EPTNot doing this is (a small part of) why Le Guin and Gibson are awesome.
Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 122
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Haiq343
United States2548 Posts
Not doing this is (a small part of) why Le Guin and Gibson are awesome. | ||
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ComaDose
Canada10357 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:11 Haiq343 wrote: George R.R. Martin is like Tom Clancy for Medival enthusiasts instead of gun-nuts. There's an interesting story in there but SweetRaptorJesus can we get an editor to clear out all the worthless unneeded descriptors of totally ancillary bullshit. They just cannot help themselves from spamming their post count. I do not need to know every detail of gun maintenance nor every dish served at every meal. Not doing this is (a small part of) why Le Guin and Gibson are awesome. If you think GRRM is like that Robert Jordan would give you a heart attack. | ||
Carnivorous Sheep
Baa?21244 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:09 Doctorbeat wrote: Cheep, y u no mention Douglas Adams? On lit, I've finished Crime and Punishment some time ago, thought it was pretty damn good. I really don't like the setting of the story though, 19th century Russia sucks dick. Now I have Brothers Karamazov squinting at me, but I'm not feeling like starting it yet. I liked Tolkien's, Rowling's and GRRM's works. I generally liked most books I read. A few that I didn't: the second book I read from Dan Brown (talking about formulaic authors), Lord of the Flies, Picture of Dorian Gray. I love Douglas Adams, but he's clearly not in the same genre(s) as the other authors I've listed. I love Russian lit, so the lack of appreciation for 19th century Russia is baffling to me  I have no strong opinions on Lord of the Flies and Picture of Dorian Gray either way, so no comment from me there. | ||
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Osmoses
Sweden5302 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:14 ComaDose wrote: If you think GRRM is like that Robert Jordan would give you a heart attack. That's what caused me to put down Tolkien the first time. Yeah, the murals around the gate of Moria are experly carved I'm sure, and there's no doubt a fascinating backstory to each and every one of them, but please, just go the fuck inside. | ||
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kainzero
United States5211 Posts
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Doctorbeat
Netherlands13241 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:14 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: I love Douglas Adams, but he's clearly not in the same genre(s) as the other authors I've listed. I love Russian lit, so the lack of appreciation for 19th century Russia is baffling to me I have no strong opinions on Lord of the Flies and Picture of Dorian Gray either way, so no comment from me there. I just got the feeling that Russia in that period of time is so bleak. Though the end of Crime and Punishment did cheer me up a bit. | ||
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HazMat
United States17077 Posts
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Zess
Adun Toridas!9144 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:21 Doctorbeat wrote: I just got the feeling that Russia in that period of time is so bleak. Though the end of Crime and Punishment did cheer me up a bit. Foucault was French? Edit: I'm bad too much epistemology has made me loopy | ||
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Requizen
United States33802 Posts
On September 26 2013 06:54 Osmoses wrote: Well I'm not spending another half hour on a reply. Skipping over the pedigree/supposed quality literature bit because I'm not having THAT argument again. Alright so you give your own examples of oversimplified characters. And indeed, most are just that, oversimplifications. Some are not, they really are that shallow, such as the Inception sidekick, but then how important are the backstories of sidekicks in hollywood action movies? Nobody cares, and nobody said Iron Man was a work of art. KS is not an action movie. It is all about the characters. They need to be real. They can't get away with the same shit an hour and a half long hollywood flick full of explosions can. They can't just be a copy of a copy of a copy, which, sadly, is the case. Every new season a new set of anime is released, and they all have these exact characters. One quiet, one energetic, one relatively normal, etc. These are not oversimplifications, these ARE the characters. The point of a story is to expand on characters and show more about them. So while you complain "I can't be bothered to finish it so don't tell me it gets better", the characters actually (surprise) evolve and grow over the length of the story. They're not going to tell you their intricacies from the get-go. Emi is more than energetic, Lilly is more than "normal", Rin is more than quirky, Hanako is more than shy. But that's the "template" they show you because, as you find in real life, people are often more than what they appear on the surface