Samnell's page

Now that my move is done, I hope to "rally the troops" a bit on both sides and get more group activities going.

I would gladly faceplant for you! :)

What spec is your alliance druid? They have so many roles, I've found it's best to pick one role (healer, moonkin, cat, or bear) and stick to that... but have awareness of how the other roles work so you can pinch-hit if need be (frex, if you mainly play as a cat, you should know how your heal spells work just in case the healer dies and you filling in will prevent a wipe).

I started as a bear tank, but didn't like the solo experience and didn't feel confident enough to queue for dungeons as a tank so I switched to pussy cat. Mainly I could never quite get the hang of managing combo points or energy. I could usually kill steadily, but ended most fights bottomed-out on energy and feeling like I was missing something. I've thought about switching to ranged dps, since I mostly know how to play that [citation needed :) ], but I want to learn other ways to play the game eventually.

1) With 8 million players, you're going to run into some dummies. Fortunately, you'll meet some good ones, too. And for the bad ones... the dungeon will be over in half an hour... or you can leave the group and do quests for 15 minutes until you're allowed to queue again.

Yeah, I've had bad groups before back on City of Heroes. It just seems like I get them half or more of the time in leveling.

2) That can happen, too. Could be DCs, could be parents calling them to dinner, could be a bootie call. Fill in the lost role, or (if you're down to 2 or 3, especially if they're all DPS) drop the group and re-queue, it's usually easier and faster to start a fresh group than try to fill 3 roles in a half-finished dungeon.

I had just the opposite expectation, but I defer to your experience and will keep it in mind next time I try.

3) Are they skipping packs of mobs and you're having to run past or through them to get to the main part of the group? Also, normally doesn't it put you where the party leader is?

Usually I get killed by skipped mobs. I don't remember the last time I properly telported to wherever the group leader was, though. Several times I ran through a mostly-empty map trying to find them. I used to think you got deposited at the last completed boss, but I guess my experiences there were just good timing. Or maybe it varies by map?

How does the alleged replacing of two Hallmark Holidays with one Hallmark Holiday constitute tyranny?

I think you need to miss the profound irony of the Lewis quote for that to make any damned sense. Possibly being caned "for your own good" at an elite British prep school is also required.

That keeps all those weird non-Christian religious holidays that might bother someone out.

It would have to be earlier than 1970, as that invites the risk of Kwanzaa. Can't have that, after all.

"The extraordinary amount of $100,000,000 was the minimum sum on which they agreed." -Basil Rauch The American Interest in Cuba: 1848-1855.

Remember that's in 1840s dollars.

Got my copy of American Interest in Cuba: 1848-1855 today. So yeah...the plan to read two works of fiction before I do more history is pretty abandoned, unless two trade paperbacks (Justice League Dark and Joe the Barbarian) count. It's a 1974 printing of a 1948 original, great condition and wonderful old book smell. Apparently began life as part of the Stuart L. Bernath Memorial Collection on American Diplomatic History at UC-Santa Barbara. The back endpaper is stamped "This book is not to be taken from the library."

Don't tell on me. :)

Being a spoiler-fiend when it comes to history, I raced right to the last page and read it. The final sentence is very 1948:

"Relieved of the incubus of slavery, the United States kept its promise not to annex the island and has contributed to the considerable success of Cuba as an independent, democratic community today."

There is a new report in the journal "Intelligence" that proposes that people have grown dumber since the Victorian age. They came to this conclusion by studying the time that it takes to react to stimuli, rather than by looking at IQ tests which has been the standard measure until this study. Thoughts?

What does reaction speed have to do with intelligence?

Which faction are players most active on? Alliance or Horde? I was on the Alliance guild and it was kind of empty.

I picked Horde purely on the recommendation to level a goblin. I have a 50ish druid on Alliance side but I never quite got how to play him so I've left him idle for quite a while. I like what I see of Alliance, where it differs from Horde, though.

