What are you reading at the moment?

The Americanized version of anything is generally bound to be crap. I'm SO GLAD the American version of Red Dwarf blew up on the launchpad, so to speak.

 

I would actually really like that as a twist, but for some reason I highly doubt that is going to occur since the MC is pretty much just a self-insert. Even all his introspection, such as "oh, hey, maybe I shouldn't brutally torture animals like this" immediately turns into "Nah, it's for a good cause. the Cause of me being AWESOME"... So I highly doubt he's ever going to look in the mirror and realize that he's not a force for good so much as a force for himself and his ego.

[loud dramatic groan] No. No, I did not. That is right up there with him "cleverly" naming a Sprite in a red shirt "Red"...and having him die almost immediately. haha. Red shirt. Wow. So clever. Much impress.

 

Same, I'm one of the few that adore the first doctor, the older show used 9 doctors over the period of 60 years and was really creative. The new one... it's more about the effects then anything.

Also Costume design, I mean each doctor was a bit quirky in his own way, this one seems to be wearing the same suit but a different face every year or two.

 

The American version of Shameless would like to have a word with you. Out back. In the alley.

I find 99% of britcoms to be unfunny garbage, myself. Different strokes for different folks though, I guess. That said, disliking something merely because it’s an American version of a foreign show is pretentious. Like or dislike whatever you want, but at least try to base it on the merits rather than where it was made.

 

It's not just because it's American, it's because they generally make the shows blander and safer and more boring. It's not pretentious to dislike something that sucks

 

you forgot crude. I've not sure why but I find that a number of shows lose the subtleties once they cross over to the US and substance gets replaced with cheap yucks / sex / celebrity cameos.

Some are good though. I liked the american version of the Office.

 

Have you ever been driving down the road, and you see road flares, a column of smoke, and a couple of emergency response vehicles? You know how traffic immediately slows down when passing the site of the accident, so they can take a longer, more ghoulish look to see if maybe, just maybe, this time they’ll see some gore?

Yeah. That’s how I feel about the book I just read, Project Atlantis. It is a perfect storm of everything terrible about a sci-fi novel:

The mind bogglingly STUPID main character, who makes absolutely zero rational decisions throughout the book (despite having a number of degrees and years of field work experience), and blindly goes along with the cartoonishly obvious evil dudes.

The blatant lack of any sort of research whatsoever or even a passing nod in reality’s direction - seriously, the way the Evil Government Conspiracy Dudes find people is by scamming for their fingerprints ... from SPACE. Shit you not. Fingerprints. From. Space.

The Evil Government Conspiracy to evacuate the government because global warming is coming and the world will be uninhabitable within a matter of days, or weeks at most. They’ll leave everyone else behind, it’s only politicians that are leaving.

The ... well basically, the entire book is a crime against the written word. You all know my review policies - I rate between 2 and 4 stars with the occasional 5 Star for novels that exemplify everything I love about a genre and are basically flawless. I automatically give a book at least two stars merely because the author finished and published, which is something I respect, even if I don’t particularly admire their work.

Well, this book got one of my rare one star ratings. It’s not a completely unreadable book - the proofreading was obviously courtesy of spellcheck and the lack of any form of beta reading or editing is also obvious, but the author has a decent basic grasp of English, at least. What pushed it into the realm of the single star is that it had absolutely zero redeeming qualities whatsoever. I hated every single character in the book and would throttle them all if they were real.

And to think that the author used the names of two, better authors - Michael Anderle and Craig Martelle - in this abomination made me throw up a little bit in my mouth and feel sorry for those two wildly successful authors.

That’s actually a decent two word review for this abomination: mouth vomit.

Avoid at all costs.

 

Well, finished up Book #6 of the Chaos Seed series. It took a while because I would read a chapter or two, get bored, and put it down.

600+ pages for just 2 days of "actual story" is insane. There were a lot of pointless details and repeating of world-building that just felt like page fillers.

Honestly, even less impressed if possible with the whole arc the storyline is taking. MC is still a jerk, but now it's excused as "ohhh, he's chaotic! That's good and evil at the same time!" and...that's not even what chaos is/means? I suppose Chaotic fits his random personality and actions, but considering he's constantly babbling about "being a force for good", the fact he's considered Neutral should give him a head's up that his actions aren't good at all. It probably won't, of course, but it should.

His ego keeps getting bigger and bigger and I'm literally zero impressed with his "progression" if one can call it that. It mostly just seems to be giving him random powers that go nowhere other than "Awesome" and him getting more and more OP. While he makes sure to remind the reader constantly of how far he's come and how "awesome" he is now. Listening to his inner monologue about how he's "power and justice and death" or whatever had me rolling my eyes more than once.

Honestly, the way the writing is going, I currently have zero interest in reading Book #7 unless it's free. and that's still a big old maybe.

It's kind of sad because the storyline and basic idea had a lot of potential, but the execution just got more and more awful with each book.

Also, random, but for some reason the Pixies acting like "children" and doing "baby talk" just extra annoyed me. They pop out as fully formed teens, but they act like bad caricatures of toddlers. Not even real toddlers, but like the crappy cartoon ones you see that say "Hewwo" and "Unca" and are generally jackasses but it's always laughed off as "cute kid antics" when it's really just being irritating. I've been around plenty of kids and I've never yet seen a real kid act or talk like that at all. So it just kind of bugged me. I get they're Pixies, not humans so maybe human rules don't apply, but it still just seemed like an unnecessary thing to make them "cutesy" when they're supposed to be the other half of the souls of fierce protectors of good. So I could have really done without the "toddler" aspect.

