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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Notes -
An entertaining new variety of kang:
Black Americans are not from Africa -- they are actually the true Native Americans! (and the other so-called "Native Americans" are frauds)
What are the lore implications? Do these Native American Kangz have a Yakub of their own?
Oh wow she just now dropped a new video laying out a lot of her theory in one place.
It seems like this is something of anti-Yakub theory, a modern well-informed reaction to it that proposes the actual proximate mechanism for creating white people: heavy metal poisoning causing DNA damage causing albinism. This was initially an accident, then may have been done deliberately (unclear by who or why), and is now starting to happen accidentally again to both Black Americans and to Africans (who are, I gather from other videos, unrelated to each-other). She's very mad at people who are still insisting on the old theory that white people came from (Yakubian?) genetic engineering mixing animals with human DNA, which she's disproven.
So it all started in Tanzanesia, where artisinal mining exposes everybody to heavy metals accidentally causing birth defects like albinism. There is still some further level of deliberateness here (there's a "they" doing it) which I don't understand. But pale-skinned people are actually a very recent development and come from this Tanzanesia heavy metal poisoning. Albinos are still to this day treated badly there, which is why white people hate black people: in revenge for their recent memory of being abused and mutilated as albinos by Africans. And it's starting to happen to Black Americans too because seafood boils are exposing them to heavy metals causing vitiligo.
She doesn't actually get in to the Native American stuff in this one, but my head-canon is that it's something like: everybody everywhere was black, but then everyone other than Africans and (completely seperately with no relation) the real Native Americans (Black Americans) got this heavy metal poisoning and turned pale. Then at some point later the fake Native Americans (Siberian/Asian, she mentioned this in another video I skimmed but I'm not going to find it again) invade or are imported or something, and invent/are forced to believe the lie that they were there first.
From some screenshots she included, it seems at least some of this is LLM-potentiated.
I can definitely see some marvel story telling tier potential shenanigans for the KCU, awww she privated her account.
Not permamently. From currently-not-privated account bio:
(unclear what timezone)
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I haven't encountered that yet. This woman's version seems to be that all non-black people have hereditary environmental poisoning that damaged their ability to produce sacred melanin. There is a video where she appears to momentarily imply it was deliberate, though does not name a perpetrator (maybe a community effort; very sophisticated systems thinking).
It seems like a big part of the originating narcissism here might be about distinguishing themselves from Africans, who they've decided are completely unrelated parasitic interlopers out to steal Black Americans' birthright, wealth and identity (this woman is very loose with deploying the p-word).
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A good LLM swears up and down that "kang" meaning something like "presenting others' work as your own" existed entirely unrelated to and predating "we wuz kangz", in the Android ROM community. This seems very implausible.
AOKP (Android Open Kang Project) was a major project from 2011. This thread attests "kang" among Android ROM enthusiasts in 2010 and does not reflect knowledge of that type of humor. No etymology is solidly attributed anywhere (that XDA thread suggests MMO slang "gank", wiktionary claims (unsourced) an otherwise-lost username of a guy who stole stuff without attribution). 2010 feels too early to me for "we wuz kangs", but then I reflect on other things that were around at the time and am not so sure.
Can anyone speak on this?
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My unhealthy obsession with designing houses continues unabated.
One somewhat strange aspect of the IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code) is table 404.5, which lays out the minimum areas of living rooms and dining rooms based on occupant count.
Obviously, it is nonsensical for the total required assembly area per occupant to bounce around like this.
IBC (International Building Code) table 1004.5 states that a dining/living room with tables and chairs should have 15 ft2 per occupant. Therefore, I am inclined to think that it would make sense to superimpose on IRC table 404.5 a failsafe minimum of 45 ft2 per occupant.
Your houses seem much more generous than the IPMC. I think it matters a lot more how the space will be used: 8 adult occupants in a sharehome will probably want their own bedrooms, whereas 8 occupants in a family home will probably end up bunking together (married couples) or on bunkbeds (kids). A family will probably be having dinner all at the same time, and so will require a larger dining area than a group of flatmates, but the flatmates might prefer to have more showers.
Speaking of bathrooms, is there a reason you have a bathroom per bedroom? Growing up we had one for three bedrooms, but I guess I wouldn't be surprised if luxury dormitories had one per room.
In terms of dining/living space, yes, as explained above. In terms of sleeping space, no—the minimum is 50 ft2 per occupant under § 404.4.1, and I have kept as close to that minimum as possible. I make a bedroom larger than 50 ft2 per occupant only when I am forced to do so in order to keep the house rectangular.
I personally have found it quite annoying to live in a house with three bedrooms and one bathroom.
(In a dwelling unit, IPMC § 502.1 requires only one bathroom, regardless of the number of bedrooms. However, in a "rooming house" (defined in § 202; an apartment building with bathrooms shared between units), § 502.2 requires a minimum of one bathroom per four "rooming units", and that requirement can be pressed into service for houses as well.)
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Nice. I'm a bit of an architecture nerd, especially for houses. Within the last year or so I came across Cliff Tan, aka "Dear Modern", famed internet feng shui expert. I had no opinions on feng shui before watching his videos, or the closest I had was Frank Lloyd Wright's epithet against interior decorators as "inferior desecrators." But watching Tan redraw floorplans, or make perspective drawings of rooms he then modifies to have harmonious feng shui, the work speaks for itself and I'm a believer. I wouldn't say in energy flow as such, but energy flow as a phrase to describe the ineffable feeling of a living space that's just "right." And it's repeatable, anybody can follow the rules of feng shui to rearrange their living spaces. I'd already mostly arrived on it intuitively, but those slight touches work, and I did it for the sunroom at my parents' house and my dad immediately said it was better.
I have a couple MagicaVoxel models I worked on just for fun around the time I started watching Tan's vids. The first was an idea I had before that I'd gone through a few versions of before starting over with some of the ideas of feng shui. The kitchen is both too open yet claustrophobic, I was thinking of it as something like an architectural challenge. I had the idea of you having to enter a courtyard to even reach the main entrance of the house, and I wanted a kitchen on the courtyard, but as you can see I weigh symmetry heavily so that resulted in me putting the kitchen as the main entrance, and that's bad. The rooms on the other side of the courtyard are bedrooms, the halls on them have slightly better flow, though the bedrooms should be like a sitting room and an office, and the blue rooms on the halls are bathrooms and should be flipped with the doors beside them for best flow, and then the doors to the left and the right of the kitchen removed in favor of windows. Of course what would be actually best is for the courtyard to open to a small foyer, then a sitting room, then I'd personally put another courtyard with halls on either side to reach kitchen/dining . . . if I return to this it will be to start over again.
Which I kind of did back then, when I realized I'd modeled myself into a corner, was go to just modeling a room.
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If you spend too much time online following the culture war I think you'll enjoy watching Eddington.
I don't want to say too much about it as it's probably more fun to go in blind.
Completely agree, there was a lot going on in that movie and although I can't say that I enjoyed watching it, I was left thinking about all of the different things that it touched on for days afterward.
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I saw Jurassic World Rebirth in theaters a few weeks back, but didn't get around to writing a review, and honestly, don't think it deserves an exhaustive analysis. But it was okay! There were dinosaurs, in a dinosaur movie, and that is intrinsically appealing. It also raises pointed questions about how Dominion was so bad that I left it in a DNF state.
In favor:
The movie is an intentional throwback to the first trilogy, in terms of setting, pacing and cinematography. It's more more restrained, the pacing more deliberate. There is a tangible sense of place, a welcome departure from the green-screen-heavy aesthetic of the World trilogy, which only reminds me (negatively) of Marvel slop.
The characters, sometimes, act self-aware.
There are dinosaurs. Most of them act like wild carnivores as opposed to horror movie villains.
Against:
The characters just as often turn off their brain when convenient for the plot.
The onus for being there, namely to create a super anti-clotting drug and the precise means of doing so, are not very plausible. They need three samples from 3 different types of large dinosaur to "cure heart disease", and there is literally a wild Apatosaur in the first scene of the movie, in New Fucking York, why didn't they just sample that??
Do not look too hard for plot holes, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. To pick on them makes me feel bad, like challenging a child with Downs syndrome to a debate.
In continued Hollywood tradition, the trailer spoils about 90% of the tense scenes in the movie.
Children = invincible.
??
??? What. It would have been better to just reframe this as an alternate universe take or properly retcon things.
Overall, a 7/10. A good way to please the child in you that still fondly remembers making their plastic Rex fight and win against Army men. The British are an enlightened people, so I enjoyed it with multiple beers in the movie hall, and didn't miss anything of note during the necessary piss breaks.
I think that's also pretty much what they did with the last two movies, in the sense of them trying to execute as little as possible on the premise of Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm), probably because it's not conducive to the kind of plot they want to tell, or it would be too high budget, or it would make the dinosaurs seem boring and not special anymore. So what they do is put out trailers that show prominently Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm), put it in opening or closing scenes, and then quickly in the movie find an excuse why yes, there's Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm) but not really dinosaurs everywhere and the trailer feels like a bait and switch.
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As a franchise, it’s a single conceit. It’s like The Matrix.
There’s the original, and then the straight remake (Jurassic World), and then a collection of average (for popcorn movies) to bad to very bad spin-offs.
You could make so many fun films based around the idea, yet they make crap.
E.g. imagine velociraptors escaping confinement and breeding freely in the continental Americas and being as smart as parrots -smart enough to have theory of mind and to bury evidence, avoid people who may have guns and leaving tracks in the mud.
