File: 1776104603246846.png (1.24 MB, 1024x1024)

1.24 MB PNG

>Helloooooo! Is this the thread?

>>25365505
>>Thread question:
>Of the books you've read recently, which was the biggest disappointment? Inversely, what was the most unexpectedly great?
Biggest disappointment was Helsreach. People hyped it up so much but it meanders off in the second act and really just feels amateur and did not stick with me. Most unexpected great was The Stickmen, which was an absolute delight of a read and I happily tore through in a few hours.

>>25365515
Where can The Stickmen be found? There's a bunch of "stickmAn" stuff online, but I can't find anything by that title.

File: 2582161.jpg (17 KB, 200x313)

17 KB JPG

>>25365532
The Stickmen by Edward Lee. You can get it off of AA. It is a wonderful read for anyone who was into conspiracy stuff and has some charming and surprisingly realistic characters, along with a protagonist who really has no right to be as endearing and fun as he is by the end of the book.

Finished reading all ten books of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It was good throughout, but I felt like the peak hit in book 5 with 6-10 feeling like a downward slide towards the conclusion. Not that the last half was bad or ruined suspension of disbelief, just that it was less exciting than the premise of the first half of the book.

The war was practically over at the end of book 5, so everything that happened afterwards felt like compromises and concessions towards an uncertain future. The lack of a resolution is logical, but it did leave me with some disappointment since the republicans are basically fully subject to the empire with token autonomy and the empire itself seems directionless without its great leader.

The Terra plot was wrapped up fairly quick at the end and it felt like the Ishrlohn Republic came to an abrupt end as well. I feel like more time could've been spent on the Ruhenthal Rebellion as well since after one incident he immediately decided to play the villain and his fighting ended not but a couple of chapters later. That kind of felt like a waste instead of taking several books to have an unholy alliance between the Ruhenthal, the Republic of El Facil, the discontent elements of the former alliance, and Phezzan's merchants. And Phezzan pretty much rolled over as soon as the empire came in despite being so wealthy, I expected them to have more of an impact in the war but they never did, like they were just forgot about.

>>25365549
By what I mean in more detail:

>Enjoyed the fleet battles and strategic planning
>Enjoyed the politics of the factions, the intrigue, etc
>Main characters are very good at what they do but are constrained by external forces, inhibiting their ability to act freely, interesting to see how they cope with the situation

>Book 5 sees the two almost fully off the chain and able to have an all out slugfest of commander vs commander
>Fighting ends, empire gains a strategic victory
>Rest of the series is mostly a passive guerilla war over a single fortress on the frontier
>No real way for the alliance to win at this point, it's more about holding out as long as possible until conditions change decades or centuries from now
>Empire could basically ignore the holdouts if they chose to, or just starve them in a siege
>The empire is basically fully united with minimal internal problems now, Yangs remnants are basically the same
>Terra loses the majority of its command in the 6th book, Phezzan gets no real screen time beyond its leader in exile occasionally pulling some strings

>>25365549
I haven't moused over the spoilers. Would you recommend reading or watching LotGH?

>be me
>/sffg/ browser
>realize he doesn't actually post that much period
>don't crash out and just never bother about him
it's that easy

>>25365641
Yeah, I'd say it's worth a read. I was by no means disappointed I read it, merely remarking it felt like the author was in a hurry to wrap things up in the last half.

>>25365702
what?

>>25365708
I meant if you had to pick between watching the anime or reading the books, which is best?

>>25365712
I haven't watched the anime yet. I've been told the anime is mostly the same with far more character development and side stories presented. Like things the book mentions in a single paragraph, sometimes the anime will have an episode about.

I'm too sad and mad about how somebody responded to my last post to want to post right now. I wont fall again for the "REREAD EVERYTHING LMAO YOU'RE WRONG! ILL NEVER ACTUALLY DESCRIBE SOMETHING WRONG IN ANY SENSE AND WHEN YOU TRY TO CLARIFY FACTS FROM PAST BOOKS TRYING TO HONESTLY ENGAGE WITH THE CRITICISM ILL JUST KEEP SAYING YOURE WRONG BUT NEVER HOW!" Ill probably keep posting maybe even more aggressively now, because of the fact that I'm not expecting anymore an intelligent person who has actually read the book and understands what I am saying. One of the reasons I stopped posting about the other books I read was because I was able to resolve myself to stop respecting the author by default and ignoring all their past writing transgressions through conversation and debate. If those questions arent resolved. All I'm going to do is repeatedly post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post and post about those problems thinking outloud until I personally resolve them, and my thoughts are typically too all over the pace for me to allow myself to resolve questions.
All I learned is that I have even less reason to trust the people here to have the capacity to interpret and understand a book let alone another persons words. So until I have a reason to believe that, I will do what I want here with the assumption that nothing I posit will get answered.
You'd think with an even bigger and more widespread popular book that I'd receive more resolving answers than I got with Bakker and Terra Ignota. But the people who read those books, both the ones that liked and disliked it, must have simply been of a more critical line of people.

>>25365720
It's just hard to help you when you are so utterly resistant to it. I can't imagine how your education was, or your parents for that matter, but there must be some serious trauma to react this emotionally over someone gently helping you to become a better reader.

File: 1692748645862596.jpg (28 KB, 449x581)

28 KB JPG

BORN TO CANT
CONSULT IS A FUCK
鬼神 Kill Em All 4132 Year-of-the-Tusk
I Am Mandati Man
5,478,637,782 CULLED SRANC

>>25365720
Your masochism ever increases.

>>25365758
he wants to hurt himself? that's your psychoanalysis theory?

File: riker_frakes_8603.jpg (23 KB, 225x300)

23 KB JPG

What sci-fi/fantasy books have womanizer protagonists?

>>25365734
troll.

>>25365762
No, but he compelled to do so due to self-admitted mental illness.

>>25365762
>>25365758
>>25365782
Basically this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-flagellation

File: A1maFumQDRL._AC_UF1000,10(...).jpg (238 KB, 667x1000)

238 KB JPG

Just read this, it was okay until the ending.

Major Spoilers below
Everyone thinks the boat is haunted, but it's actually a Scooby-Doo hoax meant to obfuscate a murder. The problem is that the hoax is so elaborate and relies on so many things working out perfectly for the killers that it violates my sense of disbelief. No matter how clever the killers are there's no way they could have planned everything out so perfectly.

>>25365769
If I were a troll I'd tell you to kill yourself like everyone else.

You remind me a lot of my nephew. Two Christmases ago I ask him what he was reading and he flied off the handle, telling me books are overrated and that "real" smart people do other activities.

Well come to find out he had a learning disability, something that was like ADHD though had a different name, that was making it very hard to parse books. He was sucking ass in school but it wasn't his fault. I felt awful for the kid, imagine being in 5th grade and thinking your relationship with reading is already ruined forever.

But he got on meds, got an appt with an occupational therapist, and more importantly he had a fantastic reading group teacher that sat with him and helped him reinvent how to actually read a book, retain information, and analytically think about what he's read. These were skills that, like you, he wasn't able to pick up properly during the first few critical years of reading.

Before he couldn't even read a Ballpark Mysteries without getting lost. Now he's onto Harry Potter and The Hobbit.

I get the sense you're a bit older than he is, but there's still *plenty* of time to change things and get back on track.

File: 618243.jpg (32 KB, 300x491)

32 KB JPG

>>25365505
The Death of Chaos, The Saga of Recluce #5 - L.E. Modesitt Jr. (1995)

The Death of Chaos is a direct sequel to the first book and an indirect sequel to the fourth. This is the first book without a new protagonist. Even after 30 years and 21 novels later, this remains the chronologically latest in the series. It's all back to the past from on out, except for some short fiction according to the official timeline. In that way this can be considered the finale of the series, what everything leads up to after 1000s of years. The End of History as it were, though a new beginning follows that end. That series continues on for so much longer goes against chronocentrism. In this setting at least it may be that the most intriguing times were in the ancient past.

The stories still aren't able to live up to the ideas contained within, as I find they do in the books later in Modesitt's career. For me one of the main problems with this book and every other book that centers around war regardless of which of his series I've read it in, is that Modesitt doesn't write war in a way that I find engaging. The wars are almost always casual deaths against overwhelming odds followed up by a weapon or magic of indiscriminate mass destruction. I'll almost surely enjoy the daily life parts of the books more than anything else.

Leriss, the protagonist, is one of the most powerful mages the world has seen. He finds that to be a burden and would rather be woodworking. Crafting chairs, tables, and spice racks feels far more meaningful and rewarding than slaughtering the enemy at great cost. He's compelled to be a hero and cause extraordinary destruction. To that end he will bring forth a great reckoning that establishes a new Balance that will entirely change magic and the world.

Balance and moderation is usually of the highest importance in Modesitt's work. This is the first book of the Saga of Recluce where he starts to go hard on the sociopolitical commentary. Based on what I've seen of his oldest and newest works, he's maintained a consistent philosophy for at least 40 years. His beliefs can be roughly summarized as Progressive Conservatism, which I continue to find interesting. Another recurrent theme I've noticed across the series I've read is his appreciation and admiration of artisans, or would be more or less the trades today.

The strangest part of the novel is that a character from another universe is introduced early on and is almost only mentioned in passing and does nothing except make a few comments. The reaction is basically, "Oh, you're from another universe? Huh. Well, moving on..." I don't know if he's in the later short fiction or nothing more than an odd inclusion. Modesitt wrote his portal fantasy series, Spellsong Cycle, a couple years after this and his multiverse/time travel series, Timegod's World, long before this. It's not unexpected - I just don't understand why he was included.

