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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29974 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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For conventional writing, Coraline and Good Omens (collaboration with Terry Pratchett) are some of the easier ones to get into, maybe followed by MirrorMask and American Gods. Much of his influence is elsewhere, though: he's been massive part of the comic sphere. Pretty much every worthwhile Endless (aka Sandman) comic and a majority of the not-awful Constantine ones are his work or related to one of his works, and that's had downstream effects on a lot of writing and tabletop spaces (eg Exalted and especially Nobilis/Chuubo's).

On the flip side, his long presence in the tumblr sphere as one of the few authors that Just Shows Up in fandom mentions was always unusual, as was his pronounced defense of Alan Moore's Lost Girls; the man had been holding a lightning pole up in the rain for a while.

I've been playing Sunless Skies again after playing Sunless Sea for the first time and deducing it's just an inferior early version of Skies, really, and the Gaiman influence shows strongly there too.

The game play is much better in sunless skies, but the writing was way better in sunless sea. Funny enough I think the OG writer, Alexis Kennedy, got pushed out of the company in between games for sleeping around the office.

It was less for sleeping around and more that one particular disgruntled partner was a figure of some renown in the indie/queer/bafta rising star type circles in the UK in which journalists at some major local games media were deeply enmeshed. He then left her for his employee, who had no complaints (and iirc is still with him).

Nevertheless, Kennedy himself was ultra annoying and ultra woke, so one can’t be too upset that he was hoisted by his own petard.

I disagree! I believe the writing is also, at the very least, more to my liking in Sunless Skies. Playing Cultist Simulator made me understand that not only was the game mechanic boring and confusing but I'm not also particularly fond of Kennedy's style of writing, and having less of his touch in Sunless Skies meant that within the dark fantasy/steampunk/occult horror vibe of the games there's more of the first two and less of the third, and that's very much fine with me.

Of course, things might be different if I had played Sunless Sea first and came into Skies with an expectation that the writing was more of the same, but alas...

I was a huge fan of Cultist Simulator. I like it to the point I have to keep it uninstalled or I'll ruin my sleep. Seems like the parts you don't like are the ones I like. I love occult vibes and obscure plots and mechanics. I love not knowing what the fuck is going on while portentous things are happening around me. Dark Souls is my GOAT for this.

From your description of what you like about CS, I recommend Kowloon: High School Chronicle. It is like a trip to a past of no walkthroughs and games not spelling out everything.

I played Sunless Sea some time after it came out, and found it epochal.

Sunless Skies was fine, I guess. Better than 'a house of many doors', which was also ok.

But going from "you and your crew are living on some steam boat on a subterranean ocean" to "you and your crew are living on a steam locomotive driving through the void without tracks" somehow broke my suspension of disbelief.

House of many doors felt like a first draft of a game. I liked the world and the characters a lot, but so much of the game just plain old lacked polish. The combat was very rough, and the mechanics barely made sense. The vibes powerful at least, though not as good as Sunless Sea.

Good Omens is Pratchett book, at least 51% if not more like 80%. I'm not sure what Gaiman ever brought to the book. The four horseman are already in Discworld, although I notice they left out Mr Soak the milkman.

This is praise. Pratchett is one of the best to ever write and the high quality of his prodigious output is astounding.

If you don't like fantasy, the Long World with Baxter is fantastic.

But now we're in the Friday Fun thread, What Are You Reading.

I felt that you could usually tell whether you were reading a Pratchett section or a Gaiman section by the tone of the writing.

Pratchett is essentially a satirist and a humourist, and nothing really terrible ever happens to the people in the Discworld books. Even when people do suffer (like the murdered dwarves in Thud!) it happens offscreen or is skimmed over.

Whereas Gaiman is a dark fantasy / horror writer. When something really grim happens, like the telemarketers being eaten alive by worms or people ripping each other to shreds because War is in the room I'm pretty sure that's Gaiman.

Telemarketers being eaten alive is "I fantasize about my outgroup getting hurt".

Oh, sure. But one of the things that made Pratchett so readable (until he started losing his touch near the end, around or just after 'Going Postal') was that he didn't usually feel the need to indulge in those fantasies. I'm sure he had them - he had a lot of pent up rage against the world - but he was self-aware enough not to let them come out in print. Even Lord Rust, who is usually treated as an absolute buffoon, has a way of dealing with problems that makes Vimes "darkly impressed". He's not humiliated, or cast out from society, or eaten alive.

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