domain:greyenlightenment.com
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
8m ago
What's this, Snow Crash fan fiction?
Skulldrinker
8m ago
To be fair kids don't really play with toys at all anymore, they do the Roblox on their Kindles and watch 20something Influencers
GBRK
9m ago
I'm surprised and pleased by how philosophically coherent this move is. If the government is going to give out industrial subsidies, why not get something in return? We all know the big corporations will dodge any tax we throw at them, but trying to get around paying dividends risks pissing off their own power base.
That being said, I'm very bearish on the chances of this particular administration doing anything productive and socially useful with additional industrial control. Probably it just goes toward enriching the Trump empire with corruption.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
18m ago
I just read the first chapter of Most Evil Trainer and it was promising. Should I have been looking on SB for fics this whole time?
Skulldrinker
19m ago
Only sometimes?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
22m ago
My personal vote is FMA: B, the dub is pretty great...
I strongly disagree with this. The dub for FMA:B is terrible, full of actors who are completely failing to act. It's one of the worst dubs I've ever heard. The Japanese audio isn't particularly remarkable, but at least it isn't "actors flatly reading lines with no character" like the English is.
I already have 30th percentile income and wealth. Making an extra 10k or 20k a year would be nice, but I could earn that for less effort by focusing on interview prep and certifications for my profession. That's why my utility curve is logitic in this case. If I get published at all, I get an initial surge of utility just from the status effects. Then there's a long doldrums of, "I'm happier the more money I make, but this doesn't seriously change my life." Then there's the jackpot of, "getting famous enough to do nothing but write." I've already taken most of the low-hanging fruit for improving my live within the confines of my current circumstances; setting a new utility basepoint would require dramatic changes in capabilities beyond what I already have.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
28m ago
That’s promising then. The Mewtwo POV chapter was such a cool way of doing the concept of AI in the box that I can probably cut the author some slack. It was just when Bill came to lecture you about AI safety that I lost it. Is there anything else in a similar vein you’d recommend?
kky
32m ago
I think the core problem is that nobody really likes the Girlboss, here defined as a synonym of Mary Sue rather than anything else, but a rather large group of people feel obligated on political grounds to include her in stories. It’s sort of like a certain genre of Christian allegorical protagonist, who is always good and opposes the many faces of evil, which of course are all atheism, and receives infinite blessings which are immediately apparent for their good behavior. There’s nothing particularly interesting or appealing about this character, and indeed the most narratively compelling part of Christianity (going back to the life of Christ) is the struggle with oneself and inevitable temporal consequences of choosing what is right over what is advantageous. But, from what it appears, the key motive of the storytellers is to encourage virtue and avoid vice as a sort of line item thing. Check them off: never take the Lord’s name in vain, tithe or donate appropriately, wear the right amount of coverage… and so on. So they think it’s necessary to make the stories very simple and to keep them laser-focused on the right things, because it’s unconscionable to even come close to permitting the bad things.
So instead of a story, you get something like a spiritual safety manual. “John always wears his hard hat. But Bob didn’t, and got seriously hurt.” Great - safety manuals are supposed to be blunt and no-nonsense. You don’t want to encourage deep intellectual exploration of the morals of lock-out-tag-out. You just want the fuckers to do it. But these aren’t stories, in the end. Stories are meant to entertain, and at their highest purpose to encourage a kind of internal and emotional development which I think is the true nature of virtue, over and above the box-ticking. That means seeing otherwise good and impressive people make mistakes, human mistakes, and wrestle with the imperfect clay of humanity as they are and not how one wishes they would be. It means that Christ must curse the fig tree and spend a lot of time talking to prostitutes, and in the end, bear his cross.
This is roughly what is wrong with the Girlboss. There’s a lot of instruction on Dismantling the Patriarchy, as a series of required checkboxes, but nothing really interesting to the character. So the people who write her feel obliged to, but never really feel interested in her. If the numbers are correct, they prefer romantasy. And this gap between ill-considered moralism and pure hedonism would be filled by works of real virtue, except that all the air’s been sucked out and there’s nothing left but a void.
