I recall that it was canon that Time Lords can only have 13 bodies. Matt Smith is the 11th.
...a Time Lord can regenerate 12 times, for a total of 13 incarnations.
We're running out of bodies here. Only two more, and then we have a crisis on our hands. Obviously we need to stop burning Doctors for fuel, and switch to a renewable Doctor source. Sustainability, kids, sustainability!
1
Ah, but The Master has circumvented that on a number of occasions, and considering that River Song has given up all of her regens to save The Doctor, there's really no way of knowing how many he has.
Heck, in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures (which I quite enjoyed, actually!), the Doctor says he can regenerate 507 times... he might have been kidding, though.
Either way, I've put too much thought into this already.
Posted by: Wonderduck at June 02, 2013 10:00 AM (lpH3d)
2
'The Five Doctors' established that you could give additional regenerations to a Time Lord who used up all of his/her original 13. Of course, one of the ways went up with the rest of the Time Lords, but there is precedent for getting around that limit.
Posted by: cxt217 at June 02, 2013 10:01 AM (g3DaF)
4
Yea verily all these many decades ago, when they first set the limit at 12, who would have seriously considered the possibility that they would actually encounter that limit?
Truly an impressive run.
Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at June 02, 2013 10:28 AM (HLJkh)
Another possibility:
When they introduced John Hurt as "The Doctor", Matt Smith's character made a point of stating that he did not consider him to be a true "Doctor". It's possible that Hurt's character is the one that ended the Time War by sealing the Time Lords, Daleks, etc. in a time bubble. That would make Matt Smith the 12th regeneration...
Posted by: Siergen at June 03, 2013 06:11 AM (Ao4Kw)
10
Siergen:
Yep.
Mauser - he is explicitly canon according to the new series, though.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 04, 2013 12:04 AM (PiXy!)
Ginger Rogers has a reputation as being one of the big name actresses from the 30's and 40's, but I've never been very impressed. Most (if not all) of her best movies were famous because she was dancing with Fred Astaire.
But Fred Astaire could dance with a hatrack and make it look good. I know this because he did. He had all the talent. As long as she didn't stumble and fall, the dance was going to look good.
1
Of course, the old saw is that she was the better dancer -- because she did everything Fred did, backwards and in high heels. I guess the real measure would be how many retakes were needed because one or the other made a mis-step, but I doubt we'll ever know that answer.
Generally I don't care for mecha series, which is why Suisei no Gargantia was a pleasant surprise. There have been mecha series I liked, but in general it's not a genre I go for.
It just now occurred to me that there may be a simple heuristic for sorting the good from the bad: If the name of the mecha appears in the title of the series, then it probably sucks.
My issue is that in the generic crap mecha series, it's the mecha which is the star, the focus, of the story telling. The series is probably wish-fulfilment for young guys who think it would be awesome to be the pilot of a giant war machine. And thus it's likely to dispense with things like "telling a good story about interesting and complex characters".
And if the series title includes the name of the mecha, then that's what they're telling the story about. Myself, I find mechas as such to be silly and boring. I don't mind if they're around, though, as long as they don't get in the way.
UPDATE: As a heuristic it isn't perfect: I did enjoy Vandread. But then, as the old joke goes, if a heuristic was never wrong it would be an algorithm.
1
A fitting example that quickly comes to my mind is Code Geass. It has mecha, but as seasoning, not the entree. Some of the manga adaptations even remove the mecha.
Posted by: gaiaswill at May 16, 2013 04:06 PM (OmaL4)
4
Maybe that's why I tend to like Macross over Gundam series? Haha. Though Macross is a more of a story driven romance with singing and war, oh and some mechas pop up.
We do tend to see this type of thing pop up in other series. When the "selling point" of a series takes over the series, at the cost of story and character. There are shows with good stories and fanservice. There are shows that are very good at fanservice. And there are too many shows that just slap fanservice in to break up the story and annoy everyone.
Mecha series are just more marketable than tits shows, haha.
