That is pretty true of the comment, and probably why no one should be seeking random quotes from random people on the internet. Any quote gathered in such a way is representative of virtually nothing, beyond the narrative the person gathering the quote is seeking to craft.

I was simply illustrating that the quote has…

If this is the explanation for the seemingly random hostility then the piece is an utter failure. The valid criticisms, if they exist, are fully tainted by the petty cruelties. I would have been fascinated to read an article that actually explored the problematic relationship between the Mormon Church and the…

The problem is that Mormonism, unlike many other problematic faiths, has fairly rigorous tithing. It’s probably very safe to assume that roughly 10% of his earnings go directly to the church... so he’s surely donated 10+ million to the church in spite of his alleged disagreements over any particular religious claims…

I mean... these are major characteristic of many people on the spectrum.

The sad thing with Sanderson is, I feel like there’s a MUCH better writer, like an actually great writer inside him, struggling to get out, but who is prevented from escape by Sanderson’s overelaborate lore and constant moral foibles about his characters.

I think some of the toxic fanbase is pretty easy to understand in Sanderson’s case. Mental illness is a common theme across his writing... so a lot of fans find characters that resonate with them on a deeply personal level even if the characters are otherwise fairly shallow. This is a surprisingly common response from…

Are you just referring to the Salvatore books? Those get largely the same criticisms as Sanderson’s book (poor prose, formulaic plotting, etc)... which, I think, sort of supports my point. If you’re talking about all the DnD books, then you’re talking about 30+ different authors and... of course there would be a lot…

This article is to journalism what Elantris is to “great” fiction.

This article is to journalism what Elantris is to “great” fiction.

You don’t have to look much further than the contemporary rise of DnD to understand why Sanderson is doing so well right now. He’s the dungeon master, crafting worlds bound by vivid and complex rules that the readers get to fill with meaning.

But I do know you have to be a damned fool to defend a rich person as unassailable because they are rich.

What I find most interesting is that virtually everyone active in the fantasy space seems baffled by this bit of “journalism”... even most of the folks that actively dislike Sanderson’s writing seem shocked by the tone and the weirdly personal digs at the boring eccentricities of the writer and his friends and family.

I really appreciate the big reveal of the article... that a Fantasy writer might enjoy playing god through the creation of new worlds.

But prehistory doesn’t remotely support this, and it’s not rational either.

I would enthusiastically agree with this sentiment if it wasn’t (IME) primarily used to club people over the head for even tepid and fairly reasonable criticisms of adaptations.

The entire history of war in the 20th century was shaped by this - the training methods of the US and other armies changed dramatically because troops in WW1 and WW2 just wouldn’t kill people if they could possibly avoid it a lot of the time, even if those people were shooting at them!

I think anyone would grant that the violence in videogames is often wildly incoherent due to the nature of the medium...

I made the mistake of assuming you could understand what I meant by the term “natal man”... which I used distinctly from “woman” and “man” (illustrating, from the beginning, that I obviously know the difference between sex and gender).

No number of transGENDER people discredits the sexual dimorphism of humans...…

The only meaningful data I’ve seen on this is that the most egalitarian countries (those with the least emphasis on traditional gender roles) also show a increase in gendered employment. This seems to imply that the less we push gendered social norms the more important the biological differences become. The blank…

For an exception to prove a rule, that exception needs to be rare, for example if the rule is “all houses have bedrooms”. Intersex, transgender, and nonbinary people are way too common for that phrase to apply.