Government dismisses it (dinosaurs? On our federal land? You've gotta be joking!), nothing much happens except feral hog populations mysteriously start diminishing. Blurry photographs dismissed as photoshops and reptilian conspiracy theories. Missing people cases not much impacted yet.
What's going to happen?
Bureaupunk movie about the dead-end government agency assigned to watch the island. When containment inevitably breaks down, our crew of misfits and scapegoats has to escape the dinosaurs stalking their conference rooms and supply closets.
Careful—you'll give /tg/ an aneurysm.
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A redneck shoots one and displays it to the media.
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My favorite dino franchise is the Primal animated series. It takes its core conceit, a caveman teaming up with a T-Rex on a rampage of revenge, and executed so well. Great animation too, same director as the Clone Wars.
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Have you ever watched Primeval? It was made in the early 2000s with the tech from Walking With Dinosaurs and broadly follows that premise.
Fan-trailer here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JLir0TDJ3GY?feature=shared
I watched it a long time ago when it came out. Pretty decent TV as I remember.
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Have you flipped sajjano and durjano on purpose or am I not deep enough?
You are correct! I'm impressed, my dad used to be fluent in Sanskrit, and the unexpected formulation threw him for a loop, so I'm surprised you noticed.
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I have yet to see any of the modern Jurassic park type movies. Closest I got was playing the Jurassic World Evolution video game on steam. Which was basically a park management game, with a few fun sidebits with dinosaurs breaking out, and a photo mode that encouraged you to take cool pictures.
Its probably because of young kids. My own parents have a blindspot to 90's culture. Which is coincidentally when my two siblings and I grew up. I think I'll have the same blindspot.
My only redemption is in movie trailers. I do watch all of the movie trailers. I think some people might misinterpret that as "I watch a lot of movie trailers". No, I watch all of them. I'm subscribed to multiple channels that just show movie trailers on youtube. I would rate Jurassic World Rebirth trailers as top tier. Cool action shots, a general sense of the plot, and a diversity of shots displayed throughout different trailers.
Good decision. The last trilogy is a travesty. The video games? It's been a while, but I recall having a pleasant time.
I wonder how the next JWE game will handle the new re-extinction of dinosaurs outside the tropics. Very inconvenient, isn't it? I imagine they'll just pretend it never happened, or have a sub-plot about the need for AC and covid vaccines.
The world really has all kinds! I'm bemused, but I guess you're not missing out on much haha.
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Awhile back I asked for some kind of gaming platform aggregator: a program that pulls all the games you own on Steam, GOG, Epic etc. in one place, so that you don't e.g accidentally buy a game on Steam that you forgot you already bought on GOG.
Playnite was exactly what I was looking for, it's easy to use, does exacty what it says on the tin, and it's free.
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A few things which irritate me about the LitRPG genre and web fiction in general. You may picture me as comic book guy for purposes of this rant.
I could go on but I feel better getting at least this much off my chest.
I've tried a few LitRPGs and web novels and find very few of them readable. Most are badly written fanfiction-tier slop that could (and soon will) be pretty easily generated by AI.
Your genre complaints are, IMO, applicable to the majority of SF&F today in general.
That said, "Hefting his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could" is not great writing (and noticeable when the author uses that construct over and over, which unfortunately I have seen even some better writers do) but it's neither switching tenses nor ungrammatical. It's a present participial.
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Is that changing tenses? Consider the sentence 'While running, he saw Steve'. 'While running' modifies the verb 'saw', but it's not present tense on its own. It could also be written as 'He saw Steve while running' which makes it more obvious.
It's not 1:1 with your example, because he's not swinging while he is hefting it. He would heft it first, then swing. So it would be more similar to "going for a run, he showered off the sweat and went to sleep".
"Going for a run, he showers off the sweat" is no more correct, so it's not really about the tense here. "Going for a run, he listens to music" is only very slightly better. The issue isn't actually that the latter action has to take place during the former; it's that "going for a run" is actually a description of a static event, describing the start of the run.
So I'd say that "going for a run, he stepped out the door" is actually more correct than either of the other two, and also more in-line with the original example. It's an odd case where the sentence structure only works if the latter action is somewhat taken while the start of the former action is happening.
"Starting his run, he stepped out the door" is best of all. Or "Following the man, he stepped through the door behind him." In both cases the former action sort of describes and informs the latter but is also an action in its own right. I'd argue this is precisely what's happening in the sentence you described too. "Hefting" isn't actually separate from swinging the mace; it's a description that informs the swinging of the mace, similar to "Using all his strength, he swung the mace."
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There's nothing ungrammatical about it, it's just bad writing.
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There was this one story where it was like a dungeon/system apocalypse sort of thing. Dude ends up in a world where monsters and dungeons are gradually expanding in power and humanity is being driven back further and further, the population dwindling over the course of centuries as the monsters continue to gain in power.
And then the characters make some offhand comment about a magic spell that lets you switch gender which certain people who were "born in the wrong body" use to cure their condition. And then MC from Earth explains how in our world those people are oppressed and everyone shakes their heads about how unenlightened that is. Now, on an object level it makes sense that if such spells were available people with gender dysphoria would want to use them. But the language was very obviously dated as 2010+ progressivism, which would have no way of being the same in some fantasy world. And more importantly there is no way a world on the verge of extinction with massive attrition due to a constant multi-generational war against monsters is going to end up progressive, especially with regard to gender roles. They are going to want women pumping out as many kids as possible so they don't go extinct. Or rather, any subculture which chooses to be progressive in any way that reduces birthrates (as opposed to some free-love variant that encourages promiscuity but discourages birth control) will quickly die out and be replaced under such strong selection pressures.
I made a comment to this effect, to which the author replied "my world, my rules". So I stopped reading.
I recall something similar in another web novel. It was otherwise quite an interesting story, blending cyberpunk with a fantasy litrpg: earth was a cyberpunk dystopia, but got visited by aliens who gifted them access to a shared litrpg world.
Now, you expect some progressive politics to insert themselves in cyberpunk just by it's nature, but it was the fantasy litrpg part which embarrassed the novel. One of the aliens was from a race which was agender until a certain age, when they would become male or female. This was a great excuse for the author to show his MCs progressive bonafides, referring carefully to "them" and acting shocked when other characters - including other alien races - didn't.
But this was alien race. Calling a woman "sir" or vice versa is insulting for humans with a large amount of sexual dimorphism, but it makes zero sense that this race would have the same issues. To them, it would be completely "alien" to worry about someone using different pronoun.
Even worse, they weren't even speaking English. Every race had their own language filtered through a perfect universal translator. Did their language even have pronouns? Would the translator not just switch anything to the correct pronoun? It was a complete failure of world building
The litrpg space and progression fantasy genre is weird, it feels like the audience is vaguely right-leaning (lots of male video game nerds) but there are author cliques that purity test each other. And in order to succeed on Royalroad or Amazon, it really helps to get bootstrapped by other authors. For example the progression fantasy subreddit has a year-round pride flag, and it's run by a clique of authors who chase off anyone outside their political window of acceptability.
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I think you underestimate the degree to which many of these communities (e.g., trans, disabled, "neurodivergent," etc.) simultaneously regard themselves as oppressed and in need of unlimited support and validation, and totally valid and not in need of "fixing" and any suggestion that magic or sufficiently advanced technology would basically "cure" them is equivalent to suggesting genocide.
I am not exaggerating; I've seen disabled activists, for example, when it's pointed out that medical technology that could grow new limbs and organs would eliminate blindness, deafness, paralysis, and many other defects, respond that this is ableist and instead, such an advanced society should reconfigure public infrastructure to be more accommodating to "differently abled" people.
If I had to count all the settings I know of which offer extremely easy alignment of mental and physical gender, yet enjoy the fandom of many trans people who create explicitly trans OCs in those settings... well, I'd probably run out of fingers on at least one hand.
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At least that's better than the BG1 expansion from a few years back, which (in a world where perfectly effective magic to change your sex exists) had a transgender character. It was so fucking stupid that I did not and never will buy that expansion, no matter how good people say it is otherwise.
See the relatively new Harry Potter game, where they had a trans woman in 19th century Hogwarts, in the same universe where polyjuice exists, and presumably other forms of body-modification.
Oof, I wasn't aware of that. It's just such a failure of imagination, to me. In a world where magic exists and can change you in all kinds of ways, nobody would be trans as an identity! They would just be a woman (or man) by virtue of magic, and nobody else would ever know who didn't know that person before. If anything, these writers are missing out on some interesting material - in a world where you can change sex as easily as putting on a magical girdle, what do gender roles and the relationship between sexes look like? Surely, nothing like our world, and that could be really interesting to explore! But no, instead people have to waste interesting material by forcing it to be a morality lesson about our world instead of letting the fictional world be its own interesting thing. It's so aggravating. :(
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It is well-established in Potterverse that magic, evidently, doesn't allow you to modify yourself long-term. Otherwise there would be no ugly wizards. A lifetime supply of Polyjuice sounds like something pretty much no one could afford.
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Transfiguration
See the section on Human Transfiguration. Even if no spell lasts permanently, what's stopping you from re-casting it regularly? That's about as onerous as doing makeup or getting a haircut.
