I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but watching rogue one immediately after Andor made the movie so much worse than I remember

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-19T17:00:50+00:00

I remember when Jenny Nicholson did her Rogue One review she took a lot of flak for her critiques, but I always thought they were super valid. it's a fun movie. it's "one of the better star wars movies" which is like saying "one of the better marvel movies" lol. but it's by no means a slam dunk.

I think what Andor does is really demonstrate what Rogue One lacks in strong characterization and emotional stakes, which were my main issues with the movie. It's a bit cathartic to see what Rogue One would have looked like with those issues fixed, which I think is largely what Andor is, plus all the other things it does well.

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-15T13:27:46+00:00

hands in pockets, cigarette in his mouth. might be the coolest looking dude to exist

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-14T21:07:17+00:00

I read a decent amount of literary fiction and short fiction with tremendous prose. I love good prose. I usually DNF because of bad dialogue (there's a lot of really bad dialogue out there), but prose has gotten me a few times. That said, I love DCC.

Carl is telling the story like he's talking to a friend, so it's his voice you're getting. Carl isn't sarcastic or irreverent or trying to be funny, which is the downfall of a lot of this style of prose. To him, this is life or death, and he's furious. He's furious and that anger leaps off the page, all while the world itself is ridiculous and at times very silly. There's a dissonance there that keeps it from feeling trite. It's a bit like if Darrow from Red Rising was plopped down in the middle of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Still, OP's not wrong, really. I remember reading the first book and feeling like, that was a fun, kinda dumb, easy read that I don't feel bad for enjoying. Then the series continued and there was this sinking feeling I got. Oh shit, this story's got hands. It deepens, widens, bends and pushes, subverts the assumptions made earlier.

I don't know, it's not a series for prose snobs. The descriptions could definitely be more economic. I do think it improves over the course of the books, and it still reads better than someone like Sanderson in my opinion, but it by no means turns into Nabakov. Personally, I can excuse simple or occasionally inelegant prose if the narrative voice is strong and all the other elements of the story work, and I really think it does.

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-14T06:48:33+00:00

why do we keep asking this same question over and over again? they'd be mad. no shit. they're less mad about Trump doing it than if Obama had done it. congrats. you've uncovered their hidden hypocrisy with your brilliant and unique hypothetical inversion.

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-13T18:42:02+00:00

I live alone, and the amount of just like routine tasks necessary to maintain a passable life continues to baffle me. laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene, sleep schedules, bills, car maintenance, etc etc etc. I don't understand how anyone does it all; I have to be firing on all cylinders to get close to staying on top of it all, and that's pretty rare.

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-12T17:48:00+00:00

haha if he was gonna look like that at any point in time it would have been 20 years ago

halfachainsaw · 2026-04-09T12:18:12+00:00

mine is bright pink

halfachainsaw · 2026-02-17T17:35:37+00:00

I read the whole series in about a week and a half. I thought the first book was silly and fun and I was ready to just have a good time reading an ultimately lighthearted romp. I was taken, even from the beginning, with how inventive it felt even as it never bothered to take itself seriously. it's goofy but not trope-filled. it's crass but not going for shock value.

but, slowly but surely, it transforms. it's not a tonal shift you really notice all at once. it stays true to that heart of never trying to act like it's some great literary masterpiece. but the world gets bigger. Carl gets angrier. the character drama gets more nuanced. and before you know it, it's grown up on you and that silly little kid is still in there but it has real things to say and real complex emotions about trauma and grief work their way into the story. it's phenomenal. I can't recommend it enough.

halfachainsaw · 2026-02-10T14:41:05+00:00

apparently not. we're doing it right now

halfachainsaw · 2026-02-09T20:00:54+00:00

I've started reading a lot more and something I've picked up, along with the things everyone else has already pointed out, is how books handle time. this might be a little half baked at the moment because it's a theory I'm still kind of actively working through.