Posted by: sqa at May 16, 2013 07:35 PM (KuPSx)
5
I'm really not a fan of mecha series either. The only series I've enjoyed in recent memory is Gurren Lagann, which is kind of an odd case in that the titular mecha does appear in the series, but the one from the full series title ("Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann") doesn't show up until the last few episodes. Also, it is a very character-driven story with lots of development. It does run very much on the Rule of Cool with increasingly huge robots doing battle IN SPACE! but it manages to keep a good balance of that and great characterization.
Posted by: MeganeNeko at May 16, 2013 09:37 PM (RXa2b)
On the opposite side, the Mecha name doesn't appear in the title of "MUV-LUV Alternative: Total Eclipse" but on the other hand, it's an utterly horrible show. I wrote up a review of this two-season train wreck, which is currently in my drafts. I'd post it but my computer died so all the pictures are trapped on an inaccessible hard drive.
Although one could make the case that it's a titty show as well. (The reason I'm holding out for the pics.)
Posted by: Mauser at May 17, 2013 01:36 AM (cZPoz)
Loooong time ago I got into Laserdisc. I owned one of the very first Pioneer players, and eventually replaced it with another. At the time I was living in the Boston area, and there was a shop there called "Sight & Sound" which had a huge selection of laserdiscs; one of the largest in the country. They probably did three fourths of their business mailorder. They must have, because the actual store was a dump.
But there were lots of laserdiscs there, and being as I was a young, single, nerdish engineer with too much money and not enough sense, I bought a lot of stuff. I owned all three Star Wars films on laserdisc -- CAV! I bought a fair number of strange titles, too, like animation collections.
And Sight and Sound had a well-stocked adult section, and I did my share of spending there, too. I owned several of the Playboy laserdiscs, and maybe three hard core porn discs. (I've never been very interested in hard core porn; so sue me. Those three were enough to convince me it wasn't worth my time. Since then I've bought a small number of hard core DVDs, and came to the same conclusion.)
They had a lot of Japanese imports there, too, including in the adult section. There was one I bought which I gather was typical of Japanese soft-core porn.
The filmmaker (if we can grace him with that title) got four girls: one Australian, one American, one British, and one Japanese and took them on vacation in Alaska. IIRC all three gaijin were blondes. They hired a motor home and drove all around in it, and he spent a lot of time filming them topless doing various things. For instance, he filmed the American girl flycasting in a river.
He spent a lot of time shoving his camera into their chests for extreme closeups. And there were deliberately plenty of opportunities for gainaxing.
The final scene was of all four running (bouncy bouncy) topless down a beach towards the camera, which was on a jeep driving in front of them.
Damned if I can remember what it was called. (Probably had a Japanese name.) But I find myself curious if it still exists. My laserdiscs and my player are long gone, but the other day I remembered this particular disc, for no obvious reason. I have no idea what brought it to mind.
It was definitely not high art but it wasn't really as offensive as it might sound. For one thing, the girls looked like they were having fun.
He also spent time taking pictures of scenery as they drove around -- maybe 10% of the film is scenery porn. (As it were.) Alaska is plenty picturesque and deserves that.
The chance of it still being in print (in any form) is nil, but I'm still curious. I wonder what it was, and I wonder who made it? I wonder what else he might have worked on?
I would say that at least three quarters of the books I've bought for my Kindle are Nero Wolfe mysteries. Don't ask me why; that's just what I've felt like reading recently.
I'm bothered by something that appeared in two of the stories. In both cases, a key event was that someone stabbed and killed someone else, and it was a critical factor in the story that the victim didn't know they were going to be stabbed, the victim died instantly, and the victim didn't make any noise when stabbed.
I don't buy that. Most deep stab wounds in the trunk area will be fatal if untreated, but death can take days, and in the short run the stabbee is likely to scream and writhe about. The only way you can get an instant kill is to nail the heart, which is a small target. Doing that without the victim knowing you're trying to isn't easy.
