Careercow Chuck Wendig / Charles Wendig / TerribleMinds - Terrible author, terrible person, ruined Internet Archive's online library

[Rand /pol/]

Why are people talking about food in this thread.

 

[ditto]

Why are people talking about food in this thread.

Because Chuck fancies himself the Perfect Leader of a sandwich cult.

 

[A Hot Potato]

Why are people talking about food in this thread.

Because everyone is fucking FAT

 

[JohnMc]

Because everyone is fucking FAT

Because SJW writers are Obssessed with food. You can't go a panel without a character either eating or talking about food.

 

[Flexo]

Because SJW writers are Obssessed with food. You can't go a panel without a character either eating or talking about food.

Because it's the only human commonality left that isn't a potential political landmine.

Any other possible topic you might broach, someone is going to get mad at.

 

[Mola Ram]

Because it's the only human commonality left that isn't a potential political landmine.

Any other possible topic you might broach, someone is going to get mad at.

Even food isn't safe. Just watch the "latinx" lose their shit over burritos and tacos, blacks tut-tutting over soul food (or worse, fried chicken and grape soda), Indians sneering at you over various curry dishes. And God help you if you use food to describe someone's skin color.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Even food isn't safe. Just watch the "latinx" lose their shit over burritos and tacos, blacks tut-tutting over soul food (or worse, fried chicken and grape soda), Indians sneering at you over various curry dishes. And God help you if you use food to describe someone's skin color.

Twitter retards aren't actual human beings. If this thread illustrates anything, it's that.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Because it's the only human commonality left that isn't a potential political landmine.

Any other possible topic you might broach, someone is going to get mad at.

I think it's even dumber than that.

ASOIAF makes a pretty big deal out of describing different foods, whenever the occasion arises. Even when someone takes a supposedly light meal, there's usually at least two kinds of meat, several sidedishes and the wine is usually also mentioned in some way to emphasize how high its quality is. My guess is that many shitty authors try to emulate and imitate this, by mentioning food, they think they engage in worldbuilding, but they lack the knowledge, tastes and creativity to really pull it off and we end up with stuff like that scene in an SW book (wasn't that by Wendig, too?), where they eat a certain spice that makes all guest fart during a wedding.

It's shitty writers engaging in some cargo-cult version of worldbuilding. They saw some authors being praised for their detailed worldbuilding and the careful descriptions of food, so they try their hand, but like everything they do by mere copypaste, they only go through the motions.

 

[AnOminous]

I think it's even dumber than that.

ASOIAF makes a pretty big deal out of describing different foods, whenever the occasion arises. Even when someone takes a supposedly light meal, there's usually at least two kinds of meat, several sidedishes and the wine is usually also mentioned in some way to emphasize how high its quality is. My guess is that many shitty authors try to emulate and imitate this, by mentioning food, they think they engage in worldbuilding, but they lack the knowledge, tastes and creativity to really pull it off and we end up with stuff like that scene in an SW book (wasn't that by Wendig, too?), where they eat a certain spice that makes all guest fart during a wedding.

This goes all the way back to the Odyssey. There are a couple books of the Odyssey that consist almost entirely of descriptions of feasts.

 

[Flexo]

I think it's even dumber than that.

ASOIAF makes a pretty big deal out of describing different foods, whenever the occasion arises. Even when someone takes a supposedly light meal, there's usually at least two kinds of meat, several sidedishes and the wine is usually also mentioned in some way to emphasize how high its quality is. My guess is that many shitty authors try to emulate and imitate this, by mentioning food, they think they engage in worldbuilding, but they lack the knowledge, tastes and creativity to really pull it off and we end up with stuff like that scene in an SW book (wasn't that by Wendig, too?), where they eat a certain spice that makes all guest fart during a wedding.

It's shitty writers engaging in some cargo-cult version of worldbuilding. They saw some authors being praised for their detailed worldbuilding and the careful descriptions of food, so they try their hand, but like everything they do by mere copypaste, they only go through the motions.

