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Posts posted by Nephil Thief
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When reading popular fiction, there is this combination of two factors that I really, really don't like to see.
Characters who meet stereotyped expectations can be annoying, but they won't usually make me stop reading.
Well established characters behaving way out of type can also be annoying; but again, won't necessarily make me stop reading.
However. When a well established character, with an established personality and beliefs, suddenly starts conforming to a stereotype that is completely out of character for them, it's usually time for me to swear out loud and put the book down. That just hurts. I haven't seen many examples of it, but the ones I have seen are all memorable cases that I wouldn't read again.
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Okay, let's try this again...
Basically I felt like THTK was building inexorably towards a climax that would be way over Yeine's head. I expected her to sacrifice herself, and be narrating as a ghost or from the afterlife or something, with a bird's eye view of the consequences of her actions. Or maybe trapped in the Stone of Earth so that Enefa could live again. Or something. Anything but actually survive.
And yes, I will freely admit that I felt a lot of sympathy for Yeine, was really caught up in the story's development, and was prepared to be shocked into tears by the ending. When things at the coronation went even more pear-shaped than I expected, I was like: "oh no oh no oh no..."
... And then Yeine went all Mary Sue and came back to life to fix things, and I was like "Wait what the hell that is just completely bogus."
IOW, I expected a bittersweet cathartic ending, and instead got a "happy" deus ex machina one (for Yeine anyway) that rang completely false. I enjoyed the ride an awful lot, but the ending was enough to knock a star off my review on Amazon.
In retrospect, I probably should have recognized some of the signs; e.g. Yeine surviving mind-sex with Nahadoth. The interview at the end did have Jemisin mentioning she fell completely in love with Yeine, which... well, there you have it I guess. But I was expecting something much more from the ending.
So yeah, I might just be a fool with easily-pulled chains. As I indicated, I've bought the second book and am hoping that Jemisin corrects the failings of the first one. Don't get me wrong, it's very much pulp fantasy, but I thought it had good ideas and mostly good execution and a lot of potential. It just could have been much better, if Jemisin had followed it to its (IMO) logical conclusion.
Satisfied?

Edit: finished the second book. IMO it was stronger in some places than the first, but weaker in others. Notably, Oree feels less memorable than Yeine; perhaps as overcompensation? Also the antagonist's motives seemed a bit weak. I still liked the way the godlings were drawn though; even the minor ones were, for the most part, endearingly oddball.
OTOH, the ending did not disappoint this time. Jemisin does macabre really well.
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I didn't like Neuromancer all that much.
Admittedly "debut SF novels I've read" is a small pool though.Hope I didn't come across as combative above. Opinions are an opinionated thing. I will try not to tread on yours.
(Re the ending, I really need to figure out how to use the spoiler tags...)
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Hmm. I finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdom a few days ago. I absolutely loved it until the very last chapter. The ending was a rather jarring change of direction, and not in a good way.
Also, I'll admit some of the earlier content (mostly involving the God of Night) seemed... very unwholesome.
Whatever though, I'll buy the rest of the trilogy. THTK is probably the best debut SF novel I've ever read; I'm inclined to give Jemisin the benefit of the doubt for now.
Oh, I also tried to read God's War by Kameron Hurley last week. I gave up after four chapters or so. Well written, great worldbuilding, interesting concepts; but the graphic violence was too much for me. I really wanted to like the novel, but couldn't bring myself to slog through it. I think I'm getting more sensitive with age (and thank the gods for that).
Anyway, there's probably an interesting potential essay in comparing Jemisin's "warrior" protagonist with Hurley's "mercenary". But I won't be the one to write it.
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Just to be clear, I don't oppose charity; even personal, impulsive, maybe-not-very-effective charity. But I do think it's pretty darned creepy to use ostensible charity explicitly as a social climbing tactic. If nothing else, it says that the person doing so isn't actually concerned with results.
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@Alorael
IMO what ADoS describes above should be wrong even by purely consequentialist standards. Sure it's giving someone a resource they need, but using a helpless stranger to boost one's ego might leave them feeling... well, used.