I guess the answer is, I'm reading these books because I enjoy spending time with Wolfe and Goodwin, not because I'm looking for truth or plausibility.
Another thing that bothers me is the way the police tend to use "Material witness" as a charge that pretty much allow them to lock up anyone, any time, just because the cops say so. I hope that they don't actually do that; it seems like it has dreadful potential for abuse.
1
The bad news is, people are still held as "material witnesses" for as long as a judge is willing to tolerate.
There are a few places you can get a quiet kill with a knife, and most of them require an attack from behind. (Slit the throat, or hand over the mouth and stab the kidneys.) In fact, strike the "most", I can't think of any from the front. Even that "stab to the heart" is going to be pretty challenging to make it instant- you have to aim just right between the ribs. And it won't be perfectly silent- see the Return of the King movie for a good example of the kind of grunt that you'll hear. Although it might be quiet enough to be inaudible through a heavy door, I suppose.
Posted by: Boviate at April 30, 2013 06:51 PM (XfqiU)
2
One I've heard of is downward next to the neck. It requires a longer knife, but if you get behind the collarbone, it's a straight shot to the heart, especially the Aorta, and there's pretty much no first aid or anything that can stop the inevitable. It's pretty gruesome, but supposedly quick.
Then again, we've all heard about "Punching the nose so the bones go into the brain and result in instant death" and clearly that one isn't as easy to pull off as the advocates say either.
Posted by: Mauser at May 01, 2013 12:51 AM (cZPoz)
3
*cough* To say the least! The correct term is "entirely impossible and conceptually absurd if you look at the actual skeleton."
( there's a martial artist in a forum I frequent, and just saying the word "nose bone" will make him twitch )
Posted by: metaphysician at May 01, 2013 05:02 AM (3GCAl)
4
Closet thing to an actual "kill shot" in martial arts is a sun-punch to the lower sternum, but the person needs a weak heart for that to work.
On the issue of "stabbing" someone with an instant kill, how strong is the blade supposed to be? If you can sever at the juncture between C1 and C2, that'd drop someone instantly. The accuracy and blade strength would be insane, but it's technically doable.
In both cases in the books, it was an ordinary kitchen knife.
You can kill someone with one punch by hitting them in the throat, if you crush the larynx, but it's a (relatively) slow death as the person chokes. Suffocation takes several minutes.
6
Years ago I read a book that was supposed to help fiction writers understand how weapons work and what really happens when they're used. It seemed reasonable and plausible, right up to the point where the author referred to the AR-15 as a "high-powered" rifle that made far more serious injuries than an ordinary deer rifle. Sigh.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 01, 2013 11:50 AM (fpXGN)
7
I'm just going to comment that I'm glad I'm not the only one that enjoys reading Nero Wolfe. I may pick some of the books up this weekend on Kindle.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at May 01, 2013 02:10 PM (T5fuR)
8
Is "interesting poison on the blade" an acceptable option? If you could somehow dip the blade in a super-nasty neurotoxin, and not die yourself from the work, that might also work.
Posted by: sqa at May 01, 2013 09:51 PM (dvTNf)
9
Some thing that I've wanted to ask about Nero Wolfe: Does Arnold Zeck qualify as a good villain by your heuristic?
Posted by: muon at May 02, 2013 12:23 AM (jFJid)
10
No, not really. Zeck only appeared in three of the stories, for one thing. And he's too derivative. It's just Moriarty with a paint job.
13
My understanding is that if you can drop blood pressure fast enough, the victim goes into shock more or less immediately, which would serve the purpose. But a knife strike that would do that would have to be extraordinarily accurate and strong. Something like the strike into the heart and aorta, with a strong twist of the knife to open the wound. From the front, I can't think of a way. And while I can't say if it's accurate or not, I've heard that slicing a throat is anything but quiet, unless you get it so deap that you get the arteries.
Posted by: David at May 02, 2013 09:42 PM (vyRm+)
14
Severing the arteries is the point of cutting the throat. It's not about the trachea, it's about severing the carotid arteries to deprive the brain of oxygenated blood.
