Having read a number of folk here say they read fanfic before seeing a movie, I'm surprised that the fanfic didn't have spoiler alerts or that the fanfic culture in general hasn't adopted some similar type of warning.
I can't see reading fanfic before seeing a movie you want to remain spoiler-free on, personally, but any fanfic writer ought to know to include spoiler warnings in their author notes.
There is a system. Look at those little blocks of text at the top of any fanfic, with the title, fandom, pairing/characters featured, rating, synopsis and the "these characters don't belong to me" disclaimer: omitting that info will get you flamed or very loudly ignored. The reason they wouldn't be included (assuming the writer isn't just a complete n00b...because there's just nothing you can do with some fans) is that the writer assumes that anyone interested in reading the fic would already know about the spoilers. If, for example, the movie was out of theaters and the DVD release was over a month ago. There's an assumed shelf life on spoilers, but the last thing most fic writers want to do is spoil the original for you.
...and yes, I do realize that the third shifted not only from letters to numbers, but changed sentence structure. *facepalm* I obviously like the sound of my own keyboard too much to pay attention properly.
I've got a few theories about the variables that make for an active, fic-producing fandom. Without turning this comment into a dissertation, I think that the world has to:
a) Get enough exposure and be accessible enough for people to know about it. This one's self-evident, and fairness or quality don't necessarily enter into it.
b) Be big and complex enough to support lots of variation and reinterpretation. One of the reasons Harry Potter fandom is so, so huge*, IMHO, is that in addition to the simple question of vast numbers of people being exposed to the books, there's this large cast of characters, all with hinted backstories and family histories; there's a system of magic and a number of locations which are available to be played with and easy enough to add onto.
3) There has to be something the fans feel is _missing_. This isn't necessarily a reflection on the writer; what could be missing is just _more books_ or movies or episodes, or whatever. Which is quite likely not something the creator has total control over. *cough* "Firefly" *cough* Or, on the more-easily-mocked side of things, what they feel is missing could be teh hawt gay smexx. *cough* "Smallville" *cough* But there has to be _something_ fans feel should be there and isn't, to give them that need to fill the gap.
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* My brother and I have similar tastes in literature and pop culture; as his degree relates to children's lit, he tends to analyse the works we both like from an academic perspective while I dabble in fannishness. Barring the occasional awkward "but those characters _hate_ each other! Why would they have sex?" discussions, it's a good dynamic. Last year he went to the big HP conference in Salem, and I got several phone calls asking, "What does 'OTP' mean?" and "some girl just asked if I 'shipped' anyone. Do I?" Also: "There was a fistfight in the 'is Snape good or evil' panel! These people are _great_!"
Well, Defoe's books were usually published as the memoirs of their title characters (I love the bit at the beginning of Moll Flanders where the author/"editor" deplores all these sensational romances being published nowadays, and doubts anyone will believe the plain and truthful tale he's about to present. Very much like those movie title cards, only snarkier!), whereas Frey was claiming these experiences as his own. Not that it really makes that much difference, from an ethical or descriptive standpoint, as far as fiction/nonfiction. Still.
Still, there's that partisan liberal part of my brain that keeps thinking "Anything that gets the religious right riled up must *de facto* be good in *some* way..."
I know what you mean, Greg; the problem, I think, is that "gets the religious right riled up" is such an enormous category. I suppose you can use the truism that nearly everything is good in *some* way: the Da Vinci code is...book-shaped, which I always think of as good. I'm sure many bookstores were grateful to have the money from its sale. I was working in one at the time of its release, so it was soothing to be able to answer a lot of the dumber questions I got ("Where's The Da Vinci Code?" "I want to read whatever's number one on bestsellers..." "What's that one book, I think it's burgundy?") by just pointing at the giant displays at the entrance.
Susan always was kind of intolerant, of course, though I find myself wondering what the problem is with Narnia's clothing sector. Is someone stopping the dwarfs from unionizing their armour-making services?
What I find really intriguing is the fact that her last name is given as Aslan. It seems odd that whoever went to the trouble of doing that hoax wouldn't know the books well enough to put "Pevensie." It's not like that'd be more of a tipoff.
Or are we supposed to deduce some very...unorthodox happenings after the events of The Last Battle? The Gnostic Gospel of Susan?
