As far as what OUGHT to be the rules regarding adult relationships, if one partner is emotionally an adult, and the other is not, then it should not matter what the physical ages are, it's just wrong. I can't say with 100% certainty at what physical age any given person achieves that emotional maturity, when one person is not emotionally mature, the understanding of the nature of that relationship that ought to be required, is probably not there. In other words, one partner is being put into a situation where he or she may be taken advantage of. Replace Vampire with old fogey, replace teen with a mentally and emotionally handicapped 25 year old, it doesn't matter -- it's not a good situation for a lot of reasons. Will it inevitably end up with the less mature person being hurt? No. The problem is that even with a 'well-meaning' older person, the less mature person is not equipped to handle the complexities that will likely arise in a relationship with an adult. BTW, I put 'well-meaning' in quotes because a mature person ought to know better. Even mature adults are going to get hurt in relationships and are going to make bad decisions, get into abusive relationships, and so on. But the law regarding the age of consent is simply about those who we THINK don't know any better, who don't ordinarily have the same legal rights to protect themselves with, or who may be far too easily manipulated. We don't know who they are, whether they truly are mature or not, so age is used as the criteria.
Why are we even discussing this? Twilight, 50 Shades, etc. are all creepy because they make these situations where girls/women are powerless yet beholden to the men they're with at the expense of their free-will and their safety. They romanticise the abusive and hurtful treatment they get, but also have messages that many people are trying to stamp out because of the thousands - if not millions - of young girls and women who get hurt (physically and mentally) by people like "Mr Grey" and "Edward Cullen". Heck, even the 'romance' in The Hunger Games was problematic, particularly with the marketing. But Katniss was so horrible! Peeta loved her, Gale loved her, and all she did was abuse their love.
Because you started it. And now you behave as if we had no right to voice our opinions because they differ from your opinion. And honestly, I stopped caring because it's getting silly (read: annoying). Whoever mentions "Twilight" in their posts in this thread from now on should prepare themselves for their posts being reported, because that's what I will be doing with them. Flame wars are not what we want and I will do what I can to stop them even if that means annoying Daynab with unnecessary reports.
I'm not behaving that way at all. It was more of a "Why do we even need to debate the minutiae about what's wrong with Book X?" exasperated comment. And no, not every opinion matters. If you're discussing why something is bad and someone says "I liked it", their opinion is completely irrelevant. They're entitled to their opinion, to voice it too, but it doesn't mean it matters. And I think Daynab will probably just ignore reports of that nature. They're beyond pointless. We're not having a flame war. The discussion might be slightly heated on some sides, but it's certainly not a flame war. No-one has insulted anyone anyway.
In a moment of brutal honestly, I will say this, Althea. The question you asked was rather ambiguous in what it was referring to. It could have been referring to the "minutiae", but it could have also referred to the discussion about the books-which-shall-not-be-named as a whole. And there is also the fact that you had stated your minutiae about the books-which-shall-not-be-named and then asked why are we discussing this after people started stating theirs. And said minutiae was on a topic which is controversial even without one of the sides not checking their facts properly. And no, this discussion is not a flame war. Not yet, and while I do not think it is going to become one, in my opinion the exchange which occurred was not exactly appropriate. You might not see it, but for at least some people the whole thing that occurred can be summed up in that way: This is really simplified and the whole discussion merely bears a resemblance to that, but that is still enough. And there is also the ambiguity I spoke of earlier. When I wrote that I "will do what I can to stop them" I was referring to their creation. But you did not know that. And other people might not know what your, equally ambiguous, question was supposed to mean either. And my personal opinion about the whole thing? I dislike those books. There are many things that irk me in them, both in regards to what those books are centred on and the universe created in them. Because of that I have not read them and I doubt I ever will. But I at least try to confirm whether the details I am pulling when talking about them are correct, and I try to acknowledge that some people will see things differently from me. And I never say something is "bad" when it is something I don't know anything about. I say I "dislike it" or that "I think it to be bad", but if I have no first-hand knowledge on the topic, I feel that I do not have the right to say whether something "is bad" or "is good". That is why my first post was "with you" whereas the latter one was not - because after admitting that you have not read them you started criticising them as if you actually had. That is the last I will talk about this particular series here, and even then I shouldn't really be doing this. But I though that maybe you simply did not notice that "the other side" doesn't perceive this issue in the same light as you do, and if someone is to do something bad to make you notice then it might as well be me. And would Daynab really ignore my reports if I made them? I don't know, maybe he would, and maybe he would not. But there is always a chance that he would take them seriously because I don't report random people for fun. And he might have seen the same thing I saw in this topic, in which case reports of this sort would serve as a reason to allow him to stop this.