It's the same thing with a chokehold. An "air choke" restricts breathing, but the victim has plenty of time to continue thrashing around and fighting. (How long can you hold your breath?) A proper choke is a "blood choke" to constrict the blood vessels, and the victim becomes unconscious within seconds.
Posted by: Boviate at May 03, 2013 08:00 AM (Nmatd)
I looked into this last year when I was curious about Halal butchering of cattle. (Also Kosher; it's essentially the same thing.)
In a normal slaughterhouse, cattle are herded onto a metal platform, then someone reaches out and touches them in the forehead with a cattle prod, which runs a big electric current through their brain, knocking them cold. Then the platform tilts away and the unconscious animal slides down below, where it is hung by its hind legs and its throat is cut. This is necessary to get the blood out of the carcass, and the animal dies by bleeding to death.
In Halal butchery, there's no cattle prod. The animal is conscious right up to the point where the butcher cuts its throat. Again, it bleeds to death but it feels the knife. Kosher is the same way.
The SPCA categorizes halal/kosher butchery as "humane" because when properly done the animal loses consciousness very rapidly (just a second or two) as a result of loss of blood supply to the brain.
So even if I cared about such things, I would not feel any guilt about buying my meat from the Halal butcher shop out on Canyon. (It's really good meat; that's why I buy there.)
They give me good service, too. It's apparent, I think, that I'm not Muslim but they've never, never, acted in a way that suggested they wished I wasn't there. My money is as good as anyone else's and evidently that's how they feel about it.
I understand that the First Lady announced the "Best Picture" winner this evening.
It could have been worse. At least Obama didn't get awarded an honorary Oscar for "Best Performance by a President who isn't named Bush." (That's what his Nobel Prize was for, after all.)
UPDATE: "Argo" beats "Lincoln". Why? Some have pointed out that in Argo, film makers are the heroes.
A different point is that in "Lincoln" Republicans are the good guys. It was Republicans who were anti-slavery; the slave states were mostly Democratic. That doesn't fit the narrative; we can't have that.
1
Baritones, drums and guitars muck around in the same frequency range, so it's harder to make out the fricatives.
Posted by: David McKinnis at December 03, 2012 06:05 PM (k5CSu)
2
He's got a good point. With the baritone leads, it was common to have
violins or a partial orchestra in the background, which I think has much
higher tones. After the Beatles, the orchestra faded as a part of
popular music (outside of the theater) and the small band became the
backing instrument.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at December 03, 2012 07:19 PM (G9eEC)
3
I think if you go back to the early days of recording, the men were Tenors then as well. I don't think the early gramophones reproduced the low tones well.
Posted by: Mauser at December 04, 2012 01:31 AM (cZPoz)
One of James Blish's books had a story in it about development of a new kind of star drive, and its first trip. They were trying to travel to Alpha Centauri, but ended up a long way further away. At one point after they finally figured out where they had ended up, one of them tossed off a comment that Alpha Centauri was actually about 70 light years closer than Sol.
Which is geometrically impossible. Since the systems are about 4 light years apart, one can never be more than 4 light years closer to one than to the other.
I was a smartassed kid and felt like sending a smartassed letter to him about it, but a combination of apathy and lack of knowledge about how to reach him meant I never did. And now I'm glad of it.
I just ran into another thing like that, in "Second Stage Lensman". Here's a line of dialog from Kinnison:
She's beautiful enough -- in her way -- of course. But then, so is a Radelegian cateagle, so is a spire of frozen helium, and so is a six-foot-long, armor-piercing punch.
So what's wrong with this picture?
Helium cannot freeze.
1
Helium can freeze, it just requires extra pressure... 25 bar worth, to be exact... and a temperature of ~ 1 Kelvin. In other words, it takes a lot of doing.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 01, 2012 05:12 PM (OzDz9)
Obviously not the case in that book (since you said "star drive"), but you could be more than 70 light years father from one than the other if your FTL thingamajigs run on one-way wormholes, like you can drive one block and be 3 blocks from where you started on a grid of one-way streets.
