/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

You told me Sanderson was anime

I didn't listen

Turns out he is, in fact, anime.

>>8803456
book of amber is hot trash, why is it a selected work?

I really love TKaG

Recommend me some sad/melancholic SF

>>8803456
I just ordered Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I hope it's good. I've never seen bladerunner so I'm completely in the dark. I'm kind of excited.

>>8803543
>I've never seen bladerunner
what are you doing

good on you for reading the book first and whatnot but you should watch bladerunner at some point

I'm reading through the Black Company for the first time and I've enjoyed most of it so far, but I just started Dreams of Steel, and I've heard it's not good. Should I keep going?

>>8803547
That good huh? I will have to watch it once I read this then.

>>8803468
Kaladin is the best Shinigami. I can't wait to find out what other powers his Zanpakuto has.

>>8803704

Good thing I liked Bleach in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to stomach Words Of Radiance.

>>8803716
I'm sad it's over. No more bullshit plot twists to laugh at with the rest of /a/.

>>8803501

what's TKaG?

>>8803543
The book and movie aren't really that alike.

>>8803761
A bad meme

i have a fantasy race that's equal parts gorgon, gargoyle and weeping angel. What do I call it?

>>8803761

To Kill a God.

>>8803565
Don't expect too much connection between them. It's a very loose adaptation. More of an "inspired by".

Riftwar is a funny series/setting

There's like 20 interconnected books yet the best of the lot have the least amount of tie ins

>>8803847
So you copied Jemisin?

>>8803847
Grezendach

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Proyas really wants scylvendi cock

Can anyone recommend me more fantasy (or scifi) where the MC starts as a slave and ends up with some ridiculous power

Loved that plot in Magician, Red Rising and whatever Sanderson's book is called

>>8803962
I really liked the Riftwar books when I was 12-14. I think it was the first series I read that mixed a traditional LOTR copy fantasy setting with other planets and an interconnected universe. But on re-reading them almost a decade later I found the prose to be so bad it distracted me from the story. The exception was the Empire series he wrote with Janny Wurts which was still pretty great.

>>8804288
Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy? If monetary power is okay.

Can we all agree than Tolkien, Erickson and Jordan are the best worldbuilders around?

>>8803761
>>8803783
>>8803850
Isn't it some fedora tier book that some anon wrote?

>>8804295
I can live with bad prose but the plotting is what kills me

In Magician every single time something interesting happens to a character you switch to 4 chapters of other characters doing fuck all.

And then when you switch back several months have passed and the character has already done the interesting thing

>>8804346
I think Tad Williams is pretty great, but not as many people have read him.

>>8804473
>>8804295
I see I'm not the only one who read Feist in middle/high school. And yeah looking back those books have lots of anticlimaxes. No idea what I found so compelling in them, but I read through like 16 of his books before finally getting sick of the power creep.

>>8804499
I found his writing to be terrible even back when I was 16. Sometimes less is more in this genre. It felt forced and I have no idea how the hell he finished his books.

>>8804509
His books always start slow but build as they go. But what I was talking about was world building, which he does a very good job at.

>>8804346
I never once felt that Jordan's world felt believable, way too many of the locations seemed to exist only to service the plot.

>>8804518
>way too many of the locations seemed to exist only to service the plot.
Examples?

>>8804522
The fucking place with the fireworks factory and insane bureaucracy

That wasn't a remotely convincing location or way of living but it did provide a fun set piece

tomorrow the 6th Expanse Novel, "Babylons' Ashes" is released.

Anyone else excited?
I basically can't wait :)

>>8804531
I honestly have no clue what you're talking about because there were two Illuminators Guilds in two different cities and neither one had an "insane bureaucracy". There are a few cultures with elaborate and obtuse rules though, like the Sea Folk or the Seanchan.

>>8804535
I broke my ereader during reading the first one and never picked it up again

Is the whole series focused on being sort of scifihorror? Because that was what I found least interesting

>>8804544
no, not at all.
It's actually very well paced and a combination of political thriller, intrigue, some little military SF sprinkled in and occasional horror elements in the first and second book. Social Dynamics is also very important.

I persoally burnt through all five currently released books earlier this year ( within 3 or 4 days ), after having watched the television series that had aired around this time last year.

Really enjoyable book.

thematically and descriptively it shares may similarities between the "heavy times" and "hellfire" books from C J Cherryh (I think these are the titles, I read them in german), and "the forever war" by joe haldemann.

I really wholeheartedly do recommend them, especially for the superb pacing. (this is maybe due to it being a duo of authors collaborating on the books)

>>8804593
Cool sounds like it gets closer to Abraham's fantasy stuff as it goes on

>>8804518
Believability goes out the window for me as soon as there's a "warrior woman" culture without an explicit fantasy element to explain it. If the women go out and be effective hand-to-hand fighters, you're not talking about humans anymore. Real-world average women have half the upper-body strength of men, and the difference only grows with training. If they get in a fight with men they get slapped around like children. That's why there have never been any "warrior woman" cultures in the real world. Ever. Just occasional mannish women.

The Aiel in general were one of the worst examples of convenient baffling noble savages. They make no sense and therefore can do anything that makes the plot work.

Also, explicit in-world protagonism is lazy as fuck. The whole world warps around the Ta'gonists to make the plot happen, then characters say, "Oh wow, I did a crazy thing. Must be those Ta'gonist powers."

It had some cool elements (I especially liked the Myrddraal and Black Wind), but for instance, the huge Trollocs are way too easy to kill. At their size, they should be able to deal with adult humans like toddlers, but he mostly ignored their size and treated them as generic goblins. Very few fantasy authors have even a basic understanding of hand-to-hand combat, and Jordan was no exception. The depiction of fighting skill development was absurd (particularly the sword Tinker).

The magic system spiralled out of control quickly, from Gandalf-throwing-pinecones-tier to AD&D-level-20. In light of the powers revealed in later volumes, the fact that the Forsaken didn't win without difficulty in the earlier ones becomes ridiculous.

>>8804544
>thematically and descriptively it shares may similarities between the "heavy times" and "hellfire" books from C J Cherryh (I think these are the titles, I read them in german)
It's Heavy Time and Hellburner.

>almost four years since WOT is finished

Am I the only one that is missing it?

>>8804653
ah, very well :) I'm sorry for the inaccurate translation :D

I did rather enjoy these two, that is, Heavy time and Hellburner, and was rather a little bit disappointed when I read the rest of the alliance union books, only to not even see a mention of the protagonists. (which is bullshit, because they would be serving aboard NORWAY). However, as I later found out, she wrote those two books as prequels basically, after the other stuff had been done.

I really hate C J Cherryh btw. Most of her stuff is really horrible, obtuse and cryptic for no specific reason and frustrating to read, or basically forcing you to have a vocab list at the ready while reading. Horrible!
But some few of her books are rather enjoyable. So weird. Some of her stuff is utter frustrating shit, and some is really good.

>>8804696
>forcing you to have a vocab list at the ready while reading
That's a good thing; it forces you to learn new words and improve your knowledge instead of just being entertained.

>Horrible!
Donald pls

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If I borrow (read: steal) a "magical" system from a form of media and file off the names and numbers - yet still keeping it similar in form, but not as grand in scale across my fictional world - would that be considered plagiarism?

Because I'm contemplating using the Bending system from The Last Airbender, but limit the elements to a couple of individuals and let the Main Character be able to learn and master the Four Elements, but without the Avatar/Reincarnation aspect to it. That way, the world doesn't focus around the usage of the elements like they do in the series and are considered unique instead of a norm.

>>8804737
Using the four elements as magic would be fine, it's an old cliche

>>8804720
no it isnt, because she makes up bullshit fantasy words. Essentially, if you for example go into the Dying Suns books, you're thrown into bullshit exchanges and conversation, where barely any vocab is explained.
Honestly, download an epub for the first Dying Sun Novel, read into the first chapter. prepare to throw up.

>>8804749
You'd love Bakker

>>8804349

It's probably the best novel released this year

>>8804749
But that's fun! He doesn't do it randomly, like the infamous portyguls of Dune, he makes words up for things that don't exist in the real world, and then either describes them in detail, or doesn't because this sets the reader's imagination spinning.

