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23 January 2015 at 22:43 #37551
sorry for your friend’s unhappy adventure
But that’s the thing – she didn’t see it as an unhappy adventure. She got closer than most do and was grateful for being asked a question (and not being let of the hook when she tried to dodge) that encouraged her to write a better story.
23 January 2015 at 22:40 #3755023 January 2015 at 22:38 #37548Oh, and I’ll join the LeGuin love-in (with the possible exception of Always Coming Home, which was a bit auteurist even for my tastes).
The Dispossessed contains my all time favourite literary quote:
“They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life, each single life, is not new then why are we born?”
23 January 2015 at 22:29 #37546The problem with Sherlock/ Rosencratz etc = fanfic is that it means The Omen is Book of Revelations fanfic (and presumably Good Omens is The Omen fanfic) and every film adaptation ever is also fanfic.
It is an entirely self-referential argument that tries to allow people to call themselves writers without actually doing the hardest bit of writing.
Moffat and Gatiss, Stoppard, Pratchett and Gaiman have represented their own imagining of situation, plot, character and theme many times over. So when they are asked to adapt (say) Holmes for the 21st century it happens because they have done the hard bit for themselves, they have demonstrated that they have the chops. Stoppard gets taken seriously when he looks at the side characters in Hamlet for exactly the same reason. And Arcadia was a better play, anyway.
I think there is a great story to be told about those in the Star Trek universe who do The Federation’s dirty work (because no civilisation could be that peaceful without ’em). Somewhere The Federation has its Walsingham. Also, I’d love to see the story of the Horgwarts-emberg Trials. But you know what? I want the heirs to Gene Roddenberry’s rights to do it, I want JK Rowling to do it. And if they don’t, that’s fine because it is their world and their choice (even if Warner Bros owns the trademarks to all the the Potter characters). But most of all, I think it would be terrific fun to sit with the writer and shoot the breeze about it, with the greatest accolade being to get a nod in the acknowledgements if in some tiny way I’ve helped something along.
RTD is very cool, (and anyone who isn’t grateful for what he has done for the Whoniverse is a complete tool) but somebody needs to introduce him to an Intellectual Property lawyer.
@purofilion
She was the writer, reading her own work (the clue is in it being at the writers’ group 😉 ). At the time she had no publisher and no agent.
The question was “What is it about?” It threw her into a a tearful tizzy, about which I continue to tease her, but also drove her back to the story.
About 9 months later she pitched it to Barry Cunningham (who, among many other things, discovered JK Rowling) who took it on. It got all the way up the chain (and several rounds of edits) until, in the finest tradition of publishing marketing departments, it was nixed by lackbrains who wouldn’t be in a publishing marketing department if they had any actual skills, and couldn’t work out how to sell it because they had never seen anything like it before. But she remains hugely grateful that I didn’t just say “That’s great. Keep up the good work!”
23 January 2015 at 19:31 #37527Hmm. No Kate Willhelm? Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is a classic. Joan D Vinge? (Marvellously intelligent reimagining of The Snow Queen)
I’d argue McCaffery is more Soft SF than fantasy (her dragons are rooted in science, albiet a not that well understood version – a scene in (iirc) All The Weyrs of Pern has a hilarious smoment in which the autoexec.bat of an AI system (which had survived 3,000 years underground) boots up. The future of Pern, resting on MS-DOS 3.1!
23 January 2015 at 19:13 #37523back then (in the early eighties) you still had to write to a plan that was essentially of another era
A romance author friend assures me this is still the case for Mills and Boon.
23 January 2015 at 19:11 #37522I must confess I find complaints about bibliographies bizarre. Once you have learned the Harvard Referencing System it is dead easy (Pedant, 2015) – although Microsoft has pushed people more towards tiresome footnotes.
Pedant, F, 2015, The Cloven Hoof, p4, The DoctorWHoForum Craig’s Brain Publishing, Scotland.
23 January 2015 at 18:54 #37517@all
So anyway, this afternoon I bumped into a friend I haven’t seen since I stopped chairing (and attending) my local writer’s group.
My claim to fame about her is that I made her cry.
She had just read some beautifully written and gloriously imaginative children’s fiction that everyone present loved (including me).
