Thread: Red Pill Ruins Reading

Sigh. I mentioned a while ago on a thread that I was reading The Expanse, a sci-fi series by James A. Corey. In that thread, I mentioned that there were some decidedly blue pill overtones throughout the series and I was only up to book two out of the four that have been written so far. Well, this past week I picked up the third book in the series and the red pill has made this one a huge chore to read. I know, I know: 'Then why the fuck are you still reading it? Nobody has a gun to your head.' Well, despite what a clash with my personal beliefs this is, there is actually a very compelling mystery at the center of it. They simply call it the Protomolecule. What does it do? Well...I haven't figured it out yet and neither has any of the characters. But it's infinitely more interesting than any of the people you read about. Anyway, for your reading pleasure, here are some glaring examples of the heavy blue pills dropped on the audience.

Leviathan Wakes

- Apparently at some point in the early 21st century, there was a panic of population decline. It was 'easily corrected' with incentives for breeding and the opportunities for space travel gave people a new purpose in life as opposed to stagnating. Sound familiar at all? They better get to work on this space travel thing, then.

- The protagonist of the series was apparently something of a ladies' man. Right up until he met his special NAWALT unicorn whom he promptly falls in love with and by the second book is already contemplating babies. Yes, this guy has the baby rabies. His unicorn is always right and way smarter than he is, no questions asked.

- The secondary protagonist is a detective who takes on a missing persons' case. Up until that point, his moral guidance has come from imaginary visions of his ex-wife. When he takes the case, she is replaced by the missing person, also a woman. This woman he doesn't even know is his entire motivation through the rest of the book.

Caliban's War

- There are two female characters introduced, one a politician and grandmother while the other is a soldier. Both of them are the absolute best at what they do. The politician is once again always right and two steps ahead of everyone else in her line of work. Hell, the other men are reduced to dick-waving caricatures of what men actually act like. Predictably it's only the woman in the male-dominated world of interplanetary politics that doesn't want war. Everyone else? Not so much. On the other hand, you have the soldier who is big in the way that Shaquille O'Neil is big. And somehow she's also very sexy despite how muscular she is, able to make men aroused and frightened just by being near them. They also casually squeeze in the fact that most men interested in her have 'unresolved mommy issues'.

- Remember how I said that NAWALT unicorn is always right? This is shown right in the beginning where the protagonist draws his pistol on a bunch of guys with assault weapons, knowing full well he'll be killed for it. She, of course, is two steps ahead and calls their ship for backup and scolds him for being a dumbass.

- The politician is single-handedly responsible for dismantling a major corporation just out of pure spite. She has dealings with its founder and CEO about this whole alien artifact business. Now, he is clearly an antagonist and deserves his comeuppance, no doubt about that. But she makes a show of humiliating him first just because she can and then makes sure he can watch as she takes apart everything he worked for. Again, sound familiar? But why kill what you can use? Seems like a waste of good resources to destroy all of those corporate holdings instead of seizing them on behalf of whatever government she represents.

Abaddon's Gate

- I will admit that I'm not even a third of the way through this one, but I'm already incredibly annoyed by it. Annoyed enough to make this post. Let that sink in for a bit.

- In the introduction of one of the female characters, she walks into a dingy gambling den of 'men who hate women'. That's actually how they describe it because the games are based on sex and degrading women. Anyway, she's here to see the guy who runs the place. When the deal they're making goes south, she murders the three gangsters in this room with her bare hands with the aid of some kind of adrenaline implant. She spends the next few minutes crashing from her high and crying in the fetal position. But, yeah. Tiny little Asian woman just took out three gangsters. And one of them had a gun! But he couldn't hit her from across the room, so...bit of an idiot.

- There's another character introduced directly after that. A pastor who's giving a man who beats his wife (goddamnit) a stern talking to. He tells her he doesn't give a fuck what she says which, if that were true, he wouldn't have even come to see her. Hell, he could have just left the office. Instead, he lets her provoke him into grabbing her wrist so she can taze him and have him arrested for assault. She also has his wife show the police her bruises. Because women are always the victims unless someone saves them. Preferably a strong, empowered woman. Anyway, after this she goes home to her wife and daughter. Apparently in the future, they can merge the genes of a homosexual couple so that they can have children. So, here we have a character who is devoutly Christian (and I don't mind that, but it's literally all she talks and thinks about so far, which makes reading her sections very tedious) who is a lesbian despite that whole anti-homosexuality Christian stance, also a pastor which as I understand isn't supposed to happen and is making this huge sacrifice to be away from her family for work. You're supposed to catch a vicious case of the feels for this character, clearly, but damned if they don't go down the feminist checklist for this character. Using the law to her advantage? Check. Same sex, different race to show how progressive she is? Check. Morally superior? Check. Humiliates men where she can? Check. Seriously, fuck this character. Oh, and apparently Muslims still like to self-immolate in front of a crowd to make an example of themselves. Good to know that's STILL happening in the not too distant future.

