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Re-ascendant Aztecs. Looks like the author read Shadowrun, or at least the Wikipedia article when drunk, and didn't stop to think for two seconds where Hispanics actually came from.
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Jul 15, 2017 06:09
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Alhazred posted:That's a really white list... Really American, too. Though that probably goes without saying. Cracked was wrong, Ready Player One is the Twilight for white male middle aged fucks.
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Jul 29, 2017 12:53
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I think the worst thing about it is that it just isn't fun, which is something of a miracle. You'd think that a story specifically written as an anything-goes medley of cool things from classic movies and games would manage at least that, but every single detail is just forced, lifeless, and false. It feels very similar to The Big Bang Theory, which is a show that expects its audience to be ignorant of the nerd references and laugh at the characters who make them. How does a guy as committed to nerddom as Cline manage that? As much as people like to accuse nerds of worshipping pop culture because they have nothing else going on in their lives that they pay attention to at all, (and still managing to miss the point of everything they watch/read) Cline looks to be an example of exactly that.
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Aug 5, 2017 03:08
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Just as well it has 'A Novel' labelled on it, I keep thinking that looks like a 80s/90s game cover.
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Aug 5, 2017 16:22
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I'm reminded of CineD chat about Matthew Reilly, Australian author whose works is something like Tom Clancy minus the political screeds and with more Michael Bay sensibilities. The best poo poo ever when you are 14, in essence. That and he went out of his way to have the antagonists be from different backgrounds; one book is basically about people caught up in a fight between different US military branches over a superweapon.
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Aug 6, 2017 07:59
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Given his complaints about thriller novels being too slow, I have to wonder if he accidentally stumbled into the 'action novels without the author insistently injecting their terrible politics in massive hateful screeds' niche.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:13
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Something about 'standard' fantasy lit has the protagonist tend to be the least likeable and sympathetic character in it besides maybe Lord Evil McRapeocaust and also lots of jarring sexual content. It's basically a long-form version of fanfiction in that way. Is anyone else really sick of 'seemingly standard fantasy setting is actually the FUTURE after nuclear war!' even though it isn't used that much? I mean, Middle Earth is at least kinda interesting given the implication/statement it's the distant past. (I might give Adventure Time a pass because it doesn't try to pretend it's a surprise)
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Aug 10, 2017 10:31
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I mean, just have a drat fantasy setting where they also invented computers and guns if you want them that badly. Or just do Fallout. Though there's a fun loophole usually used in anime where it's set on another planet that happens to be in a Wild West stage of incomplete/aborted colonisation so you can have wildly varying culture and tech levels without having to have a contrived post-apocalypse scenario. (though it doesn't always stop them anyway)
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Aug 10, 2017 12:29
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artsy fartsy posted:I really liked that series as a kid, too. Had some great monsters, cool world building and the magic system was pretty sweet. Plus the dog. That's just Once and Future King's Merlin for the lazy.
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Aug 10, 2017 14:27
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Tunicate posted:Note to self: whenever I have to write a profession with no research, just add a quick line or two saying "this bullshit wasn't normally part of his job and it was a loving tedious pain in the rear end to have to do it" That sounds like a pretty sure bet no matter what profession you're writing about.
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Aug 23, 2017 23:51
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A Series Of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter really only have in common the same themes of most young adult literature; teenage protagonists having to grow up quickly in a weird alternate world full of strange and dangerous things, and every single adult and authority figure is either evil, incompetent, impotent or not paying attention, often some combination of the above. You can probably see why it's very popular with teenagers.
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Aug 24, 2017 09:22
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Emily Rodda's fame seems limited to Australia (and also apparently Japan, it even got made into an anime), no one ever talks about Deltora Quest. Which was pretty good, if weird, since it's a fantasy book series that takes inspiration from adventure games, complete with riddles, cereal box puzzles and the collection of crystal macguffins. Also really, really good and freaky illustrations by Marc McBride. I have no idea how well it's held up, mind. I recall there's some pretty clear anti-gambling and anti-dishonest moneylending messages in some of them.
