Comments | bellatrys: You Cannot Write A World Bigger Than Your Head

bellatrys

You Cannot Write A World Bigger Than Your Head - part I

Jul 23, 2007 09:40

Part I: In Specific

The germ of this rant* came from my discovery of the later volumes of The Wheel Of Time on the dollar table a few months ago - I had given up on the series finally with A Crown Of Swords in 1996, having faltered in my resolution to stop when book 5, The Fires of Heaven, took almost the length of War And Peace to cover about a ( Read more... )

worldbuilding, writing, jordan, personal is political, fiction, fandom, society, personal is artistic too

Comments 11

Girl, are you nuts? deiseach July 23 2007, 18:12:17 UTC

Not only R-t J-n's piece of work but also "Gor"?!?

What, were there no vats of nitric acid convenient for you to dunk your head in?

I salute your indefatigability, but I worry about your mental health :-)

You only just noticed??? bellatrys July 23 2007, 19:02:19 UTC

It's very much like tackling Mad Mel - since Dark Horse is bringing back the 1st 3 Gor books in an omnibus edition, and feminist fandom is rallying the troops, I need to be able to say to the Norman defenders who go "but you haven't READ the early ones, you're just ASSUMING they're bad!" - "Oh ho, bucko, 'tis you that's assuming! And if you don't think that having Princess Te-stupid-to-live begging to be branded and "taken" by the protagonist is sexist, then there's no hope for you swine!"

I only question your sanity because I care deiseach July 23 2007, 21:13:10 UTC

Only read one Gor novel and that was more than enough. I did wonder why one of the disposable females, who was the sole woman in a camp full of desert raiders (yawn) and thus saddled with all the cooking, water fetching, etc. and was left alone - all on her unsupervised ownsome! - in the camp to do said cooking while the boyz were out doing whatever they were doing - raiding in the desert, presumably - didn't slip some extra seasoning into the stew, poison them all, and head home with the camels and gear ( ... )

well, by now I want to shove them over cliffs with poison ferrets bellatrys July 23 2007, 22:49:43 UTC

But by the end of book 3 I just wanted to reenact the finale of fish-slapping dance with them, since it felt like I'd been beaten about the head with a sardine. Book 4 was the one where I started to want to get a road grader after them, and 5 I only finished in the bemusement of "can we really milk 5 days of story time this long?"

nd as far as I could tell developed nothing and played no useful part save dumping a huge digression in the middle to make me forget who exactly was doing what where with whom, can't you tell?Well, there was some Big Portentuous Stuff snuck in there about how they have a gadget that will let them enslave Rand, too - but since it didn't show up again for another six doorstops, it all had to be re-infodumped over again in books 10/11. And the Daughter of the Nine Moons when we finally meet her is a) Flagrantly Token Black Character, which *really* felt tacked on to the Country of the Arthurian Samurai, and b) Absolute Flaming Asshole, which was not a shocker at all. (I love the way she has her treacherous ( ... )

Thread 5

wombat1138 July 23 2007, 19:12:43 UTC

Houseplants of Gor.

Even better bellatrys July 23 2007, 22:40:29 UTC

"Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor" (NSFW)

nenya_kanadka July 25 2007, 20:26:29 UTC

1) OW.

2) ROFLMAO.

3) So very glad I have NOT read these books.

(The comment has been removed)

I think the response to correct canon w/r/t Gor bellatrys July 23 2007, 22:42:28 UTC

is irresistible to every non-doormat female reader. I've heard stories for years of a legendary long-ago con skit called "Free Amazons of Gor" which was a Darkover Crossover Parody fic.

megpie71 July 24 2007, 03:59:25 UTC

I claim my "why did I read this?" fiction lumps by reading Piers Anthony's "Battle Circle" trilogy not once, but about three or four times. I believe my teenage self was attempting to see whether she could make sense of it. Fortunately those neurons are currently being reused.

I also used to collect the books of the Wheel of Doorstops. I think I got up to book seven before I ran out of doors which needed holding open, and I discarded the lot of 'em when I first moved from Perth to Canberra. Since then, we obtained a copy of book one from a friend who was passing through, which I think I gave a cursory re-read for about twenty or so pages, then returned it to the task of keeping the door open. The Gor books, fortunately, passed me by completely (and from reading your summary of the first one, I think they'll continue to do so).

mrowe July 24 2007, 10:14:26 UTC

I used to say that WoT was my guilty reading pleasure, i.e. I've known from about pg. 10 of the first book that this stuff sucks majorly, but was willing to be brainlessly entertained. For at least the last year or so, I've been afraid of trying to reread them; I think if I try, they will go the way of the Heinleins and most of the Stephen Kings.