At Virtual Liberty Con

Posted on by accordingtohoyt
Home

I am on a panel on writing totalitarian societies, and attempting to cause trouble on discord, but everyone else are responsible adults, alas 😉

236 thoughts on “At Virtual Liberty Con”

  1. Go to World Con in Washington, DC. It sounds like there is lots of trouble that could be made.

  2. From my experience, to cause real trouble on Discord, simply say that $PARTICULAR-ANIMATION creeps you out and then Duck & Cover from the firestorm. Does NOT matter that you were ***NOT*** trying to harsh anyone’s mellow – and even SAID SO! It will be taken thus ANYWAY.

    Humans are weird,

    1. The issue is going “this sucks” and then not being willing to say WHY.

      Because geeks gonna geek, and they will try to trouble shoot why you don’t want stuff.

      And no, assuming “no, really, all stuff out of Specific Country is the issue (it’s not all the same style)” doesn’t help.

      1. Well, there is stuff that I don’t like but couldn’t really say “why I don’t like it”.

        But I follow the YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) rule so my position is “I may dislike something but I have no problem with you liking it”.

        Mind you, there is stuff that I dislike and am sure of why I dislike it but am more likely to NOT talk about why I dislike it.

        On the gripping hand, there is “garbage” that I wonder “why anybody could like that”. But even there I don’t like to start a fight over it unless somebody tells me that “I Must Like This”. 😈

        1. But I know from prior poking at you that you will either say “eh, not my thing, not interested” or talk about it.

          It’s the willing to talk about it that is important, especially with geeks.

          (I made an RP character who can’t do anything raw/rare. He doesn’t KNOW that’s the limit, he just knows “stuff like that is bad.” Going by texture. It’s fun.)

          I totally love the phrase “de gustibus,” because I can say it and it’s TRUE.

      2. Well, the stuff out of North Korea…

        *grins, ducks, and runs away*

        1. Honestly, if you’d just said that, then K.

          Weird, but whatever. WE ALL WEIRD.

          It’s the “all stuff from X country in animated or illustrated form” that’s an issue.

          I can see hating… like… Westerns.

          But it has nothing to do with if it’s spaghetti westerns or whatever. Unless it’s something you can pinpoint for why.

          There’s just a crazy range of stuff and then going “hey, I won’t even CONSIDER anything to try to figure out what sucks, but will say I hate it all” is gonna make folks object.

          For contrast, I made a character that was picking a fight with another, out of character. (mother in law character, we needed conflict)

          He won’t eat raw food— and the opponent character is fantasy Japanese.

          His reason is that the texture of raw stuff grosses him out.

          He can wax poetic about why it’s bad.

          And she is HORRIBLY offended he won’t eat sashimi.

            1. You made an original statement about the “look” of anime/manga and the style.

              Which, in a group of folks familiar with the crazy range of anime/manga, raised a few eyebrows and they then tried to figure out what was causing a reaction.

              Which you then reacted to with an utterly off the walls rejection of the idea of “hey, what about this sucks.”

              And you very vocally took as an attack.

              Because heaven forbid that a bunch of folks who really like stuff go “huh, you don’t like…why? Something we can fix?”

                1. And, let’s say someone wanted to simply vent and had an issue with dogs (I do not, fwiw, dogs & I generally get on rather well), being told all the various breeds and how pugs and mastiffs and poodles and basset hounds are all different doesn’t change the commonality of ‘dog’. Nor, that the is incredible variance with the designation ‘terrier’ alone. Still dogs.

                  1. And when folks then try to figure out the exact issue with dogs beyond ‘an issue,’ they get extremely upset by people curious if it’s the four legs, the hair, biting, or what and insist that it’s dogs, only dogs, and all dogs, and it’s horrible to be so much as interested in knowing more than ‘an issue’.

                    1. Meh. I have problems with anime because of plot structure. Japanese plot structure bugs the living daylights out of me. All the cuing is wrong and it doesn’t WORK. I realize this makes me old, but that’s what it is.

                    4. I’d imagine it’s kind of like how some accents just don’t work for me; my hears can’t handle them, just No Workie.

                    6. Plot structure, storytelling conventions, cultural tropes, artistic styles.

                      Plus, most anime is like watching one of those movies that is 98% CGI. Sure, that wispy little girl can sling around an eight-foot two-handed sword. Sure.

                      My first exposure to manga was reshelving a book at my college library job in 1985, and it was an interesting “window into another culture” experience, especially since it was introduced and annotated by the American curator. But I have yet to see an anime that I found engrossing, up to and including the classics like Ghost in the Shell. I don’t even particularly like Miyazaki movies.

                      But it’s not just cultural mismatch: I’ve seen plenty of live-action Japanese movies that I enjoyed, whether samurai or modern. So for me it’s the particulars surrounding anime/manga itself. And I enjoyed Avatar: the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, but those used anime-ish art style and a few anime tropes to tell a thoroughly Western story.

                    8. Until you started hammering on people having a rather normal conversation as being anything related to aspiring to engage in psychological treatment, I rather doubt it occurred to anyone else.

                    10. Unfortunately, it’s imaginary.

                      Vague interest in what someone dislikes about a broad section of media isn’t attempted psychoanalyzing, nor is it an attack, nor is it assault.

                    11. So If I experince it’s “imaginary” but if anyone else sees something not there it’s NOT “reading into.”

                      Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

                      Smells like I forgot to flush.