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Aug 25, 2017 09:01
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Circle of Magic was kinda funny given it focused on kids who had various themed magic powers (one had plant magic, one had clothes magic, one had storm magic and one had forge magic) which were considered inferior to the 'standard' magic of the setting which I don't think we ever actually learned much about at all for comparison. And it didn't matter cuz with proper use all of that magic could be broken as gently caress. Especially the clothes magic. Also the storm magic girl could use standard magic too anyway. Then there's rock magic, dance magic, and a guy who got hit by lightning and got glass and lightning magic, and he doesn't know what the gently caress.
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Aug 25, 2017 17:41
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Zore posted:The only real issue with those books was how often we had the main character get into some really sketchy sexual relationships. Alanna obviously getting together with the knight she was squiring for who was also the prince when she was 15/he was 19. Then the sequel series following a new character has her hook up with her 30+ year old mentor at 17ish. Then another sequel series has Alanna's daughter marry a crow. First part is skeevy but at least seems accurate for the setting, the second part makes me think that episode of Steven Universe where it turned out the protagonist of their favourite YA book series married her own familiar when he got turned into a handsome dude and the last half of the book described a ridic fancy wedding.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:47
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:That's an interesting place to go to. Try reading the rest of the post and you might find it's actually on topic! 
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Aug 26, 2017 14:57
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'Cloud mows the lawn' sounded to me like on of those hilarious fanfics where an overdramatic protagonist tries to do everyday tasks and fails hilariously because they can't act like a normal person for five minutes. Like the driving school episode of DBZ.
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Aug 28, 2017 16:11
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The Day My Bum Went Psycho had two sequels, and already was by Andy Griffiths, author of the 'Just' series of children's books; Just Tricking, Just Annoying, Just Stupid, etc. I think the latest one was Just Macbeth.
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Aug 30, 2017 07:33
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chitoryu12 posted:In the Let's Read, it's getting worse. This is extra amusing when you recall Carrot Top having turned into a steroids monster.
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Sep 1, 2017 06:26
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Any prose that comes to mind that's fine when you read it but really silly in retrospect? Jabberwocky basically was a demonstration of how you can make up nonsense words and people will go along with them if they sound right, and some of them might even make it into regular usage as perfectly cromulent words.
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Sep 6, 2017 11:23
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Much like 'evolution', there's a lot of common misunderstanding of the idea of 'progress'. There's always been schlock, art and attempts at high art, it's a matter of success and ability. There are also often trends that people like at the time but don't age well, like turn-of-the-century prose.
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Sep 9, 2017 04:46
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Artistic movements like postmodernism don't necessarily invent anything, what they do is open up spaces for different ideas, techniques and experiments which might not have been previously discussed or taken seriously. You can find elements of what might be called postmodernism way back in classical Greek theatre, they just didn't have the same words for it. And of course, more widespread education, literacy, and opportunity simply letting more people write, especially a more diverse range of people, allows for a far more diverse range of stories to be told, but generally people will do what they can with what's at their disposal. Education and background helps to learn to write better, but some people come up with interesting ideas all on their own in whatever time and place.
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Sep 9, 2017 07:14
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SerialKilldeer posted:Sorry to interrupt the serious academic discussion, but I was following links from the Handbook for Mortals thread and came across something that might be of interest. It's a (n incomplete) chapter-by-chapter sporking of a book called Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck: https://web.archive.org/web/20170327050103/http://chezapocalypse.com/category/readthrough-tigers-curse/page/2/ Doesn't sound like it'd be too out of place in some old fairy tale book, though guessing the story takes it a lot more seriously.
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Sep 11, 2017 06:02
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Genre fiction gets a bad rap because bad books that involve dragons and/or spaceships and/or vampires are more fun to joke about than bad books that don't involve them.
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Sep 11, 2017 11:45
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Everything I've read about Dresden Files seems like some fun supernatural ideas with the main character being probably the least interesting and original thing about it. Also, every setting's Lovecraft ripoff ancient reality-destroying abominations always seem to be infinitely more boring conceptually than anything Lovecraft ever wrote. Even the black people.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:04
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Catholic superheroes are all either demons or vampires, or at least look or dress like demons or vampires.
