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Proteus Jones posted:
Don't pretend you don't need a cross-indexed Excel workbook to figure out who Anita Blake's sleeping with in a given chapter.
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Apr 19, 2020 21:42
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The difference being Sandman Slim is Mary Sue turned up to 11. He gets his toys and powers stripped away later in the series.
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Apr 19, 2020 23:09
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Dresden Files is on Amazon Prime if anyone else was waiting for a place to stream it.Khizan posted:This is it, really. There's no "The first books are a bit rough but it picks up at book 3" like with Dresden or Verus. What you see is what you get for the entire series. Yeah. I don't read Sandman for the prose, I read it for the voice. The author really has a love/hate relationship with his city and oh boy it shows. Plus, it's outlandish and stupid but in an amusing way. I was expecting it to be waaaaaay more problematic than it ever gets.
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Apr 20, 2020 01:24
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Wizchine posted:He gets his toys and powers stripped away later in the series. Yeah I know, I got really bored one weekend, too. He effectively gets them back later.
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Apr 20, 2020 01:56
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Sandman Slim takes the overpowered protagonist, cranks it to 11, and says “so what are you gonna do about it?” before hopping on a big rear end motorcycle and popping a wheelie off into the sunset. Sandman Slim owns.
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Apr 20, 2020 02:19
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Dresden Files is on Amazon Prime if anyone else was waiting for a place to stream it. I kind of want to watch it only because I've heard nothing but bad things about it, but in a forgotten way where no one wants to remember it rather than a hateful way.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:12
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bobjr posted:I kind of want to watch it only because I've heard nothing but bad things about it, but in a forgotten way where no one wants to remember it rather than a hateful way. I didn't think it was bad at the time, and I was sad when it went off the air, but I haven't rewatched it in the intervening 13 years.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:35
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My wife and I just watched it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It was Charmed but Dresden-y. Most of the series takes place before Storm Front, and then there is a Storm Front episode that I swear must have been the pilot.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:54
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The show had its faults, but it's what introduced me to the series and the genre more broadly, so I remember it with at least a mild fondness. But I also haven't seen it in over a decade and it might not hold up very well. If you feel your TV adaptations have to err on the side of being as much a 1:1 adaptation of the source material as possible, it'll probably leave you frustrated.
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Apr 20, 2020 05:35
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I didn't scroll back far enough in the thread to see but I assume there was some discussion about the newest Harmony Black book? I liked it but thought maybe it was a wee step back in terms of quality but that might be me being overly picky. I didn't feel like it advance the overarching plot very much and I'm really worried that Schaefer is about to power creep the gently caress out of Harmony. What did you all think? I also finally got around to reading Libriomancer for the first time. I enjoyed it but it's wish fulfillment for all us book nerds so that's not really surprising. And yes Sandman is dumb over the top fun, just take it for what it is.
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Apr 20, 2020 06:00
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vulturesrow posted:I didn't scroll back far enough in the thread to see but I assume there was some discussion about the newest Harmony Black book? I still like Faust, though. The magical heist movie story somehow keeps working after what, ten iterations?
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Apr 20, 2020 10:57
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RE: Dresden TV show It's not all that faithful to the source material. I seem to remember a quote by Butcher who said (paraphrasing) "It's not going to be a direct adaption of the books. Anyone who expects that is going to be disappointed." And he was right. What we got was yet another "soap opera supernatural" show, like Charmed, Supernatural, the CW superhero shows, etc. It's got most of the same trappings. That said: * I loved their take on Bob. They *could* have done a cheesy talking skull, probably cheaper, but a projection of a snarky British guy was so much more fun. * The hockey stick wizard staff and drumstick wand were genius. * Paul Blackthorne was terrible to play book Harry, but was great as a slightly older, less problematic Harry. The Storm Front episode was BY FAR the best episode, and was supposed to be a two-hour pilot. But they weren't able to finish it in time, and a stripped-down version appeared later in the series.
