/hobby/ - Hobby

Getting close to wrapping up Zola's La Débâcle about the utter misery of the Franco Prussian war, from the peasantry, to the army rank and file, all the way up to Napoleon III himself. He's done a great job of building up a sense of scale for the sizes of the armies and the landscape of northeastern France, then painting a picture of a landscape peppered with the debris of battle and flooded with torrents of shattered men and the victorious Prussians. Also love the way that even the largely defeated men can turn on a dime when they have nothing left to lose.
I've previously read Zola's Germinal, about a coal mining village in France developing class consciousness but then being utterly defeated. I definitely recommend it if you're not interested in constant talk about army maneuvers.
Anyone recently read any interesting fiction that they would recommend me? I want to read several more fiction pieces before I dive back into historical literature, I find that fiction does a better job of improving my reading stamina. Even memoirs can do the trick tbh.

i read le rivage des syrtes last month
in it we become acquainted with the venerable and illustrious country of orsenna, a country somewhere in some mediterranean sea experiencing some hundreds of years of peace after an unfinished war, outwardly rich and peaceful, the people of orsenna have grown restless beneath the surface as society slowly decays and retreats from the borders to take refuge in the heartland.
in front of orsenna and across the sea lies the country of farghestan, a sleeping giant of an oriental amalgam and perennial foe. the people of orsenna have been forbidden contact with farghestan after the last war and contact on their end has also stopped after farghestan collapsed into petty feudal clan wars yet now strange and mysterious forces are at work in farghestan just as in orsenna the people cry out for change, for something that makes them step out of their monotony and allows them to feel something new, no matter if the cost is the likely self-immolation of orsenna.

the book makes an excellent work of creating an atmosphere of foreboding, that something ominous and ineluctable is on the horizon even as you scream at the characters to get a fucking grip on themselves! and think about the consequences but they can't stop and even if they know what might happen they care not for they're sick and tired of the never ending peace.

excellent book to read if you're an fsl (french as a second language), the writing is very beautiful but you do need a somewhat high vocabulary to enjoy it. lots of florid internal monologue and reminiscence. don't know how well translated the english version is.

>>46696
forgot to add that i can't help but being reminded of the current state of the world in some aspects or with regards to certain people when reading it which gives it a certain layer of grimness

>>45585
Kolya Krassotkin is a predecessor to Cuno from Disco Elysium.

>>46696
sounds interesting i'll try take a look at this in translation

>>45013
>I also used to think it would be cool to see female space marines (I like Samus Aran) but now I know the lore and the fact that Sisters of Battle exist.
On the other hand, trans space marines can still be a thing. Like, space marines were already turned into these giant throbbling pieces of meat so they already had surgery on their bodies technically, it only makes sense to go even further and just transition.

>>46521
AI slop

>>3335
Yea theres kind of a nice (seems to me very deliberately) meta-textual irony in the 40K lore where Chaos, this big evil Other that is supposed to be the justification for mankind being this militaristic fascist hellhole, is actually the product of this millitaristic fascist hellhole itself. The empire of man is literally shadowboxing its own repressed subconscious manifesting in the warp. Kind of a parody of how fascism tends to scapegoat its own internal contradictions on outside forces. Something the chud warhammer fans generally dont seem to pick up on.

>>20454
>Ward is liberal
Wildbow predicted the rise of "titans" who cause the foundations of the world order to crack

Worm was a story about the collapse of liberalism into neofeudalism, as seen in Hurricane Katrina. Its sequel Ward is about how these inhuman tech oligarchs like Elon Musk are far above normal bourgeoisie, just as Porky capitalists are above workers. That's why Glory Girl is so triggered by the idea of titans being way stronger than her where regular people are like "lol its just Thursday for us, relax". This accelerationism trend of wealth accumulation towards the ultra powerful makes the "petite" bourgeois class very offended by the idea that Elon Musk has exponentially more hegemony than they ever will. Taking control over the firmament on which we all stand isn't fair!!!

