Robb Stark and Catelyn Tully are fucking retarded.

Can you post archives/text files here?

>>367353
Let me summarize the rest of the series for you:
1. Is there a character you like and is fun to read about? They're going to die, not even heroic deaths, just some off screen shit
2. Is there a character that annoys you so much its difficult to get through their little chapter? Get ready for a whole book about them
3. Remember that juicy plot point/war/battle you keep waiting for? It gets half a page while Cersei gets six pages to explain how burlap chafes

Series started off OK with good potential, then George R. R. Martin decided to mary sue that bitch.

This was a lot better than I thought it would be.

I really want to get into Game of Thrones/fantasy in general (I've only read Harry Potter), but I've been warned that if I have issues with incest, that I'm better off skipping it.

I'm not sure if you can post text files, but maybe if you upload them somewhere, you can link to them.

>>367377
>incest

If incest is a PTSD trigger for you, then avoid it. If you just think it's really icky, read on.

>>367377
>>367378
I really do need to read that.

>>367378
It's just a tad icky and I don't understand the appeal. I understand it's a different time period and that that kind of thing was common between royalty back then, though.

>>367377
It's fine, the incest in the book is consensual.

>>367314
the godfather the book was meh tier honestly
I loved it don't get me wrong
but I loved it because I was 13~14 and there were dicks in vaginas and people were shooting each other. It was very exciting.

but thats my opinion.

>>367377
>incest
Incest? Incest!? Incest!!!

>>367380
Incest is generally frowned upon in Westeros, and most characters respond to it with a "OH FUCK GUYS, REALLY!?"

The only royals to really get away with it were the Targaryens, and that's only after fighting a war with the Faith Militant because they were all "I DONT WANT TO HAVE NO SISTER-FUCKER FOR A KING."

>>367385
And that kids, is why motherfucker is a swear word.

I can't talk to anyone about the book because the show people only have ACoK covered and the book people are completely caught up. :(

>>367388
False.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/27308/what-is-the-origin-and-history-of-the-word-motherf-er

ya i get how it's supposed to be a joke but what's the point of saying something when the punchline has already been delivered? speak something real and not just what you think you should say, man. i know it's hard but you're human. you have to have something. you HAVE to.

Is anyone else reading this?

I don't know how to feel, not even a third through though.

It reads like the novelization of a stuffy British small town drama so I am all over that shit. I was hoping for some mystery (I always thought Rowling was pretty decent at it) but it's pretty straight forward so far...

>>368160
Are there funny bits? I always laughed so hard at the comedic parts of the Harry Potter books that I had to put the book down, but there were never enough of them.

>>368162
Reviewers seem to agree that it's a funny (or the dark humour flavour) and character-driven story and social commentary. Reviewers who hate it keep referring back to Harry Potter like they were expecting it to be Harry Potter #8 and disappointed that there are no wizards, despite being warned many times that it is not like Harry Potter at all.

>>368162
>>368163

There's quite a bit of dry black humour. Nothing gut busting yet but it's quite good.

The viewpoint jumps around between something like 20 characters but there is a good flow to it, and every single one of the characters is a fleshed out human being.

It is very much like an ensemble cast British drama show, so if you're into that kind of thing WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR.

>>368160
I was also hoping for some mystery but I still am really enjoying it. At the beginning it was like "holy shit, character upon character, how is this going to work in such a short book" but it worked out great.

I'm not quite done with it but so far it's definitely one of the better social commentaries I've read. You really feel for all the characters.

>>368163
Ah, thank you. I hate reviewers like that-- I don't think most things that try to become a big hit (except for maybe Twilight and Hunger Games) ever intentionally start out to be blockbusters, and when you make something that big, it's hard to ever get back up there.

>>368166
>>368181
Ah, I might like it then, although I admit I've seen very few, if any ensemble cast Britcoms, and I have a bad memory a lot of the time.

>>368181 here
>Finish reading
>Go to check what Amazon thinks
>Why are there so many one stars? I liked it.
>"The characters were completely unlikable!"
>"I don't like sad things!"
>"Foul language and sex, in my books?! Smut!"
>"Kindle prices are too expensive!"
>"WRITE MORE HARRY POTTER!"

A lot of the characters are unlikeable, they all make terrible decisions and they're all very selfish but real people are the same way. The thing I liked about the book was these characters acted the way I'd expect them to in real life. So I agree with that point.

But some of the reviews were just silly.

Angry Robot has to be one of the best publishing imprints I've come across. So many good books. Damned Busters, Dead Harvest, and Sixty-One Nails have all been top notch.

>>367314
For a second anon, I thought you were me. I have "The Godfather" on my bookshelf. I tried reading it in my freshman year of college but the excitement of living on my own for the first time meant that I only got about 3 chapters in before I gave up on it. I also just finished reading "American Gods" a few weeks ago and I absolutely loved it.

I guess this is the part where I admit that I've never seen the Godfather and I went to film school so...

Right now I'm reading "The Omen" (also a movie I haven't seen). So far I like that it's an easy read, and I think never seeing the movie (all I know of the film is that there's a creepy kid and he's maybe the Devil?) is helping my enjoyment of the book. After I'm done I'm not sure if I want to reread "The Hellbound Heart" or jump right into "The Keep" (knowing that I won't finish "The Keep" by Halloween).

Ugh god this book is great.

I've had to stop a few times because a few of the character's experiences hit too close to home for me. I guess that just means it's good writing.

You know, I would compare this to (though this is probably because I've just read it) Anna Karenina. Similar storytelling style, ensemble cast, heavy drama, straightforward and character driven. Mind you it's modernized and the Big Tradgedy happens right at the beginning, also there's less droning on about every single action taken by everyone in every scene, which is quite welcome, if you ask me.

>Read "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Thanks for ruining my morning with dark irony O'Connor. You old bitch.

>finally reading Moby Dick
>Ahab

Alright guys, my brother has read all the mainstream Sci-Fi novels but wants to get into the lesser-known-but-still-amazing stuff. Suggestions?

Is there terror that can be found with an immortal elder fearing that enemies would target his loved ones and he's unable to stop it/they go insane and kill each other? Wondered if you write about a "all powerful" character having to live with millennia of shit that his grief all traces back to him.

>>368501
American Gods is great. Sort of cynical about the movie/miniseries adaption, though, since a ton of things I like have been optioned for movies as well, and are all just sorta stuck in limbo (also: Preacher, Middlesex, and Hero).

The Godfather is great, it's written very much like it was planned to be a movie from the beginning-- every chapter except for the first one is composed of just one scene, and the world-building is indeed amazing and well fleshed-out. I don't know if it was intentional, but Godfather, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo all had food scenes that made me really hungry.

I've been meaning to get off my ass and start writing for this shared universe I've been building for a couple of years now, but after developing quite the cast of characters, enemies, organizations, etc., I find myself extremely lacking in coming up with a good, solid plot.

The world is technically urban fantasy, but less Dresden Files/Anita Blake wankery and more Ghostbusters/Arkham Horror sort of paranormality. I have a fictional city to play around in, and the right players to put on teh board, but I can't come up with a compelling enough story blueprint to save my life.

I'm sure most of you will suggest just to start writing and it will come eventually, but I'd really like some idea of where the plot I'm writing is going and the basic story beats before I begin. Nothing too OCD, just enough that I can see where I'm going. And yet, I've been drawing blanks for months now.

Finished the book

Lets talk about who you hated the most

Dear Mary, Howard, Shirley, Samantha, Miles, Simon, Obbo (sp? I listened to it on audio so..), I hope you all die in the same fire. I can't really stay mad at any of the kids because they don't know any better, and Fats really got what was coming and then some.

Looking at some reviews, I am being driven up the fucking wall by all the Harry Potter comparisons. Mainly stuff like 'we don't get to know the character's as well as in HP' well duh, those characters had seven books and a few thousand pages to be fleshed out, these characters had some 500 pages to spill their life's stories across.