                    12. You “experience” whatever you want, but you don’t get to inform me that I have motivations that I did not have.

                      Reality trumps belief.

                    14. Hm, yes, your judgement totally causes his perception about my motivation to be more accurate than my actual motivation in expressing interest in what, specifically, was disliked.

                    16. As it is now completely clear you aren’t going to defend your claim about my supposed motivations, nor support the idea that your impression rewrites history to produce a motivation that did not exist, chao.

                    19. Well, I was getting “caught up” on posts from here. 😉

                    21. >> “I have problems with anime because of plot structure”

                      Not being into Japanese or anime works, I’m curious – what are the essential differences?

                    22. One thing I know of (which may not be something that bugs our hostess), is that they have no problem in say a fantasy story where the MC does not remember what happens, and so learns nothing from it. There’s been a couple of animes that I know of (Spirited Away for one) where they had to put in a couple of lines at the end to at least suggest that the MC remembers what happened, and has grown from it.

                  3. I have a phobia of dogs.

                    But I do not like being around most large mammals that are not humans.

                    2. True.

                      Oddly enough, I liked rats, mice, gerbils, etc. fine, as long as caged, and not my responsibility. Those and ferrets might be less favorable in my eyes now that I know how allergic I am to just about everything. Haven’t been around those since a kid.

                    3. I am not overly fond of cats, but I can deal with them. Size? I rather like draft horses (no great issue with the smaller equines, fwiw). But.. things vary. $SISTAUR work(ed?) as a vet. tech and had no problem with almost any dog. American Staffordshire Terrier (aka ‘pit bull’)? No problem. Didn’t care for Chows, however. The one I met… yeah, I comprehend not being fond of such, *IF* that was a representative sample.

              2. Orvan started talking schlitz about anime?

                BWAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!! ShadowDancer will be coming for you right about now. ~:D

                Hey Orvan! November 6th 2022, SAO goes live! Bwaha!

                  1. Did the Chocolate Rabbit take down the Minotaur only once, or many times in succession? ~:D

                    Where was this? I want to go there and make huge trouble. Bwaha! >:D

                  2. So Shadowdancer’s still around, but only on Discord?

                    I’m almost afraid to ask, but how much of the activity here has gone over to the Discord side?

                    1. Do they have cookies?

                      I’ve looked at Discord for some talk on various games I play, but it seems worse than MeWe chat.

                    2. um…. we don’t have issues with it.
                      I was tempted in because that’s where my sons are, and it’s easier to talk to them there than in phone texts.

                    5. The long LOA for her started before then– just Discord gave a place she could talk to us again. The dark screen theme is very resting for the eyes.

                    6. >> “The dark screen theme is very resting for the eyes.”

                      You know there are free dark mode extensions for some browsers, right? I use one for this site (and most others). If you’re using anything that can run Chrome extensions (like Brave) I can point you to a couple.

                    7. *holds up hand* Still alive. I’ve just had very low emotional bandwidth for much, plus frequent tension headaches; just kind of generally tired; but the children are doing excellent and the Youngest Daughter is no longer on a nasal-gastric feeding tube and is eating exclusively food via mouth and loves eating; youngest son is a bundle of cute and mischief. They, and a few other things have been the focus of my world for a while, and I have had a few days where I can’t be coherent.

                      Dark themes on web browsers have clashed with pages that are already by default dark, so I don’t use it.

                      Discord has low ‘must keep track of convos’ priority with the two little ones demanding lots of my time and attention, and being real time, it’s generally understood that I have to get up and probably disappear to deal with kids and may not return until unspecified time later. I also play a game that, being Asian in origin, has Anime style aesthetics. I post occasional pictures in the video games channel.

                      The main thing is, there are people who do enjoy anime/manga, and aren’t going to stop enjoying it just because someone else doesn’t. I pointed out that anime/manga are mediums (the stylistic differences to plot and writing aside) and it’s going to come up outside the fanart and fanfic channel, because surprise, despite me being the apparent resident otaku, I’m not the only one who enjoys the medium. So Macross is going to come up in Space Opera. I was Reincarnated As A Slime will probably show up in Fantasy, as will conversations about xiaxia novels (which my son currently devours) and references to cultivation. Because last I checked, nobody put down a rule that we discuss WESTERN media only.

                      There’s always going to be stuff that some of the folks here enjoy that others won’t. De gustibus and all that. I’m not going to get upset at a group of my friends enjoying the thing I either have no interest in or actually dislike (such as Avatar the Last Airbender – which I dislike heavily because of Aang’s voice; no other reason, he’s the main character though and I actually tried sitting and forcing myself to watch to try get past that, nope. Shame because it’s a good story) nor will I consider that enjoyment, which *temporarily* may exclude me, as ‘forcing it on me.’ I will instead enjoy my friends having fun. Because guess what? I like seeing my friends enjoy something that actually is not harmful to anyone around. Nobody is ‘forcing’ me to enjoy that.

                      But, say if Sarah doesn’t like manga / anime because to her the plot and pacing is odd because the original target audience plays to Japanese expectations, that’s no hair off my skin; I will go “Oh, okay. That’s cool,” because she’s got a reason. Even “Eh, not my thing” is fine. But that’s not going to stop me from enjoying stuff from the medium with other folks who do, in the same social group in a space designed to bring us together for convos in fits and spurts – like every other conversation there.

                      That’s all there is to it.

