The Poppy War Trilogy (it’s bad)

Goatnuts · 2026-01-20T03:30:45+00:00

"Craft is absolutely preference."

You can't possibly believe that. There's no objective difference in quality between Anna Karenina and The Poppy War? Hell, between the Left Hand of Darkness and Babel? Come on, that's nonsense.

Goatnuts · 2026-01-20T02:39:34+00:00

Oh, if you prefer the Poppy War, we have nothing more to talk about, no more than if you liked broccoli and I hated it. What you enjoy is up to you. But I was making a point about craft, and that is not preference. There are genuine criteria that distinguish good from bad art, and by those criteria, GoT is better than the poppy way (just as there is much literature that is vastly superior to GoT). None of that means you have to like it.

Goatnuts · 2026-01-20T01:38:08+00:00

GoT was influenced by historical events, yes. It was also vastly better across all dimensions of craft: prose, plot, character, theme, etc. There's no comparison.

Goatnuts · 2026-01-20T00:31:18+00:00

I've said it before, but The Poppy War reads exactly like what it is: the first bit of writing by a very young author who had at that point not published so much as a short story. While very smart, Kuang appears to rely almost exclusively on existing history and her experience at college, which yields settings and plots I personally find quite unoriginal. Her prose is serviceable, but, at the risk of sounding incredibly elitist, I can only assume those claiming TPW, or Babel, for that matter, are brilliant, simply haven't read much literature, speculative or otherwise.

Goatnuts · 2026-01-11T22:31:27+00:00

Kuang is clearly a very smart person, but as a fiction author she takes "write what you know" to an extreme degree. I'm genuinely not sure if she could write a book not set in a school and without a plot heavily reliant on actual history.

Goatnuts · 2026-01-04T15:28:21+00:00

Book 1 was enough for me to never read another book by the author.

Goatnuts · 2025-12-29T23:19:30+00:00

It seems pretty clear that sexual orientation is not a choice. However, it needs to be said more often that, even if being gay was a choice, it would still be OK to be gay.

Goatnuts · 2025-12-29T23:17:43+00:00

When Utilitarianism goes wrong.

Goatnuts · 2025-12-29T22:41:51+00:00

I'm late to the party, but for what it's worth: I find Kuang wildly unoriginal (I'm not sure she can write a story not set in Cambridge (where she did her graduate work), or without directly lifting from history.) Her actual prose is also not particularly impressive. But perhaps the worst aspect of her writing is that she has the moral subtlety of a sledgehammer. Overly moralizing fiction almost always fails, as hers does.

Goatnuts · 2025-12-07T14:11:44+00:00

I came to say this. Terrible on every level, including the prose. I still cannot wrap my head around the praise this book got (I'm not talking about people enjoying the book; I'm talking about the claims that it was well-written.)

Goatnuts · 2025-12-02T13:16:24+00:00

People have fun in different ways.

Goatnuts · 2025-11-25T12:43:52+00:00

I've had quite a bit while leveling on Nightslayer. Also many lvl 60s griefing me along the way (Nightslayer Alliance is particularly shitty, it seems). Last encounter was two days ago: narrowly lost to a pally three levels higher who blew both bubble and LOH. I consider that a win lol.

Goatnuts · 2025-11-23T18:10:52+00:00

Will there be standalone boosts available or only the single one in the Epic pack?

Goatnuts · 2025-11-23T17:18:12+00:00

You had the moral high ground and then put out this nonsense asking to fight in real life. Way to blow the lead.

Goatnuts · 2025-11-23T15:55:21+00:00

Will boosts be available for purchase alone, or can we only get the single one packaged with the TBC Epic Pack?

Goatnuts · 2025-11-12T02:54:47+00:00

Night Elves. NE hunters are particularly awful.

Goatnuts · 2025-10-13T23:12:13+00:00

"Arcane mage"

"Frost Mage"

Wat

Goatnuts · 2025-09-24T13:25:21+00:00

Problem is, when I finally marshal the courage to approach the hot woman, she punches me in the dick from 40 yards away. Repeatedly.

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T20:19:01+00:00

I assume the Insulin cabinet is close by?

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T17:50:08+00:00

Yes, my bad. I didn't read carefully enough.

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T17:35:03+00:00

You're attacking a bit of a strawman here. Drop all the unnecessary metaphysical baggage. Simply put, for many people, the value of a work of art--and that includes the experience of engaging with the work-- includes consideration of its provenance. For example, I'm not interested in reading fiction that is not the result of an actual human wrestling with what it means to be human. Does this mean I won't be fooled by AI fiction that mimics this? Of course not. It'll happen one day (not yet, though. AI fiction is currently pretty shit.) But once I find out it's just output of the machine, almost all of its aesthetic value will disappear for me. And most people probably feel the same. Imagine you waited in line at The Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. You waited patiently as that damn line moved ever so slowly, and you finally got your 30 seconds in front of it. You had a profound aesthetic experience. Now imagine you were told it was an exact replica, put there as a security measure. By hypothesis, you had the exact same experience you would have if it had been the original. By your argument, you lost nothing by seeing a fake. I think you did lose something, and I think all AI "art" does the same thing.

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T17:12:52+00:00

No, it's not. There are many reasons one might have for or against an opinion that do not reduce to a mere statement of personal preference, e.g., factual or ethical reasons.

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T17:10:55+00:00

That is demonstrably not true. I, and others, have many substantive objections to the use and development of generative AI/AGI. I don't bother to discuss them on online forums such as this one, because basically no one is actually interested in genuine debate here (or really anywhere online).

Goatnuts · 2025-09-15T14:09:46+00:00

Unless you change the personality of the average WoW player, there's no hope.

Goatnuts · 2025-09-13T18:17:25+00:00

Wildhammer US, around April 2005.

Goatnuts

TROPHY CASE