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Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

pandaK posted:

I don't really know how exactly to describe this genre, but does anyone have any recommendations for stories focusing on slum people/sewer rats, preferably in a less than modern setting? Stuff like the beginning of Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows with the guild rats. The big chart in the thread's OP actually leads to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere which I think hits the mark pretty closely albeit in a more modern setting. Are there any other books of the same vein?

Terry Pratchett's non-Discworld novel Dodger.

Re: the Bagginses - Bilbo is of the English gentleman-class. I don't think it's ever mentioned where his income comes from before going to the Lonely Mountain, but as I recall the Gamgees have been working for the Bagginses for a long time so it's probably rent from tenant farmers. After the trip to Erebor, he becomes eccentric new money. Frodo is even more explicitly a gentleman, and Sam is his batman.

Jedit fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Nov 30, 2015

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Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

Kalenn Istarion posted:

Re: Tolkien's language and genealogy etc, when he did it it was revolutionary. It only seems like a bad habit because it's been so extensively copied (mostly poorly) in the years after.

Has to be said, not too many other authors have had the kind of relevant academic background he had, nor spent literally decades laying the groundwork.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

coyo7e posted:

Unfortunately everybody has been aping Tolkien for ages, which includes a lot of why so many make up incomprehensible fake languages and names. ;)


Giving Malazan yet another chance. On the second page:

quote:

‘We hunted the ranag until they were no more, and this brought starvation to the ay, for we had also hunted the tenag until they were no more as well. The agkor who walk with the bhederin would not share with the ay, and now the tundra is empty. From this, I conclude that we were wasteful and thoughtless in our hunting.’

gently caress. Off.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Why does this thread like The Lies of Locke Lamora so much?

Don't get me wrong, I like the book too, or at least I remember having a ton of fun when I first discovered it five years ago. Problem is, I can't think of a way to explain why I liked it; I got into a discussion with someone who thought it offered nothing more than shallow fun for teenagers, which he kept getting yanked out of by use of dark subject matter he found exploitative and gross (like he and some others here IIRC said about A Game of Thrones).

I had no rebuttal for that, and that wouldn't bear much thinking except this thread has pretty high standards. It's the only place I can think of where Patrick Rothfuss is a punchline instead of a writer of interest, but is Locke really that much less of a masturbatory wish fulfillment character than Kvothe is? I can imagine me overlooking that and all the edgelord set dressing because the book pushes so many of my buttons (A setting based on Renaissance Venice! Clever duplicity! Alternating flashbacks with present day!), but did that really happen for ninety percent of the regulars here, or is there something I'm missing?

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Giving Malazan yet another chance. On the second page:


gently caress. Off.
What's the problem? You can easily infer those are all different kinds of animals.

Fart of Presto
Feb 9, 2001
Clapping Larry

Munin posted:

Man, I've been reading the repeated recommendations of Cook's stuff but basically none of it is available on the UK Kindle store. Cherryth stuff has a similar issue. *sigh*
Create a new address in your Amazon account pages, but this time a US address. Don't use obvious addresses like the White House, but use any regular place.
Then in your Kindle settings, change your country to USA and use your new address.
You now use the American Kindle store.

Even with a regular European credit card registered, I've used this trick for several years, switching between the US and International Kindle store, and have bought plenty of books that were exclusive in either place.

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

As far as Amazon knows I live in zero sales tax Oregon.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Effectronica posted:

The Tooks and Brandybucks are landowners, the Tooks being more urbanized nobility and the Brandybucks being country squires. The Baggins family are "new money", and there's not much of a distinct middle class- everyone is either leisurer or laborer.

That's what I mean - middle class in a 19th century way, not a degree-and-mortgage way. Leisure class, but not nobles.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

So the Ring really isn't an allegory for the bomb, and I'd say that the Scouring also isn't an allegory for the Liberal Party, or even Communism. But Tolkien wouldn't necessarily entirely disagree if you started drawing parallels, so long as you realized that parallels aren't the same as allegories (and, yeah, for a good example of how such similarities and distinctions might be drawn, look at his discussion of the Ring-as-Allegory in the Introduction).

Doesn't he say in the introduction that he's trying to be applicable rather than allegorical? Which is what, I think, you're getting at.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Giving Malazan yet another chance. On the second page:

gently caress. Off.

