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Post by paulpogue on Dec 27, 2011 14:34:42 GMT -8
It's fascinating reading his notes, and I would love to theoretically work with him someday, because even though I think Shooter is only a "pretty good" comic writer, he is a hell of a competent editor and a relentless critic of structure. We would probably be at each other's throats most of the time and I'd be grumping "hell, all those stories about him are true and then some," but by GOD, I bet my work would be better after we were through.
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Post by paulpogue on Nov 11, 2011 13:24:21 GMT -8
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 26, 2011 18:48:06 GMT -8
HAHAHAHAHA THEREBY HANGS A TALE Let's just say it was something of a knee-jerk reaction from a quasi-retired former writer upon hearing that Stephenie Meyer's work is in any way original or subversive. Oh, god, you called out Condon on the birthing scene, didn't you? (Seriously, all of his "it's scarier the LESS you see" talk seems to me to be just a lame cover for "no fucking way were we going to film this as written and get away with a PG-13.")
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 23, 2011 6:50:25 GMT -8
The concept of prophecy in a time-travel show is particularly ironic, yes. I think for the most part we sort of have to ignore it the same way we don't examine too closely why the oldest message in the universe is written in High Gallifreyan, carved in stone on a giant mountain, and the Doctor took 907 to bother to take a look. The great thing about a character like the Doctor is that it's actually very easy to account for that, since it's long been established that he's absentminded, forgetful, thoughtless, prone to procrastination and has literally devoted several lifetimes to avoiding anything that he finds remotely unpleasant. When you're virtually immortal and you live in a time machine like a retiree who's sold his house and gone permanently on the road in his RV, the easiest thing in the world to say is, "I'll get around to it tomorrow." Now that I've had some time to think about it, Moffat has actually gone a long way towards finagling all those issues into a coherent whole. For whatever reason (by which I mean, "all the reasons you just went into") he almost deliberately tries not to know what the hell he's doing, and goes out of his way to avoid knowing too much. Which is why he can show up on his favorite pleasure planet and have no idea it's overrun by plague, and the best response he can muster when Rory yells that he should crack open a history book once in a while it "That's not how I operate!" (Really, Amy and especially Rory see right through the Doctor in a way few companions aside from Sarah Jane have ever done, which is why they exasperate him so much.) And of course, we also have it solidly established, as of "The Wedding of River Song," that he specifically does not know the dates or circumstances of the deaths of even his closest friends. The combination of "irresponsible" and "not actually all that good at the things he does" makes for a highly entertaining character, to say the least. (Although I suppose one could argue that it's actually a bit responsible for him not to check history too closely -- it gets into that "crossing his own timestream" business. I mean, for any given friend, especially one who lives a life as dangerous as the Brigadier, how statistically likely is it that he would look them up and find something along the lines of "killed in action alongside the mysterious 'Doctor' in 2014", and then be tempted to change it? Heck, on those occasions when he wanders into history and knows exactly what's going to happen -- Pompeii, Bowie Base One -- that very knowledge just tends to make his life a lot more difficult.)
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 22, 2011 9:51:22 GMT -8
Worse still, all the major events happened almost as an afterthought. Seriously, the reforging of Captain America's shield was handled in one line of dialogue. Let's say that again. THE REFORGING OF CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SHIELD. It happened off-panel and was just sort of casually dropped in there. I'm still not exactly clear on WHY Thor died. Or, for that matter, how everyone managed to beat a group of foes that we've been told all year are absolutely invincible. The Asgardian Weapons really just turned into an excuse for a splash page and barely seemed to matter again. Bruce and the Hulk just randomly decided to separate from each other in the epilogue. Seriously. Hulk says "Wow, that Nul dude really pissed me off" and runs away leaving Banner in the desert. If it sounds like I'm being harsh, it's because I really expected Fraction to pull together something better. He has his drawbacks as a writer, but "epic pointlessness" is not normally one of them. Cap's shield crack seems to have already been forgotten in followups the very same week. Nice art, though. Immonen is always pretty and Laura is, well, Laura . So at least moments like Cap taking up Thor's hammer looked quite good.
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 13, 2011 3:38:06 GMT -8
Whedon probably likes Iron Man better -- "sarcastic and quippy, yet slightly vulnerable" is pretty much his default favorite -- but he also likes giving the less-"cool" characters their say. Like all the times Xander got in a good disarming comeback when someone said something quippy and mean.
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 12, 2011 17:14:45 GMT -8
Trailers lie, though. I'd be surprised if that's how the scene fully plays out.
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 8, 2011 8:03:05 GMT -8
The concept of prophecy in a time-travel show is particularly ironic, yes. I think for the most part we sort of have to ignore it the same way we don't examine too closely why the oldest message in the universe is written in High Gallifreyan, carved in stone on a giant mountain, and the Doctor took 907 to bother to take a look.
