Jinxed
Member
I don't remember, I think it was the bear one. I did a laugh react because I thought it was absurd. Like, really? A bear flag? Gay isn't enough?
D&D seems a bit different lately…
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
I'll only read if she hooks up with a reborn Wulgar who is the actual protagonist going full Conan with his mighty thews.
Doczu
Member
*Checks bear brotherhood*
Literally a Slaaneshi cult where they need to dig deeper into kinks to get their noodles to stand up.
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NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt
Biggest Trails Stan
I'm a huge fan of The Legend of Drizzt series but stopped reading after I finished reading The Hunter Blade Trilogy back in the early 2000s. I read The Orc King last year, I enjoyed it but it's been so long that I forgot lot of details from the previous books. Now he has a daughter? That name sounds like a stripper name and she look manly from that cover art they show of her. Not sure if I'm gonna to continue reading this series after I finish reading Transition Trilogy...
The entire fantasy genre caters to female readers now. TBH, it's bizarre stepping into a Barnes and Noble these days in general. There's almost nothing for men to read. Going into bookstores abroad you don't see this trend at all, either, just the US.
Rran
Member
Dominion is still awesome, and pretty much run by one very low-key, very smart dude.
falconhoof
Member
I'm going to presume that the narrator's voice is Brie's voice and he identifies as Drizzt's daughter.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
Not really. Go to any big bookstore in Italy and the novels closest to the entry door, apart from modern or history novels, are all the like of A Court of Roses and Thorns and the rest of the copypaste fantasy for girls that has invaded bookstore in the last few years.
I have a friend that read a bunch of those, and now even she's like "I'm done with those, they're all the same".
Bookstores in Italy are great compared to the current state of things in the US. You have many classics front and center, like the recent Gustave Dore illustrated hardcover editions of Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy.
In the US all of the B&N locations lately center around romance slop, new age nonsense, revisionist history.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
Oh yeah, the variety is there, even if the data says almost nobody actually reads books and like 99% of the people you see in bookstores at any given hour is women.
But the romance / fantasy slop is pushed front and center anyway. If you see color in an Italian bookstore, it's those.
I haven't been in an American bookstore (or in the US at all, actually) for 30 years. I was in awe at the quantity and variety when I went there. Sad to hear about their current state.
Fbh
Member
Yup, there's still some good stuff but it's harder to find.
Discoverability has become harder for fantasy/sci fi that caters more to a male audience. You aren't getting prime shelf space at book stores, lots of online communities like Goodreads have a predominantly female user base and, just like with movies, a lot of awards now seemingly care more about ensuring the list of nominated authors looks diverse rather than only focusing on the quality of the work.
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This isn't quite true. There are male focused, or at least not "solely female oriented" series out there. Murderhobo, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Correia's Black Sword pentology, most of Baen Books, really. Sanderson is probably the only door stopper fantasy author still writing that I'm familiar with today, but he has a pretty balanced set of characters in line with his rather puritanical world view. I've only been to one bookstore in recent years and they at least had a lot of Dungeon Crawler Carl, not sure about the other stuff.
But yes, it does feel like the fantasy genre has been totally hijacked by the YA movement as well as everyone now writing "diverse characters", or worse, totally blank slate characters with virtually no physical description, purely to make any lucrative media adaptation easier. Very few "farm boy becomes king by rescuing the princess" plots for sure. A lot of the gritty male stuff has migrated to military sci-fi or litrpg type stuff like the Forgotten Ruin series (Ranger regiment sent into future where rogue nanotech has basically created a dark fantasy world, kind of a updated version of The Lost Regiment series).
NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt
Biggest Trails Stan
I've been using Goodreads since the early 2000s. It's one of my favorite sites due to how when tracking the books I'm reading, I can see see how many pages left I have etc. Really scratches that OCD Itch I have. But at the same time, lot of the other users on that site are insufferable as hell. They all lean left and they tend to show it in their reviews. I have lot of them on block. It's unfortunate how common it is to see them able to effect reviews scores of otherwise classics due to these classics having stuff that they would deem "Problematic". When it comes to overall scores of books on Goodreads, that's one of the things I ignore on that site
was this written by the script-writer for the Nolan Odyssey film?????
Walliwallipaloo
Member
They captured the hobby so they can target children with their propaganda. Libraries everywhere are hosting "D&D" events. Little wonder why.
NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt
Biggest Trails Stan
Banjo64
cumsessed
While I would hope that DnD in libraries is because librarians are, in general, a bookish sort that played dnd growing up themselves, I do fear you are correct that it is a way to introduce a mind virus to impressionable and vulnerable young people.
Walliwallipaloo
Member
I assure you, it is. One of those events was actually how I got into D&D tabletop about four years ago. Of course, I was aware of D&D before that, but had never played. Wife had the idea of taking the family there because why not. It was an open, everyone's-welcome event, so sure.
It was hosted by two people - an adult and an older teenager. Both males, both obviously... flamboyant. This being four years ago, this didn't bother me. The adult gave everyone in the room a brief tutorial on the game, and what stood out there is he described the clerics as "god-botherers." That was some... pretty heavy language considering the venue, but whatever.
And of course he had his partner go off to a different room to run a separate game for those of us who wanted to play alongside their kids. Didn't think much of it at the time, but I definitely notice it now that he set it up so that he had a room full of nothing but children behind closed doors.
This started quite some time ago, methinks. And man, this ridiculous, over-the-top nonsense I'm seeing lately only cements just how right my squicky feelings were that day.
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BadBurger
Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Same as it ever was, that is, the Forgotten Realms can be whatever a campaign group wants it to be. D&D is a game of imagination. And D&D is more popular than it has ever been. It's actually mainstream now. A group of streamers were so popular their campaign spawned a smash hit show on a major streaming platform. D&D is routinely one of the most viewed categories on Twitch now. The idea that D&D would be this popular and this mainstream even a decade ago was preposterous. So it's working, and the more the merrier. Run your campaign how you like, use whatever ruleset you want, it's not like the D&D police are going to show up at your house and stop you.
Anyway, funny image. Chibi beholder, cheerful owlbear cub dancing with a druid, pink-haired bard with a mohawk jamming out, good times.
Anyway, funny image. Chibi beholder, cheerful owlbear cub dancing with a druid, pink-haired bard with a mohawk jamming out, good times.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
The problem is that good or decent writers won't ever get published because everything is political. You can only access via nepotism or by writing propaganda. It's impossible for a legit new author to reach book shops. I'm happy that the bunch who read my books love them, but I can't help getting pissed when they innocently ask me "why do you self-publish?" Even if I tell them the reasons, they can't believe the industry is this corrupt.
The only way to read good new books Today is through recommendations or reading free extracts in Amazon, so you get a first impression on an unknown author. Nothing mainstream is reliable. In fact, mainstream will most likely be shit.
Fbh
Member
Yeah the site itself, as in the design and features, is great. But I can't relate to most of the userbase, so everything from their user scores to the end of the year awards they do are basically worthless to me.