So: what queation did I ask that reduced her to tears, and why is she grateful?
23 January 2015 at 18:51 #37516Couple of things:
@barbaralefty – I wholly disagree that Moffat’s Holmes if fanfic. It is an adaptation and the striking thing about it – especially the first two trilogies – is how very respectful of the source material (while not being constrained by it). See also US TV’s Elementary. Even post-Reichenbach the change was more to pull the leg of fans (to the outrage of the more ARSEy end of the fanbase, obv).
@ichabod – I also (quite vehemently) dispute the claim that some things “need fixing”. If you disagree with an author’s vision then write critique, discuss in places like this or – best of the lot – write your own fiction rooted in your own ideas.
A friend is a very successful (award-winning) author of LGBT romance (much to her husband’s bemusement). She knows the market, knows exactly what boxes to tick and knows (or rather knew, before she met us) what she could get away with – bad, fanfic-rooted writing.
But, getting feed back pushed her into her own ideas (still formulaic but fresher) and massively improved her writing. Curiously. her writing outside the LGBT market is still an order of magnitude better – utterly wonderful, at its best – and still redolent with LGBT metaphor to those attentive enough to see it.
We don’t call that fanfic
Who is this “we” of which you speak? 😉 My mate Jonathan Pinnock’s book adopted basically the same approach, has the great advantage of being uproariously funny from beginning to end and is also not fanfic – and avoids pastiche. The idea that if you use previously existing characters then it is fanfic seems to me to be straying in the direction of sophistry and is at best self-serving (on the part of the writer).
The one writer who admitted his follow-up of other’s work was Eoin Coiffer’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and…well, the les said about that the better. At least it was the damned movie.
Also, when Wilf Self was restaurant critic for the Grauniad he was a heroin addict – so had no functioning taste buds!
Anyway, what this shows is that mention of the word ‘fanfic’ makes it all but impossible to discuss writing (and that is about as bigger condemnation as I can think of, so watch this space).
(@JimTheFish – is it worth setting up a “Writers’ Retreat” (I think the traditional name is The White Hart) forum for this stuff? Nothing more annoying that a bunch of monomaniacs hogging the pub)
22 January 2015 at 22:03 #37495@purofilion
There are two main types of fanfic (fiction about a ‘verse written by fans).
1. Written by people who are intrigued enough (*cough* obsessed enough*cough*) by the characters and universe to want to play games of what if.. or what happened next. These are mostly harmless, but you learn very quickly that most people can’t write. SF author Theodore Sturgeon said “90% of everything is crud” – and that’s just the stuff that gets published. ‘Cos it turns out that writing is really hard if you, in any way, aspire to being any good at it. Yes, some people have an aptitude for it, but these not only listen attentively to critique, but also tend to write their own ideas.
The tendency not to know how to place tongue in cheek is also a rather pervasive. My all time favourite piece of fanfic was a 100 worder on Usenet that chronicles the adventures of Miss Kitty Fantastico. You will understand further down the road.
And the absence of tongue-in-cheek is most evident among shippers. We can come back to this a bit more further along your Buffy road trip, but suffice to say I would not normally approve of burning people at the stake, but in the case of shippers I am willing to make an exception (there is also slash, which is shipper fanfic porn, as often as not implausibly gay).
2. Those who think they can correct Joss Whedon (or Moff, or RTD or Sorkin etc etc ). The ones who declare that Joss Failed Us (that’s the Royal “Us”, obv). Sadly, as is evident in most fannish places, these tedious fuckwits tend to shout loudest, as well as writing their crappy “corrections”.
Of course, it is well worth noting that one of the finest episodes of BtVS -a way down the road for you yet – was a debut episode first submitted to Joss as a piece of fanfic (but those are the writers words – in reality he sent in a spec script that was dripping with awesome).
22 January 2015 at 18:48 #3747322 January 2015 at 11:35 #37468@jimthefish @purofilion
Not a comment on the book, but on it’s likelihood of having stonking great spoilers in it. You can’t be too careful.
21 January 2015 at 22:40 #37463@purofilion
It’s quite important that you don’t accidentally watch Restless before Primeval. Much confusion would ensue.
