Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

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Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Scorchy posted:

The whole chapter was Butcher/Harry patting himself on the back for not minding the gays. It's just like, how did this get past the editor.

There's an editor?

Also I'm reminded of that whole time that Butcher got flak from people in Chicago for how.. inventive his portrayal of Chicago is, since it's super clear he did about zero research on the city and the actual place that he put Dresden as living. Because he did not put Dresden in the White Guy Pub part of town.

It feels like that whole scene was to head off that kind of flak (and also to brag).

# ¿ Jul 5, 2019 22:12

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Skippy McPants posted:

In regard to his limited knowledge of Chicago, it's worth remembering that Storm Front was written in 2000. At that time, it was much harder to get current, in-depth information about even large cities. I mean, poo poo, Wikipedia didn't even launch until 2001.

The thing that pissed people off wasn't that he was wrong about it. It had been that he was wrong and when people corrected him he basically told them it didn't matter and to leave him alone, and when they got mad his response was more or less "How dare you get mad at me?? I did nothing wrong!!!!"

Kchama fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 7, 2019

# ¿ Jul 7, 2019 20:07

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

It's the classic phenomenon where people get upset if details about a real city are wrong even though it's occupied by a bunch of fictional fae, wizards, and monsters. When asked about the parking lot, he should have just said "a wizard did it."

To be fair, if you're not going to bother getting any bit of a real city correct, then why set it in that real city at all? It's just asking for trouble.

If the contents of the city don't matter, then don't bother setting it in a specific city.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 01:49

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

LLSix posted:

There's a mob in St. Louis? 'Cause the mob is super important in Storm Front.

It sure does. Not nearly as nice or friendly as Butcher makes them out to be, either.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 03:01

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

Giordano crime family.

There's a mob everywhere, man. One of the biggest mob wars in the latter half of the 20th century, the one that really kicked off the downfall of the Sicilian mafia in America, took place in Cleveland, Ohio.

Yep, pretty much every major city has a crime family.

There is actually one in Chicago, even! Just, you now, not anywhere near where Butcher says they are.

EDIT: I mean, I don't think anyone knows exactly where they are located, but it's sure not in the black part of town.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Jul 8, 2019

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 03:47

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

navyjack posted:

And I�m sure they probably don�t only do victimless crimes and only hurt bad people who deserve it like Gentleman Johnny Marcone.

This was pure Butcher wanting to have his cake and eat it too with regards to having the mob but also Dresden more or less be friendly with them.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 04:31

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Khizan posted:

Eh. Once you're that far in and you've been that significantly wrong, you might as well just roll with it. I imagine that changing poo poo up would be more jarring than not to a lot of readers.

I mean, my only experience with Chicago is having to change flights in the airport with a ~90 minute layover, and I've never had any particular reason to go research the city. The only reason that I know anything is wrong with it is because I read about these books on a weird internet forum, so I've never had a problem with his depiction of the city. I imagine that he has more readers in similar circumstances than he has readers who are really bothered by the way that he hosed up with the city.

If he had ever said "It's too late to change it" he might have gotten some grudging understanding. He was just offended at the idea that he might have been wrong.

He really should have just set it in some generic city if he wanted to write it as a generic city.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 07:09

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Wizchine posted:

Eh. I've seen writers in this genre gently caress up Los Angeles because they get enamored with the movie industry but don't know much about the city. You only notice this stuff when you live in the city in question. But sometimes research just bogs writers down and gets in the way of just writing. It's not like Butcher needs any more time-wasters at this point.

That's not really a good defense of Butcher. "Other people hosed up for equally stupid reasons."

Also if you noticed, I suggested the much more powerful "Don't set it in a place you need to research, like a specific city, or a real city". Blam! Now you can have it be whatever you want without people going "drat you really don't know poo poo, do you?"

And he hosed this up from book one when he was busting them out at a good clip, anyways.

Of course, despite all this, as stated, his real sin was getting offended at people not happy that he was saying that the wealthy black part of town where they lived was actually slumsville and doubling down, which came out of him bragging that he doesn't totally hate gay people.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 13:58

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

If by "friendly" you mean the mob boss in question is preparing deathtraps for the inevitable showdown with Dresden and instructing his facilities to cooperate with him in order to avoid having him burn them to the ground, then yes.