My current leveling project is Horde because it made him easier to sugar daddy on my own. Mostly gold, but I've also fed him herbs off my goblin so he can level inscription easier. Alas, that guy too is stalled out. I wanted to level him mostly by dungeons, but I've had incredible bad luck with the dungeon finder. I think for every good group I've had, I've gotten two or three of:

1) Very dysfunctional groups where healers don't heal, tankers don't tank, or DPS go wandering off on their own.

2) Sudden group collapse. Usually the tank or healer quits for no stated reason, even if things have gone well, followed by a DPS or two.

3) Groups I end up joining in progress and have to race across half the dungeon to catch up, often dying several times, in order to hopefully tag the end boss.

So I've been doing endgame content with my goblin, where surprisingly LFR has been mostly good. After sticking through with two trolling tanks to the bitter end, I had enough of the warning signs down that when a troll or just a very incompetent tank (charging blindly into every group and clearly not knowing or "not knowing" what to expect) appeared in my second LFR run last night I bailed on the group.

Once I get the hunter higher up, I might turn him into an Alliance guy. I do want to have something on both sides. But given the late discouragements I've been happier just sticking to my 90.

Right, topic. I'm on most nights, but I think a little earlier than most. Some nights I seem to be the only person, but others I see three or four of us online. Horde dungeon night usually gets that many, sometimes more.

Samnell, leave the customers alone.

They weren't using all their kidneys!

Also I appear to be a bit obsessed with this whole movement to steal Cuba. Dug around and found two out of print resources I had to have today. One has the most creative title I've seen in white a while: The American Interest in Cuba 1848-1855. It could be about anything! :)

Went on an expedition to the nearest big box bookstore armed with a list of twenty-odd books. Bastards had none of them so I lurked in a bathroom and waylaid customers until I harvested twenty kidneys and twenty livers to tastefully spell out a sternly-worded message to management, as you do. About this time I nice martian in a turban and speedo asked me to mount his flying teacup and ride off with him, WC Minor, and bunch of Irishmen to Constantinople, where Minor promised they would do terrible, terrible things to us. (Sorry, Minor is one of my favorite obscure history jokes.)

I was up for that but I left my speculum in my other corset and felt a bit knackered from the drive and so came home with just an issue of North & South, a collection from the NYT's Disunion blog, and a $5 B&N edition of Douglass's autobiography because I can get it for free but for reference I prefer paper.

Also the first Justice League Dark TPB and something by Morrison called Joe the Barbarian with the O drawn as what I insist is one of those cases for birth control pills, and Elminster's Guide to the Forgotten Realms. All of these sound more promising than Wyrd Sisters appears at around 20% through.

Hm.

The bookstore couldn't get me a copy of any of the volumes of Ordeal of the Union, which I was glad for. But the owner successfully guilted me into buying something so I came away with a copy of Wyrd Sisters and a copy of Hogfather.

I've never read a Discworld book before and found The Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I'm told is similar, pretty obnoxious. But the first twenty or so pages of Wyrd Sisters are at least tolerable, though I can see how the gags may wear thin down the road.

Praise Insomnia, I finally iron-assed out Fateful Lightning. It was never bad, but every time I came to it I had to get used to the author's style again and I read it while also reading a lot of related things for spot research so the whole experience got very distracting. Some of that reading was another one-volume history of the Civil War and the contrast left me with some thoughts that I will probably blog about at some point.

The main thing is that Fateful Lightning declares itself "A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction." It's not a 50/50 split. The Reconstruction stuff fits into about two chapters at the end. Most attention remains on the war, taken through a strong helping of thematic and topical sections. They fit into a sort of narrative, but it's definitely not the new standard text of the era. Guelzo isn't even trying to replace James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. He's doing a different kind of history with different focuses. He does so in about half Battle Cry's page count.

The Samnell Recommendation? If you only want one book to read on the Civil War and you hate, hate, haaaaate long books then you should get over that second part and iron-ass your way through McPherson. He's really very readable and he integrates period quotes very well. But if you can see your way to reading two, read McPherson first and then read Guelzo.

