Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I was checking out a recommended new-school game book: DestinyQuest – The Legion of Shadow. This thing is fucking huge, 656 pages, 939 numbered sections, and so on. It looked promising: lots of material, an interesting character sheet, like 12+ pages of special ability reference text in the back... and it's a World of Warcraft simulator in the worst way.

Okay, other players don't somehow grief you and camp your body, but:
• You get a full heal between each fight, so there's no building tension as your resources deplete and no particular reason not to always press on.
• There's no death penalty, at all. You are literally directed to either respawn at the map hub or at the exact reference you just died at. Except at least WoW has some kind of in-game justification, this book just has you pop back to life, fresh as a daisy, for no reason.
• Because of the above points, combat is almost entirely a time-wasting formality, which is a shame because it's middling-interesting as far as gamebook combat goes. But unlimited retries on the same playthrough mean that there's no actual consequences for defeat, and so victory is guaranteed and meaningless.
• Even given that all combats are formalities, it could still be interesting if there were meaningful choices, but so far there aren't. Like WoW, there are a bunch of quests to walk over to and do or not do, and none of them have any consequences on anything else in the world.

Now, I'm still pretty early in the book and it could redeem itself, but I don't have high hopes. It is a god-damn shame.

[Prak]

Sinfest

The anvil-dropping of Sinfest gets to me sometimes, because it's, well, anvil dropping. But I stick with it.

However, this, better not fucking lead to a "wacky misunderstanding!" subplot, because Fuscia is a fucking devil, and should recognize Evil!Slick as being a split off personality from Real!Slick as Real!Slick is trying to improve himself. Or at least recognize that "ranting fuckboi who looks like Slick" is some kind of devil bullshit and not actually Slick. Because another "'Nique is pissed off at Slick!" story plot is... at least 10 of those too much, especially when there's an "ongoing" subplot about Slick trying to be a better person.

But, fuck, that might infringe on anvil dropping, right?

[Ancient History]

Sinfest has had some great runs (Crimminy invades hell!) but it's been a bit allergic to plot-advancement or character development lately.

[Prak]

Which is a shame, because it's planted some great plot seeds, like The Devil actually being Lily's dad, the feminists meeting the fae witch, or even just the old woman being a witch herself. Fuck, even the 'Nique/Fuschia bit is good, including 'Nique's empowerment.

Oh, and Slick's self improvement. Because there needs to be representation of men recognizing what is wrong with them and fixing it, not just men never bettering themselves and women putting upwith it or cutting them out of their lives.

[CapnTthePirateG]

ARGH!

I just finished The Deed of Paksenarrion, and my god is that book an incoherent mess.

The Good gods are dicks who don't deserve worship, which is balanced out by the forces of evil being stupid dumbasses with no endgame but a love of torturing people. The setting and magic is ripped off from D&D with no attempt to file off the serial numbers. The heroine is boring and by the end of the book is spouting platitudes and following the voices in her head which make her do magic things that solve all problems forever. It has the same problem as Malazan of throwing incoherent magic bullshit about, but without the interesting mechanics and fun of deciphering them.

[GreatGreyShrike]

ARGH!
The setting and magic is ripped off from D&D with no attempt to file off the serial numbers.

It really takes this to unprecedented heights. That one village in Paksenarrion that's a direct rip from Temple of Elemental Evil's Hommlet is sort of hilarious.

[JigokuBosatsu]

On the other end of the literary spectrum, I finished that awful, awful book, The Crimson Claymore.

He is your typical fantasy author, He has a beard, a typewriter, he enjoys the occasional tobacco from his long stem pipe, and he loves listening to classical music on his record player.

As a bearded fantasy author who is literally smoking a churchwarden full of "delicious Cavendish" at the moment I am writing this, I could not in a million years think of a more pretentious lump of horseshit for an author bio.

[Prak]

Jigoku, you should print a new edition of your books with an author photo of you just looking as much like Alan Moore as possible, with a giant pipe. Like, Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds giant pipe.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I just thought of a way to make it sound more pretentious- I would mention the fact that I carved this pipe myself by hand, like the dirty hipster that I am.

[phlapjackage]

I just thought of a way to make it sound more pretentious- I would mention the fact that I carved this pipe myself by hand, like the dirty hipster that I am.

Yes, but what music are you listening to and how is it being played ?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Robert Johnson's "They're Red Hot" on a 78....