Goes without saying that none of this really helps girls learn how to grow into women with power over their own lives and communities, which I thought was the point but apparently wasn’t.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
40m ago
Meng Hao walked into the McDonald's. The cultivator taking his order gave a derisive snort, but Meng Hao did not really care, because he had repressed his aura down to the Single Patty Realm, and a fool would not be able to tell his true level of burger eating.
"Give me... a Happy Meal!"
The cultivator's face flickered before he finally regained his composure and laughed. "You couldn't afford a Happy Meal. Get lost! Don't you see that there are Double Quarter Pounder Realm eaters waiting behind you?"
Meng Hao slapped his bag of holding and threw 80 billion spirit McDonald's coupons onto the counter, causing an earthquake which demolished half of the restaurant. Everyone dropped their jaws. None could see how this was possible!
Mantergeistmann
50m ago
Who on earth liked the Force witches
My wife's disabled, non-binary friend who sums up every character in any show they like by starting with their attributes re:gender, sexuality, race, ability status, etc.
Said friend sadly is a parody of themselves at some times.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
50m ago
Little House on the Prairie springs to mind.
For fantasy, I enjoyed The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce when I was 11-12ish. It’s basically just your standard medieval setting hero’s journey story with a girl, mostly avoids giving her waif fu, and as I recall eventually makes her a mage to give her a leg up on competing with the full grown adult male knights at the end of the series.
She also wrote the Wild Magic series following a teenage girl who was some kind of special wizard, which had 4 books. I recall the first two being pretty entertaining for an adolescent male, and the last two descending into kind of stereotypical “Who will I choose, poor plain I, the powerful demon or the powerful wizard?” sort of modern female romantasy.
The first series she wrote in the 80s, and the second in the 90s, so there might have been a bit of a canary in the coal mine there as far as which direction publishing was heading.
HereAndGone
51m ago
Robert Downey Junior retires, and they replace Iron Man with a sassy black lady.
Even worse, a character who is the worst stereotypes about "urban youth". If you were trying to write eat hot chip and lie deliberately you couldn't have done it better.
Riri Williams originates nothing of her own, she works on Tony Stark's original tech to 'refine' it, she steals (literally) the Iron Man suit, gets rightfully expelled for being a massive pain in the backside, goes around then with a chip on her entitled shoulders about how this is unfair and it's only Because I Is Black. Falls in with a gang of weirdoes and criminals, knows they are criminals, happily goes along with crime and violence for money, blackmails a guy who is trying to avoid going down the same path his villain father did, frames him for her crimes so he ends up in prison, and then ends up literally selling her soul to the actual Devil, all of this knowingly and with full consent because she thinks she is Just That Special. (Disparu had great fun reviewing the series).
Played Slay the Princess recently (still exploring the remaining threads). So well written, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to pretty much anyone.
I enjoyed Cataclismo, a sort of a survival city builder with block-by-block fortification placement and a proper campaign to play through. Spanish studio, competent attempt at unique aesthetics and worldbuilding (at best distinguished and fablelike, at worst a little sterile), ok-ish campaign narrative. Fortification building satisfying, but gets tedious if you overbuild at every opportunity - difficulty is bit low and spiky, I'd suggest you build more than one layer of walls rather than elaborate, optimal walls & towers.
Playing Synergy currently, a city-builder set in a hostile, post-collapse world (perhaps a failed colony world? did not pay attention). Remaining people live in small numbers, climate is harsh, water is toxic, but since it's made by the eco-faithful, it's all a good thing actually, just the world where harmony with and respect for nature is finally non-negotiable. Males are not distinguishable from females, it's only child or adult. But I'm being unfair, it's not preachy at all, serious about its aesthetics, very pretty and detailed. Plays well - both building placement, and plant management (near all resources come from foraging, flora changes the soil/humidity/temperature, not all plants like each other etc). Resource carriers are a bit buggy (trips happening for minimal amount of resources, building input inventory sizes mismatched to crafting speed), but it only means you should build densely. Recommended.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
56m ago
Why do you worship jackpots?
Build more edge rather than risk more size. Don’t kill yourself chasing the jackpot. Log wealth is what matters. Maximize the 50th percentile outcome. Make your own luck. Avoid drawdowns.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
57m ago
She was always consciously feminist (or at least very leftist). I am not aware of her repudiating her earlier work, but I agree that her early stuff was better.