We get a pretty good description of a deodand, but what's a grue? What exactly is blue concentrate, and what does it do to people who get sprayed with it? What makes ioun stones so desirable to wizards? Imagining your own answers is part of the appeal.

A more serious problem with Vance is that he sometimes liked to use obscure real words without regard to their actual meaning.

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>>8803716
Bleach was good until Kubo became an ass-hole.

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>>8804346
Sanderson surpassed all of them Already. He literally built an entire universe.

I've been reading a lot of late and I've realised that almost everything good has been in one of the OP images

However there's one exception
https://i.imgur.com/fOGNfWK.jpg

That one is fucking useless

>>8804787
>but what's a grue
I honestly didn't know that wasn't created for Zork until now

>>8804799
Yeah it is and it's new in the OP (couple threads back). Not sure why it was put in

>>8804787
yes, but that's not what C J Cherryh does.
She takes words and real world concepts, gives them obtuse and similar made up other names, it's basically like a unnecessary lowlevel cryptographic cypher woven into her conversation.

She also likes being cryptic, in "Cloned", which is Unionside Book 2 or somesuch, it starts with politics alright, but for the first 2 chapters NADA is explained, and you are forced to read cryptic dialogue without any conflict being clear.

In cuckoos egg, the protagonists warden is basically a member of a warrior-caste of Judges in a catpeople society leaning heavily on feudal japan thematically.

However, what he is and what he does is not explained, instead we have people constantly referring to him as "duun hatani" or some fuck, and initially you might think he's some kind of royalty - but that's not right. there's not even a relevant twist or anything - she just uses vocabulary to confuse you, and then in the very last chapter she reveals: HAHA you didn't know and couldnt know, but HERE is the reason for why people acted the way they acted He's a Warrior Monk Judge Catperson Space Commander who cloned a human boy for some bullshit reason. I didn't tell you any of the motivations or any of the conflicts propelling the story... but NOW I have, HAHA

It's like a bad storyteller in an RPG, who's just missing a page in his notes and fails to communicate some core concept to his players to make sure they will get on a track to understand the problem he designed for them - and then he makes fun of them for not understandig what he wanted them to do.

Sad! Low Energy!

>>8804799

Of course it's useless, it doesn't have TKaG in it...

>>8804808
Vance invented a metric assload of stuff that people have heard of without ever having read anything he wrote.

Think of what a fucking weird idea it is for magic spells to erase themselves from wizards' memories when cast, so they have to go back to the same books and memorize them all over again.

>>8804821

>Womameme
>Being able to be cryptic
>Being able to use analytical skills
>Being able to generalize experiences and turn them around

I didn't realize this was a "you laugh you lose" thread

>>8804827
I'll make it even better, I'll go get the epub for that one book, and i'll show you exactly what she does. I'll make a vocab list even

>>8804827
YLYL
>> shon'ai (( the species of presumably Cat People ))
>> Kel (( Warrior ))
>> As'ei (( Honoarble way of war ))
>> Kel'en (( a Warrior ))
>> Kel'ein (( test for a Warrior? ))
>> Sen (( Advisors, Scholars ))
>> ...'anth (( suffixed to mean so and so ' Person ))
>> Mri (( "the People", Name of their ow kind ))
>> tsi'mri (( tsi is like "other" or "not", so otherkind or not-people ))
>> A'ani
>> Yin'ein (( the traditional weapons, static arsenal ))
>> Zahen'ein (( modern weapons, exchangeable fluctuating meaning ))
>> Kesrith
>> Niun (( the king / queen ))

I'm not an idiot,
but if you're not an idiot either,
you need to be able to see how it's no fun to be constantly translating gibberish while reading.

my example above
>" for they are tsi'mri and we are mri the Kel will do as Ruul demand. Remember this Kel'en, for Kel'ein, and she is skilled As'ei Zahen'ein "
" the not-People are not People like as, and the Warrior Caste will do as the Regul-not-People demand. this is a test for every warrior, be he skilled with the traditional weapons or those which are modern. "
>and quite naturally the other one responds
>" Se'anth tried many times doing his duty to Ruul, but Niun is Reasonable Mri A'ani "
" Our Advisors tried showing them the proper Solutions to our Problem, but the Ruul-not-People would not liste, ad now the Niun-Queen in her Wisdom has declared that we do such and such "

>>8804849
>>8804872
there, this is what this bitch does.
I can't belive I even made it through the first chapter. (this is btw copypasted, I originally posted it on /tg/ about two weeks ago when we were discussing books)

>>8804872

Is the trying to make her books seem deep or some shit when all she's doing is fucking obfuscating shit?

>>8804886
She's a woma.
Who knows what she's trying to achieve.

the crazy thing is, some of her stuff is good:
She writes low-Fantasy, like "the Paladin", and it's honestly quite good, she writes "Heavy time" and "Hellfire" and "Pells Star" and "Merchanters Luck" and they are quite good.

But then, about half of everything she writes, is this cryptic bullshit.

>>8804906
>She's a woma.
Stop making up your own words.

>>8804907
:D
sorry, honestly am sorry, my "n" key broke today! :)

Are there any Fantasy books with Mage-Knights (or anything similar of the sort) that are more liking to Jedi Knights with plate armor?

>>8804915
I do believe that the "Witcher" Games are based on a series of novels (which I have not read), which would possibly be what you search.

>>8804915
Aren't Jedis just paladins?

There's loads of paladin stuff

>>8804872

Actually I think The Demon Cycle does this as well, but it's a different language and you almost always get translations and there's not too many words that are used in that way.
It's annoying but after a point it won't bother you.
Though at least in that series it's fitting since it's literally 2 very different cultures battling each other and the demons

>>8804925
Already read those though.

>>8804934
True, but most Paladins either have no magic or they have anything but the kind of Telekinetic magic I want from a Paladin.

Is Richard Morgan's fantasy worth reading?

I've seen lots of praise for Altered Carbon but little mention of his fantasy

>>8804794
I was going to put him too, but when he dedicates 5 decades of his life, I will put him in the same realm as Tolkien.

>>8804744
No, I mean literally using the Chakra points and Chi channels too.

Going for a feeling that the world used to be full of Elemental users, but now it's rare to see one and people have converted to using iron and steel. Could even have old technological wonders/ruins dotting the continent that can only be used/accessed through the usage of elements.

>>8804737
Trouble with stealing bending in particular is that it relied very heavily on the visual aspect. I mean you could nick an elemental system and no one would really care because they're everywhere, but if it was more specifically going to be martial arts based you'd probably have real trouble conveying that elegantly in text format.

>>8804996
Codex alera did a decent job of conveying the elemental magic through text.

>>8804996
>but if it was more specifically going to be martial arts based you'd probably have real trouble conveying that elegantly in text format.
Hmm, alright. I'll just work on it and do some research. If it doesn't come out good, I'll fall back on other plans. Thanks

>>8804906
I leave for 10 minutes and this happens?
>>8804872
>you need to be able to see how it's no fun to be constantly translating gibberish while reading.
Are you some kind of ninny? It's a technique to make them seem more alien when read in english. She includes an appendix in these kind of books for a reason.

Yo should I give The Painted Man another go

I kinda liked the world but hated the characters and gave up before the plot kicked into any sort of gear

>>8805181

You mean the warded man?

yeah, it's great.

>>8805212
Yeah that Painted Man is the UK (and wikipedia) name

I'm presuming the issues I had with the father being annoying as shit will have to lead somewhere

>>8804791
He didn't become an asshole. He just stopped planning ahead. Ever since the first Soul Society arc he was just making it up as he went along. That's why we got fights that went on for the better part of a year and insane plot twists to escape the holes he dug himself into.
But Bleach was always at its best when Kubo's insane plot twists accidentally made sense.