>“I’m on a brink, and I can’t see it, but I can feel it,” the man said.
>“Try not to think about it,” Rocketround said. “Okay?”
>“I can feel it,” the man said. He wasn’t paying much attention to Rocketround. “All the way down to this vast well, partially filled with potential energy. Like I’m on the lip of a volcano and it’s an impossibly long fall with only magma at the bottom. I don’t know if I’m better off throwing myself down into that or leaving it alone.”
>“Leave it alone,” I said, my voice joining more than one other person’s.
<“What if my thoughts and brain get made into a part of that? One piece in that thing’s construction. What if it makes me immortal, forever a part of this thing? A recording of me in there, how I think, how I do things.”
>“We’ve studied parahumans, powers and power sources a lot,” Roadblock said. “We’re pretty sure that’s not a thing.”
>“Yeah,” the guy in the clearing’s center said. “But…”
>He trailed off.
>“It’s not a thing,” Rocketround’s voice joined Roadblock’s.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Anyone following his latest story? How is it going?

is stalin canon in the world of pikachu or whatever

>>46727
Only in the first game when the US existed.

>>46726
every niche fiction community has someone that makes most of the daily contributions so you should just ask this question in wildbow's discord server

The knights of guinevere pilot was okay. Good animation and an interesting story for the most part.

>>46729
Franky was goated, love me a proletarian woman.

Zootopia doesn't directly map Western race themes into their setting, at least with any cohesiveness or consistency, but does sprinkle in plenty of references to it, perhaps to signal that a distinct but similar social categorization causes tension in their setting.
But I think it's fun to playfully extend the metaphor anyway.

Let's start with Nick's (purported) transspecies son.

>>46553
>the Schwartz(tm)
Please say sike

>>46283
>>46294
Apparently they crammed like 4 seasons into one or something lol

>>46123
So I do this largely forum-based RP and one of the big things there is 'faction' RP, where there's a big emphasis put on geopolitical stuff. Since like 2019 I was doing RP partly as an exercise in social fiction. I also run a character who left the Jedi Order because it was full of idealist pussies and liberals. He has since become Mand'alor and rides a boomer-ass Basilisk droid into battle, it's kino shit.

The Solidarity started as a coalition of Outer Rim spacers, droids, and AGIs who rose out of a massive slave revolt during the Hutts’ collapse. By ~300 ABY, they’ve grown into a hyperstate of around 100,000 planets, running on a centrally planned economy and labor-credit system. Their alliance with the Republic is pragmatic: both need each other against the Sith, but the Republic also keeps ties with the Hutts, who are quietly reviving slavery as debt peonage.

Militarily, the Solidarity fields smaller but far higher-quality forces than their rivals, avoiding clone or droid armies out of principle; they uphold a “joint dictatorship of the organic and synthetic proletariats.” They’ve just finished a war that quadrupled their territory and can’t sustain more fighting, so their focus is political: undermining and delegitimizing the Hutts while preparing their own Force traditions alongside the Jedi.

This is great anon
>I ended up eventualy selling it on Reverb for a wee profit
The synth module too?

>>46715

Yeah I sold the whole thing as a standalone instrument.

>>46641
Out of curiosity, how did they find out that Serpent's Walk was authored by MAR Barker?

>>46690
this page talks about it:
>The Tékumel Foundation, who has controlled the Tékmuel IP rights since Barker's death in 2012, has known about the novel since July 2012, after an archivist turned up "the manuscript, the original cover art, the publishing contract, the photocopy of the payment check, and the proof copies of the book" amidst Barker's papers, according to the archivist; the archivist further says that two of the Foundation members knew about it previously.
>The first public hints of the novel appeared in 2018 when independent researcher Amina Inloes wrote an academic paper for The Islamic College of London, later published in The Muslim World (1911-Present) titled "Muhammad Abd al-Rahman (Phillip) Barker: Bridging Cultural Divides through Fantasy/Science-Fiction Role-Playing Games and Fictional Religion". In that article, the author referenced a "pseudonymous novel" written by Barker, refused to name it, and instead offered the following footnote: "Discussing this novel posed an ethical dilemma. The work is clearly Barker's — not only does his share his writing style and interests, but it is published in the name of one of his ancestors. … However, the novel explores potentially inflammatory political viewpoints, and it was impressed upon me that it was best to preserve the facade of anonymity. I thus will leave it to the interested reader to dig it up …". Discussion of this article seems to be what eventually revealed it to the wider public this year.
https://www.rpg.net/columns/advanced-designers-and-dragons/advanced-designers-and-dragons63.phtml
the tékumel foundation later put out a statement confirming his authorship
https://www.tekumelfoundation.org/post/the-tekumel-foundations-board-of-directors-statement-on-serpents-walk

