1y ago

What more need be said about it?

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Eh, it wasn't bad as a revenge fantasy. You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don't appreciate you would be screwed if you just left. The political philosophy being proposed won't be too offensive if you already lean libertarian.
My main objection to the book (other than the infamous speech, which I admit I couldn't read all the way through) is that it's a sort of morality play with with exaggerated good and bad and no shades of gray, but it keeps denying this and insisting that the real world really is that black and white. The reader ought to take it with more than a little pinch of salt.
Oh, and that Ayn Rand's self-insert has a BDSM fetish I really would have preferred not to know about. (Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books? I'm looking at you, Robert Jordan. And especially at you, Piers Anthony.)
- Ugh, Piers Anthony. I remember absolutely LOVING Piers Anthony’s books as a kid; I went back a while back to reread them as an adult (and read the ones I hadn’t read before) and good god, but I could not do it. Even beyond the terrible puns (not as fun when you’re not like ten years old) and the really regressive ideas of gender roles, after the third book with a young teen girl seducing a virtuous middle-aged man because he was the only one who truly loved her, I was just staring at my old books in horror.
  (A few years back someone linked me to his Hi Piers newsletter, which moved to the Internet a while back. I got as far as seeing him talking about the sexual attractiveness of girls at menarche - their first period, which can be as young as 9 - and I had to stop because of the full-body shudders.)
  
  I hate how much I like the idea of the Incarnations series. Dead like me is one of my favorite TV shows (reaper was OK too)
  But I cannot go back to all of the rape
  
  He used to advertise that 'Hi Piers' newsletter on TV commercials. How weird was that?
  
  What the heck, really? I just remember him always mentioning it in his author’s notes at the end of his books (and for a while there I think there was also a 1-800-HI-PIERS phone number or something?). I remember as a kid wanting to subscribe to the newsletter, but I’m glad in retrospect I didn’t, yikes.
  
  Really. It was bizarre to me as a non-fan that an author would go to that length. And yes, the 800-number was featured. I tried to find it on YouTube, but it appears to have gone down the memory hole. I think he only advertised on cable, but it still couldn't have been cheap. Did that really translate into money for him?
  EDIT: Also, it was just him sitting in a chair, talking. No fantasy scenes or even artwork.
- My main objection i similar to our but broader in scope. None of the main characters feel like real people. They are Platonic Ideals of Ayn Rand's fantasy lifestyle, full stop
  That always annoys the shit out of me when not one well. It can be done well, but it takes a significantly better author.
  I think author-kinks are a bit misrepresented (especially with Jordan, who I read more as commentary on power dynamics) but the point is not invalid at all.
  
  None of the main characters feel like real people.
  Apparently she did that on purpose. From Wikipedia:
  She wanted her fiction to present the world "as it could be and should be", rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters.
  
  I consider that to be a wishful revisionism on her part. The truth is shes just a bad writer.
  The charactors in her first book "Anthem" are exactly as wooden and fake as the charactors in "Atlas shrugged." She never developed any finesse or depth because real people aren't as shallow as the imaginary people she dreamt about.
  
  The Fountainhead too. Howard Roark was just a cardboard cutout with a bunch of notes pinned to it.
- Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books?
  Oh... I suggest you don't read my books when they come out. They're romance novels entirely focused on my kinks.
  
  Chuck Tingle? You're on Lemmy?
- You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left.
  I see you have read my dream journal.
  You really can't win. If you people are dependent on you it means more work if/when you take time off. If people don't need you, they don't need you and this world is just that colder.

175 comments