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>>8805221
>Full Bring Arc
>No ending
>No Aizen Bankai
>The 69 guy was completely neglected
>Zero division was a disappointment
>Ichigos father didn't even show his bankai
I could go on and on

Completely unnecessary filler arc as you've seen.
Kubo is an ass-hole because of the "literally nothing happened" chapters. He dragged the story so fucking much, he couldn't even finish it.

>>8803965
She did something like that?

Does anybody have a link to that "If Lord of the Rings was written in the style of a Japanese light novel" parody?

>>8804643
Rate my warrior women:
>world is a hell dimension, very high death rate to monsters, disease, war
>human birth rate is up to Sierra Leone levels in response
>not always enough resources to support growth or enough death to allow it
>armies form units of sworn virgins to act as scouts, messengers, archers, very rarely spearmen
>ofc you could form units of comfort women too but they don't die so good
>trained to only go after male soldiers when they outnumber them, especially when they can surround them, and also trained for stealth

Why is Sanderson able to shit out book after book while GRRM and Rothfuss can barely put down a sentence?

>>8804980
Just use East Asian elements nigga, or make fire and lightning two separate elements or have bending only work on two elements at once so like earth+fire=glassbenders and water+air=stormbenders or something.

>>8805369
Because they are too busy shitting out what little life they have left and stuffing themselves with food.

>>8805239
As far as I know he got really sick, consumption or whatever, Japs have a few taboo diseases, and that's when the quality started dropping. It felt like an axed ending though.

>>8805369
Because GURM eats by his swimming pool waiting for inspiration to strike while Sanderson spends ten hours a day at his standing desk writing.

>>8805369
Sanderson just writes, his process has always been to write more rather than revise what he has. Hence the dogshit dialogue

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If I love Mieville and Lovecraft, will I like VanderMeer?

>>8805391
He's better than either of them at crafting an actual story so you should

>>8805239
I remember an early interview with him where he was asked how he comes up with ideas and gets through writer's block. He said everytime he doesn't know what to do next he just introduces new characters. Which is fucking hilarious.
By the end there were so many half developed characters.

>>8805426
Just imagine how popular he would be if he was a writer.

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What video game based books are any good?

>>8805564

Witcher series was written by a literal cuck for your information

>>8805564
Metro 2033. But I think the game was based on the book. And S.T.A.L.K.E.R came from Roadside Picnic

>>8805564
As in set in a videogame or about one?

IIRC Jemisin has/is writing a Mass Effect book

Man it's weird how I can forget everything about a book I stopped reading and then read one line and remember everything

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I was told the first book is better, but so far I'm still not really feeling it. The prose is incredibly awkward and the characters vague and uninteresting while so much is going on that I have a hard time becoming invested or caring about anything. It's not that there isn't the cool idea here and there, or that it doesn't feel nice when you see how some things are connected, but if that's all it's about -- I don't think I want to be reading thousand of pages of this. This kind of reading feels like homework to me.

Should I just conclude this isn't my thing, and move on?

>>8805654

*the second book is better

Tired, zzZZzzzZzzzz

>>8805564
I read some of the Halo books as a kid and found them enjoyable. Whether I would now is another matter.

>>8805212
>>8805217
>>8805181
Wow the thing that was annoying me about Warded Man stops two fucking pages after where I'd stopped reading

>>8805776

???

>>8804949
It's actually too GRI APPROVED, read at your own caution.

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How do you guys keep track of new releases? Do you just use Goodreads or is there another website somewhere?

>>8805796
It's usually posted on my
P R I V A T E
R
I
V
A
T
E

>>8805654
Epic fantasy is just that- epic. It's going to have a lot of characters and places to keep track of. The writing doesn't really help either because sometimes it seems too vague. However I would push on to the second book just to see if you do enjoy it. There are some very cool scenes in the second and third book- just let Erikson take the wheel. And keep a character list at hand if it helps.

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What are the best horror sci-fi books?

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Has anyone here read this series? Worth getting into?

>>8805819
F3 that in the last thread, tonnes of answers.

>>8805828
thanks faamilam

>>8805825
The anime is very good but the translation for the novels is pretty shit

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>>8805819
>sex
>before marriage

Any fantasy/sci-fi recommendations with really imposing, threatening, well-written antagonists?

>>8805853
Obligatory Coldfire recommendation

>>8805819
Try I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, if you haven't already. Also, I really, really like this image; may I save it?

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>>8805564
Wing Commander has some okay to good books.

Starcraft got some decent novels.

I've heard the Resident Evil books are decent.

The Doom books are hilariously bad, in that they turn into Mormon survivalist propaganda.

The Metal Gear Solid novelization by Ray Benson is also hilariously bad.

>>8805853
Lord Foul's supposed to be really good.

>>8803478
Not much good fantasy out there, at least that people in this general know about.

>>8806105
From what I gather most people who read fantasy ITT just reread the same handful of authors and rarely ever try anything new.

>>8805391
Probably.

>>8805654
You have barely even waded into that series. The first time I read Malazan Book of the Fallen it didn't really start coming together in my head until I finished book 3. The scope of it is immense and ambitious. It does come together but it takes time.

If you don't have the patience to untangle the setting and larger plot then pick something else to read, because Malazan does not hold your hand.

>>8806119
It sure seems that way. Maybe the genre's penchant for series with 10+ entries mean that fantasy readers have read a lower number of authors, or that there's just always another book by an author they know so they don't have to take a chance on someone outside the mainstream.

>>8806140
It's more than there's so much trash that good stuff gets buried in a sea of shit, so people tend to stick to well known authors because for every Farseer Trilogy there's a dozen Eragorns.

>>8805819
Blindsight may be something you'd enjoy. The prose is pretty "horrific" as well though.

>>8806140
People mostly just talk about their favorites. I'm willing to bet a lot of the people here read series they feel too ashamed or embarrassed to admit reading, let alone enjoying. Hell I'm pretty sure 90% of the fantasy readers ITT have read ASoIaF yet there's virtually no discussion of it because it just brings arguing.

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>POV character starts quipping

>>8806171
>Haha I disagreed with you and then turned your point into a pun!
>Haha am I not so witty?

>>8804667
Just finished re-reading it. Really glad I can still enjoy these books.

>>8804799
>>8804814
It's actually the oldest fantasy chart around. Originally it was in two images, but I distinctly remember the multivolume tier levels, so I'm pretty sure it's the same chart.

I'm a huge wimp for sociocultural and language fuckery. I just finished the Ancillary series and quite enjoyed them despite their problems. What are some good books that tackle presenting a society in such an alien and alienated way?

>>8806420
What the fuck are you even asking?

>>8805361
>>world is a hell dimension
What do the people eat? Historically, people with agriculture were mostly busy farming, and people without it were sparsely populated.

>>human birth rate is up to Sierra Leone levels in response
Doesn't this keep the women busy and make them precious?

People don't realize this about history, but women used to have a lot of children, and therefore were constantly busy taking care of babies. In the Roman Empire, for instance, it was usual for women to have 8 children in a reproductive career.

So they'd be busy with children from the time they got married until they were middle-aged, and then they'd be helping with their grandchildren.

>>8806420
"Embassytown" and "The City And The City" by China Mieville are both good.

>>8806441
>What do the people eat?
It's more of a jungle hell than a desert hell, hunting and foraging can support relatively large populations as long as an important fruit tree doesn't suddenly go poisonous just to make humans suffer, or an important swine species doesn't bulk up and start pack-hunting humans. The biosphere is actively antagonistic and cruel, it's not going to kill everyone when it can make them suffer.

>Doesn't this keep the women busy and make them precious?
In fat years, yes. When there isn't enough food to support them and their brats and their grandbrats they'll encourage as many daughters as they can to go sworn, as there aren't any rich husbands to be found anymore and they just might get a daughter back with loot.

So, when does the Silmarillion pick up?
I'm enjoying it in a way, but at the same time I feel like I'm getting a lot of information about geography and bloodlines and such, but not much is actually -happening-

>>8806441
There's entirely the possibility that a culture could exist where a woman's death is viewed as less grievous than a man's.
It's as believable as anything in culture regarding peoples' intrinsic worth, to be honest.

>>8805796
Tor.com has monthly articles on new fantasy/sci-fi/some other genre books of the month. They list them all by date.

