/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

>List of nicknames of New York City
>Gotham, first used by Washington Irving in his satirical periodical Salmagundi (1807) and made popular as the location of Batman comics, first specified in 1940[16]
You'll be fine

Washington Irving was a real person, not just a catch-22 joke?

what?
Will she really die?
wait dont tell

:p

I think he's referring to your butchered spelling

wat
my spelling is perfect

Wait for the superior Legendarium, from the master GRRM!

there is any other book aside from wheel of time where the protagonist is a dragon?

what is that jak'o shadows that mat sings about?

Webnovels are novels too

They sing about dancing with death.

oh
but what does jak'o shadows have to do with it?

Something about setting fantasy in a real place triggers my "cringe warning" in spite of the fact that I only apply that rule to myself.

Like, i know it's not intrinsically cringey but I associate it with things that are cringey. It seems all the most embarrassing fantasy books and movies are set in New York or urban California, so when Im reading something and im on high cringe alert, it being set in the real world looks like a flaw

Temeraire series.
Eragon lol

it is death

Nynaeve is Lan's job.

>nynaeve
she eventually get's better namely after Lan reunites with her, but she's bitchy for a while

>egwene
likewise she gets better when she leaves the Aiel

i fucking hope so
egwene is too arrogant
specially when she's a insect compared to rand

Nynaeve spends every second deliberately making herself angry to be able to channel, she gets better once she doesn't have to do that anymore.
Egwene gets so much more insufferable once she's away from the Wise Ones. Granted she doesn't do something as absurdly evil as raping Nynaeve to keep her quiet anymore, but she's still a Cunt.

Oh boy

She's in the middle of AiSedai once she leaves the wise ones, they make her look downright humble by comparison(specifically after being trained by the Wise Ones)

Plus she starts doing stuff that gives her an actual reason to be high on herself

And let's be honest Nynaeve isn't acting like that on purpose, that's been her personality going back to before she learned she could channel, getting Mandragoraned mellows her out a lot(also having to acknowledge and obey Matt, which is fucking hilarious to boot)

oh boy what?
She's weak compared to rand
or are you saying she will become as strong as him?
if so i will fucking drop this shit

>Inb4 Elsecallers are also known as Bootycallers cuz they let radiants fuck their spren.
What? There was nothing in teh book about human x spren breeding.

>raped
dude, explain

She never becomes as powerful or important as he, but continues to think she is.

Pfft no, Rand's the strongest character in the series bar none, and has the strongest artifacts in the series as well

Hell Egwene never even becomes the strongest female character in the series, power level wise Nynaeve is stronger

>Suddenly rough hands enveloped Nynaeve's arms. Her head whipped from side to side, eyes bulging. Two huge, ragged men lifted her into the air, faces half-melted ruins of course flesh, drooling mouths full of sharp, yellowed teeth. She tried to make them vanish - if a Wise One dreamwalker could, so could she - and one of them ripped her dress open down the front like parchment. The other seized her chin in a horny, callused hand and twisted her face toward him; his head bent toward her, mouth opening. Whether to kiss or bite, she did not know, but she would rather die than allow either. She flailed for saidar and found nothing; it was horror filling her, not anger. Thick fingernails dug into her cheeks, holding her head steady. Egwene had done this, somehow. Egwene. "Please, Egwene!" It was a squeal, and she was too terrified to care. "Please!"
Egwene was running around in TAR against Wise Ones' orders. To keep Nynaeve quiet she does that to her.

oh
i just read this part
but i think(hope) egwene was going to make them bite her not rape
i hope...
rule 34?

A reminder for you all to read Children of Húrin. The greatest work of fantasy in the 20th century.

also to kind of impress on her that she didn't know what the fuck she was doing there and the kind of shit that could happen

Nynaeve's and basically all the Aes Sedai don't have any experience in Tel'aran'rhiod and assume they can learn it the same way they can learn everything when in fact it's very different and they have a hard time accepting that, and it almost gets a lot of them killed at one point after this

It occupies an awkward middle ground between The Silmarilion and LotR. It's supposed to be a closer look at the story from the Silmarilion but it isn't as in depth and rich of characterization as LotR. I do like the naked deer metaphor though.

How do you guys think it's pronounced?