                    8. >> “*holds up hand* Still alive. I’ve just had very low emotional bandwidth for much, plus frequent tension headaches; just kind of generally tired; but the children are doing excellent”

                      Glad to hear you and yours are (mostly) okay. Take it as easy as you can; I’m sure we’ll still be here when you have the energy to come back.

                      >> “Dark themes on web browsers have clashed with pages that are already by default dark, so I don’t use it.”

                      Not sure what you’ve tried, but the ones I use put buttons on the menu bar so I can turn them on and off for particular sites. And I keep a second dark reader installed but disabled as a fallback in case a site is too bright regardless of the setting on my primary one. Having to switch the stuff on and off is a minor annoyance, but it beats the alternative.

                      >> “The main thing is, there are people who do enjoy anime/manga, and aren’t going to stop enjoying it just because someone else doesn’t.”

                      [blink]

                      Um… Was that all aimed at me? I didn’t say anything negative about anime or manga, and I don’t expect anyone else to change their hobbies on my account.

                    9. DGM,

                      Seems obvious it wasn’t aimed at you.

                      One comment, multiple topics.

                    10. I’m a neo-otaku. Fell into SAO by referral. Then I found crunchyroll and have been slowly munching my way through it. Some anime is just plain weird. And I think some of the raters have a really hard time telling the difference between child-safe and pornographic hentai. Different cultures indeed.

                    11. Yeah, sorry. One comment, multiple topics. I was addressing the whole ’cause trouble in discord’ thing Orvan is referring to, just to explain what’s going on.

                      My sleep schedule is a *mess.* RL / parenting takes up a massive chunk of daytime. But yeah, Discord’s the easiest place to reach me right now.

                  1. If you have to ask, you probably won’t like it. But I will be merciful: Sword Art Online.

                    You can try GGO, Gun Gale Online. The MC is a little chibi with a pink outfit and a pink FN-P90. >:D

                    3. Oh, you’ll -love- this one. ~:D

                      The character is a huge tall college girl in Japan. Her dream is to be little and cute like all the other girls. So she tries all the VR fantasy games and always ends up with the warrior woman skin, tall, stacked, huge muscles etc. Which she already is. Very disappointing.

                      Finally in desperation she tries GGO, where everything smells of gun oil and all the game play is player-vs-player or monster hunting. She finally gets her dream character, cute and petite. In the gun shooting game.

                      But she doesn’t care. she dresses all in pink with a bunny-ear beret and a pink P-90 PDW and goes out to PvP like a boss. She becomes the “Pinku no Akuma”, the Pink Demon. She haunts the deserts and bushwhacks hunting parties. Because pink is camo in the desert.

                      Did I mention there’s guns in it? And something you never, ever see in American cinema, they go to a lot of trouble to get all the guns and the tactics right. Which is why I put up with the Japanese language and the goofy characters. These guys did their homework.

                    4. In this case, Sword Art is the art of using a sword.

                      I don’t have any enthusiasm for recommending the property, but that may be a general lack of enthusiasm, from being up past bedtime.

                      I’ve put a fair amount of time into SAO, but there are quality issues in the light novels, and I find I have no explanation for what the selling point would be. And, I got ticked off and quit, and have mostly stayed quit. Or at least lost interest in seeing where things went.

                      I find that I don’t recall your reading tastes enough to make any recommendations in western fiction. And while I’ve read a few light novels, the ones I like I’m not always in the mood for, and it’d be easy to overdose and ruin my appetite. Feels like a fine line between “I enjoy this because it is not nihilistic” and “this is stupid, why do I care” with a lot of them.

                  2. Yeah, in addition to the story structure, and the art style, there is a good chance you would dislike it because grimdark, and dubious technical world building.

                    Seriously, with your technical background, I expect you to be particularly well suited to noticing the stuff that does not really make sense.

                    1. I have mentioned, perhaps, that when younger I could deal with almost all the oddities of The Flintstones. The names to add ‘rock’ or ‘stone’ (e.g. “Thomas Eddystone”)? No problem. The bird phono, the mini-mammoth vacuum clearner? No issue. But that rear axle should have fallen out/off!

                3. A few years back Schlitz made a big deal of reverting to their 1960’s formula. Or, as some people put it, “Putting the ‘L’ back into the name.” I tried it. A great beer? No. A good enough beer? Yeah. As in, I wouldn’t be offended to be offered one, and (at the right price point – which is above free, fwiw) I’d buy again.

                    1. To be fair, there is a difference between conversational gambit and “tell me your trauma.” I am sort of loose on understanding of conversational gambits myself, so….

                    2. Aye.

                      It might have been a land mine, perhaps.

                      BUT, note, I do NOT and did NOT plant those mines! (Nor did anyone here.) That does NOT make the damned things any less real. And I *have* attempted MULTIPLE de-mining operations. To use a gaming analogy/metaphor, the damn things re-spawn! I know, from PAINFUL EXPERIENCE, a bunch of things that DO NOT WORK and only INFLICT MORE PAIN.

                      For anyone wanting an apology, here is it: I am sorry my screaming from PAIN bothered your ears a wee bit.

                    3. Lemme tell you how great peas and bananas are. 😀

                      I’m perhaps too out of it, and not able to pay attention, but it struck me as the sort of discussion that might occur when everyone is really really stressed.

                      I’ve definitely argued both angles before, and wanted to argue them more than I actually have.

