The "What Are You Doing This Moment" Thread

[UltimateApathy]

Looking through a few days worth of posts that I missed and realizing UltimateApathy is a faggot.

And I am sure to be soooooo insulted by your brooooootal raging homophobia, right? Try to use some originality next time you attempt to insult someone, if your feeble little mind can even manage to conjure up such a thing

 

[UltimateApathy]

Oh, and Limp Bizkit and Korn are are "pop metal", not this:



Anyone who says otherwise needs to go back to troll school...

 

[Einherjar86]

Malazan Book of the Fallen inspired stuff here:

http://caladanbrood.bandcamp.com/

I'm fucking loving this album. I get the comparisons to Summoning, but I actually hear more of the Draugnim/Imperium Dekadenz thing going on.

It's not as good as Summoning, but it's still great. I've never read Malazan, but I plan on it sometime. The guys in the band have the best stage names: Shield Anvil and Mortal Sword.

Those are actually pretty well-chosen stage names. In the books, each god (or maybe just some? he's deliberately stingy with the exposition) has a Mortal Sword, a mortal man who has been chosen by the god (with or without his consent) as their champion and to some degree avatar. The Shield Anvil brings spiritual comfort and absolution to the fallen, often immediately after killing them. In the third book the Mortal Sword and Shield Anvil of Fener lead a mercenary cult against an army of cannibalistic zealots. It's metal as fuck.

Read those books so I can talk to you about them. I can't find anyone to talk about this shit with.

I couldn't finish the second book. It reads like a video game; not really my cup of tea.

The only decent fantasy author out there anymore, in my opinion, is R. Scott Bakker.

 

[Dak]

You don't like Feist?

 

[Einherjar86]

I remember talking with you about him, but everything that I've read (a short story set in the Riftwar universe, and some of Magician) just strikes me as hackneyed and tired. It's all the same epic fantasy; imbued with a superficial violence and maturity that masks a juvenile core. I'm even starting to think this way about George R.R. Martin, and it's how I responded to the Malazan books as well.

Bakker is the only current fantasy author (whom I've read) that has continually convinced me that his texts, his philosophy, and his work in general, is intellectually mature and genuinely violent (i.e. its violence isn't there for effect, it's there because it communicates something about the ideas in the novels themselves). When I read Bakker, I'm overwhelmed by the profound feeling that my existence is fragile and that death not only hems in from all sides, but is actually a part of me. They're purposefully and authentically apocalyptic texts, and the pain in them is palpable, not merely theatrical.

 

[damnromulans]

I'm thinking that he (PP) is Indiana Jones and Krampus is the cute Asian sidekick. I haven't watched the movies, so I don't know the character name that she is.

SHORT ROUND

 

[monoxide_child]

I'd rather not read more about Trayvon Martin, thanks.

same here

uugghh
the first cop to see trayvon's corpse was actually responding to a 9-1-1 call that was actually made before the one single gunshot and Zimmerman made no attempt at all to resist arrest, and Zimmerman was covered in open cuts that were photographed at the scene before he got into the cop car

if they'd been the same race as each other, it would have been a totally open-and-shut self-defense thing with absolutely no media attention at all whatsoever

 

[monoxide_child]

am i the only one totally freaked out by the fact that Casey Anthony is pregnant again??

http://www.google.com/#output=searc...89,d.eWU&fp=8074dc2ac00ae81c&biw=1280&bih=827

 

[King Richard]

SHORT ROUND

THAST RACITS

 

[waif]

My retarded friends think that Amon Amarth is amazing and shit so they love it already. Nothing by Amon Amarth is amazing, but some tracks on "Twilight of the Thunder God" are fun to blast while drunk. They are just pop metal tbh.

Their earlier stuff is a lot better. Still pretty catchy, but you can easily draw the line from stuff like Entombed and Dismember to albums like Once Sent or The Crusher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3U7d-D2n4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUHlwE1L4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAp64nGjZK8

Around Versus The World there was a pretty distinct shift in their songwriting style, where the song structures became more formulaic and hook-oriented. Versus was still an excellent album, and I'm also quite fond of With Oden on Our Side (the drumming is phenomenal) but there's a pretty distinct gradual stripping out of the death metal elements of their sound. Their last three are the albums that really bug me...some pretty catchy songs, but it's all so trite and polished.

