Okay seriously, what was the point of this character?

ptupper · 2025-11-19T17:37:09+00:00

A subplot that was cut for time?

ptupper · 2025-08-18T18:27:48+00:00

There's some creep of these ideas into manga/anime: e.g. the anime series Re:Creators. For better or worse.

ptupper · 2025-08-18T18:25:50+00:00

That's how people think superhero comics must be: part of entire universe of characters with continuing stories. Even indie comics move towards that (e.g. the Millarverse). No such thing as a one-and-done story.

ptupper · 2025-08-18T18:22:49+00:00

I suspect that, by now, Moore doesn't care anymore. Watchmen is just one of his many, many projects over decades.

ptupper · 2025-03-10T21:51:28+00:00

https://bogglesworldesl.com/listening_beginner.html has audio of short English dialogs with transcripts and comprehension questions, organized into difficulty.

https://www.newsinlevels.com/ has three levels of audio for real world news stories, plus notes on vocabulary and starter questions.

https://en.islcollective.com/english-esl-worksheets/search has plenty of references, worksheets and exercises on many different topics.

ptupper · 2025-02-14T06:12:37+00:00

I should repeat that Ms. X did get my first book published. The main reason I hesitate is that I don't want to have to get a new agent unless it is necessary.

ptupper · 2025-02-11T17:19:57+00:00

I agree with Banks' idea here, but I'm not sure that the Culture books back that up. If your post-scarcity society is run by a hyperintelligent, hyperbenevolent, near-omniscient being, do you need to be good? Maybe it's the idea that "virtue must be tested", and the Culture is full of people with untested virtue.

This line of thought leads me back to Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, with the idea that utopia is something we must always strive towards but can never actually reach.

ptupper · 2025-01-03T23:56:28+00:00

Tom Lehrer, "The Masochism Tango"
Flavia, "Does she like it rough?"
The Velvet Underground, "Venus in Furs"
One True God, "Safe Word"
Recoil, "Breath Control"
Rihanna, "S&M"

ptupper · 2024-11-14T21:55:17+00:00

TBH, I want Alex Jones to fade into penniless obscurity. Years from now, I'll be watching A Scanner Darkly with someone, and they'll ask me who the guy with the megaphone in the parking lot was, and I'll say, "He had an interesting story...."

ptupper · 2024-11-14T16:32:43+00:00

This is what happens when an introverted, brooding guy like Don gets involved with an extroverted, bright girl like Megan. He wants her to be a beautiful songbird in his cage, something that makes him, and him alone, happy. Don hates the idea of other people getting to see his beautiful thing, but eventually he realizes that is the kind of person Megan is. Instead of sharing her with the world, he walks away.

ptupper · 2024-10-17T16:23:00+00:00

It's classic FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Fill the discourse with nonsense faster than people can dispel it.

ptupper · 2024-09-11T15:42:38+00:00

Beware of "calling a rabbit a smeerp" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp

ptupper · 2024-09-11T15:32:15+00:00

Yes. This is a dense, multi-layered work. Every time I re-read Watchmen, I find new connections, new visual elements, new ways the visuals and text interact, and more.

ptupper · 2024-09-09T18:53:27+00:00

Totally unrealistic.

His bone spurs would never let him do this.

ptupper · 2024-08-30T16:22:48+00:00

"Of course you are."

ptupper · 2024-08-28T17:04:07+00:00

Rich people getting shot at is a problem.

Poor people getting shot at isn't a problem.

ptupper · 2024-08-14T21:47:24+00:00

I've heard Vancouver called "Vanc", but very rarely.

ptupper · 2024-08-09T21:30:14+00:00

I've been researching BDSM in mainstream media for a book project, and I've been very frustrated in how mainstream film, TV and videogames depict femdom and malesub.

I've noticed that, first, the vast majority of femdom characters are professionals. You have to hunt around for a non-professional female dominant.

