Here’s a little case study in alt-right hypocrisy.
Last week, like a lot of people, the wannabe self-help guru and alt-right opinion-haver who calls himself “DarkTriadMan” professed to be outraged by Kathy Griffin posing for photos with a stylized severed head of Donald Trump.
Given that DarkTriadMan’s whole schtick is based on the idea that men should act more like psychopaths if they want to get ahead in life, you wouldn’t think he’d be much bothered by Griffin’s admittedly dark stunt, but he made quite a show of his outrage, endlessly retweeting alt-right attacks on Griffin and adding his own spin to the news:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/870652822836195328
He was glad to see Griffin brought to tears by the reaction to her photos:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/870689717049634816
And fantasized about Barron Trump ultimately taking his revenge:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/869935774883500033
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/869958745186590720
Today, in the wake of latest London attacks, Mr. Dark Triad seems to have gotten over his squeamishness about Griffin’s supposed call for violence against a sitting politician. Now he’s quite openly calling for the mass slaughter of Muslims.
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871471460543602688
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871355215215304704
He’s also talking about how great it would be if the mayor of London — a sitting politician, like Trump, with two children — were to be burned at the stake.
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871354479593091072
Or impaled:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871353175466496000
Or torn apart by horses:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871352151846658048
Or blinded and hung:
https://twitter.com/DarkTriadMan/status/871352529262694400
This is more or less what I’ve come to expect from the alt-right; their “moral outrage” is almost always in very bad faith. But it’s still a little surprising to see just how blatant their hypocrisy can be.
I can second dlouwe on the malazan series it’s one of my favorite worlds and my now a days favorite author.
And sometimes I just wanted to throw the books into a wall. It’s complicated.
@Dalillama
They sound like great recommendations, I’ll look them up at the weekend! Cheers.
@everyone who answered my comment
Thank you so much for all the recommendations I’ve read at least half of the books listed but there’s a bunch that I haven’t read and a few I haven’t even heard up which is beautiful I will definitely be adding a bunch of them to my list
@Dalillama
Thank you for the info about Brian McClellan. I knew there was one more I didn’t know that the next one came out or was even available for pre-order I must look into that. I really like those books. They weren’t the best ever but that gunpowder magic system is original and clever and he’s a pretty good writer definitely better than average for fantasy there’s so much generic crap in the fantasy genre.
@dlouwe
I tried to read the first Malazan book and I was so confused. I’ve meant to try it again for ages because it looks like the type of series that I love.10 or more books long, tons of characters, convoluted plotting, tons of intrigue and stuff like that, but the first book feels like a second book. It feels like I’m missing something. Does it start to (I don’t know the word I’m looking for, maybe coalesce?)more in the second half of the book? Meaning I loved many aspects of the book but it didn’t make sense as a whole. Does that make sense ? Can you tell me why everyone likes it so much and how I should be thinking when I read the first one again, please? I really appreciate it because I would love to have another dozen thousand page fantasy novels to read, especially since the series is already done.
@Dalillama
I love Bujold’s fantasy also I just have a thing for the Vorkosigan books in particular cause I read them during my formative years and they meant a lot to me. But I definitely read Curse of Chalion and the other books in that world and the spirit ring and a few others and enjoyed them. I completely forgot to mention Marion Zimmer Bradley though. Mists of Avalon is obviously her best work but the Darkover books are pretty awesome also. The quality varies but some of them are really excellent. I’ve heard her referred to as a feminist author so figured maybe I should mention her now that I remembered her.
@KatieKitten
I no longer read MZB; unfortunately it turns out that there are some very unpleasant skeletons indeed in her closet, and there’s limits to my willingness to separate the creator from the art.
Oh, I’m wrong; I must have seen a different book and thought it was the second one. Only Gods of Blood and Powder is out from the new trilogy.
Oh, same here. Only you said you liked fantasy, I wanted to be sure you’d seen hers since you’d not mentioned it 🙂
On the subject of books… Naomi Alderman’s ‘The Power’ is getting some brilliant reviews today having won the Bailey’s Prize; I’m looking forward to reading it, but it keeps being referred to as her fourth book. It isn’t, she wrote an amazing Dr Who novel called ‘Borrowed Time’ as well, so this is her fifth book.