As a known steadfast supporter of my feminist idol, JK Rowling... it really doesn't bear thinking about too deeply. I am actually an unironic fan of the Harry Potter series, but it's absolutely not the sort of world in which the author spent a lot of time doing the kind of "worldbuilding" that engages with the real world and considers how magic would actually affect it. The Potterverse is less plausible than any superhero universe (which is saying something). It's meant to be English boarding school drama, with wizards. Rowling invented spells because they were clever, funny, or solved a temporary plot hole, and then forgot about them. "But why don't wizards just...?" is a question that will drive you crazy if you let yourself ask it once.
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From the descriptions, fine changes appear to be less like doing makeup and more like plastic surgery, in terms of the skill required and the danger. (Most examples deal with transforming a human into an animal, presumably with stock spells). And then you're one antimagic spell or environmental effect (such as one installed in the bank) away from the glamour washing off, or worse.
Thus, even if some rare talented Transfigurationists or those able to secure the services of one practiced it, it would not be widespread or practical in daily social life. And that's just when we talk about external appearance. Transfiguration evidently does not solve aging, and it's debatable whether it can impart complex function the body didn't have, such as switching out your reproductive system. (What happens if you try to get pregnant on Polyjuice?)
More to the point, I think, in the Potterverse and in most pre-Millenium British fantasy novels magic has an implicit moral understructure. For example, the love of one person sacrificing themself for another is a powerful protective force against evil. Dumbledore makes it pretty clear that there are far deeper forces in the world than the paltry stuff that wizards usually throw around and regularly criticises Voldemort for fundamentally misunderstanding how magic works. You cannot feed yourself on magic - you cannot transfigure food. There is literally a room full of Love in the Department of Mysteries that is so terrible and dangerous that his lock-pick melts when he tries to enter.
I suspect that part of this moral superstructure is the implicit rule that you cannot magically hide your true self for long. Voldemort literally becomes ugly as he mutilates his soul. Harry’s father has an inherent nobility and his Animagus form is a stag, where Wormtail becomes a rat, and it is not possible I think for that to be reversed.
Trans people then seem to be ruled out. Even if you believe the trans identity is the reality, then I would think that spells would work better.
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This sounds like you're gesturing to a plausible culturally-prescribed use of such a spell that would be quite anathema to both our trads and our progs: fix your society's undesirable sex ratio with magical sex change as opposed to (or in addition to) war.
See, that would have made sense. Assuming the magic sex change spell carries fertility with it (not sure how that interfaces with chromosomes, but maybe you can handwave magic that), I can easily imagine oppressive social norms that forces everyone to do like a clownfish thing. They have to be female in their late teens and early twenties to have a bunch of kids and then when they get older they turn male and go off to war to protect the society, with the most successful (and surviving) war heroes getting rewarded with breeding the younger females. Oppressive and constricting to be forced into as a citizen, but super beneficial for the society and the people ruling it since you get the advantages of both sexes, and maximizes chances of survival against an enemy force that outclasses you. (It especially makes sense in a LitRPG context where you can do easy fights and level up while young and will be multiple times stronger when you're older)
I'm not saying the author needed to make it be a rationalfic and actually do that. I can suspend disbelief enough for them to have a relative normal medieval culture or something close. But it makes no sense to make everything about the world gritty and harsh except for their gender norms.
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Surefire giveaway that the author is trans themselves, or at least moves in social circles where they have to interact with a lot of them. Really common in recent years for some reason.
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I'm back at my computer. But not sober enough to put together the best recommendation list. Some additional thoughts:
Re #1: I have tried Russian and Chinese litrpg and Wuxia, and honestly, maybe you don't like reading about people inappropriately spouting progressive values, but a world of power-hungry psychopaths that read like if KulakRevolt were given super-powers is even more depressing to me. What is there to root for? Why would I want any of these people to win?
Re #2: Agreed that the John Carter movie was good and tragically mismarketed, but (seconding @WhiningCoil) the books are fun but if you've read the first couple you've read them all, and this is actually true of a lot of the old pulp stuff (like Tarzan, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Lensmen, etc.) They all follow a very predictable formula and the writing is often not up to modern standards either. Even some of the more modern classics (Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven) don't really stand the test of time, IMO.
Re #3: I see ranting all over the Internet that "No one is writing books (men) want to read" when there is in fact an entire ecosystem of indie-published authors doing just that. Now a lot of what they write is awful, and a lot of it is marketed with not much more of a hook than "This will really trigger blue-haired progs!" but apply Sturgeon's Law and you can still find gold amidst the dross. (Devon Eriksen and Travis J Corcoran come to mind- also plenty of right-wing trad published authors like Larry Correia and John C. Wright).
I agree with all of this. There are always tradeoffs in life, and in product consumption decisions.
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The indie part is key. The complaint is not that nobody is writing books for men; the complain is that none of the mainstream publishers are publishing books for men, nor are any of the established awards recognizing them. Hence Sad/Rabid Puppies and "I just hope you like Amazon Exclusives".
And, of course, this has broader consequences. Bookstores can't stock copies of web novels. Since weeding manuals explicitly call for the removal of old books, libraries are increasingly populated by texts no man wants to read.
I just picked up the first Craig Alanson book, Columbus Day. It’s so painfully self-published. Minimal cover, no logos, I’m not even sure it had a copyright page. And there is a distinct lack of editing. This made more sense when I read the author’s note in the back, in which he expressed shock and delight at the reception for what he described as “talking beer can” novels.
He also wrote about the Amazon self-publishing process. I think it’s pretty neat that was even possible. What would have been a total vanity project in 1970 has shifted more and more towards viability. Not for everyone, but as a way to clear these underserved markets.
But prestige can’t be democratized like publishing. It’s much closer to zero-sum. Every award that goes to a webnovel is one that doesn’t go to an ingroup novel. I don’t just mean that in a CW sense; conventional awards are entwined with conventional publishing, so they’re incentivized to hype up the latter.
Point is, I think the practicality of self-publishing is directly opposed to success in the awards and conventional publishers. It’s a threat.
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I haven't stepped into a Barnes & Noble in years, but I understand that it's mostly walls of romantasy and Brandon Sanderson nowadays. But you know, it's a chicken-and-egg problem that has more to do with the ruthless pursuit of quarterly earnings than it does with some malicious cabal of white female NYC publishers refusing to greenlight anything a man will read. What genre has always outsold every other genre? Romance. Who buys the most books nowadays? Young women. Hence Twilight, 50 Shades, Sarah Maas, and so on.
I'm skeptical that there is some breakout male author who could bring in male readers the way these authors bring in female readers (the last truly cross-gender mass phenomenon was probably Harry Potter and even that was a majority female fanbase). I'm very skeptical that publishing would refuse to print it if they actually smelled that kind of money.
The fact is that the publishing industry has changed dramatically in a lot of ways since the golden age of SF. Not just in tilting more strongly towards female preferences, but tilting strongly towards "Only books that are bestsellers and will bump our QEs are worth supporting." (See this phenomenon also with movies, which have turned into a different kind of formulaic slop, but not exclusively targeted at women.) The death of the midlist is I assume common knowledge by now. It used to be that agents and publishers would cultivate a relationship with an author whom they expected to produce books over the course of a career, and if every book wasn't a best-seller, as long as each one paid out, it was good enough, because the cumulative earnings were enough to sustain the author (and his agent, and his publisher). Nowadays, not so much. Publishers don't want a long tail from middling sellers, they want bestsellers and are only willing to invest in a book that has a chance of becoming that, and they are only willing to invest so much in an author who doesn't break out.
Hence Brandon Sanderson (whose fanbase is large male) doing fine, and Stephen King and Haruki Murakami and a few others, but only if they are huge sellers with already established names. Meanwhile, while even the John Scalzis and Larry Correias are making a decent living, you will not usually find them occupying premium real estate in a bookstore.
I am not denying there is also a "publishing sneers at white males" problem, but it's not happening because publishing is unwilling to pick up money that's lying on the table.
Your links, are, unsurprisingly, also rather distorted views of reality.
The Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies affair was a reaction against leftism and SJWs in science fiction. Female-coded, to be sure, but their complaint at the time was not "Nobody is writing books men want to read" but "Nobody is writing books we want to read." Seriously half of it was Vox Day's abiding hatred for John Scalzi.
That /r/romance_for_men cartoon: well, I am not really a romance reader, but I've read a few (so I could at least say I had some understanding of the genre) and while I realize meme-cartoons aren't meant to accurately reflect reality with high fidelity, the Alpha Male Wolf Pack Mafia Boss Billionaire is basically a gross exaggeration of the most formulaic and traditional romance story ever, the one that has been the stock romance story for as long as there have been romance stories: women want to read about an impressive and desirable man falling in love with a woman who is plain and generic enough that any (female) reader can imagine herself in her place. It's no more complicated than that. No, that doesn't leave much for the male reader, but I will say that if you want cute love stories with actual functional couples, there seem to be quite a few that do not feature Chad Thundercock or BDSM.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that there isn't much real "romance for men" outside of indie publishing, but again, that's because men don't buy romance.
As for your beloved idol Dread Jim, I almost literally laughed out loud that he thinks John fucking Ringo is not right-wing enough. Apparently if you don't have women literally in chains... oh wait.
Well, there's always Tom Kratman.
