TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Awww.

Would people prefer a Dune review or an essay on divinity in Sanderson?

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Awww.

Would people prefer a Dune review or an essay on divinity in Sanderson?

The Gardenator posted:

I liked the last thread for the most part. Can this thread have NWS images tagged properly, or do I have to keep certain users on ignore?

The Gardenator posted:

I liked the last thread for the most part. Can this thread have NWS images tagged properly, or do I have to keep certain users on ignore?

somebody in the SFF thread posted:

I liked The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O..

quote:

“What’s your pleasure?” asked the barista, a young Asian-American woman with interesting piercings, tattoos in place of eyebrows, and a demeanor that blended I’m sooo interesting and this job sucks with I have a really cool secret life and this job is an awesome front. Her nametag read “Julie Lee: Professional 聪明的驴子•双簧管” (which I understood, roughly, as “Smart-rear end Oboist”).

We ordered drinks—Tristan, black coffee; myself, something I would never normally have, a complicated something-latte-something with lots of buzzwords I picked out at random from the menu over the bar, and which prompted a brief smirk from our barista. The agents of shadowy government entities, I reasoned, were likely to be trained in psychological evaluation of potential recruits, and I did not want him getting an accurate read on me until I decided whether or not I wished to pursue his offer. (Also he was rather handsome, which made me jittery a bit, so I decided to hide behind an affected eccentricity.) The result being that he sat down with a lovely-smelling cup of dark roast and I sat down with something almost undrinkable.

quote:

"We have a bunch of very old documents—cuneiform, in one case—and we need them translated, at least roughly, by the same person. You’ll be paid very well. But I can’t tell you where we got the documents, or how we got them, or why we’re interested in them. And you cannot ever tell anyone about this. You can’t even say to your friends, ‘Oh, yeah, I did some classified translating for the government.’ Even if we publish your translation of it, you can’t take ownership of it. If you learn something extraordinary from translating the material, you can’t share it with the world. You’re a cog in a piece of machinery. An anonymous cog. You’d have to agree to that before I say another word.”

“That’s why Blevins threw you out,” I said.

“Yes, he’s strongly committed to academic freedom.”

Dear reader, give me credit for not going LOL on mocking him.

“No he isn’t.”

quote:

Tristan, eyes glued to Erszebet’s face (and curves, I am sure), released me so I could unzip myself from the snowsuit. But even wearing civvies, I felt doltish while this elegant creature held us all entranced. Entranced is not the right word, though—that conjures a sense of a doe-eyed fairy-tale princess, and Erszebet was not that. She was fierce. Not deliberately, not like the Alpha Girl in a high school clique . . . it was effortless on her part, elemental. And she seemed amused by how her transformation distracted the rest of us.

“The experience was very pleasant,” she continued to Tristan, in a so-there tone. “Do not presume to tell me what is good for me or not. Ever again.”

“Got it,” he said almost meekly. His eyes kept sinking toward her boobs breasts bosom, as if lead weights were attached to them; then, with visible effort, he would wrench them back to her face.

Zoracle Zed posted:

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Awww.

Would people prefer a Dune review or an essay on divinity in Sanderson?

From that realm of hungry ghosts known as discord posted:

I read Franchescanado’s post, and I can say that it’s mostly bullshit, apparently to retroactively justify the permaban.

I haven’t stalked anyone or followed goons into threads. The reason it seemed that way that this is a relatively small site and we share a lot of the same interests. Sometimes I lurked on subforums where I usually don’t post, and occasionally broke my silence there.

With Francescenado, we argued about a movie once in Cinema Discusso, and later I made a snide remark about it in The Book Barn, in a thread were I had already been posting years. Is it too much to bring up an old argument? Maybe, but it’s not stalking or harassment. I was snide to almost everyone in every subforum.

If bringing up old arguments in different threads and subforums ss stalking and harassment, then I have had dozens of stalkers and harassers after me, including a mod (nine-gear crow) as a lot of goons will attest. Some of these harassment claims in fact come from goons who were doing exactly the same things that qualified me as a “stalker”. Maybe try getting that log in their eye first before accusing me of anything.

As for CelticPredator, the thing is that we just don’t like each other, or the movies that the other liked. This is obviously a death sentence for getting along on CD where we unfortunately tended to post in the same threads. Yes, I insulted him all the time, but he’s not exactly unwilling to take snipes at others either. I found him to be whiny and babyish.
I never followed him into the CineD discord. I was on the Discord some months already before I exchanged any words there with him. What happened was that he was incredulous that I would really be there and asked who I really was. I said I certainly wasn’t the guy who whined about people not liking a Star Wars movie. Again, maybe too much to bring up some old arguments, but that’s still not harassment or stalking. That was the extent of our off-site interaction.

I understand he suffers from some degree of depression and anxiety, and I sympathize. But to me he seemed to use that as an excuse, which is why I once compared him to Harold Skimpole from Bleak House. His posting style frustrated me, and I expressed that frustration in many ways over the years.

However, doing that for so long, unprovoked, was cruel and undeserved. I admit, I was trying to get under his skin, and for that I am sorry.

I was permabanned for being continuously negative, and I’m okay with that. Trying to justify it further and retroactively with claims of stalking and harassment is just ridiculous. I'd like to be done with SA, not be saddled with this nonsense. I'm okay with people hating me, just don't claim that criticizing something you liked is a form of harassment

onsetOutsider posted:

suggestion: add a rule to the OP that this is not a thread for talking about you-know-who.

