Bakker LVII

[Werthead]

On 8/12/2020 at 12:34 AM, SaltyGnosis said:

Rothfuss is a doofus who thinks emulating Joss Whedon makes you a feminist, and Lawrence is an introverted shut-in who gets super defensive about his work. Neither make them evil.

How is he an introverted shut-in? He has a severely disabled daughter whom he spends most of his time looking after, but until comparatively recently (2014, I think) he had a full-time day job working in tech.

That said, ML did have some issues about being super-defensive over his work - including here, I think, and even got a mod warning once - which I think stems from that one BS review at the very start of his career that could he derailed his entire writing career. I also note that he's recently gone on hiatus from writing, partially from burnout but I think also from the fact that he got so far ahead of schedule that he was writing books he knew wouldn't be published for 4 years, so he had some time in hand.

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Not to mention this person you seem to think is trying to squeeze "social media cred" out of this is a best selling author who probably sells way more then ML to begin with.

Potentially. She's a reasonably well-known YA author with some adult works, Lawrence is one of the biggest-selling fantasy authors this decade (which isn't actually as impressive as it sounds, sales-per-new-author this decade have fallen off a cliff compared to the prior three or four). They're likely around the same.

[All Cats Are Bad]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

How is he an introverted shut-in? He has a severely disabled daughter whom he spends most of his time looking after

You just answered your own question. I didn't mean that as a statement t of judgment btw. I'm an introverted shut-in too, and most of that is also by circumstance. But such a person has plenty of reasons to be defensive about their writing.

20 hours ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Yes, that is the non apology blog post I mentioned above that I said was bullshit. If you’re not even going to read/comprehend my posts I’m not going to continue here.

It's weird you mentioned that as "the" non-apology because he didn't write it? I shared that in conjunction with the CP (I assume you just glanced at the title and kept scrolling) video because of the section that explains the "detractors" here really don't want an apology. Also if you wanna bow out of the argument I wish you'd just do so instead of trying to put the onus of your weak points on me. "Oh you didn't know this piece of trivia so obviously I'm wasting my time." Second time you've tried to pull that.

I really don't even think he did anything wrong tbh. Like I said I had something much more viscous and targeted happen to me when I was literally a child, with no audience or public support, and I'm not feeling particularly traumatized years later. She's an adult, with an audience, she can survive some abusive tweets. The reason I assumed she was some goodreads rando is that this is the only possible angle I could see her having a legitimate gripe from.

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Right? Between the two of us we have complete sabotaged and ruined an innocent man’s career! However can we live with ourselves!? EXISTENCE IS PAIN

See, this is the kind of intellectual dishonesty I just find it so tiresome to argue with.

[The Twink in the North]

Here's what I don't understand: Why is Mark the one on the hook for that incident? She has a platform too. If retweeting her negative review puts her in the crosshairs of his abusive fans, wouldn't writing the review in the first place put him in the crosshairs of hers?

For the record, both are kind of meh writers.

[All Cats Are Bad]

1 minute ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

And you keep singling out this one instance when there's been a ton of other stuff he's said and done in other places.

Because I don't care about any of the other incidences and neither should you. Who cares if he's defensive about his work? Do you not think the average server you tip is as defensive about things in their personal life?

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Congratulations, you're the first person on my ignore list. At this point I'm just arguing to have the last word and really don't have so much as a leg to stand on.

Fair enough, to each their own.

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p.s. I know you read this.

 

 

 

 

 

[The Twink in the North]

3 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

From what I understand and I remember (I don't feel like digging up the actual tweet right now) there was a conversation, i think surrounding goodreads, or maybe authors who are jerks, and she tweeted out something sort along the lines of "ML once pointed out a bad review of  his books and his followers attacked me". I understand she did something similar too a while back, and my understanding is neither of them intended for the followers to attack each other, Honestly, it's a dick move on both their parts. And if that was the only thing ML had ever done in that regard I'd probably be OK, but as I've mentioned this brought out a lot of stuff he's said to female critics online(reddit, twitter, etc) and some really nasty conversation he has had on twitter regarding female critics and authors. Recent stuff too, not things from 6 years ago. The fact that he tried to scrub a lot of it and then went radio silent, then had that blog post or whatever from his i think publicist or maybe whoever runs his website? which I feel made it worse. 