Ranag and tenag are two kinds of closely related animals, maybe deer or goats. The agkor are humans who depend on them - hunting, herding, following them, so "kor" is "tribe" or "person". The speaker is a member of the ay.

I've only read the first book, years ago; how'd I do?

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av
I think the issue is that some people expect words used to evoke certain imagery, and those names (explained later in a more specific way) are pretty impenetrable taken on their own as first presented. In context you can figure out the general meaning but I can appreciate that more than a few people would read that and go 'what the gently caress is a ranag? Is it a wolf? Just call it a wolf!'

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:
To be fair, it does say that half those scrabble-winners no longer exist, so you don't have to give a gently caress.

I read Gardens of the Moon somehow, and made it halfway through Deadhouse Gates before deciding that was too much Malazan for me.

Munin
Nov 14, 2004


Planetfall is drat good. Sad though. So little understanding achieved and what little blossoms there are, are ultimately essentially all extinguished.

Also one of the most empathetic depictions of someone with several deep seated mental health issues I have read.

[edit]

Kalenn Istarion posted:

I think the issue is that some people expect words used to evoke certain imagery, and those names (explained later in a more specific way) are pretty impenetrable taken on their own as first presented. In context you can figure out the general meaning but I can appreciate that more than a few people would read that and go 'what the gently caress is a ranag? Is it a wolf? Just call it a wolf!'

They are rather clear given the context though. In a way I quite enjoy those kinds of things because they work better when you just unfocus your eye a little and let the strangeness of the words wash over you and pick up the jist of the meaning from the concrete sentences like "and hence we knew we were wasteful with our hunting" (sorry for slightly mangled quote).

Munin fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Nov 30, 2015

fritz
Jul 26, 2003

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Giving Malazan yet another chance. On the second page:


gently caress. Off.

:eng101: Cool thing about language is that you can infer unknown words from context.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

House Louse posted:

Ranag and tenag are two kinds of closely related animals, maybe deer or goats. The agkor are humans who depend on them - hunting, herding, following them, so "kor" is "tribe" or "person". The speaker is a member of the ay.

I've only read the first book, years ago; how'd I do?
That's actually a pretty good guess: they hunted out two species of herbivores, which were the original prey of ay - wolves. I don't rememeber offhand what the agkor are, but I'd guess some kind of scavengers that trail behind the herds of huge migratory bhederin (think buffalo with an attitude). Boom, ecological crisis achieved with stone age technology.

chrisoya posted:

To be fair, it does say that half those scrabble-winners no longer exist, so you don't have to give a gently caress.

I read Gardens of the Moon somehow, and made it halfway through Deadhouse Gates before deciding that was too much Malazan for me.
Then you clocked out before one of the best scenes in the series, the ending of DG is a doozy. Just in case you might get interested in it at some later point.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Nov 30, 2015

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Giving Malazan yet another chance. On the second page:


gently caress. Off.

Not enough apostrophes. They go between the syll'ables.

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:

anilEhilated posted:

Then you clocked out before one of the best scenes in the series, the ending of DG is a doozy. Just in case you might get interested in it at some later point.
I was interested enough that I'll go back in a decade. Maybe after I commit every published resource on Tekumel to memory.

Clipperton
Dec 20, 2011
Grimey Drawer

pandaK posted:

I don't really know how exactly to describe this genre, but does anyone have any recommendations for stories focusing on slum people/sewer rats, preferably in a less than modern setting? Stuff like the beginning of Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows with the guild rats. The big chart in the thread's OP actually leads to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere which I think hits the mark pretty closely albeit in a more modern setting. Are there any other books of the same vein?

It's fairly modern but Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles trilogy is a fantasy novel about London street kids.They don't live in sewers specificaly, although I think the second book is set in underground tunnels.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Kalenn Istarion posted:

I think the issue is that some people expect words used to evoke certain imagery, and those names (explained later in a more specific way) are pretty impenetrable taken on their own as first presented. In context you can figure out the general meaning but I can appreciate that more than a few people would read that and go 'what the gently caress is a ranag? Is it a wolf? Just call it a wolf!'

