FWIW, 174 reads like a driveby comment to me, not just because of the things you mentioned (although they contribute) but also because of the "Say what you like" opening. Good way to start a generic "Zaidi shoe-throwing" comment without reading the preceding comment thread or post and so seem on-topic (Look, I'm not a spambot! I'm on-topic!) without actually joining the conversation, or, you know, not being a spambot.
I don't know about anybody else, but I've been conditioned to react to comments with WORDS in ALL CAPS, bad punctuation.Short sentences, that arent necessarily sentences-mispelling, and USE of "scare quotes" with "upset" no matter the content because of far too many run-ins with comments of the "athiests/darwinists/evilotuionists/feminazis are going to burn in HELL!!!1!" variety. Or, alternately, the type of comments that make you want to comment "get off our side, idiot, you're making us look bad."
Lee: I don't know, this comment thread seems pretty Making-Light-ish. (Although no one seems to have taken the slight to poetry as a challenge yet.)
Then there's Tom Smith's song on the topic, Pygmalion 2.0.
When I think about the topic from the present-day standpoint, I'm all "Cool! Human sexuality finds a way yet again!", &c. But when I think about it from the perspective of a future in which AI-as-traditionally-conceived (sentience, sapience, you know) is possible and realized, it just seems...eww. You're having sex with less-intelligent androids who're incapable of giving consent, and somehow that's supposed to be O.K. because they don't understand what's going on? It's like the robot version of bestiality, or something.
What it is is Uncanny Valley crossed with What Measure Is A Non-Human, says the part of me that made me spend several hours on TV Tropes during finals week, but it's still weird seeing how different the ethical issues seem just by positing the existence of an R. Daneel Olivaw.
Tangentially, was I the only person who was bugged by the internal inconsistencies of the Stepford Wives? (Or, conversely, has someone fanwanked it all so it's not internally inconsistent?)
Andrew @ 80:
Take, for instance, works written in the first person. Suppose there is a book beginning 'I, Mary Smith, am now sitting down to record the painful story of my life'. This gives away that Mary Smith will still be alive at the end, since otherwise she couldn't be recording it. There may well be situations in the book where some people's enjoyment would be enhanced by not knowing this; where 'Will Mary survive?' is a potentially gripping question. But it seems wrong to complain because the author has revealed this. (I don't suppose anyone would in precisely this case - if they couldn't bear knowing that Mary survives, they just wouldn't read it. But I've seen complaints in cases which come pretty close to that.)
Well, I'd consider that to be background information: the kind of information you need to know to know what sort of story it is at all. For instance, I don't think the identity of Spiderman should count as a spoiler for the first Spiderman movie (shock! The protagonist of an origin-story superhero movie is the title character!), but the identity of the Green Goblin and subsequent conflict would be. "Superhero origin story," "alien-fighting ensemble show," and "fictional autobiography" are all established classifications of stories, so it'd be impractical to consider things like "Mary survives!" and "there are aliens in Torchwood!" spoilers.
But an author may be creating a work where the desired effect actually turns on something being known in advance, and I don't think it's right to object to her doing this, or to readers/viewers passing on the information she wants us to have.
That should probably be considered not a spoiler, then--but wouldn't the author put that information in the work itself early on? (In voiceover narration in a movie, in foreshadowing or a prologue in a book....) Otherwise you'd end up with a work which you can't fully appreciate without having seen the publicity information.
I think the main problem with trailers (not all--some go the other way and "reveal" things about their movies that aren't true, which is annoying) is that studios are so eager to bring in viewers that they'll put information into the trailer to make the movie seem more exciting--and completely ruin any of the dramatic tension the reveal of the information in-movie was supposed to have. I mean, I wasn't alive when the first Star Wars trilogy came out, but I can well imagine trailers including the "I am your father" clip after "Shocking Twists!" if it came out today.
Continuing the spoiler discussion from 116:
[Andrew M.:]
But in that case what is the criterion for considering it spoilery? If the authors are happy to let the audience know it in advance, they presumably don't see it as a surprise or the answer to a puzzle. So in what way are we spoiled by knowing it is going to happen? Some works depend on surprise and revelation for their effects; but others don't. I suppose there might be a work whose entire effect turned on a surprise, and yet the author hadn't noticed this; but I can't imagine this happens very often.
I think you're using a rather more limited version of "spoiler" than I'm used to using. You seem to be defining it as something like "a piece of information that the author intends to be a surprise, such that if the reader/viewer has that information before it's revealed in the story they'll have a substantially different reaction to and interaction with the work than the author intended," while the way I'm defining it is more audience-oriented, something like "a non-background piece of information that could be significant to readers/viewers, within reason." So "characters X and Y kiss/confess their feelings of True Love to one another!" would be a spoiler to people watching a show mainly for the romance, even if the part that was Really Important to the actual producers of the show was who killed character Z or how the cast solved a problem or whatever.