...and I'm not even a third of the way done! That Protomolecule better do something badass to make it all worth it.

The Protomolecule? ...

In all ignorance, the first thing that crossed my mind is that it might be an alloy of administratium.

Thanks for the review. I'm reading Warren Farrell's Myth of Male Power instead.

I read a sf/fantasy series by a woman (Lillith StCrow) - really liked the setting, the tech. But holy shit, the protagonist is a telepath witch person who constantly bags out the normals for having disorderd, cluttered minds, while her own mind is a fucking rats nest of hypergamy.

You can always spot a book written by a woman, even under a male pen-name, because of all the fucking. Their lives are all about sex. Sex, and personal power-games with the people in their immediate circle. Case in point: Peter Brett. Once again, I enjoyed the setting, the fantasy world-system. But by the time I got halfway through the third book (the Daylight War) I knew for certain that Peter Brett is a woman, or a woman is writing his books for him. Either that, or he is deep-red pill. The book exposes a society where the women get men to die for them.

Other case in point: David Eddings. Go through the one with Sparhawk - the female characters are despicable Mary-Sues. It got worse with time, in fact: the Belgariad had some mary-sues, the Malloreon was worse. In the elenuim, the mary sue is a goddess and in the "Athalus" book, he finally admits that she is not just a goddess (who, despite being a goddess manages to be petty and to spend her energy managing a small group of people she is emotionally close to), but THE goddess of the whole freaking universe. Oh - there's a couple of male gods, but they don't do much. Absolutely no surprise whatever that on his next books, his wife gets credit as co-author. You want to know what? She always was.

I make an exception for Ursula Le Guin, who is simply a very fine literary writer. But in general, if I'm in the bookstore and there's a female name on the cover, I just don't bother.

And don't get me fucking started on Game of Thrones.

Shit. Too late.

GoT shows what happens when a society is organised around "family" as its primary focus. Family is good, right? Well - there are bandits on the roads, there are undead coming down from the north, and the entire productive output of society is focused on a couple of hundred terribly important people. Some bitch insults some other bitch, and hundreds of men have to die while the fields lay unsown and unharvested and winter is coming. The only thing - the only thing - that anyone with power cares about is their own personal crotchfruit. Personally, I think that "monarchy is a fucking stupid way to run a civilisation" is the whole point of the series.

Its pretty red-pill, really, if you are wearing your "they live" glasses. Men are all "my sons, my heirs, my legacy" and the wimminz are laughing at them because they are all fucking around. The women put the men up to all the violence, think that tournaments and jousting is cute. The greatest knight in the real gets his hand cut off, and suddenly he is nobody and nothing. But so long as a woman got pussy on her, she'll always have food on the table. Just like real life.

I'm halfway though book four, and I dearly hope that the entire society is decimated by winter, that the peasants revolt and set up democratically-elected bodies to govern themselves. Damn: what Westeros needs more than anything else is the invention of the firearm and for every knight-in-armour to be shot. The reason feudalism existed was that it takes years of dedicated training to become a knight, and no peasant can stand against one. The firearm fixed that.

Grr.

Im up to the wedding at the Freys. Don't spoil it for me - I'm expecting a whole bunch of people to get killed.

Originally Posted by Mr Wombat

I'm halfway though book four, and I dearly hope that the entire society is decimated by winter, that the peasants revolt and set up democratically-elected bodies to govern themselves. Damn: what Westeros needs more than anything else is the invention of the firearm and for every knight-in-armour to be shot. The reason feudalism existed was that it takes years of dedicated training to become a knight, and no peasant can stand against one. The firearm fixed that.

Grr.

Im up to the wedding at the Freys. Don't spoil it for me - I'm expecting a whole bunch of people to get killed.

I actually somewhat disagree with that: yes the firearm made it easier but the first firearms and until the invention of rifling (about a gap of 300 or so years between their introduction in Europe and invention of rifling) were horribly inaccurate. If you ever saw anywhere why the English Redcoats made 2 lines of muskets, that is because that "wall" was the only efficient way to get some kills due to the gun's inaccuracy.Society has advanced well during the time firearms were introduced (Renaissance in Europe) and so uses for rebellion were small and isolated.