My main issue is that by inserting random fantasy names in he requires deliberate decoding on my part, distracting away from the important part of the paragraph (that the T'lan Imass caused ecological collapse). Why is important to the story that ranag and tanag are kind of like deer, but not actual deer? It just obfuscates the actual story, or, in the case of House Louse upthrea, gives the reader the entirely wrong impression.

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

If you introduce the "agkor who walk with the bhederin" in another paragraph, if it's a thing that needs introducing, you already have three strange nouns to bring to the reader without being too obtuse. You understand from context that the ranag and tenag (look, they are even phonetically alike) are animals and that the ay are predators (but are they hunters or also animals?), but what the hell are the agkor and the bhederin? Your mind does a 180 because animal one living in symbiosis with animal two, and the concept of sharing pray between species? That doesn't really leap to your mind as an existing ecological concept in real life.

Far be it from me to tell an author how to write, but confusing the reader is a risky play.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Maybe a page before that bit, you have this:

quote:

Three ranag had become trapped in a boggy sinkhole twenty paces into the basin. A bull male, his mate, and their calf, ranged in a pathetic defensive circle. Mired and vulnerable, they must have seemed easy prey for the pack of ay that followed them. But the land was treacherous indeed. The large tundra wolves had succumbed to the same fate as the ranag.

He pretty much tells you exactly what they are one page before the 'problem' sentence.

This is also from Book 3. Bhederin are established as some sort of cattle in the previous books.

Khizan fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Nov 30, 2015

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Khizan posted:

Maybe a page before that bit, you have this:


He pretty much tells you exactly what they are one page before the 'problem' sentence.

Yeah, ranag and ay are explained, tenag is obvious from context. But it doesn't make bhederin or akgor any more obvious, not does it make that paragraph any more enjoyable to read.

Sulphagnist
Oct 10, 2006

WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED

Khizan posted:

Maybe a page before that bit, you have this:


He pretty much tells you exactly what they are one page before the 'problem' sentence.

This is also from Book 3. Bhederin are established as some sort of cattle in the previous books.

Oh, okay, my bad. I understood from the context (:v:) that this is all new words being introduced to the reader for the first time. If you're three books into a series you obviously have more latitude. I could extract a nonsense sentence from the third volume of any novel series, maybe even outside of SF.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

pandaK posted:

I don't really know how exactly to describe this genre, but does anyone have any recommendations for stories focusing on slum people/sewer rats, preferably in a less than modern setting? Stuff like the beginning of Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows with the guild rats. The big chart in the thread's OP actually leads to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere which I think hits the mark pretty closely albeit in a more modern setting. Are there any other books of the same vein?
Ender's Shadow. It's also my favorite not-ender's-game book. It's about Beat surviving in the streets of uhh, some European city with other street rat kids. It's completely absurd, and fun as heck.

You could also check out http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2334483.The_Terrible_Business_of_Salmon_Dusk, it's got a pretty good Neverwhere/sewers of London vibe going.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Nov 30, 2015

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

anilEhilated posted:

What's the problem? You can easily infer those are all different kinds of animals.
Apparently there were too many apostrophes and hyphens in their names (which was what people were actually complaining about when I responded)

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Antti posted:

Oh, okay, my bad. I understood from the context (:v:) that this is all new words being introduced to the reader for the first time. If you're three books into a series you obviously have more latitude. I could extract a nonsense sentence from the third volume of any novel series, maybe even outside of SF.

Yeah, I meant that more as a "look at all the made up fantasy names, isn't that annoying" and just got sidetracked into "don't you hate it when fantasy books shotgun nonsense at you without explaining it" (which Malazan does, and with gusto, but that segment isn't really an example of that)

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

Solitair posted:

Why does this thread like The Lies of Locke Lamora so much?

Don't get me wrong, I like the book too, or at least I remember having a ton of fun when I first discovered it five years ago. Problem is, I can't think of a way to explain why I liked it; I got into a discussion with someone who thought it offered nothing more than shallow fun for teenagers, which he kept getting yanked out of by use of dark subject matter he found exploitative and gross (like he and some others here IIRC said about A Game of Thrones).

