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Book Club #7: I Make the Pizza Hut Ninja Vanish
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I thought Soapland sounded cool, so I went to this bathhouse here in town. Turns out: not really the same thing.
http://www.daveandjoel.com/?p=4583 -
Great podcast guys, made me laugh and depressed at the same time.
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Oh and it's the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Learnt that from Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.
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Another great Book Club.
Next might I recommend "Hammered: Book 1 of the Iron Druid Chronicles". I am interested on your thoughts on the Urban Fantasy genre like The Dresden Files and Iron Druid Chronicles. -
Urban Fantasy suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
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I'm with Paul on this one.
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I really did enjoy this one as well. It made me get back into books again. I have one suggestion I highly recommend the next book club be: Perdido Street Station. It's SO weird! But in a good way. Someone Let me know if you're interested and I'll pull my copy out as well.
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I have embassytown sitting on my to read pile. Maybe I'll check perdido if I like it.
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Are you guys going to ever review the Thomas Covenant series or even just the first book?
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@The Joel since you also like The Road, why not try Blood Meridian? It's also a Cormac McCarthy classic. :) (warning, it's also depressing)
Ps: Jumper, the novel actually isn't like the film at all. And it doesn't suck (just a distant future suggestion) -
Gokiburi_Chachacha said:
Urban Fantasy suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
I prefer urbane fantasy, like Neil Gaiman's. Oh Marquis deCarabas, you are a caution!
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American Gods was fantastic, but that's the only Gaiman novel I've read.
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Dreg said:
I prefer urbane fantasy, like Neil Gaiman's. Oh Marquis deCarabas, you are a caution!
I see what you did there.
As for American Gods, I found it way too predictable, but then again, I had just finished reading ten volumes of Sandman.
My beef with Urban Fantasy in general is it seems like little more than an excuse for various Mary Sues and Garry Stues to have freaky monster sex with their freaky vampire / werewolf / zombie / Aztec mummy significant others. I can't take that sort of thing seriously. -
^First thing I thought of when urban fantasy got mentioned was that I'd rather not have to read about your sexual relations with various and sundry non-human creatures, thank you. I agree, the whole genre often seems just an excuse to write crappy sex fics.
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Gokiburi_Chachacha said:Dreg said:
I prefer urbane fantasy, like Neil Gaiman's. Oh Marquis deCarabas, you are a caution!
I see what you did there.
As for American Gods, I found it way too predictable, but then again, I had just finished reading ten volumes of Sandman.
My beef with Urban Fantasy in general is it seems like little more than an excuse for various Mary Sues and Garry Stues to have freaky monster sex with their freaky vampire / werewolf / zombie / Aztec mummy significant others. I can't take that sort of thing seriously.
Teen Wolf is the best urban fantasy ever. If a dude finds out he is a werewolf/vampire/time traveller/William Shakespeare, he is for sure going to use it to get laid. He is never going to use it as an excuse not to get laid and agonize over it. That's why most urban fantasy is bad writing. Even if the monsters hook up, it takes them forever to do it. They go out of their way to create obstacles for themselves. "OH, I'm an immortal, eternally youthful titan who is immune to STDs. It has never occurred to me that I could ever know love!"
Alf is another great example of the right way to do it. Alf was an alien. He tried to use this fact to bang his host's teenage daughter. That's honesty. That's art. It's kind of sketchy, but hey, that's life. He also ate cats.
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Alf and Teen Wolf were both set in small towns, though. I don't think it qualifies as "urban".
Mostly, it's the sex partners that are monstrous in some sense. Anita Blake and Harry Dresden are essentially human, only with magical abilities, for example. The fact that it's always the boyfriend / girlfriend / casual love interest that is some sort of sexy, mysterious, foreign Other is one of the prime reasons why I think most of the subgenre is Sue-licious crap. -
What if the book is about two werewolves fucking?
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Then it goes in the furries thread.
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Is Hellblazer or Hell Boy considered urban fantasy? I like those.
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okay, okay, what about two vampires fucking?
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karaokeninja said:
okay, okay, what about two vampires fucking?
I don't know. Can they do it missionary style, or does that make them turn to dust?
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This is, basically, the plot of the novel I wrote. :Dkaraokeninja said:What if the book is about two werewolves fucking?
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So in other words: you produced a piece of furry literature? I'm shocked and appalled. Well, at least I would be if I actually cared about such things.
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@kaazuwulf: Oh yeah, I forgot about Hellblazer. We can make that an exception then. And Hellboy is...I dunno what you'd call it exactly, but its environs are predominantly non-urban European, so no, I wouldn't classify it as such.
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I like the whole concept of blending pulp detective stories with fantasy/horror, but I guess it just doesn't work as well as it sounds. I thought Angel did a decent job at it at times, and Hellblazer, or what I've read of it so far, does it perfectly (the Constantine movie to a lesser extent), but those are the only good examples I can think of.
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The Sadman Slim books are pretty decent urban fantasy. At least the first two books.
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I think you need to differentiate "fantasy in a contemporary setting" and "Anita Blake ripoffs".
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That's what the phrase "urban" is for. "Urban fantasy" is just another name for "sexy-time Anita Blake rip-off".
It's like how "urban romance" is just marketing speak for "erotica with black people in it". -
Wait, urban means black?!
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"Urban" can also refer to Latinos, but yeah it's mostly refers to black. It's become a marketing euphemism for inner-city, hood, ghetto, etc. So rap is no longer a "black" thing, it's an "urban" thing. Stupid fucking marketers.
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Well rap technically is an urban thing. It's birth and growth were pretty much entirely in cities. And not necessarily a black thing...
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Werewolves can't rap. The fangs are very counterproductive to beatboxing.
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Maybe the forums can have a different thread for depressing news stories? Seems like Current Events is currently used for that.
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Sometimes I think that but they're pretty well served there I think. If a topic ever existed specifically for that purpose I hypothesize that it would get less discussion.