I don't know how it became necessary to even compare Calvin with Zits.
Aack. I know, and I apologize...I'm getting over bronchitis and I'd been taking this over-the-counter cough syrup which seems to be related to P. G. Wodehouse's Buck-U-Uppo. It made me all fiesty and gregarious despite being tired and achy...except that, since this isn't the halcyon side-effect free Wodehouseverse, it also kept me from getting any sleep at all (and didn't do as much as one might hope for my cough). So when I was asked wherefore the comparison I'd made in a previous throwaway line, I launched into one of my Standard Rants. I don't actually dislike Zits: it does what it does really well, and makes much more of an attempt at using space creatively than most post-Waterson comics. C&H just happens to be one of those works of literature that I adore so much I'm ever-unreasonably-vigilant against any slight to their honor; besides, the Fight Club thing had already made my head spin a bit. It was all fairly unnecessary, and I'm sorry if I offended any one.
Paul Clarke: Hee. I'd forgotten about Tommy Chestnut. Though I didn't say Hobbes didn't do things Hector wouldn't. Obviously he does. I said Hector...oh, hell, never mind. Sorry.
In re: Calvin and Hobbes having philosopher's names: a few months back one of Television Without Pity's Pixel Challenges had the prompt, "Who else is on the Lost island?" Guess who my favorite response featured. Well, you know, there are already characters named Locke and Rousseau...
...the whole set up and style is basically "Calvin as a teenager."
I really don't see that. Jeremy doesn't strike me as an older Calvin at all, there's no Hobbes substitute, there's nothing distinctively C&H
Well, the approach to the art, especially in the Sunday strips, is very close. Not that that's a bad thing, since Watterson was such an amazing innovator. The expressions characters wear are frequently C&H-inspired--have a look at a few grimaces, eyerolls, and sneezes, and you'll see the similarity. Still, no big deal there.
But have a look at the...let's say...mundane structure of Calvin's and Jeremy's lives:
The Dad: Middle-aged, balding w/ brown hair, glasses; mildly out of touch and ruefully cherishing outmoded ideals. Jeremy's is fat and ex-hippyish, while Calvin's is thin and a little bit Luddite.
The Mom: Tallish, sensible, smart, and harrassed. Has her hands full with taking care of home and family, esp. her only child. Has a more reliable, less startling sense of humor about life than her husband's. Jeremy's has curly black hair and wears more lipstick, Calvin's has straight brown hair and is more grimly determined.
The Girl: Smart, studious, sensitive, and a little bewildered/annoyed by protagonist's antics. Brown haired and not particularly glamorous, but uncomfortably conscious of her relative place in school's hierarchy. Can still be persuaded to unbend and have fun, on occasion.
The Best Friend: Bigger, calmer, and a little more self-aware than protagonist. Will nonetheless participate in any wild scheme protagonist suggests. Hector and Hobbes are definitely the biggest stretch...but the differences point out the ways Zits seems to have been adapted from the earlier strip. Hector is a human kid with a bit of a weight problem and a Latino background. But how often are these things relevant to the action of the strip? Does Hector ever do or say anything Hobbes wouldn't, in the same situation? He's on view much less than Hobbes, but I think that's because there's less need for him, as a character, than there was for Hobbes. (In the last couple years Jeremy has been spending a lot more time with Pierce, I think because Pierce has more energy as a character. Jeremy and Pierce tend to take turns reacting to each other's eccentricity with Hobbes-ish nonplused amusement) Partly because he lacks Hobbes's position as the central "question" of the strip--is Calvin's imagined world real or only in his mind?
Jeremy's world is drastically less imaginative and more social...as befits the difference between a 6 year old and a 16 year old. So there aren't any plots about running away to Mars or the Yukon. Cutting away the imaginary world that's 7/10ths of C&H, what we've got here are two strips about a smart but underachieving, blond messy-haired boy in sneakers living in a generalised Middle America, with a social world almost entirely composed of school and family, and occasional kindly disparagement of pop culture. You can say that the similarities between, say, the dads are just a result of them both adhering to a sort of American Dad archtype, I guess, but in C&H this worked because Calvin's Dad was only important when he interacted with Calvin. Especially in the early strips it looks to me like the Zits creators were big C&H fans who thought, "Hey! You know at the end of that time-machine storyline where Calvin says, 'let's go forward a little bit and see what I'm like as a teenager' and Hobbes says 'let's not'? What do you think they'd see?" and then structured their strip around that idea. Characters were run through a filter to make them less timeless, more specifically 90s: Calvin's red shirt gets changed to a purple flannel, Susie gets her ears pierced a couple more times, and all the unnamed kids at school start dating...and some of them are given names and one-dimensional personalities. The mundane world is more detailed, social and timely, since we spend more time there, and there's more of an emphasis on pop culture vs. (in C&H) ethical problems and broad social questions.
