Pet Peeve rants.

Covar

Covar

DarkAudit said:
No women in the Hobbit. Which is gonna be a given considering the source material is WORLD WAR FREAKING ONE.
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And yet the sheer amount of freaking out that went on over Tauriel. I'd be more inclined to side with complaints about the portrayal of female characters in Lord of the Rings, which I think is more indicitive of the time period it was written in than the lack of women in the Hobbit.
 
Celt Z

Celt Z

I could have sworn a long time ago I heard that Tolkien admitted a lot of his writing is influenced by his attending an all-boys school. Which he also attributes why the male characters have such close bonds and not having a lot of experience with women, didn't know how to write them.

I love the world of Middle Earth and I do wish the books weren't such a sausage-fest, but it's not bad enough to make me dislike the books. Eowyn is still one of the biggest bad-asses in fiction. :)
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

I prefer authors who have little knowledge of how women work simply writing with few women in their books (see also: Heinlein, Dahl,...) than trying to put in what they think are female characters but who either behave outrageously stereotypical, or as a guy in a skirt.
 
Null

Null

Bubble181 said:
I prefer authors who have little knowledge of how women work simply writing with few women in their books (see also: Heinlein, Dahl,...) than trying to put in what they think are female characters but who either behave outrageously stereotypical, or as a guy in a skirt.
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That was especially problematic in some of the Wheel of Time novels.
 
Null

Null

GasBandit said:
I swear to god Nynaeve if you tug your braid ONE MORE DAMN TIME

Oh, wait, time for another 5 page description of what everybody is wearing.
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And yet for all the ample description, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what half the characters looked like.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I'm reasonably sure that Perrin had golden eyes, for some reason. And Rand had red hair. And something something Matt something dice rattle something something.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
SpecialKO said:
I'm reasonably sure that Perrin had golden eyes, for some reason. And Rand had red hair. And something something Matt something dice rattle something something.
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Because they spent half the book calling him Perrin Goldeneyes. It had to do with his wolfbrother status. Matt bloody dice spear ridiculous hat cauthon is my husband (x3).
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
Audiophools now saying one hard drive sounds better than another when playing back digital music files.
:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:
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Shit, that article is even worse than I thought it would be. It's not just that they think one drive is distorting the music, they think that each type of drive gives a different quality to the sound. And there's not even a hint of testing to see if the data is coming through with errors or anything. Just purely subjective listening.

The funniest line, though, is "While this additional test was in no way scientific,"... Yeah, because faulting yourself, in your earlier testing, for making "a cerebral than an emotional choice" is so very scientific. I had to check to see if this is a parody site.

"did not sound as clean as CD"... I don't even know how to respond to this. A CD drive is far more likely to have read errors than a HDD. Also, it's my experience that read errors sound pretty distinctive and not at all subtle.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
GasBandit said:
Rand/Mat/Perrin wished Mat/Rand/RandOrMat was there, HE knew how to deal with women.
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Or when someone uses the one power... torrent, fire, ice, void, vomit, nausea, taint. Or for the women: embrace, alive, surrender, warning about using it too much, possible sexual metaphors.

And I'm surprised that none of the evil characters twirl their mustache. The villainy in this book is so often over-the-top caricature. The Redwall novels have had more morally grey villains than most of this lot.

I'm almost done, though. Not counting the prequel, I've got just one more book. Not that the books are ever really bad, but they got a lot better when Brian Sanderson took over. Part of that is just that all the wide spread plot threads are finally coming together and doing more than just setting things up, but a larger part is that Robert Jordan fell way too much in love with his own words, and just rambled too much in the middle books.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
figmentPez said:
Or when someone uses the one power... torrent, fire, ice, void, vomit, nausea, taint. Or for the women: embrace, alive, surrender, warning about using it too much, possible sexual metaphors.

And I'm surprised that none of the evil characters twirl their mustache.
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They do, but they don't call it that. "Aes Sedai X flashed her eyes darkly." Is Aes Sedai X a darkfriend? Who knows?! It's been 500 pages since she was last mentioned, and it'll be another 400 before we see her again!
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
GasBandit said:
They do, but they don't call it that. "Aes Sedai X flashed her eyes darkly." Is Aes Sedai X a darkfriend? Who knows?! It's been 500 pages since she was last mentioned, and it'll be another 400 before we see her again!
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She's also got a name that's 3 letters different from another Aes Sedai. Not that they have any distinguishing characterization, beyond being stereotypical of their faction, to make their name worth remembering.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
In the interest of full disclosure, I steal all my best snarky remarks about wheel of time from this review.