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Post by paulpogue on Oct 2, 2011 8:15:10 GMT -8
Ha. I should have figured I wasn't the only one to immediately pick up on this week's moment of Rory Badassery.
I also enjoyed Amy's brisk grasp of the mechanics going on and Rory just rolling with it.
Rory: I don't think I understand what's going on. Amy: In another universe we got married and had a baby and that's her. Rory: Okay.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 21, 2011 20:40:34 GMT -8
Apropos of nothing, while the music itself is an ... interesting ... relic of 1970s culture, I think that John Romita's cover to the Spider-Man album "Rock Reflections of a Superhero" is an uncannily good bit of art. He really captures a lot of the somber nature of Spider-Man here. It got me thinking, a little bit, about what makes Spidey tick. There's been a lot of talk between Kirk and I over in Facebook-land about the basics of Spider-Man and his character engine, and I came to a realization today. One of the things that sets Spidey apart from every other major superhero out there is that, built irrevocably into his origin, he has FUCKED UP. Nobody else has that, not in the A-list. Not Cap, not Mr. Fantastic or Daredevil, not Bats or Supes or Green Lantern or any of the big ones. Every so often a writer will sort of try to wiggle it into the backstory -- Bruce Wayne blaming himself for his parents' deaths has come up a few times -- but that never sticks, for the simple fact that it's wrong. Bruce Wayne didn't fuck up on a galactic scale and get somebody killed. People mess around with Daredevil's past as well, but same thing -- though you can imprint plenty of Catholic guilt onto Matt Murdock, "giant fuckup" is not written into his story's DNA. Spider-Man? Epic fuckup. Not in life, but just for a moment. The wrong moment. Uncle Ben's death is unquestionably his fault, and nothing he ever does can ever undo that. He won't get over it, and you know what? He shouldn't. He knows, more than anybody else in comics, that every moment matters. Every decision has an impact, even if it's just mumbling "ah, not my problem" when you can do something to help. Sam Raimi understood that pretty well, oddly enough. Remember all those bits in the movies where it seemed Peter was endlessly being humiliated by his responsibilities? The editing on those was no accident. Yes, Peter missed a date or was five minutes late for Mary Jane's play. And on the other hand? SOMEONE DIDN'T DIE. That's the reality he faces every time he hears distant gunfire and had to decide whether to run towards it or not. Someone's going to get shot if he doesn't. There's a certain wisdom you pick up in life from fucking up -- or, more precisely, fucking up and enduring the road back without cracking. Not just minor day-to-day fuckups, but the agonizing crawl back to where you started, inching your way to the goal after having ruined it all and knowing it's your fault. I very nearly ruined everything in my own life, once upon a time. I don't pretend I'm the wiser for it, but I'm certainly a better person. If I'd been that person to begin with, maybe I wouldn't have fucked it up. I'll never know. And some of the wisest people I know have, at some point in their lives, screwed up on a truly cosmic scale and lived to be better for it. Peter Parker isn't a schlub. He's not a lovable loser, or even a loser. He's a guy painfully aware of how bad it can really get, and he knows, deep down, that the sacrifices he makes are worthwhile. He chooses to lose out on personal gain for the greater good. Yeah, he's going to get a lecture -- for the thousandth time -- about letting down his friends because he didn't make it to Betty Brant's party or whatever, but somewhere in the city, there's a cop who's hugging his family, who otherwise would be face down with a bullet in the brain because Spider-Man wasn't there. Peter knows this. And he's okay with it. And this is why Spider-Man would never run the fuck away from his responsibilities and let the Devil deal the cards.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 16, 2011 13:53:02 GMT -8
I'm not sure Rory entirely trusts him now.
Mind you, you'd think they would remember Rule Number One by now, given how many times it's been both said and proven.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 14, 2011 17:52:27 GMT -8
I swear, I never get tired of this stuff.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 13, 2011 18:19:49 GMT -8
You know, one of the saddest things about this is that upon seeing a cosplay I've literally waited years for, my second or third thought was "GodDAMN, that is one good Dirk the Daring."
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 13, 2011 17:18:20 GMT -8
Alisa has done Slave Leia, Zatanna, Black Canary, Cammy, Belldandy, Morrigan Aenslund, and a truly stunning series of Dawn cosplays. And hangs out with George Perez at bondage conventions. I'm just damn lucky we live on opposite sides of the country and I'm already married.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 13, 2011 9:32:49 GMT -8
This is most welcome ... most welcome indeed! It should probably come as no surprise I've been a fan of Alisa for some time now. I remember her mentioning in passing in her blog in two thousand-freaking-six that she was working on a Daphne costume and was disappointed nothing came of it. But it seems to have been worth the wait . For those of similar proclivities, there is a truly stunning Daphne cosplay from the lovely Zedela at zedela.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=daphne. One of the best I've ever seen; I think she and Alisa get dual credit for Best Daphne ever .
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