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Kchama posted:You might be surprised to find out that for a long time in history, the nobility and politicians WERE the military. That was, in fact, the entire basis of feudalism. And let me tell you, there was a lot of wars when feudalism reigned. No, that isn't how feudalism worked. A feudal lord would be expected to provide troops to his higher liege, but that's not the same thing as him being the military any more than Dweight Eisenhower was the military after becoming President. Or, for that matter, calling Elizabeth II the military because she happened to serve during WWII before becoming Queen. quote:Politically expensive how? They have had defacto rule for a century+. At a certain point, the written constitution isn't going to matter and they'd just tear it up. Dictators aren't just going to let the military be in the hands of someone else. Politically expensive with the other absolute dictators who are likely to he as suspicious of you trying to become the new Protector as they are devoted to keeping the existing Protector weak. They Keys are not a single united entity. This sort of dynamic played out in many historical monarchies.
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Jan 12, 2022 03:46
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Gnoman posted:No, that isn't how feudalism worked. A feudal lord would be expected to provide troops to his higher liege, but that's not the same thing as him being the military any more than Dweight Eisenhower was the military after becoming President. Or, for that matter, calling Elizabeth II the military because she happened to serve during WWII before becoming Queen. I didn't call them 'the military', but serving in the military would make them military people. But I'd definitely consider a five-star general to be a 'military man'. Also, feudal lords kind of actually did, in fact, fight on the battle field quite often. It was one of their primary responsibilities as the nobility to do so. quote:Politically expensive with the other absolute dictators who are likely to he as suspicious of you trying to become the new Protector as they are devoted to keeping the existing Protector weak. They Keys are not a single united entity. This sort of dynamic played out in many historical monarchies. Considering they were all sharing unwritten power, why not write it out? If you make the Protector officially weak, then it's easier to keep them weak. Kchama fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 04:59
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Kchama posted:I do know what 'puckish' means, I just want to know what 'Puck's face, with a special smile for her' is suppose to look like, because that's a description that need more to it. Fun fact! The word "puckish" is a reference to a character in English folkloric and literary traditions named Puck, with one famous depiction appearing in Midsummer Night's Dream, one of the plays of William Shakespeare, widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential writers in the English language. It is formed from the elements "puck", which is the character's name, and the adjective-forming suffix "-ish", meaning "like, related, or similar to". So "Puck's face" here is being used as a metaphor to invoke the idea of a puckish face, since logically, Puck's own face is the most similar to itself and thus the most puckish face possible. I hope this explanation of etymology and figurative language helped you understand the novel better. quote:The trouble it causes is convenient for the plot. It doesn't give her trouble immediately and cause failure at a critical time. It just allows Weber to set up events that happen later on that largely benefit Honor in the long run (even if she wouldn't see Paul's death as such, naturally).
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Jan 12, 2022 07:20
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Anshu posted:Fun fact! The word "puckish" is a reference to a character in English folkloric and literary traditions named Puck, with one famous depiction appearing in Midsummer Night's Dream, one of the plays of William Shakespeare, widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential writers in the English language. It is formed from the elements "puck", which is the character's name, and the adjective-forming suffix "-ish", meaning "like, related, or similar to". So "Puck's face" here is being used as a metaphor to invoke the idea of a puckish face, since logically, Puck's own face is the most similar to itself and thus the most puckish face possible. Okay, so describe to me what a 'special smile' on 'Puck's face' looks like. So I get that it's suppose to be a face of mischief, but the 'special smile' gives it an entirely different feel that doesn't really feel like it belongs with 'Puckish'. quote:Yeah, the author who makes his living writing books is going to develop the consequences of his stories in ways that lead to plots he finds interesting to write about. Of course the consequences are convenient for the plot! The only way I can parse this statement as a logical complaint is if you're wishing it had made Weber stop writing the series so you didn't have to read it, in which case, my advice to you is to just stop now, save yourself the pain of reading books you obviously hate, and save us the pain of reading "reviews" saturated with your distaste for the material. What I am referring to is that it is extremely easy to see the fingerprints of when things work out all-too-tidily for the plot to get it where Weber wants. This is actually a big problem with the books, and gets more and more obvious the further in. It is even, according to Weber, why the entire mess with Honor not dying when she was suppose to came up, because he couldn't figure out how to have the time skip happen anymore while having all the stuff to happen in the specific way he wanted it to, thanks to Eric Flint. I suggest, dear person, is that if you do not wish to read my Let's Read, then do not read the thread. Kchama fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jan 12, 2022 |
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Jan 12, 2022 07:41
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Kchama posted:Okay, so describe to me what a 'special smile' on 'Puck's face' looks like. So I get that it's suppose to be a face of mischief, but the 'special smile' gives it an entirely different feel that doesn't really feel like it belongs with 'Puckish'. Puck, with a puckish smile: https://twitter.com/dhitchcie/status/1286254274322796544?s=20
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Jan 12, 2022 14:21
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Hypnobeard posted:Puck, with a puckish smile: Seems right, he’s basically fairy Loki.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:48
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Hypnobeard posted:Puck, with a puckish smile:  I was actually trying to imply something else entirely, but that evil-rear end grin is actually pretty good. I'll accept this.