>>368587
>I've been meaning to get off my ass and start writing for this shared universe I've been building for a couple of years now, but after developing quite the cast of characters, enemies, organizations, etc., I find myself extremely lacking in coming up with a good, solid plot.

Happens to me, too. I think you've just got to start writing, and not worry that the plot sucks at first. First draft's always going to be crap. That's what first drafts are for. Fix it all up on the revisions.

>>368610
But like I said, I need SOME idea of what shape the plot will take, and where it will go, even if it's vague shadows. Having no indication won't aid me in plotting, my stories will go nowhere like bad Seinfeld episodes, and I'll lose my motivation to write more because the first run was so catastrophically bad.

>>368587
I feel the same way. I've never taken creative writing or really written anything beyond a paper for class, so when I have an idea for a story, I can never really get down more than a few disjointed ideas for a character. I admit I also have a fear of having my writing ripped apart. I'm sure I can write something at very least better than "My Immortal", but I admit that kind of feedback why I hesitate and shelve many of my drawing and writing ideas.

>>368611
That's why you write an outline first. Also, write backwards. Start with what you want the ending to be, then the climax, then figure out how they get to the climax. Like with the actual first draft, the first outline doesn't need to be that good, it's just a skeleton on which to build something more solid.

>>368617
As I've been trying to imply, I have a hard time even with the outline, because I can't formulate a plot that feels big enough to be interesting.

>>368621
Start with the world. Who runs it, who populates it, their currency, the flora and fauna, etc. Then try to figure out who generally tries to fuck it up.

>>368587
I would fund this with my undying soul

>>368621
It sounds like you're putting too much pressure on yourself to make it perfect, which will prevent you from ever making it at all. Lighten up on yourself and just write even if it isn't big enough. Hell, make it about a kid trying to find a lost chicken or something. The Chronicles of Prydain didn't start as much more than that.

A writing partner might help, too. You could do the Coen Brothers thing and come up with a scenario, and then your partner finds a way to make it worse, and then you come up with a way to make THAT scenario worse. Even without a writing partner, I've found having someone to bounce ideas off helps whether or not their contributions are helpful in and of themselves.

>>368697
That's how I role-play, generally. I'm not much of a writer, but sometimes my girlfriend will bounce ideas off of me (and vice versa) for each others' characters, and even if we haven't gotten them fleshed out yet, we somehow know when the others' ideas are in-character or not. Writing backup characters can be fun, too. The ladyfriend is good at coming up with minor characters to supplant her main ones (her OC's ex-wife, their son, his lab assistant, his pet falcons) and enrich them better.

>>368609
Fucking Obbo. I am still mad about him. I can't believe I would ever hate a fictional character so much but he is just the worst. Lower-tier hate would definitely include Mary, Howard and Simon. I was okay with Samantha though because she was just such a selfish horny cougar and it made me laugh.

I was very surprised that Fats didn't straight up murder someone. I thought he was going to at some points just to be "authentic"

Speaking of Harry Potter, I realized one thing that J.K. Rowling did really well (that I hadn't noticed before) is that she writes really believable kids. I've seen too many shitty TV shows where kids either speak way too formally or use really outdated, uneducated lingo in an attempt to be "cool". Law and Order is a big offender of this, and Maven of The Eventide brought it up in her 30 Days of Night review. It's just really weird.

This book. THIS FUCKING BOOK.

>>369012
what about it?

>>369014
THIS FUCKING BOOK.

>>368155
i wanted to get an idea of what some characters looked like so i looked up the wiki. you cant even read the fucking family tree without spoilers out the arse

>>369016
OH SHIT NO DON'T.

Unless you're caught up in the books, don't read the Song of Ice and Fire wiki. Use the Game of Thrones wiki and/or Tower of the Hand.

>>369017
its ok, Joffery: deceased and lord commander Snow were the only real spoilers i got and i am more than happy to know they got whats coming

the only things i regret finding out is what the red wedding is which sounds like its coming up in the next few chpaters.

also this was a relief, i was actually worried what would happen if GRRM croaked before he finished

A YoGPoD animation - "Sean Bean, AWAY!"

This is only tangentally related to Game of Thrones, but it's still hilarious. Simon and Lewis of the YoGPoD interview Kristin "Hodor" Nairn, and it dissolves into Lewis doing his best impression of Ned Stark, Boromir, and other Sean Bean roles.

POST YOUR READING LIST OR DIE

Anais Nin - wrote more than great erotica, apparently
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - catching up on an author I've read from afar
Natalia Ginzburg - Italian feminist waifu
Pablo Neruda - to psychically own
Stephen Crane - Old writing, good writing
John Steinbeck - Half research, half re-reading
Raymond Chandler - Finally bought the big collection

and a few flip through poetry/essay books to keep my mind engaged.

Focusing on work to push me towards my big project, working with memory/ideology and history books and authors that not only directly inspire me, but who's works often reflects the themes I'm looking to focus on, ie the synchronization/illustrious nature of time, the nature and feel of certain eras in time, the things that remain, connect and disassociate us.

That I just fucking love Raymond Chandler.

only thing on my reading list at the moment is a transcendent little book called "The Spell of the Sensuous"
i'll let you know if it's any good. not quite non-fiction. i'd call it... thoughtful and atmospheric.

>that scene in SoS:SaS when the Tyrell women invite Sansa to dinner and Margaery is all "we'll steal you to Highgarden and you'll never have to leave" and the Queen of Thorns proposes a marriage between her and her grandson and for a moment Sansa thinks she means Ser Loras and her heart almost burst with happiness and you get really excited for her for a second because damn she's been through a shit-pit, but the Queen just laughs at her and is all "lmfao gurl no, i mean my other grandson the cripple"

I know she doesn't even get that but for a second I was like yes, yes.

>>369381
How about this exchange:

>Sansa: "Losing Renly must have been so hard on your sister."
>Loras: "Yeah... her..."

>>369386
>she thinks he got upset with her for mentioning killing Robar Royce

Also:

>Tyrion: What of love?
>Loras: When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.
>Tyrion: Is that from a song?
>Loras's face when

Littlefinger you magnificent bastard

http://www.amazon.com/Feast-Ice-Fire-Official-Companion/dp/0345534492

describing feasts in better detail than major plot points was all a ploy to get you to buy this

>>369392
Damn you books, damn you and your food porn.

just finished aSoS

would Littlefinger still fuck zombie Catelyn?

>>369532
I loved the first three books, but really didn't like the fourth or fifth. Looking forward to seeing what you think of them.

What do you think of the characters so far?

Up to Book 6 of The Godfather at the moment.

I can't believe there was an entire chapter devoted to discussing a minor character's vagina. What. Also, Sonny's death was both shocking and predictable at the same time.

There are a few words that I wish existed in English (or as loan words from other languages) that I want to use in a story. I'm curious if any of you guys can help me out on them:

- "A friend who is closer even than best friend (they might even sleep in the same bed or kiss), but in a purely platonic way."
- "A person who is very comfortable financially, perhaps even rich, but spends money like someone who is much lower income, never spending the majority of their money."

>>369714
I thought that was what best friend meant.
Also, the second one is a miser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miser

>>369719
I think it depends. I've had even best friends go "dude, too affectionate" at certain things.

It depends. The person I'm thinking of isn't exactly miserly, I think they're more saving their money because they're convinced they're someday going to live through a terrible disaster, like their house is eventually going to be destroyed by a fire or a tornado (a matter of when, not if) and they need to be ready, even if it never happens.

>>369725
People are different. Some people just don't like people mackin' all up on them as a show of affection, others are so okay with it that it's weird to them when people are turned off by it. Sometimes, no matter how close you are to someone platonically, they are not gonna want your smooches.

And that's a hoarder.