I had no rebuttal for that, and that wouldn't bear much thinking except this thread has pretty high standards. It's the only place I can think of where Patrick Rothfuss is a punchline instead of a writer of interest, but is Locke really that much less of a masturbatory wish fulfillment character than Kvothe is? I can imagine me overlooking that and all the edgelord set dressing because the book pushes so many of my buttons (A setting based on Renaissance Venice! Clever duplicity! Alternating flashbacks with present day!), but did that really happen for ninety percent of the regulars here, or is there something I'm missing?
If someone picks up an SFF novel blindly assuming that it's for kids, well, it coulda been worse - they could have picked up any number of Donaldson novels, or a mid-series Goodkind novel. It's their own dumbass fault, and not a valid criticism. If he wants PG-rated swords and sorcery then steer him to conan and fafhrf and elric.

I personally like TLoLM because the author does something that's pretty uncommon in fantasy novels, he credibly apes another type of genre and style. It's the same reason I like the Stephen Brust. TLoLM is basically just a Guy Ritchie movie with swords and magic, and I can dig that. The sequel is basically Master and Commander (aka a movie-sized shortening of the Aubrey/Matarin series). That's rare enough to be kind of special in SFF.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

So the Ring really isn't an allegory for the bomb, and I'd say that the Scouring also isn't an allegory for the Liberal Party, or even Communism. But Tolkien wouldn't necessarily entirely disagree if you started drawing parallels, so long as you realized that parallels aren't the same as allegories (and, yeah, for a good example of how such similarities and distinctions might be drawn, look at his discussion of the Ring-as-Allegory in the Introduction).
I always assumed he was just cribbing the Ring from the Nibelungen. It being an allegorical nuclear weapon never crossed mind my once, even with the war comparisons I've seen. v:shobon:v

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 30, 2015

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


coyo7e posted:

Ender's Shadow. It's also my favorite not-ender's-game book. It's about Beat surviving in the streets of uhh, some European city with other street rat kids. It's completely absurd, and fun as heck.

It's better than Ender's Game, because Bean is far more interesting than Ender. It is completely absurd, but it does it in a fun way. It's the only OSC book that I'd consider reading again.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

(which Malazan does, and with gusto, but that segment isn't really an example of that)

The best example of that is Gardens of the Moon. The entire book.

Kalenn Istarion
Nov 2, 2012

Maybe Senpai will finally notice me now that I've dropped :fivebux: on this snazzy av

Strom Cuzewon posted:

My main issue is that by inserting random fantasy names in he requires deliberate decoding on my part, distracting away from the important part of the paragraph (that the T'lan Imass caused ecological collapse). Why is important to the story that ranag and tanag are kind of like deer, but not actual deer? It just obfuscates the actual story, or, in the case of House Louse upthrea, gives the reader the entirely wrong impression.

As for why, it's likely intentional to make the Imass feel more foreign / different, and in the Malazan case in particular I feel like he put more effort in than the average fantasy writer, although not a Tolkien level of effort. They all make sense to me but that's also with the benefit of having read much further in the books.

And now having seen that this isn't even where they're introduced but rather using names that were previously introduced in a modified context you're just being ornery to try to make a point :colbert:

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Khizan posted:

The best example of that is Gardens of the Moon. The entire book.
I'd argue that the shotgunning of information is purposeful in that one, though. One of the big themes of the series is how facts get twisted and distorted by history - by inviting the reader to draw his own theories (and this happens throughout the whole series), it makes him more involved in the world - and possibly sympathising with characters that often suffer from same suppositions (or suffer from them since rewriting history is a recurring theme).

Is it demanding of the reader? Sure. Is it necessarily bad? I don't think so.
But yeah, Malazan is rather divisive and it's got its own thread so there's really no need to get into it here.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

anilEhilated posted:

That's actually a pretty good guess: they hunted out two species of herbivores, which were the original prey of ay - wolves. I don't rememeber offhand what the agkor are, but I'd guess some kind of scavengers that trail behind the herds of huge migratory bhederin (think buffalo with an attitude). Boom, ecological crisis achieved with stone age technology.
Also, it's intentionally written to mimic Clan of the Cave Bears.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

My main issue is that by inserting random fantasy names in he requires deliberate decoding on my part, distracting away from the important part of the paragraph (that the T'lan Imass caused ecological collapse). Why is important to the story that ranag and tanag are kind of like deer, but not actual deer? It just obfuscates the actual story, or, in the case of House Louse upthrea, gives the reader the entirely wrong impression.
Or you can just do what the author intended and learn what they are as you go, instead of going to wikipedia. Erickson loves to not reveal poo poo like this right away, sometimes it takes a half-dozen novels before something clicks and you realize how the barghests are closely related to the imass and all the other primitive semi-human peoples for instance.