Don’t ignore the Who, is all. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
@ Katiekitten, MZB was the Woody Allen of SFF.
@KatieKitten
I totally agree that Gardens of the Moon is a bit confusing on first read, and definitely feels like a second book rather than a first, and there’s a few exacerbating factors:
1) The book series as a whole is meant to portray a “slice” of a larger history, so GotM just plops you right in the middle of ongoing events.
2) Erickson deliberately avoids hand-holding and expository info-dumps as much as possible. This can be frustrating in the first book before you get a “handle” on the conventions of the world.
3) GotM was written 10 years before the 2nd book, and as such is a fair bit less developed than the rest of the series.
To answer your main question of, “does it start to make sense?” – kinda. Some things will be clarified by the end of the book, but most things will continue to be drip-fed to you over the rest of the series, and this becomes one of its core appeals.
If you do attempt a re-read, a couple things to keep in mind:
-Erickson doesn’t like to waste words, so don’t skim. Treat it like a novel-sized short story. Most important points will be reiterated, but there are a lot of off-hand nuggets that can be used to piece together a greater understanding of events.
-Get comfortable not knowing who/what is being talked about right away. This is just part of how the books are written, and you learn to trust that you’ll get to the important info in due time.
-Don’t try to fathom the magic system too much in GotM. As a mentioned, it’s 10 years before the 2nd book, and the ideas develop a lot in that time. (Though it’ll remain pretty oblique throughout the series)
-At the halfway point of the book you’ll get a whole new cast of characters. Get ready for this before hand to avoid frustration.
Now, on to why I love the series:
-Honestly, a lot of the above points. They are difficult books to digest, but so rewarding. Once it stops being frustrating, it becomes a selling point. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift compared to most other fantasy, but if it works for you, it’s so incredibly worth it.
-The scope of the world is massive. Erickson is an archaeologist, so he things about time and history on a different scale than people generally do. The prequel trilogy he’s currently writing happens ~300,000 years before GotM, and includes some characters that show up in it. The world is old and he is able to very effectively portray that.
-They have some of the most emotionally powerful moments in any media I’ve ever consumed. Like, I don’t really cry at much, and I had to put down one of the books to avoid bawling in a restaurant.
And just, so much more. I could gush for an indefinite amount of time. But I won’t. I will, however, answer any further questions you have. At length. 🙂
@Everyone
I am back! I am about to explain my absence in my response to Katie.
It’s a little from column A, and a little from Column B. You’re not entirely wrong on both counts.
My father is just a flat-out abusive bastard. I don’t like to say it, but there it is.
He used to physically abuse me and my mother a long time ago. His justification was that he would bring home money and didn’t divorce my mother, so he was entirely within his rights to physically harm us.
I still have marks on my body from his assault. Also, his reasons were fucking bullshit because my mother used to be the primary breadwinner in the house before he begged her to stop working because he felt embarrassed staying at home taking care of me.
Nowadays he spends his time verbally abusing myself and my mother. He screams, bellows, shouts, tells my mother he wishes she was dead and that he was dead, how she should hurry up and die, etc, and this causes her to burst into tears and cry almost every day.
It’s depressing. Scenes of unimaginable horror. That’s my life. Like, last night I literally spent time listening to my mother cry herself to sleep after his latest bout of abuse.
Now, as for my mother…she is partially forgetful, and partially just abusive in her own small way.
For example, my computer – the primary desktop PC (I hand-built it myself – this is a point of pride for me because I am a PC gaming enthusiast and have been for over a decade, and hand-built all my own custom rigs) is right next to hers (which I also built for her).
She swore to me she can’t read what I type on my monitor.
Seconds later, she will read my own posts back to me, giving her own game away due to her fading mental capability. And if I say, “You know, you didn’t have to lie to me about that,” she will swear to me she never lied about it.
There was no need to lie about this. There was never any need to lie about it. I am not a misanthropic ogre like my father.
If she admitted “Yes, I like to look over your shoulder and snoop on you while you type,” I literally would not care. At all. I wouldn’t start screaming at her to just die, like my father does.