As for this:
It's been a while since I read Lucifer's Hammer, but he's really glossing over how much the theme of that book was "When civilization collapses, white people become farmers and engineers and rebuild, and black people turn into rampaging cannibals." Yeah, the cannibal army wasn't exclusively black (and ironically enough, it was led by a messianic white man...) but I am pretty sure it wasn't 13%. Basically the majority of blacks in southern California joined the cannibal army, and any white people who didn't want to get et joined them. I don't think Niven and Pournelle were intentionally being "racist" (they threw a few black characters in with the good guys as well) but like, I am Niven fan but yeah, he knew what he was writing. (Including the motorcycle gang who takes a girl scout troop as sex slaves, but fortunately a boy scout troop rescues them and now every boy scout has his very own girl scout clinging to his feet, Frazetta-style.) You're taking at face value rants from a guy who thinks a book is too leftist if there is even a hint of female agency.
So yeah, where we are now is indie publishing for anything outside the mainstream or a very few Sanderson- and King-level big names. And that's because publishing (at least the industry as it is today) is dying a slow death.
It's funny that you mentioned that. Last night, I was waiting to meet up with some folks and I arrived early enough that I needed to kill some time, which I did by walking into a Barnes and Noble. The sci fi and fantasy section had a clear view of the entrance, and after a while I noticed something odd.
The place had a ton of customers, but nobody was buying books. Almost everyone who left was carrying a coffee from the integrated Starbucks. Those who weren't walked out with board games or things that would have been purchased from a toystore in days of yore.
I eventually bought Adrian Tchaikovsky's new book when I left because it felt wrong to be at a book store where no one was buying books.
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Well, the main point is that “romance for men” would be about a male protagonist who meets a woman and they have a romance. It’s not just about what the male character is like, but about whose perspective the plot is written from.
Unironically, there’s more romance stories for gay men than there are for straight ones. Presumably this is just a market thing, but I don’t know why it doesn’t even seem to exist. Are there a lot of lesbian romance stories?
I’d probably be a reader of this genre if it actually existed. As it is, occasionally I read fanfiction about male protagonists (probably 80% written by women, but occasionally not bad), and take what I can get from the scraps of media that incidentally have romantic content. Japan has visual novels, but they’re too weird and too Japanese for me, but I liked Katawa Shoujo and some western fan VNs are tolerable.
So you say “men don’t buy romance”, but this is a chicken-egg problem: I can’t buy it if it doesn’t exist.
Well, what would a male romance look like to you? For most men, I'm going to guess it would be something like the classic "Hero goes on a quest and gets the girl in the end." Do men want more "romantic" content (scenes with the girl being cute and sexy and falling in love with him, the two of them having intimate encounters and emotional conversations) or do they want action with the girl naturally falling in love with him because he's so cool and brave?
Basically I think what male-oriented romance exists would mostly be found under another label.
There are tons of anime romcoms aimed at men where the relationship between MC and FMC is the primary draw, rather than being a subplot of another genre. In fact, most of them take place in the standard high school setting and have no speculative elements. Toradora!, Komi Can't Communicate, Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, Tomo-chan Is a Girl!, My Dress-Up Darling, Teasing Master Takagi-san...
I am specially fond of Nagatoro; my heart melted when I read chapter 114. I was so proud of Senpai forfinally having the courage to ask Nagatoro to pose nude for him ; it's a very beautiful scene that is the culmination of six years of character and relationship development. Likewise, the scene that sold me on Komi was the blackboard conversation in episode 1; I was blown away by the music and the animation and the way Tadano and Komi connected. These are not scenes about something else that happen to include romance; they are romance scenes.
I don't see why you couldn't write romance books aimed at men that were similar. Indeed, some of these titles started out as light novels, and to the extent that the novels on /r/romance_for_men successfully appeal to their target demographic, that seems to be exactly what they are doing.
I've only read or watched a couple of those. And I see what you mean about them appealing to a "male romance fan" but- well, does it not strike you that there is a large overlap between the male protagonists of those stories and the generic, uninteresting, personality-less girl being mocked in that /r/romance_for_men cartoon?
I gave Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie a try for a couple of volumes, to practice my Japanese reading comprehension. (The Japanese is very simple, though it's full of idioms.) Anyway, I bailed because the male protagonist, Yuu, is so annoyingly... well, non-masculine. Unassertive, cringing, insecure, less smart, less confident, and less cool than his girlfriend... I kept wondering "What does she see in him?" But you have made me realize I was seeing it from the wrong angle, as a story appealing to women (who I guess in Japan find an unthreatening submissive softboi a turn-on?) But no, it's appealing to men- or more specifically, to boys who feel insecure and unmasculine and unable to compete in traditionally masculine ways, but want to imagine the cute, smart but devoted and affectionate girl will still fall in love with them.
Have you read Haruki Murakami?
His books are usually billed as "fantasy" or "magical realism" in the West, but they all have this theme: a rather dull guy with the personality and initiative of a bowl of oatmeal is kind of dragged into a quest he doesn't really understand, pulled along by a hot chick who's often on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl spectrum and is probably underage or barely-legal, and at some point she will strip off all her clothes and do him for no apparent reason other than that he has a penis. Then a couple of other women including the librarian and the MILF and the MILF-librarian will do the same.
(I am only slightly exaggerating- Murakami bingo is really a thing.)
And now I have realized that you could kind of consider his books "romances for men." An ordinary guy goes on a quest without having to actually do much, and gets laid like pipe without having to put in any real effort or value.
Unironically I recommend him because his stories are surreal and weird and often funny, and really convey a different kind of mindset, with lots of sensory impressions Western writers don't usually dwell on, but the male protagonists always annoy me. And this is perhaps why "romance for men" doesn't appeal to me much. I am hardly a "manly man" who wants to go out and conquer kingdoms, but I guess I am a traditional enough man that I want to see men working, striving, struggling, and earning their rewards. A guy who offers no apparent distinction but has women falling on his dick anyway is not a fantasy for me, it's a mystery.
That said:
Indeed, it does make me wonder if there is an untapped market there in the West. Maybe someone will eventually tap it. I suspect, however, that cultural differences would make it a hard sell. Boys would have to overcome the stigma of reading "romance" and, let's be honest, a story like I have described, where an ordinary boy wins the love and affection of a hot girl out of his league, would be scorned and mocked across social media and booktock, and become loser-coded.
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Well, I can’t speak for what most men would want. Maybe it’s just me and… maybe @Primaprimaprima and like a guy I know from school in the corner, but no, I’d want romance content as the main enchilada.
Basically, “guy is going about life, meets woman, forms connection with woman, the two understand each other on a deep level, passion ensues.” When you wrote this: “scenes with the girl being cute and sexy and falling in love with him, the two of them having intimate encounters and emotional conversations”, well I guess I like the last bit the most. I find myself bored in some action movies waiting for the emotional character moments to happen.
I like romance stories because I like romance, I like thinking about romance not as a reward for what’s actually important, but as something that itself forms people into who they are and is one of the keys that makes life meaningful. Not “I became the best version of myself to gain you,” but “I became the best version of myself because I met you.” Romance isn’t about reward but about recognition; seeing yourself in the other. Becoming complete through intimate union.
But I am literally the guy who will be at a party and go, “hey, these video games are fun, but what if we sat in a circle and talked about our feelings?” So if you’re looking to me to find out what “men” are into, god help ya.
Also — immediately after I wrote my first message I went to cuddle with my girlfriend, and she was telling me she’s been reading a romance novel, “but not like those romantasy books, I don’t understand the non-human thing.” Well, I don’t either honey.
IMO, the appeal of paranormal romance is two things: (1) A man who is a werewolf or a vampire or something is just that much more Alpha (and allows the whole "taming the beast" theme to become much more explicit- I mean, if your love can tame a literal werewolf how desirable must you be?). (2) A lot of women (especially on the nerdy spectrum) don't want to admit they are the kind of Basic Bitch who likes romance novels, but if you dress it up with fantasy elements, then they are "fantasy" fans.
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I’m generally not interested in “fluffy” romance, where the romance is literally the only thing going on. But as long as there’s something else going on in the plot then I enjoy those types of stories quite a bit.
Quite a few anime and VNs fall into this category, but you already said you don’t like things that are “too Japanese”, so, yeah, unfortunate.
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The thing that gets my goat in most romcoms is, after the meet-cute, they put in a music montage of them talking at a diner. That was the entire ‚they fall in love‘ scene. You had one job. I know writing good dialogue is hard, but this is the heart of the movie.
Then they move on to the stupid obstacle/reason why they can‘t be together of act II which would never happen in a million years. Then it‘s time for the excruciating ‚it was so stupid, I love you‘ ending dialogue.
Who watches this and for what purpose? romcom enjoyers must want to see attractive people humiliated by the terrible dialogue and irrational situations. It‘s like in fight club when tyler bashes blondie‘s head in.
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...Have you tried Kage Baker's The Company series? If not, I'd recommend it, and let me know what you think if you give them a try. I read them years ago and have been waiting all the time since to find someone else who'd read them as well.
Hell, I'd recommend them generally as very good and extremely interesting books. The romance is a big part of it, as is mystery, and a heaping helping of Phillip K Dick.
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The thing is, famous authors start off as un-famous authors. Their reputation is grown by getting good publicity and bookshelf deals from the publisher while they're still nobodies, and they don't want to do this for men as much as for women and minorities. That's why by-men-for-men fiction only thrives in places like Japan and genres like litrpg where it's customary to pluck authors from the highly-ranked webnovel lists, which make it possible to gauge their potential without investing in them.
It has happened to western authors, too. Andy Weir and E. L. James both started out writing web fiction (literally fanfiction in the latter's case) before getting acquired by a mainstream publisher and making it big. But that was 14 years ago.
