Ahahahaha I see someone discovered the reading habits of little old ladies. My mom once had to go on a long car ride with my grandma (dad's mom) and wanted an audiobook before they left, and knew this author my grandma had been reading lots of books from, so she got one! ...And then was very surprised when it turned out to be a bodice ripper. Quoth grandma, apparently: "Well, at least they do something about it instead of mooning around for the whole story!"
i was enjoying the world and the set up and the characters had great chemistry and i was yelling 'THATS LOVE YOU FOOL. THAT FEELING IS LOVE' and then all of a sudden the author decided it was dubious consent time and i was like wait a minute you fuck, she literally slapped you and said no, this is not the time to bodice rip i was so upset u guys -frustrated noises-
very true. i guess I'm being extra hesitant to call things rape due to like...current events -side eyes america-
Ok I don't know if this fits here, because the rest was fairly good, except for the parts that were infuriatingly bluh, but I loathe the series of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Spoiler: Spoilers and noncon It has such a stupid rape. And thankfully, there are consequences, but it's all about shaping the guilt and manpain of this protagonist anti-hero, I just remember the rape happening and hating it, and hating the cynical protagonist who was so frustrating and unlikable and difficult to follow. I couldn't care about him. I could barely care for the people he was supposed to be saving. And then, years/months into the future (time elasticity happening), the rapist meets his rape daughter and it's all fine between them. Maybe that I'm more mature I could read it and get something out of it but I dunno, I remember being so monumentally disappointed that such a well received series was... this.
The friendslocked Battlefield Earth sporking made this comparison for Jonnie's actions, and I think it needs to be seen in its entirety. The actions which prompted the comparison are horrifying, but I laughed myself into a sore face. Spoiler: length
Replace Truman in that scenario with Hubbard's alleged hero Jonnie, the Earth diplomats with alien ones, Honshu with an inhabited alien moon, and the puppets with the inaccurate Chinese dragons on the unnecessary fancy helmet Jonnie's wearing, and then follow up the whole thing with having the alien diplomats subdue the understandably angry guy from the empire whose moon it was and totally ignore what prompted his anger.
Also, the supposed hero has now killed literally one million times the number of people all the supposed bad guys put together have - no, you read that right, not one million more than, one million times as many.
Okay, I'm nearly at the end of the sporking, and the evil alien empire turned out to be secretly run by a group which sprang up from literal circus performers. Apart from it being a possible dig at the Romani and a definite dig at psychiatrists due to the fact that LRH is lumping together stage hypnotists with psychiatrists, is this where Hussie got the idea for the subjug cult? Though I'm mainly focused on the amazingly terrible writing involved in only introducing the existence of your major villains within fifty pages of the end of a thousand-plus page book, ten or fifteen parts after they'd all been killed off.
... barring vampires or zombies or such, how is it even possible to introduce villains after they're dead?
Oh, they don't actually do anything or appear on screen. He just suddenly has the surviving members of the alien race telling the humans all about this evil conspiracy which ran their society and yet they never so much as hinted at them during all their many point-of-view segments before.
Apparently Hubbard's less well-known work Mission Earth is quite a lot worse. Despite the title it's not a sequel to BE, and it's three times as long, and that length is filled with... I quote from a review: Spoiler: extreme gore/sexual abuse content
i mean this IS insane scientologist man who tried to fuckin summon babylon to bring about the antichrist irl
A friend of mine mentioned on discord she might try to write something for Choice of Games' user-made games section, and someone helpfully shared this highlight of the competition as encouragement: Spoiler: questionable insect alien anatomy I've seen a lot of inexplicable insect boobs, but I have to say, I don't usually see quite this level of commitment to the concept.
Okay, what the fuck? I just flicked through some Kindle porn samples and what the hell is the author picturing when they mention banana-shaped breasts? Were they just testing to see how closely people read fruit metaphors?
