FerretBrain

2010-09-03 14:36 - Another Set of Choices - link

There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

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2010-09-03 14:19 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link I don't think I'd peg it as a fantasy film, I'd peg it as a heist movie. My problem with the film was that - as you observe - the "is it a dream" element adds nothing to the movie whatsoever, but the film *never the less* pushes that element very ...

2010-09-03 10:52 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link

The way it has been explained to me is that the point isn't that Cobb knows the top would stop spinning, but that Cobb knows more or less when it's meant to stop spinning, whereas other people who don't know how the top is weighted wouldn'...

2010-09-01 14:55 - The Demon's Blah Blah Blah - link I really, really think you're reaching here. Urban fantasy hardly *ever* has anything explicitly supernatural on the cover. You might as well complain that because /The God of Small Things/ has a flower on the cover, people might mistake it for a ...

2010-09-01 13:56 - The Demon's Blah Blah Blah - link To be fair, I don't think the cover of a book with demons in it has to have a demon on the front. Also, the word "Demon" in the title might be considered a clue.

2010-09-01 13:11 - The Fictional Author - link Gosh there's a lot of comments on this which I haven't replied to... Starting with webcomocon up the top: Surely a true Death of the Author advocate realizes that only the reader has the authority to close off interpretive space<...

2010-09-01 12:31 - Another Set of Choices - link I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actual...

2010-08-31 15:00 - Another Set of Choices - link The plot is actually more flexible than it seems, if you tack /scenes/ onto the end of the URL you can look at the source code and there's a lot of different paths you can go down. It's just that unfortunately a lot of them are either locked off u...

2010-08-31 13:47 - Another Set of Choices - link I'm not sure if there's anybody else doing exactly this choose-your-own-adventure style of game (although there's always old-fashioned gamebooks) but there's a ton of text-based games out there (Kyra knows more about IF communities than I do). It'...

2010-08-31 13:16 - Another Set of Choices - link If you take the designer's comments at face value, he shares your preference for "monstrous" vampires. I feel a little bit bad for laying into CotV as badly as I did, because the folks at CoG are generally very sweet and responsive. For example, t...

2010-08-27 15:26 - Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Smug. Bitch. - link I was okay with the Warlock's Hairy Heart as a fantasy archetype (although you're right that in the context of Rowling's wider worldview it's annoying). What're Jodel's articles? There's a whole lot of stuff on the Red Hen and I thought I'd take a...

2010-08-23 11:29 - Man With Pickaxe: The Myth of Canon - link

@ Jamie: Yes! I think I'd just add that it's possible to interpret even something that an author says in a text itself as being non-canonical - because authors can make mistakes (I think th...

2010-08-20 12:13 - Man With Pickaxe: The Myth of Canon - link

@ Daniel Hemmens - Since canon can't be contradictory (it's no use saying Lincoln made a law in 1866, for example), then one of conflicting things must be incorrect, even if it's in "official" text. In cases like that, the author's word should ...

2010-08-19 15:59 - Man With Pickaxe: The Myth of Canon - link

Now, given that it's totally acceptable to close openings through writing (or at least, I haven't heard anyone arguing against the idea of sequels), why is it so much worse to do the same verbally? We still have the author expressing her inten...

2010-08-19 15:32 - Man With Pickaxe: The Myth of Canon - link

Andy G, I do agree that canon matters, because, without canon, there would be no interpretation at all. But canon is a very specific thing. It's the created work, which is now free of the c...

2010-08-03 10:22 - This song is why - link

Yeah, I'd noticed you apologizing for your mini-rant on the gender-segregated exams a couple months ag...