It's clear why Butcher got invested in Chicago as a setting: he figured out something to do with Sue the Dinosaur. That kind of thing is much more powerful when it involves something people know of outside the fiction. And the whole point of the urban fantasy genre is to set it in something resembling the real world so that your worldbuilding is much simpler. Inventing your own city isn't as trivial as it appears to be.

None of that excuses Butcher's lack of research. He's on record as stating that this series began with him writing out of resentment based on a writing teacher's advice, so the "this was written by an arrogant, snotty man-child" thing is well-established. To some degree, that bled into Harry and trapped Butcher: he can't change the series style too radically for fear of losing readers (Ghost Story was the biggest departure from the formula and I gather it isn't exactly beloved).

His real failure, once it came out that he had gotten details wrong, was not doing some research and having Harry complain about how the White Council agitated for a Wrigley Field parking lot because they wanted to neutralize a ley line or something like that.

It is hard enough dropping as many things as Butcher does into the "real world" without completely rethinking all of human history, without adding a major fictional city. At that point you may as well be on another planet and you're writing Glen Cook's Garrett series.

Ah yes, that one thing in book seven. So crucial to the series that the dinosaur be named Sue.

The point isn't that it's simpler, the point is that you may as well if you're not even going to do basic research on the setting, because you're pretty much just inventing it.

And it's not like the first few books are all that beloved either. I've never met a Dresden File fan who told me to read the first two books. It's always been "start at book 3 or 4".

Also lol no one even suggested he rethink all of human history. No one even hinted at that. So I don't know where you're getting that from. I even said I would have accepted "I hosed up and it's too late to change it now".

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 16:36

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ConfusedUs posted:

I really don't care how accurate Chicago is, like, at all. It's funny that Wrigley doesn't have a parking lot IRL, but does in the book.

I just can't bring myself to care about the existence of a parking lot in a series about a literal wizard.

DarkHorse posted:

Yeah. I get people who are familiar with Chicago getting taken out of the story by weird inaccuracies, but personally I don't know enough that it makes a difference. The only real thing I've noticed is that Harry "my car is constantly broken down or destroyed" Dresden never takes the El.

I just personally think his response to it was trash garbage is all.

Also doesn't his thing specifically trash all technology newer than a certain point? Except for stuff in hospitals I guess.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 16:55

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

Can you point us to his response, either on YouTube or an account of it? Because you're reacting strongly to something I've never encountered or heard of.

Seems like Butcher removed his tweets, as I looked for it and the conversation is gone. That might be why you never heard of it.

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

And that's part of a problem I have with the series. A lot of hay is made of Harry using magic to kill Justin in a legitimate self-defense scenario, and I get that it's a huge taboo in Dresden, but...

Do the later books describe this differently as the ones I read made it super clear that killing humans with magic breaks a Law Of Magic that is not just a taboo because it turns your soul evil. But it's just fine killing anything slightly non-human. Like IIRC it was just fine using magic to kill the belt-changed humans in Fool Moon.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2019 23:36

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

rndmnmbr posted:

The dividing line seems to be "has free will". Like killing a Fae or a ghoul or something similarly supernatural is okay because they have natures they must obey, and can't choose not to obey. But mortal humans get free will and preventing the exercise thereof is Very Bad and Frowned Upon By Above and Not Allowed. Which falls apart when you get to Thomas, who is obviously, being a vampire and all, is a creature with a nature he must obey, but is also demonstrated to possess and utilize free will.

And as far as hitting a few home-runs on Cassius, I think there is an implication that killing someone is icky for your soul, full stop. But there are more abstractions for killing them with a knife or gun, which absorb some of the blow to your soul. OTOH, killing them with magic, no matter how you fancy it up with SFX, is essentially just making them die with nothing but willpower alone, and that skips a bunch of abstractions and puts your soul in direct contact with the horrible poo poo you just did.

A good analogy is the Sight. If you see something, there is eyes and brain-meat in the way, so there's enough uncertainty you can lie to yourself that you were mistaken. If you See something, your soul was directly the thing looking, you saw it in perfect detail, and you can't forget. There's nothing for uncertainty to get traction on, so it's the awful truth until you die. Same with killing, any other way you can tell yourself it was a mistake or that they really deserved it or that it served a greater positive purpose, but if you do it with magic then your soul directly did the killing and there's no forgetting you directly willed someone to death, and the ends don't justify the means.

e. (but lets face it, the way Butcher writes the First Law, it comes off very much like a GM punishing you for killing a PC or GMPC, but NPCs or bad guys, who the gently caress cares, gotta get that sweet XP.)