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Yeah, I like bookstores and libraries. I want to hang out in bookstores and libraries. I don't want to download new books, I want to browse and buy them in person.
I used to love bookstores and libraries. But now there's like 90% chance that when you enter the establishment the first thing you would see a huge trans flag and a bunch of BLM slogans, if not pro-Hamas agitation. And whatever books are emphasized are selected accordingly. Which kinda spoils the mood quite a bit. So I still go to libraries - and local libraries where I live, while usually hosting a lot of lefty types, are not as aggressive in pushing politics - but I no longer think any bookstore or library is the place I'd feel welcome and comfortable.
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I mostly watch Chinese period dramas, and frankly I like the “everyone is an asshole” thing, mostly because it’s not out of step with an actual medieval society. Read about War of the Roses, read about any medieval period. They acted that way because they were basically very polite warlords and understood that everything they did would either expose them as weak or show them strong.
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I await your recommendations with bated breath.
D. Rus - Russian author, has definitely been cheated on before or betrayed at least once by some woman in his life. https://www.amazon.com/stores/D.-Rus/author/B00LYQO4XI
warning: just because its not progressive doesn't mean its good.
Inadvisably Compelled - Saw multiple attempts to cancel him on reddit because he was "racist". I asked someone for evidence onetime. They posted a screen grab of the author being anti-immigration a couple of times and then what was maybe a joke that had clear racial tones. The stories don't really stand out to me as being filled with political opinions either way.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Inadvisably-Compelled/author/B09KMRDXY7
I thoroughly enjoyed his paranoid mage story. Blue core was mixed quality and a little too heavy on the sex and harem elements at times. System Delenda Est is on my to read list.
Terry Mancour - Spellmonger series https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Mancour/author/B004QTNFOO
The main character is of the world that he is in. Which is a medieval world. He doesn't shy away from power and responsibility over others. MC is a former soldier. MC gets married and has kids within the story. It certainly doesn't feel like a progressive hero.
Those are some that stick out in my memory. Just about any translated Chinese Wuxia story will be filled with hollow characters. The MC in those stories will stack up dead bodies faster than sticks. And depending on the temperament of the author will either fuck his way through hordes of women, or constantly be betrayed by conniving bitches.
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Sounds delicious.
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I bought all the John Carter books in their hardcover format with the Frank Frazetta artwork on the dust jackets, because I am a man of culture.
They are ok. I've read up to The Chessmen of Mars, and each novel seems to have the same strengths and weaknesses. I find the characters profoundly boring, with almost no life or dynamism to their actions. They won't surprise you in anything they do even once. However, each novel tends to have at least two or three interesting hooks or twist in the overall texture of the world building.
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On mobile so I can't pull up a long list of recommendations. But the politics issue doesn't happen in all parts of the genre. Or at least not all web fiction.
My biggest personal grip with litrpg is when the story reads like a D&D campaign converted into a novel. The fights feel like a string of meaningless encounters. The MC bumbles their way into saving the world. The setting is nothing but a contrived excuse to bully the MC when he is young.
This was the big problem with Worth the Candle for me. It felt like the author had a list of a hundred 'super cool D&D adventures' that he wanted to fit in, and just slotted them one after another, with only the barest excuse for why they were happening. I grant that this is somewhat justified by the setting, but it doesn't make it good writing.
That was a story I bounced off of early. I think I didn't get past the first encounter. Because it has that feeling. Yeah maybe D&D stories can be really fun and awesome, but most of them are trash. For good reason: part of the whole point of D&D is to get into fights that then utilize the mechanics of D&D. But if the mechanics suck or are boring in any way this whole strategy sucks. You are just gravitating towards a more sucky thing.
I can say I have tried to write at least progression fantasy, or form of litrpg lite. Its hard. I set out with a goal of keeping the blue boxes interesting and readable, but I think I failed even at that simple goal.
I do really love the genre though. I'd rather read awful LITRPG any day over most "good" fiction.
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See I found that good. Actually I'm not sure why it would be upsetting to you. Oh no! Too many cool ideas!
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I see plenty of merit in points 2 through 5, but as has already been noted I think you at least chose a weak example on point 1.
Yeah I'm open to that and also didn't expend any real effort here. You know what I mean. The point is made. Yes I could be happier with it. It's difficult for me to be ugly, even on purpose. Take no joy in the awful stuff and would sooner screen it out than collect and revel in it. Else I'd be on /r/drama.
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How about first-person present tense books?
While there's often an unfortunate association there, I don't think that the problem is so much inherent to the grammatical qualities of the perspective as it is the thoughtlessness the author employs in selecting any perspective at all. This is closely related to the oft-commented-upon "books as wannabe movies" problem.
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Regarding 3/4/5, there has to be a name for this trope. No matter how alien or unusual the scifi or fantasy setting, somehow the main character is a Perfectly Modern Progressive with all the Correct Opinions on race/sex/religion/whatever, all the good guys share those opinions, and all the bad guys oppose them. It's not quite A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but along those lines.
This is sadly also endemic in assorted AIslop, in my experience you have to prompt LLMs pretty heavily (introducing its own set of issues) if you do not want your hypothetical fantasy/medieval world to be ruled by modern American politics. Not even relatively uncensored Chinese models are wholly immune to it.
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What was wrong with this book? In this context
I read it as an early teen (now far too long ago) and I remember loving the concept (also a massive Twain fan) but then finding the ending so bad it retroactively ruined the book for me.
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Present-mindedness. It’s annoying. It’s like we cannot wrap our heads around the idea that people exist or even could exist that think in ways that we disagree with. I like the Mist Crown series by Sarah Maas, but its so annoying to read a medieval peasant acting like a modern, feminist, atheistic modern American as though the author literally couldn’t conceive of a premodern woman in a premodern world.
She can't!
Probably not. Most modern fantasy authors have good imagination except that they never really deep dive into other cultures or time periods and I think it’s a huge blind spot. Someone living in 16th century France would find just about everything about the modern European mindset weird. We’d find them strange as well. And honestly im not even sure that people as recent as the Victorian Era might not walk around modern London and wondering why people there are acting so strangely.
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Values are fundamental. To a first approximation, no one actually wants values diversity, whether in their fiction or anywhere else. Good things are good, bad things are bad, more bad things are not good.
People like reading about things far away in time or distance because they crave novelty, but they want some recognizable values-coherence to bridge the gap because novelty is not terminal, but values are. Victorians write poems about Brave Horatius at the gate and I enjoy the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Pentateuch for the same reason: because all these deliver a perception of values-consonance across vast gulfs of time and space; we have our cake and eat it too.
The elements you highlight are there because the people generating them consider them terminal, and so their fiction cannot do without them.
Why not?
Authors include non-terminal values all the time. The most popular reason has to be giving the good guys something to punch. The second is probably verisimilitude. How do you know these elements are indispensable, terminal, rather than artistic decisions?
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I think this is more true today than it used to be. Zoomers seem incapable of enjoying a story in which a character has values different from theirs, and furthermore they are prone to assuming that the author is endorsing those values. (This is a generalization and I hope I'm not right, but it's what I gather from most young book reviewers nowadays.)
You say you enjoy the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Pentateuch because of "values-consonance" but how similar are those characters' values to yours, really? Sure, they fit into the general Western monotheistic tradition, but Bronze Age heroes really weren't much like you and IMO the gap between your values and theirs is probably greater than the gap between your values and the average Blue Triber's.
Conversely, do you not enjoy the Iliad and the Odyssey? The Tale of Genji? The Ramayana? Even though they express very different values? Or, if you want to get Jungian, because they express archetypes that aren't so very different after all.
To the original point, though, yes, it's not just modern writers who cannot conceive of characters (especially heroes) with values different from their own. The Victorians were definitely guilty of this. Probably Homer was guilty of this. But here and there we do so some writers who stand out for trying.
One of the other commenters here recommended the book Middlegame some years back, and I bought it and read it. I was disappointed and edified in roughly equal measure; the concept and writing and worldbuilding seemed quite excellent, but the villain was a naked ideological caricature to a degree that it deflated much of the climax for me, to a degree that the experience was itself likely worth the price of admission. The author was writing a wild fantasy, but they very clearly wanted core elements of both the heroes and the villains to be intimately familiar to both themselves and their audience, and so they wrote what I presume to be their ideological worldview straight in. Not sharing that worldview, the dissonance was sufficient to shake the whole narrative apart for me. Then again, maybe it's no worse than confirmed atheists experience reading Narnia.
I may be deceived, but my assessment is "pretty close". See various discussions of the Cardinal virtues versus the theological virtues; we Christians hold the latter to take precedence, but prize the former as close runners-up, indispensable, intertwined and of extreme importance. With regards to the Iliad, if you haven't seen it and don't mind video, this this seems a good summary of the consonance. for those who prefer text, the real kicker:
...And from the other side, I am a Christian, but recognize the glory in war and so on which he argues is the other half of the Iliad.
I've had a bunch of really good conversations revolving around this question and my own thoughts on it; I'll refrain from the usual link spam but this dialog seems on point, at least to elaborate my own perception. Suffice to say, I believe my thinking and values is in fact much more similar to that of a Bronze Age perspective (and a classical perspective, medieval perspective, and so on) than it is to what I understand to be central examples of Blue Tribe thinking and values. One of the reasons I think that is the contrast between my own belief that the wisdom of previous millennia has more-or-less undiminished relevance today, compared to the belief which seems normative among Blues that human thought has progressed, such that the things we know now have made the wisdom of previous millennia trivially obsolete. Likewise, their attitude toward perceived historical enemies, and their judgement against historical populations and their sins and crimes. I may be wrong about this, but I've put a fair amount of thought into it and really don't think so.
