Huffy Flounce

I'm trying to read my bar tab....

.....Fuck.

Hahahahaha. Good work!

I think I'll hold off on the sequel for right now...

It's got the same vibe, but it's a little weaker and feels more rushed.

I am currently working my way through the new Star Wars books. Unfortunately, most of them are Young Adults novels, so they aren't exactly the most in-depth books. Still, they are supposed to be building the new Canon universe in preparation for the new movie.

omicron wrote:Unfortunately, most of them are Young Adults novels, so they aren't exactly the most in-depth books.

I'm going to pretend I didn't just read that insulting and ignorant dismissal of a whole genre of writing,

Oh, fuck it. Read this http://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Heaven-Mar ... +of+heaven (or any of a dozen other books I could name off the top of my head) before you make such comments again.

omicron wrote:Unfortunately, most of them are Young Adults novels, so they aren't exactly the most in-depth books.

I'm going to pretend I didn't just read that insulting and ignorant dismissal of a whole genre of writing,

Oh, fuck it. Read this http://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Heaven-Mar ... +of+heaven (or any of a dozen other books I could name off the top of my head) before you make such comments again.

The generalizers of the world are all twelve-toed lickers of flan.

Mmmmmmmmm - flan.

Shit got real just then.

Damn, Negs, I didn't mean to piss you off. I am just saying the YA Star Wars novels are pretty simplistic and don't have much world building or nuance to them. I didn't mean it as a slight to the whole genre.

The other day I was participating in a discussion about YA (a designation that is more about marketing than anything else in many cases) and someone wrote that a book must have been published as YA after an editor read it and thought it wasn't good enough to be marketed adult. Not only did that diss the whole genre, it showed a complete ignorance of how publishing works.

So at least you didn't appall me.

I spend a lot of time reading and studying the genre and I'm getting a damn degree in writing it. I have little patience with even casual dismissals of it.

Negs and I differ in this regard. I've spent years dismissing the shit out the things I've gotten/am getting degrees in.

All right. I don't dismiss the subject areas. I dismiss certain scholars and strains of scholarship surrounding the subject areas. I also dismiss certain administrative and bureaucratic elements built into the system. I also dismiss certain elements of arts scholarship in general.

Negs and I may not differ in any regard, then.

I'd never dismiss Mal or Jubbers. They've gotten degrees I've gotten.

Star Wars : Aftermath is mostly shit.

When it comes to Star Wars in print, it doesn't have to be YA to be mostly shit.

I hear you. I am so glad most of the EU is now fit for 'nowt but toilet paper.

It's not even fit for toilet paper. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

Like a Tusken Raider (see other thread that I spookily posted in 10 secs ago)

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:Negs and I differ in this regard. I've spent years dismissing the shit out the things I've gotten/am getting degrees in.

Well, duh. You have to know something really well to properly diss it. And yes, there is some pure shit YA out there *cough*Twilight too easy a target*cough*, but there's also some amazing stuff.

neglet wrote:Well, duh. You have to know something really well to properly diss it.

I'm going to pretend like this was a conscious pun on "diss(ertate)."

Dalty wrote:I hear you. I am so glad most of the EU is now fit for 'nowt but toilet paper.

With you, I'm never sure if you're talking about the European Union.

I know what Fake Strider would say.

My wife and I took a trip to Maine over the weekend and listened to I Am Legend during the drive. Totally different from the Will Smith movie, which was nice. It's cool that the "vampires" in the story are kind of crossing over into zombie territory in the way they're conceptualized. The scientific explanations for the plague seemed shaky at times, but they were delivered from the point of view of a protagonist without a scientific background who teaches himself biology, so it doesn't interfere that much with the suspension of disbelief.

The audiobook was entitled I Am Legend and Other Stories, so it contained other shorter works by Richard Matheson. Unfortunately, the few of those that we listened to weren't all that great and seemed sort of half-baked. There would usually be an interesting central idea, but the idea often didn't go anywhere interesting. For example, there's a story about a Zuni fetish doll that houses the soul of a deadly hunter. A woman buys it at a curio shop and accidentally lets the chain fall off that is sealing the hunter's spirit inside the doll, so the doll comes to life and starts hunting the woman. It's a compelling idea that I could see being used as the plot for a Twilight Zone episode, but at least half of the space is dedicated to the doll's attacks on the woman and the terror she experiences - it's basically too much action. Listening to it just feels tiresome after a while and you find yourself thinking, "Yeah, I get the idea - just move on with it." Once the story moves on from the action, the payoff at the end is worthy of The Twilight Zone as well, but it just takes unnecessarily long to get there.

Anyway, that's how most of the shorter stories we listened to felt, so that we ended up listening to maybe only four or five of them.

I'm pretty sure the short story you're talking about is "Prey." It's pre-slasher film slasher fiction.

​When I speak of slasher films, I speak of the golden age of slasher films. I mean the ones with the silent knife wielders in the Myers/Vorhees mold.

"Slasher film" can be a broader term. It can include films predating the releases of Halloween and "Prey." The setup is thin, and the payoff is predictable if you have Twilight Zone on the brain.

With Matheson, it's hard not to have Twilight Zone on the brain. His writing's a big part of what shaped the show. Serling adapted some of Matheson's stories for it. Matheson both adapted some of his own stories for it and wrote some original scripts. The only non-Serling writer with a greater Twilight Zone presence is Charles Beaumont.

"Prey" is less famous as a story than it is as the basis for the strongest segment of the TV movie Trilogy of Terror. It's known for scaring the shit out of kids whose parents let them watch it when it aired on ABC in the seventies. I think a bunch of boys who watched it were watching it for Karen Black.

Mal Shot First wrote:I know what Fake Strider would say.

You have rendered him powerless.