willDeleteLater01
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User ID: 3548
willDeleteLater01
14d ago
Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) is pretty good, although short-ish.
The Ends of Magic Series (2023) has a lot of relevant stuff also. It has pretty good magical system and fight scene simulation, ok-ish worldbuilding, but underwhelming global plot arc and characters (in my opinion).
TLDR: Request for fantasy / scifi stories.
I am looking for a certain type of fantasy stories, but it's a bit difficult to describe exactly what too concisely, so please bear with me.
I keep noticing two kinds of problems in Western fantasy stories of the last decade that breaks immersion for me and makes them all feel very similar to each other (and thus more boring).
The first is that the main characters will go out of their way to virtue-signal some stance or action to appeal to the modern Western audience. It may be in the form of immediately going out to fight slavery / chauvinism / racism in a medieval society, even if such a course of action would've realistically carried great risks for the gang and little practical changes.
The second is that their thoughts and actions will be sanitised to not include anything that any large percent of the audience would be likely to find "icky" and cause them to leave a negative review or stop reading the story. This includes inner monologue of sexual nature (if it's in 1st POV); very rarely using intimidation against "non-combatants" / non-enemies; rarely using the character's advantageous position (or e.g. some resource monopoly) to strong-arm concessions from allies, neutral parties, or civilians; almost never deciding to procure slaves of their own (unless there's some convenient excuse to "force" such a scenario upon the MC); and so on.
So I am looking for stories that will not have these two types of writing tropes, and will in addition:
* be well-written in general; preferably be completed and have a large word-count
* the main character(s) should also
** not be edgelords (unless it leads to a really well-executed character development later on)
** not be sadists who tend to cause suffering / harm just for its own sake
** not be hypocrites, not apply double standards when judging others' actions v.s. judging their own
* not be the Prince of Nothing series. (edit:) Or aSoIaF, or Chronicles of Amber.
Does anyone know any such stories? Any format is fine, be it printed literature, web originals, or fanfiction.
And to clarify, I am not advocating for any real-life applications of what I've listed earlier. I just want my fictional stories to have more variety to them, and am trying to find works of western origin that would offer such variety.
edit: stories recommended so far:
- Acts of Caine series / Heroes Die (1998) — new
- The Black Company (1984) — new
- The Bloodsworm saga (2021, 3 books, complete) — new
- Brigador Killers: Pilgrim (2025) — new
- Codex Alera (2004) — new, but Jim Butcher
- Cugel's Saga (1950 / 1983) — new
- Dresden Files — didn't like the writing
- Eisenhorn (2004) — new, but WH40k. May give it a try.
- First Law trilogy (2006) — new
- Furies of Calderon (2004) — new
- Locke lamora (2006) — IIRC, didn't like it for some reason
- The Malazan series — was just about to start reading myself
- Night angel trilogy (2008) — new
- Powder Mage series (2013) — new
- The Sun Eater series (2018) — new
- Vlad Taltos series (1983) — new
- Warhammer 40k — I liked the Astartes miniseries, but the overall format of this franchise is not for me.
-
- Berserk — liked the Golden Age Arc, but the overall manga's not for me.
- Lymond Chronicles — probably not fantasy enough
- oyasumi Punpun — not Western
- Worth the Candle — This story is superbly written, and it matches the "not pandering to the audience" part. But the MC is also extremely motivated towards helping as many people as he can. IIRC, it was pretty much the driving force behind his Quest.
- The Witcher series — I've mostly liked both the books and the games. However, I don't think Geralt's personality fits this request.
Thanks for all these recs! If you know any others, please post them too, though.
willDeleteLater01
17d ago
Wouldn't a powerful immortal trickster be able to successfully trick some muggles into believing he was dead (e.g. and then engage them again as a different person)?
willDeleteLater01
17d ago
If one has an anti-liberal stake in the culture war, one can actually only welcome this move - mandatory school screenings of anti-white male propaganda will only further alienate and enrage British boys, further teaching them that liberal project sees them as potential murderers who are guilty until proven innocent.
Not necessarily. Someone's stance can be both anti-liberal and anti-"red pill" (let's label it that). I agree that forced indoctrination attempts like this will harm the woke ideology to some degree, but the outcome will not be return to sanity -- just the pendulum swinging towards the extremes on the opposite end.
