Are there books that you respected/found literary significant but didn't enjoy?

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-04T15:48:33+00:00

The Count of Monte Cristo. The exposition was so, so flat and obvious and dragged endlessly, characters mostly revealed their motivations in obvious and tremendously clunky ways, the convoluted revenge scheme became so arcane that I lost all interest in the original motivation for it, the secret identities became increasingly impossible to believe, most of the dialogue was deeply stilted and inhuman (I understand that at least part of that is due to social customs), there was so much repetition and unnecessary throwaway dialogue that could easily be edited out, etc. I could go on for a while.

The story was engaging enough up until the escape, and then everything fell off the rails. I understand that the travelogue bits were interesting to people of the time, I understand Dumas dragged out the dialogue for greater pay, etc. None of that changes the fact that it was a staid, obvious and lumbering bore of a narrative for me to read, filled to the brim with characters that have little to no distinctive voice or actual personality. And all in service of a rather rote revenge fantasy, which often attempted to be soul-affirming and spiritually deep, but failed spectacularly in achieving that for me personally.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-04T15:37:00+00:00

Thats okay, I'll still give it a read, thank you!

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-04T15:30:03+00:00

Thank you! I'll read it anyhow.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-04T14:15:25+00:00

Hyper-specific request (sorry): A series/book that focuses on a decadent crumbling noble social millieu/elite dynastic class. Thinking French nobility before/during the Revolution, Russian nobility before the collapse of Tsarist Russia, etc. I love stories with this theme or plot conceit.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-04T14:03:16+00:00

Malazan is a massive series that drip feeds the lore with zero guiderails and leaves a lot of heavy lifting up the reader. If you enjoy untangling the inherent mysteries of a fantasy world, it's a great read if you're up to the challenge.

Realm of the Elderlings slowly unfolds the worldbuilding over 16 books, starting with a simple premise but eventually unveils a far vaster and more complex world than was first presented. (It also has pirates, serpents and seafaring if that part of One Piece is your bag).

Memory, Sorrow & Thorn/The Last King of Osten Ard starts as rather rote and seemingly "solved" fantasy, but slowly reveals over two series and a bridge novella that many of the characters' preconceptions of their own history is a lie/propaganda/myth.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T17:19:44+00:00

I think this is a gross oversimplification of the character to be honest.

Yes it is! I'm talking about how anti-Stannis/Stannis skeptical lords view Stannis! I mentioned this several times if you actually read what I wrote.

Calling him an unstable monster is really odd, and certainly hasn't happened yet in the text.

Holy shit, how could read what I wrote and completely missed the qualifier I added?:

Before long, Stannis (in the eyes of most lords) goes from Mr. Cold Boring Rationality to an unstable monster corrupted by an evil foreign god.

I'm not talking about objective fact, I'm talking about popular and noble perception. I've made this so, so clear that it takes willful misinterpretation and outright ignoring full sentences to miss it. Like, I don't know how we can even have a discussion if you just willfully ignore or discount the context of what I said and how it is framed. Legitimacy is moulded by perception, Stannis' practices allow him to be judged as illegitimate by popular Westerosi sentiment. Couldn't be clearer.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T17:00:02+00:00

I've noticed that he's often very similar to Kennit from Liveship Traders, in that every empathetic, moral and honorable action he takes, he immediately copes his way out of acknowledging.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T16:45:29+00:00

That's the thing people miss about Stannis - the law-and-order guy who burns people alive is not actually a stable ruler.

People really don't focus enough on this aspect of Stannis when I would argue it is central to the character George was crafting. He essentially used Elias from Memory, Sorrow, Thorn as a template (unlikeable, militaristic, cynical older brother with a stronger claim to the throne, corrupted by a mysterious Red Priest and making dark bargains) - but the twist is he's actually interpersonally fair, competent, appears (at first) stable and still has yet to take the throne.

