan 26, 2021 08:49
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Mokinokaro posted:Brooks just is an average writer though. Not sure he belongs in this thread. Fair enough, I suppose I wouldn't call it 'terrible,' but I think it got a lot of positive press that it didn't really deserve. IMO weirdo poo poo is better than boring poo poo.
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Jan 26, 2021 20:46
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I wonder if this is actually Spider Robinson in the comments? (Also, a lot of people cheering "Yeah! Stick it to the powerful and mighty reviewers!")
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Apr 27, 2021 22:12
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Those books are not as lighthearted as you might be led to believe Pretty fuckin' grim, really
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Oct 22, 2021 00:18
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Or rollercoasters.
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Mar 30, 2022 23:15
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Tunicate posted:There's a rational naruto RPG which of course is highly rational because every character action has to be written out in pseudocode, because that's what rationality is, only doing things that are explicitly spelled out like a beep boop robot. Like, I haven't read the work, but I jumped to several random pages because I was interested in what the 'pseudocode' you were talking about was, and I didn't see any, in either the thread updates or the reader posts. Maybe it's there somewhere, but from what I could see, the closest thing was just people voting on plans, a thing that happens in a forums CYOA - here on SA we tend to bold votes, over there they have bold and an [X] symbol. I read the Update 0 and part of Update 1, and one of the first thing I see in chapter one is quote:Because I am a ninja I met your father, and he is my heart. And because he is my heart, we had you." Cringe, possibly, I'm not defending the quality, but this doesn't really seem like the criticism of pseudo-rational 'robotic' behavior holds water? edit: I kept reading, you mean these?  these are skill checks, friend, they have them in D&D and similar you check the numbers you have against the enemy or situation's numbers, it's a randomization method the determine the general outcome of actions John Lee has a new favorite as of 02:10 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 01:56
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