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quantumfoam posted:The way that Yoon Ha Leee presented Jeado through most of Ninefox Gambit didn''t land for me. Yeah I generally agree with this criticism of Jedao, what he was in practice when interacting with Cheris was so different from the response he got elsewhere. I know that was intentional and is justified later in the books, but it felt incongruous enough to me that it felt like a bit of a fumble in the way the story was told. I almost wish I'd gotten a book where Jedao was less of a character than this enigmatic half-crazed legend, as then when you get the full details of his backstory in the later books, it would have had much more impact. I personally felt like Cheris was a much more interesting character to focus on, and was actually kind of disappointed how Jedao-centric the later books got. By the third book, though, she also felt like she was pretty heavily sidelined and flat. FWIW I hate dismissive terms like Mary Sue, it didn't bother me so much when you used it because I know if asked you could probably articulate what you meant by that, I just hate it when forums use buzzwords like that as a way to just dismiss discussion of a book they didn't like (or didn't read, which is even more stupid). I would always rather hear why someone didn't like a book with some more thought than "character is a Mary Sue, I know because I read it on TVTropes". MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 17:09
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in related news i never finished ninefox gambit because i hated it and found it pretty boring. kind of reminded me of reading a clockwork orange where im spending too much time trying to read the words instead of the narrative or subtext. I just had to be a jerk about the term because I have a brain disease
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Nov 19, 2019 17:11
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To completely derail things - I brought this up in the UF thread but I think you guys would have something to say here too - I'm reading Anne Bishop's Others series and Black Jewels trilogy. Two uh... interesting things about both series: The Black Jewels features magic golden cockrings of obedience on at least two main characters so far, and they're brought up pretty often. The Others opens with a prologue note explaining that in this version of Earth, there are no native peoples anywhere but in Europe, and instead there are were-critters and vampires and elementals who regularly eat humans, to the point that settling America featured a lot of Europeans getting eaten. Of course, this is a super light and fluffy universe compared to how it actually went down...and I'm still super confused at how a book that got published in the 2010s could get away with just wholesale erasing all native americans like it's no biggie. e: And oh don't worry, none of the werewolves are native americans, our hot sexy werewolf lead is named Simon StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 17:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:The Black Jewels features magic golden cockrings of obedience on at least two main characters so far, and they're brought up pretty often. I mean, how sure are we that they're actually magical?
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Nov 19, 2019 17:51
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Orv posted:I mean, how sure are we that they're actually magical? They can sense a man's disobedient thoughts if he tenses up too much, and cause pain as punishment, so....
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Nov 19, 2019 18:30
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Achilles is not a Mary sue. He's a cruel, arrogant, petulant rear end in a top hat that's nearly invincible in battle. He's terrible at everything except fighting.
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Nov 19, 2019 18:36
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StrixNebulosa posted:They can sense a man's disobedient thoughts if he tenses up too much, and cause pain as punishment, so.... I'm just gonna leave all these horrific jokes on the table and say that's pretty weird.
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Nov 19, 2019 18:53
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Midgetskydiver posted:Achilles is not a Mary sue. He's a cruel, arrogant, petulant rear end in a top hat that's nearly invincible in battle. He's terrible at everything except fighting. Yes, this is the point. He’s ‘obnoxiously perfect at everything,’ invincible, wins every fight, people come beg him for help even when he’s being a child, the most special, best at racing, kings need to grovel for his approval. People would blithely call him a Mary Sue because the term is hopelessly nonspecific, a thoughtless Television Trope, a replacement for real thought. Even the original Mary Sues, authorial inserts in fan fiction, all had dramatic tragic flaws, usually so the canon characters could pity, mourn, or reaffirm them.