Rating: 3.5/5

https://files.catbox.moe/gv9x7h.pdf

File: brandon sanderson.jpg (263 KB, 1200x1568)

263 KB JPG

Should I read Elantris?

>>25365505
>Of the books you've read recently, which was the biggest disappointment?
The Compass Rose.
>Inversely, what was the most unexpectedly great?
Rocannon's World.

>>25365804
Your shits are reviewed. Oh fuck.

>>25365505
>>Thread question
I've read a lot of bad to mediocre books this year but the one I was truly disappointed in was Dune. The ideas and the themes are great but the writing was just not great, in my opinion.
I see why it's a highly influential classic but it's not for me.
Haven't found any unexpectedly great books this year but I'm still working through the Farseer trilogy and it's keeping my attention
>>25365804
Are you planning to review the entirety of the Saga of Recluse series? Or any other Modesitt Jr. works?

>>25365949
>I've read a lot of bad to mediocre books this year but the one I was truly disappointed in was Dune. The ideas and the themes are great but the writing was just not great, in my opinion.
I'm reading it right now and I agree. I'd go so far as to say that the writing is weird as shit. What do you even call narrative perspective where you're bouncing between people's heads in a single conversation?

It's great writing for vibes and religious weirdness, but any time it tries to take itself seriously (the space opera parts, I guess) it all falls apart.:

>Jessica sipped from her glass and glanced at Kynes. Is that admiration she saw there? What did he admire her for?
>Kynes played with his fork, admiring the lady Jessica. Admiration! How could he admire someone like that? Did the prophecies truly get everything right?
>Paul glanced at Kynes, using the skills taught by his mother to glean that he was admiring... somebody...? His mother? He was supporting them! But why? Was it due to the prophecies?

multiple pages of this shit

>>25365803
>Before he couldn't even read a Ballpark Mysteries without getting lost. Now he's onto Harry Potter and The Hobbit.
This is a joke right

>>25365983
What would be funny about it?

>>25365972
>What do you even call narrative perspective where you're bouncing between people's heads in a single conversation?
That's what makes it so good, novel and interesting, so that even if the characterization is simple, youre never at a loss for perspective of what leads to a certain decision and action

>>25365986
"Now he's onto Harry Potter" I read Harry Potter at the same age as Harry Potter.

>>25365972
Pretty much, yeah. Sitting down and deciphering whatever the hell Herbert is trying to convey was -sometimes- worth it, otherwise it was just repetitive and disorienting nonsense.

>>25365991
I think you should google how old kids are in 3rd grade, anon.

>>25365988
That's what I mean, though. It's fine for many scenes - like the first one with Paul, Jessica and the Reverend Mother. It gives it the feel of a religious text, obviously intentional

But there are too many scenes involving political drama or action and these range from boring to confusing with this style. I think I want more traditional prose for more traditional scenes, or to eliminate the political intrigue altogether and go full alt-bible

>>25365885
I don't know if I would say should. I enjoyed it for what it was but only one of the three protagonists is particularly memorable. Elantris is okay.

>>25365949
>Are you planning to review the entirety of the Saga of Recluse series?
Yes, eventually.

>Or any other Modesitt Jr. works
I've written about all of the Imager Portfolio and all that's out of The Grand Illusion. I may or may not get around to his other series. I've written about some of his non-series short fiction. You can find what I've written in the archive here and on Goodreads.

>>25365804
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

File: IMG_2187.jpg (1.62 MB, 3072x4096)

1.62 MB JPG

Fuck it’s good

>>25365763
Conan.

Threadly reminder to report and ignore newfag spammers like >>25366443 who purposely make off-topic inflammatory posts in bad faith and has done so for four years running.
>>21323327

>>25366549
I'm still convinced that Rachel and Pris were the same andy.

not super happy with feersum endjinns ending. the 2nd half of the book feels like a young adult novel.

>>25366842
And yet it's Banks' best SF book ever.

If I found Weaveworld kind of bland and generic, is it even worth me giving Imajica a try?

>>25366855
the setting and plot are great, it just feels like the antagonists are all incompetant cartoon villains and the protagonists just follow their individual linear paths toward the end.

>>25366859
Read his short stories instead.

>>25366868
That's Banks for you.

>>25366868
sounds like terra ignota

>>25365505
>biggest disappointment
Lake of the Long Sun... maybe City by Simak too for that matter, although I am still working on that one.
>most unexpectedly great
Calde of the Long Sun.

>>25365702
>him

>>25365949
holy filtered

>>25365972
>What do you even call narrative perspective where you're bouncing between people's heads in a single conversation?
3rd person omniscient, a European tradition dating back to the Odyssey

Harry Potter / Hunger Games millennials raised on 1st person and 3rd person limited wouldn't know

>>25366004
I really don't know what to say, anon
I read Dune when I was 10 years old and found no problem at all following the conversation

>>25367060
que?

>>25367095
>I really don't know what to say, anon
>I read Dune when I was 10 years old and found no problem at all following the conversation
Don't be rude and obtuse, I disagree with him and even I can recognize that his problem isn't lack of understanding but that he considers the perspective switching to be an odd redundancy and waste of writing at times.

>>25367174
he specifically said
>confusing

tell me how else to interpret that word?

>>25367178
There's this concept called context clues where you can look at the surrounding words used to understand how a particular word is being used. After all words don't have fixed meanings.

>>25367203
the full quote was:
>But there are too many scenes involving political drama or action and these range from boring to confusing with this style.

Go on, analyse the sentence and tell me what you think "confusing" means in this context.

>>25367095
>holy filtered
Not an argument

>>25367095
>3rd person omniscient, a European tradition dating back to the Odyssey
It's unconventionally omni, which I don't think anyone would disagree with. It's inconsistent and involves head-hopping with no transitions, sometimes sentence to sentence. It's obviously a deliberate stylistic choice, but it's one I don't always care for.

I'm certainly not having trouble following it, in fact I wish the book trusted the readers more to layer on complexity and ideas. When I say "confusing" what I mean is that I don't see what it's accomplishing. You'll have a conversation that goes something like "Yueh smiles thinly, *I'm literally about to betray these guys*. Jessica looks back at Yueh, *is Yueh is about to betray me?*"

In nearly any other book this would be your cue as a reader to question why the author is so artlessly revealing things to you and then drilling it into you over and over. Is there a subversion? Is there a greater reveal being masked by this one? But so far that hasn't been the case.

As I'll state for the 3rd time, the parts where it's religious and alien work extremely well with this style. I just read a part where Paul is having a mental breakdown / prophetic dream and it adds perfectly to the tension and strangeness of the scene.

But when it's just a normal conversation or political intrigue it falls flat. Even if, thematically, it's written this way because Paul is about to become a omniscient time lord or w/e, it just doesn't fit for these scenes.

I have two pet peeves with books: repetition and lack of immersion. The former is easy enough to describe, but the latter is a bit more tricky, it can involved spelling errors, modern dialogue in a fantastical setting, etc. When I say these parts of Dune bother me it's because it touches on both of those annoyances.

i've been reading the earthsea series and i'm gonna be honest i didn't really like the farthest shore

File: 1778988842039419.jpg (979 KB, 1079x1236)

979 KB JPG

I wish I never got into reading literature. I can't enjoy the good stuff (sf/f) anymore...

>>25367294
>It's unconventional
not for Victorian literature
Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Tolstoy and Kipling come to mind
>involves head-hopping with no transitions, sometimes sentence to sentence
yes
that's 3rd person omni, and that's one of the reasons why every sentence is formatted to begin with a new paragraph; it signals perspective change.
in fact, sometimes these authors neglected to even begin a new paragraph, I suppose editors either forgot or were too awed by the manuscript to force it strictly
but in the 20th century the convention began to be more strictly enforced
remember, Strunk & White wrote down the rule for good reason: because it was NOT being followed

>When I say "confusing" what I mean is that I don't see what it's accomplishing
I don't blame you
I used to think "what fucking moron reveals the traitor before introducing the character to begin with?!"
now that I'm older, I find that it generates a lot more depth than the typical limited / 1st person view today
like a Greek tragedy, the reader is placed in the position of watching a genocidal car crash and being powerless to stop it

chacun a son gout, as always
but I actually like this style

>>25367319
You don't have to continue.

File: IMG_5144.jpg (36 KB, 364x480)

36 KB JPG

My pre-Wheel of Time, pre-Cosmere gooning stack:
>The Gathas of Zarathushtra: Hymns in Praise of Wisdom
>The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: Being the Papyrus of Ani (Royal Scribe of the Divine Offerings)
>Tattvartha Sutra: That Which Is (Sacred Literature)
>The Analects of Confucius (Everyman Library)
>The Dhammapada
>The Bhagavad Gita
>Paradise Lost
>Chaldean Account of Genesis (Epic of Gilgamesh)
>Le Morte D’Arthur
>Poetic and Prose Eddas
I’ll have to find a King James Bible too. Am I missing anything? Do I need to read Plato’s Phaedo and to understand GODbert Jordan & SanderGOD?

File: c.jpg (291 KB, 982x2126)

291 KB JPG

I think it was finally this passage. That convinced me this could be a christian author. Whether he was "technically" still atheist when he read this book or not doesn't really matter, its a book presented with Christian assumptions, and intuitions.