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Jan 12, 2022 17:04
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Puckish grin is absolutely the wrong hill to die on, yea.
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Jan 13, 2022 17:34
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Puckish grin is absolutely the wrong hill to die on, yea. Sorry I guess I wasn't super clear, but it was the 'special smile' part that had me wanting the description. He had Puck's Face with a Special Smile, which does not read to me as a 'Puckish grin'. Part 1 does not seem like it fit with part 2 without some sort of actual description. EDIT: I was implying that this is probably the precursor to her later actually-romantic relationship with a much older man. I do find the idea of it being the most toothy evil grin ever to be pretty funny though. Kchama fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jan 13, 2022 |
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Jan 13, 2022 19:07
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Is 39 years really that big a gap when it is a relationship between a 55 year old and a 94 year old?
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Jan 13, 2022 19:13
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Gnoman posted:Is 39 years really that big a gap when it is a relationship between a 55 year old and a 94 year old? I mean, it is. It's not one I'd condemn or anything, but even with prolong it's a pretty big gap. It's also still a pattern with Weber to poke fun at than sheer disapproval.
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Jan 13, 2022 19:21
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Oh right, I just remembered the biggest reason why I hate Eric Flint, even more than David Weber. When the Baen's Bar got shut down for uhhh how awful to the point of being literally illegal the posts got, he was defending the people whose awful posts got the place shut down. EDIT: Actually I looked and Weber defended them too, claiming he never saw any of it (but then admitted he hasn't actually been on the Bar in years). Kchama fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jan 24, 2022 |
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Jan 23, 2022 23:44
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This thread will return soon. I've just been extremely busy and sick. Also, I said I hate Eric Flint and all because I think his writing sucks and he defended the awful posting on Baen's Bar, but shame that he died. I'm not someone to go "GOOD HE'S DEAD" even if he does suck. It'll be a shame when Weber dies, too.
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Jul 19, 2022 23:22
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Kchama posted:I mean, it is. It's not one I'd condemn or anything, but even with prolong it's a pretty big gap. It's also still a pattern with Weber to poke fun at than sheer disapproval. Don't people with Honor's generation of prolong look to be in their early teens?
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Sep 30, 2022 03:37
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Her generation stops aging in mid-late twenties, while Hamish's generation is late 40s. You're probably thinking of the midshipwoman from the Saganimi who laments that she still looks 13 because she hasn't finished aging.
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Sep 30, 2022 09:18
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Does 'first-generation prolong recipient' mean that you got the first generation of the treatment, or that you're the first generation in your family to get the treatment?
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Sep 30, 2022 19:00
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First generation of the treatment, which apparently worked just as well for longevity but didn't keep people looking as young for as long. Thus, Hamish who looks about 50 is with Honor who looks about 20
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Sep 30, 2022 19:43
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FuturePastNow posted:First generation of the treatment, which apparently worked just as well for longevity but didn't keep people looking as young for as long. Thus, Hamish who looks about 50 is with Honor who looks about 20 I'm pretty sure that the later-generation prolong treatments are said to grant more expected longevity than the earlier ones, in addition to arresting the aging process at an earlier stage; however, I also seem to recall that prolong in general is a relatively new medical technology – in the first book, Hamish's father is noted as having been too old to receive it when it was developed – so I think the difference is still largely theoretical at this point.