Look, it's not so bad that I'm going to look funny at people who still read his stuff. It's not like if I catch you on the train reading a Vox Day book, in which case I will throw rotten fruit and yogurt at you. But the constant defending from his fans, which fuck I just realized is happening here, is really really gotten on my nerves, which I guess, duh.

Hate to say it Meeseeks, I really do, because I think Mark Lawrence is a bit of a twat, but this sounds a lot like what was being described in that video you mocked. And no I'm not just saying this as a massive Contra Points stan. I remember the James Charles incident where everyone was demanding increasingly more elaborate apologies or mocking anyone who tried to defend the guy as being "insufferable fanbois". When all the flimsy accusations were peeled away all that was left was a group of vindictive people who had personality grievances with the guy and were trying to make them into something that was worth attacking his career over.

Mark Lawrence has been being attacked on social media since Prince of Thorns came out by the same group that just continuously cycles through different means of attack. Trying to spin a defensive author into something like a harassment mob is just the latest tact.

[IlyaP]

26 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

SO back to Bakker, is he really writing.written a novel called The Lolipop Factory or is that something he made up for one of his blog posts?

The impression I'd gotten was that it might be a temp or placeholder title. 

[IlyaP]

24 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

I'll have to read that blog post again, maybe it will make sense the second time. Most of his blog is about scientific level stuff waaaay beyond my pay grade.

Given its constant usage, I suspect it might actually be the intended title. 

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/lollipop-world/#comments

There are references he's made in the past to a novel called The Enlightened Dead - which is the second Disciple Manning novel. 

At some point, there'd been some talk of releasing Light, Time, and Gravity as a novel, before ultimately finding life as a series of instalments online, which were subsequently pulled, if I remember the order of events properly. 

 

[Mitriel]

Thanks for linking my Mark Lawrence blogpost here @SaltyGnosis, and by it (unintentionally) making me aware of this conversation, that by the way I enjoyed following ever since. It’s very interesting to see everyone’s input on this.
 

I’d just like to say a few things, hope you guys don’t mind. I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts around this.

 

So first of all, I’m not Mark Lawrence’s publicist. As I said in the blogpost I’m his beta-reader and the person who runs that fansite (which also has an About section, by the way, giving more information on both about the site and myself, if anyone cares to look.) So I think it’s quite important to underline that I don’t work for either him or for his publishers (as a publicist would.) I’m just a fan and a friend of his. The post I wrote was 100% my “doing”, let alone did he not have any part in it, to date he hasn’t even read it. Nor will he ever do so. I don’t think people realise how negatively something like this affects one’s well-being, and not just emotionally and psychologically, but even physically. I myself wasn’t just incredibly upset for weeks, I started physically getting sick and I know that he similarly suffered, probably even more so than me. We coped with it differently. He actually remained active on social media, but trying his best to avoid the attacks and it was me who went radio silent, posting both on Facebook and Twitter that I’ll be off for a while and even deleting the apps from my phone. 
 

I’d like to say a big thank you for linking that ContraPoint video, I absolutely adored it. And not just because of all the similarities I recognised, but I also very much enjoyed Natalie’s style and work, so thanks for introducing me to her channel. I so wish I’d known about all this sooner. I then perhaps would have been better equipped to deal with what followed. As it was, I was utterly shocked by people’s behaviour and felt absolutely helpless and clueless in the situation.

 

I’ve been closely following Mark on social media for 6-7 years now, and I’m yet to see an example where he was genuinely nasty to a female reviewer or critique. So, I know, @Mr Meeseeks, that you keep saying, you don’t want to waste your time with digging any up, but surely you can point me at one, proven example if there are tons? And not just at something someone said. But where it actually happened. Because everything I looked up and investigated so far turned out to be one-sided exaggerations, and when I questioned those, the people posting them defended themselves by saying he did it to others, too, so it was ok to demean him (even if unfairly).
 