It's a common observation in media fandom that we're not all watching the same show (/reading the same book, whatever). One person might be tuning in to Torchwood to watch the Jack and Ianto Show while another's watching the How Can Gwen Screw Up This Time? Show and another's watching the Tosh Is Awesome Show. I'm watching the Everyone/Everyone (Possibly Including Aliens!) Show and the Nifty Gadgets Show, and I even know one person who's watching the Alien-Fighting Show. (She says she wishes they didn't have all the [particularly same-sex] romance.)
Which means that what one person Doesn't Want To Know About before it happens is another person's screentime-waster that they don't care about at all. To use another example, I pretty much don't read non-Snape HP fic; I could care less who's snogging whom in HBP or how the Harry-Hermione-and-Ron love triangle resolved in DH, but there were other plot points in those books which were important to me, and if I cared about spoilers I'd probably have gotten annoyed at anyone who told them to me before I'd had a chance to find them out myself.
And what various portions of the fanbase consider important and what the actual authors of the works consider important are just as different as you'd expect. JK Rowling was writing Harry Potter and the Random Plot Devices, so it made sense to her to be coy about what the Deathly Hallows were; she didn't know people were reading Severus Snape and the Slash Fest of Angst, so "Dumbledore was gay" was such an insignificant plot point to her she didn't even bother writing it in canon. If, in Deathly Hallows, all or some of the Slytherins joined forces with the other houses in the Hogwarts Resistance and/or Battle for Hogwarts, would talking about it in the months after DH's release be spoiling? I'd think so, yes. Rowling...probably wouldn't. I would not be surprised to see something about it in the book-flap description.
To summarize: people watch/read for different things, so different plot points are significant to them, and authors/producers in particular often think they're writing/producing an entirely different story than their audience is in fact consuming, so it's my opinion that any reasonably-significant (i.e., not "Luna mentions Nargles!"-level) plot point that's not background/story-classification information (i.e., "Harry Potter finds out he's a wizard!") should probably be considered a spoiler. Whether it's a spoiler that rates a cut/ROT-13-ing, of course, is an entirely different matter, mostly dependent on the expected audience and the age/popularity of the work.
If it's information which the writer or producer wants us to have - which seems to be the case with Xopher's example - it's not a spoiler.
But a lot of writers and producers fall into the "spoilers? Who cares?" crowd, so they disseminate information which really should be considered spoiler-y. There are people who avoid watching trailers, "on the next episode" teasers, &c. just for this reason. Sometimes the only, or best, "hook" for the audience is a major plot point. (The dog dies, the lovers are doomed, somebody's a Cylon, these two kiss, One of These People Will Die....)
I don't really care about spoilers; I figure that if a book or movie or whatever is exactly and only the sum of its plot points it's probably not worth watching/reading the first time, either. And while I don't think the things Xopher's been talking about fall into the "ZOMG! Spoilers! Hide behind a cut/ROT-13 it!" category, I'm not convinced that anything the producers and writers feel comfortable releasing is automatically spoiler-free.
Mary @ 91: As a Making Light discussion grows longer, the probability of a pun approaches one.
In ascending order of requisite thread-length, replace "pun" with "reference to an old movie/Twilight Zone episode/SF novel/SF short story," "sonnet/on-topic poetry in the form of a famous poem," and "dinosaur sodomy joke," and the statement is equally true, in my experience.
Does Making Light have a bingo card yet?
Also, according to Wikipedia: "Other ethnic slurs like coon, porch monkey, Alabama porch monkey, afrodite, sausage lips, tar baby, darkie (African-American), dottie (Indian/Pakistani)[citation needed], chink, gook (Asian), beaner, wetback, spic (Hispanic-American), guinea, wop, dago (Italian), honky, gringo, cracker (whites), heeb (Jewish), kraut (German -- used especially during World War II), sand nigger, raghead, towelhead, "rug merchant" (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like fattie, retard, and redneck or hillbilly aren't entirely profane at all times, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially acceptable in polite settings or social situations."
Bastard and prick also made the (British) December 2000 "Delete Expletives" paper, higher on the list than bollocks, arsehole, and paki.
Also, according to Wikipedia: "Other ethnic slurs like coon, porch monkey, Alabama porch monkey, afrodite, sausage lips, tar baby, darkie (African-American), dottie (Indian/Pakistani)[citation needed], chink, gook (Asian), beaner, wetback, spic (Hispanic-American), guinea, wop, dago (Italian), honky, gringo, cracker (whites), heeb (Jewish), kraut (German -- used especially during World War II), sand nigger, raghead, towelhead, "rug merchant" (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like fattie, retard, and redneck or hillbilly aren't entirely profane at all times, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially acceptable in polite settings or social situations."
Bastard and prick also made the December 2000 "Delete Expletives" paper, higher on the list than bollocks, arsehole, and paki.
If you're including "hell", "sex", and "fetish" on there--"damn" (and "goddamn(ed)" and possibly "godsdamn(ed)") would probably fit too.
If I understand the asterisk properly: hell (as part of, frex, shell), butt (button), boob (booby, booby-trap), horny (thorny), kink (skink), and tit (interstitial), at the least, should also have one.
