Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

My problem with Dragonlance was that my first exposure to it was in a massive annotated book that was the first three books in one binding, and every page had lots of notes from the authors about why they did stuff and what the gaming backstory was of most of it.

It kicked rear end hearing all these behind the scenes details, and made me love the books. They probably don't hold up anymore at all but that's okay.

This doesn't sound like a problem, but it's just that I know they're bad and probably suck but whatev.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2020 01:06

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 18:51

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

Terry Goodkind had one book in his series where the Hero carves the most beautiful statues ever and they are unveiled in the capital city of Communism Land. This instantly spurs the poor to revolt and overthrow Communism.

He also had a lot of rape. Like, a whole loving lot of it, including demon rape. Lots of it.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 00:49

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

Did Marion Zimmer Bradley get brought up as a monster yet, because that one loving hurt. Mists of Avalon was for the longest time one of the bigger successes in feminist, female-written fantasy.

I really, really liked a modern fantasy series she wrote that was written towards the end of her life and may or may not have been just written using her name to sell more copies. But she's a sex monster who hosed her kids up royally, and molested/was complicit in their molestation, IIRC. Soooo gently caress.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 02:57

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

Flared Basic Bitch posted:

Mercedes Lackey�s Wikipedia entry has the most cursed paragraphs ever written in the English language.

at least filk is just nerdier folk music, and isn't molesting children

Wikipedia article on Marion Zimmer Bradley posted:

In 2014, her daughter, Moira Greyland, accused her of sexual abuse from the age of 3 to 12. In an email to The Guardian, Greyland said that she had not spoken out before because:[15]

I thought that my mother's fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women's rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives. I didn't want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut.

Greyland also reported that she was not the only victim and that she was one of the people who reported her father, Walter H. Breen, for child molestation, for which he received multiple convictions.[15][16][17] By her own admission, Bradley was aware of her husband's behavior although she chose not to report him.[18]

Additionally, she enabled Breen (her husband at the time) to have access to and abuse multiple unrelated young boys, knowing he was a pedophile who was engaging in sexual contact with children as young as eight. She and her live-in female partner both admitted to knowledge of the abuse and purposefully avoided investigating, questioning, or notifying any authorities. She even attempted to adopt a child whom Breen was interested in sexually.[19]

In response to these allegations, on July 2, 2014, Victor Gollancz Ltd, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist, began donating all income from the sales of Bradley's e-books to the charity Save the Children.[20] Janni Lee Simner donated advances and royalties from her two Darkover short stories and, at the request of her husband, Larry Hammer, payment for his sale to Bradley's magazine, to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.[21]

After the allegations were made public, Greyland and her brother Mark spoke at length about their experiences.[22][23] A number of famous science fiction authors have publicly condemned Bradley. Among the first was John Scalzi, who within a day of the allegations being made public, described the allegations as "horrific".[24] Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote that Bradley's positive effect on her readers and associates "makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic."[25] G Willow Wilson, World Fantasy award winner, said she was "speechless".[26] Diana L. Paxson, who collaborated with Bradley on a number of novels and who continued to write novels set in the Avalon Series after Bradley's death, said that she was "shocked and appalled to read Moira Greyland's posts about her mother."[27]

Edit:

I read Runelords! I am convinced there is a group of novels published between the late '90s and early-mid 00s that got popular solely off of their cool as hell cover art, check this poo poo out

rotinaj fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Sep 2, 2020

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 04:02

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

girl dick energy posted:

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth is the series where the hero is lauded for genociding evil pacifists, right?

Evil pacifists who are incredibly obvious communist/socialist stand ins as understood by a libertarian

If goodkind were still alive and writing, I would put a hundo on him being a hardcore qanon trumper

# ¿ Mar 9, 2022 23:19

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

thoughts and prayers posted:

Contributing to the thread pile-on on Piers Anthony, I remember reading the Immortality book on Death, and going 'well, his thinking about death is kind of amateurish, I mean what does 'compassionate death' mean in a world with Tarantula Hawks that create life by paralyzing a spider and letting it's young eat it from inside out while it's alive and feels everything'... but they seemed fun. And the first extended author's note (from memory as a kid, mind you) was an odd, refreshing view from the inside.

Then, uncomfortably weird stuff kept popping up in the writing, and the author's notes got longer and longer and more disquieting. Then, in one book (I forget which) the protagonist was in the abyss, rescuing some women, and they had to get them across with a boat that had to be shared with demons. But, at no time could the demons outnumber the women in the boat, or else they would be raped! Oh boy! The plot point was one of those childhood logic puzzles, but dresses up in rape! And that protagonist, hoo boy, was so good to women for single-handedly (without input or help from any of these women) helping them navigate that corridor of demons and rape. It was a weird mix of juvenile and obscene.

I skipped ahead to the author's note, and the way he was talking about his perspectives on sexual politics...my disgust instinct kicked in and I noped the gently caress out.

In hindsight, reading his author's notes felt like being groomed.

You want groomed feelings, try reading piers Anthony�s �letters to Jenny�, a collection of letters he wrote to a 12 year old fan who had been hit by a drunk driver as she recovered from near total paralysis

It feels super creepy, knowing how obsessed he is with kids around that age loving.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2022 16:48

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

sweet geek swag posted:

The would be a very good scene to write if Richard was the villain, and you were trying to establish how messed up he is as a villain. As he is the hero, it is pretty uncomfortable and weird.