Ben Nerevarine
Apr 14, 2006

Khizan posted:

The best example of that is Gardens of the Moon. The entire book.

Gardens was a tough read for that reason. He drops you neck-deep in poo poo and asks you to swim and your only lifeline is Paran (who isn't all that likable) until the Moon's Spawn attack on Pale which, in comparison to what comes before it, is like hiking several hundred miles, cresting a ridge, and witnessing the fantasy equivalent of an episode of Dragonball Z. Deadhouse Gates goes down much easier once you have some grounding in that world despite the two plots having little overlap.

Malazan isn't for everyone but it does get easier with exposure. And there's a hell of a lot to expose yourself to if you're so inclined.

Ben Nerevarine fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Nov 30, 2015

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Kalenn Istarion posted:

As for why, it's likely intentional to make the Imass feel more foreign / different, and in the Malazan case in particular I feel like he put more effort in than the average fantasy writer, although not a Tolkien level of effort. They all make sense to me but that's also with the benefit of having read much further in the books.

In that case, you also have to consider that he's talking about animals that went extinct. If this ancient dude says "We hunted the caribou until they were no more, and then the wolves starved to death" then later on in the series he can end up having to come up with analogues for caribou and wolves anyways or have people going "Wait, I thought caribou were extinct?"

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

coyo7e posted:

If someone picks up an SFF novel blindly assuming that it's for kids, well, it coulda been worse - they could have picked up any number of Donaldson novels, or a mid-series Goodkind novel. It's their own dumbass fault, and not a valid criticism. If he wants PG-rated swords and sorcery then steer him to conan and fafhrf and elric.

Since when was Conan PG? There's a Conan story where he tries to rape a woman who led him into an ambush, and the movie has no shortage of brutal violence near the end. More to the point, I think that "What, you're too much of a pussy to handle dark and edgy stories? Go back to the kiddie pool!" is even less valid than that. I love Game of Thrones, but I still thought that Martin's books and the show both had some tasteless moments that the story would have been better off without. There's a right and wrong way to handle it, just like everything else.

Honestly, I think this guy's problem was that he's so ensconced in literary criticism that he's almost completely incapable of immersing himself in genre works. From his pretentious point of view, it doesn't matter that Lies is a great Guy Ritchie imitation, because that just swaps Cliche X for Cliche Y. He wasn't rankling at the dark aspects of Lies' story because he's oversensitive, but because he thought it was a poseur way for a dumb story to pretend it was deep and meaningful with minimal effort.

Whatever. In better news, City of Blades is pretty interesting so far.

Solitair fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 30, 2015

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Kalenn Istarion posted:


And now having seen that this isn't even where they're introduced but rather using names that were previously introduced in a modified context you're just being ornery to try to make a point :colbert:

My point was originally little more than "look at this clusterfuck of fantasy names" before we all played a game of let's-deduce-the-animal. It's still really distracting to deal with the names even after they're explained.

I'd also argue that it doesn't necessarily make the Imass feel more alien and weird because, and this one of my major issues with Malazan, everything is so alien and weird. There's no context to the weirdness. Whenever a given event happens I have no way to tell with characters are going to shrug it off as perfectly normal, or start screaming for their mother.

The Imass hunt strange exotic animals and turned themselves into skeletons, the Malaz created a parallel-reality-magic-conduit and hurl demons around like candy. Does that mean the Imass are more or less magic than the Malaz? Is writing a song to turn a military squad into demigods more or less difficult than fusing two and a half souls into a new body? If reading the deck of dragons is such a dangerous and risky thing, why does Tattersail do it three times in quick succession? And why do the Bridgeburners play Mornington Crescent with a deck? Where do these decks even come from? Munug managed to make a flawed deck, isn't that kind of a big deal? Why is he some impoverished loser from Bumfuck, Genabackis if he's got that kind of power?