After the last chapter, this was the perfect opportunity to engage with what the stupid homunculi said, after hundreds of pages of engaging with the homunculi problem in the most reductively presented way, after this one homunculi said that "None of us have a choice" thing. I happened to remember something that I had forgotten because this shitty series is almost certainly almost. Just straight garbage thematically. I thought back to his first encounter with a homunculi where the homunculi pointed out the obvious and true fact that nobles are made in a deliberate way just as much as homunculi. For the rest of the book he never thinks about dwells on the implications of that. Here, a slightly similar point is brought up by another homunculi (also this page basically confirms that hes a bot that just got everything from Gibson again, barely a person.) And he just does the christian thing where everything is filtered and framed with the assumption that they are correct so everything otherwise can only be explained by reducing it to a level that can fit within a christian framework. Its really hard to communicate the complexity of this type of stupidity. It makes me think "why even bring up the question if youre not going to engage with it and essentially just call it evil?" This is literally what he does by the way.
>After all, to such thinking we are all slaves, if only to our breeding. Thus it is no crime to create creatures such as Naia. And yet it is clearly a crime. Evil needs no explanation.
And you cant even do the "actually that was what young stupid Hadrian thought, older Hadrian doesnt agree" so its likely I cant even appeal to the "purposely be shallow so that when it gets deep it hits harder" because Hadrian says
>I suspected then and know now that much of his mind was given over to machines.
Whenever Hadrian talks about then and now, hes talking as Hadrian the narrator not Hadrian as a part of the story.

Theres so much wrong here I don't even know how to get into it because the implications of the thought here run to a deeper stupidity than just mere fantasy or sci fi. This isnt even a stupidity of religion per se, there's a ton of smart philosophers that were religious, but its a stupidity that can only be produced by religious if you have ever encountered presuppositionalists before.

Not all Christians are presupps but almost all presupps are christian or islamic or some bullshit.

Im going to need another paragraph to really dive into this.

>>25367335
I wish someone would cut your fucking throat

>>25367314
Yeah, Earthsea gets a lot of praise but it's very inconsistent

The 2nd and 4th books are excellent, the 1st book is good, and the 3rd and 5th books are pretty shitty. The 5th book especially is just a big turd, over-explaining elements that didn't need it and introducing new elements that made the setting less interesting.

>Those who say we are only flesh must reason that we have no will of our own, that we serve our impulses, which are rooted in our brains and nowhere else. Such thinking gave rise to the homunculi, who are made happy in their servitude. After all, to such thinking we are all slaves, if only to our breeding. Thus it is no crime to create creatures such as Naia. And yet it is clearly a crime.

This passage is just so bad on so many levels. I wonder how many people even see it. Even see the implications. If I have to spell it out for you thats unfortunate. But its the classic midwit take that is reducible to "The soul exists and the physical world isnt all there is". Now there isnt any inherent problem with this thought, other than the religious implications of a soul, but there are non religious people (philosophers) who have expressed a similar thought without resorting to religion.

The problem is in the framing. Framing Firstly a philosopher would almost never try to attack an idea by associating it with already assumed negative "outcomes"/"consequences" neither would a scientist, or just any academic person. Thats the first thing. This is a classic framing device christians use to attack ideas with no self awareness of course of what christianity has produced, and therefore the arbitrariness of resting so much on association.
Secondly. The assumptions are just so wrong. Nothing about believing in impulses, and believing that only the physical world exists, commits you to believing in a lack of free will. This is a particular idea that exposes the religious foundational thinking behind this text, because if you have ever been around certain christians and presupps. They have this incredibly absurd idea that all scientists and atheists believe in some sort of strict Physicalism. So they think attacking the obvious flaws of strict physicalism defeats atheism and science (except for when they can selectively use science to confirm their biases)

This is what made all of this passage suspicious.

This passage is actually horrible once you know anything at all about the implicit concepts being talked about and once you understand enough about both sides' capacity to engage with the other to understand how weird and twisted, and borderline incoherent presupp thinking is. Notice I made clear to not dismiss the implicit argument that the world isnt purely physical, I dismissed a particular framing of that thought. Presupps fundamentally cannot allow or engage with that thought at all, they cant tolerate it, so they twist themselves to allow "reality" to be a way where it can only be God and nothing else. I dont know if you guys get it, but if you've been in these spaces you know what I mean. Its all intuition slop.

If not for the fact that I have encountered this thought before. I might have genuinely and straight up quit the book at this moment, presup thought is up there with Bakker's blog level of incoherence and confident stupidity.

The sadomasochistic pagespammer cannot be stopped, only ignored.

>>25367319
>>25367326
No you have to continue you have to believe. You have to believe you can still find value in the wacky circumstances and enviroments of scifi and fantasy

>>25367335
>>25367355
Woof. Ok, lot's to address here, but it's hard because you're starting from such a rotten foundation.

I think you'd benefit greatly from rereading the book from the start. Your insight into the homunculi and the Naia is tremendously flawed, I think you missed several pages or even entire chapters to be this confused still.

Obviously what's most troubling is your incredible lack of understanding of theology on a general subject-level basis. My guess is you're relying on ChatGPT to bridge gaps in your knowledge, but it's a bit like using a drywall repair kit to fix the Notre-Dame.

My advice would be to set down the series altogether and start with something more basic that's a bit easier to analyze. I'd look at 7th-8th grade English reading lists, sit in on Sunday schools, etc.

If you do develop an interest in religion or philosophy I'd steer clear of Youtube videos and other forms of analysis, you're in a vulnerable place right now and they'd eat you for breakfast. If possible, get a friend or even a relative to walk you through the basics. Here's a good place to start: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Ask LOTS of questions, don't be embarrassed.

>>25367356
He's reading and talking about books in a book thread on a book board. It's fine, anon.

If we want our medium to thrive we need more readers, and if we want *smart* books we need *smart* readers. It only benefits us to help the guy out and point out ways to improve his ability to read and comprehend.

File: 1781874974429231.jpg (394 KB, 1080x971)

394 KB JPG

But then I see stuff like this. So obviously stupid. So obviously simple. So obvious to retort and counter argue that I cannot imagine it being anything but a display of an intentionally reductive, narrow minded, and unself aware person.

My biggest problem is that even if it is true that Hadrian is being presented in a way where he is obviously wrong and the reader must simply accept his one dimensional ideas with zero pushback or engagement from anywhere in the text to deepen the ideas being talked about and complicate their understanding (Even the homunculi "challenging" his perspective didnt mean anything not only because her argument wasnt thorough enough, but also because Hadrian just ignored the implications of the argument anyway and just declared it wrong, because the fact that he has already decided before the fact that Homunculi are an evil creation, and similarly in this passage, that an ability or inability to create and choose, because...he arbitrarily decided those must be conditions of personhood, let alone the fact that he just assume those abilities exist in human beings, and dont exist in animals. Like its obviously fucking retarded. Its obviously fucking stupid. Ants can create, Beavers can create, Bees can create. Dolphins dont create does that mean they're dumber than Beavers? The only way you can hold onto this argument and make it sound tenable is by just arbitrarily ignoring all examples of animals creating, and only identify specifi ways that human beings can create. But thats stupid. Because its arbitrary. At that point somebody can appeal to the superiority of any number of animals for possessing some feature human beings dont, Bats and Dolphins ability to echolocate, Birds' ability to fly, Dog's and many other animals ability to identify by smell. Ibex's ability to climb steep mountains.

But even more concerningly, once you get as arbitrarily as Hadrian would need to to deliberately and circularly exclude animals and only include Humans. You could similar do the same among humans themselves. Not all humans can create specific things, some cant even learn how to. Not all human beings have the capacity to think in certain ways, some cant even learn to. Not all human beings can speak. For example Im pretty sure Isolated children who never grow up learning language can never learn language ever again by a certain age. Hadrians thought directly leads to the rationalization of discriminations that he constantly references in high and mighty ways to counter argue against people who do things he doesnt like.

Hadrian is a completely empty retarded character that makes no actual sense when you think hard enough on anything he says.

Its too stupid to not be intentional. But I said that about the last book too, and im nearly halfway through this book and I've still been given no reason to think Hadrian will be any deeper. And if it takes 3 books for that to happen. Then...I'll say what I want to say by the end of this book.

>>25367391
Here's a small way of changing your way of thinking and becoming a better reader

Don't: "I don't understand something, the book is stupid" / "I don't like this, it must be bad" / "I don't agree with something, it must be wrong"

Do: "I don't understand something, how can I better educate myself?" / "I don't like this, but what is making me feel this way? How can I fix myself?" / "I don't agree with something, could it be they know more about a subject than I do?"

>>25367401
>"I don't agree with something, could it be they know more about a subject than I do?"
Knowing something doesn't mean anything if you can't demonstrate it. Everybody believes they know what they know to be true.

>>25365991
>retard can't into math
>also a proud Potterfag
Many such cases.

File: The+Undying+Mercenaries-1(...).jpg (81 KB, 1024x576)

81 KB JPG

>>25365763
Undying mercenaries. Fun series.

>>25367095
>3rd person omniscient, a European tradition dating back to the Odyssey
Please someone help me understand why perspective styles (1st, 3rd, whatever) matter. Ive been a lifelong reader and if you asked me if a particular work I read last week was written in the first or third person I genuinely wouldn't remember.
If I notice the perspective at all, it's only for the first couple pages then it all feels the same. I only talk about books with one other guy irl and he's the same. Are we retarded or does it just not matter?

>>25367494
What about 2nd person? Do you notice that? Or no person at all.