Allow him to stop what? Nothing untoward is going on here. We're discussing. And yes, I did say "Why are we discussing this?" because I was exasperated that we were discussing ridiculously small details of the story, at length, without getting anywhere. And I think you'll find I did not start the Twilight thing. I was the third person to comment after the initial mention, and not the first to try to explain why people don't like Twilight. Let's just drop this topic, like adults, and continue. There is no need to resort to petty, childish "I'll tell on you" comments. We are adults, and we can handle this as adults. Daynab won't tell any of us off because we haven't done anything wrong, but he'll probably get a bit pissed off if you start bugging him over trivial grievances.
I would wager if a known and respected member of this forum merely asked, this thread would be locked without a second thought. In my experience, that is often the solution used by Gaslamp Games. And in a general sense, it *IS* the easiest solution. No-one here is arguing that the books that must never be named are good moral examples. Rather, we are just trying to avoid discussing it. There are plenty of good books to discuss, and I never tainted the thread by saying something akin to "Everyone should read Mein Kampf. It is a great book for children of all ages!"... That would doom this thread. And those books we are arguing about at the moment are very similar in that to some they are a terrible thing. To be fair, I do not think the words "Pissed-off" and the name Daynab can really fit in a single sentence in this Universe.
Back to the topic of books then... I want to mention a book that I loved as a kid and as an adult. I mentioned it earlier as a book that I've recommended for my niece, The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. It has all sorts of bad behavior in it, from infidelity to incest to infanticide. Let's not confuse though a plot element as encouragement to participate in such behavior ('nuff said on that subject). Anyway, it created in me a love of the Arthurian legend, and a need to seek out other versions of the stories. It has great humor, it does not ever excuse the bad behavior in the stories, although it does a good job of explaining it. The book has a lot of humor to it, a lot of adventure, it has mostly imperfect people trying to do good, and it contains elements of classical tragedy -- the so-called 'fatal flaw'. I've since read, or tried to read, a lot of different versions of the Arthurian legend and they vary a great deal, some are better than others. It's a story that gets reinterpreted and rewritten in every age, and the definitive 20th century version, imho, is this one. BTW, the musical "Camelot" is somewhat based on The Once and Future King. There's a decent movie version of it that stars Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero. It's not one of the great musicals, but it has a really good score, and covers some of the highlights of the novel. But it's no substitute for reading the book. If you want to know some other Arthurian books you should check out, here's a few of my favorites: The Merlin series by Mary Stewart (starts with The Crystal Cave) The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights by John Steinbeck The Story of King Arthur and his Knights by Howard Pyle (it was an illustrated, very annotated volume made for young people). There were also some very different sorts of Arthurian tales that I've read that I've enjoyed, including "The Last Defender of Camelot" by Roger Zelazny, and the novel Knight Life by Peter David (a humorous novel about King Arthur returning in 20th Century Manhattan).
BTW, the later books in T.H. White's series can be read or ignored. I think they were omitted from The Once and Future King for the good reason that they don't add to the story. They go into more detail about the education of young Arthur by Merlin. And I hope that no one confuses the SyFy series "Merlin" with anything resembling Arthurian tradition. I appreciate that some people enjoy it, so I'm not going to criticise it in detail (however much I want to). But you really need to read some of the better books.
I wanted to let you guys know about the Humble E-book Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/ I haven't read any of the books they are offering, though I have heard of most of them (which might or might not be a good sign lol). but part of the money does go to charity. As always, you don't need an e-reader to access the books, but I was able to send my purchase to my Kindle after following the instructions that I was given (there are directions for a variety of other e-readers as well). If you don't have an e-reader, you can still read the books on your PC or a tablet or smartphone (there are all sorts of free apps out there).