Oy, two freakin' months! After this I think I need two short breather reads. Maybe three because I'm thinking about going back into William W. Freehling and his style is pretty demanding. (Good, but he makes you work for it.) Unless I get a little crazy and find a cheap copy of Allen Nevins' Ordeal of the Union, which was practically his life's work in eight volumes published from '47 to '71 and last reprinted, so far as I can tell, circa 1990. Every historian I've read writing on the time between the Mexican War and Sumter references him heavily and it would dovetail perfectly with the blog. But it's also out of print work (with what I've read is a terrible ebook version no one proofread) doubtless written in prose I will find tedious.

But happy thoughts! I'm crazy enough to be seriously considering that so I must be having fun. Also I've got two good fictions in me before I need to think about it again. :)

The best thing about SCP-231 to me is the very fine print in the O5 document toward the end. The implication that they're doing all of this and know they don't need to says a lot about the Foundation...or about 231's or Montauk's ability to engender sympathy in people selected for their amoral to downright evil proclivities.

O5's insistence that 110-Montauk is not a loyalty test is also a bit suspicious. So many ways to read it, all horrific.

Limeylongears wrote:

Don't know if you're serious or not, but a campaign set in the Roman era would be great anyway, and if it was just an opportunity for general immaturity and pissing about, well, that would be the cherry on top of the stuffed dormouse-flavoured cupcake.

I am completely serious, but I also am putting the onus of doing the actual work on the one true Lord, Samnhovah, so, alas my seriousness may not amount to much.

Have fun with Tanis and the boys!

My plate's pretty full between the blog (I got recommended by an actual, published historian today!) and running the 5 PBEMs I do right now. Sorry.

Not that the Levant in Roman times isn't an interesting, adventure-friendly era.

I see a play-by-post campaign with Samnell as YHWH, Limey as the Roman centurion Biggus Dickus, Lord Dice as a sacred prostitute, and little ol' moi as a nationalist goblin zealot named Doodlebug Maccabee.

Pretty, pretty please?

I wrote two different responses to this where I briefly RPed Yahweh, but neither one would have survived long. But you should know that they included foreskin humor.

While I don't rule out superpowers down the line, mostly I'd want to fix some things. I could certainly tolerate being young, horny, and hot but I'd probably appreciate fixing my allergies, weight, and hairline more in the long run. I don't care all that much about muscles qua muscles. Just give me enough for normal functioning. Ripples and bulges might theoretically be nice but don't dovetail very well with my aesthetic preferences.

More John Brown chat for Comrade Samnell

Benfey gives a pretty poor account of himself, especially about Kansas. I don't read Reynolds as trying to excuse the Pottawatomie massacre so much as correct the usual implication that Brown just went and did it out of nowhere, for no reason, as a kind of gratuitous act of violence. Brown always gets the spotlight because he went on to later fame, leaving the slave power horrors unstated and thus invisible.

Just like how people picture the antebellum South as this idyllic place instead of a brutal police state where the chief means of social control was mob violence and the only real limit on it being that if someone made it across the county line you were supposed to let them go.

On that, the frequency witch which I find Southern politicians of respectable position in mainstream parties doing maniac things like dueling over imagined or real slights and waiving guns in the faces of opponents is just insane. Joanne Freeman is working on a book about violence in the Congress (pulling out a gun with intent to use during a Senate debate happened more often than one would like) which I'm eager to read. Faster, historian! Write, write!

Not in Cuba, but decent flick.

Whole film.

Yeah, Walker is up after Cuba and, probably, Kansas-Nebraska.

Still making very little progress with [i]Fateful Lightning[i] but I've been doing a lot of side reading about the Cuban filibusters. The history reads almost eerily like someone's D&D campaign.

I've got to read a dedicated work on these guys. It's horrifying and funny at the same time.

I recall it was implied that Elminster knocked boots once with Mystra (the first one) but I thought he was going steady with the Simbul up until the Spellplague? At least they're on the same power level (though the creepiness factor, since Elminster looked after the Seven Sisters as kids and helped raise them, remains high), and the Simbul was a more interesting character because of the whole 'borderline insanity' thing.