Ooooooo... just like there for awhile every Tolkien knock-off had their own shitty made-up language.

I hadn't read GoT yet and didn't know those details. I withdraw my theory and now back yours.

(boy, there is a George Martin is fat joke there too)

This goes all the way back to the Odyssey. There are a couple books of the Odyssey that consist almost entirely of descriptions of feasts.

Yeah, but why then the recent trend instead of an eternal one? At least in the Odyssey it makes sense since starvation was a real problem for primitive man so a lot of importance was placed on food and food was invested with a lot of meaning. Nowadays, I'm backing the above theory.

 

[A Hot Potato]

Yeah, but why then the recent trend instead of an eternal one? At least in the Odyssey it makes sense since starvation was a real problem for primitive man so a lot of importance was placed on food and food was invested with a lot of meaning. Nowadays, I'm backing the above theory.

It made more sense in the middle of the 20th century when authors like Ian Fleming describde in detail what James Bond was going to eat and drink.

Then, it was because people had just been fucked hard by war, and it was actual escapism to imagine eating the stuff he ate.

Now, it's usually because of the reasons already stated.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Ooooooo... just like there for awhile every Tolkien knock-off had their own shitty made-up language.

I hadn't read GoT yet and didn't know those details. I withdraw my theory and now back yours.

It is one of my favorite aspects of the books, since it does work so well and fleshes out the setting. When Martin describes a feast and goes into detail of individual courses, it does sound pretty awesome and mouthwatering and you wish you could be one of the guests (preferably one far away from the political backstabbing). At times, he even ties it into politics when the narration mentions that a character offers a certain dish to a certain person based on their rank. The descriptions of the luxurious foods of the royal courts also contrasts nicely with the meagre and gaunt supplies some other characters might have to survive on.
It is those nuances that I assume are missing in the works of lesser authors.

With them, you might as well replace the text with " [Feast goes here] " and nothing of value would be lost.

It's kind of weird, many people think they can outdo Tolkien's worldbuilding and all you get is them reusing what Tolkien came up with and only add a gimmicky twist, or they add ridiculous "languages" which are pretty much just made up on the spot.

One of the key moments to me, when it comes to the genius of Tolkien, is when Sam and Frodo reach Ithilien and they come upon a statue, where some orcs have torn off the head and replaced it with a roughly hewn face in mockery of the original statue. The book mentions battles from millenia and centuries past and it actually does feel like this isn't just a throwaway line from an author that just wants to make his story sound bigger by alluding to happenings in the settings past, but rather like Tolkien could genuinely now go into a long rant about the details of that history.
I think a fitting metaphor would be this: Tolkien mentions the past of that area and it feels like a window to a broad and expansive world. We could climb through that window and genuinely explore that entire world that it is out there. We might only get a short view of it, but we know it's there. With many other authors, when they mention something like that, it feels more like a framed painting and you instinctively know, there is nothing besides what was said, there is nothing to explore but the lines on paper that you got.

[Edit] To take that metaphor even further: In Tolkien's case of the "window", the closer you get, the more you see of the world. In case of a lesser's author "framed painting", the closer you go, the more you see the broad strokes that put together the image, you might see a few neat details and can admire how it's put together, but you don't get a "wider view" of the world, so to speak. [/edit]

Wendig's writing reads like everything is made up on the spot without much thought put into it.

 

[AnOminous]

Yeah, but why then the recent trend instead of an eternal one? At least in the Odyssey it makes sense since starvation was a real problem for primitive man so a lot of importance was placed on food and food was invested with a lot of meaning. Nowadays, I'm backing the above theory.

It meant a lot of things in Homer. Sometimes it just meant they were hungry. Odysseus and his men were always literally just running out of food so a chance to eat beef or mutton or anything was a chance to live. It also symbolized temptation and they'd often be punished for it, like eating Lotus, or the gluttony of the Cyclops. And sometimes, it would symbolize the decadence of society in general, like the suitors feasting in Odysseus' absence whom he later kills.