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Nov 19, 2019 18:59
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Its shorthand for a kind of bad writing, and it's easily falsifiable by pointing out flaws: holmes is arrogant, short tempered and a cocaine addict, for e.g. I mean you suggested replacing it with a brief summary of exactly what it means. Or you could just use the term.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:12
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Basically, yea. General Battuta posted:Noted literary failures and reprehensible Mary Sues: Achilles, Sherlock Holmes, Jesus of Nazareth The son of a god and the Son of God are "unrealistically" perfect in the context of their stories? The previous crying about the internet dude bro Force Awakens complaints faces the problem that their use of the term was perfectly apt, as we didn't see (and still haven't seen) any explanation for why Rey is so instantly much better at this stuff than the novice jedi we've previously seen. If the other movies didn't exist we could just assume that instant supercompetency is a feature of some particularly gifted jedi way out on the right end of the bell curve. But we instead had context that makes that hard to swallow.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:14
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General Battuta posted:Yes, this is the point. He’s ‘obnoxiously perfect at everything,’ invincible, wins every fight, people come beg him for help even when he’s being a child, the most special, best at racing, kings need to grovel for his approval. People would blithely call him a Mary Sue because the term is hopelessly nonspecific, a thoughtless Television Trope, a replacement for real thought. I see where you're coming from and the term is overblown and overused but I think it has some remaining merit if used intelligently. When I hear "mary sue" I think of a character like Honor Harrington who is *narratively perfect* -- a character who may have "flaws" but never has actual flaws because all of those "flaws" work out to their benefit. E.g., Honor Harrington may be *too badass of a killer*, and may kill people everyone thinks she shouldn't, oh no she's a "war criminal" but by the end it turns out those people she massacred were secret space criminals so she was right to kill them all along. Achilles isn't a Mary Sue because he suffers consequea for his flaws. Ditto, say, Miles Vorkosigan. It's that quantum perfection that sets the true Mary Sue apart, IMHO, and makes it a term distinct from "protagonist". A true Marty Stu may *appear* to have flaws, but will never suffer consequences.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:49
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I finished The Claw of the Conciliator and I'm not sure if I want to continue reading the next two books. I think I'm just getting exhausted with trying to pick apart Severian's account of events and how they relate to what's actually going on in the rest of the world. I got really frustrated reading through the script for Dr. Talos's play, but that might just be because I'm an unlearned pleb.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:53
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sebmojo posted:Its shorthand for a kind of bad writing, and it's easily falsifiable by pointing out flaws: holmes is arrogant, short tempered and a cocaine addict, for e.g. Apparatchik below does a better job than I ever will of demonstrating why the term’s become useless; I don’t think I have anything else interesting to say on the topic. Don’t be tvtropes. Say what you mean; don’t rely on vague maybe-unshared signifiers. Apparatchik Magnet posted:The previous crying about the internet dude bro Force Awakens complaints faces the problem that their use of the term was perfectly apt, as we didn't see (and still haven't seen) any explanation for why Rey is so instantly much better at this stuff than the novice jedi we've previously seen. If the other movies didn't exist we could just assume that instant supercompetency is a feature of some particularly gifted jedi way out on the right end of the bell curve. But we instead had context that makes that hard to swallow. You hate to see it.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:57
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I shouldn't have mentioned Star Wars; please can we not do a loving Rey derail.
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Nov 19, 2019 20:00
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A dereyl, so to speak.
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Nov 19, 2019 20:04
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Idk battuta, I guess I just disagree with your premise because there's no confusion about the term in this thread, it's mildly useful shorthand for a kind of bad writing. Goddammit I just lastworded you, sorry ok I'm done
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Nov 19, 2019 20:50
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What's the thread's opinion of the Witcher books? I have a friend who has been bugging me to read them for ages so I grabbed Blood of Elves. It was pretty disjointed and I didn't care for it. Too many of the chapters were characters sitting around just talking about the political situation or whatever. Apparently I did it wrong and I should've started with The Last Wish so I'm giving that one a try to mollify him. I'm always reluctant to say a translated book is just bad because the translator could've whiffed it, so I'll just say I didn't particularly enjoy it in English. I can see how the emphasis on world building would make people excited about adapting it, but since I wasn't intrigued by the world (mostly standard fantasy so far) it didn't pull me in. Is the rest of the series much the same?
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Nov 19, 2019 23:07
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I couldn't speak to whatever linguistic mechanics of Polish-English translation are responsible for it - including maybe there being new translations since I read them - but when I went through the books they were pretty, crisp, let's say? There's a certain level of odd formality to the dialogue and a lot of the description tends towards dry. I enjoyed my time with them a fair bit and they certainly deepened my appreciation of the games I'd recently played but while there is a definite upswing in writing quality as the books go on I don't think the nature of the prose changes overmuch. You can probably drop it.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:15
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StrixNebulosa posted:The Others opens with a prologue note explaining that in this version of Earth, there are no native peoples anywhere but in Europe, and instead there are were-critters and vampires and elementals who regularly eat humans, to the point that settling America featured a lot of Europeans getting eaten. Of course, this is a super light and fluffy universe compared to how it actually went down...and I'm still super confused at how a book that got published in the 2010s could get away with just wholesale erasing all native americans like it's no biggie. Erasing native americans is one thing; how in the blistering gently caress do you even get "Europe" and "Europeans" without, well, Africa and Asia? ...not sure if I actually want to know.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:24
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FuzzySlippers posted:What's the thread's opinion of the Witcher books? I have a friend who has been bugging me to read them for ages so I grabbed Blood of Elves. It was pretty disjointed and I didn't care for it. Too many of the chapters were characters sitting around just talking about the political situation or whatever. Apparently I did it wrong and I should've started with The Last Wish so I'm giving that one a try to mollify him.