Whatever happened later on, I have no idea. My knowledge of FR ends abruptly and with finality with the release of 4E Realms.

So far as goddesses go, Elminster's only had sex with Mystra to my recollection. They apparently did so fairly often at various times, but she tended to run hot and cold on that and the new Mystra has never touched him. His steady paramour from somewhere around mid-2e until the end of 3e was the Simbul.

Quite a bit more than borderline insanity is supposed to be the subtext for all of Ed's immortal NPCs, with all of them finding different dysfunctional ways to manage the endless parade of funerals. Sex is obviously one of Elminster and Alustriel's ways. But we only ever see them from their own POVs or the POVs of people who have good reason to be sympathetic to them for such encounters and obviously they don't see themselves as desperate and needy.

Would it be covered in lavender flowers or painted lavender? Or both because that would be fabulous ;-)

Both.

Purple Rain? And will it make Doves Cry?

Do you have a kick starter because I'm in.

A light purple, but yes. Almost pastel. And it'll make doves puke heart-shaped rainbows.

Forgot to mention that I bought Testament on the recommendation of yourself and Cde. Samnell - good stuff, worth $2 of anybody's money, and now I want a Quedeshot.

Sacred prostitutes are on the list of things I want to parade past my sandbox players at some point. Alas, I sent them off into the wilds and so they ran into a lesbian couple that run an inn instead.

Maybe some kind of druidic fertility rite instead, complete with phallic and yonic fetishes everyone's fiddling with while a woman and a man participate in some kind of pain-sharing magic on the altar, screaming and howling and offering their holy agony and blood to renew the land.

...why did I think of that after I set the game in spring? Dammit. Perfect chance to use the old "you hear horrible screams in the woods" hook.

Maybe its because I have gay friends and family, maybe its because I live in Sydney and maybe its because of my upbringing, but gay people have always been part of my life so for me gay people arent unusual, or rare and the only difference is the gender of the people that they prefer to be intimate with.

If you keep letting them know we're just ordinary, boring people with ordinary, boring lives, I'll never get enough donations through my front companies to build that big lavender mountain with a giant reservoir tip on it, let alone enough to install the world's largest fountain in that reservoir tip to create brief, artificial rainfalls over the god-fearing neighborhoods downwind.

Even without that, trying so hard to give a personality to your Ultra-DMPC (even going so far as to write stories about him, using him as a protagonist) is a sure way to upstage the PCs. Restraint would require that the NPC in that role be more or less faceless.

TSR decided who served as protagonists of the books. Ed just writes 'em as work for hire, same as everyone else writing gaming fiction. They sold well, so TSR and then WotC kept asking for more of them.

I was kind of interested in checking out his Why Is Sex Fun?, but I was so bored by Collapse I never got around to it.

I really liked Guns, Germs, and Steel despite all the fretting about a dirty scientist trespassing on historical grounds that was in vogue when it came out. I was excited for Collapse and made it about a hundred pages in. It barely felt like a good written by the same guy. I understand he also gets some regular history pretty wrong later on, but I never got that far.

Other news:
Still slowly working my way through Fateful Lightning. It's not bad by any margin and has a few advantages over Battle Cry of Freedom but not enough. He's trying to cover twice the time span and content in less than half the pages and it shows a lot. There are occasions when he incisively points out something that McPherson either just assumed or didn't see as important, like just how rickety the American constitutional structure was (and is) but it comes off feeling more like a breezy textbook than a meticulous survey.

Which may have been the intention, I suppose.

I just handled homosexuality in one of my games. The party came to a frontier town at the foot of a mountain pass, on the way to their first adventure. They go to one inn in particular because the gate guard warned them off the other on account of an elf and half-elf in the party. There they found a middle-aged lesbian couple running an in with the help of their adopted children.

I don't know what kind of game other people are playing, but I think I managed to successfully convey that they're a lesbian couple without having them ripping each other's dresses off, pulling out a finely-crafted elven sex toy, and doing each other on the table. Perhaps my own gayness has singularly gifted me in the area, but think I've empirically proved that you don't have to fantasize about licking cheez-whiz off Elijah Wood's feet to put two women into a typical family setting and have one of them call the other "my lady."