Some of the dishes are well described enough you could probably make recipes out of them and they represent things people actually ate at the time.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

It meant a lot of things in Homer. Sometimes it just meant they were hungry. Odysseus and his men were always literally just running out of food so a chance to eat beef or mutton or anything was a chance to live. It also symbolized temptation and they'd often be punished for it, like eating Lotus, or the gluttony of the Cyclops. And sometimes, it would symbolize the decadence of society in general, like the suitors feasting in Odysseus' absence whom he later kills.

Some of the dishes are well described enough you could probably make recipes out of them and they represent things people actually ate at the time.

History and historical tales are a weird field of study. You start out to read up on epic deeds of great heroism, but you soon get enthralled by little neat tidbits like finding out what a person a couple thousand years ago liked to eat for lunch.

 

[DavidFerrie]

For my money, the single most brilliant piece of literature describing food in detail is New York journalist Joseph Mitchell's 1939 article about "beefsteak dinners". No foodie journalism since has matched it.

 

[Creep3r]

I'd hate to interrupt this gastronomy in literature debacle, but I felt the need to share the following...

The new EA Star Wars game "Squadrons" is apparently going to be loaded with odes and references to Chuck's awful books. With not only ships but even locations he conceived brought to life for the first time in a video game. Along with the character of Rae Sloane (a Thrawn knockoff which he did not create but promoted to be one of the new heads of the Empire) now serving in a major leadership position in the game much like in his novels.

The ship and its dockyards were originally described by Chuck in his second shitty novel and given their own toy expansion in January 2020. Considering how silent he's been to Disney referencing his shit since he got the pink slip, I wonder if he'll be gloating about this like he did when Solo referenced some shit of his or if he will just stay quiet out of bitterness, since seeing his trap shut would be quite a rare sight.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

I think it's even dumber than that.

ASOIAF makes a pretty big deal out of describing different foods, whenever the occasion arises. Even when someone takes a supposedly light meal, there's usually at least two kinds of meat, several sidedishes and the wine is usually also mentioned in some way to emphasize how high its quality is. My guess is that many shitty authors try to emulate and imitate this, by mentioning food, they think they engage in worldbuilding, but they lack the knowledge, tastes and creativity to really pull it off and we end up with stuff like that scene in an SW book (wasn't that by Wendig, too?), where they eat a certain spice that makes all guest fart during a wedding.

It's shitty writers engaging in some cargo-cult version of worldbuilding. They saw some authors being praised for their detailed worldbuilding and the careful descriptions of food, so they try their hand, but like everything they do by mere copypaste, they only go through the motions.

Counterpoint: GRRM is incredibly fat

 

[Linako 2.0]

Today I remember to curse Charles Wendig and fucking over Archive.org.
I was looking around for old Lin Carter books to translate into Spanish and now I have to make an account to "borrow" a pdf of an old pulp fantasy anthology that's been out of print since the 70's. All because a soyboy got mad his dumpy crumply book was being uploaded even though not a single person downloaded it.

 

[ditto]

Today I remember to curse Charles Wendig and fucking over Archive.org.
I was looking around for old Lin Carter books to translate into Spanish and now I have to make an account to "borrow" a pdf of an old pulp fantasy anthology that's been out of print since the 70's. All because a soyboy got mad his dumpy crumply book was being uploaded even though not a single person downloaded it.

But don't you realize that nothing can stop you, because you are a MAGIC SKELETON packed with MEAT and animated with ELECTRICITY and IMAGINATION?

 

[Woke Blue Muttlema]

Today I remember to curse Charles Wendig and fucking over Archive.org.
I was looking around for old Lin Carter books to translate into Spanish and now I have to make an account to "borrow" a pdf of an old pulp fantasy anthology that's been out of print since the 70's. All because a soyboy got mad his dumpy crumply book was being uploaded even though not a single person downloaded it.
View attachment 1403292

> noño de soya
ngl I laughed. We should just start mocking this guy in other languages.