This is why I brought up the belt-transformed guys, who apparently it was just fine to slaughter and they counted as non-humans because they were wearing magic belts that didn't seem to get rid of their free will.

With Thomas I'm pretty sure Butcher ran into the Buffy The Vampire Slayer issue where he wanted a major vampire character but didn't want to deal with the restrictions that the story had decided that vampires should live under. Hell, Thomas is basically Angel/Angelus from Buffy, and hell the mental change from becoming a vampire in Buffy is that a demon possesses you.

But yeah, in the end, it feels exactly like an excuse for why it's okay to casually murder NPCs, especially with how you describe why magic-murder effects you. It really shouldn't MATTER what you kill with magic. You're intentionally destroying a being through sheer willpower. The fact that there's and * next to the law is bullshit.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 07:22

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

Dresden doesn't kill any of the Fbi wolves, three of them kill each other after fighting him and then Murphy shoots the last one.

I coulda sworn he decapitated one of the wolf people with his ring thing.

Beachcomber posted:

It's because Humans are God's pet project.

This is a real lame thing about the setting.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 09:00

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

He kills the loup- garou by magicing his pentacle at it really hard which I guess doesn't count because it's really scary at the time?? Okay I checked the book and it doesn't count because technically it is a demon at the time.

That's basically 'it's really scary at the time'.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 09:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

Hey what about some of those not-quite vampires that Harry killed with the magical rite? The members of Susan's organization?

What about the end of Grave Peril? There's been a lot of 'did I kill humans?' going on in his head, but if he did there'd be an even bigger blacker mark on his soul, wouldn't there? And he's being watched constantly. He'd be super dead if he looked a little more warlocky after that, so he apparently didn't kill anyone? I guess?

A hard-coded system like this super sucks and makes any effort toward ambiguity kind of confusing

It really doesn't even seem like the hard-coding is all that hard-coded, considering how many exceptions the rule has.

Hub Cat posted:

Yeah he is covered as far as the first law goes, but killing Justin even in self defense still hurt his soul whereas killing temporary werewolf MacFinn somehow does not. I'm pretty sure in this instance Butcher hadn't thought up magic backlash damage stuff yet and probably never went back and considered it.

Magic backlash damage? Well, as far as I remember the first several books makes it super clear that it does bad things to your soul but also forgets it exists half the time and generally only gets brought up as the reason why Morgan is after him and he has little to no White Council support.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 18:40

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

Is there ever an instance where Dresden kills a nonhuman not in self defense? The only time I can think of is the ghoul in the desert and that is portrayed as not okay.

Someone mentioned above that he killed some non-humans just to prove a point, which doesn't sound like self-defense.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 22:13

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

I decided to do a little research and apparently contrary to how the first books portray it, the Laws of Magic are aren't nearly as Laws of the Universe as they seemed? Because the wiki says they allow for pleas to mitigate them and well, there's a wizard whose entire job is breaking the Laws of Magic to accomplish whatever goals the Council deems done, and also have a special staff that makes them immune to bad karma or whatever.

That seems to just kinda fly in the face that these are immutable.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 01:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

It comes up in Proven Guilty, doing harm with magic literally damages your psyche and makes you more willing and able to do wizard crimes. It even counts if its "legal" like self defense and that is part of why the wardens have swords. The laws of magic are just wizard laws and could be changed or overruled by the council. I feel like having the Laws of Magic only care about humans is a feature not a bug (the council being wizard-centric shitheads who will only help anybody else if they get something out of it)

So does blowing up random fae-dudes for being annoying harm your psyche, or are you safe because Wizard Law says it's a-okay? How does a staff make you immune from bad karma? Or is it the job that makes you above the law that protects you from bad karma?

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 06:18

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Beachcomber posted:

I think the Blackstaff is just a piece of wood without any special properties. It's given to a single wizard who is judged by the council to have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility of using magical violence for the needs of wizard-kind. Accepting the staff means accepting the consequences and necessity of such actions.

I considered that, but a little bit of research brought this up:

Dresden Files Wiki posted:

Jim Butcher has said that the Blackstaff protects the user from the backlash a warlock experiences when using black magic, the phenomenon of it "being easier to bend someone the more you yourself are bent.