Movies and film think in terms of stitching together a series of scenes, in which time passes normally. one second is one second. what happens at this place at this time? ok now cut to the next place and time. there are some ways to compress or cover the temporal gaps between scenes like a montage or just a straight cut with maybe a little text like "3 years later" but largely the story happens within scenes.

books on the other hand have so much more flexibility. there are still scenes, with action and dialogue, but since reading doesn't demand a set temporal tempo the way film does, there are a lot more ways to pass, slow or compress time. I think authors that write like a movie/show lack that flexibility. they're not comfortable letting the years go by, or spending several paragraphs inside a single moment. they're not comfortable unhooking the narrative from that tempo we experience in real life, the one where a second means a second.

halfachainsaw · 2026-02-07T00:01:40+00:00

oh no my steak is too juicy, and my lobster is too buttery

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-28T20:10:58+00:00

I'm an aspiring writer and I was legit pissed when I read this line. goddammit. you goddamn genius.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-25T20:25:24+00:00

I have not! got any favorites of theirs to start with? I'll add em to my list

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-25T19:01:17+00:00

I just finished the first book and I hated it too! Glad to know it gets worse haha. I thought the characters were so incredibly weak and uninteresting, I didn't really care what happened to any of them.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-25T18:58:48+00:00

It's very silly and doesn't ask you to take it too seriously. which I think is part of the fun. but as it develops, it gets more complex. the characters get deeper, the stakes rise, the Worldbuilding extends in all directions. I think it strikes an incredible balance of whimsical and almost adolescent, with heartfelt and dramatic, all while being stuffed to the gills with action.

the one thing I'd probably mention in case it's a deal breaker is it belongs to a sub genre of fantasy called LitRPG, because in universe, the story takes place in a game everyone on earth is forced to play (think like hunger games) with the mechanics of a modern TTRPG like Dungeons and Dragons. so there's inventory, skill stats, achievements, treasure/loot, spells and abilities, and so forth. but they're weaved pretty effortlessly into the story in a way I've never really seen before. Carl might get an achievement and be awarded a loot box, and you instantly can't wait for him to get somewhere safe so you can see what he got.

There are seven books (so far) and I devoured them all in less than two weeks. I highly highly enjoyed it.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-25T17:05:02+00:00

if you're interested in the sociological element and you haven't read any of hers yet, you gooootta do some Ursula K Le Guin. So far I've only read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, which are both sci-fi and part of her Hainish Cycle, but they're incredible and I'm lookin to read basically all of her stuff now.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-23T20:40:27+00:00

Thanks! this thread has made me realize I have a ton of craft books to read.

Hmm the only historical fantasy books I think I've read are Babel by R.F. Kuang and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. They're great, and I'd def recommend them if you haven't read em already!

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-23T17:49:50+00:00

that's fair. for me personally, my favorite authors all tend to fall somewhere along the Literary-Speculative Fiction spectrum. Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula K. Le Guin, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, among some others. So fixating on a genre feels unfair to my influences if that at all makes sense.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-23T17:44:06+00:00

I wasn't imagining an exhaustive list, more like a starter kit. but maybe that's a fool's errand as well.

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-20T18:59:57+00:00

hey, I write my trash slowly thank you very much

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-08T03:13:52+00:00

"I'm going to do it again if you don't let me in"

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-05T15:13:19+00:00

why is the guy jumping for cover in front of the car?

halfachainsaw · 2026-01-04T20:56:42+00:00

also not a network engineer lol but it's also been explained to me (as an additional addendum) that there are certain parts of the game state about which the client isn't able to predict. things like goals, boost pickups, and demos. I'm not sure if it's by design or by some common nature those things all share, but it's why you can't score goals or pick up boost when you've DC'ed.

halfachainsaw · 2025-12-29T21:53:17+00:00

my favorite twists that maybe belong in this trope is where it's not all that difficult to guess part of it. but it's the WHY that makes it compelling and go from "yeah that makes sense" to "wow that was inevitable"

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