                      Possibly I project too much!

                    6. If you ever want to have a cashier asks about your groceries, buy a dozen each of jam, spaghetti sauce, and Poptarts.

                    7. Aye, they ought be kept apart. About 180 billion Light Years apart. I shall be at the 90 billion mark, enjoying the delightful absence of yuck of those two particular types. Pass the Malört, would you?

                    9. It’s a lot commoner than that, or “It all goes to the same place” would not be a stock phrase.

                    11. I am not on the spectrum. I keep food for most meals separated. Used to be a huge fight when I was a kid. One argument I made they couldn’t refute “I don’t have to Taste when they co mingle after swallowing.” Now as an adult, there are some foods I mix as bites, but not on the plate.

                      Thanksgiving OTOH, mashed potatoes, turkey, dressing, all get gravy on top, and the three can touch, but nothing else (either another plate or whatever comes later). I remember a few meals with my then new inlaw nieces “But Aunt food isn’t touching!”, me, “no it isn’t” (not sure this made me popular with the new inlaws, their grandparents, who were the same generation of my grandparents, but we were really, really, newlyweds, so no arguments ensued).

                      It does drive some people nuts. FYI for the kid, we got divided plates until he got over it. Food was one item I refused to make a fight over.

                    12. Some things just DO NOT TASTE GOOD when combined. Like…cabbage, mayonnaise and gravy. Potatoes and vinegar. Chicken, celery and mustard. BLECCCH!!

                    13. Potatoes and vinegar are no issue for me, if done right. Salt & Vinegar potato chips? Bring ’em on! (Great for a sore throat, though can seem paradoxical). And *German* (HOT!) potato salad? Great! Now, cold potato? Like hot cabbage, a crime against food and taste, IMO.

                    14. To be fair, cabbage is an affront to the palate no matter what is touching it. Therefore it on the plate period is a no! Same with: Liver, Heart, Kidney, Cream Corn, Stewed Tomatoes, Clam Chowder, Oysters, Clams, Squid, Octopus, Snails, …. even if I’m starving because none of these items will stay down long enough. Some of these items were a huge fight when I was a kid. I got punished when the food wouldn’t stay down too.

                  1. “You will like my favorite thing, or you will be obliterated!”

                    This is normal in Geekdom. It’s why we don’t get on well with the other kids. ~:D

                    1. It is also a small part of why we have soooo many planet crackers (and going up from there).

                      But mostly because we like the big krakoom.

                    2. “What do you think would happen if one universe crashed into another at the speed of light?” demanded Kali.
                      “An earth-shattering kaboom?” ventured Jimmy.

                    4. Teller was a practical man, in some ways, and perhaps neglected to consider the theory of design for cases involving more fissile material than could have been recovered during his entire life time.

                      In charity, I’m not at all sure I would want to spend much time trying to figure out that category of cases.

                      🙂

                    5. Oh, once you get fusion, the limiting factor is NOT fissile material(s). Lack might make things a bit more… interesting…. but there’s no real limit to fusion.

    2. Teen Titans Go style has nothing to do with original Teen Titans has nothing to do with Justice League Unlimited styles, for an example.

      1. Ugh! I saw the “art work” for Teen Titans Go and decided to do a complete pass on it.

        1. There is nothing wrong with Teen Titans Go! that can’t be fixed by killing those responsible, salting, and burning.

          1. I thought Teen Titans Go was funny, and the art is, well, exactly on current animation trend (that may have started with the Power Puff Girls but maybe that was only the first one that got super popular). On the other hand, I am NOT a DC fanboy, so I have basically zero attachment to any of the characters in any of their previous incarnations.

            1. Oh, I am not a DC fanboy.

              I did watch Teen Titans some. GO’s humor struck me as inter-personally malicious, hence a mismatch to the prior iteration of the property, and maybe a skin suit demanding respect sort of show. I would not object to the brand of humor being implemented in an original property.

              My comment was a tiny sliver of jest, part me being an asshole, and part me being generally angry about all of the ‘reimagine the old stuff as a way to tear the audience down’ that is going on with the entertainment industry.

              1. It wasn’t so much a skin suit of Teen Titans as it was a reaction to Young Justice.

                Young Justice was an unexpected runaway hit. (And very reminiscent of Teen Titans. Without the Terra creepiness, which was admittedly toned down from the comics.)
                The problem is that DC Animation made it in partnership with Cartoon Network (with CN footing the bill). And YJ ran into the same problem Animaniacs ran into decades before. It attracted the “wrong” demographic. CN sold advertising based on the time of day, and the timeslot was supposed to be appealing to children, not teenagers and adults.
                If I recall correctly, CN offered that they would continue to run the show if the DC parent took over development funding, but if they wouldn’t, they would have to produce something else, or end the partnership.
                And so, Teen Titans Go replaced Young Justice. With simplistic plots, fart jokes, and cheap visual gags. 5-8 year olds were happy. Almost no one else was

            2. I loved Teen Titans.

              Thus, I was the folks they — as Bob motioned– aimed to harm with their stuff.

              I can see a lot of it was funny, if it hadn’t been…what it was.

              But it’s like the difference between slamming the breaks 10 ft before you hit someone, and ten foot after.

              And this is solidly after. With intent.

            3. Part of what makes me angry is they had GOOD HUMOR in there….but mixed it with malicious humor on the prior series.

            4. I worded things ambiguously.

              Compare Hamill’s character in the Rian Johnson Disney movie with Luke Skywalker. If you haven’t seen the three Star Wars movies, a crazy old nihilist might make sense to have in a movie.