So it seems the staff really is a staff that protects you from karma. And the wiki says stuff about it making you want to commit more murder or something.

Hub Cat posted:

I mean the psyche stuff comes off to me as badly explaining wizard ptsd, the council justifying straight up executing people without trying to rehabilitate them, and making something explicit that should merely be implicit plus looking at Dresden its hard to argue all the killing hasn't had an affect. As for the blackstaff

It seems pretty "Whatever to suit the plot" either way, to be honest.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 07:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

No consequences? I guess beyond his girlfriend/mother of his child getting partially turned into a Red Court vampire and then killed, getting his left hand burned and his back broken, having a shadow of one of the Fallen in his head, then getting himself into so much trouble that she sacrifices herself to save him (meaning he's gotten two mothers killed), cutting a deal with Mab, binding himself to Demonreach, putting his apprentice in a situation where she's first haunted by arranging for his murder, then by failing to fill on for him, and finally turned into the Winter Lady, and getting the woman he loves injured for life. Plus I'm fairly sure Mister may have missed a few meals in there somewhere.

I do notice that most of those are consequences that other people pay for Harry's mistakes.

Slanderer posted:

This is insanely lame, goddamn

Yeah, I agree. Who wants to bet a climatic scene in a book is gonna involve Harry getting his hands on the Black Staff and using his unlimited power to annihilate all of his foes?

Granted, murdering supernatural creatures seems to be okay in theory and practice so he'd have to be killing a lot of wizards or something.

docbeard posted:

What that implies about the exception for killing non-humans is kind of interesting; it certainly suggests that the White Council doesn't value non-human life particularly highly and that it doesn't expect its members to either. Because, again, you can't burn a vampire to death with magic fire unless you believe you can and should do that. (Which, given that the vampire in question is almost certainly trying to eat your face off or worse, is probably pretty reasonable. Still, applying it to the Fae, or to other critters from the Nevernever has interesting implications.)

I think the problem with this is that it ties into my confusion about the Laws of Magic being immutable laws of reality or just Wizard Law, because the non-human exception would imply, if the Wizard Laws are just a reflection of the immutable laws of reality, that killing non-human is strictly never an evil act, no matter what.

Which is kinda hosed up.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 20:30

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

docbeard posted:

This is just my take, but I think the Laws started out as someone (possibly the original Merlin) saying "Okay, doing these seven things is REALLY DANGEROUS and can gently caress YOU UP if you aren't careful" and the White Council, being a legalistic and authoritarian body, turned them into Capital-L Laws.

But yeah, there's certainly the potential for something hosed up there.

If it were me writing it (always a dangerous road to go down, I know), I'd have it so that willingly murdering any sentient being with magic could mess you up (because the mindset that can lead you to decide that someone isn't actually a person is the real problem) but that the White Council doesn't really give a poo poo if someone has a mad-on for vampires or fae so they won't enforce the law unless you start murdering "real people" too.

Besides something like that, I'd just drop the whole 'it does SOUL DAMAGE if you break Wizard Laws!' idea entirely, or that it's some representation of Immutable Laws Of Reality.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 21:42

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

Having the laws be real powers of the universe but also only these exact laws just leaves a lot of open ground for wizards to do insanely lovely things without them actually being black magic. I guess the honest answer that we are gonna have to accept is that Butcher basically just writes D&D but with guns and you're either gonna accept the pulp and overlook all the problematic elements or move onto a more thoughtful writer.

To be fair, the idea I had basically makes it easier to be D&D with guns without leaving as many openings for people to question them.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 22:25

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

rndmnmbr posted:

This seems like a good interpretation. After all, loving with time is #6 on the Big List Of Things That Make Morgan Do The Choppy-Choppy, but the OG Merlin himself did just that to build Demonreach. Harry didn't kill Justin and then have to fight off an inexplicable urge to murder more, he just honestly believes right down at the bottom of his soul that killing to protect the people cares about is justifiable, and that is a very slippery slope. Molly didn't gently caress with her friend's heads and then became a mind-loving monster, she just really believes that stopping people from making wrong choices is okay - almost like a kid with a dad who does just that, but still too young to see the nuance in his actions.

Hell, #7, Thou Shall Not Open The Outer Gates, well Rashid is part and parcel of a Fae operation that does just that on a tiny scale to conduct ongoing warfare.