(I apologize for the imminent shortage of catgirls.)
Posted by: Mikeski at October 01, 2012 07:30 PM (1bPWv)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 01, 2012 09:55 PM (PiXy!)
4
Yeah, well, here's one that's been bugging me since the late '70s.
At the end of the final episode of the original Battlestar Galactica
series, they receive a transmission of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This
is meant to make the audience feel that our intrepid explorers are
nearing their destination.
However, *earlier* in the episode, they had received another
transmission. This one was accompanied by video that showed the LEM
*without its landing legs*.
In other words, they were flying away from Earth.
Posted by: Anachronda at October 02, 2012 07:59 PM (1c58W)
The "without landing legs" means it was in space after landing. It left the lower half behind when it took off.
The landing legs were part of the "descent stage". The "ascent stage" left the legs behind when it boosted into orbit.
In other words, film of the LEM with legs is earlier than film of the LEM without legs.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 02, 2012 08:35 PM (+rSRq)
6
I think Anachronda meant to say "away from the moon". Which would be confusing; it does not make sense that they're headed towards Earth, because that transmission would have crossed their path after the one of the moon landing.
In other words, they have missed the Earth and are headed away from it now.
Posted by: ubu at October 02, 2012 09:08 PM (GfCSm)
7
I read his post wrong, and he has a point. Sorry.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2012 05:04 AM (+rSRq)
8
Actually, now I see that we both read it wrong, but in different ways. I thought he meant Apollo 11 was flying away from the moon; he meant Galactica was headed away from Earth. Damn English and its unclear pronouns!
Posted by: ubu at October 03, 2012 06:11 AM (SlLGE)
9
Hmmmm...if anyone in the "Lensman" universe would be likely to encounter -- or engineer -- frozen helium, it would probably be a race like the frigid blooded Palainians, so maybe Kinnison picked up the "image" from his fellow Second Stage Lensman Nadrek(sp?). (There's almost nothinig you can't rationalize if you try hard enough!)
Posted by: Dave Young at October 03, 2012 12:20 PM (GxTMf)
10
Has anyone else seen the old Lensman anime movie? It wasn't too bad, really. Cutting edge CG for the time.
Posted by: Toren at October 03, 2012 02:49 PM (oVXUb)
11
I saw the dubbed version (it's available on Amazon and BakaBT). The director made it too much like Star Wars.
In the original series, how are the Boskone as villains?
Posted by: muon at October 03, 2012 03:30 PM (JXm2R)
Something like 25 years ago, my then-girlfriend gave me a VHS tape of a half-hour anime called "Lensman". I gather that it isn't the only show ever based on the series, because what I vaguely remember about it doesn't match what anyone else says about it.
In that one, Kimball Kinnison is just another guy. A lensman crashes near him, and Kinnison finds the lensman as he's dying. He gives his lens to Kinnison, who thus becomes a lensman.
Which directly violates Smith's canon. A lens is tuned to one particular person. It vanishes when he dies, and while it exists, if anyone other than the owner touches it, they die.
And it went downhill from there. I thought it was terrible, and only watched it once.
"Boskone" is a good enemy in the actual series, but it isn't a person.
Ultimately this is about a fight to the finish between two competing ideas about how living things should be governed. One is known in the series as "Civilization" and it's roughly based on classical liberalism, and is led by Arisia.
The other side is Boskone and is led by a race called the Eddorians. Their vision of how things should be run is based on power, cruelty, and terror.
But the interesting thing is that the true nature of the struggle is never totally clear to most of the main characters in the series. It is only in the last book, Children of the Lens, that
the Eddorians are finally defeated. And aside from Arisia, it is only the aforementioned Children who know the truth. All of the lensmen in both galaxies know that a final battle takes place, because they all help fight it, but none of them ever find out the true reason it was fought.