              But if you have seen the three Star Wars movies, the Disney movies might also cause one to doubt that those other three movies that Lucas made were Star Wars either.

              Kennedy hired Johnson to do an artsy genre deconstruction movie for some reason. It was not out of respect for the previous material from the property.

              In Teen Titans Go, Raven, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Robin and Starfire treated each other with a level of malice that really did not fit with Teen Titans. That is what I meant by interpersonal malice.

              The act of making that iteration of the property might not have been malicious. In entertainment, there are a lot of idiots with money.

              I do fit it into the wider pattern of ‘sequels’/’re-imaginings’ that purely hated the original, and of creators of original properties that are just doing stuff to hurt the audience.

              I want to read about detectives who solve mysteries, scientists with rayguns, and people who slay dragons. I even want to read about the kid bullied to death, who becomes a mighty kung fu wizard, and thus stops people from pissing on him all the time.

              I do not want to read ‘everyone is bad, especially you readers, and all is futile’.

              1. I do fit it into the wider pattern of ‘sequels’/’re-imaginings’ that purely hated the original, and of creators of original properties that are just doing stuff to hurt the audience.

                I hadn’t thought of it before, but it did “taste” like when I checked out Redshirts from the library– got a bit in, realized it wasn’t even having fun and it wanted to hurt me, and returned it.

                Only later did I find out that Scalzi was living out what I groked from the text.

                1. I don’t remember if I attempted to read Redshirts before or after Fuzzy Nation, but Fuzzy Nation meant that I’ll never purchase another book by him.

                  If I were to review Fuzzy Nation, it’s be “Scalzi decided H. Beam Piper did it wrong when he wrote Little Fuzzy so Scalzi decide to write it better and completely failed to do so”. 😡

                  2. I read Old Man’s War and liked it. Read the whole series.
                    I read Redshirts and I simply cannot remember a single thing from it. Utter pablum. (And a Hugo winner.)
                    I read Fuzzy Nation and decided that John Scalzi would not be getting any more of my money, ever. H. Beam Piper’s estate should sue the shirt off his back for that atrocity.

                    1. Old Man’s War had potential until it went preachy/smarmy at the end. “The Androids Dream” is a fun romp. Most of the rest of Scalzi’s stuff I’ve read rises to Meh or maybe a bit more. Even Redshirts which had a nice premise ends up as a rehash of meta stories of yore. Somewhere along the way Scalzi shut his brain off and just kept pumping out crap because people were giving him nice juicy advances. His injecting politics into everything doesn’t help me enjoy it.

                  3. Fuzzy Bones (William Tuning) and Golden Dream (Ardath Mayhar) were pretty good.

                    I picked up Fuzzy Nation at a used book store a long time ago and never got around to reading it. That bad?

                    1. Even Comic Book Readers would say that the Villains were unrealistic.

                  4. Scalzi had a short in one of the Dark Ride Rising anthologies. The ENTIRE STORY was two guards on a wall, with one of them a media ST fan bugging the crap out of his fellow guard. That’s it. By the end of the story, if the zombies had come over the wall and eaten him it would have been a relief.
                    I don’t intend to read any more Scalzi after that.

              2. I even want to read about the kid bullied to death, who becomes a mighty kung fu wizard, and thus stops people from pissing on him all the time.

                With a zombie flute? *grins*

                    1. GRandmaster seems to be a little bit unusual as xianxia go.

                      Formula I was talking about was the bullied MC, etc.

                      Necromancer MCs were pretty big in the Korean web novel community for a while.

                    2. The protagonist of “The Untamed” (turned into a series on Netflix) actually gets pretty close to that, particularly since the series opens with someone bringing him back to life years after he died.

                      He’s quite notorious for using a flute to work his magic.

              3. Not plugged in on the other stuff, but Kennedy thought she had a locked in audience that had to buy tickets to wherever she made, whom she also thought were mindless troglodyte unenlightened moron basement dwellers, so she really didn’t need to do more than ape the prior work at the skin suit level. Being free to make whatever she wanted, and cut loose from any corporate oversight by the box office of the first DIS movie, she proceeded to follow her true heart, which was evidently full of hatred and disdain for the fans.

                Lucas didn’t do the property any favors with his own prequels, which plodded and sucked.

                The Atlantic has an article (at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/gross-altman-star-wars-mandalorian/619016/ ) where they lightly enter this fray – they talk about the lack of immersion in the Kennedy Star Wars where the original was just that – at least in the first two movies, viewers were dunked into the world and never let up for air:

                Viewers come to feel a humanistic, or even animistic, connection. Star Wars immerses you in the awesome knowledge that peripheral things—the neighbors you don’t understand, the buildings you don’t notice—have their own sagas.

                .
                The article notes that immersion effect never happened in the DIS Star Wars movies, but it did happen in The Mandalorian. The article does not note that The Mandalorian was produced outside Kennedy’s control by Star Wars fans Favreau and especially Filoni, the entire effort purportedly created by Disney after the Solo flop as an emergency backup plan to save the value of the franchise by shifting Favreau’s production talent over from the successful Marvel property.

                But the point is the creators of The Mandalorian clearly loved both the existing material, and the fans. That shows.