>>8806502
>There's entirely the possibility that a culture could exist where a woman's death is viewed as less grievous than a man's.
Depends on how you judge that. Lots of cultures demand a reduced blood fee for manslaughter of a female relative - that doesn't mean they allow more female deaths. Funeral customs can vary widely between the sexes, honorable processions for men and simple burials for women - doesn't mean more women die. A culture's survival depends on how many wombs get filled, and if it gets lax with that it's just not competitive.

>>8806165
It's already been discussed to death, the last book was too long ago. No use in speculating when the next one will come. Anyway it is a popular series and far from perfect I'm not ashamed to admit I look forward to the next installment.

>>8806502
>There's entirely the possibility that a culture could exist where a woman's death is viewed as less grievous than a man's.
Sure, that happens, mostly in poor societies where women are ineffectual breadwinners. A woman dies, there's more for everyone else. A man dies, there's less for everyone else. When there's not enough to go around due to a lack of capable hunters, a man's death implies the death of whatever women and children he might have supported.

Basically only happens with overpopulation or food-scarce hunting cultures. They still don't send women to fight, because women are bad at it. Instead, they kill female infants, abandon female children and old women, that sort of thing. Fertile young adult women, or girls nearing fertility, would be the last to be sacrificed to necessity.

>>8806510
I still read them but they've gone to shit since they got rid of the old editor

>>8806096
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, read Thomas Covenant it's shit.
The fucker just goes woe is me all fucking book.

Anyone who swears by it is a nostalgic faggot that read it years ago and got their first rape boner. Book is shit.

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>>8806119
I try new shit all the time and suggest the best of the lot, but I get called "shit tastes pleb" for it.

>>8806136
Glad you noticed that. It had me smiling too.

>>8806870
>suggest the best of the lot
But you don't, you suggest trash. And most of those are ultra popular reddit novels by the same few authors, you don't have any hidden gems. And no Iron Daughter doesn't count, it was shilled by someone else.

>>8806204
>>8806171
>implying you don't make puns irl
It's just that the jokes go above normie's heads, they laugh at unfunny shit like stale fagbook mehmees, but when you give a joke 90% of the time it goes over their head....

I seen jokes I told them about illicit no more than w cough... then a few weeks/months later they call me to show the same fucking joke on fagbook, and they are cracking up about it.

Fuck normies.

>>8804643

All of this is correct, as much as I don't want it to be.

The Aiel numbers were also fucking insane. you're telling me a barren wasteland can somehow sustain HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people with Stone Age tech? No fucking way.

>>8804915

The Knights Radiant are exactly this. Like, literally what you described, down to the fucking lightsabers.

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>>8806464
>when does it pick up

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>>8806874
>redshit
Well you would know what is suggested there and what not, but seeing as I never went to reddit I wouldn't know.

>hidden gems
Most of the hidden gems I found became popular so.... I also read what looks interesting, I'm not a pseud who reads the "most obscure"(i know it was you asking for obscure recs thread before the last) book he could find so I can parade my non-mainstream tastes, then at the drop of a hat turn 180 and say the book is shit because it became popular.

I really need to update this list someday, been putting it off for 2+ years(more than 200 books need to be added)

>>8804349
Nobody admits to having fallen for the shilling here, therefore TKG must suck major time. Spend your time on known good books.

I know a shop window where the same title has been displayed as "book of the month" for at least two decades now, so that means nothing.

>>8805819
TKaG

>>8806904
how do you live with yourself not sorting by author?

>>8806159
Hmmm don't get me wrong I love BS but I wouldn't really call it horror.

>>8805564
>>8805710
Halo books were pretty good overall.

>Great tier
Fall of Reach
Ghosts of Onyx

>Good tier
The Flood
First Strike

>Mid tier
Contact Harvest
Evolutions (short story collection)

>Shit tier
Cole Protocol

I haven't read the Forerunner or Kilo Five books.

>>8806999
Because my ocd autism is alphabetical, not authorial.

How much shit would I get if I included an iconic item from another series in my book, but with different lore behind it?

>>8807024
If you're not doing it as an homage to a series that inspired you (which is still unoriginal) you're better off using an item of your own creation

>>8807038
The design and name of said thing just really hits home, but I suppose you're right; I should come up with something on my own.

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Should I or not?

>>8807127

If you want to read badly written neckbeard wish fullfillment with the Stuest Gary Stu in recent memory as protagonist, be my guest.

>>8807127
Look even if you enjoy it you'll still end up hating the sequel

>>8807127

Read Rothfuss's bio on Goodreads and then get back to us.

>>8807148
>Rothfuss's bio on Goodreads
"It all began when Pat Rothfuss was born to a marvelous set of parents. Throughout his formative years they encouraged him to do his best, gave him good advice, and were no doubt appropriately dismayed when he failed to live up to his full potential.

In high-school Pat was something of a class clown. His hobbies included reading a novel or two a day and giving relationship advice to all his friends despite the fact that he had never so much as kissed a girl. He also role-played and wrote terrible stories about elves. He was pretty much a geek.

Most of Pat's adult life has been spent in the University Wisconsin Stevens Point. In 1991 he started college in order to pursue a career in chemical engineering, then he considered clinical psychology. In 1993 he quit pretending he knew what he wanted to do with his life, changed his major to "undecided," and proceeded to study whatever amused him. He also began writing a book....

For the next seven years Pat studied anthropology, philosophy, eastern religions, history, alchemy, parapsychology, literature, and writing. He studied six different martial arts, practiced improv comedy, learned how to pick locks, and became a skilled lover of women. He also began writing a satirical advice column which he continues to this day: The College Survivial Guide. Through all of this he continued to work on his novel.

In 2000 Pat went to grad school for English literature. Grad school sucked and Pat hated it. However, Pat learned that he loved to teach. He left in 2002 with his masters degree, shaking the dust from his feet and vowing never to return. During this period of time his novel was rejected by roughly every agent in the known universe.

Now Pat teaches half-time at his old school as an assistant-sub-lecturer. He is underpaid but generally left alone to do as he sees fit with his classes. He is advisor for the college feminists, the fencing club, and, oddly enough, a sorority. He still roll-plays occasionally, but now he does it in an extremely sophisticated, debonair way.

Through a series of lucky breaks, he has wound up with the best agent and editor imaginable, and the first book of his trilogy has been published under the title "The Name of the Wind."

Though it has only been out since April 2007, it has already been sold in 26 foreign countries and won several awards.

Pat has been described as "a rough, earthy iconoclast with a pipeline to the divine in everyone's subconscious." But honestly, that person was pretty drunk at the time, so you might want to take it with a grain of salt."

That's enough cringe to last me through the week. Thanks, anon.

>>8807148
>>8807161
After reading that, Kvothe is making a lot more sense to me.

>>8807161
>He is advisor for the college feminists
Man you can just tell he's one of those creeps who's into feminism just to get near to girls

>>8803847
Golgri'aman. Throw an umlaut or two in there as well to really get the readers' blood pumpin.

>>8804148
U Know It Boi. Just wait till he truly proves he is the "most violent of all men" ;^) Though i'm not completely done wit the final book so hopefully Cnauir has a few more licks left to give.

