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Kangra posted:I'm a bit behind on this, so just finished Teen Archaeologists. I only realized after listening to the entirety of the third episode that I had completely missed the second episode. Having a completely new set of characters and situations was completely unsurprising to me; about all I noticed was that Mike & Conor seemed to be more familiar with Isabella than I would've thought, but I chalked it down to them having actually read the book. Still blows me away after all this time how unmoored Larry and Denise are to the idea of a main character/characters. Like I'm pretty sure after having gone through all the episodes of Teen Archeologists now that either Isabella the Evil Sorceress or the princess is the protagonist of the book and the Teen Archeologists are just guest stars characters to their bullshit. The book's so incoherent that if you miss or skip an episode it feels like Mike and Connor have moved on to another book entirely and I'm kinda sad that the Ellises only have this and Antigua to their names because I would very much like the guys to visit another out of control batshit self-published fantasy novel like that again.
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Dec 27, 2023 05:10
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Lmao that the last book just lifted wholesale from a "How To Write Christmas Cozy Mysteries" guide.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:45
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I do not understand a single thing that is going on in the new book.
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Jan 30, 2024 20:53
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MassRafTer posted:I do not understand a single thing that is going on in the new book. Haven't started it yet, but after Land of the Moepek, I am down for some good old fashioned self-published incoherence, because holy poo poo Larry and Denise just loving broke me in a way I'll never recover from.
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Jan 31, 2024 09:22
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MassRafTer posted:I do not understand a single thing that is going on in the new book. Anime. It's a guy trying to write his own shonen superhero anime. It's why the girl punches him all the time, that's a stock thing that happens in anime.
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Jan 31, 2024 21:31
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Anime. It's a guy trying to write his own shonen superhero anime. It's why the girl punches him all the time, that's a stock thing that happens in anime. Sick, Mike and I are on the same level of understanding then.
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Jan 31, 2024 21:38
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MassRafTer posted:Sick, Mike and I are on the same level of understanding then. The funny thing is that it's pretty much just as incomprehensible even if you know what he's trying to write or what his inspirations are.
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Jan 31, 2024 22:05
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Anime. It's a guy trying to write his own shonen superhero anime. It's why the girl punches him all the time, that's a stock thing that happens in anime. Oh sweet Jesus, this is gonna be a ride. I also love that the book's Amazon page already has the patented 372 Pages comet tail of "Customers who bought this book also bought..." to it. The internet moves fast.
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Feb 1, 2024 05:10
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I can't believe this wasn't written by a 13 year old. It's a bigger self-insert wish fulfillment than My Immortal!
Mordja fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 1, 2024 05:43
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Mordja posted:I can't believe this wasn't written by a 13 year old. It's a bigger self-instert wish fulfillment than My Immortal! Yeah, this has some HUGE 15 year old millennial incel misogynist power fantasy vibe to it. I'm about half an hour into Episode 1 as I write this and the main character already creeps me the gently caress out. e: Oh wow, it's super racist and ableist too. e2: Pan-ther-man, he flies like a moron! nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 19:56
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So the author's a Mormon, right? Getting some real Mormon fantasy vibes from this book.
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Feb 18, 2024 06:41
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Not since Super Constitution have I had a real hard time making it through more than 10 min of a time of this. There is something to be said about punching down so much with someone with clear mental illness or just an amateur author with no one editing their poo poo versus like someone who has made millions off of producing trash like Cline or such.
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Feb 18, 2024 06:50
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jeeves posted:Not since Super Constitution have I had a real hard time making it through more than 10 min of a time of this. There's this absurdly weird balance going on here where it's like "Is this REALLY worth all the time and effort put into recapping and examining it?" but it at the same time IS just so fascinatingly batshit that it makes you want to know more about it, even if every new revelation leaves you even more confused. I do get where you're coming from where someone like Ernest Cline is big enough and terrible enough that he warrants a good making GBS threads on, but this guy... I'm really trying to death of the author him as much as I can and just pretend that the book is some kind of separate existence despite the main character clearly being the author. I finished listening to Part 1 just yesterday, just in time for Part 2's release, and I've also just recently come off listening to the AI episodes of Behind the Bastards, and it's got me thinking in a way. Robert Evans and his guests talked at length about how AI, in its current algorithmic form at least, is probably never going to achieve spontaneous creativity, so it will never be able to write anything as batshit weird and bad as stuff like Kaileb's Dream or Super Constitution or Trucking Through Time or My Immortal. It can try, but it will never be able to truly replicate that je ne sais quoi of factors involved in the misfiring of neurons in a flesh and blood author's brain that makes them think some random insane thing sounds like a good idea to them so it needs no further explanation or examination. And so in this age of ever encroaching AI and the weird cult of shitheads who've sprung up around it to herald its advent, I find stuff like Kaileb's Dream weirdly commendable just because a computer will never be able to spontaneously do... all of that. Holy poo poo 
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Feb 19, 2024 05:08
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I do feel a little less comfortable about this book, given the author, but at the same time porkmouth and award-winning speeches made me laugh more than anything on the podcast has in a while. I don't quite feel like it's shaming them. I find it delightful in a way, in the same way I can't help but be amused when a student says the "Irish photo frame hit them hard".
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Feb 20, 2024 07:27
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I'm confused about what separates this author from any of the other self-publishing weirdos--outside of the delusions of grandeur--that would make you guys uncomfortable.
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Feb 20, 2024 07:36
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Mordja posted:I'm confused about what separates this author from any of the other self-publishing weirdos--outside of the delusions of grandeur--that would make you guys uncomfortable. There's this Schrödinger's cat vibe thing about the book where it could be "a deluded 14 year old wrote this" or "a guy in his 30s with big mental issues wrote this" and I don't know where to come down on it. I don't feel "uncomfortable" with the book, but there is something clearly off with the whole project, it's just that loving weird.
