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ZombieLenin posted:I think you mean literature is overwhelmingly bad. Pretty much the written word, in general, is the easiest "art form," to abuse as almost any literate person who doesn't have ADD can write a novel. im sorry about what the twin devils of postmodernism and genre fiction have done to your brain
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Sep 10, 2017 21:20
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uberkeyzer posted:Sorry that you can't ignore real problems in society like you used to be able to. How does it feel being like everyone else? i do not think you understood the quote to which you are responding
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Sep 16, 2017 18:55
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noted magical realist work A Song of Ice and Fire
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Sep 17, 2017 18:33
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the last time i read iain m banks i was a young masters student backpacking around europe for the third or fourth time and i hosed up my scheduling one night and ended up stranded in a foreign city at 3 AM in the driving rain, waiting 5 hours for the next train, sadly eating a vegetarian McBurger and reading Excession under a ripped awning and getting soaked
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Sep 24, 2017 19:47
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the burger was the best part of the experience
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Sep 24, 2017 19:48
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anilEhilated posted:Oh, hey, I recommended this earlier on. To be fair even his fans consider this one to be by far his weakest. what are you talking about? consider phlebas is regularly touted as one of his best novels, and i constantly seeing it being recommended as such on here
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Sep 24, 2017 20:34
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Mel Mudkiper posted:One thing I never understood is why fantasy fans talk about a consistent magical system as a benefit. If magic has rules it's not magic, its physics. because many of them are extremely autistic and find rules soothing
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Oct 5, 2017 01:26
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Neurosis posted:Sold a woman into sex slavery to barbarian savages too. The same one he raped. y'all need jesus, drat
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Oct 21, 2017 03:50
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Strom Cuzewon posted:In the begining, yeah. nice
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Dec 15, 2017 06:12
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Lyon posted:I haven't read them in a long time but I remember really liking Lions and Tigana because most of the characters are relatable but are ultimately forced into opposition due to circumstance. Lions in particular has the country over friendship aspect that I found tragic and sad, best friends forced to fight and kill each other because of politics and religion. It reminds me a little bit of some of the stories I've read about brothers/friends opposing each other during the American civil war. oh, honey
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Mar 10, 2018 18:01
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Lyon posted:Probably yeah. At the time I first read a few of his books Kay felt like a breath of fresh air compared to stories like the Wheel of Time. you're going to have a big moment when you eventually read something that isn't genre fic quote:I hope you continue to make such useful and valuable contributions to the thread. i will thanks e: Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you want to make your case that Kay is "bad," it's not enough to show that Kay's writing has some faults; all authors have some faults. What you have to show is that it has no virtues. this is nonsense. you have to know this is nonsense. nearly every published writer has some virtue to speak of; even the paranoid rantings of the Turner Diaries got people excited enough to take explosive action in the real world. Hieronymous Alloy posted:He also broke a lot of ground in depicting non-white, non-male protagonists in fantasy fiction which seems like old news now but was a big deal when he did it. Lions came out in '95. this may make him historically noteworthy, or significant for that reason within the confines of his genre, but it's entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not he's a good writer chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 04:04
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Mel Mudkiper posted:just before I do this, if I literally show you the redundant language in a straight up loving sentence chart are you gonna acknowledge it or still just be like "nuh uh" do it anyway
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Mar 11, 2018 04:50
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Mel Mudkiper posted:ok fine but you have to acknowledge the historical context focused reading of a novel is not an essential form of engagement with the text, fucker i shan't
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Mar 11, 2018 05:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Meaningful, worthwhile critique has to engage with a work's merits, not just the flaws. it does? since when? why? even accepting that dictum as true, do you think it's relevant in a thread whose explicit purpose is to engage with the glaring flaws in genre fiction which devout fans constantly handwave away rather than acknowledge or engage with?