Zoracle Zed posted:

I posted this in the main SFF thread last week when Neil Stephenson's The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. came up. Nobody felt like defending it there so I might as well repost it here. Even for Stephenson it's bad.

quote:

sooo

quote:

Julie Lee: Professional 聪明的驴子•双簧管

quote:

a complicated something-latte-something with lots of buzzwords I picked out at random from the menu

quote:

...to pursue his offer. (Also he was rather handsome, which made me jittery a bit, so I decided to hide behind an affected eccentricity.)

quote:

We have a bunch of very old documents—cuneiform, in one case—and we need them translated, at least roughly, by the same person.

quote:

But I can't tell you ... And you cannot ever tell anyone about this. You can’t even say to your friends ... you can't take ownership ... you can't share it ...

quote:

You’d have to agree to that before I say another word.

quote:

Dear reader, give me credit for not going LOL on mocking him.

quote:

I felt doltish while this elegant creature held us all entranced. Entranced is not the right word, though—that conjures a sense of a doe-eyed fairy-tale princess, and Erszebet was not that. She was fierce.

quote:

Not deliberately, not like the Alpha Girl in a high school clique . . . it was effortless on her part, elemental.

quote:

...she continued to Tristan, in a so-there tone.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Does anyone have some examples of genre fiction that does a good job with descriptive language? I've always been frustrated by the inability of a lot of authors to describe these worlds they're trying to create. It's especially bad in fantasy - I see too many authors rely on either suggestion or some Lovecraft-style "the thing was too horrible to describe but hoo boy, believe me when I say it sucked" prose - but I know there have to be some that are decent at it. I remember Bradbury's prose being strong but it's been so long since I read any of his work that I can't say whether or not it actually was.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Does anyone have some examples of genre fiction that does a good job with descriptive language? I've always been frustrated by the inability of a lot of authors to describe these worlds they're trying to create. It's especially bad in fantasy - I see too many authors rely on either suggestion or some Lovecraft-style "the thing was too horrible to describe but hoo boy, believe me when I say it sucked" prose - but I know there have to be some that are decent at it. I remember Bradbury's prose being strong but it's been so long since I read any of his work that I can't say whether or not it actually was.

quote:

So I came down through the wood to the bank of Yann and found, as had been prophesied, the ship Bird of the River about to loose her cable.

The captain sate cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitar lying beside him in its jewelled scabbard, and the sailors toiled to spread the nimble sails to bring the ship into the central stream of Yann, and all the while sang ancient soothing songs. And the wind of the evening descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainous abode of distant gods came suddenly, like glad tidings to an anxious city, into the wing-like sails.

And so we came into the central stream, whereat the sailors lowered the greater sails. But I had gone to bow before the captain, and to inquire concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of the most holy gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captain answered that he came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods that were the least and humblest, who seldom sent the famine or the thunder, and were easily appeased with little battles. And I told how I came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they said, 'There are no such places in all the land of dreams.' When they had ceased to mock me, I explained that my fancy mostly dwelt in the desert of Cuppar-Nombo, about a beautiful blue city called Golthoth the Damned, which was sentinelled all round by wolves and their shadows, and had been utterly desolate for years and years because of a curse which the gods once spoke in anger and could never since recall. And sometimes my dreams took me as far as Pungar Vees, the red-walled city where the fountains are, which trades with the Isles and Thul. When I said this they complimented me upon the abode of my fancy, saying that, though they had never seen these cities, such places might well be imagined. For the rest of that evening I bargained with the captain over the sum that I should pay him for my fare if God and the tide of Yann should bring us safely as far as the cliffs by the sea, which are named Bar-Wul-Yann, the Gate of Yann.

And now the sun had set, and all the colours of the world and heaven had held a festival with him, and slipped one by one away before the imminent approach of night. The parrots had all flown home to the jungle on either bank, the monkeys in rows in safety on high branches of the trees were silent and asleep, the fireflies in the deeps of the forest were going up and down, and the great stars came gleaming out to look on the face of Yann. Then the sailors lighted lanterns and hung them round the ship, and the light flashed out on a sudden and dazzled Yann, and the ducks that fed along his marshy banks all suddenly arose, and made wide circles in the upper air, and saw the distant reaches of the Yann and the white mist that softly cloaked the jungle, before they returned again into their marshes.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Does anyone have some examples of genre fiction that does a good job with descriptive language? I've always been frustrated by the inability of a lot of authors to describe these worlds they're trying to create. It's especially bad in fantasy - I see too many authors rely on either suggestion or some Lovecraft-style "the thing was too horrible to describe but hoo boy, believe me when I say it sucked" prose - but I know there have to be some that are decent at it. I remember Bradbury's prose being strong but it's been so long since I read any of his work that I can't say whether or not it actually was.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Does anyone have some examples of genre fiction that does a good job with descriptive language? I've always been frustrated by the inability of a lot of authors to describe these worlds they're trying to create. It's especially bad in fantasy - I see too many authors rely on either suggestion or some Lovecraft-style "the thing was too horrible to describe but hoo boy, believe me when I say it sucked" prose - but I know there have to be some that are decent at it. I remember Bradbury's prose being strong but it's been so long since I read any of his work that I can't say whether or not it actually was.

Ccs posted:

Link the old thread in the OP so all the old reviews are easily accessible.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833655&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Flesnolk posted:

Good genre fiction is an oxymoron. The term in itself means it's not good enough to be real fiction.