Re the book – best to never read it. Keep it as a Objet de Kindle.
19 January 2015 at 20:14 #37434@purofilion
Even Will looks vaguely anorexic. Is that just…digital?? Why it matters I do not know. But I’m not liking the teeth! I need sunglasses just to avoid the glare.
There was quite a bit of who-ha in the Usenet days about aspect ratio. ALL Buffy eps were framed for and protected for 4:3 aspect ratio. But in the UK (so likely in Oz) S4 on were broadcast in 16:9 pan and scan, so it might be an artefact (it was certainly the source of some comedically poor framing in a few scenes down the road).
But it is worth remembering that both Gellar and Hannigan are very slight (such that Amber Benson looks quite chunky when she is anything but). There is a much later scene, which I can’t spoil you about, where Marti Noxon’s commentary actually say “Yes, that’s Sarah. She really is that small”)
But part of the S4 conceit is that the crew are in a new grown-up world and The Freshman was specifically shot to emphasise that and I think the entire first half of the season, at least, might have been shot like that.
19 January 2015 at 15:40 #37426You’re just a curmudgeon
)Guilty as charged, but in this case it really is just a personal preference thing.
Which Doctor Are You?
Hartnell. Who else?
19 January 2015 at 01:40 #37401@purofilion @lisa
It is worth noting that S4 of Buffy broadcast a full 5 years before the return of Who and both RTD and Moff are very open about their admiration for, and inspiration from, Buffy.
Alexis Denisof. Plays Wesley. *spit*
I just re-watched Hush and had forgotten the number of sight gags with Anya (complete indifference to the blood and gore during Giles’s presentation and the …er… finger in the hole gesture after the misunderstanding involving Spike). But all that lack of guile and tact and general social-awareness leads to one of the single best bits of monologue in the series a ways further down the road.
And Buffy’s offence at the fat hips Giles gave her.
Also, though, despite the initial prompt for the episode, it is notable how much care Joss took with the set up of the Buffy-Riley dynamic in the earlier episodes. Totally unable to communicate, until suddenly there were unable to communicate conventionally.
But in your initial reaction to this and Doomed, I think you spotted a key element of their arc. Which may or may not prove significant.
19 January 2015 at 00:19 #37389Not really into these retro-fests, but if I was then Enemy of the Word would be a fascinating one to do for all sorts of reasons.
But, having watched Web of Fear for the first time since I was seven, after its re-discovery, I was delighted to see that it was every bit as scary as I remember.
19 January 2015 at 00:14 #37388@purofilion
OK, first I’m going to shout at you:
DO NOT GO RUMMAGING AROUND YOUTUBE FOR BUFFY STUFF. THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF SEVERAL EPISODES WILL BE WRECKED AND THE SHEER WTF???ery OF OTHERS SEVERELY UNDERMINED!!
GET IT?
GOT IT?
Good.
Hush is simply marvellous and is the episode I managed not to see for three years when I lost faith in Buffy thanks to the OMG-Army!-Goverment!-is!-evil! meme that Doug Petrie latched onto and talked Joss into. If you liked this, then there is an episode to come quite a bit further down the road (ie not in S4) that will, quite simply, blow your socks off.
Joss had been on the receiving end of a few barbs that his shows only succeeded because of the sharp dialogue, so he decided to write an episode where there was none to speak of (er…you know what I mean). TAKE THAT snarkists!
Also, you are now sailing serenely towards planet porn, having met Tara. Also a genuinely US TV first, although you will have to wait a bit for that.
There is much fun still to come, but it really will be interesting to get your view of S4 as a whole. I am quite sure that @jimthefish will produce an excellent analysis of its talking points from back in the day (despite his wrong-headedness about Beer Bad) and it will be very interesting if the reactions of a “clean skin” watcher are the same.
There is a character you are yet to meet WHICH YOU MUST NOT HAVE ANY PRE-WARNING OF, SO STOP LOOKING!!!!
I realise that is the same point I made above, but it is such a biggee I felt it was worth making twice.
18 January 2015 at 11:34 #37377@purofilion
You are quite a way from the pink pants, but it is worth keeping a watching brief on the Pant Code.
