u/anotheranotherother

I'm at about the same point (300k out of 400k) into Fall, and I'm in pretty big agreement. (Tho I disagree about Seveneves - I thought that was one part too short. The ending felt way too rushed after such a build-up. )

I felt a bit of nervousness from the beginning, seeing a map with place names that strongly suggested this would be a fantasy novel. I really dislike fantasy novels, and Stephenson manages to hit almost every trope that causes me to dislike them.

1) Constant, lengthy, and largely unnecessary descriptions. Look,I get it, most of the people in this world live in ~medieval era hovels mostly built from stone and log. I don't need every single freaking house described in multiple paragraphs. That's what imagination and immersion are for.

1b) A few instances of describing the exact same thing when different characters experience the thing. CharacterA finds person/place/thing, and here are two paragraphs describing it. CharacterB finds the same person/place/thing, and here are two paragraphs that nearly verbatim describe the exact same thing.

2) Characters ingloriously/randomly disappearing for whatever reasons. Was Stephenson trying to GRRM some people with sudden deaths? Because it didn't work at all. RIP Bobby Shaftoe, I'll love him, his story, and his end forever; there's nothing wrong with a well timed culmination of an arc. But in Fall, nearly every death was simply a "huh, I guess that person is gone now...?" feeling; I didn't really get to know or care about the characters enough for their deaths to effect me even the slightest bit. The only real effect I had with a lot of these was a feeling of, "so why did you waste so much time telling this person's story?"

3) On the opposite end - random new characters appearing as plot-forwarding devices. The main characters at this point in the story need to reach the next point in the story, and the only way for that to happen is if some new character suddenly appears who happens to provide exactly what's necessary for that to happen. Lazy.

I'm sure I could go on. But I'm too disappointed to care much more. Stephenson is hands down my favorite author, but this book had almost none of the qualities that make him my favorite. World building - instead of craftily built up, is explained in tediously lengthy detail. Multiple stories/arcs/viewpoints that weave in and out, sometimes intersecting - clumsily attempted, but largely just "here is this character's turn." A great sense of humor/wit - almost entirely absent, with the few instances being pretty ham-handed and obvious.

Even Anathem, perhaps his most straight-forward (narratively speaking), "dry," and fantasy-esque novel, at least had a great deal of philosophical and scientific ideas that were mentally stimulating. There's little philosophical worth pondering in Fall, and the science is either highly tread (the singularity, internet 2.0), or just oddly non-Stephenson dumb, for lack of a better term. (Why do all of the server farms have to be connected; why aren't they each individual "heavens" with maybe a connection to each for the exploring of different after-lifes; how is "the land" not totally overflowing and super-densely populated with how many people the story says are being uploaded; how is their level of science/technology not increasing rapidly considering thousands of years pass and quite a lot of people remember things from their corporeal lives?)

I wish he used a pseudonym for this novel so I could pretend it wasn't part of his library.

Yeah I'm on Chrome and using inspect a good bit. It was just the first like ~30 random subreddits I visited were mostly the exact same top bar, couldn't find one with a different link color just opacity change. Altho I'm kinda wondering if the one I found is the same...

Ah nevermind I think I found a sub with the right stuff

Outta curiosity, is it impossible to change the colors of the links at the very top (home/popular/all/random/etc)? I've clicked random a few dozen times trying to find a sub that has different text colors, but it seems like the most you can do is change font size or opacity?

Thank you soooooo much.

I used to be kinda good at this, but it's been years and I'm just now re-learning everything. I thought I'd remember a lot more, but nope, I'm back to square one for the most part.

I don't need too much other editing, just playing with colors from here on out. But that header was driving me nuts.

Man I had some dishes to do, not even that many, and this game seemed like a snoozefest. Went to do them and heard two touchdowns from the kitchen. Sit back down and it's back to boring crap.

Only just saw this comment...

259 views! And 0 upvotes...

You may have a point :P

Where? I can't find this in preferences anywhere...

Letting people revert profiles would be such a reasonable approach to this. They'd get instant feedback from people who actually use it, instead of feedback from people who haven't used it. (X% of people who switched ended up reverting, if X is a very large number, it's probably a bad idea - as opposed to X% of people just like bitching about change without actually trying it out.)

How do I use this on my phone? :(

Taste/smell combined - eating blood sausage. If it wasn't for the smell I think I could have eaten it. But the two combined, oh god no.

Touch - the last time I had an oyster. It wasn't the taste, it was the feeling, a giant lukewarm pile of snot going over my tongue and down my throat.

Hearing - any time there's really bad mic feedback.

Sight - in the movie Lord of the Flies, I was around 10 years old when I saw it, and when the kids drop the giant boulder on Piggy. 26 years later I still see it clear as day, and I wasn't ready for that shit.

Those bronze stars people used when decorating the interior of their home.

My parents are still alive. That's all.

Cool. Store will get fined, so they'll just raise the price by $1 on everything. So now if you buy 3 bottles, you're paying $3 extra instead of $0.75 extra.

Wow dude you are edgy as fuck. We need more internet cancer like you.

The instant wins (freebies) I got in there were -

3x 8 hot dog buns, 1 pack 8 hamburger buns, 9 bagels, 2 rolls 25ft foil, 3 sour creams, 1 potato salad, and 2 extra large avocados

The old lady behind me, I thought I was pissing her off because it took awhile to ring everything up. When the cashier announced the total and how much I saved, she couldn't stop with the compliments/shock, and said how proud she was of me (I guess because I'm younger and in her view people my age don't do coupons etc).

Felt good to have the grandma seal of approval :)

Yeah I included it in this post, even though "generally misrepresented fact" would be a better way to describe this stuff.

Not get on Reddit to ask strangers how to be a parent.

All of the "there's a 1 in 100 chance of being born" insert malady (schizophrenic, mentally retarded, cerebral palsy, etc etc).

Add all of those probabilities together and it should be impossible to make it 5 minutes in public without seeing a vast majority of these folk, and normal able bodied people would be as rare as albino tigers.