But the spirit of C&H was what made it so original. And that's been cut out of Zits,--along with all the dinosaurs and spaceships and the many uses of a cardboard box--by making it about stereotypical teen life instead of the constantly shifting world of childhood. Jeremy is much more literally a teenager than Calvin is a little boy, but Calvin is much more *real* as a character than Jeremy. IMHO. I wouldn't want Calvin to turn into Jeremy, because he's lost the energy and imagination that made him special. (Granted, I'd prefer it to him turning up in Fight Club...but that's a whole nother level of disturbing) So it looks to me like Zits has taken a big part of the framework of C&H and cut out most of the fantasy and individual vision. And *that's* the biggest part of why I get angry when I see jokes being directly taken from C&H and recycled with minimal rephrasing. (Which happens about once every couple months, at least, and if you go through treasury collections of both you can find them pretty easily.) In the end, I think Zits is a good but derivative strip, but Calvin & Hobbes was a genuinely great one which will continue to be important for a very long time.
[/soapbox]
jhlipton: “If we just play the first few bars of the chorus, the youngens will think of “Ice, Ice Baby”...
...and cringe? I think the Generation Y-and-youngers will actually think of "Under Pressure" as their elders will have been inclined to turn the volume up and sing along to that one. As opposed to Vanilla Ice, which, on the rare occasions when it hits the radio, merits instant station-change.
Have been trying to come up with a good explanation for my family as to why I need the Calvin & Hobbes monolith. A little stymied, as I have every other collection, including the three treasuries, the anniversary book, and the retrospective. The LA Times has started reprinting the strip again, too, which makes me terribly happy but kind of points out the lack of innovation in the vast majority of currently-running comics. And the near-plagarism..."Zits" rips off Calvin & Hobbes jokes, expressions, and storylines with appalling frequency...the whole set up and style is basically "Calvin as a teenager." Which both draws me in...since it's not done at all badly, you know...and makes me angry.
Muppets: my favorite special was for an anniversary...25th? 30th? in the mid-80s. We had it on tape, and I must have watched the thing 286477 times growing up. It had clips from *everything*..."Mahna Mahna," the planet Koozebain, a medley of "The Lullabye of Broadway" and "Rocking Robin", Piggy with a variety of entrances ranging from Jungle Goddess Borne By Shirtless Hunks to falling down a very glamorous long flight of stairs, Kermit doing "Happy Feet," Ray Charles singing "Bein' Green," "Pure Imagination," and on and on....I would kill to have that on DVD. Just point me towards the right Disney executive....(though I will admit that the "Muppets in 3-D" attraction at Disney's California Adventure is pretty damn awesome. Partly because it makes ruthless, if coded, fun of Mickey Mouse.)
"Miss Piggy's Guide to Life," a mock self-help book, is also well worth buying if you can find it. "Never forget that only you can ever fully appreciate your own true beauty. Others may try, but they so often fall short."
My favorite bit of A Fish Called Wanda...very possibly my favorite couple minutes of any movie ever...is Wanda's rant to Otto immediately following the semi-defenestration apology.
WANDA: I was dealing with something delicate, Otto. He was going to tell me where the loot is and if they're going to come and arrest you. And you come loping in like Rambo without a jock strap and you dangle him out a fourth-story window. Now was that smart?
OTTO: Okay...
WANDA: Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics, or was it stupid?
OTTO: Don't call me stupid.
WANDA: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
OTTO: Apes don't read philosophy.
WANDA: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a few things. Aristotle was not Belgian. (OTTO scoffs) The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself."
OTTO: You read...!
WANDA: And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up. Now. You have just assaulted the one man who can keep you out of jail and make you rich. So what are you going to do about it, huh? What would an intellectual do? What would Plato do?
OTTO: 'pologize...