Tell Butcher and the books that, since Butcher has confirmed that it's not just Legalistic Laws but "The Universe Punishes You For This With Evil Karma".

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 22:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

rndmnmbr posted:

Death of the Author is a thing too.

Death of the Book sure as hell isn't. I specified 'and the books' as the early ones straight up say it's bad karma and not just Made-Up Wizard Laws.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2019 22:59

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

The problem with this is that

1) When something bad happens to one of Harry's friends, it reads, in the narrative, as Harry-centric. Harry generally uses it as a means to flagellate himself. And they usually, if not absolve him, then forgive him.

2) Almost every really bad thing or impulse Harry has done has been under the influence of something else, which robs it of narrative weight.

The reason why the lovely things Alex does matter and why they hit hard is because it's part of who he is as a character and there's no wiggle room for him to deflect or shift blame. Later on when Caldera, and then Deleo ( especially Deleo ) lay into him about what kind of person he really is, and he starts dropping his guard and getting angry, that's an interesting character moment.

The end of Changes, and the whole of Ghost Story, "this is how YOU hosed UP, this is how your selfish, cowardly act screwed everyone you know and love" turns into a big pffffffffffft when no actually the devil did it

Yeah, this is more or less what I was thinking of when I said that.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2019 04:16

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

I always knew they were going to screw it up but it's funny that this is the direction they took THAT book. The one that was actually kind of refreshing for the fact that it was a UF novel with a female protagonist where the primary concern wasn't riding the were-sled to the bone zone

That's a real shame. It's relatedly why I stopped being unable to stand Bones (the show about the bones expert who works for the police) because the show's primary concern quickly became the bone zone.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2019 19:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Lawlicaust posted:

As much as I�d like to blame Stephanie Meyer for this abomination, she left it a while ago due to creative differences with the showrunners, one of who...

... was also the showrunner for Bones. They supposedly redid large parts of the show after her departure. So the well was poisoned from a lot of different people.

It�s just amazing that someone could get the rights to weird as gently caress British X-men and decide to make it a spy thriller/romance with as little superhuman/supernatural as possible. Especially with how well superhero properties are doing right now. It doesn�t even make sense from a business perspective.

Holy poo poo really? Well that absolutely explains literally everything. I'm officially of the opinion that the Twilight lady was probably a better choice than the person responsible for museum workers literally boning on priceless artifacts every single episode while the lady in charge of making sure they don't bone on the bones fondly approves in Bones.

Also is this a Starz show? They love doing stuff like this. They've been trying to make an adaptation of Noir which literally had this problem too. The casting call including a bunch of men to be the main characters as opposed to the titular Noir.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2019 18:25

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Kea posted:

Just finished my reread of the second book. Arguably worse than the first to be honest. MUCH more awful Dresden perving, specifically the female hexenwolf he CONSTANTLY mentions her boobs, often times 2 or 3 times in the space of a page or two. Also Murphy is loving horrible in this book too.

My favorite part of his obsession with the female hexenwolf is he always has to find some excuse to call her a 'bitch' over and over, like that's some clever joke Jim Butcher was in love with.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 17:11

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

I've been rereading Stormfront for a lark and holy poo poo I forgot what a smug shithead Dresden is. Like, the entire start of the book has him whining that people keep asking him what a wizard does right after he acknowledges that normal people don't know about wizards and yet he still hates people who asks just what does he do. He also refuses to actually show or tell them. Yadda yadda masquerade but he openly advertises himself to be a drat wizard.

Also the whole thing where this guy hires him to see if this place is haunted and he just goes there, tells the dude he's on drugs, gets paid and leave just... Well, that ages poorly after him blowing people off for almost identical stuff gets them killed later on.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2019 15:23

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

A lot of that's down to Butcher clearly not having a handle on his worldbuilding yet; I would say that all the way through Stormfront and most of the way through Full Moon, Dresden never explains himself because the author doesn't know what a wizard does. Dresden in Stormfront displays a level of magical talent barely greater than Garrett, P.I. He's a dude with a gun and some location spells and potions.

That's why the only good part of Full Moon is when he cuts loose and blasts a werewolf through a building. It's a serious tonal shift that carries through to the rest of the series.

