May not quite be alone but Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate has some very strong themes of isolation.
May not quite be alone but Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate has some very strong themes of isolation.
Even just the name Penny Arcade had me in flashbacks!
What changed? I’ve always seen them as a cesspit but even from a distance I can tell they’ve gotten lots worse lately; been using since 2009 or so.
I don’t know if this counts but I recently got roped into Flight Rising, a pet sim, and the forums there really capture the old-forum vibe.
original MMO
[types out an emote describing how my MUD character is laughing]
I’m not, but I’d love to visit after reading a book called Weapons of the Weak.
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Oh wow, I forgot about khinsider!
We’ve hunted species to extinction for less. Why would this be any different?
I’m kinda surprised it took this long to see Pokémon mentioned.
30% in I ask myself if I want to continue. That’s a fair shake.
I wish he still made comics like these. I visit his site pretty regularly and these really work great as an early-2010’s time capsule of sorts.
But he focuses on other stuff now and I can’t really blame him.
Sure. Let me reiterate that you’re thrown right in and there’s no exposition dump, no explanation of terms or of the world or that kind of thing, to guide you into the opening beats.
I didn’t appreciate this at first, but in hindsight it’s a clever way of making the reader think like one of the world’s denizens. But it’s a hard hurdle to cross. Good luck.
Oh, to possibly save you a click or two, first book is called The 5th Season.
Well, I hate to phone it in, but I have tried and failed to write one a few times now. So I’ve let someone else write one for me. Take as much or as little of this as you think is worthy of “elevator pitch”; any one paragraph will do but the most condensed for your intentions would probably be the third.
The Broken Earth is set on an Earth-like planet that is constantly subjected to large-scale seismic and volcanic events. The people of this land, which is called the Stillness, live in constant fear that an Angry Father Earth will unleash an environmental disaster strong enough to trigger a Fifth Season, a prolonged winter of hardship that can last anywhere from a decade to thousands of years. The Broken Earth is a resonant and cautionary work of climate fiction at a time when hurricanes, floods, and wildfires are pummeling the globe. Disaster preparedness is the organizing principle for people of the Stillness; they build for survival among the technological remains (the “deadciv”) of a long-dead civilization, which includes large mysterious obelisks that hover above them in the sky.
Among the people of the Stillness are orogenes, people born with the ability to harness and control kinetic, thermal, and other forms of energy. They alone can quell the seismic and volcanic events that threaten the Stillness. But orogeny is illegal, and orogenes (referred to as the derogatory term “roggas” by most people in the Stillness) are regarded as less than human. Orogenes are hunted down throughout the Stillness; those that aren’t killed are enslaved by the secret order of Guardians. Even more powerful than orogenes or Guardians are stone-eaters, a humanoid species that resembles stone statues and that rarely interacts with other beings in the Stillness.
Jemisin’s series centers on the story of Essun, a 42-year-old village schoolteacher who has been hiding her identity as an orogene. The Fifth Season begins with the shattering of two worlds: Essun’s husband discovers that their children are orogenes, kills the youngest, and kidnaps their daughter Nassun; the Stillness experiences an earthquake so powerful that it triggers the worst Fifth Season the planet has ever experienced. Jemisin immerses readers in the world of the Stillness: the journey that Essun sets off on to find her daughter propels the narrative, but Jemisin tells the story through multiple points of view and from multiple points in time. It’s an ambitious task to balance complicated world-building, a well-paced plot, and a range of fully distinctive characters, let alone to do so over the course of three novels. Jemisin deftly keeps all the plates spinning.
More varied formalwear than “suit with some superficial variations” (tux, 2- or 3-piece, colors, tie variety). Broader range of styles.
The third and last entry in Jamisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, The Stone Sky. Good God it’s great. Hard to break into the series and I always feel like I’m a step behind the plot, but not so much that I’ve lost the thread entirely and just want to give up. It’s a delicate dance between author and reader that takes such a deft and skilled touch that I’m floored by not just the skill involved but the gall it takes to skate so close to totally alienating your audience. But damn does it pay off.
A quote from it I grabbed to share earlier:
When a [society] builds [a city] atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.
I think you win just for originality and not “witnessed very violent happening.”
Not that violence isn’t fucked up, too, but…Jesus.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has never finished Good Omens. I’ve picked it up several times. What I’ve read of it, I enjoyed. But I never felt compelled to finish it. Put differently, I guess it’s just not engaging…?
Slight correction: It is well known for doing nothing to the rich. A distinction as subtle as it is important…and telling.
I don’t intend to be a negative Nancy about it all but I expect everything will fall through some crack or slip through some loophole or…just get looked away from, in the end. It’s a pattern I’ve seen again and again with this man.