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I think that you can make the argument that Alabaster being a mentor figure and a tragic figure makes him into a hero/secondary protagonist despite his explicit condemnation by the actual protagonist. However, I think that's partly because fantasy/scifi more often deals with cartoonish representations of evil. I thinks it's relatable that a person who's mostly kind and good can also behave in incredibly awful ways after experiencing incredible amounts of trauma and injustice. People do that. Trauma does awful things to people.
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May 4, 2022 09:58
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"Trauma does awful things to people" is a recurring and constantly referenced theme in the Broken Earth series. Nobody is a hero in those books, either. Edit: Also holy poo poo throw anything Ayn Rand wrote in the garbage. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 20:47 on May 4, 2022 |
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May 4, 2022 19:09
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biracial bear for uncut posted:"Trauma does awful things to people" is a recurring and constantly referenced theme in the Broken Earth series. It’s a pretty prevalent theme through her Kingdoms books as well, it seems to be a running theme for her. It’s too bad you can’t unread a book, Hieronymous is stuck with Rand forever now.
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May 4, 2022 23:48
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DreamingofRoses posted:It’s a pretty prevalent theme through her Kingdoms books as well, it seems to be a running theme for her. "The City We Became" seems to be significantly less of that. Like a weird love letter to the history of New York City, Voltron and fantasy stories in general about gifted heroes fighting eldritch horrors.
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May 5, 2022 01:27
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biracial bear for uncut posted:"The City We Became" seems to be significantly less of that. The sequel to this is being released in a month. Seems like it’ll be more overtly political which I’m happy with as NK seems to have a decent view of things albeit being a little bit naive about some politicians.
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Sep 30, 2022 13:55
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The World We Make came out and I’d say it’s fine but one of N k’s worse works. The bits dealing with inter dimensional horror worked, but the dealing with Trump/right wingers bits fell a bit flat for me a lot of the time sue to a mixture of it wanting to veer into wish fulfilment territory and other times just seemed to be trying to get across how horrible right-wingers are and it’s like “I know that, tell me an actual story!”. The ICE scene worked well as it brought about a horror and terror of what this faceless malicious organisation could do, but others like the proud boys getting owned by a LGBQT+ crowd just felt empty. Also couldn’t remember almost any of the characters from the original which probably says a bit about how well she fleshed them out.
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Nov 20, 2022 21:28
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How do the proud boys get owned by an LBGTQ+ crowd?
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Nov 22, 2022 18:10
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Syphilicious! posted:How do the proud boys get owned by an LBGTQ+ crowd? I mean that's literally what's happened to them in real life, but also I'm interested.
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Nov 23, 2022 08:58
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Syphilicious! posted:How do the proud boys get owned by an LBGTQ+ crowd? They chase a side character who manages to run into a crowd of LBGTQ+ crowd. The proud boys and square off and the LBGTQ+ crowd basically verbally dunk on the proud boys, make them look stupid and the proud boys scurry off with their tails between their legs at the threat of too many people videoing what they’re doing. Here’s another paragraph from earlier in the book with people reacting to a convoy of right wingers: Then a caravanner rolls down his passenger-side window to yell back at a young woman who’s stepped into the street to deliver her insults up close and personal. She apparently strikes a nerve, because the guy gets even redder-faced and reaches behind him, pulling out a gun. It’s only a paintball gun, at least; that pellet hopper on top is distinctive. The young woman recognizes it, too. It’s not clear whether the guy is just brandishing it to scare her or if he means to use it, but while he’s fumbling with it, she laughs in his face and swings her purse to knock the gun out of his hands. He curses and actually tries to scramble through the window after her, but the window isn’t open all the way; he gets briefly stuck. She rolls her eyes and walks off. By the time the guy manages to get out of the car to retrieve his gun—delayed further because a child has run forward to grab it with a finders-keepers gleam in his eye; the guy snatches it back, but it takes some yanking—she’s gone. I’m all for dunking on fascists but IRL it serves a purpose, here it just undermines the danger they represent without having anything meaningful to say and seems more like NK is venting over the last 6 years or so. There were just a few places like that where I felt NK was writing something to get some shots in, not to serve the story. The ICE scene is more effective as although the character manages to ward them off (Like the convoy and like the proud boys) they aren’t set up as incompetent but as a real threat that lingers even after they’re gone, a continuing systematic evil.
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Nov 25, 2022 12:25
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It's such blatant wish fulfillment. I am biased against Jemisin since she spoke at my school and scolded all the white males in the room. She said Trump was sending goons to kill her, then talked ad nauseum about how the industry was sexist and run by the patriarchy because she didnt make enough money from Broken Earth to live in a nice place in New York purely on her book sales, she had to do things like speak at universities for money and have a Patreon, woe is me. Not saying Proud Boys shouldn't be owned, but gawd make it plausible. The eye roll bit pushes it past cringe to "this is satire, right?"
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Nov 25, 2022 18:47
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To be fair the follow up is that he starts shooting the crowd and it turns out the paintballs are frozen so they can make people bleed and break bones, so she does present them as dangerous incompetents but it still takes me out the story.MartingaleJack posted:It's such blatant wish fulfillment. I am biased against Jemisin since she spoke at my school and scolded all the white males in the room. She said Trump was sending goons to kill her, then talked ad nauseum about how the industry was sexist and run by the patriarchy because she didnt make enough money from Broken Earth to live in a nice place in New York purely on her book sales, she had to do things like speak at universities for money and have a Patreon, woe is me. Can’t speak for the scolding white males bit, but can’t really say she’s wrong about the rest of it.