I haven't had the pleasure of the last two, but I'm saying I do enjoy them because I don't believe their values are very different. I reference Macaulay, who published his verse in 1842, near two centuries ago and an ocean away, written about a man two thousand years ago and an additional continent away; It seems to me that Macaulay wrote the verses because he perceived values-consonance with Horatius, and I quote him because I perceive values-consonance with both Macaulay and Horatius. Maybe this perceived values-coherence is an illusion, or maybe not. For what it's worth, I've dabbled in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and as far as I've gotten the values there seem much more foreign; there's plenty of what I might call "common humanity" still visible, but there seems to be a strong emphasis on a flavor of might-makes-right pragmatism that I don't recognize in western material till, say, Machiavelli. Those parts feel much more modern than the rest.
But this is what I mean by "having our cake and eating it too"; in general people love novelty, but are comforted by the idea that while the details can vary wildly, there's a core nature that remains the same. It seems obvious to me that when Blues write feminism into a post-apocalyptic fantasy, they're aiming for basically the same thing.
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I have more general thoughts on your post that I may flesh out later. Responding to this specifically, I think the dirty secret of 2016-2023 is that most woke callouts and twitter mobs were directionally accurate. People are actually pretty good at making friend/enemy distinctions and picking up on hidden feelings. Obviously the actual content of many of the accusations were bollocks but I strongly suspect that most people who ended up having trouble with the woke (including me) were genuinely reluctant or fake converters to the cause and thus, by woke standards, enemies.
The same is true for authors' values. Seen from a purely political, non-artistic perspective, putting badthink in your books is transmitting it to your readers. Rooting for the Empire is a common issue. To quote Blake re: Milton's Paradise Lost: "[Milton] was of the Devil's party, and never knew it". Even putting this aside, you run into the problem that in a hostile society lots of authors do deliberately assign their real views to a villain, to give their grievances and fantasies an airing with plausible deniability. In pre-liberal times, it was common (I am told) to write long volumes of risque smut before the heroine abruptly realises her mistake and spends the final chapter as a fallen, repentant woman.
One might believe that the artistic merit / enjoyment engendered by a book massively outweighs its potential for spreading badthink with plausible deniability, or one might not. But I will put forward that these positions are both preference choices rather than one being correct and the other being a fallacy.
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I have seen the inane "you choose what to put into your story and therefore creating a story where X' controversial thing happens which is kinda like X controversial thing that happens in reality makes you literally Hitler" criticism more than enough for my lifetime.
E.g. "putting generically evil goblins/orcs/demons into your story mirrors xenophobia". Although I suppose this is less about having values different from theirs and more about assuming Xenophobia to be a Sin, rather than a reaction that's bad when it's based on the wrong assumptions and good when it's based on the correct assumptions.
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Yeah, David Chapman writes a lot about how value has collapsed all into one set of 'good' versus 'bad' where it used to be a lot more distinctive. https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown
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You would probably hate all of my worldbuilding then. I'm currently working on a science fiction story involving two city-states with distinct value systems, which are mutually opposed to each other without one being painted as clearly right or wrong. The philosophical basis on which they ground their outlooks are comprehensible while also being clearly self-serving, and both outlooks would probably be abhorrent and hellish to most modern readers while still serving a pro-social function within the Hobbesian tragedy-of-the-commons that characterises the world they live in. Part of the point is to break apart any conception of “The Good” as much as possible.
I love this kind of shit in storytelling. While I have accepted that shared morality is probably necessary for social cohesion and these values get expressed and reinforced through outlets like fiction, I love it when writers attempt to paint a world entirely in shades of grey while never telling the reader what to think, and find morality tales dubious at best and anger-inducing at worst; they try to simplify complex moral questions down into simple thought-terminating cliches and easy copouts.
Time was, we just called that "good writing". But it's depressingly uncommon these days. :(
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I'm probably in the tail-end of the openness-trait, but I value authenticity and aesthetics, and these categories are so loose/vague that I tolerate a lot of diversity of thought. I want more stories which are different and unique in the sense that Made In Abyss is. I feel like art is a kind of escapism, and that making statements about current real-world events undermines this escape
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Challenge accepted. ("No one could ever want X". Well then, it is the philosopher's duty to want X. No generalization can be allowed to stand without an exception.)
I agree that value diversity within a given concrete mode of life is hard to consciously wish for in a direct sense (unless you're a certain unique type of individual at any rate). But certainly if we zoom out and consider a patchwork of distinct modes of life, there is no issue. I don't agree with how Islamic societies treat their women, but in an abstract sense, I'm happy that Muslims are able to continue on with their cherished values all the same. (Selfishly, it provides a further object of contemplation for me.) And fiction is an ideal medium for exploring such alternative modes of life.
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I don’t value that personally because it’s not authentic to the period or setting. It’s like having a character in 1500s France Google something. To me it’s jarring because people living in premodern times absolutely do not see the world like modern Californians.
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Most of these don't seem specific to LitRPGs?
1 is just a low verbal IQ thing, which pops up in web fiction because it is not filtered and edited the way commercial fiction is; you are reading straight from the slush pile.
2 is something you regularly see in all fiction, including mainstream blockbusters and prime time dramas; if you want something that depicts intelligent and competent characters instead of taking cheap writing shortcuts, you need to specifically filter for rational fiction or similar (e.g. hard science fiction).
3 is a blue tribe shibboleth, which you also see all the time in commercial fiction. If anything, web fiction is more likely to depict genuine respect for religion, because it is less gatekept.
4 and 5 is just projecting modern values into past settings, which, again, happens all the fucking time in commercial fiction. As Eliezer Yudkowsky put it:
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This reminds me of a plot point in the Wheel of Time series. At one point Perrin is back at his hometown which is being attacked by monsters, and people there look to him for leadership (which he consistently refuses, because he doesn't feel like he has the right to command them). It is only when one of the other characters gives him a speech to the effect of what you said, that he realizes he needs to step up and be a leader to those people in a trying time.
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If regular stories gave me what I wanted (fast pace, well-written, very high stakes, characters developing morally and in power) then I would eagerly read them. There's something deeply wrong about the publishing industry that these books are so few and far between.
The Rage of Dragons is the best "traditional" book I've read in a while and it was originally self-published.
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And yet.
(in this metaphor, what's Xianxai? Gas station sushi?)
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This sounds perfectly natural to me.
Agreed on all the political points though.
It's
an appositivea participial phrase and isn't wrong in any way. I suspect OP could have chosen a better example.Edit: The issue is with the hefting I suppose. Probably wielding would be better.
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"Xing his Y, he Zed" is meant to describe two concurrent actions. "Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she pressed send on the email."
But hefting a weapon and swinging the same weapon are consecutive, not concurrent—in GURPS terms, a Ready action and then an Attack action.
Yes, that's why the OP was right to say that it's grammatically (or syntactically, or whatever) incorrect.
Semantically incorrect; as in your example, the grammar (including syntax) is fine.
But I'd say that it's semantically fine too so long as the swinging motion is also a hefting motion. Uppercut? The sentence is correct. Horizontal? Defensible, since the attacker was exerting vertical force to keep the mace moving horizontally, but the intended implication should be "wow this mace was heavy" or at least "the attacker had to transition from raising the mace to attacking with it in a single motion" rather than "the mace had to be lifted before the swing began". Overhead bash? Incorrect, since the lifting motion for that ends before the aimed ("at her") part of the swing begins.
But regardless, if this is the worst prose that @TitaniumButterfly sees in his web fiction, I want to know what he's reading! I've enjoyed several web serials, but it's usually been much clearer that any editorial feedback did not come from professionals with English degrees, and you either make peace with that or you don't.
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But who even tosses their hair over their shoulder and hits Send at the exact same time? Most people don't have the coordination for that. You ever tried to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time? It's that sort of thing.
She's obviously going to toss her hair first, and then hit Send a moment later.
I'm doing it right now, and I am killing it. Skill issue. /s
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I think the complaint is that he actually hefted his mace before swinging (not while swinging, which is impossible), so it should be "He hefted his mace and swung at her".
Yeah but that just sounds worse to me. No accounting for taste I suppose.
Well, it would be more like
but I don't think that sounds any better
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I would say that the heft is part of the swing. You lift and make a motion towards your target, but I would not say that the swing starts only once the weapon is at the correct height.
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I'm curious how easy this riddle I recently found myself spending days to solve would be for professional software developers.
A fictionalized description of the situation: I'm in charge of a cadre of robots, whose working shift is from 6 am to 5.50 am next day. Every time they assemble a batch of Dyson swarm units, a database entry with the size of the newly born batch is created, amounting to hundreds of rows per robot per shift. To report on the process, by midday I need to submit a table on the previous shift numbers, but unfortunately my interface only supports exporting data from 00:00 to 23:59 of a given day. Nobody pays much attention to the shift tail end's results, because even robots slack after midnight, but the results for the previous day, which actually matter, are seriously truncated after downloading, let's say 20% of the expected amount of data. After random messing with filters in the interface, turning something off, maybe turning it on again, I am able to download something looking like the full data set.