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Mar 11, 2018 05:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:To be clear, that was in reference to the statement above as to why a large number of people react so dismissively to BotL's critique. All such statements of "worthwhileness" are obviously matters of personal opinion. do you sincerely believe that the genre fans who have gotten mad about BotL's posts in this thread are upset that his efforts towards literary criticism aren't all-encompassing enough, or do you think it's because of a deep-seated urge amongst (insecure) genre fans to aggressively handwave away any and all criticism of a work's flaws by invoking its perceived merits? do you think that if he'd ended his criticism of GRRM by saying "but his descriptions of food are really good", that that would have made people like his overall critique more? basically, do you think that legitimate criticism has to engage in the kind of performative "one negative critique and one positive critique" bullshit that freshman year creative writing courses do? do you think that if i were to be dismissive when BotL only criticizes the negative aspects of a work without, for some reason, also highlighting the positives, it would say more about me or about BotL? chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 06:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Online discussions of genre novels tend to start from the assumption that such works are bad and thus must be justified. this subforum is about 98% devoted to (positive) discussion of genre novels. the only places they get poo poo on are the one single literature thread, and (once in a while) the general discussion thread. even in the latter, they're far more often recommended than made fun of. so that's just untrue, innit? it sounds like exactly the kind of insecurity that i touched on and that mel went into more detail about. quote:were there actually people who disagreed with his critique of GRRM, pretty much everybody here hates GRRM and has for longer than I've been modding the forum, and I suspect the general GRRM thread consensus would agree with literally anything you could possibly say negative about the man i don't actually remember, but if you'd like i can sub out GRRM for any of the other dozen authors BotL's discussed quote:Is that seriously a thing creative writing courses do? yes quote:It sounds mega-dumb it does, doesn't it? quote:"Legitimate" isn't a question I'd pose; I'm not interested in that kind of gate-keeping. For purposes of discussion in this forum the useful question is usually "why should I, a random reader of this post, read or not read this book they're talking about", and that's a question with a two sided answer -- merits and flaws. If you don't address both, you've not really answered the question. It's not some dumb 1 for 1 thing it's about giving an accurate picture of the work. this is nonsense. it is not common practice on this forum or anywhere else to enumerate thoroughly the virtues and flaws of any work when recommending it (or when doing the opposite), nor should it be. it's okay to say "this sucks rear end and here's why" without being obliged to reluctantly cram in a bunch of positive traits. this is especially true in a thread which, alone amongst the threads in TBB, is not only dedicated to saying that genre fiction sucks but to doing so in a clear, explicit, and thorough fashion. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 06:46
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rear end frog posted:since making that first post i've read through the intervening four pages and let me tell you: there is not a man posting in this forum that deserves the breath of life wisdom
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Mar 11, 2018 07:53
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BananaNutkins posted:If you look at most English myths, they were also very sexless, which allowed mass sharing of them in a culture heavily influence by sexual shame. firstly, what the hell are you talking about? what sexless english myths? secondly, much if not most popular medieval literature is absolutely charged with sex and eroticism. christ himself is an erotic figure in some of it. 'sexual shame' is no bar at all to the mass sharing of literature with nakedly erotic themes and elements. also, brandon sanderson doesn't avoid sex in order to broaden his audience, he avoids sex because he's deeply mormon and it has clearly ruined his mind
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Mar 13, 2018 01:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Excuse me French myth the arthurian mythos is essentially celtic in origin if we're really going to make a thing of it
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Mar 13, 2018 04:36
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both the bretons the welsh are celts hieronymous
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Mar 13, 2018 05:17
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Sure, but "Breton" is more precise yeah but the origins of the myth* itself are (p-)celtic rather than specifically breton or welsh. chretien de troyes' knight of the cart, where the adultery stuff first enters in, is definitely drawing from breton sources, but those sources have strong connections to roughly contemporary and older welsh sources.** so you can't really pin a lot of it down to one 'nationality', it's better imo to just vaguely gesture and say 'celtic' *or at least several strands of it, since its a huge and complicated beast **specifically culwch ac olwen and the preiddeu annwn, among others ZZZorcerer posted:I'd like to read some critique of those highly praised games, if it's not a problem doing it in the books forum (since I never saw this kind of discussion in Games) he's talking about this chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 16:17
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I can make a really good case for the historical Arthur being a leader of the Gododdin tribe who fought a series of battles along a roughly south by southwest axis through Britain, too, mel why are you so concerned with keeping the text in pure Derridean isolation and examining it devoid fo historical or cultural context why are examinations of that context bad or at least superfluous for you
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Mar 13, 2018 17:05
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you would fragment a rich period of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contact and exchange into a mutilated corpus of isolated texts which speak to nothing but themselves and the present reader you are an abomination in the sight of God
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Mar 13, 2018 17:08
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I'll pray for you. namaste
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Mar 13, 2018 17:14
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:The point I'm trying to make is that there is no critique style for generic genre reader and what would match up with them. I'm not talking about a giant list of tropes or something like thousand faces, but more broad strokes that places high value on what the genre readers** find interesting over prose or political message that literary criticism often finds itself focused on. you have a very superficial and inadequate understanding of what literary criticism is or does, which is a result, probably, of not having read any.
