The part where they're trying to uncover the alien ruins in the forest is great

It's all very Nausicaa like, standing in a dim shadowed faraway world with your feet in unknown loam

Gee, he sure does like saying "piss"

......hm, i think i get what you mean about the pretentious style

Sentence fragments expressing abstract formulations. Exclusively in conspicuously elevated, polysyllabic diction.

Uh, yeah what you said! Said much better than I.

This is nice. Very reminiscent of the "forerunner trilogy " from the Halo books.

i like this

i hate this

This motherfucker wrote "yeet"

silverwolfcc yeet

I hate this. This motherfucker. Help me.

...I mean

.......there is a time and a place to use slang, when that's what you mean to do

but i'm guessing it's not exactly deployed artfully

This fedora tippin, slang throwing, pretentiously pedantic denizen of the deep internet

I hate it because it's good enough to keep reading, but i hate it because of the blatantly smug declaration that they know they are good enough to get the hooks into me

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN. Why even add "flash"? Why??

My tormented soul

...I mean there are engineering applications where you would want to not just boil but flash-boil, but it's not clear from that sentence why it would matter, so it kind of has the taste of unnecessary technical jargon added to elevate diction

it sounds from that sentence like they're just talking about making distilled water, though, so...?

Then maybe it's just me. Maybe it's too smart for me.

I can't really judge without broader context if it's actually getting at something, or just using big words for the thrill of using big words, but from that snippet it kinda sounds like the latter

...also the latter is a lot more common

could also be a middle road where he actually is doing something with it, but due to stylistic choices of what he does and doesn't explain, comes across as just being pretentious and/or condescending

"smart" no it is not.

yeah idk I can't help but see the obnoxious pretentious condescending as so annoying I want to yeet it away from me. Unironically that was the only part I liked

yeah idk I'm skeptical but I also try very deliberately not to judge something I don't actually know

Of course she did

Oh okay it is the character. He was trying to write the character/narrator as a stuffy ass, but it's hard to differentiate the character and author

The MC goes through a paradigm shift, so yeah

:T

Its good, i think.

...yeah I was kind of wondering if maybe they were just... over committing to the kayfabe of their first-person narrator's perspective, which is definitely a real danger with writing in first person

Yes, it most certainly is unreliable narrator now

kinda like with the danger of satire being that you might not actually make it clear that you're doing satire, an unreliable first person narrator can be great but can also really get you in trouble

sometimes you can find ways to (figuratively) nudge the narrator's arm and make them tip their hand to the reader

let the audience know that you know that the narrator's full of shit

like how in the first Devil May Cry game, Dante is very obviously a massive dorky-ass himbo, and his attempts to be childishly ~cool~ regularly backfire or fall completely flat

which is what makes it fun, because he's a clown and you're invited to laugh at him and form a kind of affectionately unimpressed attitude toward him

...but then when he's written in some later media as just... actually being very cool and hip, he becomes really kinda boring and annoying

IMO anyway

I get what you mean

The problem is these people are so unlikeable, that when, oh

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON

Blank filler

The problem is, when they finally go crazy from the alien biology, oOoOoOh, i just don't give a shit

It doesn't jive. I don't care about them, and it's awkward and jittery

ahhh okay the Cloverfield Problem

He builds this great cool alien world with unique biology that it seems he's going pure Herbert-esque and is writing hard scifi zoology, but he doesn't

To me, IMO, he falls into the boring overdone trap of metaphysical scifi and tries to go deep into meaning

or whatever the movie was with the kaiju seen through the eyes of some really annoying yuppies who were so irritating when they started dying I wasn't horrified I was like "good at least they're gone now"

.... i guess that's Herbert-esque too. BUT THAT'S WHY I STOPPED READING DUNE

I guess it's not my thing. I want a tromp on an alien world, but it had to go farther

hrm

I mean I can't say much to generalizations obviously

but it sounds like it kinda pulls an Interstellar

where on the one hand they model gravitational lensing with such fidelity that it produced some significant astrophysics papers... and on the other hand it ends on the note of "gravity is made of interdimensional love backwards in time" or some such metaphysical horseshit that I guess would have been touching if I weren't so distracted by it making no sense

*nod

At this point i just want it to end. Im checked out. I'm too far to drop it. This is another Prometheus and its silly

Another Annihilation

Either it's not my thing or it's not too good. I don't know

I have a copy of this that I haven't read yet. From the comments I feel like if I'd read it years ago I'd have loved it, but the scifi metaphysics thing is a bit played out now. I'll still read it for the alien worldbuilding though.

Oh geez. I feel bad about my commentary. Hopefully it isn't too critical.

No don't feel bad! I'm one of those people who never minds spoilers and likes critical commentary. Yours was mild, believe me.

I will still read it and it might be that I completely disagree with you, or else that I think you're right but still get some enjoyment out of the book.

.... i may or may not have deleted a plurk before this one where i may or may not have used naughty language. I wrote a book myself and hope to join this community of popular authors someday, after all

I mean this is why I try to hedge my statements in terms of how things look to me/etc and be as specific and rigorous as I can--or be explicit that I can't be specific and rigorous for whatever vibes-based reason

I try and keep my criticism to something that, if it turned out the writer were reading/hearing it, I wouldn't be like "oh no I shouldn't have said that"... because tbh at that point it's probably not really great analysis anyways, yanno? that said I also think we've all been in a bitey mood while interacting with something and it colors our reading

At this point i want to drop it. It's dragging on and I'm weary of it. But I've come so faaaaar

Yech. Eugh. I finished it. I have regrets.

Krusty: What the hell was that?

Note to future self: if you want to drop the book, drop the fucking book

IT'S NEVER WORTH IT

/chinhands

As she enjoys me suffering!

But I did tell you to drop it after the FIRST PAGE

Like I liked Lolita where the narrator is a monster on Trumpian levels of sociopathy and derangement (and child molestation and murder...) buuuuut

it was funny more than annoying

I do think it is also useful to grow and etc.

and you're nicer than me I'm savage

You're lucky you are cute

Yes yes i know. I should have. To be fair we get benefits from reading things we don't like, as in experience, but life is short and i don't like suffering

yes well at least you know to STOP FAST Now

Yes but if i need help make sure to 'distract' me away, would you?