          2. Must disagree, good sir. That travesty calls for nano-disassemblers followed by nuclear bombardment from orbit.

            It’s the only way to be sure.

            1. I was never much of a comic book fan, I was pretty casual viewer of the DC animated universe, and was not really interested by the time Teen Titans showed up.

              Also, I don’t know how to make nano-dissassemblers, and think getting nukes all the way up to orbit might be a waste. 😛

              1. They did have a sucked into the Oregon Trail videogame episode that was hilarious, and a couple of other nice ones that I saw by chance. But overall, a horror show.

                1. >> “They did have a sucked into the Oregon Trail videogame episode that was hilarious”

                  Sounds interesting. Do you have a link to that perchance?

                  1. For the record, my kids played “old games” because it was whatever we found in thrift stores.
                    So, son is not as old as this makes it sound, however it was very startling wandering the aquarium at the denver zoo with son, and he stops in front of a tank with a fish the size of a small pig, reads the name and says “Oh. We roasted one of those in the Oregon trail.” 😀

                  2. No, but it is 3rd season, episode 48, and it is named “Oregon Trail.” I am shocked that they were not sued, but maybe they got permission.

                    It might not have been as funny as it was just surprising that such an episode would be made. Not an area of nostalgia I expected to have come back.

          3. Don’t forget nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

      1. The best part of The Lion King is Scar’s Nuremberg Rally (aka “Be Prepared), because the bad guy always gets the best song. Otherwise it’s so derivative all the characters should have a lower-case “d” in front of their names.

        2. I’ve seen it (at one time, I made it a point to see Disney animated movies), but it’s not up there as one I’d like to see again. I have the multi-CD set done for the development of the music of Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, and the two(!) versions of Aladdin. If the VCR is willing and able, I’d like to watch the first two again. I never bought Aladdin, though I do have a copy of TLK.–I blame Costco for cheap movies. 🙂

          FWIW, the villain Gaston character is voiced by Richard Wright, who starred in the non-A.L.Webber version of Phantom. (Which version follows the Broadway Americal Musical style rather than ALW’s. IMHO, Webber’s music is better.)

          1. “Lion King”

            Animated Disney version hit when our son was 4 … Simba was another Barney … We’ve seen it a time or two or three or I-lost-count …

                1. Yep.

                  And “Kimba” was originally named “Leo” in his first appearance in Japan but when he was marketed in the US he was renamed “Kimba” (from Simba).

      3. ” I don’t like the Lion King. *ducks and covers*”

        Lol reminds me of Nostalgia Critic’s review of the Lion King.

    4. The first critical thought I recall; “How do I get off this monkey planet?”
      Some time later , I find myself on a team in the Mojave desert.
      Our mission:; SSTO X33…too many leaps in one vehicle. Aerospike, composite cryo tank.
      Highlights:
      1) learning enough SQL to produce a ready for court analysis of an ICD (delivered by a lying cheap- ass subcontractor as a broken Oracle DB.)
      2)a ball of frozen rattlesnakes was found in the LOX manhole next to the valves.
      3)The chief engineer also wore the CAL-EPA.-Mandated “tortoise wrangler” hat. Yiiiiipppeeeeiiooooaaay!!

      Ol’ Man Harriman nor Elon , didn’t show.

      It wasn’t a goal-goal; I just washed up on the shore of coincidental drift.

      Later again I get paid to learn Kalman filters and I get a rocket scientist mug.

  3. Democrats tuning in will look at the totalitarian society workshop as a real life “how to” guide.

    1. “on writing totalitarian societies”

      *Gestures to the news broadcasts*

      “Enh? Enh? Okay, any questions?”

  4. Anyone want to bet that the Worldcon organizers invite the FBI to the con to monitor for the presence of thought criminals so they can be arrested for “insurrection and thrown in solitary confinement with no bail?

    1. Well, you could be close to the truth since a domestic violent extremist seems to be anybody that opposes the Regime.

      1. “Well, you could be close to the truth since a domestic violent extremist seems to be anybody that opposes the Regime”

        The same people who were openly threatening to burn down a dozen cities if Trump dared to be re-elected now declare a school board meeting with parents angrily denouncing CRT to be an unlawful assembly.

      1. Funny story, one of my RPG associates is…

        …
        uh…

        a total ass. Yeah we’ll go with that. He nearly destroyed me after he was too lazy to click on a link to a spell out of stuff for RP and instead went nuclear on me as incompetent, but in a passive aggressive way. (took nearly a week for me to figure out he was going off of a joke post, not the “here is the stuff your character should know” link, and I was utterly devastated because it destroyed the character for the rest of the FC)

        So I was warned he is LAZY.

        Offhandedly, in a discussion on how Discord is expanding its base, I mentioned that I knew of groups who’d passed on using it because “discord” is a negative thing.

        Unfortunately, I did it in association with ‘hey a sweet CHRISTAIN lady I know’.

        Which triggered his moronic bigotry, so I got “treated” to a lecture on how English Is Weird and discord just means talking.

        …and I was then very disruptive by nuking him with no, discord isn’t discourse. Not the same. With photographs from dictionaries. Going back a century.

        I hope I didn’t kill the D&D group…..

      1. While it is always better to have Fluffy on my side, if Fluffy isn’t available, I can handle matters just fine. [Very Big Dragon Grin]

      2. A fanfic I’ve enjoyed has a character titled the Scholarly Dragon. He is not the same category of inevitable ruin as a Skylark.