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Mar 14, 2018 00:32
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BananaNutkins posted:I do think that genre works should be compared to other genre works to see where they fall on the spectrum of "good" for that genre. If I order a burger I compare it to all the other burgers I've eaten before. Comparing to steak doesn't make sense. That doesn't mean that prose quality is meaningless, but a different standard specific to that genre is applied. here we hear the voice of the nerd. as is the case with all nerds, his foremost interest is escapism. reality he finds unfulfilling; he substitutes fantasy. he values plot as the chief vehicle for his escape, the thing which draws him along and out of this world. he values worldbuilding - the more complicated and 'unique' the better - partly because autistically complex rules and systems satisfy him, but chiefly because they project a veneer of illusory depth upon the fantasy of escape. he does not value character, because he has no genuine interest in exploring the mind of viewpoints of another - the nerd is naturally narcissistic. prose is wholly worthless to him. at best it is the mere vehicle for the plot; at worst it is an obstacle to the fantasy. ideally the words themselves would disappear and the fantasy would become all. criticism of the fantasy is bad. it diminishes the fantasy; the nerd, who identifies with the fantasy - who needs it, for the escape it brings - feels himself diminished. the fantasy must, the nerd insists, be critiqued on its "own terms" - that is, only in reference to other fantasies. thus the fundamental essence of the genre - escapism - escapes critique.
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Mar 14, 2018 00:41
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BananaNutkins posted:Yeah. It's more a curating thing than critical analysis, which is more relevant for most genre fans looking to find more entertainment like the other things they previously found enjoyable. this is not what criticism does
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Mar 14, 2018 01:28
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hackbunny posted:What is literary criticism for, though? Why should anyone read it? gaining a greater understanding of any text as a cultural and historical (dont start mel) document, insight into the mind(s) and times that produced it, and into our own minds as we read it, and thus achieving greater self-understanding
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Mar 14, 2018 04:48
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ITT: a bunch of goons who skipped intro to crit in college and interpret 'criticism' as 'saying mean things about'
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Mar 14, 2018 23:12
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that's not even really snark; half of the people in here don't know what the other half is talking about. we can't have a debate or even a good discussion if we don't have clear terms, clearly understood by everybody, and since a lot of the people trying to participate don't know the difference between what a review does and what a work of literary criticism does i'm not really sure where there is to go from here
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Mar 14, 2018 23:16
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here's what BotL is doing with this thread:BotL posted:This is a thread mostly for looking at why your favourite sci-fi and fantasy is bad, in other words. This is not out of simple desire to mock, but because genre fiction is overwhelmingly bad, and I'm going to review its big names through a pretentious literary lens. some of the confusion over the last few pages has, i think, arisen from people not knowing what the differences are between criticism as most people understand the word, literary criticism, literary reviews, and critical theory. they are all different things. i'll briefly try to explain what the differences are as best i can: 1) criticism as most people understand the word: "this is bad, and here is why" 2) literary criticism: this is slightly more difficult to pin down. it usually involves some element of theory (see below), and can be evaluative like a review: pointing out where a text is muddled, where a poem's meter stumbles, etc. it does not need to explicitly evaluate a text according to a clearly defined literary theory, and it treats the text as a form of art rather than a product. i might write an article, say, on the motif of blood in macbeth. if i were to do so, i would look at every time the word 'blood' appears in the text, and examine what role it plays. maybe i find it's linked to insanity or guilt, and every time blood appears one or both of those themes appears with it. what i'm doing, then, is trying to trace out a pattern in the text. discernible patterns emerge in every text, from Ulysses to the furry diaper fetish roleplay you act out online, whether or not you intend for them to be there. understanding them grants new insight into the text, mind, human culture, self-knowledge, etc etc *jack off motion* 3) literary review: "you should or should not buy this book, and here's why" 4) critical theory: any one of a number of clearly systematized, organized schools of thought which can be applied to any text. these are models to which you compare your text and through which you attempt to understand it. there are a number of different distinct bodies of literary theory (with a lot of cross-pollination), and they all look at different things within the text. feminist theory is going to mostly look at how gender roles work within the text. marxist theory is going to do the same for class. and so on. think for a moment about evolutionary theory. if i were to 'interpret' a whale through an evolutionary 'lens', what i'm really doing is bringing a number of preconceived ideas (about homology vs. analogy, developmental biology, phylogenetics, etc.) and seeing how those ideas help me understand the whale and how the whale helps me understand and refine those ideas. i can look at the whale's fin and see bones which are clearly more similar to those of the human hand and of the forefeet of other land mammals than they are to fish, and so i can understand the whale better - it is probably, i would conclude, descended from land animals. my theory has helped me make better sense of my subject, partly by helping me choose what patterns/elements to focus on and by giving me tools to interpret them. BotL is mostly doing #1, 2, and 3. he often applies techniques of literary criticism (like close reading and elements drawn from different theories) to the texts he evaluates, and that tends to elevate it above just "review" - that and the fact that he's treating them as artworks which can be critiqued, first and foremost, rather than as products to be consumed. granted, his goal is to point out why these texts suck and why you people desperately, desperately need to read something that isn't genre fiction rather than gaining a more nuanced understanding of the text, but that's really fine - all interpreters have agendas, and he's made his very clear. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 02:46