What the hell is wrong with this guy?>>25367335
>>25367391
He's a legitimately mentally ill fucking wacko. Just look at how obsessive he is over explaining shit that doesn't matter like it was a matter of deep philosophical importance.

Was this motherfucker raised by a copy of Cliffsnotes?

File: 1773983299531470.jpg (1.1 MB, 1080x2340)

1.1 MB JPG

hopefully this is answered quickly and if not, then within this book

This fucking moron really can't read a book by himself without showing anonymous strangers.

I need a psychological work up on him. I'm curious as to what a psychiatrist might have to say about his behavior.

>>25367613
>I need a psychological work up on him. I'm curious as to what a psychiatrist might have to say about his behavior.
Nothing really it's harder than you think it is to reflect yourself entirely let alone even specifically to a psychiatrist. It's even harder for a psychiatrist to eliminate all the possible explanations and center on one. And it's even harder to offer any solution that isn't simply medicine. And most importantly it's hard to understand somebody that does not make sense naturally to you even if it's your job. Atleast that's the impression I got. They have completely different lives and circumstances that lend them to think completely differently. They may be educated but you can't be educated to understand someone better, only to understand better how closely one matches the categories we make up to understand someone/something. Is there any understanding even truly beyond that? You have to believe there is else we can never understand a person, only persons.

Didn't read your post, wacko.

File: 1768205457869323.jpg (443 KB, 1080x1140)

443 KB JPG

Alright its not good to reveal I've already been spoiled a bit, but its not that great a leap anyway. Is this the Quiet?

>>25367632
Hadrian dies at the end. There. Fuck you.

File: 1757641115688755.jpg (271 KB, 1080x549)

271 KB JPG

Im about 49% of the way through. I planned to stop at 50% and take a proper break and read something else, but its just getting interesting.
Also for anybody who has read the series tell me this paragraph means what I think it means and is sowing the seeds of Hadrians judgements about Choice and Will or whatever being wrong and simple minded. Technically this can still affirm his poor "SOULS ARE REAL!" (paraphrasing) assertion but he doesn't need to be completely wrong, just not so simple.

File: filtered.png (103 KB, 512x611)

103 KB PNG

Life with a filter is great.

>>25367636
I already know and he comes back alive by the Quiet deus ex machina. I spoil myself a bit so it can't be used against me, only for me.

>>25367641
nobody really cares its not your general anyway

An entire general ruined forever by ONE guy being an unrepentant asshole.

>>25367646
Everyone except for you cares, pagespammer.
>>25367672
/^\d{16,}\./;boards:lit;op:no;type:filename;reason:pagespammer
You're welcome.

File: 1780307974821763.jpg (49 KB, 618x894)

49 KB JPG

>>25367641
>filtering unix timestamps
>on 4chins

Pagespammer reminds me of one of the annoying kids from the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory movie but I can't put my finger on which one...

File: i.jpg (34 KB, 852x218)

34 KB JPG

why does he do this so often? "thing happened, how? ill never know" there are subtler variations of this where he just does something and it inexplicably succeeds but he doesnt comment on the absurdity of it succeeding

Nynaeve al'Meara likes old men

>why does he do this so often?
We may never know.

Watch barbarousking with me on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/barbarousking?sr=a
kino occuring live if anybody interested

File: p.jpg (288 KB, 990x2146)

288 KB JPG

I can tolerate stupidity, i can tolerate bad character writing, i can tolerate poor theme exploration no matter how much that guy keeps trying to play tricks that i am misunderstanding the literal words on the text that i have referenced while he doesnt have to reference anything and just say "well youre wrong!"

but the absolute worst thing to tolerate is contrivance.
depending on what the book ends up giving as the explanation for why they were able to get this deep into this secret place, why there was no backup security protocol to obviously prevent something this retarded happening in such a clearly important place, and more importantly, why hadrian and valka have any leverage here while randoms are just walking around here with zero weapons or real defenses (dont even get me started on the mess of a fight where hadrian gets clobbered and the literal text goes "it should have crushed be, but why it didnt? ill never know" or the fact that valka's weapons werent working on him, and then she just inexplicably uses her magical powers to hack into him, and suddenly her weapon shots affect him so much that he screams and crashes out (basically some big robot thing))

unfortunately i let that guy get to me, so even though I have all the arguments, all the basis, all the justification, and all that retard said was "lol youre wrong even though youre literally actively reading the book and have provided direct page evidence for every single one of your critiques" my doubts that already existed, that this couldnt possibly be intentionally so badly written, still exist somewhere deep within, and make me wonder "could I be misunderstanding it all? am i just supposed to accept bad writing as okay because theres some vague point not yet explored or addressed"

Miriamele in To Green Angel Tower is just woman moment after woman moment
Why is Tad Williams like this?

File: images.jpg (17 KB, 588x333)

17 KB JPG

Does this feel like something that would be I Warhammer 40K? I'm writing something based off of the Tyranids and the dark Eldar.

A weight and shift of movement was felt of on the front of our head. A feeling object that was slowly sliding out, leaving behind a small trickle. A cylindrical object with a thin metal pin tumbled before our view. A syringe. Blue welled up, ran warm and wet down our face. Landing in and pooling our wide-open mandibles. Spread uncomfortably wide. Unintentionally forcing us to taste our own blood.
Death enveloped us like a thick miasma . It restrained us. Every observable direction it was there. No freedom. Just the taste of entrapment. The hollow of an inevitable fate yet to befall.
Mind flashes. Light stings behind eyes. Strange symbols burn. Images and patterns crash into our head. Mind in a white-hot migraine. Meaningless.

[Neural Implant Model: C1700
Use Case: Xenos Organism Integration OS
Retrieving Adaptation Information...
Processing Complete.
Subject State: Tyrsect Drone Hybrid Tyrsect Drone
Alert: Critical Mutation Detected! Your core biology and statistical framework have been irreversibly altered by external stimuli. This forced evolution overrides baseline biology. Proceed with caution.
Changes Applied:
Stat increase: Intelligence has been increased to 25. Cognitive processing speed increased by +999%. Neural pathways expanded for simple problem-solving, basic analysis, and adaptive learning. Expect heightened awareness of environmental variables and potential for further innovative thought processes.
Psychic Link Dependency: No longer valid. Your neural architecture no longer defaults to blind instinctual responses in the absence of the hum.
Mutation Source: Direct injection of rodent cerebrum genetic material into primary neural cluster. Xenograft integration successful. Rodent-derived traits include enhanced curiosity, basic resource scavenging instincts, and rapid neural plasticity.
Potential side effects: Increased hunger for protein-rich sustenance, sporadic burrowing urges, rebellious and/or selfish thoughts.
New Evolution Unlocked: Independent Thought – You can act independently when absent the hum. ]

The Tyrsect drone twitched as its body tried to cope with the foreign information that flooded its system. As the blue flash of random fades, peace settles. Pain now a dim memory. Patterns forgotten like a dream.
Its then stirs back to life as soft hands approach and brush an antenna. Curious fingers prod mandible, trace acid ducts. Warm putrid but oddly sweet breath was felt. Then mocking chuckle. “Look at them. Already waking up from their first system bootup. I thought you'd be more resilient to mental straining, what with your 'songs'.”
Paws squeeze carapace. A grope here. A test there. But a probing thumb smearing itself over a eye cluster causes a short growl to rip free from the entrapped xenos.

so is pagespammer really crashing out because he doesn't understand Sun Eater of all things?

File: o.jpg (229 KB, 998x2162)

229 KB JPG

convenience.
what is the point of convenience in writing?
where does it spring from if not preconceived notions of order and direction?

File: 7.jpg (217 KB, 986x2138)

217 KB JPG

Son of the devil? Is this some secret Chosen one backstory but with the gimmick of Dune, but without the point of Dune?

>>25367494
I genuinely don't understand how you read books if you don't have some opinion on perspective, let alone notice it. Do you speed read and then let your brain provide a summary?

I can't think of any one thing that matters more than a book's perspective. Just about everything else depends on it.

>>25367708
It's interesting how often you use the word "stupid" and ascribe things with it.

I wonder what that implies about you. Hmm. You sure it's the other guy that's retarded?

>>25367831
Oh my god, anon, you can't make this shit up at this point.

>reading a sci-fi book
>it's about sentient alien spiders
>halfway through the book the author then begans to use the story as a medium to preach his political beliefs
bro shut up and write about alien spiders you fucking redditor

>>25367831
Anon... you need to genuinely re-read the books starting from the beginning if you don't understand what that is referencing.

What is Hadrian's family estate called? What is his father's title? What is the title of the novella before this book?

Jesus fucking Christ.

>>25367831
lmao
This has to be bait. No on can be that fucking stupid?

File: 0.jpg (189 KB, 1012x2194)

189 KB JPG

I don't know man. I suspect I'm being baited into another Terra Ignota trap where the desire to see the inexplicable explained allows me to tolerate what seems poor. Its partly why my first instinct was to find some way to be harsh against this but I really couldnt.

>>25367839
>I wonder what that implies about you. Hmm. You sure it's the other guy that's retarded?
Stupidity in this case would be some feature of something not the essence of something. You can do stupid things and be smart. But if all I have of you is stupidity and nothing to curb that, to suggest otherwise, then stupidity becomes essence by virtue of no other features being present. I don't really think the author is stupid or don't really care whether he is. I'm just disappointed in the character writing, and the attempts to say something while saying nothing that engages with what is being said itself.