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Nov 19, 2019 23:27
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FuzzySlippers posted:What's the thread's opinion of the Witcher books? I have a friend who has been bugging me to read them for ages so I grabbed Blood of Elves. It was pretty disjointed and I didn't care for it. Too many of the chapters were characters sitting around just talking about the political situation or whatever. Apparently I did it wrong and I should've started with The Last Wish so I'm giving that one a try to mollify him. I read them a while ago, beginning with the short stories, and I'd second that reading order — thought the first short story book was simply "pretty good", but really dug Sword of Destiny. I remember really getting into The Time of Contempt, and thinking Blood of Elves was a little awkward. I read them in Russian and they felt pretty smooth, I imagine Polish translates into another Slavic language more naturally than into English. I've heard some internet hubbub about how the English translations aren't great, and apparently there are fan translations around, but I've also heard mutters than "the translations are fine and it's just Poles complaining about their favourite puns not translating."
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Nov 20, 2019 00:00
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I read some of the short stories after I played the games. From what I recall, the stories were . . . B+/ A- grade fantasy. Comparable with something like Black Company maybe but it was hard to adjust for 1) translation problems and 2) video game afterglow and figure out where the books were "on their own." The main virtue is that they're drawing on non-English traditions and folklore so they're more "original" than Yet Another Lord of the Rings Clone etc. Cultural differences in the writing style etc. too. Probably worth reading if you're looking for fantasy that's different from most Western, english-language-tradition fantasy, less worth reading if you're not at the point where you're seeking out the different just because it's different.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:22
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The Witcher stories and books are definitely a few or more toes into bog-standard fantasy in places but there's something to be said for the world he's written being bleak without being grimdark and for the characters mostly acting like people in the poo poo world they've found themselves in. Ultimately though, much as I like them they're not aggressively revolutionary.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:24
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The Dark Horse comics are also pretty good.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:32
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FuzzySlippers posted:What's the thread's opinion of the Witcher books? I have a friend who has been bugging me to read them for ages so I grabbed Blood of Elves. It was pretty disjointed and I didn't care for it. Too many of the chapters were characters sitting around just talking about the political situation or whatever. Apparently I did it wrong and I should've started with The Last Wish so I'm giving that one a try to mollify him. I started reading what was advertised as the first one and : it stunk. Didn't finish due to one too many 'oh, gently caress you' moments.
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Nov 20, 2019 00:58
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General Battuta posted:A dereyl, so to speak. I'm Larry, this is my brother Dereyl, and this is my other brother Dereyl.
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Nov 20, 2019 01:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I read some of the short stories after I played the games. there's also some... uncomfortable gender/sexuality stuff. but by the insanely low standards of "fantasy books written by a man in the 1990s" it's downright normal and good when it comes to those topics
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Nov 20, 2019 01:01
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to be fair the stuff about the sorceresses kind of makes sense. nobody gives a poo poo about wizards so you only send your fourth daughter with the buck teeth to them, and once they get there, well, why wouldn't a wizard make themselves look perfect with magic. especially if your parents discard you as trash because they thought you wouldn't be able to get them a useful marriage.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:35
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General Battuta posted:The difference between the way you expect people to react and the way they actually react is how you learn the way their society and psychology differs from yours. "Show don't tell" is, in fact, a meaningful criticism, especially when applied to the characterization of major characters (as applied to certain kinds of plot and setting elements it's more a matter of taste, I suppose). "Forced diversity" is almost always a dogwhistle, but that still doesn't make it meaningless - at the very least, it usually (unintentionally) tells us something about the critic. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I see where you're coming from and the term is overblown and overused but I think it has some remaining merit if used intelligently. I half-agree with this. It's complicated by the way that the extent to which a character should face consequences is dependent, not even on genre in the usual sense, but on the tone of a book. To take an extreme example, Bertie Wooster is stupid and lazy, but Jeeves and/or luck always eventually saves him from any real consequences for the dumb stuff he does. But I don't think that makes Bertie Wooster a Mary Sue! It just shows that he exists in the context of lighthearted, comedic stories. But a main character who's immune to consequences in a story where horrible stuff happens to secondary characters is a Mary Sue, or at least an example of bad writing. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 03:18
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Sure! And Bertie does suffer, usually at the hands of aunts, sometimes from the absence of Jeevesian light. Jeeves has no flaws but he's not the protagonist. He's the benevolent antagonist. Man vs. A Beneficent Deity.