That's not a strawman argument. If anything, it's a fallacy fallacy or a slippery slope argument, but it's designed to be absurd to reflect the absurdity of your claim. A Song of Ice and Fire is popular because it's characters feel real, they feel like real people. You can compare them to other characters, just like you can compare real people, but they feel genuine. Every single character I met in KS I just went, "oh, template B again." I have had the opposite reaction. I felt the characters in KS were more human than they appeared at first, while all but a few ASoIAF characters are relatively normal fantasy tropes. MLP isn't quality television on account of it's brilliant characters. It's a bunch of pretty cartoon ponies getting into whacky adventures making funny faces. Take it for what it is. My attack on the creators was in jest, and saying so is not "backpedaling". I took, what, 6 or 7 derogatory memes and put them into one. What do you think there chief, is this guy serious? Insult humor does not become you. Your next couple of paragraphs is just you getting all huffy cause you didn't get the joke. Stop that. If it was funny I would have laughed. I've never actually played a visual novel (unless thats what you call dating sims), but I have no problem with the concept. It's true, I wen't into KS with the preconcieved notion of it being a game, and I got a piece of fancy fanfiction. That did tick me off a bit, but that's my fault. So you keep your low opinion of OoT to yourself. How noble. Me, I share, because just like when I tell people to avoid Citizen Kane, I feel like I'm doing them a favor. Since there are people like you who speak well of it, they can make up their own minds. This is a discussion board after all. You are sick of people trying to "act superior", really? I'm saying I hated the game because the characters were shallow and the dialog was predictable, I passed away from severe stimulation hemorrhage. You're the one who started listing credentials. I've read Tolkien and Dante. They sucked. I've read Hemingway and Kafka. They're great. I don't do it often, but every once in a while I stumble into hipster manga as well. Some is great, some suck. Katawa Shoujo sucked. Is this subjective? Maybe. Can it be objective? People like Twilight, anyone here wanna tell me Twilight is not complete shit? This is silly. You consider yourself some sort of good guy by telling people the things they like are trash without giving any indication as to why? Well golly, I should just go to the Art History wing of my school and tell everyone that they're morons and that they're wasting their lives. They'll thank me because I'm right. If you agree things are subjective, than you share opinions, not start out with "this is horrible trash everything about it is bad". Twilight is bad because the message is horrible, the characters are two dimensional, and the author basically all but admitted it was a creepy self-indulgent fanfic. Katawa Shoujo has a positive message with rounded characters and a lot of love put into the story from multiple people. I guess it comes down to standards. Some require high prose to be entertained. Some settle for the simple storytelling of Harry Potter. Some are young, need the money, and read Twilight. Which are you then? You're proud of your pony-loving fandom but insult other things for having crude, formulaic writing. I've given my reasons as to why I think KS is objectively bad, they make perfect sense to me. I understand you care about the game and you want to somehow "prove" that it's good. But I think you're going about it all wrong. You can't argue that I didn't like the game because something I did wrong. You can't demand I put forth specific character traits, because my argument in and of itself is that they have none. You can't dictate what kind of argument I'm allowed to make. All you can do is counter the arguments I'm making. That's as far as we've gotten now; I put forth that the characters were carbon copies of previously seen shallow archetypes. You countered with a bunch of characters from action movies. I pointed out that those are characters from action movies. I could care less if you liked it or not. That's what entertainment is, something completely subjective and people have different opinions on everything therein. Music, films, books, games, anime, comics... you name it. I do care if you insult it to my face (metaphorically speaking) and imply that your word is law on the matter, despite multitudes of people disagreeing with you. I will utilize my voice to defend the things I love to the bitter end in the face of subjectively incorrect and often bizzare criticisms that you seem to be intent on leveling. I'm pointing out flaws in your argument because you're making bad arguments. You've provided nothing substantial and yet stand by it like "the truth of KS being shit" is written in stone. As it happens, Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorite works. Go ahead and show me how it's characters are just the same as Katawa Shoujos. Some spoilers for ASoIaF + Show Spoiler +