18 January 2015 at 02:03 #37362“casual sex is bad, m’kay?”
Eh? Where?
“drinking beer will lead to you devolving into a Neanderthal”
Actually, it’s getting mickey-finned (kinda the point of the story)
And right wing christians missing the point of the story? Well, that’s me shocked. Whatever next?
I have no problem with the idea Fox might try to pressure the showrunners, but the thought that Joss – an out and proud atheist and existentialist – would play along is simply laughable.
17 January 2015 at 23:07 #37359BTW, @purofilion, you should be look out for the Leather Pants Color Code (pants in the US meaning, therefore color in the US spelling)
We have seen Angel and Faith wear the Black Leather Pants of Evil,
and Buffy the Red Leather Pants of Moral Ambibuity (when she went after Faith in Graduation Day),
Willow wears the Green Leather Pants of Jealousy in Wild at Heart (which you should have seen by now)
And a little ways down the road are the Pink Leather Pants of Enthrallment.
17 January 2015 at 21:09 #37357Puritanical? It’s never struck me as remotely that (although it is restricted by the drinking age in the US being 21, while almost none of the characters are).
17 January 2015 at 01:37 #37337@purofilion
Oh, I’ve just realised that you have already had the episode with the important revaltion (assuming you are watching in the right order now!).
It’s the The Initiative, where Riley is seeking Willow’s help to court Buffy. To whit:
WILLOW: Then talk. Keep eye contact. Funny is good, but don’t be glib. And remember, if you hurt her, I will beat you to death with a shovel. A vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend. Have fun.
Curiously this is the point, first time round, that I pretty much bailed on Buffy. Pretty much as soon as the soldier boys firmed up (so to speak) I was annoyed. Doug Petrie, one of the main writers was really into a James Bond/ X Files and it informed this arc – and I was so not interested in it that Buffy, for a good while, ceased to be appointment TV.
Despite the many issues we will get to discuss as you go a long, boy, did that prove to be a mistake. In particular, there is an absolutely key episode that you are careening towards that I never got round to seeing for about three years.
17 January 2015 at 00:10 #37332@purofilion
Yes, I like Pangs a lot, despite its (even by Buffy standards) daftness.
16 January 2015 at 01:14 #37325@purofilion
Ah, well that would account for the confusion about Oz.
Don’t worry. For all the coolness supreme of Oz, his departure opens the way for something truly epic.
And porn.
Pangs has Angel crossover.
Ooooh oooh oooh – also the ep after Pangs has big important revelation. Pay close heed to Willow’s advice to Riley.
15 January 2015 at 23:43 #37322Well if you’re going to be wrong, you might as well be completely wrong 😉
Nope, not S7, most of which I enjoyed save a specific thing which I will note when we get there (and we don’t talk about future seasons! It’s the first rule of Buffy Club!)
15 January 2015 at 19:13 #37316*Chuckles guiltily*
15 January 2015 at 19:02 #37314Anyway, picking up on @purofilion’s mis-located S4 musings…
I will cheerfully defend Beer Bad. It is damned funny and has:
Cave Buffy
The finest bitch-slap in the entire run, as Willow plays Parker like a harp
Cave Buffy
Set up of an important change (spoiler redacted)
Cave Buffy
“Dresses like Faith, voice like an albatross?”
Cave Buffy
“And then group sex?”
And also, it has Cave Buffy
Beer Foamy.
There are several worse episode that aren’t redeemed by Cave Buffy or Willow in Confident Mode, some of which have passed and some are a way off down the road (one of those being the episode where everything went wrong, but at least in part for off-screen reasons that stripped it of any humour).
15 January 2015 at 16:24 #37313@purofilion
In the interests of peace, harmony and other squishy stuff, School Reunion was in @juniperfish‘s list. I went for Girl in the Fireplace (or the the sheer sentimental value of Sarah Jane is hugely tempting)
13 January 2015 at 23:48 #37296and the eleventh doctor started regenerating
You need to pay attention to The Wedding of River Song. It is all explained in there.
