[ SECRET POST #7015 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #7015 ⌋

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


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[BG3 and other RPGs]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 37 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1002.
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

[fscom]

03. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/56a0d4bc729d.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I feel personally betrayed by Naomi Novak's books being shit, because I remember being fandom friends with them and really enjoying their fic and general style.

I should go back and re-read their old stuff, maybe my memory is rose tinted, but I also don't want those fun memories ruined by reality.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, I totally disagree, I thought the Scholomance series, Uprooted, and Spinning Silver were all well written and entertaining. I did hear the Temeraire series went downhill so never got into it. Loved her fanfic back in the day too.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh I unexpectedly loved the Scholomance series. When I started the first one I felt like I wasn't going to enjoy it, but I ended up tearing through the whole series.

[(Anonymous)]

I could have written almost this exact comment. Love her standalones and Scholomance, heard the same about Temeraire and haven't bothered.

Never knew her as a fic writer though.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, there's the misgendering secret.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

How is it misgendering? Them is a perfectly acceptable third person single pronoun and has been used as such for almost 300 years. Moreover, if you don't know someone's gender or which pronouns they go by, it feels more respectful, to me at least, than just guessing.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

OP knows Naomi goes by she/her, they stated so when submitting the secret. Once you know, using a different one is misgendering. They tried to say it was fine because they misgender people all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Rude, even though I think the Temeraire series never quite lived up to its promise.

[(Anonymous)]

Are they? I read Uprooted back when it came out and I remember really enjoying it, but it's been over ten years and I don't remember enough about it to tell if I'd still find it good now.

[sparklywalls]

Timely, because I just read Uprooted for the very first time. I picked it up because the 10th anniversary edition was displayed in one of my bookshops as a recommended read under fantasy.

Anyway, I actually thought from a prose perspective it was decent - not terribly written at all imo. But its very a book of two halves. The first half was more enjoyable than the second, it seems to groan under the weight of its world-building in the second half. Also, the love scene at around the 350-60 pages mark didn't feel particularly earned.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here, by being "shit" I mostly just meant I personally didn't enjoy any of her books. I think I was even more frustrated because everyone speaks so highly of them, so my fandom days with her plus the raving reviews had me excited, then I actively disliked the books. And they come up so often in rec lists.

[(Anonymous)]

I've heard of her in fandom days, but wasn't into HP so never read her stuff. Tried the Temaraire books and thought it was a cute concept, but very light on plot. Uprooted was okay, IIRC but her work (like a lot of books these days) sound appealing to me in terms of the concept but the actual writing is just so-so.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, my issue with the Temeraire series was that it started off interesting, but somewhere in the middle it started reading like fanfic of the earlier books.

But I think the actual fanfic would probably hold up as long as you go into it with the understanding that most of her fanfic was meant to scratch a particularly Id-y itch, and if you've left that headspace behind you might cringe a bit.

[(Anonymous)]

I think "shit" is way too strong. They're not great literature or anything, but they're functional, entertaining and tell a fairly original story. The Temeraire series suffered from massive overreach, but I don't regret reading it.

Her fic, on the other hand, falls into that weird zone where it's a great story but it doesn't really work for me as the kind of fanfiction I like, which is in dialogue with the original canon. The more you know or enjoy a particular canon, the less enjoyable her fic is.

[(Anonymous)]

I wanted to badly to like Temeraire, but the first book was so boring and had annoying clashing morals dissonances. The main character is Good and very easily accepts women being in the military when he learns that it's because a certain type of dragon only bonds with women, the main bad guy is Evil and therefore stubbornly a sexist asshole about it. Realistically, back then a "good" man would be against women in battle for any reason because he would consider it cruel to women to put their delicate selves into levels of combat where they'd surely die in immediately. Also, the annoying fiancee is scared of dragons, oh my god how bigoted to not immediately be fine sharing space with a creature you've never met but know is big and strong enough to kill you instantly by accident!