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Nov 25, 2022 19:23
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To me there's something deeply lovely about speaking at a school about how much it sucks that you have to be there speaking to them.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:58
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how many people have tried to kill her?
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Nov 26, 2022 15:08
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MartingaleJack posted:It's such blatant wish fulfillment. I am biased against Jemisin since she spoke at my school and scolded all the white males in the room. wow that sounds bad quote:She said Trump was sending goons to kill her, then talked ad nauseum about how the industry was sexist and run by the patriarchy because she didnt make enough money from Broken Earth to live in a nice place in New York purely on her book sales, she had to do things like speak at universities for money and have a Patreon, woe is me. I mean that's all fair Sci-fi and fantasy have historically been pretty patriarchal genres; Writing, like other professions, is in a bit of a crisis; it's a *lot* harder to make a career of it than it used to be, and the industry is run by monopoly power; etc. She's a little wrong in focusing on her own plight rather than systemic factors but she's not *wrong* as such I don't see how any of that relates to white males tho ChubbyChecker posted:how many people have tried to kill her? Pretty much any left wing celebrity has a reasonable fear of stochastic terrorism these days, given that Tucker Carlson exists. Khizan posted:To me there's something deeply lovely about speaking at a school about how much it sucks that you have to be there speaking to them. sure anyway I don't see how bringing up "white males" in this context is helpful, so let's stop that, thanks Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Nov 26, 2022 |
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Nov 26, 2022 16:35
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sa goons have threatened to kill me, but if i said that sa goons have tried to kill me i'd be lying
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Nov 26, 2022 17:55
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ChubbyChecker posted:sa goons have threatened to kill me, but if i said that sa goons have tried to kill me i'd be lying I mean I definitely think there could be a valid point behind a person of colour making a point that Trump was enabling a culture where they can be killed with relative impunity and far right groups are given a fairly free reign to do so, but really guessing at what could have been meant by someone’s vague summary of an old speech is just going to be futile and lean into people’s preconceptions rather than any basis in reality.
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Nov 26, 2022 19:00
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MartingaleJack posted:It's such blatant wish fulfillment. I am biased against Jemisin since she spoke at my school and scolded all the white males in the room. She said Trump was sending goons to kill her, then talked ad nauseum about how the industry was sexist and run by the patriarchy because she didnt make enough money from Broken Earth to live in a nice place in New York purely on her book sales, she had to do things like speak at universities for money and have a Patreon, woe is me. That all sounds accurate about the industry and given that you felt she scolded all the white males in the room I'd cast a bunch of doubt on the rest of your take. Also I've seen her speak several times and she never said anything like that when I saw her.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:21
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Okay, now I want to hear about how she scolded all the white males.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:44
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Are there any fantasy authors other than Sanderson or Rowling who could afford a nice apartment in New York though?
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Nov 29, 2022 04:53
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Are there any fantasy authors other than Sanderson or Rowling who could afford a nice apartment in New York though? What?
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Nov 29, 2022 17:27
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Jaxyon posted:What? Most authors can't live off the money from their books.
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Nov 29, 2022 22:04
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:Most authors can't live off the money from their books. Yeah so what does that have to do with anything
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Nov 29, 2022 23:38
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Jaxyon posted:Yeah so what does that have to do with anything He's suggesting it's unrealistic for Jemisin to expect to be able to live in a nice place in New York purely off of book sales when only the very top handful of bestselling authors in the genre bring in enough money to do so. To be more specific, one would expect those two posters to lay Jemisin being unable to afford a nice place in New York purely off of book sales at the feet of the publishing industry's short shrift given to authors generally, not at the feet of its institutional racism and sexism specifically, even though they might otherwise agree that the industry is institutionally racist and sexist. Syphilicious! fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 15:50
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Syphilicious! posted:He's suggesting it's unrealistic for Jemisin to expect to be able to live in a nice place in New York purely off of book sales when only the very top handful of bestselling authors in the genre bring in enough money to do so. It can be, and often is, both.
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Nov 30, 2022 20:51
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Jaxyon posted:It can be, and often is, both. And therefore it is, in this case, or isn't it?
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Nov 30, 2022 21:19
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Crespolini posted:And therefore it is, in this case, or isn't it? Who knows, but given the tone of the poster who gave the ‘example’ of her saying “woe is me”, I wouldn’t put it past the dismissiveness and half-listening that she was talking specifically about how the publishing industry short shrifted her from what she was owed in book sales. For context if anyone is interested: https://www.vaughanpl.info/blog/publishingpaidme-inequality-publishing/ Just the standard ‘Black woman is paid 65% of what a white male counterpart with similar credentials’ story. DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 21:41
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Crespolini posted:And therefore it is, in this case, or isn't it? No clue, I wasn't there, we're getting it third hand from someone who felt white men were being attacked. Given the history of how white nerds on the internet have reacted to her, I take that with a very large grain of salt.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:23
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