Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Lovecraft was absolutely a crazy racist. But I tend to try and take stories as stories. Indeed, one of the things I disagree with The Lovecraft Reread about is their interpretation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", or rather, the interpretation in the comments, some of which seems to see it as a story that's just propaganda saying "don't get together with people of other races". But it's really about these fish people who live under the sea and predate humanity and who are more advanced than us, think of possibly malevolent advanced aliens but like, right here. They want human sacrifices, and they want to interbreed with humans to make more of their own kind.I won't ruin the end but let's just say that narrative gets ambivalent. Anyway, sure you could read it as straightforward anti-miscegenation propaganda if you want. But I don't see why the author's personal views should dominate the in-universe story, so to speak. Also, there are a lot of classic authors who turn out, on inspection, to be pretty racist, IIRC Dickens was fairly anti-Semitic, among other things.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in … es_DickensThat's not to knock Dickens, or excuse Lovecraft. Rather, what I'm saying is that I'm perfectly willing to read stories as stories, rather than dragging in outside stuff. If a character or story is racist, I take that as the character or story being racist. That having been said, I'm not slamming people for not being into problematic authors, though I will say one virtue of Lovecraft is that unlike some other racist authors, Ayn Rand for example, he's not trying to tell us how to think or live.But especially personally, yeah, he was terrifyingly racist. The cool thing is, I don't see a lot of people who are into him trying to cover it up. Indeed, there's an introductory essay in the first collection of his I ever read, "Dagon and Other Macabre Tales", where a passage from a letter of his about people in NYC is compared with a passage in his story "The Lurking Fear", the passage from the NYC letter being horribly racist and the passage from "The Lurking Fear" being more about, well something else because again I'm not trying to spoil stuff, though TLF isn't one of his greatest stories, by any means.The thing people forget though, and I think this speaks to Dark's point, is that the early twentieth century was just pretty weird, all round. For example, many people don't know this, but Hitler praised Henry Ford in Mein Kampf as being a huge source of his ideas about race. Eugenics was pretty huge and pretty well-regarded by a chunk of the scientific community. Again, this is not to excuse Lovecraft, so far as I know he was an uber-racist, even for his times.But still, there was just so so much of that kind of thing around back then. Check out some minstrel recordings on old cylinder records some time, if you feel like some disturbing examples, or the category called, and I'm sorry in advance but that's what they're called, "coon songs". They were hugely popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they couldn't publish enough of them, and even some famous composers like Irving Berlin wrote some. I got morbidly fascinated by it all when I found out they exist as actual recordings, because you hear so much about minstrel shows and all, but we have no real idea of what they're like. The recordings, though made when they were seriously declining, give us a tangible glimpse of history we usually only read about.http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/I warn you, if you search for either category, you will hear the n-word more times in one song than you've probably heard it in your entire life. I exhagerate for effect, of course, but not necessarily by much. The sad thing is, some of them are pretty catchy, as songs go naturally, not in terms of their lyrical content. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/528007/#p528007 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review What personally interests me in Lovecraft is indeed that sort of reality bending horror which verges on fantasy, or at least seeing the world in another twisted light. Gayman is one of my personal favourite authors, and I've always liked when writers like Stephen King go into that aspects of things, indeed that was one thing I really liked in Shelly Jackson's Haunting of Hill house, since yee gods the descriptions got nasty.Elizabeth Bear is an author I've heard of, my lady has read several of hers, though I've yet to try her stuff myself.As to racism, sexism etc, the longer ago something is published, the more likely I am to give it a pass on such issues if the over all story and writing is good enough, including not blatantly giving proper gander or authorial preaching to the reader. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527998/#p527998 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review If you want sort of modern Lovecraft-esk stuff, Neil Gaiman has The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, one of the few books I've personally found to be even slightly creepy. I've tried to get into Lovecraft a couple times, but the writing is very dated and knowing that he was a racist and that some of his stuff is kinda latent racist metaphor stops me from managing to do it.There's also Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, both authors that I doubt anyone here has heard of. But they do very good short stories.And though I couldn't get into him, Jeff VanderMeer has a lot of stuff that's along the lines of Lovecraft-type stuff: mushroom people rule the world, mad geneticist makes successor to humanity, that sort of stuff. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527930/#p527930 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Dark: There's certainly lots of Lovecraft available in audio. His stuff's in the public domain now so there's stuff on Librivox. There's stuff on Audible. The link I posted is narrated by Gordon Gould, not the physicist but the actor. It's from the NLS, so I don't know how this person got hold of it to do sand animation over. There's more of it on Youtube, if you want to look, but I didn't link to it because I assume that's copyright violation, while the sand animation is, I think, fair use. If it's OK to post more stuff, I can."The Thing on the Doorstep" is OK, but not really his best. The thing is though, he does a lot of stuff. He's most remembered for weird tales/horror, but as you can hear from "The Cats of Ulthar", he did fantasy, almost folktale-like stuff, he did some early SF, stuff like that. The thing I like about him, and it's the reason I tend to prefer good supernatural horror/weird stories over serial killers or zombies or whatever, is that you really have to think about his horror. For instance, here's a bit from "The Call of Cthulhu". " Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity."Lovecraft is trying to imply here that physical laws are out the window, the regular order, the stuff we depend on, is gone. He really digs the phrase "non-Euclidean geometry", and there are actually non-Euclidean geometries that don't violate all known laws of physics, e.g. geometry on a sphere where the angles of a triangle always add to more than 180. But if you think about it, you can see what he's getting at, and it would probably be pretty disturbing.I get why zombies and/or serial killers are scary, but that's just some dude chasing you to do bodily harm, essentially. It's kind of boring you know? I feel like Lovecraft and similar writers give you somewhere to go. The best statement I've ever seen on the subject is in the prologue of "The Ceremonies" by T. E. D. Klein, another book I really really recommend."Let it, therefore, rest at this: the events recorded here began as one day they would end-- In mystery." URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527923/#p527923 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @khomus, thanks for that, I admit I do have a distinct preference for audiobooks over reading with a screen reader, especially with atmospheric horror peaces, so the youtube link you provide might do well. Thus far, the only original lovecraft story I've read was the thing on the doorstep, which was in a collection of general twentieth century horror, which was good as far as it went, but not exceptional.