How does this even work though? How do you not have any understanding of the entire premise of the story, and yet write the entire start of the story to be revolving around that question you can't answer? That's the rankest incompetence you can get. And Dresden comes off as a complete shitheel due to it, even as he tries to make it sound like he's principled as a result. And the worst thing is he doesn't even seem to LIKE being a wizard. He gets upset when Murphy calls him about his only steady job, and also gets upset at the lady who hired him privately for more or less hiring him.

Fluffy Bunnies posted:

Sometimes, I like to look at amazing author's first books and compare them to the rest of their books. And just kind of smile because this is where you started and look at how far you've come. Look at how far you have left to go.

and one day if I work hard enough, maybe someone will do that to my books, too.

Too bad we're not talking about an amazing author.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2019 04:39

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

Storm Front was originally a way to get past Butcher's writer's block - essentially a literary laxative that was accidentally good enough to publish. Fool Moon was written while he tried to get the first book published. It wasn't until book 3 that it was a deliberately crafted series. Coincidentally, this is widely considered to coincide with a significant increase in quality.

I didn't feel book three was all that much better, if at all. It has a lot of the same issues with Harry's personality that the first two books do. And indeed, I'm pretty sure that gets people killed yet again and he doesn't act like he ever gives a gently caress.

And 'deliberately crafted' the book is almost entirely new characters coming out of nowhere and reassuring the reader that they've been there the entire time, and just were never mentioned.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2019 18:46

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

jivjov posted:

Love the point in the thread cycle where we all decide suddenly that Dresden sucks and was never good.

Don't drive-by white noise post, geez. Unless you're just trying to drum up people to run in and talk about how they love it. Sure, maybe it gets good. Maybe it doesn't. But I'm rereading it and drat I hate it.

Of course I never did like it in the first place. I sure as heck didn't suddenly changed my mind about its goodness. Do you really have nothing to contribute? At least I'm reading and talking about the topic.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Aug 10, 2019

# ¿ Aug 10, 2019 23:28

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Ornamented Death posted:

Why are you reading a series you hate? Doubly so when it's a reread and you didnt like it the first time.

I dont want to kink shame, but that seems masochistic.

I wanted to give it a second try to make sure I wasn't being unfair to it. And I thought it'd be good for discussion to see if I'm just misinterpreting things.

Also I'm stupid. Peek into the Honor Harrington thread if you wanna see the depths of my stupidity.

I don't mind getting told I'm wrong, but that kind of post really irks me.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2019 23:53

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

Which things? That it gets better in book 3? That just because Harry is the first-person narrator it doesn't mean that Butcher thinks he's perfect or that we should?

Dresden Files was one of the origin points for a particular kind of fiction. Of course some of the authors who followed it made improvements. They'd be poo poo authors if they didn't. Sometimes somebody has to screw something up for the first time before it becomes clear what constitutes screwing up.

Jumping from that to "this author is loving horrible" is a big jump. Butcher is, for example, a much better writer in almost every way than Weber (though maybe not so much in those first two books). He can present human emotion, even when his narrator doesn't recognize it. He's synthesized a bunch of fantasy traditions into something that's somewhat coherent, though a bit of a mess. He's written several pretty strong characters, though it'd be nice if more of them were women. He's neither humorless nor is he presenting a psychopath as a hero.

Let us know which of those claims I just made you disagree with and we'll see if the thread's willing to discuss.

So here's the thing. The fact that he was an early urban fantasy author really has nothing to do with the things that I dislike about Dresden Files. He writes Stormfront as if he's aiming for a noir mystery. He's completely incompetent at it, but it's what he's attempting. The magic and stuff is all just a skin for it and really does the book no favors. He's trying to have this big mystery in a setup where there's no rules for the mystery. He introduces a lot of magic elements but doesn't really make it clear how this interacts with the mystery. In fact, it becomes clear that Butcher himself really doesn't understand himself, and is just making poo poo up as he goes along.

I'll be a little fair to him. Writing a supernatural mystery is very hard. Harder than writing a regular mystery, in fact, because you have a lot more to set up. You not only need to set up the situation and circumstances, but also anything that might complicate the mystery that would not be obvious from it just being a normal non-supernatural mystery.

The problem is, Butcher doesn't have the chops for a supernatural murder mystery, much less a normal murder mystery. Take the heart-exploding killing magic from Stormfront. Very little is really established about it and often-times the book contradicts itself several times on what it would take to cast it in a way to fit the crime. As a mystery, it's one of the worst I've ever read, and it does it to itself.