Because I'm so not into licking cheez-whiz off Elijah Wood's feet. Ew. But: Science!

During the 2011 Conference of Interreligious Dialog in Hungary, italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, speaking as representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation of Europe, indicated that their studies showed that 105,000 Christians were killed each year, or 1 every 5 minutes. This number represented stricly martyrs, that's it, people killed specifically for being Christians.

That's nice, but you didn't tell me how he arrived at that figure. His website is in Italian, so it's no help. Google turned up a sample of his work which left me less than confident that he isn't just inventing numbers for propaganda value, considering the histrionic absurdities he saw fit to publish therein.

These numbers shouldn't be hard to come by and I found the total repeated in various rightwing Christian places. Yet it's never broken down to show how they arrived at the sum. I don't doubt that it's a fundie shibboleth, but that's only testimony to why we should be aggressively skeptical of it. If his group actually did the studies, then they should have a paper out with their methodology, etc. Do you have it?

As stated in another thread, 163,000 Christians die annually for their faith

Could you provide some support for that figure? I just googled it and all that came up was what amounted to a fundraising document which, in addition to being deeply suspect from the get-go, did not deign to tell the reader how it arrived at that number.

The philosophies are largely irrelevant.

They are pretty much identical, though. The only thing that separates Westboro from Robertson, or both of them from the average antigay internet poster are tactical decisions.

I thought the 700 Club had gone off the air because all the people on it had died of old age and bitterness.

When Pat (his real name is Marion, incidentally) sold the Family Channel to Fox, who later sold it to Disney, the contract required that they 1) always air the 700 Club and 2) always have Family in the network name. The deal did not forbid putting a disclaimer up before it airs Pat's crap, which I understand is now normal practice.

To throw more fuel on that fire, Iomedae has been described as "more forward thinking than her former patron". Maybe some old traditions got turned over starting with her taking up Aroden's mantle. Or maybe such things could have started earlier, after Io's apotheosis with her playing the "good angel" on Aroden's shoulder.

That sounds reasonable. Aroden was a LN dude, so I imagine his being God of Humanity did not mean he liked any humanity that came by, but rather that he had a specific vision of humanity that he promoted. To judge from Golarion's history, that vision included a fair bit of empire and at least implicit domination of other races.

To riff on that more, maybe Aroden as "God of Humanity" is a later development and originally Aroden was more the God of Azlanti-descended Taldans or something like that. Aroden chose them to rule, and he ruled over them, so naturally he was lord of all humans. Fast forward a thousand or so years and Aroden Of All Taldans becomes Aroden of All Men. Like Zeus Panhellenios. (Aroden Pananthropios?)

Which now has me thinking about a sort of theological progression from Aroden as most beloved of the gods, to Aroden King of Heaven and then Aroden the One True God. I should find a way to use that somewhere.

One of the latest from Comrade Samnell.

One of the stories I heard years ago when doing Boston's Black Freedom Trail was that the ringleaders of Shadrach's escape were tried and were facing the death sentence for treason and rioting and were only saved because one of the jurors was secretly an abolitionist and adamantly refused to vote to convict.

By nineteenth century standards, I'm sure they had all eight people they tried dead to rights. Even in Boston, plenty of people didn't give a damn or thought the abolitionists were dangerous fanatics. But that's quite different from voting they should hang because they transgressed against a law that most of the white North found at least a bit obnoxious.

Of course that's the big consequence the Compromise of 1850 had for the Union in the longer term: forcing Northerners who were previously indifferent to decide where they personally would stand on slavery by bringing it up close and personal and, and this is a big deal, requiring each of them to personally assist in enforcing it. In an America that hadn't ever had so much as a draft, from late 1850 onward you could be deputized on the spot to help catch a runaway and if you refused you could face jail and a huge fine.