A more optimal scenario would've been if the series didn't exist in its current form at all, and refugee / migrant problems were discussed and addressed in an honest and unbiased manner, so that they could start being solved and their continued existence would stop radicalising the "anti-woke".
willDeleteLater01
1mo ago
Musk did not wear a suit when meeting with cabinet officials last week, an obvious sign of disrespect.
I assume this is a reference to the recent Vance / Zelensky event; and I agree that the administration's overall stance on this is a case of double standards and hypocrisy. However, I disagree that lack of a suit (for Musk or Z.) objectively can be interpreted as disrespect.
willDeleteLater01
1mo ago
I'm pretty hesitant to write an effort post in response to a user who will delete half the dialogue later especially when their comment is 90% questions
Not the dialogue, but the user account. On this engine it should make the posts themselves remain, AFAIK.
And is it really an effort post? Mostly I'm just asking for you to back up the multiple claims that you've made in your original one. Which I think should be expected by default, no? And if you did back them up previously, I can't know that either, because 1) there are no references to those supporting comments in your current one and 2) your comment history is private, so I can't be Ctrl+F-ing through it to try finding the relevant parts.
willDeleteLater01
1mo ago
Can you please explain the contextual framework which can make "Russia currently possesses the best army in the world" appear true?
E.g. China, India have much large numbers to brute force their attacks with. USA has much more advanced tech, most of the prominent AI developing companies, control over chip producers, control over a world-spanning satellite internet system. To some degree this applies to China too. Israel has decades of war experience, and has shown hypercompetent achievements in its last stage as well.
What does the Russian army have, or done, to merit being classified as the best one among them?
who was so pro-West he was almost a Europhile and wanted to integrate Russia into the market economies of Europe.
How can you know what he truly wanted or didn't want?
repeatedly attempted reproach with Europe
(to prevent misunderstandings, I am guessing you meant "reapproach")
Putin-lead Russia repeatedly attempted [reapproach] with Europe from trying to get into NATO to willingly and seriously participating in any European organization it was allowed to enter for years and years.
And if we judged by his actions, then he started sabotaging Europe almost as soon as he more or less concentrated power and built up his authoritarian regime. Most prominent of all by invading Ukraine in 2014.
to build infrastructure to strengthen ties with Europe (especially Germany)
Infrastructure-related ties are not necessarily a good thing, if other conditions are not being met. As we've seen with how Russia has been blackmailing the same Europe when the latter was reliant on it for fuel imports.
Instead of genuinely working with Russia, the Americans and Europeans constantly took advantage of their weakness and rapprochement attempts.
How did they constantly take advantage of Russia? Please rely on concrete and valid sources when answering this question, rather than on hearsay.
US has drained its armory
How do you know this? Wouldn't the true capabilities and stocks be classified info?
There are only a few weapons which the US and NATO has held in reserve
Same with this.
Russia is now deeply acquainted with NATO weapons
Similarly, that the truly bleeding edge technology and capabilities would not have been shared with Ukraine to be exposed to rivals and potential enemies?
willDeleteLater01
2mo ago
The U/R v.s. B/H comparison misses crucial details. E.g.:
1. U had several specific agreements with R about mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity: ([1] [2] [3] [4]), whereas B/H don't.
2. The U-R war destabilises EU (and the world in general) much more than what a B/H war would.
3. B wouldn't be on its way of becoming a superpower once it captured H, threatening the current superpowers and the status quo (more destabilisation, eventual return to cold-war era atrocities).
4.
One of the current superpowers hasn't specifically declared their recognition and support of H's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Essentially egging them on to do go ahead and resist the aggressor, knowing that they would have such a backup.
Blinken told reporters the United States was open to dialogue, but made it "clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend, including Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances."
We will not compromise on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every nation in Europe, and we will not compromise on the right for all countries to do, to choose their own path, including what kind of security arrangements they want to be part of, and will not compromise on the right for allies to protect and defend each other.
5. B hasn't been known to carry out extrajudicial murders / murder attempts on EU soil. And in a manner so grossly incompetent as to leave other people sick or dead from radiation poisoning. [2]
6. AFAIK, B is not currently carrying out a large hybrid warfare / psyop campaign vs. EU and US populations.
7. There's an unstated, unproven implication that, circa 2014, quality of life in R was significantly higher than in U.
8.
Would we support a government that is failing its people?
Same with this one.
Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
Imo: severe, systemic violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, crimes against nature. Internal policies, which present a serious risk for the neighboring countries or planet as a whole -- e.g. incompetent handling of nuclear technology, failure to properly regulate and police weapon smuggling, and so on.