I finished my Sword Of The Lictor reread. I'll reiterate my comments from yesterday - slow start with Severian at Thrax, but after the first hundred pages there's a lot of action - The Alzabo, Little Severian, The Sorcerors. The climax, with the Island people at Lake Diuturna castle, is also very rousing stuff - and would leave an irresistible cliffhanger for the first time reader. Aside from the plotting, there feels like a lot more philosophy and reflective passages in this book than in Shadow + Claw, and overall I enjoyed those books a little more.

Anyway, it's onto the last volume after a small break, and some of my spoilerific BOTNS thoughts:

did the Typhon sequence really happen, given that Severian was cold, starving, thirsty, oxygen starved, and traumatised by grief? Note Sev says, shortly after, that it may have ben a dream or vision -- intriguingly, later, in the Hetman's house, Sev speculates that his imaginary visions and reason could be switching places (i.e. imaginary figures becoming external)

Typhon's erection, which was being 'nursed' in front of Severian. Could Typhon have raped him?

Cyriaca's little potted history of a previous civilisation, the rise and fall of an automated society where robots restore human status, is wonderful

Just what on earth is going on with Little Severian anyway?

Baldander's sequence is still quite disturbing in its incidental details - the artificially fattened catamite child in the bed, the eviscerated woman under the belljar, all of the Dr Moreau-esque abominations.

Regarding the Typhon bit: Severian meets Typhon again, somewhen else

I'm 99% sure the fag who wrote it just misspelled dragon and went along. Kind of like the way gurm names characters.

>somewhen

Is that a real word tho?

oh yea

Well I'm stealing it. Got into Soldier of the Mist and I have to say it is strangely similar to BotNS which might otherwise piss me off but Gene's prose and dialogue just hook me like a junkie. Are 5th Head of Cerberus and Long Sun similar also?

Regarding the second bit: Funnily, the same imagery is repeated in another book. It seems to be one of Typhon's quirks. Boys will be boys, alas.

Regarding the fifth bit: Did 'the meeting and farewell' with the cenobites make more sense this time around?

Similar, but Soldier of the Mist actually manages to be even more disjointed and difficult to follow than BotNS.

Haven't read 5th.

Long Sun is pretty different from the two. I didn't really like it. Although I suffered some spoilers before reading it.

Do you mean the cacogens/hierodules at Baldander's castle? Yes, by now my impression is that they are time travelers, or ar least are not limited to three dimensions - and generally they want to ensure human rule (as opposed to Exultant/Vodalus rule, or the Abaia who I suspect are the ones who are orchestrating many of the book's players by Cthulhu-like mind control.) The Cacogens appear far from a monolithic entity though, and will be from different planets/galaxies as well as time zones. What is more perplexing is their little regard for the Claw, and the nature of their 'test.'

How can it be more disjointed?
Latro loses his memory but I assume the stuff he writes in his book is chronological. I also assume some of the people he meets are actually gods, unrevealed. So going off this, can you tell me how it's disjointed and difficult? It seems to me like it's pretty straightforward with a tinge of mystery around it. Shit, is it something to do with Latro's life before Plateea that makes me question everything or throws me off and I need to reread it?

Oh yea, cacogens.
They can, only, I'm pretty sure, travel backwards in time. Thus this was the first tiem Severian meets them, and the last time they meet Severian.
Yea, I don't mean that it isn't in chronological order. Only that it makes some serious leaps forward in time occasionally. And doesn't make much effort explaining how it got there.

They do not do that, necessarily. They are machines and their handler and could travel forward in time if they needed to on that giant ship from Urth

Are cacogens machines? Or Hierodules, specifically. I thought they were aliens, or an off-shoot branch of humanity, changed by the Hierogrammates into what they currently are. Severian speculates so, at least. I don't remember anything about them being machines. They die after only a decade or two after all, like Baldanders says..Are you thinking of those ships that summon aquastors? Regarding Tzadkiel's ship, true enough.

I don't think it's clear but 2 out of Famulimus, Ossipago and Barbatus are machines and one is their handler. Can't remember which. Hyerodules are mutated humanity or humanity mixing with the people on Tzadkiel's planet or people mixing with people from the future that visit Urth and who are almost alien. I never got what the fuck Abaia or Erebus are tho.

Oh, I never got that. Makes sense.

