To discuss your favorite and most hated women (male and female) in literature.
I think the only female author book I ever finished was “Pride and Prejudice” (didn’t even read Harry Potter, lmao). But history is full with them, you have authors like Mary Shelley 
, Margaret Mitchell 
, Margaret Atwood 
, Isabel Allende 
and so on.
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Ann Rand: Based or Not?
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I really enjoyed Fountainhead and to a lesser extent Atlas Shrugged (you can skip the Galt sperg speech). Every time I hear someone critique it they either have never read either or pretend they've read it, because they read some synopsis on the internet.
A lot of her characters in Atlas are caricaturey and the book has a smug teenage "I'm going to show the world one day! You'll see" attitude that gets taken very seriously but the ideas are interesting. Particularly how shitty people take over institutions and slowly chip away at society and reward each other for not nooticing, while the people who care/work hard/keep the lights on become cynical and alienated.
I can sympathize with my elite big brain
me IRL
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Galt's Gulch didn't really work for me. I understand the screed against communism, and I don't think that society is "due" the fruits of others' genius. But the only reason they got to be genius inventors and whatnot is because they lived in a society where they could pursue these ventures and not have to worry about surviving. They could buy food and medicine, etc. But they get pissed at society, so they're going to take their toys and leave. Fortunately, they're already rich so they can buy everything that they need from the outside world, and continue being geniuses.
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I don't think it's supposed to be a guidebook to life though just a thought experiment "what if all the smart capable engineers and entrepreneurs and the smart dudes who know how to fix anything etc all fricked off and left society to the politicians, freeloaders, and grifters, what would happen?".
It's not like things would instantly collapse or something but I don't think it's controversial to say that a smaller portion of society does a ton of the heavy lifting for the greater half. It's just how some people are, like Winston Churchill writing 43 books, while running a country, and being a full blown alcoholic. Some people just punch above their weight or simply care more.
Not all of them are rich and famous either which is usually where most people dismiss it out of hand by assuming Galts people = a collection of today's rich people. Society is far from a pure meritocracy, it's not that simple as "what if all rich people on Wall st left". Tons of middle class people nobodies are doing that sort of hard work keeping the lights on while most of their coworkers float by day-to-day.
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Never read Atlas Shrugged, but that’s an good case for the book. Interesting ideas exposed by an average melodramatic writer.
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It also kinda supports the idea thay high functioning autists are species-wide antidotes to the same shit-peopling trend. High function autists will persist in forcing shit to work right in an organization even against the grain of shit people incentivizing more shit people by looking away and driving away not shit people.
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Based r-slur. However she is the rightoid version of
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I think every artist should read The Fountainhead. The hero is an uncompromising autist who refuses to design buildings that people like. Obviously this makes him an ubermensch, and only geniuses can appreciate his vision.
As for Atlas Shrugged, I think the one thing it gets right is industry lobbyists will use the government to strangle creativity and development in order to protect their markets.
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Roark was an entitled sociopath who blew up a building. If she wanted to tell a story about an uncompromising artist she should have gone with a painter who shreds his painting on an exposition instead of an architect. Though people like Toohey are real, so she nailed some of her caricatures.
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But that wouldn't have been as cool!
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Can’t argue against that 😃
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