        Is a bit scarier than mere nuclear weapons.

          2. >> “A simple web-fu maneuver later:”

            How did you do that? I’ve tried to extract image links from pics on Twitter in a form I could post here, but I never managed it.

            1. I *think* he went to the gab (not a tweet; not sure what works for twitter), viewed the image, and pasted the url of the image.

              Testing my guess:

              1. This is what I did.

                You can even get at things more obscured if you use the browser’s debug functions, but sometimes you have to sift throgh a bunch of html a scripty-stuff to find out where they’ve stashed the image.

    2. I’d rather have a VF-25, even if it violates the square cubed law rather badly.

      (Idol singer optional.)

      1. yes, i made a remark about havey telling you you’re supposed to be writing lol

    1. I didn’t notice anything about price?

      IE Do you have to pay to attend on-line?

  10. While we’re tangenting into DC land, I did have an idea on how to do a Batgirl series that isn’t just ancopy/paste gender swap:

    She is Bruce Wayne and Catwoman’s daughter. It was a huge scandal when Selina Kyle moved in with Wayne. Every one knew she was the Catwoman. And while for the first couple of years it seemed like she had, mostly, turned over a new leaf, one day she skipped town, leaving Bruce with their young daughter, proving him to be, once again, a playboy chump.

    So she has grown up as the daughter of the infamous catwoman. She doesn’t fit in high society because her father was a chump, and her mother low class, but as a scion of wealth, she doesn’t fit in with the middle or lower classes either.

    And, her father *is* The Batman, and she’s knows it. Set it around highschool when she’s starting to notice boys, and her father has noticed that boys have noticed her, and you have this great glorious ball of character tensions to play with.

    I can an epic rant where she goes off on the Riddler, about how it’s so much easier and bless stressful dealing with his schemes than highschool. “You? You have to make sense! It’s a compulsion! They *don’t*! They can decide one plus two equals green and be mad at you for a month for not figuring it out! Then they want you to be their buddy and hang out with them again!”

        1. That sounds right, but the “how to say no” thing would be epic story fuel in itself.

          Because Riddler isn’t a BAD bad guy…..

          1. I thought of Harry’s scene and also see a scene where Batman shows up upon which Riddler reminds Batman that he’s not as BAD as Joker (in my scene Riddler suspects Batgirl is closely related to Batman and may have said something about that so he doesn’t want Batman to think he’d really harm Batgirl).

            In the DC universe, no criminal really wants Joker on their team but is also afraid that Joker would be insulted if he’s not invited to join the team. 😈

            1. That dynamic could get really dark *really* fast. In my non-cannon headcannon, I’ve always thought the Joker did not kill Batman, because he needed him as an audience/rival.**

              And I don’t know that would extend to Batgirl…

              **For plot bunny 2.0, I had an old idea for a Superman vs Evil Faye fanfic. One of the threads was she gave various super villians magic. She gave the Joker resurrection (and yes, Thriller does happen). He promptly kills Batman and raises him, because now he can play with him forever and ever…

              And yes, Batman is still functioning and in control by the end of the arc, because he. is. Batman.

          2. OK, mostly OT,m but I link this only because of those two words “bad guy”:

    2. Interesting story but I’d add something else.

      Selina Kyle didn’t desert Bruce Wayne but disappeared and Bruce/Batman suspects that she was murdered.

      IE She was just gone leaving everything she might have needed/wanted to start a new life.

      The thing is IMO Bruce, even in love with her, would know if she was planning to desert him and there’s no evidence for any such plans to desert him. Especially if it was obvious that she deeply loved her daughter by Bruce.

      Thus while we have the pains of this girl growing up and the pains of Bruce raising a daughter, we also have the mystery of “what happened to Selina”.

      1. That is definitely a possibility, but not the only possibility. Part of the issue is, she simply cannot not be catwoman. And, she’s getting older, and has made more lethal enemies than the Batman.

        She could easily have chosen to vanish because she felt is was better for here not to be around.

        And she may have been planning it from the very beginning too.

      1. [jeering] “Oh, yeah? What’s green plus purple?”

        [perfectly matter-of-fact] “Brown, red.”

    4. IIRC, one of the previous versions of DC’s Earth-2 (basically a parallel universe Earth that showed up frequently in the comics) did have Bruce and Selina get married. And they had a daughter, who was Earth-2’s Huntress.

    1. Good! If a spouse or family member did to someone what the British government [and Canadian] has been doing, a lot of people would call it emotional abuse (and shading into physical) and call in the cops. I’m glad to see resistance.

      1. Even Despicable Kate Brown (D-emonstrably crazed, Oregon) realised that the lockdowns and perma-mask orders were only generating more resentment and resistance than compliance. Once we get either a) 70% of the population shot with the not-vaccine or b) June 30 whichever comes first, the orders are rescinded, complete with overrides of the orders from OR-OSHA and the Oregon “Health” “Authority” that curiously followed Kate’s whims.

        OTOH, she’s clinging to the emergency declaration in case she feels she can get away with more screwing around. On the gripping hand, even the Dems are tired of the restrictions.

        Caveat: public transit, airports and health facilities are still mask zones, ostensibly because of federal rules. Hard to stay masked at the dentist’s, and the med-lab allows a face shield. Only a few doctor’s offices insist on the face diaper.