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Feb 20, 2024 08:25
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Real  moment when the book reveals Hope's age
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Mar 23, 2024 17:41
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Mordja posted:Real When the party they meet at is described he writes something like "Every girl there was either 2 years younger or 1 year older" so it didn't really surprise me but everything about the book is unfortunate.
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Mar 23, 2024 22:05
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I do have to say it's one of the only pieces of media that actually feels dreamlike, or at least like the dreams I have*. And by that I mean that there's sort of a throughline of events but everything is disjointed, locations and motivations completely change with no warning or reason, random things happen that are never resolved and immediately forgotten, and they're incredibly boring to describe. Oh and sometimes I die and immediately get better. I haven't ever dreamed of becoming a panther-griffon who marries a 13 year old, thank God. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Mar 23, 2024 |
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Mar 23, 2024 23:07
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Do you dream of every breakfast, lunch, and dinner you've ever eaten, at least?
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Mar 23, 2024 23:46
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Mordja posted:Do you dream of every breakfast, lunch, and dinner you've ever eaten, at least? No, oddly enough.
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Mar 24, 2024 00:12
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Mordja posted:Do you dream of every breakfast, lunch, and dinner you've ever eaten, at least? That is the part of this book that is loving killing me. It's just an endless series of meals and the protagonist entertaining his guests in the most boring rear end upper middle class white person who's stuck in his teens mentally way possible while a demon army a billion billion billion strong allegedly stands ready to invade and destroy the Earth at any moment. Also it is the LEAST surprising thing that the love interest for the 17-18 year old boy is 13. This book has been just radiating creeper vibes since the jump, so it's refreshing to just see it come right out and confirm that it is in fact as textually creepy as it has been subtextually creepy so far, thanks Kaileb!
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Mar 27, 2024 01:05
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The characters were 15 and 13, the author was like 30. Gross!
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Mar 27, 2024 14:05
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Breadallelogram posted:The characters were 15 and 13, the author was like 30. Gross! These characters as-written feel like they should be in their 20s or 30s. Especially with the constant talk of consummating their marriage, and how he wants to wait until their of age, and then you realize she's 13 
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Mar 27, 2024 17:09
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nine-gear crow posted:These characters as-written feel like they should be in their 20s or 30s. Especially with the constant talk of consummating their marriage, and how he wants to wait until their of age, and then you realize she's 13 It's why I'm convinced the dude who wrote this crap has watched a lot of trash-tier fantasy/sci-fi shonen anime. Those series are full of plots about random teenagers suddenly becoming members of absurdly powerful organizations involved in wars that will determine the fate of the universe.
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Mar 28, 2024 03:58
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Hope you are excited to go from a book written about young adults to Ernest Cline's new YA book.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:16
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MassRafTer posted:Hope you are excited to go from a book written about young adults to Ernest Cline's new YA book. Oh no.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:00
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How can he have written a book for people who are way too young to understand 80s references? It simply doesn’t make sense.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:04
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"Milton Bradley - his name was a reference to a company of board game makers - had found a box of his dad's favorite TV shows on DVD. He especially thrilled to the A-Team, which was about a group of do-gooding mercenaries who were also on the run from being caught by the military. The team's tough man, B.A. Baracus, had a wild hair cut!"
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Apr 10, 2024 01:05
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Dawgstar posted:"Milton Bradley - his name was a reference to a company of board game makers - had found a box of his dad's favorite TV shows on DVD. He especially thrilled to the A-Team, which was about a group of do-gooding mercenaries who were also on the run from being caught by the military. The team's tough man, B.A. Baracus, had a wild hair cut!" Fanfiction. It's tough, but I'm going with fanfiction.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:10
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jeeves posted:How can he have written a book for people who are way too young to understand 80s references? Get ready for everything to be framed in terms of Sword Art Online. They probably haven't heard of that either but I think it's Cline's newest reference.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:16
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Defiance Industries posted:Get ready for everything to be framed in terms of Sword Art Online. He explicitly referenced it in Ready Player Two.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:55
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"They" meaning the intended age bracket for YA novels.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:07
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Yeah, I think I misunderstood your post. Anyway, I'm reading the Bat City book and it SUCKS!
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Apr 15, 2024 22:14
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I appreciate the guys releasing the first episode of the Bat Book series on what my work computer task bar informed me was Bat Appreciation Day. I don't know if they timed it that way, but it was very appropriate.jeeves posted:How can he have written a book for people who are way too young to understand 80s references? I am also extremely interested to see how this plays out. This is hilariously outside of every one of Cline's comfort zones. The guy wrote three books that were basically all the same book with the words jumbled about, so what's he gonna do when all of his trope and genre crutches aren't available to him?
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Apr 18, 2024 03:28
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I'm sure he'll jam them in there anyway
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Apr 19, 2024 03:39
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It's not like his references were particularly artful or subtle. "A variety of 80s dance moves" indeed.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:44
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I mean right at the start he used the phrase "yuck someone's yum" so this is going to be a long, hard road.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:48
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Defiance Industries posted:It's not like his references were particularly artful or subtle. "A variety of 80s dance moves" indeed. My favourite Clineism remains the whole "You must fight seven different versions of Prince!" set piece, and then Cline couldn't think of seven different looks for Prince so it's just Batdance Prince, Purple Rain Prince, Unpronounceable Symbol Prince and then use your imagination for Princes 4 through 7. He couldn't even do something funny like have one of them be Dave Chappelle impersonating Prince either.
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Apr 19, 2024 04:27
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nine-gear crow posted:He couldn't even do something funny. Or engaging, or clever, or intriguing
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Apr 19, 2024 04:32
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