(ha, I wish!)

[Chamomile]

Still looking forward to the full and proper rageview from Maxus.

[Prak]

I just thought of a way to make it sound more pretentious- I would mention the fact that I carved this pipe myself by beard, like the dirty hipster that I am.

Fixed that for you, Jigoku.

[Maxus]

Still looking forward to the full and proper rageview from Maxus.

I've been going through with a highlighter.

It -hurts- to re-read this closely, much less type it out fully. But it -is- coming.

Incidentally, I did the review on Goodreads and the author, to his credit, took the criticism like a champ and said he sorry I didn't enjoy the book but he appreciated the honest feedback. Our mutual acquaintance says he had some sort of surgery recently so he's on painkillers. They must be -really- good for him to be that mellow about it.

But still, I'll give him a nod of respect for it. Not for the ego-pandering, but for being a responsible adult about finding a review where someone went down to cases about why things didn't work and how they could have.

[Maxus]

The Crimson Claymore

The brave warrior Searon is haunted by the deaths of his wife and children at the hands of the savage reptilian draeyks, who are on a bloodthirsty rampage. He walks the land of Calthroia alone and thirsty for vengence. He hunts the creatures down one by one, showing no mercy.

But Searon is a one-man army, and no match for the legion of murderous draeyks. Lucky for him, the powerful wizard Karceoles finds him during his travels and enlists Searon in this coming war. Karceoles believes Searon can unite the races to defeat the draeyks once and for all.

Searon discovers he can do more damage with Karceoles and a band of warriors they find along the way. But as the war rages in earnest, Searon must make a choice: Is it more important to destroy the draeyks at costs, or will his quest for vengeance endanger the lives of his new brothers and sisters at arms?

That's the back cover of the Crimson Claymore. It set off some warning bells in my head, and so did this timeless poetry when I opened the book to a random page and found this:

The music was still light when the two dancers walked up to their table. Both smiled and looked from Searon to Karceoles.

"You two seem like you have seen a long journey," the brunette said.
"Yes,we have. Too long," Searon smiled.
"It is but fate that we travelled so long and so far to stumble into this place. Both of you are so skilled with graceful dance, and beautiful faces, that it puts our mind at ease after such long traveling. We may now rest east this night knowing we sleep in an inn where there are kheshlars or angels, for surely you must be one of the two because your beauty and grace surpasses all," Karceoles said.
Searon turned to glare hard at the wizard, but he seemed not to notice as his attention was turned toward the dancers with a courteous smile. There seemed to be an aura of charm about the wizard, and he seemed to glow. His face was stern and his smile genuine, but no wrinkles stained his face as Searon had thought did on the road. It was a clean face, still without beard or mustache, and it seemed to be mature, as if he knew more about the world than anyone.
"You are too kind," the blonde said, curtseying at her knees. "What is your name?"
"I am Karceoles, and what are such fine women as you two called?"
"I am Berethana and this is Annettera. We are both pleased to meet you," the blonde said.
"My name is Searon," he said, but neither seemed to notice him in the slightest.
Both were blushing as they looked at Karceoles with large smiles on their faces. Searon shook his head and took another long drink of his whiskey.
"Perhaps we'll see each other again," Annettera said shyly.
"I count on it."
The two women giggled and walked off, with glances over their shoulders at him, and holding hands to whisper in each other's ear.

That excerpt should tell you a lot about the author, and about my superhuman patience at reading this.

So here's the deal. Crimson Claymore could have been a decent story. Really. It could have been fun, but everything -except- the base idea is badly done. The last time I read dialogue that bad, it had been written by a man who was 80% deaf. No joke.

I've talked about the boar-roasting scene, but that's just pieces of it.

See, Searon has superhuman strength, speed, and senses. Or so we're told. Once, when they're being chased by critters, he smells granite and marble and steers the group to, it turns out, an ancient lost city in the capital. It's this large, organized, stone city, utterly abandoned. The palace, we're told, is immense, with "walls rising for leagues in height".

Fuck, man. Fuck. This, supposedly, is not far from a capitol city. How could they NOT notice the black needle off in the distance and gone to look when they moved in?