13 January 2015 at 23:40 #37295Couple of really close run things though:
1. The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances (Dalek nearly got it, but Nancy and using a true but largely unknown aspect of WWII (feral kids, not nanogenes)edges it)
2. Girl In The Fire Place (Still the finest single episode of AG Who – cuts straight to the essence of Who)
3. Human Nature/ The Family of Blood (I still tear up at the closing scene. Amazed I didn’t go for Blink)
4. Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead (well, duh!)
Specials – Waters of Mars (End of Time ended up a little too overblown)
5. Vincent (for entirely personal reasons – the season as a whole comes close to matching S5 of Buffy and, for TV, praise does not come higher)
6. The Doctor’s Wife (Just – the God Complex came close, as did The Girl Who Waited, but much good stuff)
7. The Day of the Doctor (‘cos – but for S7 proper, a dead heat between Angels Take Manhattan and Asylum of the Dalek. But I like the whole season a wee bit beyond reason, but possibly because of what it built up to)
8. Listen (Flatline came close though)
I think the Christmas eps should have had their own list and Day of… should have been on a list of one episode just to make a point.
13 January 2015 at 10:41 #37278So anyway. Broadchurch 2 by Chris Chibnall, fet D Tennant and A Darvill.
A handy exercise in “If, in order to get from A to B, you need to rely in Plot Required Stupidity rather than behaviour emanating believably from established character, it is a sign that you need to rethink the plot.”
Also, some research into how the UK legal system actually works would be handy.
12 January 2015 at 14:05 #37261Had not seen this before. Jenna Coleman is an ambassador for One-To-One, a charity that helps HIV victims in Africa. Via kasterbourous.com
11 January 2015 at 03:15 #37221@purofilion
You’ve ALREADY forgotten the “one ep of Buffy, one of Angel rule”?
It isn’t essential, but also it is non-trivial and the richness of some later episodes is greatly enhanced by following the two.
I have a few regrets about S4, but one of them was having to deal with Channel 4’s erratic scheduling of Angel, meaning I missed some of the nuance (and a lot of the episodes).
And there is much to say about S4 once you get cracking.
10 January 2015 at 16:38 #37208Damn. I must be losing my touch 😉
10 January 2015 at 12:18 #37194That’s OK, as noted all are entitled to their view.
This is going to sound awfully patronising but I have been around the block too many times to really give that much of a toss.
You are in that age group when you Know Everything – not in any way a barb – it is an unavoidable part of growing up that between (roughly) 18 and (roughly) 23 people Know Everything. Then we being to grasp the limits of our understanding (note that I do not say knowledge). Then over the next few years we develop and, somewhere between (roughly) 28 and (roughly) 32 we reach the point of having a decent grasp of the limitations of our understanding, so can finally discern the best question to ask and can therefore have sensible discussion with scientists, artists, philosophers(1) and tradesmen. Failure to grasp this at the time is why (I now realise) I was overly ambitious in my post-graduate work.
But don’t worry – as I said this is completely unavoidable, everybody goes through it, barring impairment, and most come out the other side with the beginnings of that all-important human trait, wisdom.
In particular, once you get there, you will be able to review this sentence:
I’m just not a fan of the way Joss Whedon always has his characters have something clever or witty to say
and realise just how much you would like to take it back. To help you along that path, I invite you to consider its opposite.
Go about it in the right way and you will enjoy every moment. Either way, storytelling is way too important for me to not poke youthful absolutism with a stick.
None of that, of course, alters the fact that @havoc is a thundering bellend.
(1) With the exception of deconstructionists who are, without exception, complete twats.
10 January 2015 at 01:38 #37168Yeah, I’d go for that.
Although having looked an @thekrynoidman‘s reference to Buffy, its snark does make it appear he is suffering a loss entirely of his own making (as @purofilion will attest). Youngsters, eh?
Now, let’s get back to pointing at the troll and laughing.
Or discussing Doctor Who, if you want to be blue boringer about it.
10 January 2015 at 01:31 #37167It takes an act of belief from Amy
No. It was an act of remembering – as a direct consequence of the Doctor planting memories (I stole the Tardis…well, borrowed it, it’s old and new and very blue – and with Moffat brilliantly using big and small to misdirect the viewer into thinking he was just rambling).
I may have looked at this before.