I’m not saying he’s a saint, I did see him get into arguments in the past (mainly on Reddit) I didn’t like, either, but they were not against female reviewers. They were with various people from various backgrounds around various topics. But again, while these did happen, I would say they might amount to perhaps one percent of all his interactions with readers on the internet. So I don’t think it’s fair to judge his character solely based on those. Part of his background, as @Werthead mentioned it, is that he is the main carer for their very disabled child. This means that he needs to spend 99% of his time at home. Not just that he hasn’t had a holiday for 16+ years (just imagine), but he can’t even go out to just a pub in the evenings or the weekends. The only time he manages to do so is once a year when BristolCon is on, he goes to the bar there to meet people while a carefully organised carer is with the child. (This year even that is cancelled due to Covid.)  So, yes, I know I’m a friend of his, but given all that I honestly couldn’t  blame him if he got a little cranky at times, even if I wasn’t. Yes, he makes mistakes sometimes, he loses it sometimes, but he’s only human. And he does spend a lot of his time helping self-published authors, sharing his thoughts on threads in regards to writing, SFF books and other matters in the community, being kind, engaging and good-humoured with everyone, which people hostile against him either don’t know, or don’t care about, or willing to ignore as it doesn’t fit into their view of him. 

 

And while I’d like to believe all these malicious accusations won’t affect his career, unfortunately I don’t think that’s the case. Readers came to me saying that moderators cancelled his book being the book of the month in Goodreads reading groups, Illumicrate was pushed into not featuring his books anymore in their subscription boxes by VE Schwab’s fans on social media and to date I see Instagram comments and Goodreads reviews of his books accusing him of things based on this Twitter storm I know to be untrue. And that’s without me even looking at Twitter, where I’m sure the situation is much worse. 

Some people really hated me defending him, but I’m doing it for two reasons. One is that he’s a good friend who’s being unfairly accused and trashed and as such I will absolutely stand by him. The other is the same reason why I spent years of my life promoting his work (for free, not for any payment) is that he’s a terrific writer. He’s both incredibly skilled and talented. Which actually makes me wonder sometimes whether at the core of these attacks there might just be a little good old-fashioned professional jealousy and not much else.
 

Anyway, I hope, I didn’t offend anyone here. It’s really not my intention. @Mr Meeseeks, I very much doubt that I could change your mind or your feelings in regards to this, but I was still hoping we could have a respectful interaction about it. I’m tired of those people who only want to destroy and trash. I still believe that talking things over help and that fixing things in a community and making them better is what helps that community to become a stronger and happier place for everyone.

 

[IlyaP]

Are you...trying to justify bad behaviour?

[Caligula_K3]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Are you...trying to justify bad behaviour?

I think they're trying to get people to stop talking in vague "I heard he does this" and provide actual links and evidence of Lawrence intentionally harnessing his fans to go after female reviewers. I don't have a stake in this fight; I read one Lawrence book (Prince of Thorns) and I really didn't like it. Maybe he's been an asshole in some internet discussions (like 3/4s of people who post on the internet), maybe he got into an internet fight with Schwab, and some of his fans reacted by being shitty misogynists. Their behaviour, if he didn't encourage it, doesn't mean he's an awful human being who should be lumped in with authors who are committing acts of sexual harassment and assault.

[Mitriel]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Are you...trying to justify bad behaviour?

I’m trying to establish what “bad behaviour” exactly we’re talking about. See, in the VE Schwab example, I’m showing in my blogpost that what happened was that Mark Lawrence retweeted a tweet from her without comment and actually none of his fans misbehaved.

Bad behaviour = him RT-ing the tweet.

Accusations? “he tracked me down, and set his followers after me, encouraging them as they called me b*tch and c*nt” - original act exaggerated and twisted into a manipulative lie

Judgement from people attacking his character based on the accusation without proof or wanting to hear the other side of the story (God forbid the truth): “harasser”, “misogynist” etc.

This is why I said that I’d like to see some proof now for these accusations because all the claims I investigated so far turned out to be similarly stretched.

[IlyaP]

Oh you're here looking for gossip. I getcha. You made a wrong turn on the internet highway. You need to chuck a uey and go to tmz.com.  

 

 

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Oh you're here looking for gossip. I getcha. You made a wrong turn on the internet highway. You need to chuck a uey and go to tmz.com.  

No, this is an appropriate place to ask people who claim Lawrence has done X, Y, and Z in posts here to actually provide some information about the claims rather than it being a game of telephone.

That said, it feels like discussing Lawrence should be its own thread.

[Larry of the Lawn]

C'mon guys the Bakker threads have been a haven, a place where we can hide from the gaze of the Mods, and now you've done let them in.