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Apr 20, 2020 15:32
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There should be story about the human trafficking of illegal immigrant shoe-making elves for exploited labor in sweatshops
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Apr 20, 2020 15:35
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Mel Mudkiper posted:There should be story about the human trafficking of illegal immigrant shoe-making elves for exploited labor in sweatshops That was basically done in one of Simon R Green's Nightside books. A bunch of faeries chained to workbenches making cheap knock-off enchanted items.
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Apr 20, 2020 15:37
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that owns what about Tiger King but for a guy who breeds Unicorns
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Apr 20, 2020 15:39
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Mel Mudkiper posted:that owns If you're okay with dragons instead of Unicorns, there's a fair bit of that in one of the Discworld Watch books. Men at Arms, I think. Lady Sybil is part of a group of people who raise dragons and while she's a good person, the rest, not so much.
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Apr 20, 2020 15:48
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No I mean I want crazy loving rednecks running illegal zoos in the marshes of the bayou breeding unicorns and cockatrices and poo poo and there is one meth head zookeeper who has a stone arm because they weren't careful cleaning the basilisk cages
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Apr 20, 2020 15:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:that owns Do the unicorns in The Laundry Files side story count?
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Apr 20, 2020 15:54
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Mel, try Michael Swanwick's dragon books - The Iron Dragon's Daughter is the first one.
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Apr 20, 2020 16:27
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Safety Biscuits posted:Mel, try Michael Swanwick's dragon books - The Iron Dragon's Daughter is the first one. Ok wait hold on... quote:The story follows Jane, a changeling girl who slaves at a dragon factory in the world of Faerie, building part-magical, part-cybernetic monsters that are used as jet fighters. rad
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Apr 20, 2020 16:28
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mastajake posted:My wife and I just watched it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It was Charmed but Dresden-y. Most of the series takes place before Storm Front, and then there is a Storm Front episode that I swear must have been the pilot. The entire series got shaken up at the last second when a new producer came in, and IIRC all of the eps were more or less shown out of order. Originally it was supposed to be a serialized, straight adaptation of the books, in order. The new producer insisted that they make it episodic, with no continuity or changes between eps, and all of the scripts had to be heavily rewritten.
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Apr 20, 2020 17:21
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The Dresden files: TV edition was good, I liked it. It unkinked some of dresdens problematic elements like diversity (lack of) and sexuality (too much of) but it really was the most basic take on the books. The actors cast ranged from good to great, the material let them down sadly. Dresden in a decrepit old army Jeep made a lot of sense and I wanted one for ages afterwards.
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Apr 20, 2020 17:48
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Mel Mudkiper posted:No I mean I want crazy loving rednecks running illegal zoos in the marshes of the bayou breeding unicorns and cockatrices and poo poo and there is one meth head zookeeper who has a stone arm because they weren't careful cleaning the basilisk cages If you want crazy redneck UF/PNR you might want Illona Andrews Edge series. https://ilona-andrews.com/the-edge/ theblurb posted:"The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Walmart and magic is a fairytale–and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny. It’s a place where poverty is real, life is hard, and fairy tales sometimes do come true."
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Apr 20, 2020 18:09
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Anias posted:If you want crazy redneck UF/[/url] quote:Welcome to Gil's All Night Diner, where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never know what might be lurking in the freezer. . . . https://www.amazon.com/Gils-All-Fright-Diner-Martinez/dp/0765350017
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Apr 20, 2020 18:11
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I really love Gil's All-Fright Diner, and most of that author's stuff is good too. The Automatic Detective is probably my favorite of them all.
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Apr 20, 2020 18:28
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Also good!
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Apr 20, 2020 18:29
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The TV series wasn't that bad, I thought if it just stuck with the street level Wizard PI concept it would have been fine as an episodic case-of-the-week show. It kinda tried to split the difference with the books though and was kinda all over the place. I think TV since then has locked down the format a lot better, if it was made today it would have had a more consistent structure. The drumstick wand and hockey stick was great.
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Apr 20, 2020 19:06
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Does the TV series get better after the first 10 minutes of the first episode?
