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but also the fifth book of the Alexandra Quick series started updating, after like seven years so far Alex got two wands to replace her old broken one, was essentially declared persona non grata by the confederacy, started dating her muggle friend Brian (it's a terrible relationship that's gonna crash and burn), her older sister is going to open a magic day school for problem students, and now she's visiting the Ozarks with her other sister Julia it's all written and done already, just updates monday and friday instead of getting dumped all at once, about 60 chapters or so
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Aug 31, 2019 08:38
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Malah posted:Joseph and Xander, excellent job covering this dumpster fire. Now let's throw this monstrosity into a volcano and never speak of it again. Seriously though, I really wanted to draw some conclusions here, but I don't have the time :/ (But I can assume you people have the time and can invest the effort in my place)
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Aug 31, 2019 15:25
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why did a guy go "Welp, I guess I'll have to write a version of Harry Potter where Harry is a hyper-pragmatic manipulator" when Sabriel already exists
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Aug 31, 2019 17:19
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Mazerunner posted:but also the fifth book of the Alexandra Quick series started updating, after like seven years Woah, I never thought that one would come back. I liked the first book but the next three felt as though in an effort to avoid turning the main character into a Mary Sue, the author leaned too far in the other direction, making her too foolhardy and unwilling to keep people in the loop and having to learn the same lessons over and over again. Overall I still enjoyed them enough though and I hope the writer has grown sufficiently since the last one. Now if only HP and the Natural 20 would come back, after the two measly updates he posted last year following years of inactivity.
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Aug 31, 2019 17:57
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Monocled Falcon posted:But since they're not conscious, thinking beings they can't approach the problem directly, they can only amass information and iterate on their 'shards' via an evolutionary design process. One thing you definitely got wrong is that they are sapient, but they don't really have a singular or defined mind the way human beings do. Like, consciousness, psyche and subconsciousness, in people those are basically made out of one piece and just what a mind is, as far as most people are concerned. If our mind was an object, it would be a brick, because it stays one shape all your life and you basically can't add or remove anything from it. By comparison, an entity would be made of legos. One of the weirdest things about the setting is how handing out shards is not the same as handing out tools, it's like handing out parts of yourself. An entity is really only itself when it's complete. Imagine handing someone your ability to appreciate irony, or your skill at interior design. It would obviously change the way you work, and even if these things were able to think for themselves, they'd not really capable of seeing the world in terms of anything but irony or shades of pastel. So basically, that's what they do, and it's why even Scion isn't actually an entity - he's more the command unit and failsafe. The biggest part, the most complete part, but still not everything of himself. Their mode of existence is the mental landscape that it evolved, is all about finding the right tool for the right job, because it's so easy for them to integrate entire skillsets in the blink of an eye. The downside is that they're not really designed to think creative, to do that "making the best of what you have" thing that people do when there's nothing else to be done. They just don't think that way. So that's what they're pretty much outsourcing to humanity. Hosts constantly come up with strangely effective ways to use their powers that would never have occurred to an entity, although they're aware that it's fundamentally something a shard ought to be capable of. All they know tells them entropy is inescapable, but they might have thought the same about using long protein chains synthesized by arachnids as improvised triplines, and eventually Skitter's shard integrates that to the point where it does so independently, just because it's such a clever idea. And if it takes another 3000 cycles until the attempt pays off, then that's perfectly alright by them. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 19:06
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PupsOfWar posted:why did a guy go "Welp, I guess I'll have to write a version of Harry Potter where Harry is a hyper-pragmatic manipulator" when Sabriel already exists What? Are you sure you're thinking of the right thing?
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Sep 1, 2019 08:22
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It's been a long-rear end time since I read Sabriel but I don't remember it being anything even slightly like that.
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Sep 4, 2019 00:48
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Sabriel is more like backwards Harry Potter: girl goes away from boarding school to learns about friendship and magic. And then she looks for her dad or... something? I gotta admit, I don't really remember. Has absolutely nothing otherwise in common with HPMOR, though.
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Sep 4, 2019 12:43
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Cardiovorax posted:Sabriel is more like backwards Harry Potter: girl goes away from boarding school to learns about friendship and magic. And then she looks for her dad or... something? I gotta admit, I don't really remember. Has absolutely nothing otherwise in common with HPMOR, though. Girl at non-magical boarding school finds out her dad is dead (for a given value of dead given that they're a family of Necromancers) and instantly leaves to go find who killed her dad and find out if she can bring him back to life. Total time spent in school is negligible and had nothing to do with the actual school.
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Sep 4, 2019 21:55
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The realization that I'm no longer a middle school kid and can just go buy and read all of the Garth Nix books that I never got the chance to because my library didn't have them has been throwing my brain for a loop, lemme tell ya. I wonder how they hold up as an adult reading them.
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Sep 4, 2019 22:06
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I meant that in the sense that there's a degree of similarity in the basic premise, not that boarding schools actually play a substantial role in it. I can understand how one would come up in a conversation about the other, is what I mean, although they really don't have much in common at all once you get past that.
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Sep 4, 2019 22:09
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The Shortest Path posted:The realization that I'm no longer a middle school kid and can just go buy and read all of the Garth Nix books that I never got the chance to because my library didn't have them has been throwing my brain for a loop, lemme tell ya. sadly sabriel is a bit of a high point for his quality
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Sep 4, 2019 22:13
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That's a drat shame.
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Sep 4, 2019 23:19
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Keys to the Kingdom certainly isn't bad, but it's also very noticeably young adult.
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Sep 4, 2019 23:22
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Cardiovorax posted:Keys to the Kingdom certainly isn't bad, but it's also very noticeably young adult. Honestly Garth Nix is mostly worth reading just for examples of settings that are actually somewhat unique instead of ripping poo poo off without being so dense that they're impossible to understand.