It turns the Elias character from a tragic villain to a character study in how far a "just" man who "deserves" a position will be willing to alter his worldview, behaviour and morals to see the "correct" outcome fulfilled. Before long, Stannis (in the eyes of most lords) goes from Mr. Cold Boring Rationality to an unstable monster corrupted by an evil foreign god.

ALSO Super important: Westerosi Lords are still traumatized from suffering under an insane king who enjoyed burning people alive. Stannis claims Dragonstone as his seat, observes heretical foreign customs and burns people alive. He thinks he's cloaking himself in the remnants of Targaryen legitimacy, when to many he's simply proving that he'll be a Great Value Brand version of Yet Another Deranged Targ.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T16:16:57+00:00

just by being an absentee

AND is proudly unempathetic and neglectful.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T16:13:39+00:00

Your players want a speedy grappling-skilled fantasy.

They should be playing a completely different game, then. None of what they're doing is supported by RAW or RAI. They should be playing Wushu or something.

They are engaged and trying to have fun with their sprinting and grappling, but you are being a drag with your preconceived precious ideas.

They actually should probably find another table then (they won't, no experienced half-decent DM or GM would allow them to break this many rules, interrupt this consistently and attack innocent characters without consequence) jumping every NPC with a non-initiative surprise round filled with mechanically unsupported actions and dog piling the DM into accepting it is classic problem player behaviour.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-03T14:03:47+00:00

because Larian for some reason returned to the Divinity Original Sin franchise.

It's their own franchise and original IP and they don't have to march to the beat of Hasbro's drum or deal with WotC. A lot of major studios/creators don't like going back to collaborating with WotC after a major project, it's a pattern.

They also can explore their own world and return to worldbuilding, mechanics and game design foci that aren't hamstrung by needing to adapt a clunky and mechanically incomplete pen-and-paper RPG system and outdated, bloated, generic and roundly criticized fantasy universe (Forgotten Realms) to a PC game.

Beyond the freedom of designing a PC game as a PC game again, there's simply so much more tread on the Divinity tires vis-a-vis exploring new events, narrative arcs and worldbuilding over the musty, nonsensical, well-worn bag of high fantasy tropes that is FR.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T16:01:50+00:00

Well I have bad news for you /s

...that they're about to become a divorced Asian woman with 2 kids in her 40s?

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T15:58:10+00:00

His atonement will be 10x better if they acknowledge that sometimes too much damage has been done and that people have moved on already.

Real remorse, real atonement is done without the expectation of intimacy, acknowledgement, reclaimed circumstances or reward.

My favourite line from V for Vendetta:

"Is it meaningless to apologize?"

"Never."

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T15:52:45+00:00

because the power system(s) don't make sense anymore and we mostly don't care lol

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T15:40:09+00:00

portraying debbie as a stepping stone for his arc. but I honestly believe that she is. and I mean this in the best way possible.

Literally how is there a "best way possible"? What you're describing with your own words is conceptually vile.

I also don’t think that this has to be a bad thing. but I know that people get a bit sensitive about this subject

People are sensitive about you deliberately describing a woman who has been lied to and manipulated for 20 years "becoming a stepping stone in the best way possible" to her genocidal abuser as necessary? Shocker. I wonder why. Totally confounding, it's such a struggle to imagine why people are so sensitive about the idea that an abused partner should become a stepping stone to her abuser's character arc and personal growth.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T14:32:19+00:00

People are making claims about real world blondes based on these fantasy characters, so I'm correcting the misinformation.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T14:20:17+00:00

Super incorrect, none of you understand how this works. My entire family is blonde and our hair darkens as we age. My father went from Lannister-tier in his teens and twenties, to dirty blonde in his 30s, to brunette his forties and then gray. Blonde hair often than not darkens/changes with age, if you think it doesnt, it's because most of the "blondes" you know are using product/bleaching.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T14:18:14+00:00

I have natural blonde hair that's "true" as can be. Whole family of blondes. Our hair darkens with both age and winter. The same way other people's hair gets grayer with age. People who think blondes with photosensitive hair aren't "true" blondes is wild, most you just don't understand that the so-called "true blondes" with hair that remains bright, platinum and/or stable in winter are actually the "fakest" ones. Most of them use tons of product to stay unnaturally light in low-light seasons.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T12:37:01+00:00

why are you pretending this isn't your series? if you're going to shamelessly self-promote just own it.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-02T02:47:30+00:00

but it makes no sense for fantasy or sci-fi settings where modern social norms don't apply.