>>369714
heterosexual life partner

Finally finished The Godfather. We're supposed to have it done by next week, but my attention span is erratic, so I always read what I have to the afternoon after class. It's a very good book. I had to start making a flowchart to remember some of who was who, but I liked it. I have a lot of respect for anyone who is really good at foreshadowing like that. I've never been a writer myself, but if I was, that's something I'd want to learn how to do.

My only nitpick (that will probably be alleviated with the movie) is that saying "Johnny and Nino were great singers" or "Mrs. Corelone was a great cook" over and over never really gives you a good feel for how other people hear and taste the music or the food. Linkara mentioned this issue recently when he reviewed "Batman: Jazz". It's hard to express how things sound in a purely visual medium, and it's hard to express taste unless you're actually there to taste it (although I think Ratatouille pulled it off well, and I guess that's why there's licensed Game of Thrones cookbooks and YouTube channels like Feasts of Fiction). But that's not Mr. Puzo's fault. That shit is just hard to pull off by anyone, and it's a minor nitpick anyways.

>>369727
That's true. I guess as a very open, affectionate person, I never really understood that. But I accept it. And yeah, that's apt, in a way. I was thinking of people like my dad, who squirrel money away out of paranoia, and while I understand it, it's frustrating when people expect something horrible to definitely happen that might not.

>>369728
I think my dream is to have one true sex/romance partner, then, and a harem of purely platonic life partners on the side. I wouldn't say "heterosexual life partners" because I might end up marrying someone of the same sex and then having both guys and girls as super close friends. Although I couldn't marry someone if they weren't also my closest friend as well.

>>369643
>What do you think of the characters so far?
Jon is a lovable idiot. I honestly thing his ending was stupid. He's too incompetent to run the Night's Watch.
Brienne is a lovable idiot too.
Catelyn is a weapons grade dumbbitch. I'm still not registering the fact that that book's ending happened.
Robb is... his mother's son.
Tyrion is a GTA protagonist. HOLY SHIT HIS ENDING.
Jaime is every bit as great as his fanboys/fangirls says he is. Holy shit, I know book-Jaime is less evil than show Jaime, but the 180 he took in the book was astounding. Nigga woke up one day and went "holy shit, I'm a terrible person and all of this is my fault." HE SHOWED MORE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY THAN THE STARKS.
I want to coat Littlefinger in my semen. He's the warden of the Vale AND the Riverlands now. He got Ser Dontos and The Queen of Thorns TO MURDER JOFFREY HOLY SHIT.
Samwell is kawaii.
Daenerys is actually likable now.
Bran's chapters are made of boring and uninteresting mixed with zzzzzzzzzzz...
Sansa is my second favorite Stark now, behind Rickon.
Stannis is super-Catelyn, but unlike her, he has an entire character built to justify his existence and make him likable.
Arya is aight, but I realized I like everything around her more than her right now. Her entire story in ACoK and ASoS was meant to show you the human side of the war, while introducing you to some of the most notable characters in the series.
The Hound is pretty damn likable, in retrospect. It's important to note that even though he and Jaime are similar characters on paper, Jaime used his misfortune to reevaluate himself while the Hound just kept on doing terrible shit and pitying himself for it.
Oberyn Martell is the realest of the real niggas, birthed by real nigga priests under real nigga stars. And real niggas never live to the end of the story.

>people insisting Brienne is OMG TRANS

>>370255
Ugh, reminds me of that Tumblr post complaining that Rosie The Riveter was anti-feminine because even though she was skinny and dolled up with makeup and done-up hair, her flexing her twig-skinny arm was a denial of what it meant to be a woman.

Somehow, in Brienne's case, being both strong and unattractive means she has a hormone imbalance and the wrong set of genitalia. Stunted view of gender is stunted.

>>370259
Tumblr "feminists" are truly the worst

>>370308
Some SJ people on Tumblr aren't bad, it's just the ones who make politics their entire life, or who think if you're not constantly making a political aspect of everything (someone I saw went as far as to say non-SJ bloggers don't care about politics period), you're wasting your life. Ditto for people who read symbolism into everything. Sometimes they have to realize a rose is just a rose, and you have to accept it at face value.

Personally, I like the idea of a non-Hollywood-attractive woman who kicks ass, and I consider myself a feminist.

Why is it in fiction that the majority of characters implied to be gay always end up as "stalks/molests/annoys the hero" kind of characters, i.e. a lot of Disney and James Bond villains? They're rarely portrayed in any sort of sympathetic manner or like they're good people, and that's really frustrating.

>>370652
Nuh-uh, that's not true. Sometimes they are comedy relief too!

inb4 someone brings up Dumbledore, it doesn't count if even the reader doesn't know he's gay

>>370655
Ugh, yeah, that pisses me off too. I want a gay character where their sexuality is mentioned explicitly in canon, but it's just a thing and it's not their entire personality or a huge deal.

We'll never know what Grindelwald thought of Dumbledore or if Lily ever loved Snape back, and that sorta makes me sad.

I'm reading the first Witcher book, grabbed it from the library for my Kindle. It's... alright so far I guess? A bit exposition heavy at points, like one time when the head Priestess just spouts out Geralt's entire worldview with little provocation. I've just only gotten to the 2nd short story though. It seems that the collection was edited with a bunch of stories set in-between a new one made for the collection? Whatever the case, it's just Geralt digging through some corpses he found with some wolves.

I've not played the games, incidentally. Someone gave me the first one on GoG but I can't run it.

I hate literature students who over analyze and over interpret everything they read.

So I've read a quarter of The Last Wish in a single trip to campus and back (wow this thing is an easy read). My thoughts thus far are that I'm still not really interested in Voice of Reason, The Witcher was kind of meh mostly due to not introducing the world very well and being a fight, and A Grain of Truth was pretty fucking good despite being basically Polish Beauty and the Beast.

I'm told once you get into the actual novels the series gets much better.

>>370669
so... 90% of them?

>>370669
>>370728
How I feel about this depends on what I'm reading. Sometimes something is what it says it is, no deeper meaning. Sometimes it's not and there is in fact symbolism, or a deeper plot than it comes across, but they expect you to figure it out yourself.

And that's the first Witcher book done with. It definitely got better as it went on, though I'm told the actual novels are still better.

Been reading a couple of historical whodunnits. It's a genre I enjoy, even if the writers of such books do tend to waffle on about some oh-so fascinating bit of history they simply must share with me.

>>370852
I really want to start reading history books or at least historical-based novels, but I've had a weak stomach in the past over the realization that some people and events that are sort of glorified are actually the result of terrible things and people who weren't as great as they were constantly portrayed.

>>370885
Studs Terkel
Oral History is the purest, raw form of history since mankind made language, and Studs Turkel is the lord god of Oral History.

Hope you enjoy the 20s through 50s.

>>370885
What kind of history are you interested in?

>>370888
>>370914
I don't know, honestly. Growing up, all of my history books were of the "[x] is definitively bad and is a racist, mass murdering terrorist, [y] is definitively good, never does anything wrong, and our ally, and you should hate [x] for bullying them". And I've gotten chastised because people have told me that it's the complete opposite, how could you be that naive, etc. I just want to know the unbiased truth so I can make my own decisions.

>>370888
This. I fucks with 'The Good War'.

>>370915
Encyclopedias then. You are delving into the dark and equally dry realm of research. There is no easy TRUTH book for anything, avoiding the [you will also find hundreds of books written on] the fallibility of history in and of itself, and it's fundamentally human element.

You find first hand accounts, media, artifacts, the represented fictions of that time, or you're reading the driest riverbed or statistical data facts. Research isn't in finding the truth, it the process of looking for it.