At the start of book three, Picker gets some blessed torcs from Munug. She discusses how/where they were blessed, and even comments on their lack of bless-markings. So blessing artefacts is clearly a pretty commonplace endeavour. But Quick Ben calls her a bloody idiot for accepting the blessings of an ascendant. So which is it? Are blesses a big deal or not? And then he doubly calls her a bloody idiot for accepting the blessing from Treach, who went insane 500 years ago. How can Picker know enough about Treach (First Hero, Tiger of Battle etc etc) to want to snap up his blessing, but not know that he went mad half a millennia earlier?

Where do wizards come from? We see inside the heads of a half dozen mages, but not one of them thinks back to their youth, to how they learned that they could open S'trep Coc'cs which was first built by the T'Son Il'tis (which may have been ten years ago or a million). Everyone uses wizards, half the characters are wizards, and Erikkson devotes huge swathes of text to (pretending to) explain how magic works, but nothing so far on how people think about magic, how they relate to it.

The Moranth have chitinous armour, and ride giant insects, and speak in strange clicking noises. Does this mean they're insects? Nobody comments on them being insects. We never see a Moranth outside its armour, never see one remove its helmet, so it's apparently supposed to be a mystery. But nobody ever wonders what they look like, nobody questions if they're actually human or not. It's one of a thousand plot points that seems to have no impact on the characters or their emotions. It's just there.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Strom Cuzewon posted:

S'trep Coc'cs which was first built by the T'Son Il'tis

lol, is this real?

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
So I'm thinking you didn't read the whole thing? Because at least half of those get answered and/or explained (The Treach thing, for example - there are divination cards that tell people what's currently up with gods and it's a common practice to go have a reading before important decisions. Every practitioner knows Treach is contending for the post of God of War because of that. The cards and the pantheon affect one another, and you can infer the flawed deck is a big deal because of that. And you'd know that because a big part of the first book deals with Deck fuckery.) The reliability of those explanations, now that's the question.

edit:

angel opportunity posted:

lol, is this real?
No but it pretty is close to some of the names.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Nov 30, 2015

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

Solitair posted:

Since when was Conan PG? There's a Conan story where he tries to rape a woman who led him into an ambush, and the movie has no shortage of brutal violence near the end. More to the point, I think that "What, you're too much of a pussy to handle dark and edgy stories? Go back to the kiddie pool!" is even less valid than that. I love Game of Thrones, but I still thought that Martin's books and the show both had some tasteless moments that the story would have been better off without. There's a right and wrong way to handle it, just like everything else.

Honestly, I think this guy's problem was that he's so ensconced in literary criticism that he's almost completely incapable of immersing himself in genre works. From his pretentious point of view, it doesn't matter that Lies is a great Guy Ritchie imitation, because that just swaps Cliche X for Cliche Y. He wasn't rankling at the dark aspects of Lies' story because he's oversensitive, but because he thought it was a poseur way for a dumb story to pretend it was deep and meaningful with minimal effort.
The guy's an idiot, that was already obvious. You're just cementing the fact.

You sharing his puritan outlook on what is appropriate in a fictional setting doesn't give me hope for you, either. Would Game of Thrones be "better off" without all of the incest, for instance? Jaime and his sister are both bland, boring characters without their forbidden affair, and without the incestuous affair (I choose incest, because incest scenes really bother me, personally) there's really no reader interest in any of their three children (or readers' worries about their being suitable potential kings since they are incestuous and will always be "stained" by that in a sense, as well as their legitimacy being on unstable footing from day one, with the Sword of Damoclese hanging over them) outside of "well somebody's got to be the heir to Robert when he dies". Would Arry's journey be "better off" if there wasn't the worry about, "well, she IS just a little girl all by herself and there's a lot of really bad people doing bad poo poo in the world, will she be alright? Will something unspeakable happen?" :ohdear:

Attempted rape, insinuated rape, these are not the same things as some of the stuff that goes on in the novels I mentioned. And since he's got a juvenile outlook on genre fiction then he ought to be pointed toward dated and/or juvenile offerings. Has he tried CS Lewis?

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Nov 30, 2015

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

So if it's common knowledge that he's a contender for God of War, why is not common knowledge that he's permanently morphed into a tiger and gone mad? It seems completely arbitrary what each character knows about all the magic stuff going on around them.