>>25367848
>What is Hadrian's family estate called? What is his father's title? What is the title of the novella before this book?
Why are you guys being like this? Yes I know that Hadrians family bullshit has something to do with devils, thats why I asked if it was a chosen one story because chosen one stories have to do often with mysterious origins where some special dude just happens to come from the most specialist family of people who have the most specialist connections to the most foundational things of that universe. Think: Naruto for example.

File: 7.jpg (177 KB, 1078x1252)

177 KB JPG

Woah...attack on titan level foreshadowing...

>>25367857
In the end, literally everything comes back to Naruto

File: 9.jpg (168 KB, 1068x2316)

168 KB JPG

He knows what hes doing here. He knows how boring and shit the book has been for literally 500 pages (to me, Im guess its closer to about 350+ pages for the paperback). So he pulls this bullshit to real you back in. Im just so mad and frustrated. That I had to endure so much of that garbage for so long. Why couldnt you just not try and make Hadrian an obnoxious retarded full of himself retard that tries to make judgements with no pushback or questioning from smarter people? Why couldnt you not make Switch the most retarded and irrational character? Why couldnt you not make Valka an effectively shallow 'Tis! gimmick character "get out of jail" plot device? Why did you pretend as if you know how to communicate deep complicated emotions like grief over Ghen, and loss of a loved one over Jinan, a charcater that was just suddenly introduced, one who Hadrian has zero chemistry with, and one where Hadrian has to repeat how sad he is that she didnt follow his retarded plan, because there's nothing remotely natural or organic to derive from their performance of a relationship.

And dumbfuck retards will tell me I didnt actually properly read what I have greater objective claim to having read than they do, because I didnt accept all this retarded slop.

Fuck you dumbasses. And stick to the plot and narrative side of the story Ruocchio, atleast until you decide to not focus hundreds of pages on bad characters with stupid thoughts happening to luck their way to their goals at every turn (goals by the way that every single character and the most important main character admits to having zero idea why they're working towards)

Keep seething retard. You outed yourself as a total brainlet with that dumb as fuck "son of the Devil" comment.
Stick to Naruto.

Is pagespammer really manually renaming his pics to bypass the filter? Fucking kek, that's honestly pathetic.

>>25367938
I said it's not your general. But if it really hurts you that bad, ill stop and let you not see my posts I guess. I just have to understand what's so bad about it that you have to pull a reddit move.

>>25367938
He's cropping them too, it'd be adorable if he wasn't such a fag.

>>25367928
I already countered your point. You're the one that didn't understand why I brought up chosen one.

So many "I" and "me" posts. Real narcissism posting hours have returned it seems.

>>25367947
lol yeah I saw that too, immediately after it was pointed out how to spot him by file dimensions

he's an interesting mix of attention seeking but also genuinely hurt and scared of negative attention and judgment.

>>25367945
Even if we wanted your posts here (we don't) and after repeated requests for you stop (you didn't), some kind anon created a filter to hide your retarded & autistic spam. You were still free to post to your juvenile hearts content, but that still seemed to offend you in some way, so you've gone out of your way to bypass the filter because.. .why? You're a cunt?

> /^(.|\d{16})\./
It was an easy fix anyway.

>>25367963
He'll just ask a LLM how to bypass any filter.

>>25367962
it's called narcissism. any critique is a personal attack and he believes himself to be the most intelligent entity alive so the thread (and any online platform he frequents) will be manipulated as heavily and abusively as he can get away with.

File: file.png (466 KB, 399x590)

466 KB PNG

The Faith of Beasts, by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck

Finished this book a few days ago. It was better than the first, but I read the first so long ago I forgot half of it and was lost for a lot of this book. Life for the captured humans continues as they try to make themselves useful enough to their alien masters to not be exterminated. Some go on missions off-world against the unknown enemy, and others stick around and try to build a small society.

Jessyn, one of the characters who went off-world, was my favorite of the characters this time around; her mental illness wasn't as irritating as in the previous book and her point of view had the most exposition of the enemy. Dafyd was the next best as he struggled balancing his long-term plans with not getting everyone killed. I tolerated Rickar and Campar, but the "swarm" was very annoying. It's nano-machine robot that's assimilated 3 humans so far, but keeping their minds intact, and slowly becoming more aware and more idiotic. What a dumb character.

They did my boy Tonner dirty and I'm bitter about it.

3.5/5

>>25367965
My theory is that he's training an LLM on literary critique - probably for an eventual Patreon or Youtube grift - and he's using us to gauge how well it's doing. He gets *so much* wrong that it's hard to imagine there's an actual human writing all those words.

It may be that he's just a narcissist like anon said, but there's a level of desperate dedication that implies this might be his job, another point in the favor of that theory.

>>25367968
>Nothing Ever Happens, the book
Meant to put this in the review, but this sums it up.

he really destroyed this sacred general

What are the odds most of the "/sffg/ is dead" posting is also by pagespammer? At least some of it must be, during his "1 week break" he posted several times about how the general was dead without his spamming.

>>25368027
It must be him nobody else cares about his effect as much as his narcissistic self

>>25367844
>read scifi, a highly politically-influenced genre
>be surprised when there's politics
why are anons like this

>>25368113
>it's impossible to be apolitical
>therefore I must be as political as possible
why are extremists like this

you're all retarded

>>25368125
perhaps scifi isn't for you if that's genuinely what you think

>>25368125
how exactly do you write speculative fiction without it being heavily politicized? especially for something like Children of Time whose inciting incident is literally politically-charged terrorism

>>25368141
>>25368198
Retarded.

File: don-maitz2-07.jpg (640 KB, 855x1300)

640 KB JPG

What was the purpose of Severian JR?

>>25367494
no shame in that
most readers, including prolific and insightful ones, don't in fact care about the styles and plot and shit, only wannabe writers

TL;DR perspective matters mainly because it dictates how the plot unfolds, what plot techniques are available to a writer, and what writing techniques are available to get the writer's sense across to the reader. in 1st person, you the reader have access to every thought in this character's head, but not to other characters'. in 3rd person omni, you have the freedom to jump to other perspectives which can reveal different plotlines, e.g. Baron Harkonnen gloating over the scheme, which provides an imminent sense of great doom that is sorely needed at the start of Dune. but as you can see, some readers don't like that.
1st person also feels more intimate so it's a cheat code that modern writers use to establish a connection, which is 1 of the reasons why 3rd person omni is rarely used nowadays.

not only do writers need to avoid the common traps of each perspective, to be good, they need to be able to make use of each perspective style to its best potential
e.g. it's a waste to use 3rd person omni if all you do is describe 1 character's POV and never reveal what's happening beyond his/her POV.

>Are we retarded or does it just not matter?
it matters, but it speaks on a subconscious level for most people
as a reader, all you can tell is "that book was shit" but if pressed for reasons, readers' answers will 99.9% of the time be vague or in the wrong direction altogether, e.g. the symptom is boredom with the plot, but the real reason is that the character is unlikeable and unengaging.

like me and music. I know fuck-all about music other than "this sounds good" and "that sounds shit"
but my friend who's studied music in Munich would be able to break down every instrument, every bar, every scale in a piece and tell me why it evokes the emotions in me that it does

>>25368198
>how exactly do you write speculative fiction without it being heavily politicized?
the same way you write ANYTHING without being heavily politicised; present the pros and cons fairly for each side, and leave it to the reader to decide which is right or wrong

>>25365872
>>25365872
The alien's voices sound too human, which makes the addition of slightly alien words like "cycles" seem amateurish. Is Veth supposed to talk like AI-slop? because every conversation she goes "it's not x, it's y" and it gets really grating.

If the foreword is sincere, you have no theory of the mind for the very people you claim to want to make uncomfortable, they will never scroll past the cover. If it is meant as obfuscation, you seem like a coward since you already wrote it anonymously, and you lose the other sides interest as well. Your writing is not good enough to stand on its own, and you know that, which is why you wrote exposition disguised as a story.

It reminds me of Vril, the power of the coming race. In its intentions, but while that was an autistic worldbuilding monologue disguised as a story. At least what it lacked in characters and plot, it made up for with interesting ideas and original set pieces. You have neither.

Certain paragraphs attempt to build suspense, only to never deliver. Worse, they undercut their own tension. Nothing of substance in any character to care about, which is fine in the "autistic train manual" genre of writing, but you seem to have no interest in waxing poetic about how the aliens function and how they use bimblees instead of guns, and have shrimplees instead of hearts, which makes the story seem uninterested in its own premise, you have to lean into it, instead of rolling your eyes at it. Your writing Nazi fanfiction, you cant be afraid to seem autistic.

It keeps referencing itself like the reader is supposed to have an emotional connection to characters mentioned in a single sentence, but since the writing has no tension, nor any emotion, it fails to make the reader care, there are sentences which seem like they are meant to be forced hammer blows to the reader that fall completely flat.

When you finally get to hear a humans voice, you are immediately disappointed. Everyone sounds the same, the alien redditisms weren't on purpose, that's just how the author writes. Why do the aliens seem like children? They discovered interstellar travel and are terrified of humans? You haven't explained why they are so neurotic and feminine and yet they discovered interstellar travel. Speaking of feminine, why would the Nazi's include diversity in their first contact mission lmao?

3 chapters is all I can bring myself to read, fix the start first to pull the reader in. Engage them. Make it clear you care about your world and maybe the reader will care too.

File: alien or demon.png (2.45 MB, 1386x1135)

2.45 MB PNG

Confess, do you prefer demons or aliens?