I just read that "Shards of Honor" comes chronologically (in the Vorkosigan series) after the novel "Falling Free", which I actually have read. The novels and stories in the series were not actually published in the same order as the stories take place. I also read "Mirror Dance", because it was nominated for the Hugo (I used to try to read at least every best novel nominee each year -- I didn't always succeed though). You can both nominate and vote if you are at least a supporting member of the World Science Fiction convention. Way back when, before media conventions (like Comicon) took over, the World Con was really really huge. If you want to wait on long lines and pay money to get autographed photos of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the latest Star Trek movie, you go to Comicon. If you want to go to a party and actually converse with Hal Clement or have brunch with Mike Resnick or participate in a writers workshop with George R. R. Martin, you go to a Worldcon.
The Last Unicorn is one of *the* best fantasy novels, apparently. The only book in that set I've read is Boneshaker, and I don't really have much to say about it other than "It wasn't bad, I suppose".
Oh, cool, humble bundle for books? I shall support this. I've read Shards of Honor before, and it was good enough to read all the other Vorkosigan Saga books, if that helps.
Two non-fiction reads of mine (I don't usually read non-fiction, but what the heck!) I just finished re-reading these during my "break from fiction" month. Sevengill: The Shark and Me is an autobiographical account of a diver who cleaned tanks for sharks in an aquarium. It gives very interesting insights into the behaviors of different species of sharks, especially Sevengills, and when I was very young I read this book and it incited a love for the sea and marine life (a love that led me to nearly be a marine biologist, but that's a different story for a different time) River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones That Didn't Get Away is obviously based on the Animal Planet show River Monsters and is a great read even if you've seen the series. It provides some insight into the episodes and beyond that really goes to show just how much work is involved in hunting down elusive fish.
Between all the things I had to do today I couldn't really get anything major done, so I spent a while re-reading "Crystalicum: The Known Universe". It is a tie-in guide to the setting of a Polish-made table-top RPG (called "Crystalicum"), in form of a novella written as memoirs of the main character. It is obviously not a masterpiece, but it is a decent "adventure comedy" (though devoid of dialogue since it does take the form of someone's memoirs, and instead you can only read that "they talked about this or that" or "the result of their discussion was such and such") and a nice way to waste an hour or two. To be honest, I reached for this particular novella instead of some other because one of my friends has rounded some of our other friends to play "Crystalicum" and I'm helping him (because I like playing NPCs and switching the characters I play, and that way he can have NPCs talk about something for the players to witness without him talking to himself), and thus my mind ventured into that direction based on this single fact. The book itself, as I already said, is an adventure comedy and depicts the protagonist's journey from one place to another in order to look for somewhere he could stay. Most of the time he has to leave because he ends up making some stupid mistake due to not being knowledgeable enough about the culture of people living where he is and thus ending up insulting someone or outing himself in silly ways. Though at least on one occasion he actually had a place to stay but wanted to leave instead; oh well. Because the novella is a tie-in to a tabletop RPG it might be difficult to get anything out of reading it if one isn't aware of a few (more than few, actually) details from the game's manual, but for me it was a nice way to waste some time laughing at the protagonist's misadventures.
I just finished reading The Walking Dead: Compendium 0ne (comprised of issues 1-48 of the comic book). It definitely satisfies my itch for "The Walking Dead", while the show is on a break. Some of the storylines have parallels with the television show, but they are different -- things turn out differently , the characters are different, different people live, different people die, and so on. I don't want to give too much away, but the end of Volume 2 is kind of in parallel to the end of the previous season -- similar, but at the same time, very different. The creator and writer of the series is Robert Kirkman, and he must not be afraid of hate mail based on what he does to his characters in the series. It reminds me of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones in that respect (although Martin has certainly not killed off as many main characters as Kirkman has... yet). As far as what else I've been reading, I started reading Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, but found it slow going. It was a Nebula award nominee from several years back, and I realized after a few weeks that I'd barely made a dent in it, so I'm setting it aside for now. It concerns an alternate universe in which after WWII, Britain fails to set up Palestine as a Jewish homeland, so the U.S. came up with a plan to set up a part of Alaska as a temporary Jewish territory for 60(?) years (kind of like Hong Kong), and the time of that is ending with the territory set to revert back to U.S. governance any day now. The main character is a police officer in the territory, not a very good one, who's trying to solve the murder of a Jewish chess afficianado). Michael Chabon is probably better known as the author of Wonder Boys (I haven't read the book, but the movie that was made from the novel is excellent). So I decided to return to my Sherlock Holmes collection. I'm currently reading The Sign of the Four. This is much better than A Study in Scarlet, and involves murder, a stolen treasure brought back from India, and a potential romance for Dr. Watson. I'd never read this before, but there was a Broadway play made from the novel (I recognized elements of the story from a play that my aunt took me out to see many years ago). The play was called "The Crucifer of Blood", and I remember being blown away by the staged special effects and sets for it. It (the play) involved a chase scene in boats along a foggy Thames river, all done on stage. I looked it up, and that was back in 1991 when it premiered.