>>370917
Hard Times is my jank. Still collecting all his work, in the very least for it's significance alone. You can just open any of them up and bam, you got some old soul telling you how it was just like that. Turn the page and you have the same view from the other side. Studs really captured the world, straight from it's source.

mynigga.gif

>>370915
I might be able to recommend some primary source books if you give me a time period and a country/continent you want to find out more about. They're basically like textbooks but contain excerpts from writings of the period.

But like Pablo said finding the real truth isn't easy even with first-hand accounts as everyone has a bias. You just have to take that into account when you read.

jamie/brienne

Speaking of research, anybody here an /x/phile? I;m looking to introduce a system of magic in my stories, but I'd like some real world studies on the matter first before I brainstorm. People like John Dee and Aleister Crowley, for instance.

Any suggestions? My magic system is largely based on symbolic sacrifices, almost like the cost of being a Contractor in Darker Than Black.

>>370946
The War of the Five Kings is pretty much "unnecessary escalation ruins everything for everybody". Everyone has that one character they blame for everything. Me, I have two.


Catelyn: "YOU HURT MAH SON" *kidnap Tyrion*
Tywin: "YOU KIDNAPPED MAH SON" *invade the Riverlands*


>>370985
I am perfectly fine with that ship.

>>370921
I think I might start out with American history, because I want to know the truth about my country. I'll bridge out from there.

The areas of history I find sort of uncomfortable are WWII, especially reading about what the Nazis and Soviets did. But I have to eventually get over my squeamishness on the topic.

>>370991
Which is worth more for a love spell? Diamonds, roses, or hershey's kisses?

http://hermetic.com/
http://www.chaosmatrix.org/index.php

>>371036
Roses, in that they were once alive/had a connection to living, changing entities, as opposed to diamonds, which are changing only by the static interference of universal laws, like gravity and pressure.

>>371044
Now I'm wondering about diamonds made through the purification and compression of high pressure plant matter. Maybe even rose petals. Good luck with your stories and remember to wear a condom when practicing magic.

>>371044
>>371049

Anything with carbon in it can be compressed into a diamond in a laboratory.

This includes chocolate, roses, and human beings. They call those last ones Soylent Diamonds.


(And in response to the original question, I find useless things to be very unromantic and wasteful. I don't care for rocks nor plants, but I'll take something edible. That at least provides calories, which is essentially energy for sexing each other. So, go with the chocolate, I'd say.)

>>370991
I don't know if this'll help, but Diana Wynne Jones (who wrote Howl's Moving Castle) wrote a series of novels called The Chrestomanci Quartet. Each book was unrelated except for an appearance by Chrestomanci and the fact that it had wizards in it, and they all casted magic in different ways, which I thought was unique.

Just finished Atlas Shrugged.

I feel pretty dirty. Was I supposed to sympathize with Galt? Admire him? He comes off as a spoiled little shit, especially considering what he fucking developed and the ramifications a motor that can produce electricity from the static electricity in the surroundings. Something like that would help so, so, so many people and to desire money over the quality of life of your neighbors as well as the potential that serves as a back up power source for something like a hospital? Quite frankly, you'd make money hand over fist, either way. I just don't find Galt to be anything else but a myopic and petty individual.

>>371193
Atlas Shrugged is not the paragon of societal commentary everyone holds it up to be. I couldn't get through chapter 1 because I thought it was just so badly written. It really seemed like some bizarre fanfiction and by the time I got around to it, I'd read enough bizarre fanfiction that the hallmarks just leapt out at me.

If you're reacting that way, it's because you are a rational person who is not easily inducted by bullshit. \

>>371193
I've been told that reading Atlas Shrugged makes the complete deconstruction/rebuttal of Ayn Rand in Bioshock even more rewarding.

>>371223
Oh my god, I thought the exact same fucking thing. John Galt really comes off as one of these stereotypical Sonic the Hedgehog creations that can do anything and everything. The whole idea that "Oh society will collapse if certain 'important' people go on strike" is fucking retarded.

What happens when a CEO is being a dipshit? He's replaced.

If you're going to read a tale of such hubris, you should follow it up with Moby Dick.

>>370985
>>371009
yes

the only problem i had with Lysa's death is the ashe never got to find out that Jon was talking about Roberts seed, not her little crippled shithead

>>371328
*that she

Skimming Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the comic book adaption (I got the signed preview #1 issue back at NYCC) before I dive into the novel for real (and then see at least the American adaption-- my dad said he'd lend me his copy). S'not really a spoiler, but between this and Rise of The Guardians, I don't see why having a tattoo is so weird anymore. Doesn't really affect your personality-- I mean, yeah, you have the Neo-Nazi shitheads with tattoos, but there's also a lot of normal, nice middle-aged women with Tinkerbell etched on their ankles. It's more of a mainstream thing now, or you'd think it was.

>MFW the page where Doran Martell reveals his master plan
>vengance and justicefire and blood

Girlfriend: Started Gulliver's Travels in class.
Me: How is it?
Girlfriend: It is PEE ON ALL THE THINGS: The Book.

>>370287
god dammit grrm, you could have mentioned what was up with that at the START of the book and not THE FUCKING EPILOUGE

>The entire last third or so of Cold Days

>Good Old Neon

I'm finally reading Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and so far, the moral of the story is "being a child fucking sucks because the very fabric of reality is FUBAR".

The transforming animal companions are kinda cool, though.

>>371838
I had that same reaction to a documentary my teacher played in class that claimed you could completely alter reality if you just believed you could because quantum physics and everything bad that happens to you is caused by your own psyche.

Is His Dark Materials as preachy as I've been told?

>>371844
>Is His Dark Materials as preachy as I've been told?
Yes.

>>371844
>Is His Dark Materials as preachy as I've been told?
It starts out alright, but really gets into it in the last book. Not a bad series overall, but you've gotta have a decent tolerance for preachiness.

>>371883
>>371893

Ahh, okay. I'd been told it was essentially the antithesis of C.S. Lewis-- where he was very into God and Jesus, "His Dark Materials" was the Atheist equivalent. I'm iffy either way, I'd rather my (hypothetical) kids choose what to believe on their own.

>>371780
Brows Held High? Good tastes.

Though whenever I see the host, I can't unthink his spot-on Miss Piggy impression from the Moulin Rouge! outtakes.

all i really remember from his dark materials was when the evil swan things drown the wheeled elephant's village in evil swan shit and also the first book was bitchin as fuck

I got the Mogworld audiobook for my kindle since Amazon gives a free one for trying out Audible and I like Yahtzee's voice. It's pretty funny!

>>371926
...Yahtzee as in The Escapist?

>>371930
Yes. He's written two novels, Mogworld and the recent Jam, which I know fuck all about.

>>371780
YO MAN

YOOOOOOOOOOO

THAT WAS SOME REAL ASS SHIT

WHERE'S MARU TO TALK ABOUT IT ILL GET HIM

>>371780

Haha shit ruled. This book is so fucking dense. I am actually planning on doing a reread of ll the books with this new information. Like, this book is totally about the Butcherian Hero, which is described as this quote from Codex Alera.

"He was sure, that somewhere, somehow along the way, he had gotten in over his head"
So, with this, we finally get an idea of where the Dresden Files endgame is gonna be. We see the Outer Gates, so much new info on the nevernever, FUCKING DEMONREACH IS A PRISON TO THINGS THAT HAD TO BE kILLED BY NUKES AND ARE IN MINIMUM SECURITY LOCKUP, oh god poor Molly and Sarissa. And like Pudd was saying earlier, we just want harry and karrin to get together is that so much to ask!?!?!?!?
[spoiler/]

So, if you want my speculation on what is gonna happen come the apocalyptic trilogy, read on macduff.

[spoiler]I think that 3 Eye is gonna be super important. Yeah, that 3 Eye. The stuff from Storm Front. I think Harry is going to make a version of it that just wakes up people's magic, not just make their third sight open wide for like ever. I don't know if you've ever read Butcher's other series, Codex Alera, but I noticed a lot of similar notes from that series and this one.