I would like to summarize every non-ironic complaint about political correctness ever written:

*deep breath*

*lengthy stream of slurs directed at various races, religions, sexualities, and genders* never used to complain. Back then they knew their place. Those were the days.

Now *same lengthy stream* act like they're as good as the rest of us. What are we, a bunch of *same lengthy stream*?

He was actually going to publish Misery under Bachman's name, but got outed (or whatever) before he could.

I think I probably could like King quite a lot, but I'm not generally a horror fan. Misery is the only book of his that I've read, back in the 90s when bookstores had giant King shrines with most of his books on display with matching covers. It was fun, but I actually felt very sorry for crazy murdering whatshername.

Part of that could be from seeing the movie, though. I saw the movie first and Kathy Bates reminds me a lot of my mother. Similar height, age, shape of face, and she often takes roles that my mother likes.

"The key word in understanding the South's behavior throughout the four critical decades before the Civil War is threat." Fateful Lightning, A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen C. Guelzo

The problem is that the US government won't do anything at all to legitimise the post-revolutionary Cuban government, so this will not happen until that government falls. You'd think after 54 years it might be time to move on, but apparently not.

Carter was making progress toward normalizing relations with Cuba in the late Seventies, but the nation had the choice between an uncharismatic rightwinger who might have had a few screws loose but wasn't fat crackling evil and a dementia-addled brownshirt type and went with the latter. Because that's the kind of joint this is.

Quote:

I find it fascinating that the endeavour to create a separation of government and the judiciary has led to a supreme court filled with political appointees who vote along party lines.

An interesting point. I wonder how else they could be appointed. But then, I think the founders of the nation didn't imagine the party system would "evolve" (heavy emphasis on use of quotes) into what it did. IIRC (it's too early to look up facts) Washington hated the very idea of political parties, and he probably had the right of it.

Washington was a bog-standard federalist, really. He just didn't think the presidency should be perceived as political and preferred to crack his skulls behind the scenes when he could. Rather like the British monarchy of the century prior often did, when the butt on the throne could be bothered to speak English. He aimed for a public image one part Roman statesman and one part marble statue of a Roman statesman.

How is that US Supreme Court hearing going by the way?

Most of the substantive ones end up being theater. The justices already know more or less how they'll vote. That may not be so on hyper-technical cases that don't have many obvious policy implications, but not on the big ticket items that interest news crews. Later this week they will vote in private and know the outcome. From then it's just writing the opinions. The people outside their staffs will not know until June. Occasionally justices do switch during the writing process, but it appears to be mostly a tactical maneuver to steer the development of the opinions.

So, it's hard to decide which hat to go for on this one:

From a book I read a long time ago about Methodist missionaries in Uganda:

** spoiler omitted **...

Henry Morton Stanley went back into the Congo to scout out Leopold II's personal colonial abbatoir. When your brutality towards black people shocks turn of the century Europeans, you have reached 20th level douchebaggery.

Edit: And yeah, the whole reason I came to the books thread to start with was to commiserate about the death of Chinua Achebe. Sucks.

I would never read it myself, but Things Fall Apart wasn't bad. I had to do it for a class and one woman was furious over the unflattering depiction of Christian missionaries.

Because it's not like Achebe was writing about how they actually behaved, a fact plenty of whites with quite a bit more interest in saving the lives and health of Africans also noticed, or anything like that. Among the latter, Schweitzer (who drifted into the same category as he got older) pronounced shooting too good for missionaries.

John Kretzer wrote:

Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

I support hanging Blair, too.

Is there anybody who you would be against hanging?

I was thinking of starting a thread--Ask Comrade Anklebiter--where people could ask me whether person X should be hung or not.

But I decided against it.

Three people who I would be against hanging, off the top of my head:

Lance Armstrong
Oprah Winfrey
Justin Bieber

I wanted to make a joke about hanging and Armstrong, but his sleazy fake charity (takes in huge piles, hasn't spent a dime funding research in years, mostly runs a very cheap hotline operation and the rest goes into his pockets) came to mind.

