roseweird posted:

i liked d&d games for a while because i liked how you had a little imaginary person with a sword made out of numbers and you can calculate probabilities and use magic!, not because i think roleplaying games have good stories. i read most of the book and thought "this reads like a d&d campaign" then i read an interview and found out he takes inspiration from d&d, which is a dumb way to write, imo. i don't know how the book ends, but i assumed it would end with an epic boss battle that i didn't really need to read so i returned it to the library. if you prefer my opinion as a self-realized nerd i'd still say "waste of time, just go play temple of elemental evil or something instead". just saying if you enjoy china mieville you might also enjoy world of warcraft novels. i still think crawl and anime are cool so if you can forgive my genocidal urges i hope we can be friends~

You're not complaining about actual problems with the book though, you're complaining that it reminds you of Dungeons and Dragons and telling me that makes it bad which isn't a real criticism. It's like people that complain that it's steampunk and they don't like steampunk because they saw pictures of nerds dressed up in Victorian dresses wearing steampunk monocles, its just a self-conscious obsession with subcultural symbols that you reflective blanch at rather than using your brain to figure things out. In other words stop being a hipster for 5 seconds and maybe you can enjoy things.

Lessons posted:

. . . a self-conscious obsession with subcultural symbols . . . . stop being a hipster . . . . .

Lessons posted:

You're not complaining about actual problems with the book though, you're complaining that it reminds you of Dungeons and Dragons and telling me that makes it bad which isn't a real criticism. It's like people that complain that it's steampunk and they don't like steampunk because they saw pictures of nerds dressed up in Victorian dresses wearing steampunk monocles, its just a self-conscious obsession with subcultural symbols that you reflective blanch at rather than using your brain to figure things out. In other words stop being a hipster for 5 seconds and maybe you can enjoy things.

roseweird is actually doing the exact opposite of this. she's not complaining it has some superficial D&D tropes and therefore sucks because she doesn't want to be associated with nerds, she's saying it sucks because it uses a narrative style based in D&D which by definition doesn't make for good fiction. I don't know if she's actually right about that book cuz I haven't read it but her evaluation if true is entirely valid. it's like saying a movie looks like and has the plot of a first person shooter or something, that's not going to make for a good movie (if only because of the lack of interactivity means that the flaws of the other forms can't be forgiven anymore).

i don't know or care if china mieville or anyone is a trot though.