>>46174
I think you can have both. The nature elves are the "wood elves," while the advanced, magical elves are "high elves."

>>46689
its funny that you mention the Covenant since I always thought they were one of better written default horde factions of p much any big video game franchise or at least the writers actually tried to develop the Covenant into an actual living breathing society with culture and history and motivations instead of just being mindless drones.

>>46698
Is the Covenant a "horde" though?

>>46686
>turned into pure fetishistic agp gender bender bullshi

lol bro when was it not that

>>46686
Is there specifically blanchardism in it or is there just genderswap / forcefem-forcemasc stuff in it and that's the framework you have to parse it?

>>46688
>Is there specifically blanchardism in it

Lol no

>>46688
it's agp in the sense that there's fetishistic narrative focus on the female body as something arousing to inhabit, and there are several characters that get sexually excited by inhabiting female bodies

>>46700
I mean that'd be like calling OniMai blanchardist.

Sorry if it's offtopic but the reactionary obsession with lotr is fascinating to me.

Why Is The Right Obsessed With Lord of The Rings?
by The Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini)
<Every fantasy franchise has an insufferable part of its fan base. But this one takes the cake. Powerful conservatives are obsessed with The Lord of The Rings. We know this because they name their military tech companies, surveillance companies and venture capital firms after objects in Middle Earth. Billionaire Peter Thiel has named 10 of his companies after things in Lord of The Ring, including Palantir, the Trump's regime's authoritarian surveillance company of choice. JD Vance has called himself a "Lord of the Rings guy," Elon Musk has hot anti-woke takes on The Rings of Power, and Jeff Bezos helped make that series by buying the rights to the franchise via Amazon. Even the far right even in Spain and Italy identify with the Lord of The Rings.

>>46620
Not a bad video

<Original – The Nine Sovereigns at Windsor for the funeral of King Edward VII, photographed on 20 May 1910. Standing, from left to right: King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of the Bulgarians, King Manuel II of Portugal and the Algarves, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and King of Prussia, King George I of the Hellenes and King Albert I of the Belgians. Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of the United Kingdom and King Frederick VIII of Denmark.
I wonder if this influenced the 9 rings for mortal men

>>46667
It's an interesting detail in that regard that they're all wearing riding boots.

Pretty good so far, another banger on Glitch's belt.

It was good and I can't wait for the whole thing to be released. But it just made me think, why can't Western animation do spacial consistency. Like it feels like the world does not really have distance and the characters just bend the rules of reality to get places. Most western animation has this kind of consistency / pacing issue. But yeah it was great.

>>46659
I hadn't the words for this until you said it, but I think you're right. With anime you sometimes get a lot more liminal / en-route scenes, like stuff is still happening but they aren't teleporting just to The Place Where The Next Thing Happens as often.

>>46659
>But it just made me think, why can't Western animation do spacial consistency. Like it feels like the world does not really have distance and the characters just bend the rules of reality to get places.
I've noticed that a lot, especially in GoT. Like in the 5th season one character makes a trip of thousands of miles in a sailing ship in a matter of days. Recently in alien earth similar disregard is shown for the time it takes to travel. The general tendency just seems to be "whatever the plot needs."

Imo it's part of a much larger writing problem that seems to be effecting media where little or no thought is paid to how things actually work or why. The only consideration seems to be how spectacular or melodramatic a particular scene might be in the moment.