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@ADoS
FWIW I've been following this, but not posting because my input would not be useful. (Too far outside my experience etc.) However, I really owe you one, since you helped me with the thing with my dad. For now, *HUGS* and try to stay safe okay?
Also, much sympathy re: people not listening to you because of diagnoses. Been there, done that, it's awful.
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Despite the old saw about the root of all evil, I don't think you can really have too much money. You can misuse it, sure, or let it warp you, but it doesn't necessarily do that. You can use money for good, and you can always use more money for more good. Excessive pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of other considerations is bad; but having wealth is fine.
Depends on who you ask. Voluntarily holding onto a ton of money, while other people are starving etc. for lack of it, IMO qualifies as a form of hording.
Also, I suppose this thread might be a bit less silly than it seemed to me at the outset...
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Short version: what Slartibus said above.
Long version:
Crossbows are marginally more effective than bows, in terms of damage and hit chance. That might be hard coded, or it might not.
From the CBoE sources, barely anything improves ranged damage. Not any of the skills, and not launcher bonuses. Ammo bonuses help; as does Bless status, though not by much; and finally the Accuracy item power. Damage and hit chance both decrease with distance, and with the number of foes in the way, and also both go down precipitously at point blank range.
Poisoned bolts might be useful in some situations. OTOH they have high nuisance value, since you must first unwield any melee weapons, or the poison won't be applied to the bolts.
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I suppose a part of five or six archers, with poisoned ammo, might be effective. One archer is probably going to be pretty useless though.
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@Richard Bacon
I'm guessing it's because you used an ordinary text editor, instead of a hex editor, and moved some stuff around by accident.
e.g. You have 200 gold:
00c8
Now you have 30000
7530
However, if you don't overwrite those first two NULs...
007530
^^^ Then you've displayed all the data following that value. Position matters in binary files.
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@Slartibus
BoE skills are stored in the save files as 16-bit integers, not 8-bit. Not sure if they're signed or unsigned, I'd have to check the sources; I think unsigned... In any case, the maximum is much higher than 256.
However, the effects of very high skills can be weird, because most of them use lookup tables rather than flat arithmetic. For instance, 50 Strength will have you hitting rarely and doing little damage; while 255 Strength has a character hitting every time for 50+ damage. I suspect this is because the tables are stored next to each other in memory, and the index is overrunning into other tables.

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@Richard Bacon
Not sure how that could happen without you noticing. What version of BoE are you using?
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@Ishad Nha
It used to be possible to run them in Wine, before Wine's 16-bit support broke forever.
These days my preferred solution is Windows 2000 under Virtualbox. Windows XP still has the 16-bit NTVDM subsystem, and should work just as well.
(In both cases I'd recommend exporting an OVF appliance, so that you can just import it instead of reinstalling if your VM somehow gets trashed.)
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@RainbowDashRadical
Been to many of those places, too. You're not alone.
*HUGS*
I know life can be really painful, but please stay with us okay?
Not sure where you're located, but there are suicide crisis hotlines. The main one for the United States seems to be
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
^^^ If you're anywhere in the US you can call that number, if you're having suicidal thoughts, or if you feel like you need to talk to someone just to keep going.
Best wishes. I really hope things get better for you.
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Whoah. Off topic but: is that Windows 3.x running on top of DOSBox?!
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[Edit: redacted.]
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Okay so maybe I shouldn't comment on the OP, but first off
Okay, so I'm just gonna throw this out here. I've never dated or even kissed a girl, and I'm about to turn 20 years old, and it frustrates me and makes me very lonely.
I hadn't kissed anyone until this year (I'm 26). Oh, and the person in question was a guy.
This society puts huge pressure on people to "find someone," and do so quickly, as a social status thing. And especially re hetero relationships. The truth IMO is that this doesn't work for everyone, and romance-as-social-status is unhealthy either way.
I was very lonely too. But after a while I got to the point where I had a day job and a few very close friends, and didn't feel like I needed a partner. I mean, it's really nice to be dating someone now, but for me a lot of it was social pressure that I had to get over.
That said, what you describe is... honestly, kind of heart-wrenching.
