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NeilNjae
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Comments
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I didn't like the writing. It seemed both dull and laboured. There were big chunks of exposition that didn't seem to serve much purpose in either moving the story or setting the scene. If the book had been edited down to something like half the leng…
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It was a very simple plot, and there wasn't a lot of complication added to it. Yes, the ending was foreshadowed, but there weren't any surprises in how we got from start to end. I though it was quite dull. I think that what was supposed to carry to…
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I came across this article from The Conversation from 2023 (link below). It's written by an English academic who's published papers on Shaka Zulu. The main point is that most of what we "know" about Shaka has been made up by various people…
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None of the characters was particularly nuanced. The main male characters were brave and violent, with Chaka being ruthless and cruel. They did their things because of family and context rather than their own individual personalities. The women didn…
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I think the frame structure worked fine here. It gave an explanation for why British Victorians were paying attention to a story told by a Black man about other Black men. It also emphasised that this was a biased narrator's account of the facts, no…
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At its best, democracy doesn't mean tyranny of the majority. There can be diversity and tolerance for it. I recently saw a short video by a university economist about why there are so many sequels in films, just a few music superstars, etc. His con…
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Roleplaying amnesia seems to fit in the same category as roleplaying other forms of dramatic irony. If I, as a player, know that your character has some hidden agenda, or secret backstory element, or whatever, I can engineer scenes to have that appe…
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In a fit of good timing, this video version of the first short story just appeared on Youtube.
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I agree with the the comment that this is a couple of short stories that got over-expanded into a full novel. There's nothing wrong with fixup novels, but there wasn't enough here, I think, to keep things coherent. I think most of that was because o…
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I think your description of the RPG cycle of play is accurate for action-adventure based games with traditional roles around the table (one GM, one PC per player, character monogamy, limits on who can contribute what to the shared fictional space, e…
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Yes, I can see the lineage of these ideas from the modern interest in cryptids, modern horror, and all of that sort of thing. Twilight Zone and X-Files, yes, but also folk stories like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and back to even earlier stor…
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I've finished, so feel free to start whenever. As for format, I'm happy to experiment.
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The other thing I didn't like about the book was that the main character was a pretty rubbish anthropologist. Why didn't she just ask people, "Where do babies come from?" and "What does 'soestre' mean?" But that would have remove…
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I think The Watch and Ammonite are different stages of the same thing. The Watch is about showing patriarchy as being an oppressive thing, forcing gender roles onto people. It also shows how women are actually more varied than their assigned gender …
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It could be turned into a game, but why? What's the interesting part of the setting to explore? If you want the idea of "only women allowed", the RPG The Watch (by Ash Kreider) is a good one. That's a fantasy, where patriarchy has turned …
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The cultures all seem believable, mainly because they are heavily based on real-world cultures. I'm not sure there was anything "alien" about them. But, as Barner says, the novel was essentially a sermon, so it suits Griffith to show that …
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I agree with Barner. Physically, the world wasn't any different from Earth, just a version of Earth where there were no men. The cultures were a bit more interesting, but that's a different question.
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I thought it had an interesting premise, and lots of potential, but I got bored with it. I think mainly due to the main character not being engaging. She didn't come across as a top-flight anthropologist. The story didn't seem to be going anywhere,…
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Happy new year! I'm afraid this is another book I couldn't finish: I wasn't interested enough in what happened. So start the discussion when you like.
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(Quote) Sorry for being unclear. Same class (noble), different roles. I don't know if it applies exactly in this time period, but later settings have the idea of a "household knight". A lord has a lot of land, and income from it, and pays …
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(Quote) I think that's where the concentration on "honour" comes from, and the value it serves. To some extent, you can view "honour" as the reward of social esteem given to someone who performs acts that benefits their peers, ev…
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(Quote) Bear in mind that these are stories about the warriors in the society, whose only responsibility is to apply violence when ordered by their lord. These folks aren't lords and landholders, and therefore aren't responsible for the wellbeing of…
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(Quote) The work was definitely there as a written piece, but I expect that performance or recital was the most common way it was experienced.
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To clarify: by "Mallory" I mean Morte d'Arthur , written in England by Sir Thomas Malory in 1485 (while he was in prison!). de Troyes wrote Knight in the Cart around 1180 in France, so about 300 years earlier.
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(Quote) Yes, there's a fair bit about balancing different Traits and Passions. One example in the book is when a knight is faced with some Saxon non-combatants. Does his "Hate Saxons" passion urge him to kill them, or does his "Mercif…
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(Quote) I think the reference to "gentlemen" is a reminder that these are stories for the elite. Yes, the sudden ending was sudden! The story of Lancelot is continued by another author, in a tale about as long as this one.
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By "heroic", I was meaning the depictions of Yvain and Lancelot as superhuman characters. Partly that's the magic, partly that's the excessive descriptions of combat lasting hours, and continuing despite huge numbers of injuries and great …
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(Quote) I also enjoyed that. I think it may have been as funny as we find it. de Troyes doesn't spare any opportunity to remind us about Lancelot riding in the cart.
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I agree the women were more interesting characters than the men. I think that was because of social roles being more rigid around men: there's really only one way for a man to be both good and manly. The women have fewer restrictions, and the lower-…
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(Quote) That is the military in that age. People are driven by personal honour and loyalty to their superiors, often connected by bonds of blood, marriage, or wealth. All the relations personal, not to any organisation. The "kingdom" is wh…