Yet, for some reason, she feels the need to lie to me and make stuff up and it’s really hurtful. Her lies are pathetic, since her mental faculties have dulled greatly, and a child could see through them, but it’s still painful to me that I spend this much time taking care of her and yet she plays these dumb fucking mind games.
She plays a lot of dumb mind games like these, which I effortlessly discern, since she doesn’t have the capability to actually mount any sort of intrigue. It’s like when a three-year-old tries to lie to you or outwit you.
Hey, do any of you have problems with your employees sleeping on the job or being lazy? Hire me! I am really good at staying up and paying attention to you all the time, because of my experience with taking care of my mother: if I take even a five minute nap, it’s clear evidence that I hate her. If I don’t pay attention to every single thing she says, I hate her. She will then go into a long guilt-trip session in which she accuses me of secretly hating her, which is fucking bullshit because I wouldn’t be here, dedicating my every waking hour to taking care of her if that were the case.
I don’t mind taking care of her so much. It’s the lies and the poor treatment that bother me. I feel like I at least deserve to be treated like a fucking human being instead of a robotic machine, you know? I deserve not to be lied to and invalidated and deceived (or at least be the target of attempts to deceive me, since she can’t quite manage the real deal).
There are other things she does, like invalidating my sexuality or misgendering me, but I’m not going to trouble you with all the sordid details of that.
I was like this when I was a teenager for a while, too. Doubly so because I was already pretty ladylike (people were already ID’ing me as a girl even before I had realized I was trans) and I felt I had to play at being a tough guy for a while, which led to me steep myself in all sorts of toxic masculinity bullshit extreme behavior for a long time.
I’m honestly surprised I’m not dead, sometimes.
I’d be happy to. I have a venue where you can contact me outside of here.
Also, you would be right. I am extremely distressed by my circumstances.
I have trouble speaking to people (again). This was never a problem for me since I was about 10 or 11, but my social anxiety has returned with a vengeance since I am basically cloistered in my parent’s house.
Talking to them is impossible for the reasons I outlined. I talk to them, but only very light, easy subjects; the conversational equivalent of baby food. I do not carry on deep, intense conversations of the sort I have with you guys.
And lastly like we said before, you live in Long Island, I take the LIRR from NYC to Long Island occasionally if you ever want to hang. We can discuss fantasy novels and medieval history and pretty clothes and other awesome topics. I’m not trying to be creepy, you genuinely seem like a kind creative intelligent interesting person who’s upset and dealing with a lot who may not have enough people in there mental support system At my old age of 33 it seems I rarely make new friends IRL anymore though I’d like to. I don’t seem to know how anymore. It was so easy when I was young. But don’t forget, we’re awesome unicorns! That’s gotta make you feel least a little better? I hope you start to feel better soon.
If you could do this, I would be so happy. Also, I’m sure we’d get along great.
There’s just one problem: I’m not allowed to have anyone over at the house, and the house belong to my parents so obviously I’m not going to fight about it.
They don’t have an explanation for this. I’m just not allowed to have anyone over. This is one of the many dumb little rules I have to play along with or else it’s a shitstorm. I don’t have the spoons to make a fight of it; and this is funny, because my mother always acts as though I’m gonna fight her about something, but I just don’t have the fucking spoons to manage fighting.
It’s difficult enough taking care of myself, her, and my father without expending spoons on stupid shit like arguments, so I mostly just allow my parents to run my life for me.
Someone in the thread asked me why I don’t get in-home care for my parents, and I had actually looked into it, but I had to drop the idea because they both have a horror of letting people in the house.
Secondly, I can’t really leave the house for long periods of time for obvious reasons. This is why I basically have no friends in real life. Nobody wants to only hang out for like a half hour or an hour (and even an hour is stretching it for me).
So we might be forced to only speak through email or Skype or Discord for now.
I’ve been gently raising the subject of moving my mother into an assisted living facility and she doesn’t seem too opposed to it, but that could just be another fucking lie so I don’t know, but perhaps my circumstances might change.
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I had to wait until I could get a private moment to use my computer, because I definitely could not handle having her read this particular post. Nothing is worth that.