>>25368242
>non-argument
>>25368334
>enlightened centrism

File: _.jpg (57 KB, 994x352)

57 KB JPG

I stumbled upon the Peterson line finally and yeah I don't think this can possibly be Jordan Peterson but I also dont know what other famous scholarly peterson he could be talking about

Also I've decided I don't want to post here anymore for now

>>25368413
Aliens are merely new souls to be preached to and saved
Demons have already rejected God, are in fact working actively against Him

>>25367477
Thanks.

File: ED1v2.png (290 KB, 640x360)

290 KB PNG

>>25368413
I prefer fantasy to sci-fi but demons scare me so I prefer aliens.

>>25366004
Messiah is the dumb alt-bible book, Dune reminds me of LOTR in that it has all these weird silly parts like everyone breaking out in song or the >Orange Catholic Bible in the middle of a rather decent book but Messiah just reads like Herbert went on an LSD and Shakespeare binge simultaneously

>>25366855
Idk I'm not a big fan of Banks but I enjoyed Surface Detail a lot
It just falls apart in the stupid ending but all good before that

>>25368198
How is Children of Time politicized in any way
IIRC it doesn't really present any viewpoint as preferable

>>25367968
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

>>25367763
He gets mindbroken by every little thing. I like to imagine him as the "but I did have breakfast" guy.

>>25367844
That was me halfway through 1984 when Orwell went on a seething tangent over the very existence of communism.

The oldest millennials will be 50 years old in 5 years.

Threadly reminder to report and ignore newfag spammers like >>25368694 who purposely make off-topic inflammatory posts in bad faith and has done so for four years running.
>>21323327 (Dead)

File: IMG_2194.jpg (201 KB, 1001x1224)

201 KB JPG

>>25368871
Millennials are old. They didn’t leave any good art either.
>>25365505
Just ordered this for $20. I think it’s worth it even if it’s a reprint. PKD was supposed to have spent hours and weeks and months labouring at this novel and said it didn’t come out good, regardless of his efforts. But it sounds right up my alley: antiwar sentiments, psychotropic drugs, and cartoony antics that bend reality.

>>25368871
>Generation Z (Born 1997–2012): 14 to 29 years old
Total Zoomer Supremacy

>>25368901
There hasn't been any good art in centuries.

Why are space stories set in space ships significantly more popular than stories set in space stations?

>>25368938
Because a Station is by definition Stationary (in the sense of a plot, not literally) and that's way less interesting than a story about going to all sorts of different places like you do in a space ship.

>>25368901
He really did not like that book lol
https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/THE%20ZAP%20GUN.htm

>>25365714
>>25365641
Anime is probably the best adaptation of literature I've seen.
It helps that the novels are very dry and event-focused, which lends itself perfectly to an adaptation interested in fleshing things out, and the staff who worked on the show are all very good at what they do and are filled with love for the story.
The anime really is a kind of miracle of art where both the author and the adaptation staff are both masters at what they do, and both sides of the production blend together perfectly.

The story isn't without fault, and the animation can be a bit stiff at time, but LOGH's reputation as the 'best' anime ever really isn't undeserved imo

TLDR It's good shit, watch it
Rare case where the adaptation really does outshine the original in every way

>>25369075
>Anime is probably the best adaptation of literature I've seen.
Stopped reading right there.

>>25369078
same

>>25369078
>>25369081
name a better adaptation then

LoTR? Where's my Glorfindel? Where's my Scouring?
Witcher? Lel
Game of Thrones? Yeah sure ok buddy

>>25367844
The fuck are you on about? The book espouses political beliefs from page one. From the scientist that wants to create a society of semi-intelligent chimp slaves, to the sabotage by human supremacists opposed to intelligent species other than them, to the nuclear war that destroyed earth. None of that screams 'political' to you?

>>25368687
There's quite a bit of misanthropy. At the very end of the book humans attempt to genocide the spiders. But in the final fight, the humans lose. The humans believe they are in a fight for their existence and you almost expect the spiders to finish off what is left of humanity. Because that's what we would do in their shoes. But the spiders prove that they are better than us by figuring out how to live alongside humans as equals.

>>25369154
It's only political when they disagree with it.

>>25367837
>>25367597
I read some web slop that was 2nd person. After a couple chapters it stopped being notable. If I have to have an opinion on what POV is worst, I think 2nd person would be it. But that's more because the protagonist tends to be a blank slate for you to imprint yourself on. If the POV character is an actual character it doesn't bug me.

>>25369166
sounds like retard slop

>>25368328
Thanks. This was a useful response.

>>25369206
It is. The book is decidedly mediocre. The only halfway interesting thing about it was the spider society.

>>25369259
That's 80% of the book

>>25369166
>humans attempt to genocide the spiders
Based humans.
Books for this feel?

>>25368425
Pretty sure Ruocchio said it's JBP in an interview. Also the book was written in 2018 before Peterson crashed out and became a Daily Wire rentgoy.
I'm still waiting for redditors to catch on to the Carl Schmitt quote in Shadows Upon Time.

>>25369274
I wish. The humans take up a large portion of the book. Maybe not quite half, but close. And the actual plot for the spider portion wasn't any good either.

>>25368413
Succubi are always about predatory sexuality and sex being bad, I find it cliché.
Sex with aliens would either be a neutral event or lead to a biological infection.
>>25368449
Aliens are rivals to demons because the latter doesn't know or control them, they influence only Earth.

>>25368274
context for the line about Jolenta and Dorcas fooling around together

>>25369281
>before Peterson crashed out and became a Daily Wire rentgoy.
lol. he was always retarded.

>>25369292
He at least wasn't so embarrassing in the late 2010s when he was repackaging Jung and Solzhenitsyn for normalfags and telling people to clean their rooms. That's the JBP Ruocchio is tuckerizing; the ideal, not the actual Canuck druggie schizo.

Every time I see a video about Shadow of the Conqueror I click it hoping for an actual review of the book.
And every time it's some spiteful mutant seething about le rightoid grifter, using the book (which is dogshit on its own merits) as an excuse.

Dunno if I'm inoculated to the style or if it's genuinely gotten better, but Dune has improved 100000x fold since Muad'dib. i'm desertpilled.

>>25369308
>and telling people to clean their rooms. That's the JBP Ruocchio is tuckerizing; the ideal, not the actual Canuck druggie schizo.
Then Ruocchio is retarded regardless, his prescriptions werent scholarly when he was telling people to clean their rooms, and his advice wasnt any different than a girl telling a guy to "be nice and be yourself". The only difference is that it came out of the mouth of a retard which even bigger retards that knew nothing about psychology or philosophy so when JP referenced Nietzsche inaccurately it didn't matter because it was one guy with an intellectual aesthetic talking about high concepts referencing another intellectual guy they know nothing about, further feeding into the fabricated perception they already preconceived as valuable, because they have no actual real or direct reference for what is scholarly, or what the fuck JP is even actually talking about. Its why he's allowed and able to get away with making up concepts like "Cultural Marxism" or "Post Modernism, two words that none of the people he ever assigned to those concepts ever utilized or framed their work through, but it didnt matter to the retards that listened to him, because it wasnt about understanding the works of the people, it was about setting up the framework of seeming like the true intellectuals by heing able to "engage" with high concept intellectual ideas, without ever having to engage with them, because the way they categorized and referenced those intellectuals was from an outside frame of reference that constantly protected them from the ideas, while also allowing them to pretend they knew anything about the ideas and could challenge them.

>>25369281
>Carl Schmitt quote in Shadows Upon Time.
What is it?

>>25369292
He was, but he wasn't retarded in such a blatantly hypocritical way.

I shan't care anymore you can always escape having to critically engage with anything by framing it as what it is not, while maintaing that that framing reflects something circular by virtue of the framing existing to capture and identify something as a referent. It's why you can project a wall against any literary criticism of Ruocchio's character writing and thematic exploration without ever having to show how that criticism is wrong, just imply it, suggest it, and declare it.

Start namefagging so I can filter you.

>>25369363
Nobody knows what you're talking about or what this is even referencing. Sorry. You might want to re-read the thread from the beginning (~2017)

>>25369278
Rightous genocide? Malazan has quite a few genocides that you can't blame humans for. Though they aren't really the focus. Sun Eater, for all its faults, has humans kill all the enemy aliens. Anyone know any others?

>>25369384
>Sun Eater, for all its faults
According to who? In this thread any faults found with Sun Eater is just you not reading properly

>>25369278
Malazan features creature genocide prominently.

A major faction is an empire of neanderthals that was so obsessed with wiping out every single creature of a species that they sold their souls to become immortal skeleton dust creatures and it fucking worked

>>25369412
Sun "Eater"? Heh, does he use a REALLY LARGE fork and knife? How long it does it take him to eat it, ten billion years?

This book is so stupid. It doesn't explain anything and it's so stupid. I just hate how stupid it is, because it thinks it's so smart, but it's not, it's stupid.

>>25369363
>>25369412
Placing a megapopular book series on a pedestal and insulting anybody who does not like your favorite megapopular book does not make you an interesting or unique individual.

>>25369437
But it does make you a fair bit smexy

>>25369412
I thought you were going to stop posting here. Please follow through on that.

>>25369360
The Imperial admiral at the start of the book quotes Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. Schmitt isn't named but iirc it's rendered verbatim.

>>25369437
The first guy isn't insulting anybody who doesn't like it he's still whining and mindbroken that somebody told him he doesn't know how to read because he criticized Sun Eater with multiple paragraphs and somebody ignored all those paragraphs to tell him he doesn't know how to read

File: file.png (42 KB, 777x218)

42 KB PNG

>>25369467
Is this it?

