/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General Anonymous
06/05/26(Fri)18:44:55
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25323801
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The Old New Earth edition
Previous: >>25313741
>Recommended reading charts (look here before asking for vague recommendations):
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb
>Archive:
https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg
>Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
Showing all 139 replies.
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https://youtu.be/RQ567ezE370
unfortunately this video has nearly convinced me against dandelion dynasty
the descriptions of bluntness, the "fixed right and wrong being steered towards" in contrast supposedly with GOT where bad people can win (ive actually heard that GOT has a similar underlying "justice" where bad people get their comeuppance eventually, but regardless that one essay on Daenerys is already imbuing far more nuance in my mind than what is implied by this videos description of how dandelion dynasty bluntly addresses tyranny). It just comes across as too narrow. Unironically in a twist of events, almost in retroact convinced me that GOT is a better read. But im still skeptical of that.
This guys review is almost complete opposite to that Book Guy youtubers review I posted some days ago where he said its deeply philosophical, and plays with concepts and values in a way that doesnt spoonfeed you an answer, but leaves the conclusions to be decided for yourself (there are unique problems with that theoretically, but its almost always preferable to "lol tryanny bad, ill pretend its not actually that simple by showing how le trynanny corrupts even da good, so that you have a tacit association with good and tyranny, which makes it seem like tyranny has more dimensions than strictly bad, even though, well its actually just bad and there's nothing truly complicated about that, nothing deep to investigate about how thousands of years of tyranny existed beyond "well people were just different back then and got tricked by the big bad leader, not like modern more free societies, where they only get tricked a little but still get on freedomingly)
I'm going to be reading political philosophy soon this coming year so i figure scifi and fantasy's approach to politics will only start to seem more foolish.
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>>25323874
>I need Daniel "It's not cheating because she's nonbinary and I have a bisexual pass" Greene to give me permission to not read a book series
pageblogspammer please, you must become a better man than this.
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>>25323910
uhhh what? i dont know anything about these guys' personal lives, but if nobody else is going to give me a deep dive on what makes something good, worthwhile or interesting, and if AI is going to be stupid forever (likely because its just an amalgamation of the most typical collected thought ever, so it can only answer the most simplest and shallowest of prompts where specificity, nuance, and particular experiential based detail is irrelevant) then I can only basically go look at the biggest most popular guy video who talks about the thing I want to know something about. Its not like academics are talking about this, and besides, academics are stupid in their own unique way, theyre horrible at communicating ideas, and forget that they live in a society not a vacuum sealed echo chamber, where the replication crisis fails. Nothing is conditioned independent of the most complex overarching thing. Now whether it should be? Obviously not. Thats how you get echo chambers and circlejerks.
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>>25323920
>irrelevant) then I can only basically go look at the biggest most popular guy video who talks about the thing I want to know something about
Anon just pirate book 1, read the first few chapters and make up your own mind if you want to continue reading it or drop it. You've wasted hours researching and watching videos about a book when you could've just read the first chapter and made your own, independent opinion. You are the final judge of whether or not something is good- not /lit/, not reddit, not youtube, and not the hugo awards.
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long and interesting read before this, no idea how any of this going to be addressed really, but it talked about mechanism and the general sense of how some modern mysticism/religion of its fictional time seemingly basically says and encompasses too much "meaning" to the point that people are left experiencing things without any purpose or value. Thats all I could gather from that. I'm just interested what it could all actually end up meaning for the story. Doesn't seem that far from our modern world is my only issue.
For example it talks about conceptualizing the mind as a computer, but something i learned even in highschool psychology is that despite that being an intuitive notion, the mind is actually nothing like a computer, and memory is like one of the biggest aspects of the mind where you can realize that. We do not process memory cleanly enough for computers to be a sufficient analogy
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I just dont know what would make any future human think of the mind as a computer when past humans (our modern time) have already dismissed that analogy.
Still interesting stuff to read about in a scifi novel
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>>25323988
>>25323990
The book is from 1992.
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>>25324003
>There are still people who think it is. A lot of people really.
Makes no sense. The facts contradict such. And so does logic. Philosophers have dismissed similar analogies, but extrapolating the mind to the closest complex machinery long before computers existed.