Such as

Nemesis/Outsiders is the Vord.

Tavi and Harry both have secret kickass grandpas.

At the end of Codex Alera, the reason the good guys were able to beat back the Vord was due to their ability to think creativly. They used lesser talents in ways no one had thought of in order to be as strong as the top tier abilities. Sound familiar? Yeah. Paranetters. So, what I was thinking was Dresden maing a pure version of 3 Eye, and awakening either the paranetter's full abilities, or using it on vanilla mortals like Karrin and Butters to bring their talent to life. Remember, any human can do magic, Butters himself is proof of that when he made a circle. Really, what seperates the three, vanilla mortal, paranetter and wizard is the strength of their gift (between wizards and Paranetters) and the ability to feel magic (vanilla mortals and magic users). Butters could have the potential to be the next Merlin Merlin, but never know cause he can't sense it, can't SEE.

And thats where 3 eye comes in. Open up their third sight so they can see and sense, and away you go. Wizards and paranetters.

Which brings me to another point. Why make 3 Eye in the first place? Well, this is Nemesis' plan see? Nemesis goal, as far as we can tell, is to take control of everything. And to do so, Nemesis will need an army. A powerful army.

An army of wizards.

I'm sure that it might sound rambling and shit and it might sound dumb to try and figure this shit out, but its not. Dresden Files isn't just fantasy, its a detective novel. And a good Detective novel gives you all the clues to figure it out beforehand. And thats what I'm trying to do.

Ending note: What a book. It is now my favorite Dresden Book. Funny, favorite used to be Summer Knight. Pure Dresden that book. Getting in over his head, in a fight between two literal forces of Nature, trying to save the world...

But this one is even better, more in-over-their-headness.

>>371935
Oh, neat. I'd love to hear his audiobook version, provided he doesn't speak as fast as he does during Zero Punctuation. I couldn't take a full book of that.

>>371926
Sell me on Mogworld.

I remember cringing when I read the summary because it seemed so cliched for Yahtzee as a game designer/critic, and since i've never given a shit about MMOs one way ro another a lot of their impact are lost on me, but I'll give the faux-Aussie bastard a try. I saw Jam too and that seemed infinitely more neat.

>>371942
Let me just say that i tend to hate MMOs and have a particular hatred of WoW because it basically took the serious which I adored as a child and tore its guts out for the world, who showered Blizzard with love for it. I can't claim Mogworld's exactly standout, least notsofar as I've read, but it's a solid parody of fantasy in general and fantasy game cliches in particular. It's only 10 bucks, or free if you've not used your free Audible credit, and I think that's a decent price for it. You can see the Douglas Adams inspiration shining through, I'll say that much.

>>371940
At times he's actually a bit slow for my taste, but he adds an appropriately snide or pompous voice to things that I at least enjoy. It's also something that I can turn out when my shitty eyes start to hurt but I've still got an hour of train and bus to go before the campus.

So I started reading Legends of Shannara: Bearers of the Black Staff, and there's a character called "ragpicker" (so far, no name given yet), and every now and then he sings a little bit.

I realized the lyrics match up near-perfectly with the tune for "Bad Boys" (ya' know, the song from COPS). I just can't read them the same way...

Finished Mogworld.

Yeah that was actually really fun. Jam's probably better for those looking for something outside of Yahtzee's comfort zone, but he did a good job with this. Certainly had a lot more fun with it than I've been having with the Witcher books (the 2nd of which I still need to finish).

Reading Maximum Ride after my little sister begged me to read it.
It's alright. Entertaining, but not sure I'm crazy about it yet. I like them being on the run, for some reason.

So I have a theory (trope?) about fiction that I wanna discuss with you guys. The theory goes that you can only judge what is "normal" and what categorizes as Mary Sue behavior by judging by that universes' standards, because every fictional universe has its own distinct set of rules.

For example, there's probably 15 different types and ways of magic that I can think of, all from different series. In some universes, talking furry animals are normal, and in others, you can have blue hair biologically. In some, there's no magic, no talking animals, and no blue hair. You can't even say "in anime, [x] but in Western cartoons, [x] never happens", because there's anime with all normal colored hair characters (Azumanga Daioh) and Western cartoons with blue haired characters (Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Mission Hill sort of). Stuff like that. I dunno, what do you think?

>>372320
I can see what you're getting at, but I think it goes down more to narrative atmosphere and tone than any concrete factoids of the universe.

Like, a comedy universe like Discworld has a higher standard of Mary Sue because it's just so silly that a character like Vetinari can exist without being too obnoxious within the framework of the stories he's in. Much more serious works, and Big V would be annoying as all hell. That's not to say Discworld isn't serious at times, but as a whole, it's not super-serious like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I still prefer the idea that Mary Sues are only classified as such when they face neither difficult trials nor consequences from their actions. Good character who are morally compassionate and all-around nice can still face negative consequences from their actions based on the world they live in, and have to deal with remedying the situations they present. A Mary Sue is not only right, but the universe inherently agrees with him/her and minimizes the struggle, if any struggle at all.

Compare a WH40K novel where a squad of Space marines effortlessly kill everything in their path because FUCK YEAH IMPERIUM, to a better novel where they face a massive threat that could wipe them and several planets out. It doesn't take away how badass the Space Marines may be, but it does amp the challenge enough to hint at the possibility of failure enough to keep dramatic tension going.

Regardless, Mary Sue is a term that has lost all legitimacy in serious discourse. Your ideas aren't terrible, but you need to stop using meaningless terms if you want them to be taken seriously.

John Dies at the End is really cool so far.

>>372331
Yeah, I've been listening to it as an audio book for the last couple of weeks on my way to work, and I'm liking it. It's got a decent mix of humor and seriousness to make it intriguing without being dour.

>>372331
I had a lot of fun with it, and the sequel. Lent them to my brother and never got them back, though.

>>372322
I didn't know, apologies. Perhaps "overpowered" is a more apt term.

Power is defined by whatever else you have to compare it to, I think. Like the humans in Dragonball Z, Krillin, Tien, Yamcha, Hercule, Videl, etc. All stronger than most humans could ever get, but look like weaklings because the Namekians and Saiyans all pretty much start off at a place where most humans couldn't hope to get to, even with years upon years of work.

>>372321
I've never read Warhammer or Discworld, but I see what you're getting at, and I agree. I think this whole argument (at least, between my friends) started when someone asked if The Engineer from Team Fortress 2 was too unrealistically intelligent because his backstory says he has 11 PhD.'s. He's a cartoony mad scientist, and TF2 is mostly unserious, so I don't think it's unfathomable.

>>372322
>Regardless, Mary Sue is a term that has lost all legitimacy in serious discourse.

No it hasn't you jackass.

Just because faggots on the Internet run a word or idea into the ground doesn't mean it's now permanently off-limits in real life.

"Mary Sues" are a real problem in amateur literature and if you don't believe so, you're either a glutton for godawful fanfiction or a fucking horrible fanfiction writer yourself.

>>372351

Not that other guy, but watch those fallacies, son.

>>372349
>Engineer is too smart and good

Well, here's the thing: TF2 doesn't have characters in the traditional sense.

Yes, each class has a personality and quirks and in the case of a few, even a nugget of backstory or a real name. However, none of these characters have really been in a canon storyline outside of a minor comic or two. Therefore, you can't judge Engineer's character because it hasn't been fully explored yet because that's not the point. He's less of a person and more of a gag/utility.

Your friends might as well be asking if the Burger King is too overpowered because he can appear anywhere with a Whopper in hand.

>>372352
What logical fallacies?

That I think "Mary Sue" is still somewhat a legitimate term regardless if the average /co/ moron keeps incorrectly applying it to characters they hate?

Or that I'm wrong for thinking people who don't believe Mary Sues exist are the more likely to either write them or indulge them?