I was worried that I'd never get a girlfriend, so I created an imaginary girlfriend in hopes that it could fill the void. Her name is Katie, and I like to hug and kiss my pillow at night pretending that its my girlfriend. I text myself on the phone and have "her" respond back to me. I created an entire facebook page for "her" and I manage it all myself. I like to message this girl on facebook. I end up "texting" and facebooking this girl for hours on end everyday. Whenever I'm in my room alone, I'll talk to her, and pretend that I'm going on imaginary dates with her. I really love her, but sometimes I feel really sad because I know deep down inside she isn't real. But I still love her, and I love talking to her everyday. I just can't let her go now, and all the real women I used to have a crush on, I don't anymore. I can't fall in love with any other women now because I love "her." I don't know what I've done to myself. I've fallen in love with something that isn't there. Am I going insane?
"Hours on end" sounds like it might be interfering with your external life a bit. That kind of time adds up. I would suggest you seek professional help, if only in scaling back the time usage.
But on the other hand, I'm just going to put this out there: be careful. Trust your instincts. There are some really incompetent people in mental health practice, and I've met a bunch of them (and suffered at their hands).
In any case, seriously, best of luck. I hope things work out better for you.
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That someone discovered, thousands of years ago, that they could preserve ideas in written symbols. I hope we never lose that. I know there's other things too - all the technology that keeps people like me alive, for instance - but writing is the one that really comes to the front, in my mind.
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I'm currently wandering around the Wurm Pit in ZKR (somewhere in Morog's territory), and I'm not sure what to do with the cursed idol my character stole...
Err, recap: I walked in, slew lots of respawning Ooz Serpents and eventually a tentacled slime-beast at the center, wandered around a bit, and found a bunch of totems. There was an idol among the totems, so of course I stole it, and got cursed. Now I can't leave the dungeon, and get badly poisoned whenever I try.
What else is there, let's see:
- A little cavern in the northwest full of pretty mushrooms, which don't seem to do much.
- A pool of water with odd tranquilizing properties.
- Another group of totems in the southeast, which make me uneasy when I get near them... Unless I drink from the aforementioned pool first. But they don't do anything unusual if I blunder around them while tranquilized.
I could put the idol back, but I kind of want to find out more about this creepy little dungeon. What's the deal with this place?
Edit: the trick is to walk out through the wall behind the second set of totems. D'oh! Still interested in how this dungeon figures into the rest of the scenario though, the atmosphere of the place could be right out of Clark Ashton Smith.
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@Goldengirl, thank you for your advice - it worked beautifully.
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I'm not a nail technician or anything, but I've had mild success when it comes to doing my nails (until it comes to painting my dominant hand...)
I always do a base coat before anything else, and usually a top coat at the end for good measure. In my experience, the base coat is more important.
Make sure to wipe the excess off on the lip of the bottle, yes. Press the brush fat and wide on the base of the nail, right over the crescents. It should be wide enough to cover most of your nail. With each coat, try your best to evenly apply it to all parts of the nail. And do two or three coats, letting each one dry on that nail before moving to the next one.
Thank you! I'll give that a try next time.
(Though the Q-tip strategy I mentioned earlier, actually wound up looking surprisingly good...)
Other than that, I suppose just try to avoid doing too much with your hands, which is easier said than done.
Well yes. Especially for a computer person who likes to read a lot... :|
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Again, I'm not talking about some vague, dehistoricized idea of rationality. I'm talking about the specific thesis of rationality (perhaps Rationality, to distinguish it) developed and forwarded by the Enlightenment, around the 1600's. Quite simply, they didn't know as much about the human brain as we do now, and so they developed some ideas that weren't quite accurate as a result.
Ugh. My apologies then, I wasn't understanding you at all.
Edit: also sorry for the 'splaining above. I need to work on that.
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This essay is technically about Wikipedia and hacktivism, but it includes a long diversion and discussion of Dada. It certainly provides a lot more context and depth of analysis than the Wikipedia article itself. Check it out.
Thanks. No, really. I should stop relying on Wikipedia even for vague ideas of stuff.