Me neither. From UotNS it seems like they have another vision for humanity, competing with the Hierogrammates'. I don't think their origin is ever explained, though.

On that note what the fuck was that thing that made the manapes run in the mine?

I always though it was another thing like Abaia and Erebus. Slumbering and awaken by Severian. Fits nicely into the Chtulu-imagery as well.

>implying strength actually matter in the end
Rand understood, after being emo for a while, that defeating the Dark One is not about UNLIMITED POWER, which is why he destroy the Choedan Kal and only use Callandor as a trap while Egwene wield Vora's sa'angreal as her personal dildo of destruction

5th is not as "advanced" and there are not as many non English phrases. But it's still clearly Wolfe.

I am on book 5 yet, will this spoiler be too much spoiler or i can read?

Which is more like BotNS, Vampire Hunter D or Berserk?

Stay away from it.

I'm at the end book 6 and i regret having read it

The book you mean.

okay thanks anons

I think it was some awesome fighting machine. In Autarch, during the war, before being saved by the Autarch on his meme mammoth, Severian observe an Ascian mech of some kind and mention that it might be even worse than the thing that terrified the man apes.

It's a spoiler.

The war with Ascia is fucking mental. You get cavalry using pikes, fucken midgets riding /bigguys/, air machines, mechs, lasers, bowmen. How the fuck do you even fight a war like that?

>In Autarch, [...]
On that note, I've seen speculation that (BotLS spoiler) it was one of those ogre-faced machines on the Whorl

I think it was your dear old mother

Whole bunch of volunteers, that's how you fight it. I love how Severian is just gobsmacked by how metal the Ascians are but actually they're just about beaten since they're sending pregnant women to combat.

Not to forget flying cat girl super soldiers.

I'm still in awe of an army of masketta men riding banes

The Autarch knew what the good life is, too bad he couldn't fuck'em. That mammoth pissed me off tho.

I think about that part a lot.

God, I loved the part in the Last House when the ancorite explains or reveals to Severian that the Commonwealth is actually winning the war, by going through the three possible reasons for a sudden increase in the enemy's strength. I can't put it to words well. It's doesn't even read like a plot reveal, it's so obvious and logical, in retrospect, that of course the war can't be going badly if it's so distant from the rest of the country.

>of course the war can't be going badly if it's so distant from the rest of the country
Tell that to the western roman empire.

Not really comparable.

Too soon

Imagine being a hunter in your village and going off to war with bow and arrow. So you join some volunteer brigade with other archers and crossbowmen and you start fighting Ascians. So first there's some dudes youe rout, then there's midgets riding some retarded bodybuilders, then you get fucking pregnant women and just as you seem to break a fuckhuge ray of light kills the entire company to your right in one hir and through the clearing in the ranks you see some giant white fishwoman crawling towards you. I'd fuck off and forget this ever happened.

Any good fantasy books about duty and characters that know they are marching to almost certain death but they dont run away, they face it and shit?

Tolkien, silly

aside from tolkien dummie
i tought it was already implied

Any of you guys ever read Limbo by Bernard Wolfe? Is this the future of virtue signalling? Ive heard that some people have made themselves paraplegics for victim points.

...

You want to know if any of us read "I have no mouth and i must scream"? yes, we did.

>Eragon
How many pieces of fiction did he pretty much copy directly for that?

How much of a genre theme is there to Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury? Is it completely youthful slice-of-life or is there some kind of sf/horror/fantasy to it?

any books out there where the MC gets the cute Elf?

Dalinar gives the people of Roshar an ideal to strive for. They will rise behind him, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join him in the .

How far along are you guys?

The Godling Chronicles

fair warning you didn't specify that they had to be good

...

H-hey guys, so I kind of joined a book club at a library near me that is reading War Of The Worlds, I got a copy and am about 30 pages (7 chapters) in and it's okay but I'm just curious if the sci-fi elite actually consider it a true classic/patrician novel?? I know nothing about this stuff, I'm just doing this club to try and be social because I basically have no friends...

I never heard of that one but I am intrigued now

Are you a cute girl? I can be your friend.

We're all friends here user.

It’s a classic, as in babbys first sci-fi

It's one of the most influential SF novels ever written along with The Time Machine, also by Wells. But it's one of those things you have to take an academic interest in, if you're weaned on modern fiction it might be hard to get into.

the time machine is better desu