 

About the author

I have been reading sci-fi and fantasy for basically thirty years. In the past year I am honored and blessed to have earned the title "The Father of American LitRPG

^I'm sorry but if you are in your early thirties (and I swear his photo looks like mid twenties) and you give yourself a title like that then I'm not even going to read your book.

I think I got book one for free and even that I couldn't finish, every 90's cliche was in there, I swear the author is stuck in 1992. there was even a clip of the audio where a merchant was speaking in this super racist middle eastern inflectional that you only hear in Aladdin. I should know, I'm Arab xD

 

Or Apu from The Simpsons.

 

Yes, now that I think about it the reader did try to sound vaguely Indian. isn't that even worse though

 

Most people have stereotypes regarding other countries. Americans are just way more visible because we carry our stereotypes with us when we travel and ALL of our media gets blasted out around the world.

Most countries aren’t quite so obvious about it. Like Japan and anime exports for instance. They curate their anime broadcast licenses pretty strictly and only allow things out that don’t show off their prejudices or the more batshit insane things they come up with in their own version of popular culture. Same with their dramas and books of all sorts.

It gives America a bad reputation. Kong is terrible about it to foreign sensibilities, but by our own standards it’s something we just glaze over.

Edited to add: Japan is one of the most insular, racist, xenophobic countries I’ve ever been to. I go there a lot and have friends there, but for a foreigner trying to live there it’s an entirely different experience than you get as a tourist. They don’t even HAVE laws preventing most discrimination, and the ones they do have are unenforceable because the overwhelming precedent is that they’ve never bothered enforcing them to begin with. On the flip side, their citizens generally don’t deal with much in the way of discrimination to begin with ... unless they aren’t full blooded Japanese, in which case they’re treated pretty harshly.

 

Don't be too hard on the US or Japan. try the middle east. It's all linage over here and people will dig up your past up to your great great great GREAT grandma!

Also Japan is ok to tourists at least, try Korea. I don't think I've met such obvious racism in my life... and I wear Hijab everywhere!

Thing is when you are writing for a target audience those little things slip unnoticed. If you are going wider then it's a turn off to potential customers. I don't know, It's just alot of my favorite authors are American and British yet I've never felt a hint of racism in their books even when they wrote about other cultures. there was both respect and little hidden jokes that only someone from that culture would get. little digs and such that actually made the book better. wonder if my standards are too high hmmmmm

 

Heh. I’ve been to the Middle East too, but I was on deployment at the time so I don’t think I got a very good cultural snapshot, as it were.

I’ve also been stationed in Germany and visited a few other European countries. Everyone has their own individual stereotypes for outsiders, it’s just that most people feel some level of shame about their prejudices. Not so much in America; even if we were capable of hiding it, with the level of cultural contamination we basically force on the rest of the world, we probably still wouldn’t bother trying.

And yeah, Japan is a gorgeous place to visit. People there are friendly and welcoming and determined to give you a good time ... if you’re a tourist. Things only become apparent when you breach the tourist/expat barrier. Still, I love it there, warts and all.

 

It's something more recent in the art creator scene. I think one of the big irritants was Scarlett Johansson getting the role of the Major in Ghost in the Shell. Suddenly everyone got their panties in a bunch, then creators had the horrible thought, "My work isn't Diversityied! Horror!". They then began throwing stuff in to get "Diversification! Yay" without bothering to do much research since they only wanted a thin veneer. I dropped a big pack of webcomics when their writers/artists got bit by that bug. They went and Retconned their characters. Retconning is one of the things that burns my cookies, and to do it to condescendingly add "diversity" is the most infuriating thing of all.

Getting a real understanding of a culture takes effort and work, slapping a few stereotypes together is quick and easy. Guess which route most take.

 

Maybe, I like older writers and although some were a bit bias they still made sense withen the context of the book and you never took it seriously. newer books however are... well you just said it.

I've been going back to a few books from my youth though and I can see the attempt at "diversity" even from the late 90's.

Example :- in book 2 of HP there is a Chinese girl, the one Chinese girl in the entire school apparently and she's only there for Harry to ogle. Now she was treated like a normal person but it was odd to have this just one foreigner among all the kids that were clearly brit.

Example 2 :- Rowling actually placed a condition on the casting choices. that the child actor playing Harry had to be British, and she meant british-british not just have the passport... I sorta hated her after reading that part.

Example 3:- anything disney made up to Moana!

I don't know, I've just read Terry Pratchett's "Pyramid" which clearly deals with Eygptian mythos and even has a few stereotypes thrown in yet it was never offense, it was actually a lot of fun I loved the little nods to old tales like the 7 cows dream.

He also has books that took place in china and Australia and they were some of his best! Clearly a lot of work was put into them... or he was a demi-god and had an open communication with one of the muses. not ruling that one out!

 

The thing with Johanssen getting the role was that the role was originally Japanese and there are almost no lead roles for Asian actors in American productions - it wasn't that the creators were forced into diversity, they were deliberately whitewashing a role. The only people who get upset about "forced diversity" are the melting white snowflakes who've never been un-represented in media and can't cope with it.

 

Actually Disney has been really good about not whitewashing their princesses. They only change the stories, not the place the stories come from.

And it started earlier than GitS - first time I remember it Being A Thing was when M Night Shamalamadingbat whitewashed the Avatar movie.

 

If I’m remembering right, didn’t the creator of GotS come out in favor of the Johansson casting decision?

 

LOL No idea, but I do wonder how much money was behind that declaration. At any rate, the movie would have sucked regardless.