The "Dark Heavens" long running series (2 trilogies and started a third) is proving rather an enjoyable read for me. A "Kylie Chan" is the author. Slightly darker/raunchier? than most YA books, and only a moderate thematic payload, but quite good on the whole.
I finally finished reading The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's his second Sherlock Holmes novel (the third one is The Hound of the Baskervilles). It's certainly much better than his first novel, A Study in Scarlet, and I do recommend it. However, I will have to mention that, like his first novel, it is not politically correct by modern standards, but it does work better as a mystery than the first one does. If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes, then I do recommend it. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the second Compendium of The Walking Dead (comprised of issues 49-96), and I'm still enjoying it. That said, I can see patterns emerging from the stories. But we'll see. I'm at a point in the series where things are going to hell (again. as usual. of course.). You know as soon as everyone is happy where they are, that something really incredibly bad is going to happen to make them have to leave. I get it -- zombie apocalypse, what the hell was I thinking. But I can see it start to get repetitive. I'm just hoping that Kirkman shakes up that pattern a bit going forward. Regardless, it's still incredibly fun, and addictive to read. Besides "The Walking Dead", I'm not sure what I'll be reading next. I did purchase and start to read a book of humorous quotations, but because of its atheistic/humanistic nature, I feel I might be better off not actually discussing it in any detail. But I will link it in case anyone else is interested (I did read a free sample first): http://www.amazon.com/Quotations-At...?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1374997902&sr=1-6 It shouldn't take me very long to read, it so I should think about what's next.
I've spent the last few months reading quite a bit, trying to get some more classics and "literature" on my list. As you can guess, I've mostly failed Good things I've read: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds Hard science fiction (no faster-than-light travel, science that might kind of be possible) mixed with some space opera. Reynolds has very decent characters, but he shines in describing his worlds and alien concepts. Huge scales, with planet-sized machines and kilometer-long spaceships, but also hand-to-hand combat in grimy corridors. I read the first book in the series quite some time back and found it decent, as well as some of his standalone novels. But evidently I've developed more of a taste for hard-ish science fiction since I quite liked The Prefect, which is kind of a standalone prequel to the main series. I then read all of them as well as the short stories and novellas set in that universe. Really good, with enough diversity in setting and plots to never get bored. His standalone novels are also pretty good even though the basic premise of Terminal World is kind of hard to swallow. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Better than I expected, solid youth fare. A bit lacking on the world-building-side, but Katniss is a surprisingly deep main character. She's actually kind of cold and an asshole. Other characters are often a bit too thin though. Good pacing, good action, I rather liked the ending. All in all, very solid, but not groundbreaking or anything. A bit sad that much better books sell less, but this is good enough. Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Caution, classic ahead. Wasn't easy to read for me, I had to force myself through it from time to time. It's short though Very interesting read, looking into the head of a late 19th century author. Interesting depiction of colonialism, made me think quite a bit. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest Steampunk fast food. Decent pacing, doesn't get boring and entertains. Not much more to say about it, just don't think too much about it. Characters and world serve storytelling purposes, that's about it. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Quite unmistakeably Neil Gaiman, concerning setting and plot. Mythology in our normal lives, but in this case there is also an undercurrent of growing up and losing the sense of wonder. If you don't like Mr. Gaiman you probably will not like this one, since it's rather similar to his other books. Good starting point to get into him though, it's short and sweet and with enough other topics to distract from the magic! More to come, this is what I have floating in my head from the last week or so.