>>372351
>Just because faggots on the Internet run a word or idea into the ground doesn't mean it's now permanently off-limits in real life.
The problem isn't that it's been run into the ground, it's that a word that means something different to everyone who says it is not a word that is useful in pretty much any context. And yes, I know you're dying to tell me your definition of Mary Sue now and how "clearly this is the definition that everyone SHOULD be meaning when they say it," but you have no more leg to stand on than they do.

Just use terminology that actually means something. Author Inserts, or Overpowered Characters, or Characters With No Flaws or Original Character in A Fanfic Who Takes Attention Away From The Real Cast or whatever aspect of what it is you think Mary Sue means that you're talking about in the given context. Or at least give your definition of Mary Sue before using it, like "(Here, I'm meaning Mary Sue to mean X)," because you are neither using a term that has an official definition or even a general consensus as to the meaning in slang other than "bad character."

>>372354

Saying "the only reason you think that way is because you're X" is a silly statement to make.

My definition of Mary Sue was "a character that is overpowered and no longer suffers from any sort of obstacle or is affected by anything". I could be using it wrong.

I actually don't mind author inserts if done right. Sometimes they're not the protagonist, just a bit character who offers sage advice or inspires the hero/heroine, and then vanishes, or just shows up to be a comedic butt monkey.

I've heard people argue against the usage of gender-specific terms like "heroine", "actress", and "lesbian", saying "just use the male term for men and women", but that is a whole other can of worms.

>>372357

A definition of a Mary Sue, for me personally, is a character that is greater than all other characters for no good reason.They won the lottery where luck and fate are concerned and are awesome "just because". This often happens to protagonists who are the most important person simply out of happenstance and no real effort of their own, and thus remain the protagonist because they are the protagonist. It gets to the point where it's blatantly obvious that the author is heaping the awesomesauce onto that character just because they are supposed to remain in the limelight. It's basically when a character becomes a one-man deus ex machina all day, every day. For example, if Frodo from Lord of The Rings hadn't been a Hobbit but instead an Elf-Wizard that never got hurt and defeated the Witch King himself and kicked Sauron in the balls before chucking the Ring into the pit... he would be a Mary Sue character.

Most comic book superheroes are Mary Sue characters. They get new powers as the plot demands, win all the time just because the author says so, and (almost) never die. Superman used to be an actual interesting character. He was dumb as a post and ridiculously violent and flawed... and then all of a sudden he became the poster-child for perfection. Wolverine in the X-Men movies is another example; it has nothing to do with his powers, either. All the important plot points just seem to DRIFT in his direction or stem from his life just because that's the way it is. He's contractually obligated to be the most important by default. Fantastic mutants work for a secret military force? Guess who's on the team. Someone's kidnapping mutants? Guess whose former boss it was. A cosmic force is going to destroy the Earth? Guess who has to kill it.


Really, it's meaningless as you said. Even using more specific terms doesn't help much, however. Everyone's definition of "overpowered" will vary, as well.

I feel really, really bad for the people who waited 5 years to read A Feast for Crows.

The original Mary Sue was a fan character roaming an established, published and popularly recognized canon. A wish fulfillment construct that stuck out in the setting like a lincoln log in a 500 piece puzzle. Yes, she had many characteristics associated with bad characters, but the worst offense of all was the fact that they were all poorly written artifacts that just made the story stilted, awkward and painful to read. The most prominent designation to come away from that with should be that a Mary Sue is what happens when an amateur writes drek taking place in somebody elses universe without their acknowledgement or permission. That's what I see as defining a Mary Sue. You can name characteristics and symptoms of bad characters that typically affect Mary Sues, but that's just a conglomeration of aspects of bad and amateur writing mistakes.

What the term 'Mary Sue' has degenerated into has become nothing short of a degrading slur amongst teenage and manbaby writing cliques. It barely attacks the character that the label is attached to, and more a way to call the writer terrible, or of inferior quality to the person to accuse them of it. Not unlike calling somebody a witch, a sinner or a heretic. Mary Sue has been taken from defining a poorly written fan character haphazardly and hackeneyedly glued to a canon universe, and become shorthand for "that character I view as poorly written and do not like, created by somebody of lesser writing skill than myself or my literary standards." And worst of all, the creative writing fandom on the internet has started attributing the term to established, original published characters in their own franchises. Yes, we've gotten to the point where Captain Kirk is now capable of being declared a Mary Sue.

I cannot and will not take anybody seriously that uses the term. Because I know when I see anonymous posting the accusation or the disregard of a story because the character is a "Mary Sue," I'm dealing with a hambeast that walks and talks like a man. Who likely has more than 10 pieces of Axis Powers Hetalia fanart bookmarked on DeviantArt and a history of evangelizing shipping fanfiction. A person that argues with other fanfic writers and trading passioned insults tearing somebody elses story down while 'proving' how their character isn't a Sue, because they don't fit the cherrypicked "official Sue criteria" that other hambeasts have made to prevent their own works from falling under the term.

>>372410
I feel bad for the people who waited three books for A Feast for Crows.

The fifth book is better but not by much. I loved the first three books but at this point I don't even know if I'm going to finish the series if the last two books will be as long and unenjoyable as the fourth and fifth were.

The first three books were "The War, The Wall, and Essos". Now it's "The Wall, Braavos, Oldtown, Dorne, The Iron Islands, The BRIENNE!QUEST, The Eyrie, Riverrun, King's Landing..."

Something needs to bring these stories back together.

>>372456
You don't have to worry about that with me. I can't stand Hetalia and I mostly stay away from shipping. I genuinely didn't know that that was a bad term. I was only asking about writers who keep changing the status quo in their own series, who say "[x] would never happen in this universe" and then [x] does happen "because now it can".

Or people who make fancharacters who don't fit into the universe at all. Not necessarily overpowered, but tonally 180 degrees different.

>>372487
>Or people who make fancharacters who don't fit into the universe at all. Not necessarily overpowered, but tonally 180 degrees different.

>>372493
I don't recognize the character, so I can't say if she's an example or not.

>>372495
Diana Allers from Mass Effect 3. She's modeled/voiced by a journalist on IGN, and one of the biggest complaints about the character is that she really sticks out among the cast.

>>372499
Aah, okay. I've had Mass Effect recommended to me, but I haven't played any of the games yet. I don't own a PS3 or a 360 right now.

>>372505
Don't bother.

>>“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”


Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

One, if this is how Terry Pratchett always writes, I finally need to pick up one of his books. Two, I have never seen anything that explains my father so aptly before. My family is in no way rich, even though we've been accused as such, it's that we buy clothes at Target and he didn't buy me a Bentley when I turned 16 like all the other kids claimed they did. He was just good at knowing what to spend money on and what to hold back on.

>>372608
Yeah, that's pretty much how he always writes.

>>372608
>if this is how Terry Pratchett always writes, I finally need to pick up one of his books.

You'll need this then. I'll recomend starting of with Guards! Guards!

>>372644
Chart needs to have some updates--Snuff at the end of the Guards books, and I Shall Wear Midnight at the end of the witch books.

>>372650
I know, but for some reason I couldn't find a 2.1 version in readable size.

I sent my favorite (online) publication thanking them for their site, and begging for a new issue to be released. I got this back tonight.

I'm so gay for you, Asymptote. PLEASE TAKE ALL MY MONEY, MY MONEY AND THESE...THESE...t-tears in my eyes~

(http://asymptotejournal.com/index.php)

>sitting down maxin
>playing the jazz relaxin
>have the legend book ready
>that writing feel
I'M READY TO WRITE SOME BOMB SHIT

>the calligraphy pen is dry
>mfw
oh well i could just replace the ink
>unscrew cap
>INK EXPLOSION EVERYWHERE

hey you guys, it's National Short Story Day in the UK.

http://www.nationalshortstoryday.co.uk/recommendations

You can read hundreds of short stories here

hey you guys, it's National Short Story Day in the UK.

http://www.nationalshortstoryday.co.uk/recommendations

You can read hundreds of short stories here

I will never get those people who really, really love, say, Game of Thrones or the LoTR movies, or who watch every superhero film that comes out, but are vehemently against reading the books or comics they're based on.