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Nov 20, 2019 03:23
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Finished up Wolf Hunt 3 by Jeff Strand, and it's a pretty great book. If you liked the first 2, you'll dig this one.
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Nov 20, 2019 08:27
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lol Eragon author Christopher Paolini announces first science-fiction novel quote:https://ew.com/books/2019/11/19/christopher-paolini-to-sleep-in-a-sea-of-stars-science-fiction-novel/
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Nov 20, 2019 12:03
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Call me when they decide to waste Jeremy Irons again.
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Nov 20, 2019 13:34
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someone find a stray dog to take a message to avshalom
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Nov 20, 2019 13:38
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Fake edit to above post; Also, Bertie Wooster is always clearly *proven wrong* by the text. A true Mary Sue protagonist is never, ever *wrong*. By the end of the story, all their actions will have been justified.
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Nov 20, 2019 14:06
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professor metis posted:someone find a stray dog to take a message to avshalom Avshalom never left
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Nov 20, 2019 20:56
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sebmojo posted:Avshalom never left and still posts in TBB In actual content, I'm reading Four Roads Cross, the fourth/fifth book in the Craft Sequence depending on how you want to count them. I definitely enjoy it more than the last couple (Last First Snow & Full Fathom Five) but I still don't find it quite as gripping as I did the very first book I read and I just can't figure out why. FFF was a total slog for me, and LFS was fine but kind of bland, so this one is a big improvement in large part because I enjoy the setting and characters more, but I'm not tearing through it like I did Three Parts Dead. Maybe it's because I mostly enjoyed the novelty of the world in the first book and not the actual story, I don't know. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 21:05
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MockingQuantum posted:and still posts in TBB Full Fathom Five basically has the inciting incident about 50% into a not-very-slender novel, which is quite a few pages without the reader understanding what the gently caress the actual story is about, and just kind of meanders showing author's precious worldbuilding before that. I like the guy and I liked the first two books, but I am not sure I'll ever get around to reading the rest of the series.
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Nov 20, 2019 22:38
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NK Jemison was streaming some video game on twitch last night, it was kinda fun. Only 40 viewers lol
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Nov 20, 2019 22:38
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Megazver posted:Full Fathom Five basically has the inciting incident about 50% into a not-very-slender novel, which is quite a few pages without the reader understanding what the gently caress the actual story is about, and just kind of meanders showing author's precious worldbuilding before that. I like the guy and I liked the first two books, but I am not sure I'll ever get around to reading the rest of the series. Yeah Full Fathom Five was kind of miserable for me, I skimmed a lot of it and I'm glad I did. I think I agree that part of the issue is the worldbuilding-- I think Gladstone is pretty good at writing a decent plot, but at least for me personally, his world isn't quite interesting enough (or maybe just not quite specific/fleshed out enough) to justify the time he takes on worldbuilding. Like FFF especially, I felt like the whole idea behind the island and the penitents and the idols were cool, but extremely half baked in such a way that all the cool ideas in the world wouldn't ever hang together nicely, in a way that felt coherent and engaging. I had the same problem with Two Serpents or whatever it was, the setting was kind of meh, but the story was engaging. Last First Snow was still the same meh setting, but with a disproportionately slow, bland story that could have been written more engagingly in a lot fewer pages. edit: Reading what I just wrote, it sounds like I hate the series! I actually don't, but I do think the longer I spend on the books, the more my enjoyment drops. Not in the Dune kind of way where each book is shittier/weirder/more convoluted than the one before it. I think the books just kind of overstay their welcome and a lot of the ideas are half-baked. It's a similar feeling to what I had after reading Perdido Street Station, and I think for similar reasons. I'm still interested to read more of Gladstone's writing-- I think I'll give Empress of Forever a try since it's unrelated and (hopefully) not as drawn out as the five Craft Sequence books feel like they are, sometimes. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 22:53
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