WANDA: What?
OTTO: APOLOGIZE!
WANDA: Right!
OTTO: (formally) I'm sorry.
WANDA: No. Not to me. To him. And make it good, or we're dead.
I'm also an admirerer of the Muppet Christmas Carol, though IMHO the music in all the Muppet movies took a nose dive after Jim Henson's death. Still. Muppets make everything better. Weezer videos, boring talk shows, whatever. The hideous train wreck that was the last season of Angel, redeemed for one brief shining moment by Puppet!Angel. I hear Alias is ending this season; since they have nothing left to lose, they should really have a Muppet episode. Like, Sydney gets given some kind of hallucinogen that causes her to see the members of another CIA splinter cell as Muppets. And then spends much of the briefing scene giggling helplessly, as everyone acts puzzled. Miss Piggy would be so much fun wearing all of Syd's wigs and doing karate...Marshall talking tech with Bunsen and Honeydew, or Gonzo facing down and baffling Jack and Sloane, and Kermit striking James Bond poses and occasionally flailing his arms in panic. Plus, big musical number! You can't tell me the whole cast wouldn't jump at the chance. Victor Garber used to do musicals... (/worryingly detailed fantasy) And hell, it's no less unlikely than Mind Control Orchids and the Giant Flaming Ball of Russian Zombification.
Looking for poems for the Monosyllabification thread, I discovered that my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Lit, vol. 2, (which boasts several poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti which he really shouldn't have bothered to dig up) has not a single mention of G. K. Chesterton. WTH?
How does that even happen? I mean, I know he's not particularly in favor, I know he's not considered to have an easily identifiable masterwork, I know he's a dead white male. But so is Thomas Carlyle (64 total pg) and at least G. K. C. didn't hurl teacups at his wife. Okay, actually, I hate that kind of anti-feminist wankery, but this honestly has me puzzled. How, in a 2543 pg. anthology, is there not room for, I don't know, "Lepanto" or "The Ethics of Elfland" or a chapter from one of the novels or something? Is it a print error?
No Saki, either, dammit. Norton Anth. vol. 2, you are dead to me!
...vol. 1 is good, though.
Off to comfort myself with the Edwardian snark of "The Stuffed Owl" and its incomparable index:
Liverpool, rapture experienced at, 196
Maiden, feathered, uncontrolled appetites of, 59
I saw "Control Room," the documentary of Al Jazeera's experience of the invasion of Iraq, around the same time as "Farenheit 9/11." Very intriguing stuff about journalistic bias and sources...and not nearly as one-sided as you might expect. Though my favorite of that election-year documentary glut is still "The Corporation."
Ever see the "Bit of Fry and Laurie" version of "It's a Wonderful Life" in which Clarence shows Rupert Murdoch what Britain would be like if he'd never been born?
...and once again I wish "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" were available on DVD. Or even VHS, for less than $46 per tape. Aargh. I've found the collected scripts online, which is lovely, but still.
My vote for worst of the pop-Xmas songs...I'll even put up with "Feliz Navidad" if I can never, never hear "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" again. Somehow I always get sucked in to trying to make sense of the lyrics. There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for roasting... I would've thought roasted marshmallows are just about the only sweet you don't eat at Christmas... "There'll be scary ghost stories..." Sounds more like a sleepover than Christmas. Unless we're talking "A Christmas Carol," in which case I count one ghost story with a jillion scary productions. ...and tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago. Okay, so it's pretty obvious the lyrics are just in service to the painful rhymes. And yet they still manage to get in the reminder of the story of How Andie Cooked The Turkey Without Defrosting It Or Taking Out the Plastic Giblet Bag...as if I won't be hearing it for the fiftieth time anyway on the actual day.
Will have to watch Love, Actually again just for Bill Nighy's sneering, wobbly-hipped old rock star, cornering the pop X-mas market through self-mockery.
From the greed of hag and hell-imp that into rags would tear you
May the ghosts that stand by the air-clad man in the Book of Moons all spare you
That still your fierce five wits be tame, stay close heeled at your feet
Nor leave you wild to walk with Tom
Bare-legged to beg your meat.
While I do sing, "Any food, any meat, please,
Meat, or drink, or old clothes warm?"
Come, young maids dear, and have no fear:
Poor Tom will do no harm.
