Ask him for his lunch order instead. If you're lucky you might get an outline for a sandwich-based system of magic.
I can see potential in that. It would kind of be like crafting in video games, and if you get the wrong item combo you could end up with a hideous concoction which would grey goo all vegetable matter or something.
True naturals at the magical sandwich arts could intuitively assemble a sublime stack from like, half an icecream tub of picnic leftovers and the residual scrapings from a midwestern Chinese buffet.
I'm not sure about that prose, though. It captures Doyle's style in fits and starts - particularly with all the parentheticals and interjections, the sense that this is a story being related to you at a club over cigars and brandy - but Watson comes off like a shrieking neurotic and far more classist than the real deal. (Watson is a parochial middle-class Victorian, of course, but he's also deeply sentimental and doesn't have a malicious bone in his body.) Are the books comedies?
Yeah the books are 100% comedies. It takes everything about the Holmes canon that is frankly ridiculous and adds a hugely satirical bent to it. Holmes in this case is a complete and utter dunce, but is the most powerful warlock on the planet, and Watson is the guy who does the deducing and tries to keep Holmes from breaking reality.
Also Bix is more like a zergling or a tyrannid.
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Gives me a chance to highly recommend "The affair of the mysterious letter" by Alexis Hall, a Sherlock Holmes novel where Sherlock Holmes is a female sorceress and the setting is a full on Eldritch horror mish-mash. It's extremely funny and very well done.
+ a mixed rec for Angel of the Crows, by Katherine Addison, where angels gain their identity by bonding to a location, and our Holmes is an anomalously unbound angel. In favor, it’s written great; I think the narrator’s voice rings “period” while also being easy reading. It’s a lot of fun how it weaves supernatural elements into the setting. The plot hews surprisingly close to Doyle, it’s basically just several classic stories lined up.
It’s maybe uncomfortable on some gender identity and sexual orientation stuff. In particular, (and one thing I disliked is that this is spoilers)
Watson’s revealed midway to be a woman acting as a man, which, cool, but it really made me wonder if it was staking out a political position on the obvious model, Dr James Barry, who’s been the object of some controversy over whether he can be claimed as a transmasc ancestor. (To me, not a trans person, it sounds like the answer is yeah that’s pretty reasonable, accounting for the usual how-is-identity-constructed-socially stuff; he apparently wanted to be remembered as male posthumously. And the people who are really invested in saying no, absolutely not, this is a story of female empowerment, seem a rather terfy group).
I don’t necessarily want to lump Addison in there or attribute everything the characters think and say about themselves to Addison. I think there’s clearly some intentional amount of portraying people struggling to figure themselves out without access to useful frameworks. On my first pass I took a lot of this in stride for this reason. But sometimes it does feel real fuckin dicey. There’s some asexuality vs. sexual agency discourse in there too I wasn’t sure about.
But anyway the reveal, I didn’t like it. Watson and a lady client have a mutual flirtation over the course of the case, Watson agonizing that it can never be, and the reader at this point clearly understands it can never be because Watson got bitten by a hell hound in the war and has a werewolf thing going on. At the end of the case Watson tearfully confesses to the lady that Watson is not a man, Watson is a woman. And they split and then I dunno, maybe Watson’s resigned to the single life. It felt cheap and maybe a bit cavalier to me. The more I think about this the less indulgent I feel towards everything else; like why would WATSON narrate the story this way, and if you’re using this as a cool mid-book twist how seriously can you be cogitating about this stuff.
I finished Circe you guys...you guys, that was fantastic. I loved Miller's prose, it was vivid without being super floral(I also liked Time War, and the language was my hook to enjoying it, but it's a sometimes food for me), kept up a good pace, quite surprisingly had a lot of relatable (if exaggerated) moments about parenting, and all made more intriguing with the godly setting. I very much want to read Song of Achilles, but I'm going to set a lower expectation, assuming it mostly doesn't have those last two factors.
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Good news, Dawnshard is 57k words which technically makes it a full blown novel and still on track to come out before the end of the month!
whuat
I can see potential in that. It would kind of be like crafting in video games, and if you get the wrong item combo you could end up with a hideous concoction which would grey goo all vegetable matter or something.
True naturals at the magical sandwich arts could intuitively assemble a sublime stack from like, half an icecream tub of picnic leftovers and the residual scrapings from a midwestern Chinese buffet.
Cooking versus baking - quick improvised magic versus precision based recipes that require a lot of preparation
Or bartending, where you use more potent magical ingredients to cover up the fact that this year's mandrake crop is abysmal
To contrast with sommeliering, I guess, having prepared magics that have been aged across many years and follow generally formulaic effects
Yeah the books are 100% comedies. It takes everything about the Holmes canon that is frankly ridiculous and adds a hugely satirical bent to it. Holmes in this case is a complete and utter dunce, but is the most powerful warlock on the planet, and Watson is the guy who does the deducing and tries to keep Holmes from breaking reality.
Also Bix is more like a zergling or a tyrannid.
^
Also the Graphic Audio version of these books is just *chef kiss*
It’s maybe uncomfortable on some gender identity and sexual orientation stuff. In particular, (and one thing I disliked is that this is spoilers)
I don’t necessarily want to lump Addison in there or attribute everything the characters think and say about themselves to Addison. I think there’s clearly some intentional amount of portraying people struggling to figure themselves out without access to useful frameworks. On my first pass I took a lot of this in stride for this reason. But sometimes it does feel real fuckin dicey. There’s some asexuality vs. sexual agency discourse in there too I wasn’t sure about.
But anyway the reveal, I didn’t like it. Watson and a lady client have a mutual flirtation over the course of the case, Watson agonizing that it can never be, and the reader at this point clearly understands it can never be because Watson got bitten by a hell hound in the war and has a werewolf thing going on. At the end of the case Watson tearfully confesses to the lady that Watson is not a man, Watson is a woman. And they split and then I dunno, maybe Watson’s resigned to the single life. It felt cheap and maybe a bit cavalier to me. The more I think about this the less indulgent I feel towards everything else; like why would WATSON narrate the story this way, and if you’re using this as a cool mid-book twist how seriously can you be cogitating about this stuff.
This is how we lose the time war
Dunno why, blaming this thread
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
You'll get what you deserve for that!
Watching the progress of communicating, and how frozen in time characters are at the beginning verses the 80+ pages i am at now.
Its interesting.
I am not a fan of serious time travel stories and bounced hard off of kindred, but this i like
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Geth, close the thread.