Also I'm pissed both Prince of Nothing and Hyperion are absent from the selected works graphic,
but I don't know what is or isn't in the zeitgeist so hopefully its just 4chan contrarianism rather than collective shit taste

I would also recommend that "Prince of Thorns" series be excised from all lists. Repetitive, dull as fuck, and edgy in the most pure sense of the word.
A book about a "13 year old badass" that reads like it was written by "a 13 year old badass". I couldn't finish the first book.
I couldn't continue reading over and over again about how this "total badass who doesn't give a fuck" got his "Dark twisted side" when he saw his parents get killed and raped and also the rose thorns oh gosh
oh me oh my i saw them killed and i was stuck in some thorns and the author is going to repeat this so much you ALMOST
will forget how contrived it is that this kid wasn't spotted and didn't make a sound while his carriage was sacked 10 ft away

>>8807161
>and became a skilled lover of women
it's all so cringeworthy but that takes the cake

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>>8804754
Bakker is just smothers you with lots of proper nouns. Its not like he's calling water "splish'a" and air "swish'a" and feet "D'angael" or anything.
It frustrates me that people have trouble keeping all this shit in check like they think it's super duper important to know the difference between a Thunyeri or an Ainoni or a Norsirai or a Nilnameshi at all times. You don't.
You should know what a Dunyain is, a Scylvendi, and you should know that the holy war is fighting the Kianene.
And when they describe the battles- and this is definitely personal preference- I find the occasional confusion regarding who is holy war and is dirty heretic dogs actually adds to the intense battle descriptions and mapping of formations smashing into eachother.
Just keep reading and you actually will discover that its not that hard to understand them and whenever it is EVER necessary to know which is which- CONTEXT CLUES, ya fucking autist.
Like, why even pretend to read books if the simplest of mechanics involved in understanding literature escapes you?

>>8804787
i will say shit like that great excerpt from the morrowind lore with the (words) firing their (words) charged by 8th dimension mathematics until the (words) glitter in the (words) of (words) is overwhelming to the point of hilarity.
Haven't read vance but you do have to balance that shit

>>8804799
>"Multi-volumes: God Tier - In the Name of the Wind"
>mfw

YUP. ALL 2 (TWO) VOLUMES ARE SOOOOO GREAT HAHA LOL :)

>>8807243

Sup Bakker, how you doing? Still blazing?

Has anyone ever read a multi-pov book and actually enjoyed every single PoV?

Because I'm not enjoying the second and third characters in Warded Man much at all

>>8807243
But why would I read that when I can read something that is clear rather than muddled? Same reason I dropped Gardens of the Moon within 2 pages, these authors need to learn to write in an actually coherent way rather than trying to make everything epicly intricate.

>>8807253
no

because even if all the POV characters would be good in isolation there will always be some that suffer in comparison

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>>8807253

>mfw le witty Shallan chapters thrown in my face right when I want to read about based Dalinar slapping the shit out of everyone

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>>8804824
You literally just blew my mind. I've been playing rpgs, even pen and paper, and never knew thats why you had to meditate on a spell before casting it, or that that is why they have limited casts.

Fucking kill me.

>>8804872
>all according to kekaiku*

TL note: Kekaiku means "plan"

>>8806877
mhmm sure. keep telling yourself this story
had nothing to do with the delivery, timing, or, even much more likely, reading the fucking room to know when it was appropriate to tell your stupid hacky joke you came up with all on your own b/c you're so special "but somehow ended up on fagbook"
the reason they didn't laugh is because you aren't funny

>>8807264
Why would you want to read more Dalinar? He's an abominable tyrant! I know this because all the characters keep saying it, despite what's actually happening in the book.

>>8807253
I haven't finished it but I actually like the dual PoV's in Leviathan Wakes

But it is only two characters and it seems like it's one author writing each.

Oh and Jemisin does it well in Fifth Season but I've again not finished it, and I half suspect that there could be some twist like them all being the same person at different times.

>>8807264
Stormlight feels like Sanderson wrote a book about Kaladin and then went back and added in other characters to pad it out

>>8807280
>I half suspect that there could be some twist like them all being the same person at different times.
I'd be cool and weird to read a book with different PoVs where they are all the same person, but reincarnated from the original "hero" in different timelines or different points in time.

Sorta Legend of Zelda, but all happening at once in a trilogy. The action of one of them in an earlier chapter leaves a mark for a 200 years in the future reincarnation to stumble upon a few chapters later.

>>8807289
It'd*

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>>8807249
I fucking wish but also I don't. I hope I never spend 17 years writing my first fucking book unless i am literally excavating the letters from the ghobi
and carving them into the bones of genetically abnormal children who died of spontaneous combustion

>>8807256
>epicly intricate
pic related

>>8807253
No. Even if I enjoy each of the characters theres always some shit where the author jumps to another right in the middle of some hot shit happening with the one you're reading
kellus finally starts learning sorcery and then i get thrown into cnauir and then some crazy shit happens with him and then im jumped somewhere else, back to achamian i think.
I love each of the characters but this fuckin CBT orgasm denial bullshit drives me insane.

and then of course there is Wheel of Time where i'll just fuckin drop it and not read again for months because it switched povs and im tired of jordans plodding re-re-re-reintroduce you bullshit

>>8807310

Man, finishing Wheel Of Time took some serious fucking resolve.

It did get easier once the Sandmeister took over, tho.

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>90% of the graduates in /sff/ majored in a STEM field.

How does this make you feel?

>>8807407
:(

>>8807407
Makes me feel rather tired by your constant avatarfagging.

>>8807318
>Man, finishing Wheel Of Time took some serious fucking resolve.

There's two things that are horrible about WoT. And that is the entirety of Perrin's story, and Book 10(which is the worst trash I've ever *tried* to read).

>>8807416

>Perrin in the first books
>shaping up to be an axe wielding werewolf badass

>becomes Lord Pussywhipped instead

Words cannot even express the rage. Fucking Faile.

>>8807412
>Luís Vaz de Camões
>Avatar

Stem faggot detected

>>8807407

Ok I guess? The rivalry between STEM and humanities is fucking stupid.

A Renaissance scholar like Pico Della Mirandola was a man who had studied EVERYTHING, from mathematics to literature. Civil war between branches of knowledge for e-penis enlargement is both pointless and retarded.

>>8806904

I don't see TKaG there

>>8807443
Yeah both fields would benefit from each other

I lived with some science students and their writing skills were often really poor and they're made to do a buttload of ethics classes. Just give them some proper humanities lessons and you could fix that

>>8807428
>shaping up to be an axe wielding werewolf badass

Which is itself an overall boring narrative in a book that is about spell-weaving psychos that blow shit up all throughout the books.

>>8807474

They are geeks who want to write numbers and shit not words, you can't blame them

The only WoT character I liked from what I'd read was Mat and he spent literally half of what I had read dying in bed.

Couldn't stand anyone else

>>8807253
I enjoy Reynold's stuff, rev space is okay and has a lot of spit PoVs

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>>8807474
>Mathematics departments would benefit from an injection of Feminist Dance Therapy majors

Nah. Humanities is a joke in modern universities.

>>8807483
The inarticulate and grossy inaccurate nature of this post is a good demonstration of my point desu

>>8807476
But Mat is the best character throughout the books and he doesn't have any kind of magic beyond genetic memory

>>8807253
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3282362/1/The-Dichotomy-of-Prophecy

>>8807516

Mat doesn't even need magic when he's literally manipulating the fabric of space and time in his favor, has always perfect odds and probability,all of military history in his head, is a master spearman and is immune to magic on top of all this.

>>8806880
>you're telling me a barren wasteland can somehow sustain HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people with Stone Age tech?
Well, they've got agriculture and blacksmiths, so they're hardly stone-age.

But the Fremen-like attitude toward water, not just something to be minded when travelling in the desert but rare and precious even in their homes, was absurd. Never saw a river? Never saw rain? They're not living somewhere you can put farms.

The Bedouins saw much more water than that, and they just barely scraped by as herdsmen.

>>8807535

Yeah I was wrong about the stone age tech, but all the same I don't think the Aiel Waste could ever have sustained a whole civilization, especially not one hailed as the best warriors ever.

>>8807127
It's a guilty pleasure, a couple notches down in respectability from The Dresden Files, but fun. Maybe about on the level of Harry Potter without being suitable for kids.

It's like nostalgia for all the things you used to enjoy but now cringe at.

>>8807516
>But Mat is the best character throughout the books

As always, I think it was good up untill the author feels like a female element is suddenly necessary, and then it turns to shit.

How do you write a good female military character without falling into the "strong woman" shit hole?

>>8807586
Make her a flawed character

>>8807600
And be a sexist?

>>8807586
Don't, write a good solider, their gender is irrelevant. Watch Aliens, Vasquez is a great example of a military woman who doesn't fall into the stronk womyn trap.