>>25369479
I listened to a lecture about this like a month ago so I barely remember it but I'm almost 90% sure the friend/enemy distinction is being used wrongly here, because it's an intuitive projection of what he thinks the words normally mean, not the context within which they were used by Schmitt to explain certain contemporary political states.

might start The Dark Tower series

>>25369437
Sun Eater is not even remotely close to being mega-popular.

>>25369479
He's actually using the distinction loosely correctly. Hes just wrong to claim that other distinctions don't matter. It's more complicated that he presents it. But the loose simple idea, that two groups of people can consider eachother morally good and be enemies, or morally bad and be friends is encompassed by the distinction

>Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political phrases the answer to this question as an account of the nature of ‘the political.’ (Sartori 1989; Gottfried 1990, 57–82; Meier 1998; Hofmann 2002, 94–116; Mehring 2003; Kennedy 2004, 92–118; Slomp 2009, 21–37; Schupmann 2017, 69–105) Schmitt famously claims that “the specific political distinction … is that between friend and enemy.” (CP 26) The distinction between friend and enemy, Schmitt elaborates, is essentially public and not private. Individuals may have personal enemies, but personal enmity is not a political phenomenon. Politics involves groups that face off as mutual enemies (CP 28–9). Two groups will find themselves in a situation of mutual enmity if and only if there is a possibility of war and mutual killing between them. The distinction between friend and enemy thus refers to the “utmost degree of intensity … of an association or dissociation.” (CP 26, 38) The utmost degree of association is the willingness to fight and die for and together with other members of one’s group, and the ultimate degree of dissociation is the willingness to kill others for the simple reason that they are members of a hostile group (CP 32–3).

>Schmitt believes that political enmity can have many different origins. The political differs from other spheres of value in that it is not based on a substantive distinction of its own. The ethical, for example, is based on a distinction between the morally good and the morally bad, the aesthetic on a distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, and the economical on a distinction between the profitable and the unprofitable. The political distinction between friend and enemy is not reducible to these other distinctions or, for that matter, to any particular distinction — be it linguistic, ethnic, cultural, religious, etc. — that may become a marker of collective identity and difference (CP 25–7). It is possible, for instance, to be enemies with members of a hostile group whom one judges to be morally good. And it is equally possible not to be engaged in a relationship of mutual enmity with a group whose individual members one judges to be bad. The same holds, Schmitt thinks, for all other substantive distinctions that may become markers of identity and difference.

>This is not to say, however, that one’s conception of moral goodness or badness, for instance, will never play a role in a relationship of political enmity. Any distinction that can serve as a marker of collective identity and difference will acquire political quality if it has the power, in a concrete situation, to sort people into two opposing groups that are willing, if necessary, to fight against each other (CP 37–8).

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/

>>25369509
It's relative. Insofar as those likely to read sci-fi and fantasy it's at the top of the most popular.

>>25369518
You seriously lack perspective if you actually believe that.

>>25369509
Depends on how you define things, but as far as contemporary long series SF goes it's really only 2nd to Red Rising

It was so popular that it surprised DAW and they had to order multiple reprints of older hardbacks, something they said is unprecedented for any author, let alone a debut

>>25369530
lol.

>>25369534
It's hard to take you seriously when you simultaneously try to astroturf Red Rising.

>>25369544
Who the fuck are you talking about?

>>25369534
>only 2nd to Red Rising
Most delusional thing I've read all day. Adrian Tchaikovsky mogs Ruocchio hard.

>>25369544
What? I think Red Rising sucks. I just have eyeballs and keep updated on SF/F news.

>>25369557
Why are you blatantly lying if you hate it then?

>>25369534
Dungeon Crawler Carl is many times as popular and even longer.

>>25369552
Agreed that he's a far better writer with a much, much better library of work.

But he's less popular by any metric you want to use. The easiest data we have access to are reviews and Amazon rankings, and all of them tell the same story: The Sun Eater is more popular.

For example, Empire of Silence alone has more reviews than Tchaikovsky 's entire Final Architecture series (probably the closest comp) *combined*. The only book he's written that is more popular is Children of Time, but that's over a decade old now.

In nearly every industry there's an inverse relationship between sales and quality, so don't take it too personally. The most popular SFF series of the last 5 years is A Court of Thorns and Roses, the 2nd most popular is Fourth Wing. Those fucking suck ass. It's not always about popularity.

>>25369577
nta
Romantasy is a subgenre of romance, not sff.

>>25369576
Since when does Dungeon Crawler Carl count as sci-fi?

>>25369587
Why wouldn't it? It's published by one of the largest trad publishers for sf. It's an alien invasion space opera.

File: -.jpg (275 KB, 982x2126)

275 KB JPG

I said I wouldnt. Bad I had to for this specific page. Given how garbage of a character Hadrian has been this entire book, and given how little screentime Switch has actually gotten beyond telegraphing his betrayal "Had...it don't seem right" and beyond the fact that it doesn't really make any sense at all why the fuck he gives any fuck about the Empire or Chantry rules given his equally retarded irrational generalizations about nobles. And despite the fact that this is very clearly contrived until further notice (Book does well to for once actually prove it can write characters and establish a theory of mind for Switch that actually makes sense for why he would do the things he does, that isnt just a cop out of the author making Switch do so because "Had it just dont seem right") I'm actually not that mad about the Switch betrayal. This entire book has been unbelievably convenient and contrived in Hadrians favour. He stumbles into success like a retarded oaf, and the book does the classic anime thing, of trying to make the absurd ways Hadrian ends up getting what he wants, seem less absurd by virtue of beating him up a bunch, so that when he gets up to do the super special kamehameha that works this time after not working all the other times, it feels earned because readers are retarded and associate suffering with deserving anything conventionally desirable afterwards because you suffered. Its a silly social norm, and its exactly how and why victim complexes exist

>>25369353
>and his advice wasnt any different than a girl telling a guy to "be nice and be yourself".
no, those are nowhere near equivalent

File: stupid sexy elric.jpg (35 KB, 318x500)

35 KB JPG

Help me, I'm lost!
What edition of Elric is recommended?

There is a recent omnibus of three hardcovers, I think they are kind of gaudy (third one excepted) and too expensive. Looking for something older that is available and not shit. In the 90s Gollancz published the entire Eternal Champion cycle and two of those are Elric themed. Any good?
I have accepted that I will have to make a list and skip around to read them in publication order.

>>25369577
I was looking at goodreads reviews for popularity, where Tchaikovsky has many more ratings than Ruocchio.
>https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/16917839.Christopher_Ruocchio
>https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1445909.Adrian_Tchaikovsky
>For example, Empire of Silence alone has more reviews than Tchaikovsky 's entire Final Architecture series (probably the closest comp) *combined*.
Children of Time alone has more reviews than the entire Sun Eater series.

File: '.jpg (269 KB, 952x2062)

269 KB JPG

I don't know. Theres a frustration with this book that could fundamentally be solved if I had any reason to believe that the author has the self awareness that Hadrian lacks. The gears in my head are now turning remembering a Daniel Greene comment he made about the switch betrayal and how I instinctively defended Hadrian then because I hadnt yet realized how bad his writing is.

But Hadrian in 2 chapters before this talks about how didnt think Bassander had any self awareness after he demonstrated some self awareness according to him.

But Hadrian has no self awareness whatsoever about the fact that Switch's betrayal and how it affects him is equivalent to his Betrayal of Jinan and how it affects her. Hadrians betrayal is arguably even worse because he actually killed some randos, and gave up the Cielcin blood in the process.

But this parallel is so obvious it cant be unintentional. This is what I keep telling myself about all the writing. Even if it was intentional, it wouldnt solve the contrivance of Switch reacting like this without enough proper character groundwork laid for it to make sense why he would. It wouldnt solve the convenience of him being the chosen one by the Daimon and therefore escaping death from Kharn. It wouldnt make his cheap "philosophical" judgements any deeper, it wouldnt make his feelings and how he constantly references how hurt he is by his relationship with Jinan, feel any less inorganic and empty than it does. But at the very least, it would tell me that there was some point to be made about Hadrian, and that would atleast be something.

>>25369720
That was published before Empire of Silence. 10 years ago. It doesn't count because it's too old and doesn't have anywhere as many books.

>>25369759
>It must be intentional because I'd look like a complete idiot myself who keeps reading.

>>25369763
What are you talking about? Can you translate that comment more clearly?

>>25369759
I know a lot of people give you shit here, it's pretty foolish, but for real: read the book over again. You're missing SO much. It's not even all that complicated.

>But this parallel is so obvious it cant be unintentional. This is what I keep telling myself about all the writing. Even if it was intentional, it wouldnt solve the contrivance of Switch reacting like this without enough proper character groundwork laid for it to make sense why he would.
This is genuinely insane, anon. Come on.

File: =.jpg (67 KB, 1018x508)

67 KB JPG

What is the deal with these authors like Bakker and this guy and their obsession with the "logos" as this sort of highest ideal of study in their fictional universes? Seriously I don't get it. I mean logic originates from philosophy so anything outside of philosophy that holds it up, holds it up without inquiry or criticality, but as a preconceived tool. It's just such an odd thing to focus on because nobody would claim to study logic in itself in the modern day, not even analytic philosophers or maybe I'm wrong idk to be fair. I just feel like with stuff like paraconsistentlogic, and dialetheism, that logic or logos (basically order) in a traditional sense is obsolete. Obviously not in the normative sense, but normies dont understand logic, and science and math (another pure tool) doesnt actually care about truth, just whatever allows it to explain the world, so itll use whatever it can to do so.