So instead I'll just say that I have never quite understood the venomous hatred Bieber gets. He's a teen idol marketed to teenage girls, just like any number before him. I understand why teenage heterosexual boys would dislike him since he's perceived competition. (When I was in high school, every straight male hated Hanson.) But come on, adults? That's like going around bashing on Sesame Street.

Book alert for Comrade Samnell

The authors, I guess, are way pro-JB; the reviewer not so much.

Best part of the essay:

** spoiler omitted **

Vive le Galt!

I'm paywalled out of the full article, but Hawthorne always seemed like a dull, misanthropic old Tory to me.

Finished Nightglass. I think Fateful Lightning is next but I'm not excited about it. Maybe I need to do another work of fiction before diving back in.

The multi-million dollar question: Does anyone know if there is any valid research that indicates what might cause this?

There's no scientific evidence of a link between autism-spectrum disorders and vaccination. (The one study reporting correlation was pretty clearly cooked and has since been withdrawn.) Likewise the stuff about frigid mothers doesn't hold up.

Beyond that? It's really complicated, multicausal (probably multiple genes plus multiple non-genetic factors like paternal age, uterine environment, etc), and we don't know. Sorry.

You know, I noticed something yesterday. Harry doesnt like hats. He has never been described wearing a hat, and even willfully chooses not to wear a helmet in changes saying 'I dont do hats'. But in all the covers ive seen where he is depicted, he's wearing a hat. I know the hat works well with his duster, but if the character doesnt actually wear hats, shouldnt something have been done to correct this at some point?

Most authors have more control over the Earth's orbit than they do over what goes on the covers of their books. Butcher is no exception. I guess he finally met the cover artist some time after the motif got established and now takes it as a joke. Hence the stuff in later books where Harry muses on headgear.

Started Nightglass last night.

This book is packed with really messed up s&$#. I'm impressed that the author can treat the horror of it all, especially as it happens to children, and also capture how banal it becomes since they're stuck with it for years, without being so disgusting or horrid that I threw the thing down without soft-pedaling it. Holy crap.

It's like Harry Potter as written by Torquemada.

Um...it also made me want to play a cleric of Zon-Kuthon. The initiation rite included a sensible, logical kind of religious experience that I could even distantly relate to on a personal level from having had some painful experiences of my own.

"But even if he doesn't, we'll keep him from doing anything sutpid, and we'll have that much longer to help him with his magic."

Nightglass by Liane Merciel

On the subject, though--I must say that I picked up on a certain anti-intellectual vibe from 2nd book, as well. That turned me off a bit, too. Not sure if that's just Dresden speaking, or Butcher's appeal to a supernatural world view in the real world. I'm left undecided, but still--a bad taste left in my mouth, nonetheless.

I initially took Harry's anti-science broadsides in the early books as Butcher speaking through him, since unlike his sexism they don't get much counterpoint. (There's some, but it's really easy to miss.) But over the next few books, starting with the introduction of Injun Joe in Summer Knight and then really taking off with Butters in Dead Beat, it becomes pretty clear that Harry's just a jerk about it, albeit one who tacitly admits error later on when he finds out that Butters has a much better head for magical theory than he does.

That particular turn was a bit gratifying because most of our introduction to Butters was Harry and the rest of the supporting cast going on about how weak and cowardly he was because he acted like a normal human being instead of the protagonist of a fantasy novel.

The most annoying aspect of Dresden's personality, I find, is his martyr complex. Everything is always his fault. It's really frustrating to read his whiny rants about how he is always failing everybody. He's so damned patronizing.

Though, I rather enjoyed the 1st book. Burned through it pretty fast, but I've been stuck on the 2nd book for well over a year now. I dust it off every now-and-again, but never get very far.

The martyr complex never gets better. The books do pick up a lot once the two or three most grating elements of the premise get tossed out and the secondary cast grows.

Yeah, I was just messing with Sam. I have the APFC on three characters now. :)

Everyone's always messing with me. No one ever cleans with me. This is the sole reason for the disarray of my bookshelves, my receding hairline, and the tragic fact that seasons of Mad Men are so short.

Started Nightglass last night.