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Sep 5, 2019 08:30
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Is this story really all that good? I've heard about and I think I tried to read a long time ago. My impression at the time was "Okay, so this is what happens when Harry Potter gets possessed by Richard Dawkins."
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Sep 8, 2019 23:10
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lol, no. It is straight trash garbage. This is a mock thread.
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Sep 8, 2019 23:17
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Necrotizer F posted:Is this story really all that good? I've heard about and I think I tried to read a long time ago. My impression at the time was "Okay, so this is what happens when Harry Potter gets possessed by Richard Dawkins." It's fantastic, but opinions differ widely.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:06
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They differ widely between "has awful taste" and "does not have awful taste," hth.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:17
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Excuse me, I have awful taste and do not wish to be lumped in with the people who like this fic.
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Sep 9, 2019 01:53
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Cardiovorax posted:They differ widely between "has awful taste" and "does not have awful taste," hth. I get that. And I can see how some people would like the fic. A lot of people liked those Steven Seagal movies like Hard to Kill, Snowball in Hell or Out for Justice where Seagal's characters easily dispatches his opponents (and any sense of suspense or dramatic tension) with great speed.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:45
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Yeah, it's not too different from that, really. A lot of posts in this thread go into how this story really fails at its own premise (the whole "scientifically investigating magic" angle) and instead quickly becomes nothing more than an extended power trip for the author self-insert. It tends to appeal largely to people who can identify with that to some degree.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:51
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I am reminded of that awful Salvation War series.
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Sep 9, 2019 06:55
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Cardiovorax posted:Yeah, it's not too different from that, really. A lot of posts in this thread go into how this story really fails at its own premise (the whole "scientifically investigating magic" angle) and instead quickly becomes nothing more than an extended power trip for the author self-insert. It tends to appeal largely to people who can identify with that to some degree. Speaking as a decades long connoisseur of terrible fanfic: This is terrible even by the standards of extended power trips for author self-inserts.
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Sep 9, 2019 07:40
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But at least it's not the Salvation War. Now, give thanks to the person who compiled those threads into ebook format, causing the author to abandon the third book in the series before it began.
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Sep 9, 2019 07:47
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90s Cringe Rock posted:But at least it's not the Salvation War. Praise be!
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Sep 9, 2019 08:20
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Stroth posted:Speaking as a decades long connoisseur of terrible fanfic: This is terrible even by the standards of extended power trips for author self-inserts. Hey at least it doesn't have egregious spelling and grammar errors, that puts it above like, 95% of all fanfics
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Sep 9, 2019 08:35
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I am reminded of that awful Salvation War series. is that the one with the progress missile hitting satan in the chest
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Sep 9, 2019 09:37
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:is that the one with the progress missile hitting satan in the chest Yes it is. It's the one where all the devils hide under the bed from nukes.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:50
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Which would honestly be a funny and entertaining idea if it wasn't also so soapboxy about the author's own conservative beliefs. I mean, that story tries to make George Bush look effective and charismatic.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:53
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Salvation War is proof that even the dumbest hack can have a flash of brilliance. It's a wagonload of the worst trash, but the chapter with the nuke, juxtaposed with its aftermath, is one I remember with honest awe a decade later. And it wasn't a case of the author learning over time, either. That beautiful moment came immediately after this little nugget: quote:Petraeus looked at the operational displays, calculating safety margins and degrees of separation. Yes, it would work. “Sodom, for Gomorrah they die.” Cardiovorax posted:Which would honestly be a funny and entertaining idea if it wasn't also so soapboxy about the author's own conservative beliefs. I mean, that story tries to make George Bush look effective and charismatic. It's not soapboxy at all though? The dude was SUPER conservative, like "jumped out of a Kelly cartoon" conservative, but SW doesn't do anything worse than, like you said, portraying Dubya somewhat sympathetically. Soapboxy would be if he put Bill Clinton in Hell from AIDS or something.
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Sep 9, 2019 15:33
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Just because the guy can do subtlety doesn't mean it's not also an opinion piece, tho. VVV Can't argue with that. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 15:38
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Cardiovorax posted:Which would honestly be a funny and entertaining idea if it wasn't also so soapboxy about the author's own conservative beliefs. I mean, that story tries to make George Bush look effective and charismatic. Everything is relative. Compare Dubya to the current POTUS, for example. After all this I kind of want to look up The Salvation War - an impulse I will doubtless soon regret.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:05
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Didnt salvation war have bill clinton defeat some demons in 1v1 combat?
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Sep 9, 2019 16:18
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Tunicate posted:Didnt salvation war have bill clinton defeat some demons in 1v1 combat? According to TV Tropes, at one point he kills a succubus with a shotgun. I did read through the Tropes site on this and it almost made me want to find and read it. Almost. I suspect that it would fall far short of another work set in Hell that I enjoyed, God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:55
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I think he then makes a joke about not falling for the succubus' evil pheromones and magic mind control because he's married to Hillary the sequel's worse btw
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Sep 9, 2019 16:56
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Tunicate posted:Didnt salvation war have bill clinton defeat some demons in 1v1 combat? He walked out of a McDonalds after his morning jog, grabbed a shotgun from his Secret Service detail's car and blew a succubus' head off while she was enthralling his bodyguards. When asked how he'd seen through her illusions he said that of course he could recognize a soul sucking bitch from hell, he'd been married to Hillary for decades.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:58
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That's the most American thing I've ever read. I'll admit it, I laughed.
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Sep 9, 2019 17:02
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Iirc Obama comes off pretty good as well.
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Sep 10, 2019 00:47
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I get the impression nerds just find POTUS being legit action hero-style badasses to be an inherently entertaining concept regardless of politics.
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