domain:nfinf.substack.com
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4hr ago
John C. Wright is a former atheist who did a hard-right turn into Catholicism. He's written space operas pre- and post-conversion.
Dean
Flairless
4hr ago
Mercedes Lackey... is mixed. Valdemar is Very female, even by the standards of Telecoms
...huh. Wasn't expecting to see a link to one of my own old posts.
Mind if I ask what prompted you to keep a link to it?
Throwaway05
4hr ago
Thank you for sharing.
The subset of these types of people who end up requiring medical attention is of course not representative of the true population but I've Noticed Some Things that are of course not captured in the literature even when they are hinted at so it is useful to collect more N.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4hr ago
((That said, I'm one of probably thirty people on the planet who liked Darkship Thieves, so my taste is... not very refined.))
I liked it okay, for what was basically Heinlein fan-fiction with a self-insert Mary Sue.
Throwaway05
4hr ago
I can only speak to the first season as I mentioned, but it's one of the best seasons of television of the last ten years. Full stop.
Now admittedly it's not to everyone's taste, it's a slow and deliberate Cold War spy thriller living in the most Star Wars feeling Star Wars since the original trilogy.
If you are the kind of person who liked Better Call Saul as much or more than Breaking Bad you are 100% going to love it, but I don't fault people for needing a faster pace etc.
Put another way it reminds me of Winter Soldier which duct taped an excellent non Marvel script to Marvel IP and kept the advantages of both.
It does have some woke elements but they are chiefly background casting stuff that isn't too annoying when it's drowned in quality. It is also explicitly anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian but not in the childish modern politics way so it shouldn't chafe too much.
It's much less Wolfenstein haha kill the nazis and much more Das Leben der Anderen this is the reality of these systems. Sure the woke end up liking it but that's by accident.
Dean
Flairless
4hr ago
Wasn't that the one where the male passes on the romantic opportunity with a pretty girl in favor of his horse or something?
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
The Texas democratic party reacted to Trump's victory in '24 by firing their chair for suggesting that it might be wise to put trans issues on the back burner- he didn't even ask for a platform change. These people's idea for winning over young men was trying to pay fraternities to listen to Olivia Juliana(they refused). They ran Beto of 'hell yeah we're going to take your AR-15 away' fame as a moderate on gun control- and he kept it front and center.
The only thing they reliably accomplish is being a very inefficient machine for converting turn Texas blue money into inane twitter drama and circular firing squads.
gattsuru
4hr ago
Aw, I liked Tremaire (although I didn't even think of the author's gender until now). Not a fan of how hard it leaned into the telecom tropes, or an issue the writing quality/plot pacing?
There's a pretty decent number of women authors who just write male-focused or general fiction, especially for teen and young adult audiences. See Diane Duane (the first three Young Wizards and then Book of Night With Moon are highlights) or (and 6/6 of Erin Hunter) for better-known examples. It's probably more interesting to talk about women writing female-oriented-relationship-stuff in ways guys wouldn't be repulsed by. For that... :
- Diana Wynne Jones is best-known these days for Howl's Moving Castle, but I like to recommend her Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin as good examples of stories that have a plot, but are about relationships. In Derkholm (tl;dr: fantasy send-up of portal fantasy from the view of the world's natives who are treated as a tourist spot, as a commentary on industrialized evil and pointy-haired bosses), between the main character and his wife and family, and with his immediate peers; in Year of the Griffin (tl;dr wizard school story with the interesting twist that the main characters don't struggle to fit in) between the protagonists and a society that they don't know if they can trust.
- CJ Cherryh's more standard scifi fare, and she's no Zahn, but she's a pretty good writer, and especially Chanur is driven by relationships far more than tactics or technobabble, but still hits that Pernish 'there's an actual plot, it's just not faffing and then suddenly everybody's friends/lovers'.
- Bujold should go without saying, but the Vorkorsigan saga is very much about phrasing women-relationship-things into forms men and especially young men are trying to grow into: honor, loyalty, trustworthiness, and legitimate use of force. I'll recognize that Gentleman Jole isn't very good, but Komarr, Memory, Cetaganda, just very strong each.
- Mercedes Lackey... is mixed. Valdemar is Very female, even by the standards of Telecoms (if you liked that bit of Pern) or Romantic Fantasy; the Elemental Masters series (and not-quite-part-of-it Fire Rose) are extremely well revised takes on classical fairie tales in ways that are more enjoyable reads than technically impressive. But she's pretty much a distillation of what guys say they don't like, without the obnoxious parts that they don't like about it.
- Tamora Piece is more male-friendly and often technically better, but in turn it's less clearly women's-relationship-writing in most works, if still less could-pass-as-male as Duane.
((That said, I'm one of probably thirty people on the planet who liked Darkship Thieves, so my taste is... not very refined.))
EDIT: for a 'do they follow the Hero's Journey' rule, I'd say most of them fit pretty well. No on Fire Rose and there's a couple of the Vorkorsigan books that break from it, though they've still got the 'failed-to-do-thing, developed-skills, do-the-thing' bit. Year of The Griffin's Abyss is pretty shallow -- it's a ultimately a comedy -- but the points are there and somewhat refreshing for not just slapping the Harry Potter-style stuff in. Book of Night With Moon's Abyss is both deep and realistic enough (
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Consider the number who become obese, refuse to socialize, or are just unpleasant and offputting, there's clearly a 'something' she has to do.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
They were making 25% of revenue from licensed games, and in 2021 EA suggested that had been $2bn between 2019 and 2021 alone, and that’s pure margin.
I can't really even remember any games from that time. Battlefront II (the second Battlefront II), the one with the lootboxes, I guess?
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Disney lost a bunch of parents pushing gay shit too. Like toddler movies that aren't good is recoverable from- they're toddler movies, after all- and probably doesn't even make a difference. But the people writing their preteen sitcoms being in charge of pixar wasn't the thing that pissed people off. It was GayBC agenda pushing.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if they weren't Star Wars specifically, the prequels (especially the first) would have been much better received, Jar Jar Binks aside.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Gotta make it present tense for that.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Mercedes Lackey? Not everything she's written, but there was that one book about a teen boy being bullied... who then gets the magic power to set his bullies on fire (and set other things on fire). I had no complaints.
TitaniumButterfly
5hr ago
Andor was actively incredible though
Haven't looked into it at all. I know redditors who enjoy it immensely so I assumed it was pretty soy.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Other than the (I suspect partially trendy) AuDHD? Something to do with physical mobility, but I've never learned what. Has needed a walker to get around for ages, and is certainly not yet old enough where that'd be unremarkable.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Famously, the entire corpus of Jane Austen.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
I mean if you just mean 'written by a woman' the Hunger Games trilogy had broad appeal.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
There's been quite a lot of Christian big name science fiction writers, actually- Jerry Pournelle was Christian even if he changed denominations a lot, CS Lewis wrote science fiction, etc.
gattsuru
5hr ago
Fair, was speaking more to the extent that they're basically rat-monkeys.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
If we're counting LDS as Christian, Orson Scott Card and Larry Correia might rival him depending on how you count 'successful'.
Big Fat Liar (2002). Surprisingly good for a kid's film; the "Hungry Like the Wolf" pool scene is very memorable, as is the "I Wish" warehouse montage, and, of course, the "Right Here, Right Now" helicopter ride. And, yes, very 2000's; right up there with Shrek (2001) and Digimon: The Movie (2000).
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