>>8807604
If that's the price you pay, so be it

>>8807187
>A book about a "13 year old badass"
They did eventually give a reason for why he was succeeding, though it wasn't very satisfying. Everything's feels magic because quantum, so a stubborn, dismissive attitude and willingness to try things that should fail, yet expect them to succeed, gives you power.

It's really a series about the setting. The main character's just a vehicle to take you around a place where viziers grow glass trees by feeding them with their blood, machine ghosts sleep with terrible secrets, and the magic wants to eat you.

>>8807586
You just write a male military character, and just subtly imply a bosom and long hair throughout the book.

>>8807630
See, you trick me now, because this sounds cool as fuck
but im not going to fall into that trap. I do not want to read about how he relives that tragic evening every night, every moment, every other fucking paragraph.
I started it and a few hours later at most I was fed the fuck up, closed out, and saw that I had 50% of the first book read
and I thought, wow, theres no way. There's no way that an author spent half a book+ recounting the same story, the same scene, with very few differences in detail or structure, and absolutely no differences of any significance
such as perspective, or thematics, or even just fucking mood
he did it so many times. I honestly. If I was just the slightest bit more autistic I would go back and count how many times he does it.
But what the fuck do I know I've read six books of the WOT.

theres really no accounting for taste :(

>>8807770
It's like poetry. It rhymes.

>>8807770
>But what the fuck do I know I've read six books of the WOT.

You are like a little baby. Watch this :

I read all fourteen of them and after each one I posted in /sffg/ and asked if I should stop and the answer every time was yes and every time I kept going. Also I guess this meme format should have ended in SUCC but whatever.

>>8803456
What are some good online or physical magazines where I could read published short fantasy or sci-fi stories? Lately the pulp magazine has interested me.

>>8807770
>>8807799
It's like a song, it has a chorus.

>>8807586
>>8807614
this. If you are trying to write a good character "despite their gender" then don't, just write the character and use whatever pronouns.
if you aren't female yourself then there is likely no great insight you can give as far as the character relating to their gender
and, personally, i find giving so many glasses, so many different lenses that a character must see the world through- gender, race, creed, culture, language- it gets fucking kaleidoscopic

essentially, write a human first. a human is all those things and none of those things. only through insight do we ever grab up the lenses of the pieces that make us.
strictly described, our actions, and our passions, and our visions- they are human. It's in our minds that we make ourselves of a race, a creed, a gender, a culture, a language, a father, a mother, a child etc. etc. etc.

To stroke my own dick ass here some more, lets think of it this way.
A human picks up a rock and skips it across a pond.
OR
A father picks up a rock and skips it across a pond.
The latter only be need written as such if the context calls for it, right? She should only be a woman if it MATTERS that she is a woman in that moment.
The problem with 'strong womyn' archetype, is the mistake of mind that, no matter what, it ALWAYS matters that SHE is a WOMAN.
That there is no humanity in her. Only woman. That there is no man, no father, no brother, no son- further- no daughter! no wife, no sister. No soldier. No sinner, no saint. ONLY woman, above all only woman.

Don't write a fucking woman. For that matter, don't write a fucking man. Write a god damn human. We all have the same brains in our heads.

I hope this is somehow useful and im not just fagging it up over here

>>8807586

You don't you idiot.
Why put female in military, they are weak and a burden to the rest of their crew

>>8807799
>>8807817
>>8807827
Ok but how about this. How do I stop shitposting on /lit/ and get to writing the words that i thought inside my head a little while ago.

Also whats some good music to write to, since all of you are such hospitable and friendly shitheads. Im using google play since they acquired songza and the "electronic film scores" is hit or miss

I get that the thematic core of the series is overcoming fear but why do the demons become such pushovers in the second demon cycle book?

>>8807835
This is good advice. Are there any books that should be avoided because they fall into the stronk woman trope?

>>8807835
Excellent advise. I haven't started to write anything other than worldbuilding and some character planning, but I'll definitely focus on the character and not on his/her gender when developing them.

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>>8807906
>tfw got stuck in world building for months upon months and could probably continue world building forever
I'll start writing eventually, I promise.

>>8807911
Most authors spend a good 3+ years on world building, unless they're all bullshitting us to make it seem like they had everything planned out before putting ink on the paper, so to speak.

>>8807835
>if you aren't female yourself then there is likely no great insight you can give as far as the character relating to their gender

>Females know their gender better than men

You fucked up at the beginning making your entire point moot

>Write a god damn human. We all have the same brains in our heads.

No we don't, if you think there are literally no differences between male and female brains you're just a fucking idiot

>>8807835
In practice this usually just makes characters that feel male but are canon female.

>>8807851
Bakemonogatari soundtrack, it makes my characters 70% wittier.

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>>8807897
i don't know any outright, but many writers great and small throughout time eat adam and shit eve.
just keep your eye out because there many many traps and you WILL fall into a few of them.
the struggle against mediocrity is a war of a attrition, I feel. mitigate losses, strive for greater successes.

>>8807933
to me, process > product. Work over all. Don't be one of those shits that dies before you finish.
Finish, finish again, and finish some more.
Don't live and die on one idea. Van Gogh would finish 3 paintings in a fucking week. Sure there's only one starry night, but if you don't think all his field worker series is the hypest shit ever you can get the fuck out my face.

>>8807952
just because you have a weeping, bleeding hole where your dick should be doesn't mean other men know what that's like, you little baby bitch.
you tiny baby bitch.
>literally no differences between male and female brains
how is it you criticize me about believing women have a distinct advantage over writing "female truth" in one breath and then in another seem to believe that I think that there is no difference between man and woman.

are you retarded my boy? were dropped from a great height on that soft little head?

>>8807975
>seem to believe that I think that there is no difference between man and woman.

Let me quote you here
>Don't write a fucking woman. For that matter, don't write a fucking man. Write a god damn human. We all have the same brains in our heads.

You need to stop giving advice on writing, because it's horrible, absolutely horrible

>>8807975
>how is it you criticize me about believing women have a distinct advantage over writing "female truth" in one breath and then in another seem to believe that I think that there is no difference between man and woman.
Which is it? We're all just human or you should give up on writing women if you're not one? Should I give up on writing Martians if I'm not one? Should I not write humans, not write Martians, but write sentients, because we all have the same qualifications for self-awareness in our processing centers?

>>8807975
You're comparing an historically legendary artist to some guy who wants to write a book or two on /lit/. The former could afford the due diligence that comes with improvising, the latter can't without some planning to make it deep and semi-good.

>>8807835
>Don't write a fucking woman. For that matter, don't write a fucking man. Write a god damn human. We all have the same brains in our heads.
We don't though. The difference between men's and women's brains is comparable to the difference in their bodies, perhaps greater.

Don't let "same average IQ" fool you. IQ is an awful metric, seriously as bad as BMI. "Same average IQ for the sexes" is a design constraint of IQ tests, not a finding of intelligence research. In fact, it's one of only two design criteria for a valid IQ test: conform to the specified bell curve distribution, get the same average score for each sex. Naturally, this leads to scores of deeply questionable utility.

The original purpose of IQ was to detect slow development in children, as a sign of undiagnosed illness or mistreatment (the "quotient" in IQ was "mental age / physical age"). Sex parity was a practical measure to keep costs down, and was simply assumed to give good enough results. Totally BMI-tier even before it was misapplied.

If you look at the brains physically, you see differences like the musculo-skeletal systems. The male brain is larger absolutely, larger in proportion to the body, more energy-hungry relative to its size, made of more metabolically-costly materials to grow, and with a denser network of connections. The female brain is largely symmetrical, while men have a swollen left hemisphere: the primary seat of language, reason, and calculation.

Besides the difference in raw horsepower, the difference in emphasis and drives is profound. Women are much more inhibited from violence, and tend to break down into passive ineffectuality when in strong emotional states. This (mostly) keeps them from killing children during fits of rage. Men, on the other hand, often remain tactically effective and coordinated when their reason is otherwise overwhelmed by their anger, so it's not good to have a man with a bad temper babysit. There are many such differences.

If you write a woman as a man with tits and girly arms, you're writing about a freak.