These should be proven to be taking place. Unfortunately, anything less than that will incentivise the invader to manufacture such violations to get themselves a casus belli, e.g. like R was doing with the supposed discrimination of R-speaking population in Ukraine.
Poland vs. Ukraine
This comparison is inaccurate also. E.g.: P was much further away from R's sphere of influence. Enjoyed a certain extent of protection from being a NATO member. Was not being controlled by an R puppet for a large chunk of its post-USSR existence.
GDP
U was not being given a chance to advance as much as it could. The ousting of -- a corrupt -- Russian puppet followed very closely by the Russian invasion and war, which pretty much has not stopped since then.
willDeleteLater01
2mo ago
Some guesses -- though mostly possible, rather than probable, ones:
- to get rid of cancel culture by targeting a sacred cow with minimal effort (activation of some hand muscles) and minimal risk (initial performers highly resistant to being canceled).
- Musk has already drastically pivoted his public persona before, at least once, and with great results for himself. Done again to target the European alt-right audience may open new markets and means of production to him.
- Russia significantly poached the US using certain wedge issues, and is on the way of poaching the EU in the next 5-10 years. Maybe instead of supporting the opposing groups (more left-leaning EU fractions), the "new" US admin. has decided to just poach the EU-right from Russia in turn. Esp. when some of the systemic issues (e.g. refugees) that empower those wedge issues will only be worsening.
- weaponisation of radicalised forces to intimidate power-holders into giving that power away, or to take it away from them forcefully. See: meddlesome priest, January 6 attack, Kristallnacht, some of the assassinations in Israel (e.g. Yitzhak Rabin).
- keep potential opposition in the form of political activists constantly exhausted. Or rather, make them spend their energy now against a literal body movement that can later be motted as a "muh heart" or whatever, so if / when something more outrageous ends up happening (deliberately or by accident), they'll be exhausted to become an OWS or pre-BLM scale threat.
- keep the infosphere polluted with easily-generated noise to dis-coordinate potential opposition.
- if Trump / Musk are Russian assets, it may be serving Russia as an easy way of discrediting and isolating the US.
- salami tactics -- use a series of litmus tests to check what people are de facto letting them get away with. How much money can be saved / earned by e.g. running prisons / concentration camps with lower "quality of service" and adherence to human rights? What if illegal immigrants could be used for forced labour instead of being deported? Or if the Xinjiang "reeducation" model seems like an efficient enough solution to them to be worth of replicating, v.s. Muslims or other groups? The elites could be getting access to cheap "donor" organs too.
- ... if the current admin is considering invasion / occupation / annexation of non-NWS states / territories, it'll have to solve the "issue" of the local population somehow. Things like forced displacements, ethnic cleansings, camps, etc could be internally risky if the frog of the domestic population isn't boiled properly to be accepting of these things. E.g. I think Russia's attack on Crimea went mostly ok domestically because by that point Kremlin had already largely defanged most of potential internal threats and erected its power-vertical. And even then it took them years and then months of aggressive propaganda still to build up towards feeling safe to officially report at least some of the damages that it was causing to the Ukrainian civilian population and infrastructure.
It's probably not one specific factor, but rather their calculation of the sum PRO / CON difference from several such factors.
willDeleteLater01
2mo ago
That model is missing crucial components that make it inaccurate:
- R's not a random mugger, but more like a neighbouring family / household. R has a history of forcefully occupying rooms that "belong" to others. R's also likely to come knocking at U's door (and at some other "owners'") later if U just gives away the current room that R's trying to snatch.
- if R does manage to snatch away the current room, it'll become easier for it to snatch even more rooms from others later on.
- if R does manage to snatch away the current room, others will become more likely to adopt a similar strategy too.
- to U, it may be more preferable to keep fighting now and lose some family members, rather than for them to become trapped in the captured room and be slowly tortured / killed there under the guise of "peace".
- apartment building "owners" have had kinda previously agreed on a "code of conduct" of sorts. There was a chance it would protect U from R, so U's decision to keep fighting was not entirely uncalculated.
- the whole building is booby-trapped, and R, USA, and some others each hold a button that can blow it all up. So just stepping in and using direct force against R isn't viable.
- USA and many others have bipolar disorder.
There are probably some more that this list is missing in turn.
Thanks for the recommendation. How much will I be losing from this story, if I haven't played the game and know nothing about the original setting?
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