[ SECRET POST #3526 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3526 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
[Feed The Birds, from Mary Poppins]


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03.
(Once Upon A Time)


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04.
[ Dota 2 esport ]


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05.
[Great British Bake Off, series 3]


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06. http://i.imgur.com/82bEEum.png
[The Private Report on My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness; linked for nudity/implied porn, illustrated]


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07.
[We Happy Few]


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08.
[Stranger Things]














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #504.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Book club - AUGUST DISCUSSION!

[(Anonymous)]

"who we then treat as weaponized cattle"

This would be one of the central themes of the series - whether it is right, or even practical, to do so; how does one change it; what other ways could dragons, with their tendency to bond hard with people, work with society, and how do they live on their own?

It's okay to be annoyed about the initial attitudes to harnessing dragons. It gets discussed. (If you don't like the viewpoint character or the prose, eh, people like what they like.)

Re: Book club - AUGUST DISCUSSION!

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

You're the same anon from the comment directly above, right?

That's really good to know about the different treatment of dragons in different places and cultures.

My problem is that I see no potential for that in what I have read so far. It's not so much that I absolutely need the full Freedom For All Dragons thing (ideally yes, but not necessarily). I don't even see the potential for questioning the human-dragon situation in the first place.

Novik opened a can of worms, when she decided to have a speaking dragon, that's on her, but that's not really the problem. It would have been all right, if she clearly showed or even just implied that dragons are more or less the same to her as other animals in a human-animal hierarchy and the situation is therefore justified. I wouldn't have agreed with her, but it would have been fine from a storytelling perspective. Because the whole voluntarily being harnessed thing is a cop-out that doesn't address anything.

Treating this as a non-issue however, which she does in the first 50+ pages, is a writing fail. And what I've seen doesn't convince me that she is able to handle anything of the sort in a thoughtful, sensible and intelligent manner.

But I'm glad to hear that she addresses and handles it further down the line. That makes me much less uncomfortable about the whole thing. So thanks for telling me! :)

Me not liking the protagonist is not really the problem either. I love or even just enjoyed plenty of books with protagonists I didn't like. But it bugs me that he is mostly an empty non-entity. His whole person seems ingenuine to me.

South America: dragons hoard up people like treasure
LOL. How does this work exactly? Are they dead bodies or do they curl up on a pile of living people like on a pile of gold? Wouldn't they get crushed? Or am I imagining this wrong?

Re: Book club - AUGUST DISCUSSION!

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, that was me.

"South America: dragons hoard up people like treasure
LOL. How does this work exactly? Are they dead bodies or do they curl up on a pile of living people like on a pile of gold?"

There was a smallpox epidemic that cut down the human population drastically. In this universe the draconic impulse to feel attached to people (and be possessive about other things) is very strong. In this case, what with the sickness, dragons attached to ayllu (sort of like clans) love and adore and guard their precious few human members and sometimes kidnap them from other dragons. Mostly they farm.

"My problem is that I see no potential for that in what I have read so far... Treating this as a non-issue however, which she does in the first 50+ pages, is a writing fail."

What can I say? Novik writes a lot of slow burn for her big plots. The start of the book is looking at Laurence and the naval view of dragons and aviators - giving the situation a solid grounding before deviating from it. He hits a lot of culture shock when he reaches the training ground and how aviators view dragons and what they're really like. There's a lot of leisurely exploration of the world, plus friendship and a bit of action. He and Temeraire gradually become more dissatisfied with How Things Are Done. Slow burn is a lot of what Novik ^does.

If the pace didn't work for you, I'm sorry. It's a book I love, but not everything works for everybody.

Re: Book club - AUGUST DISCUSSION!

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, yes, that's certainly less sinister than what I imagined. :)

Pacing is a good point though. Her pacing didn't work for me at all (besides my other issues with characters and style), too slow of a slow burn. I guess I would have needed a discernible undercurrent beneath the beginning, which reads like a glorification of the status quo. But I'm glad the status does get challenged later on.

And maybe her pacing is more normal for series? That the books work better together as a whole than as indivual pieces? I honestly don't know, I don't read series.

In any case, thank you for all the info!

Re: Book club - AUGUST DISCUSSION!

[(Anonymous)]

Welcome.