[Rhom]

8 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

C'mon guys the Bakker threads have been a haven, a place where we can hide from the gaze of the Mods, and now you've done let them in.

The threads always had a creepy eye buried within their own chest growing on their heart.

[Maithanet]

12 hours ago, Rhom said:

The threads always had a creepy eye buried within their own chest growing on their heart.

I MUST KNOW WHAT YOU SEE

[Andrew Gilfellon]

Spoilers.

 

So finished the unholy consort and I am pleased to see my theory on the No-God confirmed. The first No-God, not the second No-Go, plus the prophecy. But I admit to being a bit tired toward the end and may have missed some points, so could some people answer me please, these questions and if I got things wrong in my assumptions. Please, tell me, what do you see? 

SPOILERS.....

 

 

1. The Dunyain were actually an experiment of the Consult, to find the perfect soul to reawaken the No-God. 

2. What the hell was up with Ajoki? Was he on the Consult's side, or Kellhus? Just WTF in general. 

3. Was the Tusk confirmed to be a ploy by the Consult? Inchoroi. 

4. Also, if Kellhus was the perfect soul, why did they grab his son?  

That's all I can think of.....TELL ME. 

 

[.H.]

1 hour ago, Andrew Gilfellon said:

1. The Dunyain were actually an experiment of the Consult, to find the perfect soul to reawaken the No-God.

I think this is a somewhat "popular" idea, but I don't personally see any real textual support for the idea.  To me, it is just that the Logocentrism of the Dunyain just happens to align with the Tekne of the Consult, making them prime to repurpose/use it all.  The question about the providence of the Insertant's identity is likely (to me) a different matter entirely.

1 hour ago, Andrew Gilfellon said:

2. What the hell was up with Ajoki? Was he on the Consult's side, or Kellhus? Just WTF in general. 

I personally think Ajokli is on Ajokli's side.

1 hour ago, Andrew Gilfellon said:

3. Was the Tusk confirmed to be a ploy by the Consult? Inchoroi.

Inchoroi, yes.  We "knew" this extra-textually, post-TUC the text confirms it.

1 hour ago, Andrew Gilfellon said:

4. Also, if Kellhus was the perfect soul, why did they grab his son?

Who said Kellhus was a "prefect soul?"  Kellhus might be "closer" to the Absolute than anyone else has ever been, but that doesn't mean he is actually all that close.  In fact, I think one could make a case that as close as he got, he actually ended up farther away in the end (because he let Ajokli "in").  It is also debatable if Koringhus is notionally "closer" to the Absolute, but in the end, it likely doesn't matter if he was or wasn't.

Not only that, but just what makes an Insertant an ideal "circuit" for the Sarcophagus is not actually clear.  Closeness to the Absolute is likely not it though, since it hardly seems that either the first or second even were.

[Werthead]

Interesting Reddit discussion here.

There was a great point someone made that Bakker's key weakness is that his narrative is less than the sum of its parts, like many of the individual elements of the narrative (the basic idea, the prose, the philosophy, the characters, the worldbuilding) are excellent in isolation but become less coherent when he tries to bring them all together. I hadn't thought about it like that before and they seem to be onto something.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

1 hour ago, .H. said:

I think this is a somewhat "popular" idea, but I don't personally see any real textual support for the idea.  To me, it is just that the Logocentrism of the Dunyain just happens to align with the Tekne of the Consult, making them prime to repurpose/use it all.  The question about the providence of the Insertant's identity is likely (to me) a different matter entirely.

I personally think Ajokli is on Ajokli's side.

Inchoroi, yes.  We "knew" this extra-textually, post-TUC the text confirms it.

Who said Kellhus was a "prefect soul?"  Kellhus might be "closer" to the Absolute than anyone else has ever been, but that doesn't mean he is actually all that close.  In fact, I think one could make a case that as close as he got, he actually ended up farther away in the end (because he let Ajokli "in").  It is also debatable if Koringhus is notionally "closer" to the Absolute, but in the end, it likely doesn't matter if he was or wasn't.

Not only that, but just what makes an Insertant an ideal "circuit" for the Sarcophagus is not actually clear.  Closeness to the Absolute is likely not it though, since it hardly seems that either the first or second even were.

Ah right, must've just been me then. I thought that was the jist of that conversation at the end......because they were trying to woo him, or something. So confusing. I think I preferred the first trilogy more.