It’s really good.

Yeah, I quite enjoyed Stormfront. It feels weird with the absolute need to write about the breasts and looks of every woman in the book, and it makes it feel fairly shallow. But there’s something that feels like it will become a really good series in there too, so I’m inclined to try a few more.

There are in universe and out of universe reasons for the general tendency of Harry to be the a benevolent sexist in the books. Out of universe, it’s playing on many of the tropes of classic noir stories and that was a really common one. There’s a longer story behind us that I can write out if you care, but basically this first one was written in protest by the author to include as many tropes and clichés to try and prove a point and he failed successfully. In universe, you learn a bit in this one and more over the next few books, but Dresden grew up without a female presence in his life, and really did not learn much beyond what was written in early sci-fi, and fantasy novels, and then, when he was a teenager in a extremely unhealthy relationship.

That said, it is never treated virtuously in any of the books. It gets him in trouble many times, other women in the books call him on it, and he does recognize that it is something he needs to change in himself. And it isn’t a perspective that is shared by the author, in so far as it doesn’t appear when he writes other characters.

I have the same concern Glenn Fleishman had on mastodon. I love the idea of this, but it probably still needs to be enumerated with a more specific license.

Otherwise it’s just like standing in the corner of your office screaming “I Declare Bankruptcy” and thinking it has some concrete effects.

If it’s replies to a post of mine I upvote virtually everything. If something is so incorrect is borderline misinformation or so off topic that there’s no connection to the thread, I downvote. If it’s really insightful that I think more people should read it, I upvote.

That was my take too. Their overall point wasn’t bad but the start was a complete non sequitur that made me question if I wanted to finish because it’s a bad foundation for their actual argument. 

The book that really got me started reading fantasy is also arguably a “school for magic” book from long before it was a trope. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin is a classic.

Gladstone is definitely still writing stuff. The Craft Sequence series is done at 6 books, but there is a new trilogy called The Craft Wars that is meant to wrap up the whole universe. The 1st book Dead Country came out in March with book 2 slated for April 2024 per fantasticfiction.com

Seems like a simple acronym to me:

Everyone Do Your Thing, Just Episode Downloads (for) Home & Great Movie Downloads. Happy Media.

I just finished the first book of the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. I started a new job and my brain has been there so I’ve fallen behind in reading. It was good and an interesting take on the “school for magic” genre.

Starting the second book in Max Gladstone’s Craft series. I read the first one for r/fantasy BINGO last year and really enjoyed it.

It was a creative writing class by another author if I remember the story. He had graduated with a literature degree already and was trying and failing to write super high-minded stuff and get it published. This teacher and he were butting heads because she wanted him to basically do a story that he considered trope-y or cliched. So finally he sat down to prove her wrong and out popped the first part of Dresden files. She sent him home to map out the rest and he misunderstood and mapped out the entire series when she meant the rest of the book.

I’ll be the contrarian here and suggest that—especially if you’re OK with trying one book out of order and then going back to read the rest just so that you can get a feel for the books—that you start with Dead Beat. It was written as an introduction for new fans when the Dresden files TV show was getting ready to come out. It really shows off some of Jim Butcher’s strengths as an author after he got his feet underneath him. It’s the book that the fairly well-known (spoilery) meme is from.

As to Dresden’s, chauvinism, this older Reddit comment, probably addresses it as well as any I’ve seen. I will say that it isn’t just treated as though it must be there. There are strong, textual and sub-textual reasons why he acts and thinks the way he does, it’s never treated virtuously, it does get him in trouble, and he does realize he has to be better.

He had a bunch of personal life drama after 2013 that involved a divorce, a move, building a house with radioactive complications, a wedding, and a second divorce.

He seems to be back on schedule though.

Raymond Feist’s Riftwar series (starts with Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master). It’s a great series overall though the books are a bit inconsistent in quality. The opening 4 books are superb though. And I would strongly recommend any fantasy fan read the two magician books, if nothing else.

The Rook series by Daniel O’Malley, Iron Druid by Kevin Hearne, Libriomancer by Jim C Hines and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich are all really good series with good world building to read while waiting for Dresden too. Iron Druid and Libriomancer are finished but they were only a few books long.

I don’t know if I can say that I will be devastated, but given it’s my current favorite series it will definitely be a big moment. But it’s something I’ve already gone through with another series, so I’ve had practice 😀

The numbers are a bit in the air because of some of the plot got shifted around and that added 1-2 books. If I recall the current plan is 22 regular casebooks, 3 short story collections, and one trilogy to finish the series (some times referred to as “Big Apocalyptic Trilogy” or BAT).

See here: https://www.jim-butcher.com/faq

They shouldn’t have had storage issues, they were never going to host images or communities. They simply were an instance that only federated with nsfw instances so all could be only porn.

The ideal would have to be some sort of AI translation. The problem is that PDF is a page layout format and EPUB is a reading format and you can’t just extract the text without understanding what parts are affected by page layout, think of reading by columns for example. And you would need to train the AI on what’s unnecessary for reading comprehension

The extent of my moderation experience has been a few old phpbb forums and a few admittedly large Facebook groups. Let me think it over and I’ll get back to you shortly.

I also wonder if it might benefit from ebooks being separate because authors could post updates about them as theoretically as well as it’d be easier to manage spam.

Do you have a place to post when we find significant discounts on ebooks?

I think I understand where you made the mistake, it’s not red dit, I think it’s supposed to be re ddit. It’s where they “did it” again (or “re did it”) but like All those other early 2000’s sites they just dropped a vowel so it’s just re ddit.