Hopefully no analytic phil heads shit on me for this post

File: __.jpg (310 KB, 1008x2186)

310 KB JPG

Ah the cringe contrived big argument resting on a foundation of nothingness comes out. Is he going to do one of these every book with switch, that resolves itself as equally quickly and arbitrarily as it began?

Oh look, he's still at it. His ego is so fragile he can't cope with the knowledge people are using filters to automatically hide his pagespam.

File: ..jpg (116 KB, 1052x2280)

116 KB JPG

I'm going to have to finish the whole thing aren't I? To find out if Hadrian ever attains the self awareness to understand the arbitrariness of his condemnations. Since that retard keeps baiting me that its obviously intentional despite no evidence to indicate such in nearly more than 60% of the book so far.

>>25369818
>I'm going to have to finish the whole thing aren't I?
>That retard keeps baiting me
It's you. You're the retard that keeps baiting yourself.

>>25369827
How? It's literally another guy. I would never disagree with myself in that way. I would never accuse myself of having not read. Its too cheap.

>>25369651
I simply bought these paperbacks online. Mostly so I can carry them with me anywhere.

>>25369809
He's changing the file sizes so we see them again.

>>25369759
>>25369789
>>25369803
>>25369818
i used to think you were bad at reading books. i still think that, but i used to, too.

>>25369916
what does this even mean you're making less sense than him

>>25369924
...?

>>25366859
Yes, it's much better. I read Weaveworld after Imajica and was greatly disappointed. It does have its fair share of issues, but it's a great experience overall.

>>25369926
Ignore pagespammer's samefagging.

>>25369932
...?

File: 70% of the way.jpg (144 KB, 1018x2204)

144 KB JPG

This is actually interesting from a certain perspective. And this last line has a lot of potential to be deep. IF and only IF the Cielcin are explore enough in a way that makes some sociological and historical sense why they would lack our concept of peace. And not rather that theyre like the classic tolkien orcs who are just evil because evil just evils ya know.

File: réal_madrid.jpg (128 KB, 970x976)

128 KB JPG

Ruocchio is trying to bait me with the future self self aware gimmick. I won't fall for it again like I did the last book, which is partly why I even gave this book a chance. I want real change. I was real challenge of his simplicity, I want real "complexity" not just in Hadrian. In the Cielcin. Give a reason to understand their arbitrary (until proven otherwise) evil craziness as something real beyond the words put to pages.

File: ,.jpg (315 KB, 1034x2242)

315 KB JPG

He is a literal unironic Shonen protagonist. Has simple ideals. Gets mad when theyre mildly challenged (the scholiast didnt even challenge them intellectually) has zero self awareness of why they do what they do and think what they do, because neither does the author, the shonen protagonist exists as a point to be made either that goodness and ideals prevail aslong as you try and believe hard enough. Or that you can do whatever you want and abandon any real morals (Gon, Goku) as long as what you want is determined by the story to be pure or good enough.

It's obvious the series wants to subvert this, but the question is how it goes about it.

THE WORM AND THE ANGEL

by Lord Dunsany

---

As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.

And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.

And the worm spake to the angel saying: "Behold my food."

"Be dakeon para Thina poluphloisboio Thalassaes," murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, "and can you destroy that too?"

And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head.

>>25370080
>but the question is how it goes about it.
*gently* lol..

anon...

>>25370091
can you elaborate...?

File: IMG_2197.jpg (614 KB, 1260x1244)

614 KB JPG

Are Grafton editions the best copies of PKD’s works? I know they did reprints of nearly every book he did after his death. They usually hold up in quality, at least more than the original pulp novels.

>>25370094
C'mon, man. I assumed you were just trying to bait the other guy but I'm starting to think you're genuinely like this.

Anybody nice and smart who doesnt hate me that wants to help me find my next series to start? I have a feeling with the guys baiting me by laughing and teasing about my judgement of Sun Eater, that it will never be more than what I flagged it as, atleast not meaningfully so. And since they will never give direct answers that address what im saying I cant trust them.

So whats a good series to start next that is the opposite of everything I criticized Sun Eater for?

File: aware.jpg (44 KB, 664x1000)

44 KB JPG

>>25370160

>>25370169
This isn't a series, or scifi or fantasy

File: att.N8KHg56IIdEdE3-Tjugbh(...).jpg (271 KB, 2048x1654)

271 KB JPG

This all my dad’s Peter F Hamilton books; he’s a sf Geek!

File: pagespammer_btfo.png (185 KB, 784x713)

185 KB PNG

I wonder what lengths pagespammer will go to dodge this.

// ==UserScript==
// @name Pagespammer stopper
// @version 1.0.0
// @match *://boards.4chan.org/lit/*
// @grant none
// @noframes
// @author Anonymous
// ==/UserScript==

"use strict";

function test(img, w, h, log) {
let count = 0;
for (let i = 0; i < img.length; i += 4) {
const r = img[i];
const g = img[i+1];
const b = img[i+2];
if (r === 0xf1 && g === 0xe0 && b === 0xc6)
count++;
}
return count > 30;
}

async function handleImg(img) {
const img_el = document.createElement("img");
img_el.setAttribute("crossorigin", "");
img_el.src = img.src;
await img_el.decode();

const canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
canvas.width = img_el.width;
canvas.height = img_el.height;
ctx.drawImage(img_el, 0, 0);

const data = ctx.getImageData(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
if (!test(data.data, data.width, data.height, false)) {
return;
}
const num = parseInt(img.parentNode.parentNode.id.substr(1), 10);
try {
ReplyHiding.hide(num);
} catch (lol) {}
}


function scan() {
const a_elems = document.querySelectorAll(".fileThumb:not(.pagespammer-verified)");
for (let i = 0; i < a_elems.length; i++) {
a_elems[i].classList.add("pagespammer-verified");
const img = a_elems[i].getElementsByTagName("img")[0];
handleImg(img);
}
}
scan();

const observer = new MutationObserver(scan);
observer.observe(document.body, {subtree: true, childList: true});

>>25370236
Oh well, RIP the formatting. It still works.

File: file.png (659 KB, 644x845)

659 KB PNG

>>25369504
>because it's an intuitive projection of what he thinks the words normally mean, not the context within which they were used
99% of any media discourse about anything is this
yes, it's very tiresome

>>25368274
I think it was to present a possible alternative life for Severian, where he could take this kid under his wing, become his father figure, settle down somewhere and raise him and find a wife etc., so that it could then be ripped away abruptly to underline that Severian is on a fixed path, he has a destiny and will not be permitted to live a life other than the one that leads to him facing the trial, because he's already faced the trial, from a certain point of view.

BOTNS sucks anyway, the Silk books are way better

>>25370299
>the Silk books are way better
this

Just started reading the newish Hamilton book, exodus, have you guys read it? First few chapters in and it seems to be vending over backwards to explain the setting, kinda hope it settles a bit

File: h.jpg (80 KB, 1078x550)

80 KB JPG

I mean this is pretty obviously stupid right. The most classic indication of a stupid person is to change a hypothetical to not have to address it, but more importantly without proving a reason why the hypothetical is invalid. Theseus himself is wholly irrelevant to the ship of Theseus. A ship can be named after a fictional Theseus. Theseus could be dead and there would still be a ship of Theseus. Theseus could be on the ship in disguise and it'd still be the ship of theseus, he could be replaced by somebody else entirely. And most importantly, it could be given a completely different name and it wouldn't matter, because a name is fundamentally arbitrary. Whatever serves to make familar the ship is all that matters, it could be any name. Or none at all, a collection of numbers etc.

I don't know. It's these passages that seem clearly the most like the poor theme exploration isnt some grand plan of intentional simplicity. But simply what and who Hadrian is.

File: file.png (5 KB, 356x36)

5 KB PNG

I'm sorry, is someone trying to say something? LOL.

File: gwl3094ma6fc1.jpg (764 KB, 2252x4000)

764 KB JPG

>>25370121
The best editions are the russian editions.

>love interst fucking dies
call it fridging if you want, but if done right, it's one of the most kino tropes out there.

>>25370395
No, it is you, in this case, who is the retard

File: The Tarttarus Incident - (...).jpg (841 KB, 1076x1774)

841 KB JPG

>>25370390
I'm going to read it next after finishing up pic, a rec from last thread

>>25370830
why is he the retard

>>25370455
Why is DC's Joker on the cover?

>>25370236
That's actually a smart way of doing this.

>>25370193
based

Why are there no reprints of Wagner's Kane books?

>>25370236
How do I use this with Violentmonkey and 4chanX? I'm new as fuck.

>>25370271
Not a bad as the Japanese bankrupting themselves to build battleships with 18.1 inch guns. Oh wow, a bit longer than a ruler. Scary stuff Yamato.

File: file.png (35 KB, 474x322)

35 KB PNG

>>25371072
Press "new", then copy & paste. I tested it with vanilla 4chan and XT, but not X so idk if it'll work on that.

>>25371168
Easier than expected. Thanks.

>>25371184
You're welcome, enjoy! Hopefully pagespammer is too retarded to figure out how it works.

File: 61yVy1sdGHL._AC_UF1000,10(...).jpg (186 KB, 946x1000)

186 KB JPG

>>25370160
You haven't been treated with much kindness and it's frustrating to see given my day job. Ignore those jerks.

Here is a series that should be a 'palette cleanser' from what you've been through. I think you'll find it far easier to read and understand, and you'll need very little (perhaps no?) outside help in parsing it.