@Chris, I did post This topic, where I went through all the episodes of the thirteenth doctor's era and gave thought on each one that I've seen, indeed when I get around to the rest of season 12 I'll probably post thoughts there. For the most part, the thirteenth doctor's era was less Sjw than I thought, but things did get a little too bland and happy families in a lot of places. Indeed, my problem with that rant in Dalek is basically you had this poor guy trying to appologise to his son for not being there, being incredibly sorry and trying to make amends, and the entire cast, the doctor included giving him a right yelling at for it, which just seemed mean. I mean, the guy hadn't been abusive, he'd just not been around, and whilst it's understandable his son would be angry at him, what ever happened to you know, accepting apologies and moving on, especially when he was admitting constantly that he'd been wrong, it just seemed way too one sided and rather mean spirited to me. That being said, much of the so called "soap opera" elements are pretty exclusive to new who. Some of them are a good thing, since generally in the classic series the doctor's companions didn't get as much background, it was more a matter of just "lets run around, solve problems and have fun", so to an extent I agreed with russel T Davies approach with Rose's family in New who season 1, but you can definitely have too much of a good thing, especially when the idiotic moffat had the idea that you couldnt' build character off earth so nearly every episode had to have iut's share of just wandering around school on earth or the doctor being yelled at by little miss perfect Clara Classic who and audio description is sort of interesting. So many episodes from the first two doctors era, back in the 1960's were lost, the bbc produced what were tantamount to narrated soundtracks, since they still had the sound tracks and shooting scripts, and had just lost the film, so ironically, you can get lots of descriptions of very early new who, and fewer of later stuff. Not to say all the sixties who is bad. Power of the daleks and tomb of the cybermen are both highly worth checking out for a start.However, with how popular new who has gotten, the Bbc have been rereleasing a lot of the novelizations of classic stories. Some are of course better than others, but some I'd recommend that I've enjoyed include Vengence on Varos (a really dark and down right nasty story, about a dystopean society, with the sixth doctor colin baker and his assistant perry), The three doctors, get the first three encarnations of the doctor all teaming up to defeat an evil timelord in a universe of antimatter, (though I admit, part of the reason I like that one so much is that it was my first ever exposure to doctor who at the age of five), and of course one classic story to check out in any form is genesis of the Daleks, see the war torn planet of Scaro in all it's glory and go back to a time when the daleks and Davros were bloody evil! With big finish, one of the hard things now is they've produced so much stuff over the last twenty years, they virtually have their own corner of the whoniverse. Also, as many of their earlier stories were very much marketed to doctor who fans, you needed a knolege of the show to get many of the references. However, they have had some pretty good stuff. The 8th doctor Lucy miller audios were created especially for people coming from new who. A similar formatto the tenth doctor and rose, the 8th doctor and random northern girl who gets shot into his tardis, however stories that just went to different places, oh and if you want amazing character exits and a really good and well put together take on domestic drama, that is it! I'd also recommend a lot of the war doctor and war master stuff. I admit, I never liked the idea of actually explaining the time war, and I down right hated day of the doctor with that silly plot twist about the doctor's missing 8.5 incarnation. However, in fairness Bf have actually pulled off something that is pretty awesome, and given us a time war which is just as dark, twisted and down right disturbing as we could wish. If your less a fan of grim, or want something quick,, the monthly series has had some pretty fun stories. The very second story Bf produced, Phantasmagoria is just a bloody good adventure in 18th century britain, with a los
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Dark: If you don't mind literary criticism with your stories, there's a pretty good blog here. I don't agree with everything they say and they're clearly pretty into Lovecraft and the genre, so if you're new, you probably want to skip the stuff they say and just read the stories, they're linked at the beginning of the posts.https://www.tor.com/series/the-lovecraft-reread/ If you want the horror, "The Colour Out Of Space" seems to be a good place to start, it was Lovecraft's favorite story that he wrote. I started with his, I guess you'd call it minor work. Here's the narrator that got me into Lovecraft, with somebody doing sand art over it. It's also short.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hHTSTg1l_A URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527548/#p527548 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review That book sounds like absolute garbage! The initial premise sounds interesting, but clearly it fell short. I would have stopped reading it immediately if I had discovered it.As for Doctor Who, I really! don't like anything past season 7. I can't find the original series with audio description, so I've only looked at the newer stuff starting in 2005. The 9th and 10th doctors were pretty cool, 11 was okay, 12 was awful, and so was 13. Honestly I didn't have a problem with the Doctor being a woman, my problem is all the PC crap being shoved down your throat. I only listened to the episode about the Dalek, and immediately lost interest when half of the time was spent with one of her companions talking to his father about something completely unrelated. Doctor Who is about the Doctor's adventures through time and space, not a soap opera! Oh well, all good things must come to an end. I haven't checked out any of the Big Finish stuff yet. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527215/#p527215 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Interesting you mention Sherly Jackson. Some of her stuff is down right amazingI find her stuff tends to be a bit hit and miss. Some I loved, Here is my review of Haunting of Hill House, and bare in mind, I'm not one of these people who hands out 9 or more stars like confetti.On the other hand, some of her stories just struck me as a little pointless, or uncertain, indeed I found the last short story collection I read of hers altrnated between moments of brilliance, and stories which were marginally incomprehensible. Some of this might just be an eighty year time gap, but I suspect not since I've read a lot of classic sf, and indeed classic literature in my time as well, indeed I just finished reading a collection of Edgar Alan Poe.HP Lovecraft is someone I always mean to get to, but really should read, given how much his stuff is referenced by other authors. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/527164/#p527164 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review I love Tolkien. Also H. P. Lovecraft, they're probably my two favorite authors. I've really been digging Shirley Jackson lately. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/526775/#p526775 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review The problem is when people describe Doctor who as "just the tv show", your missing out on not only most of the show's history, but also on a lot more that has been done outside that.Remember, Doctor who has been going since 1963, and even more than Startrek, has changed over the years quite a bit. New Who on tv has had it's idiotic moments, but there are certainly some aspects of new who that are uniquely it's own and don't belong to other encarnations of the show, for example obsessive love for the doctor is rare, and back in the 63-89 show he rarely if ever saved the entire universe, often plots were small scale in the extreme, like one monster terrifying people in an enclosed location.In the audios, they have even been able to get away with things that the show really couldn't do, either because of time constraints or adult logic, for example, one trilogy of adventures involve the first doctor picking up a gay assistant back in 1966 when being gay was literally illegal, other stories revisit characters from the past and see what's happened to them in the mean time. Heck, a recent series of brilliant, if down right disturbing audios have been the war master stories, which involve what the master did during the time war, some of which are so bloody twistedd, dark and nightmarish it beggars belief. There are several Whovians I've met who utterly repudiate any and all recent Tv doctor who, and just continue with the big finish audios. I wouldn't go that far, and I thought season 11 had a few nice points, at least compared to seasons 6-10, but it is true that most of the better Doctor who I've run into recently hasn't been on TV, and whilst I do have favourite episodes of new who, the satan pitt and turn left for example, there are a lot more really good audios or bits of original doctor who kicking around. Then again, I'll freely admit I'm biased. I have been a whovian ever since the age of five when i read the novelizations of the three doctors, the lock ness monster aand Carnival of monsters. I even had a sort of life changing experience when I found a life sized mock up Tardis in a hospital display after losing most of my vision at age seven. I've also watched, if not literally all the classic who stories, certainly a fair few of them, so i'm hardly going to be absolutely objective on the subject, indeed whilst I enjoy both Startrek and Starwars, Doctor Who, and the works of JRR Tolkien, are the two things I consider myself an actul, card carrying fanboy of. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/526282/#p526282 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Jayde, totally with you about Doctor Who. On paper, it sounds like something I should love. There's just something about it that ends up making me actively contemptuous of it. Well, I actually know what some of those things are, but like I said, I'm not trying to bash the show as such. But yeah, me too for pretty much being allergic to it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/526079/#p526079 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Doctor Who is good if and only if you watch the right episodes. Sometimes they really hit the ball out of the park, whether that be being vaguely scientifically correct and using it to quite good effect (the season 10 finale) or having a really good faerie tale style story (silence in the library, most of season 6). Otherwise it is horrendously bad. Take season 11, the main point of which seemed to be "The Doctor is now a woman and this means that we don't need to try because we have already been super super edgy" or something. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/526049/#p526049 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Oh my goodness there's this one series, The Extinction Cycle, about people becoming actual monsters, not merely some animal-human hybrid, and the author seems to go out of their way to describe the Virals, as they're called, as evil or actively malevolent. Like, "they chittered and screeched in their evil language." and stuff. Like, really? We get it, humans are not the top of the food chain now, the world is ending, all that. We get it, we gotta preserve humanity. But these things aren't evil, they're predatory animals that were once human.I don't know, maybe I'm weird and this would be "evil" to most people, but objectively, these Virals aren't evil. Thankfully, the author does describe their physical attributes and actions well, so they aren't just the zombie hoard that wants to destroy, they're a little deeper than that. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/526041/#p526041 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review I'm well aware of how important eye contact is to sighted individuals. That's fine. But if you've told us that her eyes are oceanic once, or maybe even four or five times in the book, I promise we won't forget. lol It's just horribly, horribly excessive.Also? I'm in the minority here but I have a pathological dislike for Doctor Who. The show doesn't grab me and is not something I have any particular desire to dig into. Yet I thought Hitchhiker's Guide was wonderfully bonkers, so go figure. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525835/#p525835 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @khomus, the problem is, if you call it "Doctor the who", it sounds like someone fiddling the lyrics to an old sixties rock band .I wouldn't get frothing mad if someone got the name wrong, though given how culturally major Doctor who, is, especially in the UK, I might wonder what their problem was . @camlorn, I will say that if an author constatly uses the same phrasing to describe something, it irritates me as well. To take one example, in Peter Cleins X heroes series (a series I read hoping it was to be better than it actually was), he constantly mentioned one character's salt and pepper coloured hair, even describing him as "the salt and pepper man", as in "Yes, the salt and pepper man replied." Not only did constantly having this character described as "the salt and pepper man" sort of make him sound like a weighter, but also Clein absolutely never used any other descriptive phrase to talke about the colour of said man's hair, indeed the salt and pepper hair was about his only characteristic besides his age and the fact that he was a he. Had Clein occasionally said "blonde speckled hair," or "greying hair" or any other damn phrase about the man's hair rather than "salt and pepper" time and time again, I wouldn't have minded, although it might have been nice if said guy had a bit more physical presence than just his hairdo. clein's books weren't "terrible!"or offensively bad or anything like that, they just weren't particularly well written, and very much of the one trick pony variety, though in Cline's case that pony wasn't Harem fiction or erotica, but overpowered super heroes slaying their way through hoards of less than dangerous zombies and coming out without a scratch. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525824/#p525824 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @22that's actually a sighted person erotica thing that sighted readers probably love quite a lot, or at least much more than you, for what it's worth. Your point stands if only because there are probably many synonyms to oceanic, but in terms of social interaction and eroticism, eye contact and looking into each other's eyes and such is very much truth in television (or literature as this case may be), and it's worth mentioning that because you may not know that and anyone else on here who's totally blind probably doesn't, either. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525771/#p525771 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Dark: Not to hijack this thread to be about Dr. The Who, as I often call it to piss people off, but ...No, they were literally super angry, seriously it's difficult to convey just how frothing mad they were which is why I saved the post, that people would refer to the character by writing Doctor Who or The Dr. or Dr. Who rather than "The Doctor". It wasn't in universe at all, it was about dumb Philistines what didn't watch the show, as this woman saw it, and so they kept screwing up the name.It was basically all about these people not having sufficient respect for this show she loved. It was basically the equivalent of somebody getting super angry and throwing a tantrum about how it's Star Wars damn it, not "The Star Wars"! Annoying sure, and they're right, but you know, calm the hell down. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525768/#p525768 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review I haven't actually seen series 12 yet, mostly because I was watching it on my parents tv, I watched the first episode, and then lockdown happened, and I'm too stingy to buy something which I essentially can watch for free elsewhere, especially because since season 5 Doctor who has been in quite the slump, and season 11 was only just getting out of it. I could note that the space whales and robots of sherwood other issues you mention are in the slump period, however Doctor who has always had a tendency to do the weird. That indeed is one of my favourite things about it, that it literally can go anywhere and do any kind of story, from historical drama to horror to full blown sf, and one reason I disliked Tv doctor who between seasons 6-10, was that it basically had the same tone, style and lack of coherent plot all the way through.@khomus, the issue with the name of Doctor who was not actually to do with the name. The issue is that for years, the doctor has always just been called the doctor. There was then an uterly overhiped and stupid special in 2013 for Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary in which the doctor's name was going to be revealed, and the big reveal was that the doctor's name was actually, doctor! Yes, great and imaginative plotting there . @SirBadger, All that running around time and space is pretty tiring . I'll have to check that when I eventually get back to season 12. Fortunately in the audios the doctor doesn't tend to do that half as much. @Jayde, yes, repetitive description can get very annoying. One rather fun character test I remember was one given by Plinkit, the psychotic starwars Reviewer, in which he asks if you can describe a character without mentioning anything external to that character such as physical appearance, gender, occupation, what they do, or their history, IE just describe their personality and nothing else. It's surprising how difficult that often is with many characters, especially when the author has been more concerned with their eye colour than who they actually are. in fairness, I am not a fan of the other extreme, where writing basically becomes like a narrated shooting script for a film and you don't get any details of characters' physical appearance at all, but there is a happy medium here . URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525568/#p525568 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review To put the actual quality of the writing itself into the light for just a moment here:Vall describes Valerie's eyes as "oceanic" no less than forty-three times. In one novel. Yes, I counted.Now, consider, he mentions her eyes at other times, too. I didn't specifically count those, but it's probably fair to say that there were at least seven instances of this. So in a book that doesn't break the four-hundred-page mark, this guy mentioned one character's eyes over fifty times.Let that sink in for a minute. Fifty. Times. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525545/#p525545 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Oh, Doctor Who only has to do with it insofar as I have a bunch of friends who love it to bits. I've never been able to get into it, for reasons I'll only get into if anybody cares and I'm sure they don't, I mean unless you like a good rant because I generally try to make those funny too. So it's just one of those things where I'm pretty out of step with lots of people I know. They love it and I can't fathom how in the world they're into it at all. So it's just another one of those things where I'm going, OK, yeah sure, the rancher and the city slicker hate each other on sight so of course they're married by the end of the book, OK, sure, you meet Robin Hood but they're all robots, whatever dude. But basically the one thing I've learned from Doctor Who is this, sorry, two things.1. If you mess up the name, you will generate white hot nerd rage. Somebody made a post once, and gods I wish I'd saved it, about how he's not Dr. Who or The Dr. or a few other variations, he's *The Doctor*! There was a lot more nerd rage but that was the main point that had them wanting to strangle somebody. I wanted to pat them on the head and give them a cookie.2. Yes, I get it. You're British, you live on an island, and you're terrified of the sea. That's the only explanation I have for evil sea creatures showing up all over the place.Oh and extra bonus content:3. Space whales. Enough said.But see like furries and BDSM and porn and all, I try not to judge people. I try to have fun with it you know? Some people like romances, I don't much. Some people love Dr. The Who, I don't. There's probably all sorts of things I'm into or do that people would think are dumb or some sort of problem. So sure I have opinions, don't we all? But so long as it's all consensual and not truly hurting somebody in practice, and obviously fantasy in fantasy, as opposed to a possible indication of some sort of danger, I say let people do whatever gets them through the day. That includes critiquing bad writing, naturally. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525517/#p525517 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @dark my one issue with the latest doctor who is she's always out of breath even when she hasn't been doing anything strenuous. what's up with that. now I've pointed it out it'll probably bug the hell out of you every time you watch it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525489/#p525489 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review So, I mean, the title has Monster Girls in it, but... Where are the monsters? Are animals monsters now? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525467/#p525467 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review we don't even have a tv, and I doubt hallmark is available in the UK if we did anyway, my lady and I prefer to read, yet she still has run into her share of really bad romances over time, and we do tend to have cringe at them occasionally, if one of her friends points one out. I think my favourite was the one a friend of my lady's mentioned, about the tom boy riding, shooting man hating girl who owns a cattle ranche, who falls in love with the city slicker who comes to buy the ranch You know, they dislike each other on sight so of course they're going to end up together). Said girl went by the fantastic name of "boddene longbow!" Yes that was actually her name, Bodene! Longbow!I now want to play a fantasy ranger at some point, just so I can have an excuse to play a character called Bodene longbow, though it might be more fun to make them an axe wielding dwarf .Not sure where doctor who falls into that though, indeed accept for the tv series, romance in doctor who was never a thing, I've not seen the new series, and I hope that is one thing they avoid, since making the doctor female and instantly going romance plot would be trite. Then again, romance in doctor who has always been a bit iffy. The classic series 1963-89 had little to none, mostly it was about exploring time and space and getting wrapped up in weird alien goings on. Ditto with the audios. There have been some exceptions, but Romance in doctor who is generally something better kept to a minimum, then again, the recent series has had a tendency to overplay the histrionic factor a bit too much for my liking.As to furries, again, I'm not sure, and wouldn't be against reading something furry related if it actually made for a good story. Heck, Alan Dean Foster's spell singer series are wonderfully light hearted silly fantasy, and probably qualify as furry even though the term "furry" didn't exist when they were written. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525433/#p525433 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @14While some furries are indeed in it for the art/as an identity/whatever other asexual interpretation, there is the entire flip side of that where it crosses over with BDSM pretty heavily, and my furry friends and acquaintances have definitely been that sort, so it definitely does exist. It just depends which part of the subculture soup you end up in.But let me be clear, I'm not judging, and while I'm not personally a furry there is a reason I can name at least 10 of the BDSm/kink/furry events off the top of my head. And if others judge, I'll be against them if that should ever turn into sides, at least until lines way beyond "I'm a furry" get crossed. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525428/#p525428 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review My wife watches them, but she's also willing to point out the dumbness. For instance, we once compared movies and found out there are a lot of duplications. So the other day she's telling me, "oh I was flipping threw channels and a Hallmark movie came on and it was about this woman fostering a dog, and a vet, an army veteran not an animal doctor, came to reclaim it and it was about the romance between them". I go "oh that one". She goes "no, I haven't seen this one yet, not that one, it's a different one"!Her comment on my post was that she didn't think there was any possibility of Hallmark stealing my plot and characters, because it was too original. But yeah, we literally went down the list of Christmas movies one year they split between the channels and she was reading plot summaries, and it's like "a plucky young accountant blah blah blah", and I'd go "oh that's the one where they have the Christmas tree festival right"? She'd go "no, it's the other one where her parents run a candy cane shop". We pretty much went down the whole list like that, they do these movies that are really pretty damn similar, with slight variations.I try to not pay attention to them, because I have a memory for dumb details like that. So she watches Doctor Who and I don't, sorry British people, and if I've seen enough of one to get the plot, or have had somebody tell me about it or whatever, I'll just remember it for years so I'll end up getting her to recall it, if it comes up somehow or other. So unfortunately even though I usually only see about a half hour of any given movie, I end up remembering a bunch of their plots because of seeing that or having my wife tell me about whatever one she was watching. Oh well, at least I got to put my head full of dumb trivia to use and make people laugh. That's worth something I guess. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525419/#p525419 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @khomus, quite hilarious, especially since my lady dis pares of a lot of those sorts of generic romance plots. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525370/#p525370 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Hi.Well i guess there is a book for every market. I also suppose noone is really reading just books like these, as others said, it's just mindless entertainment and to get some rounds of pocket pool for some to go on.But pointing at another topic, let's just not go there and throw furrys into the mix. They are just normal people as everyone else and beeing a furry doesn't mean your either in the BDSM scene, mentally ill or atracted to animals or what ever crude thoughts people have about furrys. I'm not one myself but know a few people who actually are and the hole comunity is pritty easy going and really friendly to almost everyone if you don't step on their tails, no pun intended.Greetings moritz. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525313/#p525313 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Okay, admittedly this made me laugh like hell. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/525246/#p525246 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review I can't help the person who's just wondering why people read porn, some things you just gotta work out for your own self. But I'd like to help them maybe figure out the issues in the review. Suppose you're watching a romance movie, you know, one of those Hallmark Christmas movies, or like me you're subjected to one because you're in the room eating supper while it's on. Now the plot of this movie is that J. Random Woman is returning to her small town home, and J. Random Friend is there, and OMG they had this thing back in high school, but it went wrong, but they're back around each other again, and boy howdy do they still have feelings for each other. OK, we're all on the same page? So, in this movie, they're getting back together, because that's what kind of movie this is. But in the first version, the problem was that J. Random Friend took J. Random Cheerleader to the dance, and J. Random Woman got all upset and left town and didn't communicate to J. Random Friend at all. This gets resolved when we find out that J. Random Enemy told J. Random Friend that J. Random Woman was going to the dance with somebody else already. It was all a big misunderstanding, and once they finally talked about it, it gets fixed pretty quickly, and they can get back together again, even after all these years, because that's the kind of movie we're in, stay tuned for the sequel, An Apple Cider Wedding.OK, now for the second version. What I didn't tell you about yet is that her family runs the town's cider-making business, and the whole town hinges on the fall tourism, because their cider's just like, so yummy and so totally the best, like seriously you guys you just won't believe how awesome it is, people fly in from all fifty states and everything! So in the first version her mom tells her that it was all a misunderstanding, and they should go patch it up, it was back when they were young and dumb and they're both adults now, and true love knows no bounds and the good heart must be held within four hands and biscuits never rise on a Sunday, you know, whatever fake small-town platitudes Hallmark makes up to keep its viewers.However, in the second version, J. Random Friend, let's call him Skippy, Skippy's bad. Like, not just kind of bad, he's real bad. And because her parents won't let her come out and see him one night, he sets fire to their cider house. It burns to the ground. They struggle for years. The town declines. Things might never be the same again just because bad boy Skippy couldn't control his dumb teenage anger. Now they're finally gonna start having the great cider festival again, the festival that was the town's heart, that they haven't had in years, but who knows if they can pull it off?She left the town because she always wanted to be a fancy New York lawyer, but also because she can send money back to help her parents. However, when she gets back to town, she meets Skippy, he apologizes, and that's that, get ready for the sequel, An Apple Cider Wedding. See how that's unsatisfying? I mean, Skippy did some real damage here. That's not the kind of thing that should be resolved with "hey sorry", "oh OK, let's get married"! Mind you, I'm not saying one of those movies wouldn't actually do that, in fact I'm pretty sure ten or twenty of them actually have, well maybe not, burning something down is pretty racy for Hallmark.My point is, in version two, which I'm going to call "Cider Fire: The Juicy Apple-scented Quickening" just to be as ridiculous as possible, they've got some real issues to work through, or they should. Having both versions resolve in the same way and at the same pace, sorry version one you're too damn cookie-cutter to get a funny name, should strike most thinking people as either ridiculous, or as bad storytelling at the very least, because "Cider Fire: The Juicy Apple-scented Quickening" left out a hell of a lot of stuff to get to the same place in the same time as version one, the dumb movie that not only dare not speak its name, it's too dumb to even deserve a name. Sure they're both doing the same thing, J. Random Woman thought she wanted to be a New York fancy pants lawyer but, per the Hallmark movie code she realizes that all cities are soulless husks that are simply traps to suck out your vital juices for their own nefarious purposes. she needs to get back to her awesome small town because only people who live in small towns are *real* people, also per the code, and be with her first love, again see Hallmark movie code, I think it's section seven or thereabouts.But they shouldn't be doing it in the exact same way, see above, because Skippy, A.K.A. "the Cider Fire Quickenner", the r
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @camlorn, if you'd spoken to me more than five days ago I'd have recommended all of Becky chambers books absolutely, indeed I probably liked record of a spaceborn few, book 3, slightly better than closed and common orbit, that is book 2. Shameless plug, find My reviews of all three, plus all my other reviews here. However, unfortunately the other day my lady and I read her latest novella, to be taught, if fortunate, and I can honestly say that despite some wonderfully alien aliens and an interesting setup, it was a genuine disappointment. Shallow, happy families characters, no development and a book that ended not only on a complete copout where the plot was concerned, but a massive, preachy sermon too, and the fact that I happened to agree with the point Chambers was making in the sermon didn't stop it from being really irritating! She also for the first time had at least a slight, direct critique of monogamous relationships and romance as well. All in all, whilst it wasn't a bad book, it had far more flaws than I expect in her writing, and I hope she gets back on track next time. Formal review is written, and will be posted when the webmaster of fantasybookreview.co.uk has time. As regards the rest of the thread, I can't speak on Vall, but I'll say lack of subtlety is a general problem in a lot of genre fiction, especially when authors tend to run into standard cliches, or write one note characters, or still worse, define all characters by their relation to the hero, IE anyone who likes/loves/agrees with the protagonist is automatically good, anyone who dislikes/hates/disagrees with the protagonist must be eeevil! Another reason I really do not! like super hero stories. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524987/#p524987 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @8A long way to a small, angry planet is one of those books that I only read because I was very bored at the time, because normally I don't go in for sci-fi that is that soft. But it deserved the awards. And the sequel is so much better. it's a shame the third in that trilogy--the name of which I can't remember at the moment--wasn't able to grab me at all.@9If the goal is exploring weird societies in general, there's the first book in the quantum Thief trilogy (warning: must understand the very basics of public-private key cryptography). I feel like I have a whole list of weird society books which don't require an understanding of public-private key cryptography that I'm just forgetting at the moment, so perhaps I'll remember later.For shifters/monsters/etc with romance my favorite is probably still the Parasol Protectorate, despite it being very straight and me being very gay. It's hard to describe. The werewolves there actually do treat it as a curse for one thing. The writing can be a bit interesting though--it's good, but intentionally written like Victorian literature, because it's set in an alternative Victorian England.neither is porn/BDSM/anything like that--I'm not going to be the one to start the recommend porn thread. Parasol Protectorate has some sex but not more than any other Urban Fantasy book you care to name. I doubt you care personally either way, but others might. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524884/#p524884 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Let me be really clear here.I wasn't expecting this book to be literary genius, and I'm not howling mad because I read it. Reading it was my choice.Furries don't offend me. It's not really my bag, but they don't offend me.The main issue is that the writer has absolutely no subtlety, and I was hoping for something better. I read more the reviews than just the jacket copy, and some made it sound like it worked. It didn't.Monster girls are...not really my thing, but I know from experience that it can work. Some writers are better than others.My main issue was the way the women were portrayed once changed. Mindlessly in love. That just exploded everything.If he'd made his monster women slowly grow to know, trust and love the main character, then it's still not precisely my thing, but there's no way in hell I would've written an angry review about it. I would have dismissed it as a meh read that didn't pan out too well, in the hands of an author who still needs to hone his craft. But that is manifestly not what happened. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524873/#p524873 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Vall was recommended to me by a friend, but when I looked up his output and checked a few descriptions I was less impressed.From what I gather, Vall is less about the furries, and more about the one male hero plus lots of fawning women who want to have sex with him. Is there a problem with people reading this as erotica, IE works just intended for sexual gratification, not at all. However, if one is considering what makes a good book, there are a lot more factors involved, plot, character, and, in a made up world, the complexity of the society created. That is generally why I personally have no interest in this sort of thing, since when I read, I tend to prefer books where the characters are complex, and where, if they do explore alternative perspectives, furries or matriarchal societies or the like, they do so with a little depth and subtlety in a way that makes me think, rather than just lots of banging and/or action for it's own sake, and characters who are just there to facilitate said themes.I'll also say on a personal level, when erotic goings on do happen, I tend to feel far more when I am invested in the characters involved. to take two examples, China Mievil's perdido street station involves a romance between an overweight neurotic scientist, and a woman who has a scarab beatle for a head and is an artist who makes sculptures out of her own spit. Yet, it is one of the most genuinely touching romances I've ever read. to take another example, in becky chambers long way to a small angry planet, a relationship is begun between one crew member, and one of her shipmates who is an andrisk, a reptile alien (and also a lady), whilst the ship's captain has an on runing romance with an iluan, a silver scaled, aquatic life form who communicates via colour. I can't speak for Jayde here, but for me, it's subtlety, complexity and style that make for a good book, and why I personally wouldn't bother with Hareem fiction, since usually there is a distinct lack of any of those things in authors who are very much one trick ponies just intended to cater to one taste. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524871/#p524871 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Vall was recommended to me by a friend, but when I looked up his output and checked a few descriptions I was less impressed.From what I gather, Vall is less about the furries, and more about the one male hero plus lots of fawning women who want to have sex with him. Is there a problem with people reading this as erotica, IE works just intended for sexual gratification, not at all. However, if one is considering what makes a good book, there are a lot more factors involved, plot, character, and, in a made up world, the complexity of the society created. That is generally why I personally have no interest in this sort of thing, since when I read, I tend to prefer books where the characters are complex, and where, if they do explore alternative perspectives, furries or matriarchal societies or the like, they do so with a little depth and subtlety in a way that makes me think, rather than just lots of banging and/or action for it's own sake, and characters who are just there to facilitate said themes.I'll also say on a personal level, when erotic goings on do happen, I tend to feel far more when I am invested in the characters involved. to take two examples, China Mievil's perdido street station involves a romance between an overweight neurotic scientist, and a woman who has a scarab beatle for a head and is an artist who makes sculptures out of her own spit. Yet, it is one of the most genuinely touching romances I've ever read. to take another example, in becky chambers long way to a small angry planet, a relationship is begun between one crew member, and one of her shipmates who is an andrisk, a reptile alien (and also a lady), whilst the ship's captain has an on runing romance with an iluan, a silver scaled, aquatic life form who communicates via colour. I can't speak for Jayde here, but for me, it's subtlety, complexity and style that make for a good book, and why I personally don't find Hareem fiction, since usually there is a distinct lack of any of those things in one trick only authors. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524871/#p524871 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review @5There's very little I can say on this subject that's not very much NSFW or which I would want to bring into a site of primarily immature teenagers, but suffice it to say that if you go to Goodreads you can trivially find lists of books like this one that go on for pages and pages, and that if you have more than 10 friends or so I'd put money on at least one of them secretly reading stuff like this (literally: I have looked up the demographics for some of this, and yes people have done surveys etc). You can easily make well upward of 6 figures if you write this sort of content regularly and keep putting it on Kindle--you have to have at least some level of talent, but there are enough people who read it that that's totally doable.Also Folsom Street Fair takes over 5 blocks of San Francisco once a year with hundreds of thousands of attendees into this kind of stuff, same for the east coast equivalent in New York, and most large U.S. states will have multiple yearly or more frequently than yearly events for people into the various BDSM subcultures that happen at/take over hotels, and that's before you even get into the private or semi-private stuff. There's at least two big yearly ones that are specifically for gay people that usually draw upward of 2 attendees every year as well.And we haven't even talked about furry cons yet.More than that I will leave to Google and/or your parents, and I'm only saying this much because we have at least two games in New Releases that are about this sort of content that are apparently fine with audiogames.net mods (or at any rate, the thread is open and there wasn't anything I could obviously spot). But my point is if your first question is who would want to read this genre, the answer is at least 10% of the world, and much more if it's less subversive than @1 indicates it is. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524865/#p524865 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Why did you read niche fetish erotica not targeted towards you and then get surprised when you found it distasteful?If enough of the people with all the fetishes this book is trying to cater to were to come out and condemn this writer, that would be one thing, but otherwise, it sounds like your just on the outside looking in at something you can't empathize with in any way.Are the people who enjoy this messed up in some way? Maybe... But who are you to judge them. You say that those who despise those in the LGBT community for their sexual preferences have no rite to be concerning them selves with what others do in the bedroom, so how is this any different?Maybe it's a harmless outlet for those who have a problem with women, maybe it's just skin deep, badly written jerkoff material for those that need to scratch an itch, or maybe it's hate porn that pushes people further into their unhealthy obsessions. More likely than not though, it's all three of those things and more depending on the reader. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524864/#p524864 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review Please send him help. I think he might need it. I'm honestly questioning why anyone would read that, though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524789/#p524789 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review This sounds like stereotypical run-of-the-mill BDSM transformation fantasy for terataphiles and/or furries and the goodreads description also makes it pretty clear that's what you're getting. It's probably bad, most of that stuff is, but I'm not sure why it provokes anger unless it caught you by surprise. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524784/#p524784 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review I seem to remember hearing Eric Vall mentioned as someone who basically writes harem fiction, that is books that are boarder line pornography and just involve a lot of girls throwing themselves randomly at one over powered mail protagonist. As such, not something I'm at all interested in. Doing a female dominated society could be a worth while premise if handled by a semi decent author, but from everything I've heard,that would not be Vall. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524773/#p524773 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
Re: For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review How? why? why would a publisher let something like this be published in the first place?Unless the book is self-published... URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/524660/#p524660 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review
For a Change of Pace, an Angry Book Review All right, folks. It's rant time. And book review time. Here's some proof that I can spit fire at people who have nothing to do with this website, if anyone needs it. Heh. If you're going into this expecting a gentle and even-handed review, stop now. I won't apologize for what follows.Still here? Okay, here we go.The book in question is something I tried even though I knew it would be bad. It's by Eric Vall, and is called Making Monster Girls. There's cringe #1, right there, but the premise had promise. Allow me to summarize the book. Spoilers below this point; sorry, not sorry.Charles Rayburn, a male doctor-scientist in a society with a dominant matriarchy, has been commissioned by his local duchess to create super-soldiers for reasons he doesn't understand. I should mention right away that women in this society all have some form of elemental power, but men don't. It doesn't come up a lot, but every so often, some woman or other will use her power to hurt or intimidate a man. Anyway, Charles has been experimenting on live male subjects - prisoners, mostly - provided to him by his patron, and every attempt thus far has resulted in failure and messy death for the subject. Men in this world are second-class citizens at best, often viewed as beasts who can speak. The book starts with Charles being chewed out by the duchess for his failure, and told that he's running out of time. On his way out, he is accosted and propositioned by a woman the author takes great pains to characterize as undesirable: she's fat, she's ugly, she's got a thick accent, she smells kinda bad, she wears too much makeup. This is a society where men are sometimes taken as consorts by women, for the sexual gratification of the woman and occasionally for breeding. Charles flees in horror back to his lab, and through some badly-explained pseudoscientific woo-woo involving a stray cat and a prisoner that Charles finds out is female, he creates a cat-girl. A cat-girl whose first on-screen act is to fling herself on Charles and proclaim, "I love you!"The cat-girl - who ends up with the name Valerie, or Val for short - spends the next quarter of the book doing strange, sweet, infuriating and occasionally clever things. She's got cat-ears and a long, prehensile tail, and a penchant for sleeping in odd places, cavorting nimbly about, and asking a lot of questions. Oh, and she can also turn near invisible...and she's really, really fast when she wants to be. Charles once more meets the woman who propositioned him - whose name is Delphine - and it's made clear that Charles is running out of time on this front as well. Sexual tension between Charles and Val continues to mount, and eventually they decide that the best plan of action is to kidnap Delphine, because she apparently deserves it, and turn her into another monster girl. They capture a bear in the forest, kill two people and try really really really hard to justify it - well, Charles does, Valerie just giggles a lot and says how brilliant and amazing he is - then go home and have mind-blowing sex at long, long last.Charles manages to infiltrate Delphine's mansion on the pretense of accepting her offer of being her consort, then overpowers her, sneaks her unconscious bulk out a window and smuggles her back to his lab. Using the bear, he does more fun science things and creates Daisy, a bear-girl. Daisy is tiny and gorgeous, with little furry ears and a puffball of a tail, but is otherwise almost completely human except for prodigious physical strength. Charles gets some unexpected visitors, Daisy fakes that Charles is her consort and that she's a visiting noble from out of town, and after a frame job and a murder made to look like a suicide later that night, Charles eventually comes home and has more sex with Val.And that's...pretty much it. Oh, and there's a brain in a jar in Charles's lab that he can hear in his mind, and who, because they have Charles's blood in them, the monster girls can hear as well. He's good for some banter, at least.That's the synopsis, now here's the review.I can't tell you how much I hated this book, but instead of going down the list, I'll hit on a few of the really big points.Okay, first off, the world and worldbuilding. The idea of a dominant female society is neat. The idea that women have powers and oppress men is a potentially interesting dynamic, but Vall handles it about as well as someone trying to drive a bulldozer through a china shop. He tells and never shows, and he does it over. and over. and over again. Almost all women, except the monster girls (I'll get to them later, I promise) are damn near irredeemible. It gets to be a very monotonous and one-note song in a tearing hurry, let me tell ya. But this alone might not have killed the book; it would ha