Oh, don't worry, goodkind also made sure to do a scene like that for the book's villain

Said villain needed to make a soul adore him or some poo poo, so he took a like seven year old little boy away from his parents and put him in a special garden in his castle, and buried the kid in the ground up to his neck, so the kid couldn't move. Then, to keep the kid alive, he would mash blueberry pie up and feed it to the kid through a feeding tube

This is done a few times to get the kid used to it, and then, when the kid adored the villain, the villain said he was gonna feed the kid, and poured molten steel down the tube, so the kid dies in a ludicrously evil fashion

The villain then turns the kid's soul into a dragon or something so he can ride it

Goodkind was really good at writing horrifying scenes that have stuck in my memory for 20+ years, but not for the reasons he intended

# ¿ Mar 27, 2022 15:38

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:

Wasn't the gotcha at the end of one of the books the virgin Confessor, who was Richard's love interest, let his half brother bang her FOR MAGICAL SAVE-THE-WORLD REASONS but SURPRISE it wasn't the half brother it was Richard which set off the next book because he felt she was way into banging his half brother.

Goodkind was definitely the kind of guy who had a lock on the inside of his bedroom door that needed a key he had on a chain around his neck to open.

that sounds like the fourth book, where goodkind lovingly detailed putting a bunch of rats in a cauldron, chaining that to a lady's stomach, and having them eat their way out as he heated the cauldron

I remember nothing else from that book other than the rat torture

i should not have read these books at eleven years old

# ¿ Mar 27, 2022 17:14

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

precision posted:

i saw some youtube commercial that was just brandon sanderson talking, and you know, i gave the man time, but after 2 literal minutes he still hadn't got to the fuckin point so i clicked skip

he just kept saying "i wrote a SECRET book" then "i wrote ANOTHER secret book" and again but he didn't give ANY indication of why i should give a gently caress or what they concerned or ANYTHING lmao

it was a very bad commercial. if i give you 2 minutes you should be giving me some info

Fans of his are massive fans of his, and they�ll pay big bucks for whatever he puts out

I am very uninterested in him personally thanks to his extremely thin characterization in the 1.25 books of his that I have read, and the pretty transphobic stuff he has said in the past, what with the Mormonism

He has tried to be better since then and write lgbtq characters but he also isn�t willing to actually come out and say things like �gay people don�t deserve execution� or �trans people exist�, much less more radical things like �trans rights are human rights�. He tries to have his cake and eat it too, because reportedly he doesnt want to anger members of his family

That all does not do it for me, personally

# ¿ Apr 3, 2022 16:35

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

sweet geek swag posted:

Sanderson has been public about how much he doesn't like the current way publishing works. This was just a test to see if it was realistically possible to crowdsource publishing. But all it really tested was that, "Yes, people will pay lots of money to famous authors they like to get bonus books."

So it's not a bad thing, but I'm not sure it's going to actually help anyone other than Brandon Sanderson. But maybe it will inspire people to crowdsource publishing coops or something. Who knows?

The instant feedback that most authors got of �hey go kickstart your books� was supremely not helpful. If you�re at sanderson�s level, sure, you can do this and make bank, but there�s a lot of low level and mid list authors who don�t have the kind of built in cache of fans that a Sanderson or a Rowling does.

While publishing is a hosed up industry, this might even cut out the supremely successful books that subsidize all the middling books that don�t get the publicity or the attention of top level books. If the big names all start taking the funding from crowdsourcing and don�t stay with publishers, that could cut out a lot of profit from the biz. That will likely wind up turning publishing into the movie industry, where only the big deals are fiscally lucrative for the publishers, and there isn�t enough spare money for smaller successes.

The actual problem in publishing is the same problem as everything else in the world, billionaires squatting at the top of the food chain, siphoning off everything they can to pad their bottom lines, and not reinvesting in their own businesses.

:capitalism:

# ¿ Apr 4, 2022 16:32

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

Considering the amount of kickstarter campaigns that never pan out and just burn the investors, I don�t know that I would ever kickstart a novel for someone who doesn�t have a proven track record

I am waiting on at least four different sets of dice that look like they may never be made because of Kickstarter scams

One person never posted a single picture, then started claiming she had a sudden cancer diagnosis, after she had already begged off from deadlines because of a death in the family and a different person in her family getting cancer.

Book kickstarters are gonna be even worse

# ¿ Apr 4, 2022 19:01

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 18:51

rotinaj: Sep 5, 2008; Fun Shoe

Did anyone else read the iron tower by Dennis mckiernan

It was a book where a group of small people good at thieving went to try to destroy the last remnant of an evil sorcerer�s power before being accompanied by a stout axe-wielding fellow, a graceful archer man and a gruff swordsman

I think he had actually written it to literally be lord of the rings fan fiction or some poo poo but couldn�t get the rights and so settled for this

It was published as far as I can tell in the early 80s, flopped, then was republished in 2000 when tolkien fever really got going

# ¿ Apr 9, 2022 00:20

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)