Or, ooh, how about the non-character! The party splits up, and run into kheshlars and--

--what is a kheshlar? I suppose I'll have to explain that. Kheshlar are elves with light-blue skin, silver eyebrows, and the female lead of the novel is THE kheshlar with the biggest rack of her race. No. Seriously. Character description and everything. All the characters get a profile in the back of the book. You, dear reader, wouldn't find out what a Kheshlar is in this book until several pages of 'you're near kheshlar lands' and all that. It mentions the word several times but you never find out what they are until you see one turning heads around with a hammer.

Starlyn
Kheshlar-320 years of age
Birthplace: Sudegam
Appearance: Bright Blond hair, electric gray-blue eyes, thin eyebrows, cunning smile especially when the stars are about. Pointed chin and high cheek bones with the fullest bosom of all the kheshlars. She wears midnight blue chainmail under golden bronze and blue hued plate mail.
Weapon: Large steel hammer with spike on backside.

--So anyway, they run into a Kheshlar patrol and the captain, who knows and respect Starlyn, offers a loan of the best archer he has, Erenuyh. We're told he's taciturn and he doesn't interact with anyone very much. The party gets attacked by wolves, the backup hero, Andron, loses his pinkie, the archer loses two fingers because wolves come flying by like bullets or something. Later, they try to talk to him, he gives monosyllabic answers. Then they're attacked by creatures made of translucent crystal that only attack at night when they're -fuck hard- to see, he shoots the critters with arrows to make out heads and arms and such, and then gets his head pulled off. And the warrior elf with the big hammer somehow isn't shattering the crystal men all over the place.

That's seriously the character's involvement and reason to be in the book: Get them past a fight with critters that aren't mentioned before, and aren't mentioned again, in the book. Then he's killed.

As for bad characters, you meet Searon's brother. Searon wears crimson and gold armor. His brother wears blue and silver. And his brother's name is Noraes.

Yes. 'Searon' spelled backwards. And no one mentions this. The brothers do not catch each other's eye and groan about the travesty their parents inflicted on Noraes.

I could really go on. Give me more time and I might just do that. There's all kinds of things, like how Starlyn's rack reduces all men to staring, drooling nitwits for minutes on end, and the graceful way a mage (not the wizard) handled this. Or how the author can't find the trigger on Chekov's gun. Or the fallout of the excerpt at the top, where it turns out the wizard, being such the charmer he is, sleeps with both the dancers at once and knocks up one of them, and how he handles that.

But also how the enemies somehow pop up like JRPG random encounters in a pine forest.

This one irks me. We have pine forests around here.



Imagine a pack of six or eight human-sized creatures running up on people by surprise in that.

Oh, right, plot, I forgot about that. The book has one, in as much as it has a sequence of events and they follow more-or-less logically, but that'll be for the next rant.

[Mask_De_H]

If 4chan has taught me anything, it's that huge elf tits turn men into drooling nitwits for minutes, even hours at a time.

[DSMatticus]

Searon shook his head and took another long drink of his whiskey.

I feel you, buddy. After reading that, I could use a drink too.

I'm always surprised by how incredibly not hot people's "look ma, I seduced a woman" fantasies can be. I mean, fucking seriously. Imagine those words coming out of your mouth. Do you feel sexy? No? Hm. Try tipping your fedora. Is it working yet?

Even briefly setting aside the issue that the dialogue is cringy as fuck, I can't empathize with the mindset that would make the author want to write it that way in the first place. If I were fantasizing about talking a girl (or two) out of her panties, that is not at all what the words in my fantasy would look like. Even when taken as shameful self-insert fapfodder, it's so bad.

Why do people write scenes like that? It's not an uncommon thing. Is it just a kind of trope? People repeat it because they've seen it? Or does it have some actual appeal I'm not aware of?

[Hadanelith]

I think most people are just that bad at writing dialogue. Dialogue is hard and most people just don't put much effort in.
That said, this is a particularly poor example, yes.

[OgreBattle]

The latest game of thrones is mega dog shit and has the most hilariously stupid unwanted origin story for Hodor. Lots of out of character silliness to force plot

[SlyJohnny]

Feeling good about waiting for the books right now.

[tussock]

Why do people write scenes like that?

1: People enjoy their own sex fantasies.
2: People write about the things they enjoy thinking about.

Therefore.

3: People write about their own sex fantasies.

They think it's good because they were masturbating when they first thought of it, and that releases endorphins which make variously suboptimal things seem really good and special.

[Ancient History]

...I can't throw stones, though I could probably put up a few targets.