How successful are adaptions of anything in getting people to get into the source material? Just in general.

>>373016
There would be no point in adapting stories to different media if they weren't fundamentally different on some level. Some people are just more visual, or like their entertainment in small, easy-to-digest portions or don't like having to give a piece of entertainment their whole attention, and that's a lot easier to do with a movie than a book.

Plus, sometimes the source material is a chore to read. Lord of the Rings being a perfect example. The movies did a good job of making a dense and almost aggressively inaccessible tome into something that anyone could enjoy.

What's going to be interesting to see is whether or not the same is true of the Hobbit--the Hobbit was much, much more readable than the Lord of the Rings, and Jackson seems to be trying to make the movies more like Lord of the Rings, which I'm afraid might actually hurt what could be a really personal and heartfelt movie by trying to treat it like a dense epic. The first movie turned out pretty good, so maybe he'll be able to avoid going too far into "Epic" territory, but I've got my concerns still.

>>373017
Point taken. I'm the kind that tries to do both, though-- if I like a world, I want to stay in it as long as possible, in as many ways possible.

I guess what bugs me are those people who flat-out don't read books at all, or who turn up their nose at reading comics for being "too geeky" but avidly collect, say, Batman merchandise and obsess over the films.

Finished The Legends of Shanarra: The Measure of the Magic. I'm kind of disappointed, because this duo-logy could easily have been a trilogy by fleshing out the attempted troll invasion. Still, a good entry in the series.

Also the fate of some of the characters had given me a terrible case of the sads, so I likely will have insomnia again tonight. ._.

just finished Dance with Dragons

i dont know what to do now

>>373189
Wait for GRRM to release Winds of Winter and pray to gods old and new that he doesn't die before ending the series.

>>373195
It's cool, if he does die he's apparently told a bunch of people how it's supposed to end including the dudes in charge of making the show so they could carry on when he inevitably chokes on a chicken bone and snuffs it.

>>373195
old, new, drowned, there is only one true god

R'hllor:ressurection, heailing, visions of the future, shadowbinding, cool ass flaming weapons
all the other gods put together: having stupid things done in their name.

>>373223
b-but its going to be 5 years until the show catches up

>>373239
Nah, they're combining some of the books in to one season remember.

>>373189
Go read the Dunk and Egg stories. The first two were made into some pretty cool comics.

>>373223
>Trusting the future of the series to the people who created Roz.

Naw.

>>373245
ASoS is being split in two, but AFfC and ADwD are almost certainly going to be combined.

General writing question.

Is it possible/a good idea to laugh at trauma if it's something you've gone through yourself? Example: I know people who have been abused by their parents, but aren't offended by The Binding of Isaac, a game with parental abuse as part of the plot (an over-the-top example of it, but regardless).

>>373471
Black Comedy is always a gamble. If you're actually funny, it can be pulled off with gusto. But if you're not very funny, you're going to alienate a lot of people.

Really, the best option is to have a lot of people read what you write and tell you whether they thought it was funny or if it crossed the line. Try to get people who are in your target demo--comedy about kids being hit isn't as likely to be funny to new mothers or old people as it is to college-aged men, for example.

And understand that no matter how funny you are, some people are going to be offended. This isn't the end of the world (someone's going to be offended by pretty much ANYTHING you do), but just remember that for every person who complains about it, there are a hundred more that agree but say nothing, and if you seem to be getting a lot of that response from your target audience, all you're going to do is alienate your readers if you include the material.

>>373474
Also any humor can lose its kick when overdone, but specially when it's something that can be distasteful. Basically, there's the sudden "oh wow haha" and then there's stretching into "enough dude, not cool" territory.

>>373474
>>373565
It's been wreaking havoc on me morally recently because I sometimes laugh at black humor, and sometimes I cringe at it because suicide jokes just aren't as funny when real people you know actually attempt it (unsuccessfully, thank god, although there was an underclassman I hadn't met in high school who killed himself). Although the Jimquisition at Escapist Magazine successfully proved with this week's video that there's a very thick gap between real and fictional violence.

Things Shakespeare Did That Make Me Surprised That People Find His Work Boring:

>>snuck the word "cunt" into no less than four different plays
>>made a "your mom" joke in one

>>374626
Yeah, pretty much nothing that Hamlet says to Ophelia is not about her vagina. And the whole of Shakespearean canon is rife with fart and dick jokes aside.

Finished John Dies At the End.

What a weird fucking book.

>>374628
It's a good fucking book.

Read the sequel. It's wonderful.

>>374642
Only tangentally related: I have seen stuff that explicitly said "warning: this contains spiders" and seen people respond, screaming, "OH MY GOD THERE ARE SPIDERS".

>>374627
I'm actually sort of baffled that they let us read it in high school English. But then again, my teacher pointed out that I was one of the few who actually would realize that they were filthy in the first place.

Well, this was a lot less satisfying than the J. W. Wells books.

the only logical outcome

>>374642
It's definitely on the list.

>>374656
I hope this isn't POWER LEVELS, because if so...

>Jon Snow beating Barristan Selmy
>Jaime beating Ned Stark
>Drogo beating well-trained Westerosi in armor

...it is WRONG.

>>374682
all the choices are just a means to create the final ENDS IN ANGRY HATESEX battle

>Just like the books

Ah.

By the way, what do you think of this fan theory:


>Barristan Selmy told Danaerys that "Aerys took liberties with Tywin's wife on their wedding night".
>Tywin got mad at his sister for saying Tyrion was more like him than Jaime.
>Cersei is just as paranoid and unbound as Aerys.

Jaime and Cersei are Aerys' bastard children.

I've been reading a compendium of Lovecraft's works. I've been enjoying his stuff quite a bit. He is nowhere near as difficult to read as I have been led to believe, at least so far, but then I'm not even a third of the way through the collection.

It's been nice reading short stories instead of whole novels. Getting to the end of a short story is more satisfying than getting to the end of a chapter, and you can put the book down for longer periods of time because it doesn't matter if you forget small details or the names of characters. Something I like about Lovecraft's short stories in particular is that, while they are seperate from each other, there has definitely been a mythos being built up to in all of them, and it's very easy to imagine them all taking place in the same world. It's all the benefits of short stories with the world building of an epic. It's pretty neat.

>>374719
While it is possible, there isn't enough evidence to make me actually believe it. I can't totally dismiss it either though. It's an interesting idea.

>>374719
It would also kind of explain why Aerys didn't want Cersei to marry Rhaegar.

My favorite theory is that Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. What else could Lyanna have made Ned promise? She did die in a "bed of blood," probably after childbirth.

I asked a person I considered a friend to suggest a book or comic for me to read next, being that she's a librarian and knows what's out there better than I do, and she just laughed and called me an idiot and asked me if I was too dumb to know how to use Google.

Is it really moronic to ask for suggestions anymore?

>>374876
No, of course not. She was just being rude.

In other news... well I guess I should finally work on editing and touching up my short story. I've pretty much written down all the major changes I want to apply, so the only thing left is to write it up.
Eugggghhhhhhh that sounds fuuunnn.

>That last Quentyn chapter in ADwD.
>That last Jon chapter in ADwD.

WHY WOULD YOU PUT THEM NEXT TO EACH OTHER GRRM YOU FUCKER?!

>That last Dany chapter.
>That Kevan chapter.

[INTERNAL SCREAMING]

>>374895
Enjoy waiting for the next book to come out.

Because it'll be a long wait.

In fiction in general, if you hint a character is gay, the following happens:

Fangirls/boys squeal because they find gay [insert gender here] sexy.
A large chunk of other people vehemently refuse to believe any character they like could be gay.