For a number of reasons, Christopher Kinnison decides that it's better that way.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2012 04:03 PM (+rSRq)
There seems to have been a TV series, too. I haven't seen it and don't know anything about it. But just from the description in ANN it's obvious that it ran roughshod over the canon, and I'm not interested.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2012 04:18 PM (+rSRq)
14
Grumble. I'm reading Children of the Lens now. The word "Ploor" has shown up three times so far, and every time the stupid spell checker changed it to "Floor".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2012 04:46 PM (+rSRq)
15
That was the one. Apparently, the anime mixed in the silver age Green Lantern origin, which is ironic since the Lensmen pretty obviously inspired the Green Lantern Corps.
Boskone itself doesn't seem to, but are there antagonists for Kinnison among them that meet the "attractive" criterion for villains? (I'd say that Nero Wolfe's Arnold Zeck doesn't.)
On scientific errors, do E.E. Smith's inertialess ships hold up once you accept the basic concept?
Posted by: muon at October 03, 2012 06:17 PM (JXm2R)
16
While I don't know if the concept would actually work as shown, Doc Smith gets major points from me for continually and rigorously exploring the consequences and utility of his inertialess drive. The evolution of warfare between inertialess ships actually feels like the kind of things that would happen between two warring parties using the same basic tech.
Posted by: metaphysician at October 03, 2012 06:34 PM (3GCAl)
Muon, any FTL drive, no matter what it is, tosses all of Relativity into the shredder. But if you grant that from the very beginning, I thought he did a pretty nice job with it.
For instance, the inertialess drive isn't infinitely fast. Instead, the force from the thrusters balances against the resistance of passing through interstellar gas -- which ain't very thick, usually, which is why the ships are so blisteringly fast.
But it turns out that intergalactic space has even less gas, so the inertialess drive is even faster between galaxies. And that all makes sense.
He has a lot of fun with the "intrinsic momentum" of objects using the inertialess drive. Basically, when the drive is turned off, it resumes the velocity it has when the drive was turned on. If that's not in a direction you like, too bad for you.
Which means that docking with a ship from another system nearly always is pretty complex. Both ships have to turn their drives off, and then match intrinsics.
Yeah, I think it works pretty well. I've seen worse.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2012 07:10 PM (+rSRq)
18
I'm actually not totally sure that's the case, though it certainly is here. Wormhole-based FTL and similar ideas certainly violate the causal ordering postulate, but the COP is on a lot more shaky ground than relativity proper ( there's a reason its a postulate, and not a theory ).
Posted by: metaphysician at October 04, 2012 05:51 AM (3GCAl)
The Lensman series was originally written in the 1930's, before America got involved in WWII. And one thing I'm noticing is how strongly a certain ethos/attitude comes through in it.
I would call it "chivalry". A feminist would call it "male chauvinist piggery", I think.
Kinnison is quite willing to, and often does, slaughter men by the dozens or hundreds, but he never kills a woman so far as I remember. He always finds some other way to cope with her, even if she's his utter enemy.
And he's willing to do almost anything to protect a woman in danger.
That's the ethos in which I was raised. That was what was prevalent in the 1950's when I was a kid. By the time I entered college, however, I was being told something else entirely. For me to feel that way about women indicated that I was sexist and lower than a frog's hind leg.
I never lost that ethos, but I learned to hide it when I was in proper (read "leftist") company.
Treating women as if they were defenseless children isn't really good, but Kinnison doesn't do that. He eventually makes MacDougall a lensman, and sends her into combat, for instance. But the basic idea that men should cherish women and protect them, well, it runs all through this book.
I think we lost something precious when organized feminism tried to kill that idea off.
1
Key phrase: "tried to" I'm raising my daughter to stand tall, shoot straight...and say "thank you" when someone holds the door for her.
And if a boy doesn't hold the door? No second date.
Posted by: Douglas Oosting at September 27, 2012 11:48 AM (sdWdc)
2
One of my friends bounced on his first attempt at Doc Smith, "because of the misogyny". I started pointing out the ways that Dorothy and Clarissa are quickly established as smart, talented, level-headed, fully-functional human beings who can hold their heads high in a room full of Duquesnes and Kinnisons, and he mumbled something and changed the subject. He hadn't gotten that far.