...and I feel like a butcher. My first attempt only got as far as:
In lands of the East did great K. Khan
A posh fun-house with dome have built...
before I had to slam my head against my keyboard a few times and go get a glass of something strong. Am still vaguely amused by how much "K. Khan" sounds like "King Kong"...which would be more appropriate for the tone I had going, there.
Herrick's "Lovers how they come and part" seemed a little less intimidating, though the rearranging of two-syllable words can be frustrating:
A mage-made ring they bear about them still,
To be, and not seen, when and where they will.
They tread on clouds, and though they do oft fall
They fall like dew, but make no noise at all.
So love to love they will with no sound come
As shades steal soft into the pear or plum,
And air-like, leave no change that may still show
The place in which they met, or did in part once know.
Eeek. Well, that's pretty much what I was imagining, then.
Vicki: it could be worse. I was born in late 1979. As far as I was concerned as a kid, the President had always been Reagan. The actual Camelot meant a lot more to me personally than Kennedy's.
Assumptions I (rightly or wrongly) instinctively make about politicians:
1. They're lying.
2. If they're not lying, they're bending the truth.
3. If they're not bending the truth, it's because someone else is doing it for them.
4. All of the above has very little influence on whether some nutcase will take a shot at them: the nutcases' numbers increase in direct correlation to the number of people who perceive the public figure in question to have some kind of power, political or otherwise.
5. Any assassination attempt which succeeds just happens to have won the Pure Dumb Luck lottery (see: John Wilkes Booth vs. Guy Fawkes); security and whatnot undoubtably helps somewhat, but at the end of the day there is no absolute security. As a public figure, your chances decrease as in #4.
I should mention, maybe, that I don't think of myself as cynical. Or apathetic, for that matter. I've never bothered to ascribe to any particular Kennedy assassination theory because I'm dead sure I'll never find out the truth (though this doesn't stop me from speculating about the death of Marilyn Monroe, or Perkin Warbeck and the two princes in the Tower, either). Kennedy seems to have so much emotional baggage connected to him which I can't relate to that I've tended to feel that his death is sort of...well...covered. Okay, I didn't say that feeling made sense.
History Channel documentaries are very fond of using the phrase "the day we lost our innocence": Western history would seem to have the re-virginizing capablities of a Celtic goddess.
Maybe it's because I'm a Southern Californian, and used to the way Hollywood exists more in the mind than in the drab cluster of warehouses, strip malls and cheaply built apartments you find along Santa Monica Blvd. You make your own Camelot. Even in Camelot, it only lasted as long as faith.
...waterboarding?
*suspects this of being a joke that only just barely whizzed past her, but now has disturbing conflicting images of water torture and boogie-boarding lodged in her head*
Lenny--the other fake crossovers did indeed suck. The worst was the "Adam Knight" character, who was falsely rumored to be somehow connected with Bruce Wayne, and ended up being a pretty-boy zombie who was (of course) obsessed with Lana. But the Perry White ep turned out to be, IMHO, one of the best of the series, largely because he was played by the brilliant Michael McKean. Plus, tractors falling out of the sky for cheap laughs! Always works for me.
Serge--I actually don't like either of those actresses. I wanted to like Erica Durance, despite her rather plastic prettiness, because I like canon Lois and OMG nothing could be worse than f#$*ing Lana Lang. But then the Smallville writers got hold of her and made the character completely ineffectual while denying her any of the classic Lois's personality (aside from a vague abrasiveness). Became a general damsel-in-distress/fount of unintelligent snarkery. Chloe, being smart, strong-willed, witty, and caring, never has anything good happen to her and spends half her lines apologizing to Clark or Lana for things that are totally not her fault. And she's so marked to die this season. *sigh*
The Hepburn quote is v. encouraging, but let's not forget that Kate Bosworth's last starring role was in "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!", and most of the critics said her performance actually made the material worse. If that were possible.
Isn't George Clooney cousin to character actor Miguel Ferrer, who was the boss in "Crossing Jordan" and has had small parts all over the place? I think Fametracker or some such site commented that both men look like they should have the other one's name. I think they're both grandsons of classic swashbuckler Jose Ferrer, and the same article expressed a wistful hope that one day Miguel would get a part wearing a ruffled shirt and sword and rescuing a buxom bodiced lass. I'd go see that.
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