I reverse engineer the REST API of the web interface, and try to replicate that random tinkering in a script. For example, exclude those robots assigned to assemble catgirl bots instead of Dyson bots, or do two downloads, of the robots painted red seperately of the robots painted blue, or some other even more convoluted approaches. Each approach works exactly once, as if there is somebody on the other side of the API, blocking every approach he encounters.
What was (apparently) happening and how did I (hopefully) prevail?
Hah, you baited me into making an account after mostly lurking since the CW thread. Hopefully the lower barrier to comment here doesn't tank my real life productivity.
I'm only a former software dev, but after spending like five minutes staring at the second paragraph on far too little sleep trying to visualise the problem, I gave up and moved on to the third paragraph and immediately realisedsomething is caching; use a cache-buster parameter like &nocache=${timestamp} if possible.
Thanks for the tip about trying to pass an arbitrary parameter, unfortunately, it was discarded by the offender. And in my defense, the significance of that circumstance which solved it for you only dawned on me in hindsight...
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GPT-5 Thinking one shot this. The free Claude Sonnet didn't.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689f7c89-c6c0-800b-89c5-ba2988419f6c
Claude Sonnet 4 non-thinking also one-shot this when I tried it with a very short addendum to the prompt of
Interesting, especially the variability in response. What I'd give to have an OAI non-reasoning model that was as high quality and fast as Sonnet 4.
It only takes about 5 bucks and a few minutes to use the API with a bring-your-own-key chat interface to pay as you go for Sonnet 4.
I'm aware, I just don't use it often enough to justify doing this. The free tier isn't great, but it does the job when I need quick answers.
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I was passed by a Sherwin-Williams truck earlier today and noted something unusual that had escaped my notice surely dozens of times before.
Their slogan is “Cover the Earth” and it is accompanied by a graphic depicting paint pouring out of a bucket over a globe.
Is there any other company anyone is aware of that is quite so up front about their corporate commitment to instantiating apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenarios? I’m choosing to call the Sherwin-Williams situation an ecru-goo doomsday.
"Funny" Anecdote about SW - they have (had?) one of the most sociopathic and dysfunctional IT departments I've ever worked with. One of two clients my firm has ever fired.
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BP "beyond petroleum" Their logo of a sun exploding or expanding, which would be the end of the earth, and also the end of petroleum extraction on the planet.
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Luckily it didn't escape everyone's notice: https://theonion.com/sherwin-williams-triumphantly-reports-nearly-half-the-p-1819566493/
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I stood @ToaKraka up the other week on Victoria 3 mods.
While I don't have as many as him, this is what I've been playing with:
Thus, I changed AI weights so they never pick them, and I never pick them.
I did notice that my assimilation did increase dramatically for a while when I had a +25% assimilation buff, so I will test that out eventually (more on this later).
infamy calculation is fucking stupid as it's based off population and not GDP (african states are so expensive it's so stupid). It also scales incredibly poorly in late game. My attempts to rebalance thus far have gone poorly, I can get it to a good place in early game or a good place in late game, but there isn't a good unified set of defines for both I've found yet. I think I could probably add more infamy reduction to later game tech, but my willingness to spend my free time balancing a paradox game for free was low.
clicking "build power plant" a million times makes me want to kill myself. I modded power plants to have 4x output and 4x input. This makes them somewhat overpowered, I don't care, I now click 4x less.
I increased the amount devastation recovers per state. The war goal system is AWFUL which causes AIs to get locked into wars no one can end for a while, which means if one is occupied that whole time it gets inadvertently genocided (population loss has 0 effect on war exhaustion, lmao, and it wouldn't matter if it did, LMAO). Making devastation recover faster mildly helps with this. I think they just fixed this somewhat in 1.9.8, but frankly the AI needs all the buffs it can get in this game.
I changed the law enactment time from 180 days to 50 days. I think this may make the game easier? Although now movements/revolutions are still mad after the law they hate is passed, so I think it's okay. The law passing mechanism is fucking atrocious, and could easily waste YEARS of times bouncing around with "+10%"..."-10%"... etc. This makes it snappy. The challenge of passing a law is maneuvering your political structure into place so it's passable at all. Once you can pass it, it's just a matter of how many de-buffs you take along the way. I'd prefer to pay the cost and move on, not watch a random number generator slowly tick.
Side note, but the paradox communities' acceptance of "save scumming" as an acceptable part of the game, but console commands as "cheating" absolutely sends me. It's literally the same thing, except one is a horrible use of your time. I once (only once) spent 30-45 minutes micro-ing and reloading to pass a very low % law. It was probably the worst use of 30-45 minutes of my free time. I don't understand why people do this in a single player game.
Something I would like to do, is get better at event modding. I want to set up some AI only global events that would trigger in ~early mid game to kick the AI all off traditionalism/serfdom as those laws are crippling and AI sucks at government management.
I also am considering setting up a global event for like +50% assimilation as that seemed to be much more effective than my define tweaks.
I also would like to make a mod that gives the AI +10 goods production of every good in their capital. I think it'll help them bootstrap supply/demand cycles for new goods. I'm not sure how they're doing at electricity production, etc
Finally, I don't know if I can, but I really want to 1) make the AI better at upgrading units as it current SUCKS at doing this and 2) make the AI stop making 30 individual armies, as that provides 0 tactical benefits to the AI, and makes the game noticeably laggier.
EDIT: ONE MORE
migration in this game is in an AWFUL state right now. If you get a Chinese or Indian country in your market, they flood your country at absurd rates (although I do plan to do an India run where I take Canada/Australia and fill em up, for historical accuracy purposes lol).
And mass migrations are basically "human only" because you GDP/capita and SoL maxxxxx and then absorb like 80% of the mass migrations regardless of you're Brazil or Vietnam, which is so fucking stupid.
I need to figure out how to give the new world a massive buff to mass migration attraction.
Depths of stupidity on brand for Paradox paypigs. Console permits you to tailor the experience to your liking, resolve balance issues, and save AI from itself mechanically, tactically and strategically. Imagine not using it.
Also, for anyone considering Vic 3
The game has improved significantly with 1.9, but still has some glaring issues. I think by 1.11 it'll be an un-ironically good game.
I recommend buying vanilla on sale, as access to Steam workshop is MANDATORY (seriously, mods make this game so much better). It's incredibly easy to CreamAPI the DLC for free once you own the base game.
You can also make do with manual mod management on non-steam game installation, just need that workshop/forums access. Good enough if it's just one or two big mods you want to run, a bit of a pain otherwise, of course.
But looking into it now, apparently CreamAPI account risk is negligible. Huh.
I have like 40 steam mods (happy to share list if anyone cares) so vic3 was an easy $50. I've also never paid for a Paradox game and put an ungodly amount of hours into Eu4/Vic2/Stellaris (less for this one) so it felt fair lol. Still never paying for DLC tho.
I do worry about this, it seems like it would be easy for Steam to book and aligned with their incentives to do it (they profit from DLC being sold) but they don't seem to care and I love farming free DLC so it's a risk I'll take.
Plus my stream library is pretty small, I'd have made a burner if I paid for more games.
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Legit, you see people on the forums suffering through issues that they could solve in 10 seconds with a debug_mode mod and "~"
Victoria 3 might actually be the worst for this too. I find myself constantly needing to tag over to other countries to fix whatever insane and dumb shit they (since 1.9, 90% of the time its France) get themselves into.
Also the WORST border gore, oh god the border gore.
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On Wednesday evening I went to see Celine Song's new film Materialists, her follow-up to 2023's critically acclaimed and Best Picture-nominated Past Lives, which I adored. The film concerns Lucy Mason (Dakota Johnson), a successful New York-based matchmaker who mostly caters to clients in their thirties and forties. While attending one of her client's weddings, she gets to talking to Harry (played by the omnipresent Pedro Pascal; seriously, he starred in like 1/3 of the movies being screened in that cinema that day), the wealthy brother of the groom whom she attempts to recruit as a client (but he has other ideas). She also runs into John (Chris Evans), an ex-boyfriend and aspiring actor she dumped years prior, and yet who visibly still holds a candle for her.
Right off the bat, let's manage expectations: it's not much like Past Lives, and it's nowhere near as good, but it's still worth a watch.
Past Lives was an intimate, semi-autobiographical character drama about romantic love and Song's own experiences as a Korean immigrant to the West. Here, Song attempts (not entirely successfully) to wed two wholly unlike genres. On the one hand, it's a cold, glassy-eyed and cynical dissection of the economics of modern dating and marriage, in which women marry purely to spite their younger sisters; in which successful career women in their thirties are passed over by their male peers in favour of gorgeous dullards fifteen or twenty years their junior (about whom they have the audacity to complain that they're "immature"); in which Lucy's prospective clients present her with laundry lists of traits their partner must have (no men under 5'11", no women with BMIs over 20). On the other hand, it's a conventional romantic fantasy, in which the female lead has to choose between a wealthy finance bro who's safe but makes her feel nothing, and a starving artist who sends her heart all a-flutter. (No prizes for guessing how she picks.) At times, the dialogue is just as intimate and piercing as anything in Past Lives; at other times, you feel like the characters are reading out choice quotes from /r/femaledatingstrategy. If you've spent enough time in redpill and PUA circles, some of the talking points are sure to inspire a shock of recognition: it's practically a femcel manifesto in cinematic form.