He'd been so seriously infected by modern feminist redefinitions that he couldn't set them aside long enough to really look at the characters in the era the books were set in.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at September 27, 2012 12:20 PM (fpXGN)
3
Not just Clarissa, but Kinnison's daughters eventually. They are in every way superior to every human alive except their brother.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 27, 2012 01:24 PM (+rSRq)
4
Comment is becoming too long... post coming later tonight.
Posted by: Wonderduck at September 27, 2012 03:32 PM (DLZof)
Posted by: Wonderduck at September 27, 2012 06:42 PM (DLZof)
6
Feminism was hijacked by the liberals too. It stopped being about women's equality and started being about making women sexually available to liberal men without the need for courtship or commitment, and without consequences like children.
Posted by: Mauser at September 28, 2012 02:13 AM (cZPoz)
7
At a basic level, the "male protection of women" instinct runs so deep inside men, especially in the West, that it's the single biggest reason women shouldn't be in front line combat. So it not showing up, especially in an older work, would be slightly strange.
But it's not as if women don't still want the protective treatment. They just want it from men they find attractive. Which is a problem since we've made most of the boys act far more like girls for the past 30ish years. That's much of the trouble.
And while a lot of old works would definitely ruffle feathers these days, it more tends to be due to hitting far closer to reality than we like to openly state these days. When the writer has never encountered the "Women are equal to Men, unless things go bad" nonsense, they will tend to write their characters rather differently.
Though the real problem with older literature is what I like to called the "Progenitor Effect". Work of fiction X was the first, but many have refined and improved on the concept since. You end up being left simply expecting more from it. Though I'm also the person that finished reading "Nightfall" and asked "why'd they edit the last few paragraphs?". (Given some of my other comments on classic literature, I might just be overly effected by hype, haha)
Posted by: sqa at September 28, 2012 03:15 AM (OJQsT)
8
I bet the typical modern leftists finds the books' forthright idea that you should deal with enemies of civilization by, gasp, killing them. . . alien, too. Especially in the beginning, when they are fighting "pirates."
Posted by: metaphysician at September 28, 2012 05:14 AM (3GCAl)
Roller Blade Warriors: In the future, a warrior nun on roller skates must rescue a seer, who is to be sacrificed by a band of mutants.
I'm speechless. Where do I buy a copy?
(You know what scares me? I bet I can buy a copy for my Kindle!)
UPDATE: I suppose it needs to be said that I don't really want to own that.
But I kind of wish I could find this somewhere. I used to own a copy of it on VHS, which I found in a cut-out bin at a video rental place, for ninety nine cents. And worth at least half of that, for the nudity and humor value alone.
Lynette Harris and Leigh Harris are (or were then) very good looking, and have healthy chests, which spent a lot of time bare in the film. And the conceit of the film is that their characters been raised as boys, and despite having a sister, they don't realize that they themselves are female. It goes down hill from there.
Except that it doesn't, really, because the film is camp and doesn't take itself seriously.
Having said all that, it was really low budget, and it looked it.
1
I agree, you don't want to own it. I rented Roller Blade Warriors for part of an A-Z Lame Movie festival in college, out of the 99-cent rental bin. I think we ended up rating it 5/6 crutches.
The titular Roller Blade Warriors are warriors with blades who traipse around the desolate, mostly-desert wasteland on roller skates (traditional roller-derby 4 wheels on the corners skates - it pre-dates the popularity, and possibly the existence, of skates with in-line wheels)
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at September 25, 2012 11:46 PM (XjJZF)
2
I actually have a digital copy of Sorceress, Mr Den Beste- I could probably get you a copy of it on dropbox or something similar. Granted, it's only 600 MB and the quality isn't the best, but its yours if you want it.
Posted by: Gothmog at September 26, 2012 10:39 PM (uBla2)
