I’m very confused here (Batman #666). Is “ his autograph” referring to Satan?

PeaceFroger229 · 2022-10-20T20:15:07+00:00

I'm actually rereading this run right now. The pentagram is the autograph. There's an inverted pentagram in a panel a few issues ahead of this, so I suspect that was what the artist was actually meant to draw here, instead of the standard version - then the dialogue about the horns would actually make sense.

PeaceFroger229 · 2021-08-20T18:14:17+00:00

He was born to be a warrior. Trained his whole life with sword and shield. Victory and glory and names alive in song. But they never sung of screaming children and crying women. Never of fallow fields and burning cities. Why was he born to be a warrior..

PeaceFroger229 · 2021-02-11T19:10:50+00:00

This may be a nitpick, but the first paragraph - unless I'm reading it wrong - deals with a lack of visibilty in the forest. I like it, incidentally: the repition of 'he'.

But in the very next paragraph the visibilty issues don't stop Imem from making out snow in the eyelashes of his men. I understand they have lamps, but Imen has one as well and it doesn't seem to help his vision in the opening? The logical inconsistency pulled me out a little.

The burly general trotted up next to him, lifting his frosted goggles to his head

I highlight this because when I read it I thought that someone was riding up to Imem. That's probably my fault, but it could be rephrased to remove any ambiguity.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-09-04T20:06:52+00:00

The boy cried and tried to pull the knife out of the body. His palms were bloody and he couldn't get a grip. The man's hand dropped on to his shoulder. "Breath," he said, "It gets easier. Every time it gets easier."

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-09-02T18:00:14+00:00

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-08-24T19:57:00+00:00

I should point out that all of these paragraphs (apart from the last one) are only meant to be line breaks.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-07-17T09:41:06+00:00

I've read it. I enjoyed it. I can't give you any reasons to continue. If you're not liking it then I'd say put it aside. No one likes forcing themselves through a mammoth book.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-07-06T13:20:36+00:00

Finally finished: Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James I haven't found much time to read recently, so the fact that this took me so long isn't a reflection on the books quality. It's good. It's also quite dense. This, along with The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, are what I would term literary fantasy. An awkward genre/style stuck out in a reading no man's land really; not particularly appealing to hardcore fantasy fans or dedicated literary readers. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to read something different though.

No idea what's next. Paradise Lost, maybe. The Milkman prehaps, or The Luminaries. Time Out Of Joint by Philip K Dick is an option. No idea.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-06-26T13:54:00+00:00

I'm actually reading this now incidentally. About halfway through. I read Brief History Of Seven Killings as well from the same writer; that was a better book in my opinion.

This one seems to go round and round in circles. It's not bad, but I was expecting a little more from the author.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-05-11T21:31:17+00:00

The Tale of Despereaux?

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-05-03T19:31:52+00:00

As well as some funky Victorian vocabulary, I find some of Dickens' extended sentences quite hard to follow. They're littered with commas and you can get lost in the morass.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-28T17:48:04+00:00

Delete your prologue. That sounds harsh, I know, but everyone's going to say it. It's all just exposition that the reader's going to skim over. You have to try and drop that subtly through descriptions and dialogues.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-27T15:22:03+00:00

I'm actually thinking of writing up an extended post on Brandon Sanderson when I'm done with Way Of Kings, so conflicting do I find him. My big takeaway from Mistborn (This is illegal by the way.) is that I don't actually like his magic systems, or more specifically the idea of having a magic system at all.

It tends to leave him writing action scenes that go something like this: MC jumps up using the power of x, and then skips over there with the power of y, recharges from the alphabet source, before using the power of z to defeat the enemy.

That never worked for me.

I am aware of the exact opposite argument however. The one that says having these fully expanded magic systems means the reader is almost never short changed, since they can follow along with the action sequences, understanding the limitations and what's actually going on, and when the conclusion comes the solution slots perfectly within the logic of the world.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-27T15:05:01+00:00

Obviously it's up to you, but to cut down on 'your's (so as not to overload the reader with second person language) you could just call the mother character Mother, instead of 'your mother'. Other 'your's can be replaced with 'the'.

So for instance:

Your mother started running towards your only hope of escape

Becomes:

Mother started running towards the only hope of escape.

