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So, what have we learned from reading this whole thread? 1) Don't be a paedophile (does this REALLY FREAKING NEED TO BE SAID? Fine, I'll say it anyway). 2) Don't put rape in your books. Just don't. You're not qualified to use it in any way that could be considered remotely good in any way. 3) Don't try end runs around this with stuff like "well she's actually 1000 years old!" or 'Some plot device aged her up from 12 to 22!' or 'They're emitting incredible lust rays!'. 4) Seriously. Just. Don't. Even IF you're normal and trying to do commentary on the most extreme deviances of relationships in the vein of Lolita, that book said it best and it's STILL skin crawling with how easy it is to emphasize with the narrator when all you see is what he sees. You won't succeed. Just don't. 5) Don't put sex in your books either. At best, do some joking commentary or a strip and embrace and then fade to black. 6) If you're having trouble with the above, jack off. Then resume writing. 7) Try and realize just what the concept of a whole race behaving in a singular way was a sublimated expression of. 8) Seriously, MAKE ALL YOUR drat LOVERS MEET AS ADULTS OR NEAR ADULTS, NO drat MEETING WHEN ONE IS 11 AND ONE IS 28 LIKE REED RICHARDS AND SUE STORM ONCE DID, no idea if that's still canon. If you're gonna do large age gaps, make one of them at least in their freaking late 20's. 9) There's a tricky line between worldbuilding and character development and pointless spinning of wheels. It seems even supposed good authors constantly cannot parse it, so uh...just keep looking and good luck. 10) Be honest with yourself. If you deny aspects of yourself, it WILL end up coming out in your work, in one way or another. And it'll make you look a lot worse. 11) Terry Goodkind needed to be punched in the face a lot more in his life than he did.
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Mar 25, 2022 08:06
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 12:33 |
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Though, having read Wizard's First Rule as a teenager, I do feel the constant refrain of "Richard kicked a little girl's jaw off and is lauded as a hero for it in the narrative." IS removing a LITTLE of the context around what happened. So, all right, let's just ignore that nothing happens in a piece of fiction unless the writer wants it to. God knows a lot of writers sure do that. Said girl has been horrendously abused, not in the traditional sense, but having been spoiled rotten and exposed to poo poo and nonsense that no child should know about, let alone have power over. The kick happens after she basically says "I'm gonna find your love interest, have others rape and torture her until she's a broken insane wreck, then have her executed and have her head stuck on a spike for everyone to see.", while getting too close to Richard, who if you want to be KIND in your character analysis, has a bad temper and has been subjected to abuse to make it worse (this is right in the middle of the extensive BDSM womanforce torture), and he snaps and lashes out against the child who has no sense of self-preservation and, again, has gotten too close to him to make her taunt. If said girl had been an adult, it would have been a classic case of 'gently caress around, find out.' It wasn't like he went "This girl is mocking me." over just having her blow a raspberry at him and did it. Of course, if this was in the hands of a writer who didn't end up so far up his own rear end he could eat his meals twice, Richard would have realized that it was still wrong and made it part of character development to try and be better/make up for it. But as has been very well documented, Goodkind wasn't interested in that.