        1. Saw a brief blip about a new variant that is panicking TPTB …

          I don’t think that can change any plans here in the US. Whether global travel, including US to Canada, opens, IDK. But in the US with the their own patsies starting to complain, they are going to keep backing off, with “look what we did Worked!” Not that anyone with an ounce of brains and common sense believes that.

          1. Delta is “more transmissible!” especially to unvaxxed <30, but all the vaxxes except the imaginary Chinese ones work on it, and so does natural immunity, and it’s not really more symptomatic or more severe once symptomatic, and masks still make absolutely no difference in transmission.

            So not really a biggie.

            1. But COVID-Death-Virus!

              It’s rather like they’re trying to keep us scared witless, like FICUS and Kneepads.

        2. Attended church in Tucson, AZ this morning, right outside the U of AZ campus. If I’d needed confirmation Tucson is an electric blue dot, I would have had it when we had to wear face diapers AND have a temperature test to enter church. In Tucson, in June. (Can we say, “Temps in the high 90s every day, boys and girls? I knew you could.”).

          1. So, the inverse of JP’s temp-taker last winter, up in the Frozen North. “But wait, you can’t have a temp of 20F and still be alive?!?”

            1. I think of the dozen or so times they’ve tried to do the dermal temperature about half have not worked. Have had a few cases they just didn’t try after first few attempts.

  14. Got home from church in time to catch the Correia & Hoyt panel. V. cool: Thank you Liberty Con!

    In re: Rey: Q says not to worry: In the next remake she’ll be a dude 🙂

  15. Awkward AutoCorrect: “Oh beautiful for pilgrim feet whose sternum passion stress . . .” The roofpreeder missed it as well.

    [For those not familiar with the text, it should be stern, impassioned stress]

      1. One comedian had a long bit on letters and such written with autocorrupt suggestions that were not the right word. Got really hard to follow when he went full WTF is AC thinking there?

  16. Darn. If there’s a regular discord, I predict a likely dropoff in chat on the blog. When I’m working twelve hour days I read posts here, and almost never manage to post myself since I’m rarely keeping up in real time. I like you guys, and often I even get to learn something.

    I need to find a LibertyCon equivalent I can attend.

  17. Well, at least you didn’t refer to it as a “virtual con” like Old NFO. Not sure if he meant that the way it was written, but he is a writer so I tend to assume foreknowledge.

  18. So, off-topic but amusing:

    I’ve been looking into the cats Leslie Fish has been breeding for intelligence. There’s not nearly as much info on them as I’d like – I’d love the chance to ask Mrs. Fish some questions – but I did find a small collection of amusing stories about one named Mrrrp the Magnificent: http://www.kayshapero.net/FishTale.htm

    I especially liked the one in which Mrrrp reinvented the lever. Bonus points for the fact that he only did it for sex.

        2. He was a quarter Persian. His mom was half persian (and we knew the mom) and half traveling salesman (she lived in a college dorm and got out while in heat,) long haired marmalade boy. And the SMARTEST cat I’ve ever met.

          1. >> “And the SMARTEST cat I’ve ever met.”

            Yeah, I remember that part. You even said he seemed to have rudimentary language skills.

              1. Our very smart cat spoke English. It blew my mind when he stuck his head around my office door, and said “hello”. He had gotten tired of trying to teach me Cat. There were “words” he would say in Cat I learned meant: “I am going to run into the living room, hop up onto the couch. Follow me. You are to pet me in the exact way I have taught you”. Cat is a much more compact language than English. But that was the extent of my understanding of Cat. It is amazing how much information you can transmit with now, no and hello. He would come up in the middle of the afternoon, to ask “Now?” (for food)

                I would talk to him, and tell him what i was going to do, like: “I will feed you when I get back from the store.” When the car would pull into the carport, he would race back to where the other cat was, with my wife, say something in Cat, and they both would race to the door. Our other cat had no understanding of English.

                He understood doors. I would find him standing on his hind legs, front paws wrapped around a doorknob, trying to turn the knob. If we had had lever doors, he would have opened them easily.

                I know he will be one of my escorts on my journey over the rainbow bridge. I look forward to conversations with him.

                1. One of the MANY questions I’d love to ask Mrs. Fish is if she’s ever tried breeding specifically for language capabilities (symbolism + vocalization).

                  1. If cats can understand English, and we can’t understand cat, who is smarter?

                    1. If the dumbass sitting next to me were smart enough to understand English he’d go outside before throwing up. It’s not like I haven’t yelled at him to do so plenty of times.

                    3. Did I tell you while I was struggling for Dragon to understand me, it transcribed Pixie perfectly.
                      Apparently what Pixie was saying was “Hi mom, hi mom, hi. What are you doing mom? Hi, mom! Hi. Hello.”

                    4. >> “You’re under the impression he cares?”

                      He doesn’t like it when I get mad, show him what he did, smack him and throw him out. So I assume he would care. He just doesn’t seem to GET it.

                2. Presby, would you email me off line. I do have a question OT.
                  And yes Pixie and his brother Randy were a two-cat door opening team, one pulling the door, the other turning the knob.I’m hoping Pixie and my Greebo will be waiting for me. Pixie won’t enter. He’ll be waiting for his boy (Older son.) Same with my beloved Lord-dog. I’ll see him after I get through. He’ll go in with dad. Assuming dad goes before me.

                  1. I figure when it comes to it, the co-parented fur babies will be able to escort each of us in turn across the Rainbow Bridge. They won’t have to choose.

Comments are closed.