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Apr 20, 2020 19:43
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Does the TV series get better after the first 10 minutes of the first episode? No. Starts terrible, stays terrible.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:35
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Ok, the comparisons to poo poo CW shows had me confident I'd made the right decision but I wasn't sure if it was just everyone else having poo poo taste in production values or what.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:47
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Sloth Life posted:Dresden in a decrepit old army Jeep made a lot of sense and I wanted one for ages afterwards. Paul Blackthorne is 6'2 and changes like his car were because he was just too tall to do some of the things that book Harry does (and book Harry is 7 inches taller) and the height realism was my favourite part of the show.
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Apr 20, 2020 23:20
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Yeah if you walk in expecting something actually good you’re gonna be disappointed. But it’s a fun and enjoyable experience if you like the setting and want more and don’t care about cheesy stuff.
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Apr 21, 2020 03:19
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ConfusedUs posted:I really love Gil's All-Fright Diner, and most of that author's stuff is good too. The Automatic Detective is probably my favorite of them all. drat, I'm going to have to reread Gil's All-Fright Diner and the rest of Martinez' stuff again now.
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Apr 21, 2020 04:02
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ulmont posted:drat, I'm going to have to reread Gil's All-Fright Diner and the rest of Martinez' stuff again now. Gil’s, The Automatic Detective, and Divine Misfortune are my three favorites of his. The others are ok, but those three do nifty things.
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Apr 21, 2020 07:40
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For me it's Automatic Detective, Chasing the Moon, and Emperor Mollusk vs the Sinister Brain.
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Apr 21, 2020 12:37
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Cugel the Clever posted:I think this is part of what leaves me taken aback: there's just enough hints throughout the book that one could walk away with the impression that it's all a bitter satire of that world, but it's left so ambiguous that it's just as easy to believe the author genuinely doesn't see the hypocrisies he describes because he was steeped in it. I get the impression that fans of the book think it's all played straight, though I don't have more than a couple person sample. This is a take that I see a lot and I never quite get it. When Quentin graduates from Magic College, the principal makes a huge speech about where magic comes from, and he explicitly says “I’m pretty sure we can do magic because we’re massive whiny babies who refuse to grow up and deal with the fact that the real world is hard and so we force reality to bend to our whims because the alternative is learning how to be a functioning adult and none of us want to do that” That seems like a fairly on-the-nose indictment of everybody who can do magic, as I understand it.
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Apr 26, 2020 16:17
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Coca Koala posted:When Quentin graduates from Magic College, the principal makes a huge speech about where magic comes from, and he explicitly says “I’m pretty sure we can do magic because we’re massive whiny babies who refuse to grow up and deal with the fact that the real world is hard and so we force reality to bend to our whims because the alternative is learning how to be a functioning adult and none of us want to do that” The Dean says that, but it's not as negative as you make it sound. The Magicians posted:“Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic,” Fogg said expansively. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little too perfect, don’t you think? If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
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Apr 26, 2020 23:37
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He explicitly calls out the question of whether somebody who can cast magic is capable of growing up, and the book recognizes it as a scolding, and then he proceeds to say that magicians are special because they're all gold-medalists in the emo olympics. I agree that my interpretation casts it as more negative than Dean Fogg explicitly states, but the book (and the sequels) all make it clear that the magicians are incredibly stunted individuals because magic keeps them from needing to grow up - there's no reason to face adversity when you can magic your problems away and when you run into problems that magic can't solve (because there's no such thing as a life without problems), they're all completely ill-equipped to deal with those problems in any significant or productive way. How much more clearly should the series have stated this, that some people feel like it was left ambiguous?
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Apr 27, 2020 15:43
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Coca Koala posted:How much more clearly should the series have stated this, that some people feel like it was left ambiguous? The series did not hold my interest to the point of book 2, but really, I didn't see the "magicians" as anyone worse than the characters in the standard Ivy League coming of age bullshit stories. ...so I basically read The Magicians as the Wild Cards/Frank Miller version of Harry Potter and then moved on.
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Apr 28, 2020 05:27
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Coca Koala posted:He explicitly calls out the question of whether somebody who can cast magic is capable of growing up, and the book recognizes it as a scolding, and then he proceeds to say that magicians are special because they're all gold-medalists in the emo olympics. The magic is a metaphor for money. drat.
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Apr 28, 2020 17:35
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