When I first picked up this series in 1995 or so, I was very impressed. It grinds some common fantasy grist (pre-adults set on epic quest to save the world and find their place within it), but throws in some spice of its own with richly fleshed out characters exhibiting fear of change, distrust of other's motivations, and the like. All nicely set against a backstory of prophecy and lost knowledge which, for me, rose to a peak in "The Shadow Rising" with the meshing of the Aiel and Tinkers, and hints regarding the Lost Song of the Tree of Life.

Exciting stuff only tainted slightly by the repetitive inclusion of foot stamping, braid tugging, "I'll never understand women like Perrin/Matt/Rand", and other well intentioned but annoying adolescent characteristics.

Unfortunately coming back to the series in 2005, I find that the Wheel of Time stopped being a series somewhere around book 6 and became a franchise, and an under-capitalized one at that. Why stop with a video game and inspirational music, while leaving untapped a market for silver foxhead medallions, Tarabonner man-veils, red Tarien conical hats, and blue silk velvet cloaks with hooded cowls chased with silver threading with a border of beaded lilies in yellows and reds edged in lace trim?

I thought the point of this series was to fight the Dark One: instead having just finished Book 10, I find that the point is to fight through lengthy descriptions of what Aes Sedai X is wearing (while busy shivering with frosty indignation). Is Aes Sedai X a Darkfriend? You've got me, it's been 600 pages since I saw her last and she's just going to sip some more mint tea, flash her eyes dangerously, and vanish for another 300 anyhow.

I'd ask where Tor's editors have gone, except paid by the word it's obvious that they've gone to the Bahamas where Jordan is rumored to have built a replica White Tower with his royalties.

I'm making it worse than it is, but only slightly. After "Winter's Heart", I find great empathy for Perrin's men running low on food and tramping through a seemingly endless forest of mud and snow. In "Crossroads of Twilight", I share Egwene's frustration as I wait 8 pages for Sheriam to announce Egwene to the Hall. And as Tuon reminds me, women really love shopping for pages and pages. If not for the comic inclusion of weevils in everyone's food I might not make it to Book 11.

This brings up the real problem with the later books: the masses of secondary characters, the weight of flowery prose and pointless minutia cracks the delicate suspension of disbelief and degrades the primary characters' integrity. Am I really supposed to belive that the entire Aes Sedai rebel camp lacks the single nail that would suffice to fix Egwene's stool once and for all? If the Power can reheat bitter mulled wine, why can't it heat a rock sufficiently to warm a tent? If using the Power is so trivial as to be expended in lighting and extinguishing lamps, why does no one think to use it to sort weevils out of grain?

This is a shame. A tale that started so strongly deserves a strong ending. The New York Times can make the insufferable claim that Jordan has "come to dominate Tolkien's world", but that'd be in terms of raw page count. JRR told a tight, compelling and enduring tale. Would that the Wheel of Time be as tightly edited.
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Null

Null

The prequel (New Spring, I think?) is terrible. Just fucking terrible. It adds nothing worthwhile to the story, Suian Sanche and Moraine's lesbian relationship included, and half of it consists of Moraine being a horrible *halforums censored term* to Lan basically to make sure he knows his place / doesn't try to rape her.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Sliders. Out of nowhere, they're freakin' everywhere. Every place on earth now suddenly is rushing to aggressively sell small burgers they call "sliders." It's a stupid food. It's a stupid name. I wish it would go away and whoever coined the term would get get incurable diarrhea for the rest of their life.
 
Tress

Tress

Sliders are supposed to allow variety on one plate, or be a good appetizer to share. If an order of sliders isn't showcasing multiple types of burger, or if it's intended for one person, that restaurant is doing it all wrong.
 
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Celt Z

Celt Z

We have had White Castle most of my life, and I don't ever recall calling them "sliders". Anything of that ilk was either a "White Castle-style burger" or "mini burger".

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot. We usually called them "rat burgers".
 
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PatrThom

PatrThom

Celt Z said:
We have had White Castle most of my life, and I don't ever recall calling them "sliders". Anything of that ilk was either a "White Castle-style burger" or "mini burger".

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot. We usually called them "rat burgers".
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Any small burger like that around here was always called a "slider." Didn't matter if it was White Castle, Steak & Shake, or homemade, still a slider.

--Patrick
 
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