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Probably the worst written part of the book so far. A secret special order of prostitutes that mastered everything about torture and made a deal with the super duper powered high brow assasins, to protect them from another set of random assasins that they hired to assasinate their pimps so that they could have all the money (gee why did historical prostitutes never think of such a brilliant and genius idea. what the fuck is the point of a pimp if a prostitute can just save up all her riches from the dumb men willing to throw a fortune at these women, and then get rid of the middle man so that they can own everything?) and then somehow inexplicably through their relationship with the super powered special high brow assasins, who were interested in the order (super powered high brow mathematicians that fly spaceships) they got in bed with the order, and also somehow the warrior prophets just decided to teach a bunch of super special secret prostitutes their "teachings" (whatever that means)...just because.
This is just dumb, this is silly and makes no sense. One of the greatest sins of writing something can commit, is establishing a set of facts and conditions, without explaining how it makes sense that certain phenomenon or events or further conditions arise out of the preceding ones. It just makes it look like youre sloppily making shit up on the spot, and also more importantly, HOLDS ME HOSTAGE so that I have to push forward through the story accepting some relevant (made relevant not by relation of affect, but by brute force relation of attention) condition.
Its weird. The narrator does stuff like this where they sort of skim through some information you dont yet have access to to explain and deepen some understanding of the current thing the narration follows after, or precedes. But that works when its psychological information that cant easily be accessed, or is already justified by what has already been established so that the narration is just an efficient way of adding depth that otherwise is only implied, and therefore makes no sense, like how much narration there is about Hanu's feelings, his mental battles with himself, and information hes hiding.
But this doesnt feel the same, this feels like a hasty justification of a new condition (courtesans with great social power) of the story that has never before been relevant, and also the explanation on its face just makes no sense, it doesnt add depth, it just adds information that has no real relevance or basis beyond its mere mention.
This is why I say context is not depth. But at the same time. This sequence and Danlo simping for her would be retarded even without the context. So the fundamental framing of this interaction is just broken, until further notice. Assuming the courtesans are better explained later, and escape seeming merely like a quirky plot device.
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>>25323998
They figured this out in the 50s.
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>>25324413
>>25324414
whats the problem?
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How do you select for which short stories to read next? I gave up on longer forms due to tendency of authors to include time-wasting frill. I tried Hugo, Nebula and mainstream Greatest Of anthologies but dislike the political messaging present in the stories and inherent selection bias. Also don't have time to wade through underground or niche magazines to uncover that one gem in a pile of shit. What do
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>>25324984
>>25324984
Your best chance is to find authors you like and read their collections. Drop the ones you don't like quickly. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. Even reading themed anthologies or themed best of anthologies may not help if your taste doesn't align with the anthologist. For my part, I've accepted it. I've posted my favorites here before but again, it may not be of any value. You can try reading from older decades as well. Short fiction goes back to the early 20th century.
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>>25325006
Name some real word examples of smart and good at business and/or what you are specifically looking for. Are they still the enemy? Maybe the protagonist works for them? Could even be story justifying them.
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>>25323990
>I just dont know what would make any future human think of the mind as a computer when past humans (our modern time) have already dismissed that analogy.
You have dismissed that analogy because you are a retard that doesn't know how either works.
Meanwhile we have just discovered the mathematical principles of thought which, though our understanding of them is in its infancy, have already led to the invention of large language models in real life.
The brain IS a computer, there is nothing else it can even be, although it is different to our purely silicon-electronic machines in how it operates. Don't say humans dismissed the idea, because no one serious really did, YOU DID, because you're an idiot.
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>>25325043
Guess you'll just have to give up on reading altogether since it's not worthwhile enough and focus on some other form of entertainment. Though, the problem seems like it'd be for everything . If you find something where it isn't, you should stick with that.
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I took my favourites, asked AI to assing tvtropes to them and this came out:
BreakTheCutie, MechanicalEvolution, TheyLookLikeUsNow, AIIsACrapshoot, KillerRobot, DownerEnding, BittersweetEnding, AfterTheEnd, NotHisSled, AutoErotica, InterplayOfSexAndViolence, NightmareFetishist, DeathSeeker, BodyHorror, Polyamory, OpenMarriage, Voyeurism, PeepingTom, SurveillanceAsThePlotDevice, TheReveal, RelationshipReveal, ChildSoldiers, TrainingFromHell, AChildShallLeadThem, TwistEnding, MyGodWhatHaveIDone, HiveMind, CombatPragmatist, TheChainsOfCommanding, InnocenceLost, PostHuman, Transhuman, GoneHorriblyRight, BlueAndOrangeMorality, TranshumanTreachery, AnachronicOrder, VignetteStory, FragmentedNarrative, BrainUploading, BodyBackupDrive, GrandTheftMe, WhoAmI, ExistentialHorror, WhatMeasureIsANonHuman, SuperIntelligence, TheChessmaster, WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity, OurAngelsAreDifferent, Deconstruction, DivineIntervention, DigitalAvatar, VirtualGhost, TimeSkip, EldritchAbomination, GoneHorriblyWrong, ParallelUniverse, Doppelganger, MesACrowd, ManyWorldsInterpretation, DimensionalTraveler, AlternateSelf, FishOutOfWater, Seppuku, RitualSuicide, BushidoCode, HonorBeforeReason, TogetherInDeath, InterplayOfSexAndDeath
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>>25325270
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>>25325270
>tvtropes
My sides
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>>25323801
Is The Wandering Earth any good? There's a goofy movie, too.