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Oct 1, 2022 05:01
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General Battuta posted:Does 'first-generation prolong recipient' mean that you got the first generation of the treatment, or that you're the first generation in your family to get the treatment? The former. The earlier generations of the treatment freeze you at an older age, but have the benefit of being able to work on older people - later generations of prolong have to be applied in early childhood. One of the Solarian admirals ponders that he might be the galaxy's oldest human being, because his rich and powerful family meant he was in the first wave of treatments and was almost too old to receive it. I'm 99% sure (but can't find it) that a later book mentions that the very latest version eliminated the "eternal puberty" flaw, not long after the first book (Saganimi 1) that focuses on characters young enough to still be in the eternal puberty. Which, if I'm remembering correctly, suggests that the potentially creepy implications didn't occur to him until then.
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Oct 1, 2022 05:22
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Or people yelled at him enough for him to get rid of that plot point. I'm not implying anything about Weber while saying that. The creepy implications might have been intended but not approved of, so to speak, but fan backlash made him nix it.
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Oct 1, 2022 09:19
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his starships are complete BuShip. i mean unbelievable levels of dickshippery hope you love counting missiles
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Dec 16, 2022 08:58
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Kesper North posted:his starships are complete BuShip. i mean unbelievable levels of dickshippery I dread the million-missile ships later on.
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Dec 16, 2022 09:40
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I think Weber just got less horny as he got old. To his credit that's the opposite route many old sci-fi authors took
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Dec 16, 2022 21:51
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Has he ever been? I don't ever remember him doing sex scenes. The only time sex gets brought up much is with Honor's awful mother.
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Dec 16, 2022 22:29
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I don't recall a single one in the Weber-written books. The Flint-written ones have a few almost-examples, but not Weber. That isn't to say the subject is avoided entirely - many viewpoint characters express attraction or desire, and Weber has an unfortunate tendency to use sexual violence to mark somebody as Irredeemably Evil - but nothing's "on screen".
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Dec 17, 2022 00:04
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There's a few examples of "Getting a message while both in bed after sex", and some relationships are absolutely weird, and its clear the characters are sexual even if its kept off screen but Weber has at least avoided the sin of "writing out a sex scene." He's also avoided "writing horny, navel gazing chapters about sexuality and the author's fetishes." So whatever his other problems, I appreciate him not doing that.
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Dec 17, 2022 00:43
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Yeah, Weber loves "How do we show this guy is bad? Oh yeah, he's a rapist!", or if he wants to show things are REALLY bad somewhere, but is unfortunately not a unique sin to him. I guess he's otherwise mostly fine on the sex front.
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Dec 17, 2022 10:54
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Something that recently occurred to me is that the whole "Genetically engineered supersoldiers from Ukrainian biolabs destroyed the world" element of the series backstory really hasn't aged well. It's outright impossible for this to be deliberate connection to any real-world conspiracy theory, given that it predates the conspiracy theories by decades (it was solidly canonized by At All Costs in 2005 at the absolute latest), but it sure does resonate bad now.
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May 24, 2023 09:17
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I always figured the 'extended puberty' thing was from Weber trying to emulate the aesthetics of Age of Sail stuff with young midshipmen, but (as with a bunch of stuff) he both underthought the implications and also later made the surrounding context meaningless by turning everything into missile pods missile pods missile pods. Edit: 'Underthinking' also including that one weird sequence from the perspective of a prolong-treated officer who panics over how non-prolong people will think of her, with internal narration that doesn't square at all with it being something that 99.9% of people she's ever known are also affected by in a way that's basically redefined the human life cycle in general. Roadie fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 05:34
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The only good Honor Harrington stories are, in my opinion, the ones by David Drake. Or Eric Flint.
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Aug 21, 2023 20:56
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So his stories are good only when other people write them?
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Aug 25, 2023 03:07
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I actually haven't read the David Drake ones but Eric Flint's didn't impress me.
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Aug 25, 2023 08:03
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David Drake wrote only one short story in the universe, with few connections to anything. It is more closely related to his own Republic Of Cinnbar Navy series than it does the main Honorverse.