I'm a little bit bothered by the author's accusations re: scientific rationalism; more on the basis that "acknowledging the connection" between said mindset and the horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries shouldn't necessarily involve throwing the whole thing out. I know I sound super pompous saying this, but IMO the dose really does make the poison.
Likewise the emphasis on subjectivity. That can cut both ways.
(Like with GamerGate. "How dare you tell me not to harrass people online! I was bullied incessantly as a child!" etc. etc.)
[Edit: bookmarked nonetheless though. That is a really cool blog.]
Now, that said, here's my two cents about this thread: reason and logic are specifically developed historical ideas. Logic was espoused by the Ancient Greeks as a mode of thought and philosophy, and revived in Western Europe with the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Reason also came out of the Enlightenment - the Age of Reason. These ideas, which I'm just going to lump under the term of reason or rationality, were used in specific ways in Western history to justify large movements and action. Republicanism, human rights, and scientific inquiry, but also the development of capitalism (which hinges on people operating under their own rational self-interest), the devaluation of emotion as something counter to reason (and the subsequent ascription of emotionality as feminine), and imperialism (countries acting in their own rational self-interest over irrational/non-progressive subjects). This legacy, inherited from the Enlightenment, has brought a lot of good and a lot of bad. Dadaism fits in with the radical Left because of a decision that the Enlightenment was more bad than good and thus we should burn the whole system down and start over.
Whether I agree with that latter depends heavily on how one defines "burn down the whole system." I can definitely see it re: Wikipedia at least. Some well-placed, persistent, and particularly comical vandalism, might have encouraged me to find better sources above for instance...
Re the former, I guess I'm viewing it less through the historic perspective, and more through the perspective of a would-be physics major re: causality and time's arrow. Some things in observable reality are invariant, in terms of how we interact with them. The block of wood I mentioned earlier will always be hard and inedible. Sure, there's no way to ascertain what the "real" nature of the block of wood is. But if I don't assume some level of invariance somewhere, then I could end up... well... trying to eat a block of wood.
I could talk all day about how the block of wood is just my perceptions. But at the end of the day, I would not eat it.
The idea of reason (from the Enlightenment) is pretty thoroughly debunked. People are inherently subjective, based on their upbringing, location, bodily experiences, etc. Psychologists have shown that certain fallacies and cognitive biases seem to be hardwired into our brains, not to mention the fact that logic and emotion are in no way separable or antagonistic. Capitalism has shown repeatedly that often times individuals don't act in their best interest (prioritizing immediate consumption over future consumption, being risk averse, etc.), and even when they do we still get bad things (e.g. monopolies). The idea that certain people are less rational, and therefore deserve what's coming to them, is widely recognized as pretty messed up. Nevertheless, reason still has a lot of staying power.
Agreed on that much; though I'd point out that the cognitive studies showing this themselves owe something to the Enlightenment, and I'm honestly not sure what (if anything) that implies.
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First, take a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
Okay, Wikipedia article, yes. But I found it interesting. Anyway:
Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political affinities with the radical left and was also anti-bourgeois.[3]...
Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeoisie capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction."[8]
I've seen similar threads in current social commentary. And I don't think it's entirely wrong. OTOH I find it rather a depressing concept, because... well, logic and reason without ethics get you war. But logic and reason also get you things like indoor plumbing and public sewer systems.
If we're going for definitions: I guess I would, in this context, define reason as linear, causal thought. I do not see how humans can survive, in the long term or just day-to-day, without this. So yeah, I always get a bit uneasy reading such sentiments, be they from the radical-left Dadaists or from conservatives like G.K. Chesterton.
I mean... An orange may remain edible one day to the next. A block of wood will not. That is logic. Likewise applying paint to canvas to produce a painting, with the assumption that the paint will stick this time, as it did last time. So what does it actually constitute, to take a political stand against "logic and reason"? A stand against overuse of that mode of thinking, or use in the wrong context?
Or is this something completely different? As far as art, I've always considered art primarily emotional and intuitive, not conscious/logical/linear/whatever. Art can use logic, but it speaks to people's emotions. Was "art" just defined in an utterly different way, back before the days of the Dadaists?
I'm confused. Probably should have taken that Art Criticism course back at Amherst. Ah well.