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>>25325064
Kek the fuck does this retard think LLMs are? Why would you even bring up LLMs in favour of a brain as a computer analogy, how fucking stupid do you have to be to insist that computer scientists/engineers understand the brain more than Neurologists and Psychologists? Fucking retard.
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>>25325759
>>25325869
Wait, is that's what's going on here?
Pagespammer is a sociopath that doesn't know that the normal person would just be able to relate to another person.
This concept being so foreign to him that he thinks a character is reading a person's mind?
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>>25325927
We just want you to fuck off. It's pretty goddamned simple. You haven't noticed (because you're an oblivious autistic who cares for nothing and no one but yourself and your own narcissistic, inane navel gazing) that EVERY SINGLE THREAD that you post in goes IMMEDIATELY down the shutter.
Fucking kill yourself man. We fucking hate you.
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I've never actually sincerely wanted someone on this earth to fucking kill themselves and rid the world of their bullshit until bakkerspammer/pagespammer came along.
Put the barrel to the roof of your mouth and pull the fucking trigger.
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>>25325992
Ehh, it's already I'll just build a database of all of pagespammer's posts, and use word link analysis to find his writing style to search for posts from him elsewhere on the internet. Then analyze the images in bulk under the assumption that he's posted even just one of these screenshots elsewhere.
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Very few people if any ever get banned for anything on /lit/ and pagespammer never does but if you criticize or insult pagespammer? Instant ban.
Stop making /sffg/ threads. Stop posting in /sffg/ threads. Stop responding to /sffg/ threads.
Starve this fucking lunatic out.
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>>25326064
>>25325480
>chinese "artists"
Fucking lmao, they're too beholden to the CCP and literally cannot produce anything of value
They can't display skeletons for a start, and it gets worse from there
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Fine I'll stop posting screenshots for a week. If the general can actually be active and foster good discussion within that time frame, and not just loose "oh yeah this fantasy/scifi book exists, I will say nothing of further substance than noting that this thing exists, and is this way" then I will not return. If not. Fuck you subhuman worthless shallow fucks that never contributed anything anyway to your little echochamber. I can talk about books as much as I want on the literature board and you will burn in hell for whining so much.
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>>25326004
The first year or two of /sffg/? Sure.
>>25326090
Normalfags (99% of you posters) have molded this thread into the very thing you want it to be.
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https://youtu.be/sSh_9TioLM4?si=oTn7N0nhtBsw4H0b
>So the kith of the Elf-folk went abroad by night to make a soul for the little Wild Thing. And they went over the marshes till they came to the high fields among the flowers and grasses. And there they gathered a large piece of gossamer that the spider had laid by twilight; and the dew was on it.
>Into this dew had shone all the lights of the long banks of the ribbed sky, as all the colours changed in the restful spaces of evening. And over it the marvellous night had gleamed with all its stars.
>Then the Wild Things went with their dew-bespangled gossamer down to the edge of their home. And there they gathered a piece of the grey mist that lies by night over the marshlands. And into it they put the melody of the waste that is borne up and down the marshes in the evening on the wings of the golden plover. And they put into it, too, the mournful song that the reeds are compelled to sing before the presence of the arrogant North Wind. Then each of the Wild Things gave some treasured memory of the old marshes, 'For we can spare it,' they said. And to all this they added a few images of the stars that they gathered out of the water. Still the soul that the kith of the Elf-folk were making had no life.
>Then they put into it the low voices of two lovers that went walking in the night, wandering late alone. And after that they waited for the dawn. And the queenly dawn appeared, and the marsh-lights of the Wild Things paled in the glare, and their bodies faded from view; and still they waited by the marsh's edge. And to them waiting came over field and marsh, from the ground and out of the sky, the myriad song of the birds.