Sadly, Johnson and Evans have very little chemistry with one another. Part of this might just be because of the usual reasons actors don't have chemistry with one another, but I suspect a major contributing factor might be Evans himself. At the time of filming he was a 43-year-old playing a 37-year-old character: looking at his face, I got the distinct impression that he's undergone a lot of Botox and/or cosmetic surgery to maintain a youthful appearance. (No need to do this in his most famous role, for which he mostly wore a mask.) He hasn't gone full Bogdanoff by any means, but whatever procedures he has undergone make it very difficult for him to emote: his skin is simply stretched too tautly across his skull. It was hard for me to believe his character is going through the emotional torpor the screenplay wants me to believe he is when nothing below his cheekbones is conveying this. The fact that men undergoing painful and expensive cosmetic procedures to improve their status in the dating and jobs market is actually a plot point in the film makes me wonder if Evans's casting was intended as some kind of meta-joke.* Johnson's character admits to having had work done on her nose and breasts: I'm dying to know if this is also true of Johnson herself. Nose, perhaps; breasts, probably not.
Johnson and Pascal do have some chemistry with one another, but as my girlfriend pointed out, it's the chemistry you expect between a girl and her gay best friend, or perhaps a girl and her cool uncle. It was hard for me to believe they were romantically interested in one another, even if it's implied that Pascal's character is significantly older than Johnson's (although probably not quite as much as their IRL age gap of ~15 years).
A little funnier than Past Lives, but ultimately it didn't move me nearly as much, even though it was obviously meant to. While watching Past Lives I felt like I was watching real people going about their lives and having genuine conversations, a feeling I never got from Materialists, and I don't think that's just because of the increased star power Song has to work with: a lot of the aforementioned femcel dialogue felt extremely artificial and essayistic. Perhaps the most affecting part of the whole movie is when one of Lucy's clients has been sexually assaulted by a man Lucy set her up on a date with: she angrily throws Lucy's words in her face and tearily insists that she is deserving of love, no matter how much Lucy might urge her to keep her goals realistic. It was a heart-rending scene that has me tearing up a little just thinking about it now. Shame the romantic A-story couldn't inspire anything resembling that kind of raw emotion.
Another data point added to the viewing public's efforts to psychoanalyse Song and her presumably peculiar relationship with her husband, Justin Kuritzkes. Given that both Song's first movie and Kuritzkes's first screenplay (Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino) concerned love triangles between a woman and two men, these jokes have been ongoing for some time. Personally, I interpreted Materialists's romantic plot as a spirited defense of Song's decision to marry a sensitive, artsy boy, rather than a wealthy finance bro as her mother presumably wanted her to. At least she had the forethought to marry a successful artsy boy, instead of a loser like John.
*At one point, Lucy and Harry attend a play in which John is starring. A poster for said play mentions that it was written by Celine Song.
I also like Past Lives and was excited for the movie but felt it was a snooze fest.
I think the main problem is simply that Dakota Johnson is not charismatic enough or good enough of an actor to be a leading lady in this kind of rom-com/drama. I also agree on Chris Evans being miscast, although he’s a much better actor than Johnson.
It’s maybe a bit of an unfair comparison but imagine this same film with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, the rom-com duo par excellence; you may actually have a fantastic movie.
Recently I’ve been on a rom-com kick and watching many of the old and new classics. Notting Hill, a movie with the aforementioned pairing, is completely ludicrous and when examined in depth the script is somewhat lackluster and the cinematography is nothing special. But when you have the equivalent of Ali vs. Tyson as the main event then nothing else matters.
For romantic movies the chemistry of the duo or love triangle is essential. Without it even the script of, say, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, or When Harry Met Sally won’t be enough to make the movie good.
You're dead right. In Ireland and the UK, there's something of a tradition of watching Love, Actually every Christmas, a movie I loathe. My girlfriend was curious so we went to see it in the cinema. On Christmas Day we ended up watching Bridget Jones's Diary (written by Richard Curtis, who wrote and directed Love, Actually), and even though I'm not a romcom dude, it was head and shoulders above Love, Actually. It's legitimately funny, and there's actual chemistry between the three leads.
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It's been a while since I saw it but that one I thought was deliberate.
The revelation about his character casts their entire relationship in a different light.
Pascal's character didn't approach her because of chemistry, but for validation.
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... That's not all that big of a gap. The average person would probably have difficult reliably telling those ages apart, and especially so when looking at Hollywood actors who presumably take good care of themselves. A 43yo playing a 27yo, or 53yo playing 40yo, would start to be more obvious.
Also, I had to look up who he is, because apparently Chris Evans, Chris Pine, and Chris Hemsworth are all different people but my brain had combined them.
I wonder how much control a director (vs the studio) has over this kind of thing (that is, the casting of the main actors). A movie about romantic love with two leads with no chemistry is quite the miss.
No, it isn't. If he hadn't bothered to get any Botox or cosmetic surgery, I think he would have been entirely believable as a 37-year-old: even if he looked a little older, it might have made sense given that his character works unsociable hours, shares a crummy apartment with two of his mates and has a bad diet. But Evans is obviously sufficiently vain and/or concerned about his career prospects that he felt medical interventions were necessary, so we're stuck with this flat, impassive uncanny valley appearance.
I would be surprised if any of the three leads were Song's first choices for their respective roles.
Yeah, with the exception of people who get extreme leeway after long, successful careers (Nolan) or who can cast whoever they want because all actors want to work with them (Wes Anderson) I think it’s usually the studio and/or major financial backers who have the say on casting. In romance/romcoms especially the only way to make profitability even somewhat likely over the last fifteen years since the bottom fell out of the genre has been to cast famous people, whether it’s Fanning/Hemsworth/Pascal in this, Roberts and Clooney in that one a couple of years ago etc.
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I wonder how much of the lack of chemistry is driven by the simple fact that Johnson and Evans are not good actors. Perhaps Song thought she could get something interesting out of them once they were taken away from comicbook crap?
I don't know if Chris Evans is a bad actor so much as out of practice. His post MCU run isn't exactly a Pattinson/Radcliffe-style rush to stretch himself.
This is the first real movie I've seen him in since like Knives Out (which he was fine in). The rest has been streaming slop like Ghosted and Gray Man that might as well be AI generated and he could probably do in his sleep.
Neither was his pre-MCU career.
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Series of court opinions:
A wife gives birth to a child. However, around the time of the child's conception, the wife was intimate not only with her husband but also with a paramour, so the child's paternity is uncertain. When informed of the pregnancy, the paramour at first disclaims interest in it, but a week later changes his mind. Shortly after the child is born, the paramour files a lawsuit to compel genetic testing and establish paternity. The husband testifies that, regardless of any DNA test's result, he will continue to love and care for the child.
The trial judge rejects the paramour's request. (1) State caselaw incorporates an irrebuttable presumption of legitimacy: If paternity is uncertain, but around the time of conception the mother was in an intact marriage with a husband who was not absent, impotent, or sterile, then the husband is automatically considered the father, and this determination cannot be changed even with a DNA test. (2) State caselaw incorporates paternity by estoppel: After the paramour disclaimed interest in the child, the child and the husband were entitled to rely on that declaration, and the paramour was not permitted to change his mind and "pull the carpet out from under" the developing relationship between the child and the husband. The appeals panel affirms, solely on the first basis since it is dispositive.
The state supreme court vacates and remands. The irrebuttability of the presumption of legitimacy is an outdated relic of the days before in vitro fertilization, minimally-invasive (cheek-swab rather than blood-vial) DNA testing, and nondiscrimination against illegitimate children. The presumption of legitimacy now can be rebutted with a DNA test if (1) there is a reasonable possibility that DNA testing will reveal the paramour to be the father and (2) DNA testing serves the best interest of the child. (The doctrine of paternity by estoppel is left unchanged. On remand, it may serve as an alternative basis to affirm the trial judge's ruling.)
Two of the state supreme court's seven justices dissent in part. They think that the presumption of legitimacy already has been eliminated by the legislature, and therefore courts should be empowered to order DNA testing without a pointless multifactor test. One of the dissenters would go even further:
(The other dissenter refrains from joining this footnote.)On remand, the appeals panel reverses the trial judge. Regarding the presumption of legitimacy: DNA testing serves the interest of the child in knowing its biological father. Regarding paternity by estoppel: In past cases, the doctrine has been applied when a paramour filed his paternity lawsuit multiple years after the child's birth. However, in this case the paramour filed his paternity lawsuit just eight days after the child's birth, so there was hardly any "developing relationship between the child and the husband" to be torn asunder. (Of course, after all this lawyering the child is two years old.)
So whose kid was it?
The appeals panel's opinion on remand was issued just two days ago, so DNA testing probably has not yet been performed.
This is a family case, so the docket is sealed, and we probably never will know who the father is.
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One problem with family law cases is that the guiding standard is often "the best interests of the child." It's about as vague as one can get, and unless a state legislature has clearly laid out what counts as best interests and how to weigh factors against each other, it leads to judges speculating and pontificating on what those best interests are. Knowing the biological father, not knowing the biological father when knowing would upset the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship, avoiding the appearance of illegitimacy, taking the kid away from this dysfunctional trio and giving him to a high-income, photogenic couple who has already successfully fostered 3 kids, and a dozen other things could all be in the best interests of the child, but somehow judges are supposed to sensibly pick among them.
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Interesting, as usual. I almost think we should have a dedicated Saturday Series of Court Opinions: brought to you by ToaKraka™.
I wonder if the dissent with respect to "marriage and child-rearing" is some positioning in case the US Supremes ever revisits Obergefell Re. Roberts dissent:
I would love to read a regular "weird court cases" topic.
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