I am not going to fetishize my gay characters, nor will I allow people to say they can't or don't exist. I will treat them like real people.

>>374904
Psh, a new chapter seems to leak every week. I read a few this morning.


Tyrion and Victarion are still massive shitheads.
Arianne and Doran are worried about Quentyn.
JON CONNINGTON ACTUALLY TOOK STORM'S END HOLY SHIT.
Theon won't tell Stannis anything because he's dumb enough to think he'll be shipped back to Bolton if he does.
Barristan Selmy is coming to terms with the fact that Yunkai and Mereen are essentially fighting with retard infantry.

>When the sun rises in the west
Dorne finally joins the war in Westeros
>and sets in the east
Quentyn Martell
>when the seas go dry
not sure about this one but potentially the narrow sea could freeze over in the depths of winter or something
>mountains blow in the wind like leaves
a certain mountain has be scattered in several pieces all over the place
>when your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.
she's certainly taking every opportunity to make it happen
>Then he will return, and not before


conclusion: Dany and ghost rider Drogo will lead the dothraki across the frozen narrow sea

>>374932
Or dark magic will reach far beyond the North of Westeros, and Drogo will rise with blue eyes.

>>374924
>Psh, a new chapter seems to leak every week. I read a few this morning.

I'm gonna need you to cite that claim, buddy.

>>374934
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4uB5dqTYBLwOVFZS19RLTFFbDA/edit

The Barristan chapter that was leaked yesterday isn't here yet, though.

>>374932
ADWD:Dany had her period at the end of the book, so yeah, that part of the prophecy has come to terms.

I'm having fun reading ASOIAF fan theories.

>Sarella Sand is Alleras of Oldtown.
>Hodor and Brienne are cousins!
>Wyman Manderly fed those three Freys to the guests at Winterfell.
>Ser Duncan the Tall was never knighted.

>>374934
but he was burnt.

...

wait, a horde of flaming dothraki skeletons vs an army of frozen corpses. fire vs ice

>>374730

What kind of brain-dead illiterate told you Lovecraft was a difficult read?

It's pulp for fuck's sake; the whole point is that it isn't.

>>374932
>mountains blow in the wind like leaves
The Dothraki Sea?

I just finished Nineteen Eighty-Four.

God, what a fucking great way to push that horrible lingering after taste of Atlas Shrugged away. That was fucking awesome. The last time I spent so much time unable to put a book down was when I read Patriot Games.

That goes up there with Fahrenheit 451, To Kill a Mockingbird, Stranger in a Strangeland, and Starship Troopers in my list of truly great classics.

>>375232
What angers people about Atlas Shrugged?

>>375233
Ayn Rand First Interview 1959 (Full)

>>375233
>>375235
I think the "Ayn Rand was a sociopath" video in the left kind of sums it up. Her "theories" are only really important for how wrong they are, and she isn't that good of a writer.

>>375237
Can you just sum it up?

>>375240
Atlas Shrugged erects the character of John Galt as a messianic figure, here to save a crumbling socialist world. He is a former child prodigy that got butthurt about how the 20th Century Motor Company doled up its pay and went AWOL because of it, stealing his revolutionary invention: A motor that is powered off of the latent static electricity in the atmosphere.

The entire book makes this naive presupposition that there are certain people in society who, without them, it would crumble and die. And for such a fucking idiotic idea, it worships an unlikable prick (John Galt), and then does so for an obscenely long period of time. Reality does not gel with the book.

After all, what happens when a CEO has blown his last chance with the board of directors?

He gets replaced.

What happened when John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

He got replaced.

What happened when Pope John Paul II died?

He got replaced.

What would happen if I were to slam one of my school's Cessna's into the ground at 160knots?

The Cessna would get replaced and (after some grieving), I would be to shortly thereafter.

No one reads it, at least no one that espouses its greatness or its intellectual depth. It's the libertarian bible: A big, impressive looking tome that no one reads.

Confession time.

I was greatful that my mom gave me a lot of her classic books from when she was a kid, and one of them was The Wizard of Oz and its first sequel. I loved them. I haven't seen Wicked or Oz: The Great and Powerful, but I hate the original film. Not because I like the book better, because I actually read the book second, wanting to know if it was any better, but I guess the film is too saccharine for me, or that many musicals just kinda grind my gears.

>>375292
>many musicals just kinda grind my gears.
Oh my. Do you suffer from s-e-v-e-r-e c-h-r-o-n-i-c p-o-s-t -t-r-a-u-m-a r-e-l-a-t-e-d, a-n-x-i-e-t-y r-e-a-c-t-i-v-a-t-e-d m-a-n-i-c a-g-o-r-a-S-P-O-N-T-A-C-A-N-T-I-P-H-O-B-I-AAAAAA~?!

>>375313
The reference is lost on me, apologies.

I do like some musicals, but unless they're horror (Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, Repo!) or Disney, they grind my gears. Although to be fair, for years I insisted I would hate Rocky Horror, and I ended up watching it twice.

It's just ones like Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, and Grease that annoy the hell out of me.

>>375326
It's from a sketch on the State. They burst into song while singing about their kid's condition, which if my rudimentary understanding of latin isn't failing me, is "The fear of suddenly and publicly bursting into song."

>>375349
Ah, okay. Unfortunately, I haven't seen The State, but maybe I should go check it out now.

Just picked this up, looks pretty intimidating being 981 pages and all. Tell me, why does /lit/ shit all over it?

>>376602

Wallace used to teach at my university! This was long before I attended, though. His name comes up in a number of my classes. I think our English Department generally likes him.

Also, there's no telling why anyone on 4chan does anything. I'd give it a read to see what's up. I kinda want to, honestly.

>>376602
Because hipsters and psuedo-intellectuals dickride it, most likely. Probably a hype-backlash.

>>376626
your dickery keeps people on the internet honest
thanks for that

>spend months writing/rewriting/editing/stress crying over thesis
>finally all done
>have free time
>nothing much to do until graduation

>go back to the library and write more

what the fuck is wrong with me

>>376910
perhaps you have ideas to express

This book was horrible. Usually I get really wrapped up in reading shitty YA books because they can be fun but this actually had me yelling at it. It's supposed to be dystopian, so something bad happens and then the US decides to split into five factions that each represent truth, peace, intelligence, bravery and selflessness.

Not only did it have 200 pages of useless romantic confusion between two characters with almost no personalities that dragged on even after it was resolved, it turns out the faction of intelligent people is evil and is attacking the faction of selfless, religious people. Can people be selfless and intelligent? This book says nope, someone can only be one or the other (otherwise they're special divergent people... or something, I still seriously don't understand what was happening).

The love interest of Beatrice, the main character, actually says something along the lines of "I have a theory that sometimes you need to be selfless in order to be brave" which I think was one of the stupidest things I've ever read in a book. No fucking way, dipshit.

I liked the name "Four" (the love interest's name) but lost my shit upon learning his real name is Tobias, to which I could only picture a blue Tobias Fünke walking around, taking off his shirt, trying to look hot, having ~brooding blue eyes~ etc

tl;dr: 0/10 would not recommend even to fellow lovers of bad YA books

As Gatsby is being released, I took some time to reflect on the book and how it was one of my favorites in high school.

It shaped my decision of never wanting to be a petty rich person, or chasing after things I know I could never have.

>>read fanfic
>>I ship X with Y, but fic writer ships X with Z instead
>>Z is horribly out of character and you could just as easily replace all instances of Z's name with Y and it would be identical

I can tolerate it if you ship differently than I do, but if you write Z identical to Y, there's no point. They have totally different appearances and personalities in canon, show me how their relationships would differ. Convince me X would be better with Z than Y.

I did not expect the Dexter novels to have so much food porn.

So many Cuban pulled pork sandwiches and crullers.