I listened to one song and it was so predictable I turned it off after while. No surprises indeed.

Blood Eagle was cool. That's about it. There were one or two others in the second half that I thought were pretty decent, but I honestly can't remember any of it.

 

[Dak]

I remember talking with you about him, but everything that I've read (a short story set in the Riftwar universe, and some of Magician) just strikes me as hackneyed and tired. It's all the same epic fantasy; imbued with a superficial violence and maturity that masks a juvenile core. I'm even starting to think this way about George R.R. Martin, and it's how I responded to the Malazan books as well.

Fantasy itself is juvenile and somewhat hackneyed. Magic and dragons? Martin manages to try and keep it as real as possible without completely abandoning the magic and dragons, especially in abandoning typical fanatasy themes of stark black and white, Archetypal Good vs Archetypal Evil.

I appreciate an author's ability to world build (especially if it spans multiple generations), even if the events occur in a somewhat predictable and/or juvenile way. It's the reading/interest level of the majority of the potential audience.

Bakker is the only current fantasy author (whom I've read) that has continually convinced me that his texts, his philosophy, and his work in general, is intellectually mature and genuinely violent (i.e. its violence isn't there for effect, it's there because it communicates something about the ideas in the novels themselves). When I read Bakker, I'm overwhelmed by the profound feeling that my existence is fragile and that death not only hems in from all sides, but is actually a part of me. They're purposefully and authentically apocalyptic texts, and the pain in them is palpable, not merely theatrical.

Interesting.

 

[Eligos]

Oh, and Limp Bizkit and Korn are are "pop metal", not this:

Anyone who says otherwise needs to go back to troll school...

I know that metal is still novel to you and all, and that you find the upperground stuff fresh and exciting. That doesn't change the fact that most melodeath and symphonic black metal bands are pop metal. Opeth and Mastodon are pop metal as well. Meshuggah and any Djent band are also pop metal.

Any band that can fill an arena is popular.

 

[Einherjar86]

Fantasy itself is juvenile and somewhat hackneyed. Magic and dragons? Martin manages to try and keep it as real as possible without completely abandoning the magic and dragons, especially in abandoning typical fanatasy themes of stark black and white, Archetypal Good vs Archetypal Evil.

I think it depends on how one contextualizes magic and dragons, and how they're manipulated representationally. Magic as a metaphor for technology, for example, deserves more merit.

Martin's bald relativism actually wears on my nerves. Sure, he subverts our expectations of good and evil, but it goes no further than that. Bakker, on the other hand, presents a series of very specific conceptual binaries and plays these against each other. He's been called a misogynist, but the accusation is misplaced; his texts are, without a doubt misogynistic, but most fantasy series (of the "high" or "epic" variety) are. Bakker openly admits the misogyny of his texts; in fact, he claims that his books present a world where women are actually, objectively, inferior to men. So now we have to question what exactly the role of fantasy is in this regard (beyond its use as a literary mode); Bakker's admission of textual misogyny means that it is presented as a fantasy, but he forces us to acknowledge it as a fantasy.

The "bad guys" in Bakker's novels are creatures that literally thrive on the torment of others. Their existence is rape and torture. So Bakker introduces an ethical dimension into his texts by exploring the issues of pleasure, pain, and how pain is translated as pleasure, and vice versa. His books are full of episodes that play out such dilemmas.

 

[Dak]

I think it depends on how one contextualizes magic and dragons, and how they're manipulated representationally. Magic as a metaphor for technology, for example, deserves more merit.

I agree. It's better than having a neo-medieval world with one race that has combustion engines and robots (Even if crude).

So Bakker introduces an ethical dimension into his texts by exploring the issues of pleasure, pain, and how pain is translated as pleasure, and vice versa. His books are full of episodes that play out such dilemmas.

#50shadesofdragongrey.

 

[Einherjar86]

#50shadesofdragongrey.