Now, Clara was very clear: right now she believes. She was (and in doing so, inviting the reader to join her in) suspending disbelief. Which is subtly different from believing.
(It has often occurred to me that if they ever decided to end Doctor Who the scene with a little child waking in the night, looking around and going back to sleep knowing she is safe would be as near to perfect as any. But Moffat used it to reboot the friggin’ universe! Maybe we are all living in Amelia’s dream.)
10 January 2015 at 01:05 #37165Are you a professional moron, or just a gifted amateur?
9 January 2015 at 15:38 #37134Also, Professor Albert said it was just an innocent gesture?
History is littered with men who think there gestures “innocent”. It is never innocent to place an uninvited hand on a knee (or any other party of the anatomy) especially when in a position of authority.
(There is nothing in the writing to suggest a relationship between Dave and Albert and nothing in the way Troughton played it.)
9 January 2015 at 00:28 #37113I was just about to say that.
7 January 2015 at 23:35 #37085Very clever.
7 January 2015 at 22:49 #37083That should be “young Zoe Kazan” but I missed the edit window.
In Your Eyes is a very slight story told very well, and played pretty much to perfection.
7 January 2015 at 22:39 #37080@purofilion
I didn’t recall the 800 year old demon-ess
That’s Anya, played by the marvellous Emma Caulfield.
Oh and http://inyoureyesmovie.com
Available to stream from Vimeo and well worth the £3 it cost me – you Zoe Kazan puts in a stellar performance.
7 January 2015 at 21:49 #37077@jimthefish @purofilion
Jim’s wrongheadedness notwithstanding 😉 – the best is still, very much, to come – the sheer craft of this show is becoming evident now. As Jim notes, there is a splendid clue bomb of the sort that will only become evident when it detonates (and then goes off again, just in case you missed it, from the mouth of…well…someone you’ve heard of. BOOM!)
I am not (neither would I) dissing this season. It is thoroughly spiffing. It’s just that it soars so much higher.
But you’ve got to get there first. First there’s retro, there’s silly; there’s rip your heart out and stomp on it it; there’s just plain scary and there’s just plain weird (in a good way). And “you made a bear! Undo it!”. Oh yeah. And there’s porn. And syphilis (unrelated).
Sort of.
Also, you learn the root of my blog name.
Buckle up.
Fire bad, tree pretty. Bee+++++CONNECTION TERMINATED+++++
6 January 2015 at 01:25 #37015Yes, that is my take – Ashley’s life is full of the trappings of success, but emotionally and intellectually empty.
Bonkers theories are rather the mission statement around here!
5 January 2015 at 19:17 #36983If the dream crab had stayed on her that many years, she would have been long dead by the time the Doctor came
Not nessa-celery. It could have latched on to 80 year old Clara three seconds before the Doctor turned up, but her dream would still have been of being young and with Danny.
5 January 2015 at 13:11 #36976Discworld is a thing I could never get into. Much as I enjoyed the writing and the invention, I found it impossible to give much a toss about any of the characters.
His (nominal) children’s works on the other hand – Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny And The Dead etc – were utterly wonderful. Engaging, with likeable characters and some surprisingly deep themes.
Also, Pratchett fans, the BBC has done a superb radio adaptation of Good Omens, now in iPlayer (5x30min episodes, 1x60min).
It may be possible to arrange for it to fall off the back of an internet for those with no iPlayer access.
5 January 2015 at 01:18 #36954@purofilion
Ah, Wesley. Perhaps the most annoying character introduced to the Buffyverse. Which, bearing in mind what happens further down the road, is really quite interesting.
Yes, I’m in tease mode again.
Don’t forget that when you hit S4 you also have to start S1 of Angel (in Buffy > Angel order to reflect the original airtimes).
4 January 2015 at 18:29 #36934Yes, Timescape is a small masterwork (even though my amazement was tempered by inadvertently seeing a critical date as a chapter heading). A very clever and well thought out time travel take. Sort of 😉
You might enjoy No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop. Also Time Storm by Gordon R Dickson.
Not a time travel story, but dealing with similar themes, Christopher Priest’s A Dream of Wessex is simply sublime. The diagram for it would be epic.
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