dogpoet

Schools these days are over protective fuckwits

 

They banned Tag from school. Not the perfume, but the actual game. TAG for gods sake. who's the fuckwit that decided THAT was a good idea.

 

What really chaps my ass about that is they are afraid of being sued because Little Johnny accidently bumped heads with Jeffery. Big fucking deal, kids do that ALL THE TIME. Their kids, they fall down, they get hurt, they cry, they get back up and continue running around.

Yes, but a lot of the litigatious fuckwits you have running around at the moment still think it's cool to sue a schoolboard if little Johnny come home with a bloody nose. Thus, no tag*. Tough shit.

*(In one school in Boston.)

Just remember that when your lover says "I've booked us onto Jerry Springer to discuss our relationship in front of a hooting audience" it's time to walk away...

Possibly good news, possibly not: it has emerged that Will Smith's daughter has been cast in this version, which hopefully means that the flashbacks about his family's deaths and the collapse of civilisation that nobody could be arsed with for The Omega Nan are going to be in it.

I'm calmer, now. i take back my "I'm never writing again" declaration. Still, I think I'm going to be persistant...I'm going to keep calling today (Mind you, I called at 10AM, I won't call again until after 4PM...)

 

If they tall me not to call, I'm going to her house to talk to them in person. i have to straighten this out.

 

(I still want to hit shit, though.)

Try to unwind a bit before talking to them about it, at least.

Chill, Jay. It's a rotten thing, but the situation may improve once her parents have clamed down a bit, and there isn't anything you can do about it at the moment anyway. That's the main thing, and I can appreciate that it's pissing you off no end, but all you can do now is wait and see how it plays out.

No deodorant?

It was invented since the 19th century, so probably not. Possibly they can get away with using cologne.

One of those online internet game things or a myspace type affair with virtual land rights at a guess.

Heh, the cig would be replaced with a tooth pic. Still woulda been great seeing him.

Or chewing gum?

;)

Who do you want to have provided voice?

If it was just voicing an animation and so they didn't have to look anything like Constantine, Paul Darrow could probably do a good job of it.

Tell us what you think Dog Poet!

I shall, but he's not going to post it until the cheque clears, so that'll be a week or so yet.

The copy of JLA: Earth 2 I'm waiting on, on the other hand, should be here sooner.

At the moment, I'm reading Pretty Young Things by Dominic McDonagh!

 

Just got it in the mail from Charlie!

Thanks, Ning. Let us know what you make of it.

Is Legion of Night any good?

I liked it. If you can find it cheap, it's worth your time. It's not anywhere near the level of Gerber's 1970s work for Marvel.

It stars the magician girl from Gerber's Man-Thing, and is about the legend of Fin Fang Foom.

Just won an auction for it on ebay for a couple of quid, so fairly cheap.

Is Legion of Night any good?

Sounds cool: did the otter enjoy it?

Actually, that book never came up during the discussion. I don't think anyone in the class was familiar with it. It more had to do with the ideas of Romanticism put forth by Byron, Shelley, and the like, and how Victor embodied them.

Fair enough (I've not read it myself).

Yeah, Christian, family and feminist issues were a major part of the discussion. We also applied Jungian archetypes to Victor and the monster (I think it was Jungian, anyways. I was sick the day the teacher gave the overview of the different theories) and also looked at how Victor had the mindset of an ideal Romantic hero.

 

It was interesting stuff.

The Jungian stuff would probably fit the monster a lot better than the Freudian approach: it isn't like the poor sod has a mother figure, after all.

Romantic hero thing is based on his having read The Sorrows Of Young Werther, isn't it?

I think you're right: somebody's sharecropping fiction from a late '80s RPG at the moment, so that could be them as well.

The Arkwright's a boxed set, rather than just one CD, is it not?

Are Big Finish the same bunch who did the 2000AD CD plays?

He's talking specifically about the episodes as initially conceived. He first pictures them to be emotionless, complex and 'science fictiony' then changes that.

Given that, how would you say he's defining his initial versions as being more science fictional than his finished versions? Does he mention any signifiers other than complexity and an absence of emotional resonance in relation to that?

(And I was referring to Davies' own assumption that the legacy is too complex in his initial quotation as opinion.)

I have to admit, much as I love Vess' work, his style doesn't strike me as a particularly ideal match for the world depicted in Martin's books.

Too pretty?

He doesn't say that the legacy is too complicated or dark for anyone in particular, just that it's too complicated. Which is correct.

That's mere opinion, and given that he made a point of getting rid of a certain amount of the backstory before starting (not necessarily a bad thing) it isn't automatically a correct one, either. The assumption that it's hard to do complexity on television is more of a self fulfilling prophecy than anything else.

And as for the science fiction thing, he's obviously not talking about science fiction as a genre, but specifically about the initial versions of the Doctor Who episodes he writes. At the start, the brain is dominant: it's all complex science fiction. But Davies prefers the finished script to be based more around the heart, so he brings the emotional, character-based elements to the fore and shaves away the complexer, science fiction elements. Not because the audience is stupid, but because he's not writing for a sci-fi audience - as he puts it, the "subscription channel, cult audience, male sci-fi" audience. Which is why the series is pulling in an average of 8 million viewers instead of being shoved away on late-night BBC2.

 

You're the one filling in the blanks.

I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version -- the more emotional, honest version.

That's an assumption about the nature of SF as a whole right there, I'd have said.

I've always got a much more complicated, science-fictiony version of each episode in mind, and I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version -- the more emotional, honest [for complexity and science fiction are neither honest nor emotional] version. For example, there was a great [too great for the halfwits who watch this shit to understand, of course], complicated version of "Tooth and Claw" in my mind where, at the end of the episode, Queen Victoria is killed, and that creates the parallel universe which becomes the world of "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". It would have been the most brilliant ending, because the Doctor and Rose would have stood there and gone "That's not supposed to happen!" But it's very subscription channel, cult audience, male sci-fi. It's a brilliant moment, but its legacy is too complicated [for my stupid taget audience to grasp], and too dark in a boring way [for my stupid target audience to be arsed with].'

 

I think this says far more about Dogpoet than it does about Davies.

My suggested subtexts may be a bit more cutting than necessary, but precisely how is saying that something is too complicated for the audience you're writing it for and that science fiction is neither emotional nor honest to be interpreted? He makes both of these statements, which begs the question of why the hell he's writing science fiction for a mass audience in the first place.

Ah, I see.

Somebody should tell him that you can do a wordcount with most wordprocessors and text editors, shouldn't they?

The Tad Williams fantasy series was pretty grim, Mark, but apart from one each by Rowling and King I've not read the others you mention. (I have read a couple of Ericksson's postmodern literary things, but not the Malazan stuff.)

Fucking fantasy series writers.

Never saw Michael Moorcock or Roger Zelazny publishing huge fat books as part of a fantasy series, did you?

Fair enough, Malin.

This is a pretty substantial book if they're publishing it in two parts?