My other major complaint over all was that Dresden is just a poo poo-head. Like, he's way worse than Honor is. You say it's good that he's not a psychopath but other people have said stuff that makes me wonder. And then there's the fact that he just won't stop being a shithead to everyone. He is constantly bitching about his own customers asking him to do things that he feels is below him because he won't say what a wizard is, despite openly advertising. And as I mentioned earlier, it's never said to be due to any kind of masquerade. He just thinks they should know, despite his own monologues about how regular people don't know about magic, even though that really doesn't make sense in such a setting. The Dresden Files also have a very strange human-oriented morality that doesn't help either.

The point of all of this is to say that he wasn't really doing anything new with Dresden Files. It was more or less a regular story with a slight skin on it. It's as tepid as it gets. Even in 2000 it wasn't anything amazing. Tsukihime, of all things, came out just a few months later and is a much better urban fantasy story, and I can can assure you was a hell of a lot more imaginative and inventive.

I don't know where you got that I like Weber and am seeking to compare Weber favorably to Butcher. I was pointing out the Weber thread because it's about how I've read the dumb-gently caress books of his and want to finally get to rant to people who aren't adoring fans.

I do disagree that Butcher is a better author than Weber, though. I think they both are awful at what they do but had a niche in it that mad them popular. You could pretty much just replace 'Weber' with 'Butcher' and vice versa there and it'd make about as much sense.

jivjov posted:

Sorry I hit a nerve. But hey, read what you want, even if you don't like it. That's cool with me

Maybe don't run in to post a "HOW DARE YOU NOT LIKE DRESDEN FILES NOW" post, then, if you're cool with it. Sheesh.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 03:18

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ImpAtom posted:

Man, I will agree with most complaints about Dresden Files but if you're going to start pointing to loving Tsukihime then I'm going to assume you're looking at Tsukihime through rose tinted glasses from hell and back. It takes like a decade of retcons and cleaning up before Tsukihime is remotely not creepy as poo poo and then the only real interesting stuff tends to come from errata or side stuff.

There's a reason why I said 'of all things'.

You can't deny it was more inventive than Dresden Files.

Like, the point was that things that did Urban Fantasy better existed in the same time period. Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril are straight up worse, even with Tsukihime's problems.

EDIT: You ninja-editor!

And you could easily put 'Dresden Files' in there and be a lot more correct. And hell, from what everything that's been said is, Dresden Files gets creepier as time goes on!

Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 11, 2019

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 03:32

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ImpAtom posted:

Cut to shorten post

The porn parts are really awful, yep, but I enjoyed Tsukihime and it's ideas a lot more than the early Dresden books. I think you're 500000% wrong about it being significantly worse, or even worse at all. It especially did not make a rank mockery of my favorite genre of books like the Dresden Files does.

quote:

Cut to shorten post.

Well, that's a shame, because the baseline is the basement then.

By the way, if I sound like I'm defending Tsukihime, it's totally cuz I am. I read it a decade ago and it was really inspiring in terms of how I want to write and what kind of setting I'd want to make. Like, bad translation aside, it's use of first-person is something I hadn't seen done so evocatively, and really meshed with its setting to be Extremely Up My Alley. Like, I'll be honest: I won't say anyone sucks for liking Dresden Files. I'll rant about hating it, but I'm extremely cool with them arguing about why they like it. Or just chiming in to say they like it. Because I understand.

EDIT: Also I couldn't understand half of what you were saying because it was written incomprehensibly, so I just guessed. People were born? Tsukihime was retconned and that's why people like it now? Huh?

Kchama fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Aug 11, 2019

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 03:48

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Hub Cat posted:

I think they meant to write bone and got autocorrected.

Oh. Yeah you're probably right. Eh, you could say that about anything that gets popular, though. It got a non-boning fighting game sequel, so people apparently thought the action was cool. I know I did.

ImpAtom posted:

Yeah, sorry. I need to stop trying to write anything more than five lines on my phone.

Oh, that's cool. Sorry, I was just legitimately confused about a lot of the post as a result of some of that stuff. I'll do my best to try and be more understanding as a result.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 04:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Decius posted:

I am here not to praise Dresden, but to bury him. Just like you I never liked him, he must have tricked me into reading this trash somehow! My taste is high-brow and impeccable, I would never read something pulpy and just fun!