>This, too, the Wild Things put into the piece of haze that they had gathered in the marshlands, and wrapped it all up in their dew-bespangled gossamer. Then the soul lived.
>And there it lay in the hands of the Wild Things no larger than a hedgehog; and wonderful lights were in it, green and blue; and they changed ceaselessly, going round and round, and in the grey midst of it was a purple flare.
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>>25326591
Lord Dunsany is just fantastic.
It's such a shame that Brits never managed to produce a Dunsany or Tolkien type stylist in science fiction having tried and found people like Clarke, Wyndham, Priest and Keith Roberts lacking. I wonder if their culture just isn't conducive to it in the way way that American culture is. Even the British New Wave SF authors always seem to be looking behind them instead of forward. What do you guys think of british sf?
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>>25323801
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>>25323801
fan question to r scott bakker:
>Where does the judging eye get its subjectivity? In other words, why is sin SIN? In my mind, perhaps there is no answer, the God has its own reasons, its own unconscious motivation perhaps. But it seems some animals are more holy than others, some acts more heinous than others. Is this human morality (Mimara interpeting what she sees) or God's morality? Is there a reason for this morality?
bakker answer:
>Ad hoc arbitrariness is the problem all traditional religions share. Blind consensus covers this arbitrariness over, but as soon as you start asking questions, it becomes ever more obvious. Ethics and meta-ethics represent attempts to rationalize this arbitrariness, but can never seem to bootstrap any scheme out of the mire of philosophical disputation, leading to the suspicion that they too, are arbitrary. The suspicion in our world is that moral authority basically boils down to power. The fact in the World is that this arbitrariness is an objective feature of reality. Since modern readers rely on modern versions of blind consensus, the idea was to write a fantasy that would grate against moral sensibilities, calling attention to the plight of all morality in the modern age.
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>>25325025
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, JP Morgan, TSMC, Meta, Berkshire Hathaway, Samsung etc etc etc.
>Are they still the enemy? Maybe the protagonist works for them? Could even be story justifying them.
Sure, it just needs to make sense. The corporation shouldn't be doing stupid stuff that's evil but not profitable. I don't care if they eat puppies as long as eating puppies has a good profit margin.
That's just an example, btw.
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>>25325570
>I read somewhere one of the books has a Jordan Peterson epigraph and its completely put me off reading it
It's actually about another Peterson as I found out. There a single line about an old Peterson with a knowing smile. The reddit thread here explains it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sollanempire/comments/1d5inxd/lord_marlowe_ha s_an_especial_fondness_for_the/
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>>25326580
Would not surprise me, really. Bakkerfag was also the archive spammer, after all, and the archive spamming is fairly similar to his current strategy. His behavior when getting called out is also almost identical to the archive spammer.
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>>25327295
Who is the archive spammer? Like most newfags, Bakkerfag does not interact with the archives and largely ignores their existence, unless he believes within the present moment that using the archives will "own" you in some manner.
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>>25327367
Archive spammer was Bakkerfag, as already stated, but similar to his current pagespammer persona, he avoided mentioning Bakker most of the time while doing his archive spam, though this was largely because of the nature of the spam.
The gist is that he'd copy months or years old posts out of the archive, and fill the thread with them. Sometimes with the exact same images as well.
>Like most newfags, Bakkerfag does not interact with the archives and largely ignores their existence
That was only true when he was actually new to the threads, when his main shtick was alternating between posting Bakker "memes" from his private discord group and relentlessly hating on Brandon Sanderson. At first he just reposted the exact same posts and images every time, but people exposed him using archive screenshots of his constant reposts. This tipped him off to the existence of archives, so he started varying his posts, to avoid being exact duplicates. He thought this was very clever and tried to fool people into thinking that he just happened to write a post that was 90% identical to a series of identical posts in the archive, and his image which is just 1x1 pixel different dimensions from a spammed image was something he found on google. He's never been the brightest bulb.
Anyway, back then the threads were active enough that even with his spam the threads were actively talking about stuff, and his autistic rants and handful of image dumps weren't enough to really derail conversations, which was his goal. He hated people talking about stuff he didn't like, which was basically everything except Bakker. This is the root cause of his autistic behavior. So he switched tactics (again) and found a method of spamming that did permanent damage to these threads. They've never really recovered. He started spamming posts from the archives, often inane, reply-baiting questions, but sometimes it would be random comments or even reviews of books. He went for quantity rather than quality, filling up more than half the threads with his archive reposts. At first people didn't realize what it was, til he stupidly started reposting longer reviews and effortposts that were recognized by people, including their original authors. By this point, though, he'd successfully killed the thread's traffic to almost nothing.