I've seen each of their arcs done before at least once. But, surprise surprise, it's the way it's written and how the characters go about them that makes them interesting as opposed to the templates they're based out of. OH WAIT that applies to KS too. | ||
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wei2coolman
United States60033 Posts
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Pooshlmer
United States1001 Posts
On September 26 2013 08:19 wei2coolman wrote: Classical literature blows. With that being said. Watership Down is best book evah. Richard Adams did an AMA on reddit today. | ||
FakeSteve[TPR]
Valhalla18444 Posts
On September 26 2013 07:14 ComaDose wrote: If you think GRRM is like that Robert Jordan would give you a heart attack. it's sad, too, because book one of the Wheel of Time series was fucking amazing. Books 2-4 were pretty good too, but it felt like Jordan bit off more than he could chew by book 5. Too many ambling storylines, too much going on, not enough closure on many, many things. Sucks, cuz Rand is a pretty cool hero for the first bit. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
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wei2coolman
United States60033 Posts
On September 26 2013 08:25 Pooshlmer wrote: Richard Adams did an AMA on reddit today. Just looked it up. Awesome shit. Thanks man. | ||
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ComaDose
Canada10357 Posts
On September 26 2013 08:31 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: it's sad, too, because book one of the Wheel of Time series was fucking amazing. Books 2-4 were pretty good too, but it felt like Jordan bit off more than he could chew by book 5. Too many ambling storylines, too much going on, not enough closure on many, many things. Sucks, cuz Rand is a pretty cool hero for the first bit. I still loved it all the way to the end! I just took it for what it was when i wanted to relax. I think Jordan was just literally losing himself in rand land. Sanderson did a good job of pulling things together as much as someone could hope to. | ||
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WaveofShadow
Canada31495 Posts
SPOILERS WARNING? - No plot, character, or story-specific spoilers here but just in case you don't want to know ANYTHING about the Dark Tower, don't read.+ Show Spoiler + Regarding the Dark Tower - I very much disagree that this is one of SK's strongest works. The first book is drastically different from any of the other stories since it was written years before---the final 3 books of the series were written literally DECADES after that first one. The style and tone changes in between the first few and last few books is massive. The first four >>>>the last three. SK had a lot of problems writing this, his car accident and subsequent depression took its toll and in some ways was incorporated into the story, not to mention it's fairly obvious as you near the end that SK had no idea where this story was going from the beginning, or if he once had an idea it changed drastically. It's kinda like watching LOST as a new viewer and believing the writers had a massive story planned where all the connections and everything would resolve at the end---it really only ends up being disappointing. | ||
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Carnivorous Sheep
Baa?21244 Posts
On September 26 2013 09:11 WaveofShadow wrote: Cheep: I agree with you regarding God Emperor. Were you being serious about there being no conclusion or facetious? I honestly can't tell. If you are (being facetious) I know exactly why and it is the subject of an incredibly long rant not worth getting into. No, as in, Herbert died before he actually finished the series lol, there was supposed to be a seventh book after Chapterhouse. | ||
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WaveofShadow
Canada31495 Posts
On September 26 2013 09:16 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: No, as in, Herbert died before he actually finished the series lol, there was supposed to be a seventh book after Chapterhouse. There was. It was split into two books actually. It was written by his son and some other guy from notes he left. It was god fucking awful. | ||
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Carnivorous Sheep
Baa?21244 Posts
On September 26 2013 09:18 WaveofShadow wrote: There was. It was split into two books actually. It was written by his son and some other guy from notes he left. It was god fucking awful. I know. I don't count it and I don't plan on reading them. So Dune is incomplete as far as I'm concerned. | ||
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Haiq343
United States2548 Posts
On September 26 2013 09:20 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: I know. I don't count it and I don't plan on reading them. So Dune is incomplete as far as I'm concerned. Dune was perfectly complete as a one book thing. All the sequels stink. All of them. On September 26 2013 08:42 ticklishmusic wrote: Wheel of Time basically redefined the word epic. Epic: Very Long. Like Das Boot, only longer. Actually I enjoy GRRM and Robert Jordan both, but they have... imperfections. | ||
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