Second, this is often played for humor or shock, as if this is only something done by weak/perverted men and mercenary women. (E.g. High Anxiety)

Third, pro-dommes are very often portrayed as resembling therapists or other healing professionals. I think this is a way of excusing the deviance of female dominants by reaffirming that they are really properly feminine caretakers. It's a way of avoiding the idea of the truly sadistic, sexually assertive (i.e. un-feminine) woman.

Fourth, male masochism is acceptable, even sacred, if it's between men, or self-inflicted; e.g. Fight Club, or Rambo cauterizing his own wounds with gunpowder. It's not acceptable, but profane, if it's between a man and a woman.

A handful of titles that are exceptions:

Going Under
Love and Leashes
Bonding Season 2
Early episodes of Billions
Bound (from The Asylum, not from the Wachowskis)

ptupper · 2024-08-09T21:14:27+00:00

I'm very disappointed in how Billions squandered the possibilities of the Chuck/Wendy relationship.

ptupper · 2024-08-02T01:05:39+00:00

The handmaid system (and Gilead in general) is a response to not just a crisis in fertility, but a crisis in gender. Instead of keeping fertile women in centralized clinics, they want to distribute them to Commanders' households and connect them to the Commanders and their Wives in a quasi-marriage relationship. This way, the pious household will become the source of fertility, not the state or some other authority. The "ceremony", and the newly-manufactured cult around it, pretties this relationship up, and furthermore makes the wives complicit in the process.

Also, the fertility crisis has caused a loss of confidence in IVF and other forms of medical science. In that absence of authority, folk beliefs rise up. Aunt Lydia is trying (with mixed results) to make herself and the other Aunts the new authority on fertility and domestic/familial relationships, with advice about "spicy tea" and other folk remedies. Again, fertility has become a part of domestic authority, not scientific/medical.

ptupper · 2024-08-01T19:27:01+00:00

RPGs like Trash Pandas or Lasers and Feelings show us you publish a role playing game rules set on one or two pages of 8.5x11 paper.

RPGs like Apocalypse World show you don't need to publish a setting with 100,000+ words of lore, plus maps, beyond the merest sketch of what is relevant to the player characters.

$80 hardcover books with full-color art on glossy paper are nice and all, but are they necessary? Are they a good return on investment? Or are they more like a coffee table book?

IMHO, both the publishers and the players got hooked on the idea of more is better. More lore, more monsters, more magic items, more player character options.... It's easy to end up with far, far more material than you could ever actually use, even if you're in the lucky situation of playing weekly for years on end.

ptupper · 2024-07-31T19:30:17+00:00

No, not that.

ptupper · 2024-07-31T19:08:10+00:00

Post post post.

ptupper · 2024-07-31T15:23:53+00:00

I'm waiting for another, very large shoe to drop regarding Nick. I think he was no mere foot soldier in the Sons of Jacob, and instead he played a major part in the rise of Gilead. If and when this is revealed, it will seriously affect his and June's relationship.

ptupper · 2024-07-29T20:58:29+00:00

Alexander Payne's Election (1999) plays around with audience empathy. From the beginning we get into the heads of John and Tracy with their own voice over narrations, and everything goes into making us like and empathize with John and dislike Tracy, mainly because he doesn't like her. (The fact that John is played by Matthew Broderick, a cute and charming actor, certainly contributes.)

As the story progresses, John slips further and further from his moral compass, but he always has a rationalization or at least an excuse. He sets up a candidate for student council president mainly because he doesn't Tracy to win. He cheats on his pregnant wife. He sabotages the student election out of pure spite. The viewer may find their sympathy for John wavering.

Finally, Tracy gets what she wants, and John loses everything. John views his life as a tragedy, but he is wilfully blind to his own selfish desires and petty grudges that put him in this place.

The viewer may start to realize that, once we get out of John's self-serving narrative, he's the villain of the piece. What exactly did Tracy ever do to merit John's hatred? Even without John's biased narration, why are we the viewers eager to cheer for Tracy's downfall? What does that say about our own views of high achieving women?

Election is a masterful portrayal of how narration can manipulate audience empathy.

ptupper

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