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Sep 18, 2017 07:27
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There's a running undercurrent in politics, which American liberalism hasn't really done anything to discredit, that conservatives, authoritarians and fascists are Hard Men who Make Tough Decisions and are Decisive in a Crisis Situation, who will sometimes do mean things and look scary but they'll have your back when the big scary bad guys show up, while liberals and pacifists are silly hippies who okay to tolerate when everything's sunshine and roses but are a liability whenever things get scary, so you need to shut them up so the Tough Men Can Take Charge. (Communists tend to be an aberration in this regard, usually seen as corrupted by wicked, inhuman, false religion) It's never been easier to demonstrate how wrong that is after Charlottesville, but I don't think it's going to go away easily.
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Sep 21, 2017 14:02
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Does make me wonder what various nationals think of Bill Bryson's travelogues. Down Under probably sells better in Australia than anywhere else because it's quite affectionate and brings up cool stuff most Australians didn't even know about. Also, it's goddamn hilarious. Also, he is right at least that the English language is a shambling Frankensteinian abomination too horrible to die that spreads like a disease and assimilates like the Borg.
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Sep 28, 2017 01:47
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It might well also be because he's written fuckloads of books, wouldn't be surprising if some get forgotten or blur together after a while.
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Sep 28, 2017 17:47
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Turtledove is probably best known for The Road Not Taken, a short story that's probably the best you're gonna get because it's not expected to have much solid characterisation. That's the one where aliens who have antigravity technology allowing for FTL travel and every other aspect of their technology and culture stuck in the Napoleonic era trying to invade contemporary Earth. (There was a SNL sketch with more or less this premise which may or may not have been inspired by it) There's some fun ideas to it in that apparently while a bronze-age civilisation can figure out antigravity and FTL, apparently the technology is so different and weird that the scientific method is an active impediment to figuring it out, and as a result civilisations that do tend to abandon it or stagnate because they can just fly around and drop things on people. The logic on that is probably questionable, but it's a good enough reasoning for a technological disparity.
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Oct 5, 2017 15:44
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dril is the poet of our time.
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Oct 5, 2017 17:34
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Arcsquad12 posted:The BFG is pretty bad. Definitely his worst movie in a long time. But then again, Wes Anderson kind of set a new bar for Roald Dahl adaptations with Fantastic Mister Fox. That seems surprisingly disappointing, The BFG seems like something perfectly in Spielberg's wheelhouse. How'd that go wrong?
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Oct 8, 2017 04:50
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Kay Kessler posted:Ringo's the guy that put a webcomic character in one of his books, right? I do recall the Troy Rising series was apparently originally a prequel to the webcomic Schlock Mercenary.
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Oct 9, 2017 08:09
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Anything that's old, critically acclaimed and doesn't have too many spaceships in it becomes literary fiction eventually.
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Oct 10, 2017 13:24
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Pastry of the Year posted:I... actually loving love this idea. Me too, though more for the potential entertainment value. For a bonus, mention one is a guilty pleasure as well.
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Oct 11, 2017 12:41
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I think that was Hitler's ashes, and it was a toilet in the White House. Also the Nazis were based in Atlantis.
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Oct 17, 2017 05:50
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Reilly's version has a special forces free-for-all in an Antarctic base where the British have freeze grenades, the French have crossbows, and the Americans have grappling hook guns.
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Oct 17, 2017 10:39
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All this is making me picture Dark Souls set in Maine. Like that one horror game that everyone was talking about then forgot about some years ago, but with even more death.
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Oct 18, 2017 13:07
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Alan Wake? Game ruled. If not, I too have forgotten about it. Thassa one. Though Silent Hill would also be pretty much correct.
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Oct 18, 2017 15:03
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Sounds like he eventually figured out it's more fun when you're not trying to portray sides as The Good Guys and The Bad Guys but explore the ramifications of societies and ideologies colliding in space. Especially since that description sounds best comparable to Q, but from the other end; they could be doing god stuff, but loving around in the material world and trying to help people in a dickish way is more fun.
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Oct 20, 2017 07:41
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A lot of English class depends on the teacher (and the class) making the text understandable and interesting. Providing context, clarifying misunderstandings and talking about your own interpretations and ideas makes it worth the hassle, and is kind of what learning about books is supposed to be about. Even something like a teacher reading out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, interspersed with talking about things like how the original Oompa-Loompas were pygmy stereotypes now considered horribly racist but accepted at the time, and other parts of how the culture when it was written was significantly different to what it is now. (Like with Mike Teevee having aged hilariously poorly)
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Oct 25, 2017 14:57
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