My poetry is nothing like the sun
You regulars read more than I have read
If abi's be ten, why then my verse is one
If words be fires, cool flames go from my head.
I have seen genius, in rhyme and reason right;
No such genius sees (s)he who here seeks.
And in this thread so far is more delight
Than in the awkward lines this "poet" speaks.
I love to try to filk, yet well I know
The source hath yet a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I must at least be quite a show,
My poems, when I share, aren't passed around.
And yet, for shame, I find I cannot care
I do not write for praise or false compare.
heresiarch@89:
Exactly what I was thinking. There seems to be a pattern on Doctor Who, lately, of "too good to be true" ubiquitous new technology being, well, too good to be true--coming from aliens with an ulterior purpose. If this water thing worked, this publicity would clearly be the first off-screen stages of the aliens' side of a Doctor Who plot.
I do like the "human joy" idea, though. (Tanj--now I really want to see/read this episode....)
The worst multi-level dreaming dream I've had was the one where it
kept happening so much that I thought I was going crazy and told my mom
to get me checked into a mental hospital or something. And then I woke
up, and told her I was going crazy and should be institutionalized. And
then I woke up....
My dad utterly refuses to even consider the possibility that I might
have narcolepsy--because of all the "fall-asleep-midsentence"
portrayals in movies, I suspect--no matter how many sleep problems I
have, or how often I try to point out that cataplexy plus falling
asleep on any moderately-long road trip or, often, in class plus, yes,
hallucinatory-type half-dreams when dozing off equals *something* that
should be checked out.
And I don't know how many times I've sat down to write something, or
to read if it's a more complex novel or I'm especially tired, tried to
do it for a few minutes, given up, and gone to bed. Another thing my
parents don't believe: more sleep doesn't actually help me be less
tired later on. No effect whatsoever, which is why there was a stretch
when I was out of school when I stayed up late online at night (because
the Internet tends to be stimulating enough that I don't even get the
normal kind of tired) and got up at my normal time, with a short
mid-afternoon nap, because although the total sleep time was much less
than my full-ten-hours-a-night schedule (plus, of course, naps), I felt
more rested.
Thanks for sharing your experiences--now I'll remember to pester my
parents about sleep studies again, instead of hoping the daily Mountain
Dew will be enough to keep me fully awake through *this* class period.
The more these types of stories come up (I remember once being shocked when Cheney said he'd refuse to come before Congress even under a subpoena), the more the question seems to be: Is there any (legal) way to force members of the executive branch to obey the law?
Or, to rephrase that, to take into account the way Congress acts, is there any way for the citizenry to force members of Congress to force members of the executive branch to obey the law?
I mean, "revolution" used to be like "impeachment" for me, triggering the same automatic dismissal of the speaker that "commie", "fascist", and "Nazi" did, but some days I think the only purpose of the Bush administration is to give those terms political-debate respectability. Or perhaps it's to convince everyone that the second amendment really is as important as the NRA's been saying all these years. I'm not sure.
I really wish impeachment wasn't "off the table", that "bipartisanship" (i.e., total submission to the minority party) wasn't only necessary for Democrats (or at all), and that I believed in higher purposes.
Re #283: When I went to the LA Universal Studios in 2000, they had the Waterworld stunt show there too. So it's not just a Japanese thing.
My family just went this summer, and we loved the Waterworld show. Explosions, fire, awesomely-dressed villain (complete with a monocle!)--I didn't know it was based on a movie, though. So maybe Japan isn't a stuntshow ghetto.
This made me think of you guys:
"Dinosaur dicks"--did dinosaurs have penises?
--"First world, Second world, Third world" vs.
"Old world, New world, Third world"
I'm not sure when the former became the preferred formulation, but it isn't historically accurate. Neither form is particularly welcome in the Third World (since they both recall the earlier colonial times).--
I thought that "First World" referred to capitalist industrialized countries, "Second World" to communist industrialized countries, and "Third World" to non-industrialized countries.
On-topic: I thought I was a good speller, until I read this post and found out all these words I apparently misspell all the time. Thank Ghod for Firefox! Without it, I'd just embarass--embarrass--well, you know--myself every time I tried to spell those words.
I before e, except after c, and when it says "ay" as in neighbor or weigh--except for in the words science, deity, weird, height, conscience...
I can think of seven ways to pronounce "ough" in the dialect of English I speak: off as in cough, up as in hiccough (granted, I don't see this one as much in newer books), oo as in through, ah as in thought, oh as in dough, ow as in doughty, and uf as in rough.
Eh, haiku and limericks are all I'll ever aspire to. Shorter.
Does anyone else think it odd that this thread started out with Bush Co. as vampires and zombies and gradually they became knitters? I'm pretty sure that's not exactly how the Spectrum of Evil goes. ("Zombies-->Vampires-->People who talk at the theater", not "people who knit".)
Names with an asterisk* have been changed to protect privacy.
Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
Don't Panic.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 14 |
| 2007 | 4 |
| 2006 | 1 |
Total: 19 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Gwen:
Show all comments by Gwen.