TitaniumButterfly
59m ago
LeGuin started strong but then became consciously feminist and repudiated her earlier work.
I recall her describing how embarrassed she felt in retrospect at making Ged a man, as though a male hero should be the default.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
59m ago
I picked it up from my son, and it really feels like a perfect term to describe the thing in a lot of progression fantasy where the MC does something impressive, and then the focus swaps out to random other characters just to show how jaw-dropped impressed they are at how that was IMPOSSIBLE!
It hits a sweet spot as a specific term for unsightly over-praise.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
No special tricks, I'm afraid. It just boils down to doing a lot of research and due diligence. Actually read what the agent or contest says about what they are looking for (and what they are not looking for). A huge number of people will just ignore someone who says "I am looking for feminist utopian optimistic SF featuring communities of color" and send them their military space opera. Or worse, send their military space opera to the agent who mostly reps romance authors.
You already know about QueryTracker and similar tools. Make use of them. Sending out 100 queries without a single response is normal.
Look at the books you like (and the books similar to yours) and see if you can find out who that author's agent is. (Often you can find this on their Twitter or their website).
Networking is a thing. Most of the leads I actually got were from other authors who were willing to connect me to their agents.
There are very few publishers who take unsolicited submissions directly. Most of them are small presses. If you are in a very particular niche you might find the right one.
I was very close a few times. But it takes persistence and volume.
Also just so you know, Baen does take submissions but they take literally years to respond. (I think I got my first "you made it out of the slush pile" email two years after I submitted the manuscript, and then it was like two or three more years before my final rejection.)
Your best bet is to go indie. If you absolutely must attempt traditional publishing, skip the agents and try submitting directly to Baen.
Good point, I should be thinking about direct-submission places too... I have a pretty limited view of the publishing industry because frankly I mostly just () books. After a brief look I've already found the litRPG publisher Aetheon, and I think it's pretty interesting that they phrase their inclusion statement as
***Aethon Books is committed to the publication of works by writers of all genders, ethnicities, color, orientation, nationalities, and religious or political beliefs. We are concerned only with the quality and commercial viability of the works submitted to us, and not on the personal backgrounds of the authors.
... which is implicitly meritocratic. Ironically, I bet that their output is far more varied ethnically than the bigger publishers. (Some of those Indians CAN write, haha. And they're doing it on royal road instead of kindle unlimited.)
I'm willing to serially publish in principle, but this book in particular isn't designed for that; it's too short and dense to be serialized, so instead of butchering it I'd rather start from scratch.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
Well, see some of my recs. Most of them follow that formula and show character growth in the female protagonist. Whether individually they suit your tastes, I can't say, but a lot of the complaints about Disney and romantasy just aren't that applicable to the entire field of published genre works. (And I do recommend stepping outside of genre to broaden your horizons.)
Jiro
1hr ago
Sailor Moon, but there's a reason that people point to anime as being insulated from woke influence.
mildly_obsolete
1hr ago
Civ/EU/CK/Total War hybrid
Dreaming up a game like this, I'd put the emphasis on it being a living world rather than a very complex, but largely static boardgame (you do touch on this with the fog of war bit, in a way).
Take playing "tall" in baseline EU4 - it amounts to stacking modifiers and clicking a button when you have the points; if you don't click, nothing happens. Compare to EU4+MEIOU - goods flow and populations rise, development increases along the trade routes, you can at most shape the flows. I love in particular how, with low state capacity and sky-high corruption (includes local, non-state interests), you initially are barely in control, and how you get to take this inefficient, inert society and get to build its momentum, rolling towards modernity.
Gimme a game that does that better, and preserves player agency.
Mate, in the last Culture War thread we had someone on here commenting about that immigrant case saying that sure, it's totes normal for an adult man to want to bang a 15 year old girl (because men are wired to be attracted to youth and fertility). Women do learn early that simply having boobs and a pulse gets you male attention in the "I'd hit that" sense. Not that they're interested in you as a person, that's where the fantasy wish-fulfilment comes in.
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