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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3294 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In anticipation of the what are we reading thread: What are we reading?

I have just finished the 2-book story by Daniel Suarez, Daemon and Freedom tm, which are not at all my usual genre but were given to me by a friend. I found them very fast and interesting reads on my commute. They're neither of them newly published, but has anyone read them?

Mencius Moldbugman's Unsqualified Preservations, a book of short stories from a fellow who got doxxed off old-Twitter. The most striking and thought-provoking parts were when he was being self-aware, talking about the corrosive effects of being an online persona known just for hating on terrible cringeworthy people, which he was.

Frankly I thought he went a bit too far in hating China and women though it's still fun to read about the mid-ranking Communist Party officials competing to see who can be ruder to the waitress, waste more food and show off more luxurious foreign imports. I found it a fun mix of hilarity and despair, mostly hits with a few misses.

China Mieville's Embassytown. The plot is really very imaginative and engaging, although some parts of the background don't really make sense (and the sexual libertinism is a weird touch too).

I'm currently reading Patrick Stewart's memoir, Making It So. It's been very enjoyable so far! I'm pleasantly surprised by how well he can write. My main worry for the book was that it would be preachy (as Stewart is known for being a rather politically active man), but so far it hasn't been. Hopefully that continues.

The [short] Stories Of Ibis is turning out disappointingly girly.

So far I've had a story about a woman who rescues/redeems the morality of a bully victim turned killer using the power of Star Trek fan fic, one about a blind girl who is chatted up in a VR chatroom by a boy who likes her for who she is, and one about a girl's relationship with her best friend character AI who lives inside a vanity mirror toy.

This is tied together with intermissions about a man who has been captured by a caring and enlightened yet powerful robot who knows that she's sexy but is quick to pre-empt the man by letting him know she doesn't have a vagina.

Kotodama, a hard-scifi near-future spy adventure romp about two space habitat-born people trying to survive amid multi-directional political plots that revolve around one of them. There are various hijinks around Terrans fumbling around in zero-G society and vice-versa. Despite being faithful enough to its hard scifi label, it is fairly lighthearted and plays on many tropes such as literally isekaiing into a Japanese school (we Russians love our weebery). Linking it in case someone wants to brave it with the latest LLM translator.

I finally got down to reading Unsong. I really hope it gets better in Book 2, because while it started out strong, its fluvial counterpart so far has been not Büyük Menderes, but Okavango. Too many mystery boxes and too many subplots that dry up (until the next flood?).

I really enjoyed Scott's shorter fiction, but this is disappointing in a way that reminds me of Good Omens, where Gaiman and Pratchett managed to cancel each other out.

I found that it picked up a lot around The Broadcast interlude.

I really enjoyed it when I read it. The plot could have been managed better, though, I think.

Kill Six Billion Demons

The webcomic that is the absolute epitome of:

If you meet the Buddha along the road, kill him

And where God himself committed suicide because of depression.

I saw it recommended on Reddit as a work of fiction taking inspiration from Hindu mythology, and to be fair, it does, especially aesthetics, but it's largely a mishmash of Hindu, Buddhist and Abrahamic themes.

But most importantly, the name is fucking cool, and if you can't judge a book by its cover, the typography and esoteric codas should work too.

Dunno, seemed all style and very little if any substance, to me. But most likely I just don't get it.

Also, to be honest, it was in my bad book for all those stronk independent black women and trans angels all over the place, but that's the quiet bit out loud.

I did notice that myself, but the quality of the art and my desire to know wtf is going on keeps me reading.

Has he finished it yet? I remember reading it years ago but I couldn't keep track of the plot reading a page every few days.

Nope, probably still a few years from completion, but we're getting towards the end of the story.

Well I'm currently reading posts from 2015, so I have no clue.

That is great, the art is fantastic and that psalm accompanying 16 is phenomenal.

All the psalms and little parables are great. The author was wasted in the 21st century, they'd have built a religion off it a few millennia back.

Don’t forget the Elder Scrolls philosophy thrown in there, too!

And the character designs. K6BD kicks so much ass, it’s unreal.

For something very different which also draws from Hindu themes, there’s Ra. Though given your interests, you’ve probably read it.

I will admit I bounced off Ra the last time I tried, but I'll give it another go! Though something named after the Egyptian Sun God having Hindu elements is funky haha

Oh, it gets much funkier than that.

Though I misremembered, and a lot of it is Buddhist rather than Hindu.

Fate points. Classic litRPG about humans placed into a competition with 7(?) other "competitor races" and forced to fight to survive. The pacing is off at times but I enjoy the characterization (characters are generally rational and interested in their own, and humanity's survival, but not perfect, psychopathic, or lacking emotion) and the system is pretty well thought-out.

Seriously though the pacing can be pretty bad. Not nearly as bad as The Path of Ascension, where seemingly nothing ever happens even during vast multi-galaxy wars, but it did take this book a hundred and something chapters to resolve a minor secondary plotline.

I can strongly recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl if you're into this kind of stuff. Intentionally comedic most of the time (which is also enjoyable, especially the whiplash when the tone changes), but imo it's core strength is exploring a certain kind of horror about how the system works that is notably absent in most of other works. The audiobook is also quite good, for people who prefer that medium. Main weaknesses are imo the typical things that are almost unavoidable (main character has superficial allusions of being the underdog but is in practice always winning, the power level of everyone is always rising, as soon as ethics come up it's always from the lens of modern mainstream liberalism, women are noticeably male-ish, etc.) but most of those things make sense even inside the world itself so its not so irritating.

That's a great one! Though imo on a slight decline since book 3 or so. The genre as a whole really suffers from a sort of "fight-everything-itis" where there are no character stakes, no growth, and basically no plot, and the main characters are just a bunch of psychopaths wandering from one fight to the next. Usually they'll have like 1 moral principle--maybe they hate being disrespected, or hate slavery (but not murder, mysteriously), or racism, or something. The few books like DCC that manage both a system and an actual story are real gems haha.

Yes, I agree, DCC is slowly getting a bit formulaic & morphing into a standard "rebellion against the evil empire" story, but it has subverted my expectations before, so let's see.

What's the what are we reading thread? I was going to make a media recommendation thread back when we moved but I never heard back from the mods when I asked about guidelines and set up. Anyway the point is we should call it Le Motte Juste.

Well, not thread, but the usual post in the Friday Fun Thread about reading habits.

Anyway the point is we should call it Le Motte Juste.

Nice. Someone can correct me, but I think it would have to be La Motte Juste.

Just a heads up George, Edenic typically posts this in the Small Question Sunday thread.

Ah, sorry didn't mean to steal his fire.

No harm no foul

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