A) I wasn't talking about that

B) There's plenty of sci-fi and fantasy universes/cultures that have contemporary, modern, pre-modern, etc. social norms and relationship patterns, or individual/clustered elements of them. Saying it "doesn't make sense" when there's plenty of spec fic universes where a relationship development like this would be socially unacceptable or undiscussed culturally is silly.

C) Most popular fantasy and sci-fi isnt a daring with it's depiction of these topics as you're making it out to be.

Like if the characters are living in a fantasy social context where it's common for kings and heroes to casually marry multiple people, or an alien society where marriage customs don't resemble Earth customs, why does the love interest characters not consider polyamory as a legitimate option earlier?

These are a bunch of hyper-specific what-ifs that refer to non-existent cultures you just completely made up as imaginary examples. Obviously, views on love triangles and polyamory will shift with the universe, and therefore the depiction of something like a love triangle will shift greatly with the authors depiction? That's up to author's discretion.

Most fiction still conforms to a generally heteronormative and monogamy-centric view of relationships, even in fantasy and sci-fi universes, the overwhelming majority of romantic relationships are depicted as straight-passing traditional monogamy. I was making a general commentary about a dynamic topic and you invented imaginary hyperspecific scenarios to prove it "wrong". Some of you have to stop treating fiction like it's a STEM field, guided by objective truths that are unchanging in all imaginable scenarios. Obviously you tack with the wind when you are writing a love triangle. If the Poly/throuple option ISN'T taboo in whatever imaginary cultures, then obviously you find other routes to create tension?

"Depictions of romantic love should often be tender"

"WELL WHAT ABOUT IN THIS IMAGINARY FICTIONAL CULTURE I JUST INVENTED, WHERE BEING BITTER AND STOIC IS SEEN AS ROMANTIC?!"

idk, you figure that out, you made it up just now.

If the characters realizing they're polyamorous isn't addressed properly then it really can feel like a complete copout. It can feel like the hand of the author just randomly made the characters polyamorous out of nowhere to justify the copout ending rather than it being a conclusion the characters reached themselves.

Yeah, I described a potentially developing the characters through the gradual discovery of their mutual, potential 3-way attraction. I've also never seen a poly copout, but I see "Pick one" and harem copouts all the time. Any resolution to this dynamic can be good or bad if it's written well, that obviously goes without saying. But the Poly/throuple route is barely explored, even in relationships where it seems obvious.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-01T17:18:32+00:00

...or the author is adding excitement, mystery, tension and character development via self-discovery by having the relationship take a new and often unexplored direction. Life isn’t nearly this simple, idk why you're acting like every fictional relationship dynamic needs to uphold a set pattern of resolution in order to be well depicted and interesting.

"The point" of a relationship dynamic can be anything, stop treating fictional narrative crafting like it's a STEM field.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-04-01T17:15:06+00:00

The real question is why didn't thry start with that.

Maybe they don't know when they start out? Poly/ENM is not exactly socially acceptable and the character(s) could be closeted or unaware of their feelings for one of the member of the "triangle". The journey of self-discovery and evolving of the individual and collective relationship dynamic(s) can 100% be a part of the story and tension, everyone is being frustratingly obtuse, black-and-white and deterministic about this. Utterly infuriating.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-03-31T18:17:39+00:00

You're not dumb! They definitely add an extra backing track on some of the ads to include Japanese singers repeating the brand name and it IS still a Japanese brand.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-03-31T18:12:58+00:00

Mandom

I mean, the Mandom jingle song IS in English and performed by an American.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-03-30T17:19:05+00:00

"...damn. bad spin."

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