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Mar 25, 2022 23:39
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Okay, I've never actually read Wheel of Time, but I keep hearing that it's like 5 percent substance and 95 percent filler. What precisely is Jordon having his characters do during these thousands of wasted pages? Also, I recalled something that I think says it all about ol' Terry Goodkind, he of the 'deep philosophical reach' and 'hatred of moral clarity'. You can argue the whole 'kicking the girl's jaw off' is something that the character would do, all other reasons in universe and out aside. You can argue that the 'feed a kid molten metal' and 'make rats chew through a woman' are just showing how depraved the villains are. You can even argue the chicken thing is just a serious misfire, which even good writers have. I think what really sums up what really goes on in his head is what (looks up her name) Kahlan talks about when she talks about the history of her lineage, the Confessors. Confessors basically have a 'once a day' magic touch that if a Confessor touches someone, they become utterly and slavishly devoted to them, and will do absolutely anything they command. By anything, I mean anything. Confessors, it seems, are all female. Richard asks if there are male Confessors. Kahlan says yes, male children can be born to Confessors and they can have the same power, but in their case it can be even stronger, not requiring a recharge period at all. This in the distant past resulted in terrible things, so now any Confessor couple who has a male child must more or less immediately put the child to death. Okay, horrible enough already, but you could argue if you squint that it sounds like some barbaric tradition that was started because of horrible crimes, but said crimes are now so far in the past that now basically still going by inertia. You'd think, it's not this infant's fault it was born this way. How do they kill them? Give them a fast acting poison, maybe? There's magic in the world, maybe a spell that causes crib death, the infant going to sleep and never waking up? Hell, worst comes to worst, maybe a quick stab with a blade in a precise spot? No. Instead, the male child is laid on a platform, a metal rod is placed across its neck, and the husband of the pairing has to get up on the platform and STAND ON BOTH ENDS. THAT'S how they prevent the possible rise of male Confessors. That pretty much says it all when it comes to Goodkind's mind.
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Mar 28, 2022 17:13
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The Moon Monster posted:Stuff happened, but there was an insane amount of durdling that didn't really do anything to move the overarching plot of the books forward. Lots of relationship drama, court intrigue, and arcane minutia that didn't actually affect the relative positions of the forces of good and evil. It was almost like what I imagine soap operas to be like, where you can stop watching for a year and when you pick it back up there might be some surprises like "oh those two hate eachother now for some reason" but the gist of the show is pretty much identical. Is it circular drama? Like, they just keep repeating the same issues without either resolving them or breaking up? Also, while the very first Shannara book was a LOTR clone to the extreme, and people say that it was just the same story repeated over and over, I will give one credit to the writer: in the second set of books, a quadrology, the second and third have some REALLY good setpiece locations, in a "This is an area of horror and death and you'll need to be at your absolute best to survive". Edit: Went and looked them up. The city of Eldwist, and the island of Morrowindl. And I'll note that the book with said island predates the Elder Scrolls game by a decade. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Mar 28, 2022 |
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Mar 28, 2022 18:26
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I did read the Dragonlance series, or the first two trilogies, decades ago, and I was too mentally regressed due to undiagnosed autism/Asperger's to notice its flaws (hell, I even read Pier Anthony's infamous Firefly and even ITS grossness flew over my head), but people keep saying that they, and Drizzt, read way too much like a story made of a D&D campaign. And I just wondered, how? Do the fights read like people rolled dice to decide the order? Do they really drive home that each character has 'a class'? Do they repeatedly do the same move over the books? I recall someone mentioned how the heroes got stuck and then some guy called Paladine literally dropped gryphons on them to get them somewhere, which was an analogy for when the DM railroaded IIRC, but I'm interested in details.
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Mar 29, 2022 04:17
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Veth posted:I remember reading Spellfire and being appalled by the number of times "main character uses her superpower, her tits fall out, and she passes out" got used in one book. I can't help it, I am curious of how exactly that works.
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Mar 31, 2022 04:15
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Attitude Indicator posted:The revised version won’t change your mind on the book. It’s mostly just added nonsense to make it connect better with the later books. Personally I really like the first dark tower. A grumpy cowboy plodding along in a post-apocalyptic western horror fantasy full of prog rock names written in the early King minimalist style. Thats some cool dumb poo poo! I read Dark Tower when I initially got into King in the late 90's and was trying every book of his I could find. I finished it, but it just did nothing for me. Decades later I found myself enjoying the comic adaptions of what I believe was the fourth book, Wizard and Glass, so maybe I was just was too immature. Still, not a book I'd try and reread on my own.
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Apr 9, 2022 02:40
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