Nice. But honestly, by presenting non-human creatures, he expands the discussion in a way that a book like 50 Shades of Gray can't. The latter is a pop-culture fantasy that revels in the ambivalences of pleasure and pain, since it encompasses the discussion within human terms. Bakker's books actually establish the possibility that torment may comprise the core of a thing.

 

[UltimateApathy]

I know that metal is still novel to you and all, and that you find the upperground stuff fresh and exciting. That doesn't change the fact that most melodeath and symphonic black metal bands are pop metal. Opeth and Mastodon are pop metal as well. Meshuggah and any Djent band are also pop metal.

Any band that can fill an arena is popular.

Let me be the first to point out that Opeth, Mastodon, Meshuggah, and most melodeath and symphonic black metal bands can't fill arenas as solo acts. Show me one instance of such bands filling a stadium as a solo act and I'll admit I'm wrong, but in the meanwhile, since I know you won't be able to, there is no harm in admitting that you are wrong - I won't hold your errors against you. I can understand how some testosterone-enslaved kids think that anything that isn't poorly-produced muffled grunt-based brutal death metal is pop music, and I pity such elitest nerds almost as much the kids who think that Black Veil Brides are pretty intense underground music. Just one example - of many thousands - of symphonic black metal that isn't "pop metal":

Listen to that, and if you still think it's "pop", then I can recommend some good books about reaching and dealing with puberty to you.

 

[monoxide_child]

unrelated to anything else that's going onin this thread.....

Casey Anthony is pregnant

 

[waif]

Fantasy itself is juvenile and somewhat hackneyed. Magic and dragons?

What is inherently juvenile and hackneyed about fantasy? I'll grant that there's a huge body of extremely pulpy, juvenile fantasy out there that makes heavy use of magic and dragons, but I don't think that makes the concept of magic and dragons juvenile any more than the existence of bodice rippers makes the concept of sex trite and sleazy.

I couldn't finish the second book. It reads like a video game; not really my cup of tea.

The only decent fantasy author out there anymore, in my opinion, is R. Scott Bakker.

It's really a question of why you read fantasy. I enjoy immersing myself in new worlds, and so a lengthy high fantasy series with a carefully constructed and highly detailed backstory and a complex narrative right up my alley, even if it fails to really say anything deep or meaningful.

I am curious why you think it reads like a video game.

 

[Blind Guardian]

I've only read one Malazan book and two GoT books but to me it's still really obvious that both Martin and Erikson pretend to think much, much further ahead than they actually do in terms of story-building. It's easy to write intricate plots when all you have to do when out of ideas is to amorally kill off your characters or to degrade them in some other way that makes them completely irrelevant to the continuation of the story.

What's strange to me is that most people don't see this kind of writing method as a cop out, but rather they praise it for being cynical and realistic and therefore more 'mature' than 'naive' fantasy like Tolkien*. It's obvious to everyone already that in real life, chance and randomness rules supreme and bad human traits win out just as often as good ones because there is no justice in the universe. There's a reason most accomplished authors of fiction don't create their narratives around the bizarre happenstances of life though; it makes it hard to follow through with any point other than that life is cold and random. Granted, you don't have to deliver a message with fantasy but even so, in my opinion it doesn't make for satisfying entertainment either to have your protagonists be complete losers.

* I believe Tolkien was actually very conscious in using romantic archetypes of good and evil like Aragorn and Sauron, but that's another discussion perhaps.

 

[Einherjar86]

I am curious why you think it reads like a video game.

That's a good question. It's tough to explain. It felt like "gameplay" as I was reading, especially some of the assassin sequences in the first book. Then, in the second, that ending sequence; I can't even remember the details now, it's been so long. But they're rushing toward something, and they teleport somewhere... I just remember, as I was reading, that I was envisioning it like a video game; first-person, like when a character has been assigned a mission by the game, and is running to complete it.

I didn't necessarily think the books were bad; it just wasn't enjoyable for me. It was as though I was being described a video game with excessive anthropological and historical background. I don't mind that in video games, but it made me tense reading it in a novel form.