>>8807987
Only a fucking sith deals in absolutes you mongoloid. You make of me an enemy out sheer misunderstanding. A woman can not write a "truly good 'male' character" the same a man can't write a woman as such. By that I mean the things which are distinct unto gender. But that does not preclude anyone from writing a great character who is male, or who suffers from circumstances that are female.
You write a great character. But the Bible of MAN can only be written by a man, and the Bible of WOMAN can only be written by woman.
As I said before, the problem with writing the "stronk female" is that FEMALE is all that matters in every circumstance and that the character is nothing but FEMALE or MALE or BLACK or CHRISTIAN.

>>8807990
posthumously legendary, and not comparing at all. I'm using Gogh as an example that being prolific is extremely important, and possibly overlooked in the writing community with fags like George around. Don't die on one book, one series. You can author many beauties far better than you can author one starry night.
Planning is fucking good. Do it. World build fucktons. I prefer that in my sci-fi/fantasy. But work at it, right? Like have work to show for it.

>>8808024
>possibly overlooked in the writing community with fags like George around. Don't die on one book, one series.
You mean GRRM? He has written tons of stuff in various settings.

>>8807161
It is actually pretty great as far as sales pitch goes -- which is why I would approach with caution. Something that is actually good wouldn't need so much hyping. You can tell that guy is probably overcompensating for something.

>>8808013
>Don't let "same average IQ" fool you. IQ is an awful metric

They might have the "same average IQ", but let me give you an example, what are the averages of these 2:

3, 3, 3, 3, 3

1, 1, 3, 5, 5

>>8808051
Dunno dude I didn't go to uni, I'm just here to talk about sff...

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>>8808051
>3, 3, 3, 3, 3
>Mfw I thought it was 2,5 first

>>8808013
looking at his bibliography, i recant my statement. Looks like the longest between novels was 7 years and he's got fuckloads of shorts and I know he did screenwriting as well.
I'm just asspained that the new season will air before the new book, it looks like and I totally blew what I thought was slothliness out of proportion.
I think the point still stands though, right? To write a lot. Work a lot. Im seriously projecting though as I'm a fucking lazy scumbag.

>>8808013
Buddy come on. Come on bud. Pal. Really now.

I didn't say write a man and call her a woman, you keep missing that, and Im not sure how else to repeat what I've already said on that.

I will say maybe that
>we all have the same brains in our heads
this line, that keeps getting stumbled over. I should rephrase it.

We all have brains- the human kind, you know with consciousness and imagination or abstract thought- in our heads, here on earth, where we all live, with those brains. The human brains. Brains that can figure out what dirt feels like. And like. How being made fun of sometimes feels really bad.
Human brains that think, well Ice is cold, and the sun is hot, and exacting puttering morons who suffer a million injustices and fantasize a million millionfold more strengths afforded by nothing. nothing. circumstance. imaginary shit.
that such cunts are insufferable.
our human brains can figure this out. man or woman. its pretty
fucking
crazy
like wow omg the world we live in?

>>8808076
You're probably a women with how hysterical you are. You'll never know what it's like to have the superior male brain, sorry.

>>8808076
>I didn't say write a man and call her a woman
You said write a "human." There are male humans and female humans. For many reasons the default "human" in literature has traditionally been male.

>>8808081
Probably a man who's convinced himself he's a woman and is acting extra-hysterical to make up for lost time.

Yay what I come to this thread four thousands of words about why girls suck

>>8808125
You should learn how to accept that your argument sucks without resorting to sarcastic, patronizing, outsider language.

>>8808134
I don't give a shit about this argument buddy. I just wish you'd make your own thread so nobody has to read this bollocks.

You aren't convincing each other and nobody else cares enough to read your shit

>>8808125

Yeah that's the women authors anon, probably hasn't gotten laid since the Clinton administration if ever.

>>8808125
I just realised I conflate come for and four thousand

nvm

>>8808151
>You aren't convincing each other and nobody else cares enough to read your shit

I cared and I did read it

>>8807483
Your opinion of what counts as humanities classes shows how uneducated you are.

>>8808051
There's kind of a myth that there are way more male mental defectives, and this is what keeps the averages the same, when there are far more high-scoring men than women.

The reality is that the high scores are pretty rare and therefore don't affect the mean very much, especially in the samples used to design the tests. They don't try to balance the bell curve on the low end. Serious mental defects usually result from serious physical health problems, not at all by the same mechanism as normal variation in intelligence.

It's not easy to design an intelligence test so male and female scores come out to the same average. I think it depends on boringness and questions with no objectively right answer. Women are more inclined to work hard on easy things they're told to do, and on finding the answer that *agrees* with other people rather than the objectively correct one. They more usually need to succeed in the social realm rather deal effectively with physical reality. Men are more likely to stop paying attention when given unimportant, unchallenging work, and not care if they make a mess of it, or to seek out the truth that other people don't see rather than settle for the consensus position.

So IQ scores have a component of submissiveness, and that's what's used to achieve sex equality. They could have balanced it across the whole curve, rather than just the mean, but ultimately the kind of men who would take an interest in designing IQ tests are only interested in denigrating the intelligence of men different from themselves.

>>8808084
>You said write a "human." There are male humans and female humans. For many reasons the default "human" in literature has traditionally been male.

If I'm getting this right, you mistook me saying "human" for "male human" and then got mad that I was saying to write not a woman or man but a "male human"
and then you stopped thinking, because why thinking about thoughts once you've had them, no time for that, better write about IQ and male and female physiology because that has everything to do with what I said?

I genuinely am having trouble understanding where your argument is coming from, as it continually seems to be you misunderstanding completely everything that I say and then trying to subtly explain that women are inferior to men? Or that women are distinctly different from men?

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Alright I gotta rub some banana peels on my rubber tree and thats not a euphamism

i hope some of you besides IQfag got something out of what I wrote here
>>8807975
>>8807835

but im just another anon and by no means an authority.

And if you suffer from autism please remember that it doesn't mean you have to be an insufferable cunt, and that if you find yourself in severe disagreement with someone be sure to reconsider their argument, read it fully, and above all, communicate with that person if you believe you have any misunderstandings.

Together we can make a brighter tomorrow. Asalomo shakem,
I remain

>>8808076
>Buddy come on. Come on bud. Pal. Really now.
>I didn't say write a man and call her a woman, you keep missing that, and Im not sure how else to repeat what I've already said on that.
This is what you said:
>Don't write a fucking woman. For that matter, don't write a fucking man. Write a god damn human. We all have the same brains in our heads.
>It's in our minds that we make ourselves of a race, a creed, a gender, a culture, a language, a father, a mother, a child etc. etc. etc.
You didn't have a sensible point. You're spouting stupid bullshit you think sounds profound.

And you're pushing blank-slate theory: that every brain is born equal, and only what is written on it by experience matters. It's not true, and it produces shitty literature. Good literature starts with insight into human nature, not by throwing insight out the window in favor of polite pretense.

"Write a human" is vacuous. There's nobody who needs to be reminded that there are some commonalities of the human experience.

You seem like someone who would vaguely like to be an author but has never even tried. I mean, you can't even use capitalization and punctuation properly, but you want to hand out advice on writing.

>>8808243
>>And if you suffer from autism please remember that it doesn't mean you have to be an insufferable cunt, and that if you find yourself in severe disagreement with someone be sure to reconsider their argument, read it fully, and above all, communicate with that person if you believe you have any misunderstandings.
But you were insufferable and you didn't try to communicate at all.

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Tell me about your worlds, anons.

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>>8808482
There are obscure memes perpetuated by monks (no printing presses). A kind of mysticism evolves around those memes since no one is able to trace their origins and after a few centuries we have a whole Kabbalah rooted in memes.

>>8808482
A planet where the atmosphere disappears as the sun sets (magic I guess), thinning until midnight is perfect vacuum. The planet's axis points toward its star and wobbles a lot, so there are zones where the sun never sets and you can always breathe outside, zones where you have to wear space suits after dark, and zones where there is no atmosphere ever. Nuclear civil war between the central government in the distributed farms of the sunlands and the heavily populated cities of the nightlands.