No wait, I love these books about that nerdy, overpowered wizard, who is so goony he should wear the hat. Flaws and all, wait time, iffy wokeness in 20 years hindsight and recons to smooth out things a bit. Can't wait for the next book, even if other UF series burn brighter in my heart, Dresden was one of my first loves in the genre.

Is he really a nerd wizard. He says a lot that he's a nerd about magic who knows all about it but he's constantly having to be explained stuff like he's Harry Potter just arriving at Hogwarts.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 05:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ImpAtom posted:

Harry is absolutely a nerd about magic. He is *extremely* knowledgable about certain things and then dense as gently caress about everything outside of his exact realm of interest. He basically is the kind of guy who can name every appearance of a Koopa Trooper in Mario canon but thinks Beyonc� is a type of spice. Like that kind of nerd he also gets very defensive and grumpy when his worldview is challenged.

What certain things, though? He spends the first three books having his hand held about literally everything, even the stuff that is suppose to be his job to do regularly. Like making potions. He needs Bob to explain how to make them despite supposedly having a business that involves making potions. He's almost entirely clueless about basically everything about the magical world.

Like, I get that it's a bad writing technique of having the protagonist have zero idea what's going on so things can be explained to the reader through them, but he's suppose to be the master. He should always be explaining things. Like even when he's suppose to be doing his expert thing, like explaining about the thunderbolt murder spell. He contradicts himself constantly and comes off as if he doesn't know a drat thing and is bluffing.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 09:11

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:56

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Narsham posted:

Snip snip

You seem to be thinking that I like Weber. I don't. I hate Weber, probably more than you do. It's not doing you any good to try and insist that Butcher is better than Weber, because no matter what, I'm not going to be impressed with Butcher by that argument.

Not to mention all this "Dresden sure is a shitheel early on, but later on the books INTENTIONALLY make him a shitheel" like that's better. Guess what, all I've heard makes me hate Dresden more and want to read the books less. So you're not really doing much for you're 'they get better' theory. And honestly, if it takes a half-dozen books to start getting passable, well, I don't care that much. Book three was trash too. The only reason why I even bothered to keep on with the awful Honorverse books is because they started off okay, and I eventually dropped them too. So it eventually was a plain bolonga sandwiches that was mediocre but at least edible to turd sandwiches.

With Dresden it ended up being a question of how many turd sandwiches must I consume before I get to the ones promised to be plain bolonga sandwiches?

I really got the impression you didn't read what was being said at all, to be honest. From the Tsukihime comment, wherein I said it was better and lamented that the boom was because of complete hot garbage. As for 'tepid', the main thrust of my big post was that it was just a lovely mystery knockoff (my favorite genre!) wrapped up in a urban fantasy skin. It was tepid in the sense that it barely engaged with either the mystery or the urban fantasy. It was terrible because what Stormfront did do it did poorly.

I'm... really not sure what

quote:

Suggesting they are interchangeable is such an apples-to-oranges comparison that I can only guess that you find Butcher's apple so rotten for some reason that it might as well be an orange for all you care.

is suppose to be talking about though. I've never said anything even like 'the characters are interchangable' or something. My completes have centered on Dresden, and hell, I lamented about him being an rear end in a top hat to everyone he meets.

Also, sorry for wishing to discuss the Dresden Files in the thread entitled "The Dresden Files & Urban Fantasy: The thread was on fire and it wasn't my fault".

Next time I'll only make pre-approved, fawning posts over Dresden Files, since apparently disliking it means I can't be interested in discussing it, Thread Lord. I've even openly said that I'm fine with people talking about what they like about it. I only yelled at Jivjov because he ran in with a "HOW DARE YOU NOT LIKE IT" post, but he apologized. You, on the other hand, don't seem like you're gonna realize that people like different things than you.

EDIT: In conclusion, I'm not sure how you thought you'd convince me the later books are great if one of the key reasons I don't like the Dresden Files- That is, I think Dresden is a lovely person and hate reading about him because of that - is in fact a primary fact of the later books. So what if more people realize it in the books? So what if he's self-censoring to make himself look better? I can already tell he's a shithead and that's why it taking ten books to let me know that yes, I pegged him correctly long before even the author did really doesn't do much to endear or impress me.

EDIT2: Fixed slandering jivjov by accidentally saying he doesn't like Dresden Files, which he seems to. Sorry, jivjov.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Aug 11, 2019

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 19:54

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

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