/lit/ - Literature

Why is it so hard to write female characters that are reasonably smart, helpful, and drive the plot forward, without crossing over into flawlessness, obnoxious girl power virtue signalling, and cringe?

>>11844955
If single pov would always be the best, then isn't first-person the logical conclusion of that? Is first-person always the best way to tell stories?

>>11801942
If the main character is my self-insert, then how come he's so small and weak and useless, everyone keeps kicking him around, and terrible in bed to boot?

>>11733883
Amber and Tigana are some of the very few fantasy books I rarely (if ever) see criticized here at all.

Are there any others that /sffg/ can more or less unanimously agree to be good?

Is there a word for the idea of there being a theoretical set of actions, things you can say, and timings to do things/be places to accomplish just about anything one could ever want? The idea has always fascinated me, but I've never been able to find the term for it.

>Take online IQ Tests
>Get an 80
>Take another
>Get 115
>Take another
>Get 140

Is IQ truly the biggest meme metric there ever has been?

>naj-ah-lism
>ni-heel-ism

which one is correct?

>>10792066
>Homer is brainlet literature
The absolute state of /outerlit/

I've never read Nietzsche. Where should I start?

>inb4 start with the greeks

>>10718767
What IS so enigmatic about Japanese power?

>>10608633
also

>my boy jack vance
>my boy heinlein
>my boy lafferty

interesting

>>10579657
>>10579676

>>10282177

is the guy punching his deformed other face feeling the pain as well?

if so, does the sensation differ for each twin?

>it takes paying money to truly appreciate art
>all books worth appreciating are public domain

What actually is purple prose? Is there a better definition than being a tryhard?

>>9950332

>>9921402
>i will get better books as i spend more money

really makes me think

>>9891101
>In one famous scene, a character's journey to the mantelpiece to fetch a pipe is told in over seventy pages.

Unironically considering whether to put this on my to-read list now

>>9879356
>Is Asimov's Foundation series worth reading through? How foundational (heh) is it to science fiction, and is it still relevant as a vision of a future society?

I bought the first trilogy of that series but couldn't get into it. The concepts are interesting but the prose is just bad. When I look at Asimov in my bookcase, and around it I've got PKD, Wolfe, Davidson, Banks, Chiang, Stross, Gibson, Stephenson, hell even that crazy glorious bastard Hodgson... there's really no contest. Asimov feels dull in comparison.

It's not foundation to sci-fi in terms of enjoying the genre. It's not like "start with the Greeks".

>>9840115
>living is just looking at light reflecting onto your retinas, hallucinating and trying to find to find a deeper meaning

Recommend a book. Historical fiction, dystopian

Pol related encouraged

Something like my favorites
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A Clockwork Orange
War & Peace
The Count of Monte Cristo
A Tale of Two Cities
Brave New World

Why does nobody acknowledge that there are infinitely many possible philosophical axioms and infinitely many criteria for the judgement of these axioms?

It seems like once you realise this, all philosophical discussions become either laughable speculations about what the "true" definitions of concepts are (when these concepts are obviously arbitrarily defined) or flailing about within the infinitely large space of unfalsifiable* conjectures. And the judgement of these speculations and conjectures is pretty much based on marketing.

I have never seen a worthwhile response to this. Can someone please give me an explanation?

* I mean we can't currently, at this moment, verify these things (e.g., We go to heaven after we die", "Once computers become fast enough, they will gain a consciousness"). And I know that science is merely a subset of philosophy. And I know there isn't an agreed upon scientific method. And I know there isn't an agreed upon definition of verify.

>>9776377
>Computers don't exist, science is wrong,

>>9771579
>"Willy Wonka meets The Matrix"