Another example: In Deadhouse, Heboric accidentally forces Fenner into the mortal world. And I have no idea what that means, because they barely react to it. Clearly Heboric needs to watch out for himself, but have they just unleashed a cataclysm on their surroundings? Have they merely bloodied Fenner's nose, or have they completely upset the balance of the ascendants? All the book tells me is that it's an unspecified level of bad. Which is hardly compelling.

angel opportunity posted:

lol, is this real?
I was inspired by my favourite example of gratuitous apostrophes:

Wheel of Time posted:

With the Power in him, he could make out the pins fastened to massive mailed shoulders. The silver whirlwind of the Ahf'frait band and the blood-red trident of the Ko'bal. The forked lightning of the Ghraem'lan and the hooked axe of the Al'ghol. The iron fist of the Dhai'mon and the red, bloodstained fist of the Kno'-mon. And there were skulls. The horned skull of the Dha'vol and the piled human skulls of the Ghar'ghael and the skull cloven by a scythe-curved sword of the Dhjin'nen and the dagger-pierced skull of the Bhan'sheen.

Jordan's trying to prove a point here - half the names in WoT are corrupted mashups of existing myths. But still, Dha'vol for pete's sake.

less laughter
May 7, 2012

Accelerock & Roll

coyo7e posted:

Jaime and his sister are both bland, boring characters without their forbidden affair

This isn't remotely true

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Strom Cuzewon posted:

I was inspired by my favourite example of gratuitous apostrophes:


Jordan's trying to prove a point here - half the names in WoT are corrupted mashups of existing myths. But still, Dha'vol for pete's sake.

Well, given that WOT is set in a far future Earth and all its myths passed down from ours, that's hardly a thing.

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coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

less laughter posted:

This isn't remotely true
Okay I'll try this, I like these thought exercises in how to rewrite a story "better".

GoT without Jaime and Circe Lannister having a long-standing incestuous relationship.

Jaime? He's a dick, he's good with a sword, he doesn't care about anybody at all except for his family sort of. Without his kids, he has no endearing traits. Without his love for his sister, he'd never have been believable as having symapthetic feelings toward his father's treatment of his brother (vis a vis Tyrion's wife, and summary relationship indiscretions which he's been warned against repeatedly and quite nastily), and he'd never give a poo poo about Brienne, let alone lose a hand while he's not at his best and then be forced to rely on others and grow as a person. He's literally just a rich dickhead with a sword.

Circe? She's a spoiled queen from a family she has more loyalty to than the king, she doesn't like her husband (who's to say she'd hate him so actively and turned him against her so badly, if she hadn't have been daydreaming about goldenboy?) She would have shared her children with Robert, the children would be legitimate and not have the overshadowing of possible developmental problems from being inbred, Robert would be another king. Either she likes robert and thus loves her kids, or hates him and thus is partly conflicted but still loves her kids. She's a rich woman with kids, whose entire purpose is to have kids. Robert probably doesn't love her and thus doesn't ever respect her, but she has nothing corrupting her heart deep down except her own pettiness, so she doesn't ever push boundaries, has no say in court, etc.

Of course, Brand would never do anything at all either so that's cut, then. Without Joffrey being a nasty little lannister poo poo, he wouldn't kill anybody's wolf and cause another to be driven off. Without incest then the whole scheme with the Hand that brings Ned to the city, wouldn't have happened.

There's an amazing amount of direct causation from just that one gross part in GRRM's books. How would you feel about Joffrey dying so badly - he is just a innocent kid after all, except for that gross and upsetting bit where he strips a girl naked in front of a crowd, largely due to the demands of both his mother's twisted sadism and his adolescent hormones needing to see breasts.

And of course that's only counting weird gross sex things (which is why I said puritanical), there's all kinds of objectionable stuff.. Necromancy, some really nasty torture, human sacrifice.. Why is it that the sexy bits are the only ones which are "bringing down" the story?

Strom Cuzewon posted:

So if it's common knowledge that he's a contender for God of War, why is not common knowledge that he's permanently morphed into a tiger and gone mad? It seems completely arbitrary what each character knows about all the magic stuff going on around them.
Why would be morphed into a tiger and being completely loony stop him from bein the "god of war"? Not in Malazan!

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Nov 30, 2015

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