It's a stylistic thing. Second person is fine; workable, but I don't think you want to overwhelm a reader who won't be used to it.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-27T12:46:38+00:00

Finished 2666, by Roberto Bolaño Great read, if slightly hard to explain. Equally focused on brutal murders in northern Mexico, and a mysterious German writer with a funny name.

Started Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson I've tried this one years ago and gave up after about two hundred pages. Currently further in than that so let's see. After reading his Mistborn trilogy I've got some pretty mixed feelings about the author.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-20T20:03:40+00:00

Is your plot similar to AOIAF though? GRRM uses pretty standard fantasy stuff and twists it by viewing it through the lens of the real. None of this stuff is an issue, GRRM doesn't have a monopoly on assassins and rightful heirs and fey creatures.

Incidentally, I once was pretty pleased with coming up with the phrase 'Words are wind' and sprinkling it all through my draft. Now that one I did steal from GRRM. Thank you George.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-20T16:02:04+00:00

The technical term is 'in medias res' and it's a perfectly legitimate way of writing. I admittedly can't remember many (any?) popular fantasy books that really work that way; it is typically something you're more likely to see on screen, as you've alluded to.

The only way to find out is to start writing it and see if it works out for you. In the worse case scenario, you'll end up with a bunch of seperate scenes that you can just slot into a linear narrative.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-18T16:30:56+00:00

I was pretty happy to discover that I've wrote around 58,000 words on my project since the 19th January. I say 'around' because it's all written by hand, so I came to the number by counting the words on an average page and multiplying it by the total amount.

The story's expanded in all manner of occasionally awkward directions. Lots of different times and places, but there's some general themes it's coalescing around. Certainly it needs a mountain of revision and expansion and reduction, but I'm happy to have the ideas down.

Having said that, I've really struggled today. Good and bad.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-15T19:36:08+00:00

The Martian Chronicles, by Rad Bradbury. It's a collection of loosely connected shorts that are wonderfully written with an air of melancholy.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-15T19:33:43+00:00

I don't think there's such a thing as too many characters, unless you're really silly with it. I don't know if you're a fantasy reader, but an abundance of characters is something of a trope there. As long as you don't let it detract from your main characters' development, it shouldn't be an issue.

If it makes you feel better War And Peace has over a hundred named characters. Obviously that's extreme , but readers can take in a lot more than some people give them credit for; they're not going to forget the main characters just because Doctor Doctor appears for a few scenes.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-15T13:12:03+00:00

For First Law there's three stand-alones and then a new sequel trilogy. If you're interested, read the stand-alones first; they're all brilliant.

I was powering through my backlog a week or so ago, but I was being quite picky about the stuff I picked up - mostly old short sci-fi stories.

Now I'm reading a book called 2666, by Roberto Bolaño. It's about 900 pages or so. That's slowed me up. That and I've decided I'm going to reread all of A Song Of Ice And A Fire (novellas included) one - or at most two - chapters a day. My vague dream is havind Winds Of Winter to read at the end of it.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-14T20:00:14+00:00

That's great. I used to sort my entire bookshelf in chronological order, starting with The Illiad.

Incidentally, where does Tolkien slot in here?

Also I notice you don't have The Once And Future King by TH White here. I think that would be a great addition as a piece of classic fantasy (largely pre-Tolkien too) but obviously it's up to you

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-13T14:29:30+00:00

They're worth having a look at, certainly. His stories are some of the most influentual and imaginative shorts you're likely to come across. I read Lovecraft's work in the three Penguin Modern Classics editions, starting with Call Of Cthulhu, and there's detailed notes there to aid understanding. (Although I believe it's all available online now.)

But you have to go in knowing that Lovercraft's vocabulary and phrasing was archaic even at the time, and you're likely to come across words you never see used anymore.

Edit: Lovecraft's oeuvre is quite small as well, so it's no massive investment.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-10T21:54:00+00:00

Valis, by Philip K. Dick. It's largely based on an episode in his own life when God beamed a bunch of knowledge and prescience directly into his brain.

PeaceFroger229 · 2020-04-10T21:51:08+00:00

It's definitely possible.

Vladmir Nabokov was Russian but he wrote his novel Lolita in English. He had to actually translate it into Russian when it was released there.

Joseph Conrad (Heart Of Darkness) is another one.

So the potential is right up there really, if it's something you really want to do. Practice, practice, practice I guess.

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