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Aug 25, 2023 09:57
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I think Weber was not bad when he had an editor standing over him, and the quality of his books dropped off once he got big enough to have editorial control and started hanging around with people who reinforce his worse tendencies. I liked the early part of the Honor Harrington series and the first two Bazhel Banakson books, they're not Great Literature but they were fun reads, had good characters, and a lot of memorable scenes (Bazhel annoying his god by pointing out that a trick he pulled is fine since he didn't lie, he just told the truth to some villagers and they did the actual lying). Some of his tics were showing up, but they didn't dominate the stories, and you can roll on past it because you're hitting action or dialogue or something else fun. The later books get thicker overall but the good stuff gets thinner - there's more infodumps (including things like details of a conference room table), less action, more weird quirks (like the fanservice 'bisexual women in leather bikinis' in the 3rd Bazhel book), a distinct lack of dramatic tension, and way less cool scenes. One thing that stands out to me now is that he's definitely an older, traditional straight guy who's in the 'doesn't have anything against gays but also doesn't really get it'. I mean, in HH you have the vast Solarian League, vastly richer, larger, and more technologically advanced than anything on real Earth, with a whole planet of the best bio-engineers who also happen to be hedonistic freethinkers. But the Beowulf claim to fame for wild sex is some small-scale polyamory and bisexuality and normal body configurations - no one is doing any wild body mods like I'd expect. I don't fault him for not getting into that kind of thing in detail, but I think it should exist in the world and should get referenced at some point.
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Aug 27, 2023 16:07
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There's a marked shift in his style when he moves to dictating his work instead of typing it. Also a point in his career where something went wrong financially and he HAD to get out several books a year to stay afloat, which meant reducec editing time. I hate to bag on anyone for using accessibility options to keep writing after an injury, it sucks, I'm glad he was able to keep working. But I don't think moving to dictation was at all good for the books. It's where the endless meetings and recaps really kick in.
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Aug 27, 2023 16:26
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Endless meetings was another consequence of promoting the lead past Captain. Because that's what Admirals do all day, they sit in meetings. Her side gig as dictator of a continent is another job that realistically would involve endless meetings with people. The right thing to do for the series would have been to kill her and switch to the younger characters, even earlier than the original plan
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Aug 27, 2023 17:34
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I've been thinking about trying to make an argument that the last Dahak book was Weber's creative peak and everything since then has been him reusing the ideas and concepts from that series but that's too much effort. So instead, please just agree with me and praise this idea  Kchama posted:I actually haven't read the David Drake ones but Eric Flint's didn't impress me. Flint walked in and immediately made a mockery of Weber's idea of what a liberal was, so for that alone I extend those books a great deal of latitude. General Battuta posted:There's a marked shift in his style when he moves to dictating his work instead of typing it. I read an interview, which I really need to track down again, where he said something like his style was 'put characters in room and find out what happens,' which sure, fine. Except when he's doing that by dictating speeches, it's so much easier to just keep the speeches. And doing so under the clock? Yikes. As you, I don't begrudge anyone making use of accessibility tools but I do think the combination of a writing strategy not adapted to a new method of writing, haste in publishing, and lack of editorial all came together to just doom everything since. I do think, under other circumstances, he could've made the switch in method without ... all this. But, alas, no. so we're all really, really excited for the idea of a new Hell's Gate book right? I'm sure everyone wants to read another 1000 page doorstopper where nothing happens for 975 of those pages!
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Aug 27, 2023 22:08
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Psion posted:so we're all really, really excited for the idea of a new Hell's Gate book right? I'm sure everyone wants to read another 1000 page doorstopper where nothing happens for 975 of those pages! It's me, I'm the mark. 
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Aug 27, 2023 22:24
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drat, I didn't even know he'd continued the series past the original Hell's Gate snoozefest. I think the last Weber I actually properly read was Out of The Dark, although I did skim through the last mainline Honour book out of morbid curiosity.
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Aug 27, 2023 22:51
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FuturePastNow posted:Endless meetings was another consequence of promoting the lead past Captain. Because that's what Admirals do all day, they sit in meetings. Her side gig as dictator of a continent is another job that realistically would involve endless meetings with people. The right thing to do for the series would have been to kill her and switch to the younger characters, even earlier than the original plan Yeah but a lot of the Endless Meetings don't even involve Honor, it's just random groups of people having meetings, and a lot of the time it really isn't something we should just be told. You can see it as early as the first book where the big mystery of what is going on is revealed pretty much instantly by Weber cutting to a meeting of bad guys explaining their evil plans to each other.
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Aug 28, 2023 00:27
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