[CapnTthePirateG]

The latest game of thrones is mega dog shit and has the most hilariously stupid unwanted origin story for Hodor. Lots of out of character silliness to force plot

Apparently that is from GRRM.

I'd be interested to know what else you found out of character other than

Bran straight up murdering Hodor with mind control, HOLY SHIT!

[OgreBattle]

The latest game of thrones is mega dog shit and has the most hilariously stupid unwanted origin story for Hodor. Lots of out of character silliness to force plot

Apparently that is from GRRM.

I'd be interested to know what else you found out of character other than

Bran straight up murdering Hodor with mind control, HOLY SHIT!

A combination of Out of character actions and really dumb decisions and oversight. So here be SPOILERS

Nobody told Bran "Hey don't tree-vision the ice king or he'll find you and we're all fucked", they just left him connected to the three internet doing whatever.

Bran and elder tree guy's response to "the ice kings know where we are and are coming to kill us" is "lets go into a comatose state and VR browse your family album while our physical selves have no awareness of how close the ice king is getting to murdering our physical selves."

Origin story for Hodor is he was mindraped into retardation by his owner's time traveling son to be his man-slave for life meant to die in a very specific event caused by Bran not paying attention when using his scrying powers. This use of time travel to affect the past to do something in the present reminds me of the episode of Rick & Morty where the sister just uses up a monkey paw for very small wishes like "I wish I knew CPR" and the devil comments "what a waste of a monkey paw".


Bald eunuch loses his cool immediately like an edgy atheist to red priestess when his entire character is based around never revealing his true feelings and not openly defying people because he's patient and planning.

Tree person suicide bombs instead of throwing her goddamn grenade. This kind of thing happens when the director/writer goes "We need a NOBLE SACRIFICE! YEAH!!" and then force it in the most uncreative way possible without actually thinking about if that character would do this, or if it would even be a useful decision.

Wolf jumps immediately to its death instead of trying to help its master. You know what's really good at pulling a sled through the snow, a giant wolf that lives in the snow.

Daenarys and Old Knight have a livejournal lubby dubby fanfic moment that basically ends with "Yeah I know I have access to the world's greatest scholars and sorcerers but you gotta cure your cancer alone with none of my help bye".

Arys has completed her batman ninja training to become a blank faced killer, and then on her first job is emoting sooo much emotion to seeing a play about her father, getting so emotionally involved, and then goes back to tell her boss "hey my emotions tell me I shouldn't do this killing I want to do something else".

Her boss used to talk in rather vague tones where Arya has to think about what he said then it hits her in an epiphany, now he's talking like a project manager working in a large office.


Sansa tries to make a brothel owner feel bad about being deflowered on her wedding night doggy style even though that is a totally expected part of their society and prostitution is a regular occurence in Winterfell under the Starks too. And then this is suppose to make her more traumatized and edgy than her brother that just came back from the goddamn dead to lead an army of giants and stuff against the ice zombies. Sansa then bosses Jon around and lies to him about important things like "where can I find an entire army to help me stop the badguys". Maybe it's to set up a "SANSA, YOU LIIEEEEED TO MEEE, YOUR BRUUUHTHERR" moment in this shitty director's next episode.


The Crow's Eye talks like he's playing an online game "TIME TO KILL MY NIECE", and his master plan to "hey they sailed away" is "GO TO YOUR HOUSE CUT DOWN ALL THE TREES WE BUILDING BOATS". Jesus Drowned Christ isn't he suppose to have the most swift fleet known to Westeros? I think they just ran out of budget and couldn't show his ship or that immolation horn so they settled with "Lets have a debate in this nondescript beach area where we all stand and yell and point"

If this was Xena I'd be fine with this being Xena because that's the tone you expect from Xena, but GoT is suppose to be "SUPER GRITTY VERY REALISTIC" writing awarded show.

Maybe GRRM is purposefully giving them terrible ideas so he knows what not to do in the books.

[Omegonthesane]

Bran brainwashing Hodor seemed like power incontinence to me, he clearly had sufficient control of Present Hodor to make him do competent things.

I assume Sansa was trying to get across that Ramsay sex is somehow more traumatic than what she'd otherwise be expected to do. I mean he did make Theon watch her wedding night.

Varys has a specific berserk button around sorcery that was established back in season 3.

Might have something coherent to say about Sansa and Dany later, but the rest of your criticism is pretty spot on.