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I should note though, "rationality" is another matter as far as I'm concerned. Kind of personal, too, and I've been bitten by it a few times. IMO the concept of "rational" is less about logic, and more about espousing one arbitrary group of delusions while hypocritically condemning others.
(But whatever, what do I know. Last time I posted something "philosophical" I confused Locke with Hobbes.)
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(Because I've got to post about something other than my messed up family life...)
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Okay, I sometimes wear colored nail polish. But I have no idea how to actually get the stuff on properly.
Just apply it with the brush it comes with -> results in a hideously thick layer that never dries completely, and comes right off the next time I scrub my hands. Also gets all over my fingers, irritating my skin. (It doesn't help that my hands have a slight tremor, due to medical stuff outside my control.)
Apply it on top of clear nail polish -> looks better, but comes right off *after* it's dried.
Apply it on top of clear polish, then apply more clear stuff on top -> still comes right off.
The only halfway sensible approach I've found is to dip a Q-tip in the colored polish and dab it onto my nails very lightly. This results in a... rather interesting mottled look. But I'd prefer smooth and shiny.
Is there, like, any way whatsoever to do this one's self?
(No, search engines haven't turned up much. And I don't think I'll ask on Stack Overflow, thanks.)
- bernadinegg18 and Annalags
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2

Tell me if this thought makes sense
in General
Posted
@Lilith
Got it in one.
In this case it was an SF novel I'd been reading. Note, possible spoilers follow, and also stuff that some people might find triggery...
In summary:
The novel is Memory by Linda Nagata.
The narrator/protagonist is a young woman, highly intelligent and a bit rash. She's something of a maverick, in a culturally and technologically stagnant setting. She's also quite self-reliant, which is very normal for women in the setting. Gender hierarchies are not a danger in this world, but wild animals and free-ranging robots are, so basically every adult knows how to forage and find shelter and use a rifle. If there's something unfashionable about the protagonist, it's that she might be a bit too fearless to survive in the wild, rather than the opposite.
So, I was not pleased when her handsome would-be boyfriend rescues the protagonist from a bad spot, by doing something likewise a bit reckless... And she suddenly starts yelling at him, having a complete toddler-style tantrum about how his rashness will doom them and she would rather die right then and there.
Thence follows a drawn-out argument where he represents Science ("we need to know what rules the world works by") and she represents Mysticism ("why should we bother to try and understand things?"). Mind you, protagonist studies languages as a hobby, and was doing rather sciency stuff with robots just a few chapters ago. And has had a hunger to understand things about the world, things that others just nod and accept, for basically the whole time prior to this.
And thence begins a forced seduction scene! With the rescuer starting to pressure the protagonist into sex, with her kid brother right nearby (yes seriously); and her not being creeped out at all. If anything, she starts looking more kindly on him, now that he's trying to literally take advantage of her, as opposed to just saving her life and getting her safely reunited with her friends.
That was the point where I put down my Kindle and said, "[bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep], okay, I just can't read this."
And it hurt all the more because, up until then, it had been really good and engrossing, and had studiously avoided the usual cliches.
However, I've seen the same kind of thing before, again mostly around gender stuff. Michael Crichton seems to have been a common offender.
e.g. Timeline:
"Let's have this competent woman turn into an inept damsel in distress, so that the goofy male lead can rescue her and win her love."
Or Sphere:
"The nominal antagonist is a woman! And she's also a complex and sympathetic character! However, her real motivation is that she secretly wants to be rescued, again and again and again, by the graying and portly male protagonist."
Ventus by Karl Schroeder, which I mentioned a while back, was also a particularly painful example:
"Do you like my angsty woman antihero? So do I. That's why I have her forced to undergo traumatic body and brain surgery to become part of a hive mind! But don't worry, it makes her finally happy with herself, and all the people who knew her think it was good for her too!"
What's astonishing to me is that this stuff is not even subtle. Timeline and Sphere were why I had completely given up on Michael Crichton before I'd started high school. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
(Aaaaaand let's hope this doesn't go overboard into rant territory.)
[Edit: Ventus is not a Crichton novel, in case you were wondering]