People didn't even realize he was the bakkerfag til he slipped up and started falling back into his old post style while reposting old archive images. Perhaps he couldn't resist gloating.
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>>25327418
>This tipped him off to the existence of archives, so he started varying his posts, to avoid being exact duplicates. He thought this was very clever and tried to fool people into thinking that he just happened to write a post that was 90% identical to a series of identical posts in the archive, and his image which is just 1x1 pixel different dimensions from a spammed image was something he found on google
Also he has a very limited vocabulary and is the only source of certain words and canned phrases in the archives, so even when he did try to write "original" posts from scratch they contained enough of his trademark rhetoric to easily identify him. I think he was truly baffled and confused at how people were able to tell it is him, every time, and so resorted to archive spam as a kind of "well if they are going to use the archive on me all the time, I'll force them to use it on every single post until they can't reply to anything".
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>>25327418
>he'd copy months or years old posts out of the archive
OH that's what you meant. I get you. Seen it before elsewhere, yeah. Not entirely a new phenomenon and very annoying.
>relentlessly hating on Brandon Sanderson
Heh it was funny learning he was behind most of that. I bet he has a hateboner for me in particular. I would love to meet him in real life.
>He's never been the brightest bulb.
Of course not. His grotesque personality has only worsened over the past decade. Extreme tunnel vision. Narcissists are the worst.
>Perhaps he couldn't resist gloating.
He has no subtlety and does this in most threads. Pagespammer mask is on up until he gets enough responses to "trigger" someone and make somebody "mad" then here comes the canned phrases. Remember a few threads ago when he sperged out because people notice he's the only person who says "you sound resentful" and always uses it as some "gotcha"? Lol.
>>25327434
>Also he has a very limited vocabulary and is the only source of certain words and canned phrases
Newfags always latch on to whichever buzzwords were in vogue when they found 4chan and make those handful of terms their entire lexicon. The webnovel general in particular of same board generals has at least one newfag who shits up the entire thread with nonstop snarky responses to every post if you acknowledge his existence and recognize his patterns. And don't forget RIspammer who started here in 2019 but moved over to shit up /wng/.
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>>25327680
>Heh it was funny learning he was behind most of that.
It took a while for people to catch on, cause Sanderson always had detractors here. But when you just copy/paste the exact same posts and reuse the exact same images every thread, it gets noticed.
I can't remember if he blew his cover by bringing up Sanderson in a Bakkerpost, or Bakker in a Sanderson rant, but he stopped even trying to hide that he was behind both types of spam for a while, until people just starting shitting on him for it every time he posted.
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>>25327682
To me, it is. Just because he's a fan of Jordan doesn't mean he put him into his book. The knowing smile is also not one his characteristics. The other Peterson in that thread is the most sensible candidate.
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Do you agree with the point that the most important skill (or aspect) in fantasy writing/literature is the language itself? I've been told it matters more than worldbuilding, the plot, the fantasy aspects and tropes that make up the genre, even prose itself, because if there are too many colloquialisms, there is no more suspension of disbelief and the entire story just falls apart, and fantasy stop beings, well, fantastic.
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>>25328020
I think the most important part is always going to be subjective, it would depend on what people are reading for. The people interested in modern fantasy series (since you used the example) tend to be more interested in the familiar tropes of the genre which make it comfortable for them.
As for the language itself, I don't entirely agree or disagree. There's always going to be some level of suspension of disbelief required to believe they're all talking in some form of English, no matter how archaic, but I do personally like reading more formal language.
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>>25326928
>>25327412
>>25326714
It's a masterpiece. The greatest fantasy novel.
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When you asked fans what is missed in BOTNS on a first read, they either
>Get squirrely and avoid the question
>Come up with some insane head cannon that really isn't supported by the text, but makes the poster feel smart. (There is a subset of people who really just enjoy creating their own fake stories out of existing stories, and become convinced they are really in any way supported by the text)
or
>Some superficial reference or discovery that, while interesting and fun, changes very little.
Love Wolfe, but I hate the fanbase a lot.
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>>25328686
because 99% of wolfe fanboys are manchild retards
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>>25323801
The Sunlit Man is about a quirk chungus nigger who isn't allowed to hurt people, and his quirk chungus talking crowbar, with obligitory racemixing propaganda. And people in here never say anything bad about it. This feels a bit too ya/nigger worshipy to me.
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>>25328889
>Moorcock
>tedious
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