Has any SF author tackled the problems of a high-gravity no-atmosphere world? I know it doesn't normally happen in real life.

>>8808506
will you be my bedbug?

subverting tropes is a meme

so, /lit/,
I need to ask this, for I only know from where to get german ebooks (for free, that is), and most baords have threads with like MEGA folders and ressources,

where would I go to find english ebooks?

I am asking specifically, because both my itunes as well as my amazon just simply flat out won't allow me to fucking BUY the new expanse novel.

I'm honestly buttmad, and I can't get behind, why they wouldn't let me O_O

>>8808840
Email them.

>>8808848
email whom? Amazon?
It says: Unavailable in your Country.

And I do have a hunch why that is this way, as we have some retarded law in germany called Buchpreisbindung, which is basically a Fixed-Book-Prices law, making all our books significantly more expensive than (for example) in England. It just won't fucking do.

But maybe, I'll just have to wait a couple of months or half a year :(

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>>8808840
Welcome to piracy. Like you, a lot of us have been driven to this life because we're fed up jumping through the bullshit hoops they put our stuff behind.

Bookzz.org and http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ are my favourites but you can scour the torrent trackers like https://extratorrent.unblockall.xyz/ if you want.

>>8808868
thanks mate, appreciate it! :)
I do buy hardcover books regularly, basically a couple each week when I'm down in the city, as I just enjoy having a proper book in hand, but I'm really confuzzled why getting new releases from foreign countries is made so hard.

thanks alot!

>>8808865
>we have some retarded law in germany called Buchpreisbindung, which is basically a Fixed-Book-Prices law, making all our books significantly more expensive
Is this a German thing or an EU thing? Cause it sounds like something the EU would do.

>>8809161
>a German thing or an EU thing?
The EU is the 4th Reich.

I'm considering using the seven deadly sins personified as the antagonists in something I'm writing, but it feels like this "trope", for lack of better word, has been overdone to death. What would you do? Continue with the seven deadly sins or come up with something more original in its stead?

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>>8809195
It's a fine motif. You don't have to explicitly name them as such. What was the last thing you read that used them and wasn't FMA?

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>celebrated fantasy nigress is going to write for fucking Mass Effect
Two things I hate in one.

I know it's the most common sounding trope out there but I'm looking for something to read where the main character starts out useless and ends up all powerful

Stormlight and Lightbringer are the only recent books I can find with this and they weren't fantastic

>>8809201
>What was the last thing you read that used them and wasn't FMA?
Good point.

>>8809208
Define
>all powerful

>>8809216
Good at fighting with at least some level of magical nonsense

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>>8808482
Hyperadvanced machines created to design a utopian society read the desires of mankind and fulfill them. Too many cooks spoil the broth and the desires lead to the devices segregating humans into villages and simplifying their desires, manifesting as "gods" in a now regressed, dark age world.

Small liberation fronts are hunted down by human-god hybrids trying to maintain the status quo. Rebels infiltrate the segregated, god-led villages and try to work against whatever collective desire forms the god, thus affecting the populace and unraveling the nature of the being, weakening it and allowing it to be, if not killed, then suppressed and locked away.

>>8808482
A world where magic is introduced in a way similar to how industrialization happened. But make it happen during medieval time period so that you still have the main fantasy time period.

I just want books to be in a world where magic is everywhere and they acknowledge it so they use it for everything like blacksmiths using magic to heat there forges, summoned golems in place of oxen and horses. Magic rings and enchanted items out the ass, with as much cursed items as there is beneficial ones because people are shit at magic but still give it a go or because people are malicious.

But I'm too lazy and not /lit/ enough as seen by the shallowness of this idea.

>>8808482
A version of our own world in the middle of the Viking Ages, around the 750s are so, but it's not our world because in this world every single myth, legend, folktale, and religious belief is true in some form or fashion. It doesn't mean that all of them are literally true, but many of them are, including most of the big religious ones.

As a result, cities are where they shouldn't be, nations and empires either never existed or still exist when they shouldn't, and the ancient and medieval worlds are crashing messily into each other. Gods and heroes and monsters reshape the course of our own history.

>>8809276
I've never been a fan of normalising magic. Or rather, I don't see the point.

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>>8809205

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>>8809292
But that is our world.

>>8809315
You can love Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge and still hate Jimmyson, anon.

>>8809318

OH SHIT

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>>8809318

>>8809298
I love normalised magic. It always annoyed me how in DnD style settings where magic can make food trivially they still bother to have agriculture.

Humanity as a whole is great at abusing every advantage it has. If magic can be used to further people they will exploit the fuck out of it. The key is to either make the downside big enough that it becomes a choice again (lightbringer colour magic) or make the whole world difficult/dangerous enough that even with the magic advantage they still only just come out ahead (codex alera).

>>8808482
Tidally locked planet where people are forced to live in the thin strip of land between the light and the dark. Its constantly raining and windy with steep mountains and valleys where galciers constantly push from dark to light to try and keep the temperature somehow livable.

The sun itself is magic/radioactive and is twisting living things into horroble abominations that constantly assail the inhabitants that have heavily fortified valleys to protect themselves.

>>8809321
Fucking hell Stephenson's your mark of quality?

>>8809161
German (and presumably Austrian) thing. Applies to German-language titles only. DOES NOT APPLY to non-German books sold in/to Germany. (Does, however, now apply to books sold to Germany from abroad - foreign retailers must now charge German prices.)

Strangely enough, I sort of agree with the idea of keeping plush high street bookshops in business, and being able to find a wide range of titles there. However, there is no mechanism to cap the prices set by the publishing oligopoly.

>>8809180
For an American, sure. Enjoy your civil war in six to eight years.

Yo I got about 10 pages into the second Mistborn book and stopped

Should I carry on with it? I liked the first but it was almost perfectly self-contained, felt it did what Abercrombie was trying in half the time and without making the book seem pointless

I was reading Shadow Campaigns thinking it was an okay black company knock off but it's suddenly transformed into One Piece

Not even in a subtle way

>>8809436
It'll be a treat compared to what's brewing in Europe. You invited the machete squads from Rwanda in.

>>8809400
For modern SF, yeah. Is that controversial to you?

>>8809537
>talking shit about best autist husbando Janus

Opinion discarded

You told me "The Dragon Reborn" was supposed to be one of the best. It's worse than the 1st two. I can't stand those 3 bitches.

>>8809478
It's shit. Mistborn was planed to be a stand alone.

It's literally the "nothing happens" book.

>tfw you want your shit written but have no desire to write it
>tfw you don't even have the motivation to read anymore

>>8809745
I know that feeling, though I just discovered a series that got me back into reading. I can't say I'll read anything after I'm done with it, though.

>>8809745
>Come up with idea
>Get caught up trying to formulate logical explanations as to why the story is the way it does

>>8810193
>have an idea for a plot
>can't think of original characters so shamelessly rip them off from /co/

god I hate that

So many sequels coming out in 2017, nice

Is rothfuss ever going to release the 3rd book?

Opinions on Brimstone Angels? I just saw The Devil You Know on my local library and it looked intresting.

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>>8810442
I hope he does another strangely introspective one-character novella first, Slow Regard of Silent Things was better than both tomes put together. Ideally it'd be about Elodin since he's the only other interesting one.

List upcoming 2017 GRI APPROVED novels

>>8810454
>the devil you know
You aren't speaking of mike Carey are you?

>>8810459

The Core (If it will come out next year) will likely be GRI improved, there has been gay rape and rape so far, I can't remember if incest was in there though

>>8810470
Nope, it' by Erin M. Evans.

/sffg/ what do you do when the story you're most passionate about writing is just pure plagiarism all the way down to the core, stealing plot elements, characters and themes from the same source, but the parts you stole are the ones you like the most?

>>8810459
The unholy consult in summer 2017, if the publishing date holds.

Bump limit reached

New thread

>>8810540
>>8810540
>>8810540

>>8810515
There Is nothing wrong with plagiarism if done correctly. See bakker

>>8810193
Get out of my head.