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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   619 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 5, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Taylor's A Secular Age to the list. Going through the backlog slowly.

Finished reading Andy Weir's Hail Mary, and I watched the movie too. I still think both were great overall, though the movie traded off leaving out some of the less important details and hamming things up a little for some amazing visuals. Not to spoiler things too much, but I think the ending does show Weir trying to get a little more into character development side of things, though it's probably still not his strongest point. The Sci-Fi is a little hand-wavy on the details of a few things, but probably no more than needed for future tech, and mostly does a good job of sticking to its own rules.

Almost done with The Worm Ouroboros. I think it is quite good overall despite its shortcomings. It's an interesting counterpoint to Tolkien's world - there's no guarantee that good will ultimately triumph and it's up to the characters to actually change the course of events, although there's a light smattering of prophecy.

I think its weakest point is the poor characterization of the good guys. Juss, Spitfire, Brandoch Daha, Goldry Bluzsco - I can't really tell you anything that distinguishes one from the other. The illustrations in the book give them all the same face, like tetrarchs (is this the point?). Maybe one is a little more impatient and another a little less. The bad guys are actually quite well characterized:

  • Corinius, the swaggering womanizer who backs down from a duel
  • Corsus, the drunk, somewhat over the hump, who sends his daughter Sriva (wily, coquettish, scheming) to seduce the king to advance his career
  • Corund, the honorable (to a fault) man who raised honorable sons (I admit I keep confusing him with Corsus due to their names)
  • Prezmyra, Corund's wife, torn between her brother who sympathizes with the Demons and her husband who will never go against the king
  • Gro, perhaps the most interesting character, also Tolkein's favorite, who constantly shifts allegiances and suggests killing the enemy through treachery at every turn, yet always manages to find a home

I guess it's a common trope that bad guys are harder to write than the good guys, but I think Tolkien managed this pretty well.

“But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? Rather turn as now I turn to Demonland, in the sad sunset of her pride. And who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star? since there only abideth the soul of nobility, true love, and wonder, and the glory of hope and fear.”

[...]

It was now high noon. The horse and his rider were come to a little dell of green grass with a beck winding in the midst with cool water flowing over a bed of shingle. About the dell grew many trees both tall and straight. Above the trees high mountain crags a-bake in the sun showed ethereal through the shimmering heat. A murmur of waters, a hum of tiny wings flitting from flower to flower, the sound of the horse grazing on the lush pasture: there was nought else to hear. Not a leaf moved, not a bird. The hush of the summer noon-day, breathless, burnt through with the sun, more awful than any shape of night, paused above that lonely dell.

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