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BananaNutkins posted:Critical theory sounds like a big game of obsessively nerdy confirmation bias, especially when death of the author is in play. Like college lit class where everyone has to come up with an interpretation of the symbolism hidden in the text when most likely none was ever intended. you have paid attention to nothing
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Mar 15, 2018 06:44
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BananaNutkins posted:Critical theory sounds like a big game of obsessively nerdy confirmation bias, especially when death of the author is in play. Like college lit class where everyone has to come up with an interpretation of the symbolism hidden in the text when most likely none was ever intended. here's the real answer to this very dumb post literature is not a puzzle to be solved. the study of it is not a game wherein the author hides clues and riddles and the critic spends five hundred years figuring them all out.* it is about the recognition of meaningful patterns and textually-supported interpretations. if i write that article about macbeth, and i 'prove' (i.e. put forth a strong argument which is rooted in the text) that blood and guilt are interrelated themes, it doesn't matter whether or not shakespeare intended for them to be interrelated themes. there are two other important reasons why we don't look for shakespeare's intent when we read a play. firstly because you can't ask shakespeare if he put it there on purpose, because he's dead. so it's an unanswerable question - we can't argue over whether or not shakespeare intended for hamlet to really be insane or just faking it, because barring major advances in necromantic technology you'll never know what was in his mind. what we can argue about is what the text itself says - whether it supports one interpretation over the other. that has potential to be a meaningful discussion.** secondly, because the author's intention and interpretation are both subject to change, and are not stable. for example, Tolstoy's interpretation of Anna Karenina changed radically over the course of his life as his religious and moral views shifted. so if i were to ask Tolstoy what he intended by putting something in the novel, the answer would be very different depending on whether i ask him in 1873 (when he was writing the book) or in 1909. which of Tolstoy's interpretations do I take as the 'true' one? another key word is textually-supported. the idea of subjectivity in art has totally ruined people's minds. not all interpretations are equally valid. i cannot write an article arguing that Macbeth is secretly an orangutan, even if it's my firm interpretation that it is, because that's not supported by the text and is insane. i'm sorry that you had a lovely college lit class, because that isn't what reading literature should be, or how the study of it properly works. *except for james joyce **fwiw i think the answer is both, he starts out faking but actually goes insane around the time he mercs polonius chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 17:40
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Mel Mudkiper posted:What he said 
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Mar 15, 2018 18:14
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rvm posted:I found Paul Fry's lectures on Theory of Literature to be informative and accessible enough. this is good, thanks
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Mar 16, 2018 21:01
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BananaNutkins posted:http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/reviews/how-to-get-five-star-book-reviews this article is dumb and also, as I posted above, critical analysis can absolutely contain 'value judgments', however you're interpreting that. it's normal to say that something doesn't work in a text. chernobyl kinsman posted:2) literary criticism: this is slightly more difficult to pin down. it usually involves some element of theory (see below), and can be evaluative like a review: pointing out where a text is muddled, where a poem's meter stumbles, etc. it does not need to explicitly evaluate a text according to a clearly defined literary theory, and it treats the text as a form of art rather than a product. e: for an example, i'm working through an edited edition of a text by a major scholar in my field, and at one point he writes this: Derek Pearsall posted:The allegory has little vitality, and it was an error of judgment on the poet's part to suppose that interest could be sustained through nine separate and generally similar petitions of complaint summarily presented (582-707). What he's saying is "this is boring and it goes on for too long". Hard not to read that as a value judgment. And he's right, it is boring and it does go on for too long. And that's in the context of critical analysis, not a book review. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 18, 2018 |
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Mar 18, 2018 23:23
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Ccs posted:So at one point you must have enjoyed these books, to go through reading them. What sharpened your views? Grad school? Age? one of the fallacies* that nerds commit when rushing to defend their chosen genre fic is not understanding that it's entirely possible to read and enjoy things that are not good, and which you know are not good i like Lovecraft. I derive genuine pleasure from reading Lovecraft. Lovecraft is not a good writer, and I can happily list and discuss the many ways in which he is in fact a bad writer. these are not mutually exclusive statements. *though not the greatest fallacy, which is making the media they consume part of their own personal identity, and reacting to any attack on it as though it were an attack on themselves
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Mar 24, 2018 02:11
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the problem with nerds arises from poor parenting and insufficient church
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Mar 26, 2018 20:38
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Mel Mudkiper posted:But, for example, Star Wars doesn't and never has had an authorial vision to speak of, even if you believe an authorial vision matters. The "EU" being officially canon or not is irrelevant because the stories themselves are the collaborative works of hacks to support a "brand" they're upset because all of the stories they liked aren't real anymore. of course they weren't real to begin with, but even in the not-real world they aren't real now, due to decree from on high. this matters, somehow
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Mar 26, 2018 20:44
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lol if you're not a sedevacantist in TYOOL 2018
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Mar 26, 2018 20:47
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