- Location
- Washington State
No no no Scotty wrote some damn decent safty standards, he over spec'ed by 3x and ran at 1/4 capacity. Its not his fault that future generations started 1:1 spec'ing every damn component.
Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)
- Thread starter Derek M
- Start date
- Crossover
Author's Opinion: Included Universes
- Location
- Maryland
I am in the process of writing the next chapter, but I thought I would share my personal opinions on the different fictional universes and my experiences with them.
Worm: Here is an odd thing. I've read significant portions of Worm here and there. Some parts of it stand out vividly, like the confrontation in Arcadia, or the end of Alexandria and Tagg. I've read quite a lot of Worm fanfiction. What I have never done is sit down and start Wildbow's story and read it all the way through from start to finish. It is undoubtedly a well-written and interesting take on the superhero genre, but I just find the constant hammering of the characters by fate to be depressing as hell. It's the same reason I could never get into the Walking Dead, I guess. I want a little more entertainment in my entertainment? Maybe that's why I enjoy Taylor Varga so much -- take a world that really is interesting but make it fun and vivid instead of the type of slog you get from great Russian literature.
The Dresden Files: I've read all of the Dresden novels, including the short stories published in other works. I love the fact that Harry as a character has an honest desire to do what is right rather than what is easy, and yet he still makes plenty of fairly substantive screw ups that make his life harder but also lead to unanticipated consequences that aren't always terrible. I think I relate to that. I also really enjoy the inversion of the whole Harry Potter "Statute of Secrecy." The supernatural world in the Dresden-verse doesn't go out of its way to flaunt itself, and uses secrecy as a protective cloak. Yet here you have this dude who is something of a victim of fate, and he advertises himself as a freaking wizard in the phone book. Part of the reason he does it as a kind of, "up yours," to the establishment of his world, but he also does it because it legitimately lets people who need his kind of help reach out to him. Jim Butcher has also done a great job of putting together a consistent set of rules for the supernatural here. I just wish he would get back to urban fantasy. I've just read way too much epic and heroic fantasy in my life to get into Calderon and his other works to the same degree -- and frankly his characters in his other works just aren't as iconic.
Star Trek: One of my first memories of Star Trek is of a day when I was being punished for something -- I was relatively young, so I'm sure it was exactly the same kind of stupid stuff my own kid now-a-days sometimes gets in trouble for doing. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, but my mother called me in and let me watch an episode of the original series Star Trek (this was well before TNG), and she said it was because she knew I really liked that show. What's funny is that until she said that, I hadn't realized that was the case. There's a lot of stuff written about the social impact of the show, so I won't belabor it here, but Star Trek and the Twilight Zone were the two shows that made me think that you could get interesting concepts in a television show, even beyond the quality of the story itself. (Edit of this entry: I like Miles O'Brien because he basically is the character most like the folks you work with on a day to day basis. He's competent, experienced, and good at his job. While he has principles and bravery, he isn't the core protagonist or hero in most stories. He likes playing darts and RPG's with his best friend, and spending time with his wife and kids. He gets crapped on a LOT, in part because his job puts him close proximity to all of the crazy that seems attracted to the more heroic types.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I could never catch this show consistently when it was on, as it was during a period when I didn't consistently have access to television. I binge-watched it on DVD in later years, and I think doing it that way allows you to appreciate its nature as a metaphor for growing up. Each individual episode seen in isolation was...OK. (There were a few exceptions...the episode Hush, for example, is just a great examples of successful risk-taking by a creator.) Taken as a whole, it becomes something better. What's interesting to me is that if I had watched it piecemeal, I probably wouldn't have become a big fan. (Edit: I realized I didn't explicitly call out Xander Harris. There are two things I like about this character: he participates because he chooses to, rather than because fate handed him a superpower, and he doesn't let his own insecurities and poor upbringing keep him from doing extraordinary things -- including saving the world when everybody else is too busy to notice.)
Stargate SG-1: This show is driven entirely by its characters. The adventure-town/monster-of-the-week format is nothing that hasn't been done a hundred times before by lesser shows. Richard Dean Anderson is frankly just watchable in almost anything he does. I enjoyed the work of Christopher Judge and Amanda Tapping. Ironically (at least when you look at my omake), I think Daniel Jackson was my least favorite character at first, but he's undoubtedly the character who undergoes the richest character development. Seriously, sit down and watch the various shows and focus on him. By Stargate: Universe, he's completed a journey from being a clumsy and slightly awkward academic and has turned into an extremely well-educated member of a special forces team. The degree of confidence and commitment he shows is astonishing. Compare that to the first few seasons, where his driving motivation was trying to get his wife back from the body snatchers. (I even enjoyed the addition of Ben Browder and Claudia Black, but then I was already a big fan of the off-the-wall Farscape before it prematurely ended.)
Spider-Man: My biggest motivation for including Peter Parker was taking my son to see Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. I rank that movie up with Black Panther and Infinity War as one of my favorite superhero films of all time. We live in a golden age of cinema for superheroes. Honestly, in the 1980's, Wonder Woman would have been considered one of the best pictures of the year, especially among genre fans. Now, we see it as one of the few current-gen DC movies that lives up to the potential of the character. We have that attitude because so much of what's come out recently is just that good. I have to say that Peter Parker is such a popular character that depictions of him are slightly over done, but I respect the intent of creating a relate-able superhero...somebody with the same problems as everybody else, rather than somebody whose only weakness is kryptonite and lazy writing. I did, for a while, read Spider-Man comics, but to be honest I was more of a fan of the various X-Men books.
DC Comics: *Sigh.* I was never as big a fan of DC Comics...not because the characters are inherently bad, but because they're far more prone than even Marvel to just hit the reset button whenever it is convenient. Don't get me wrong -- Marvel certainly doesn't get a pass on this. With DC, though, you look at things like Crisis on Infinite Earths and it seems like they get lazy with the editing, and then they make a business decision to consolidate everything. It's like your favorite characters have to go through a corporate layoff. I included Jimmy Olsen in this story because he suffers a lot of abuse as the infinitely variable background character. Hell, Snyder literally offed him as a throw-away gag. If you look at Web sites that cover superdickery, Olsen is the one who is the butt of the worst behavior by heroes and villains alike. I think he deserves better. He's literally an experienced investigative journalist who in many continuities has won a Pulitzer Prize. In the real world, he would be an awesome person to know. In the comics, he suffers because he hangs around with Superman and his Superfriends.
Alien: I have seen the first two Alien movies, as well as Alien vs. Predator, and I've read a number (although certainly not all) of the comics from Dark Horse. I have not and will not watch Alien 3 (although I have read some pretty detailed summaries online), because it pisses me off that they completely wiped away her accomplishments in the second movie. Aliens had one of the most badass scenes by a heroine in cinema, with Ripley using a freaking power loader to fight off the alien queen. She's not being saved by the marines, or by her love interest, or through a deus ex machina ending. She literally had to go toe-to-toe with one of the most frightening movie monsters of the 80's and 90's and physically pummeled and pushed it out an airlock, inch-by-freaking-inch. Next movie comes out: nope, the kid died, and you got implanted anyway, just like Paul Reiser wanted you to be. F-ing weak. Now, the continuity of the comic books is pretty wacky, especially when you add in the predators. I don't think everything done there makes sense. This is, in my mind though, a perfect example of how cool concepts can live past some wonky implementations. As universes go, it's also a little light on some of the background details, and you have to wonder if one of the main criteria for being a manager at Weyland-Yutani is a complete lack of survival instinct.
Worm: Here is an odd thing. I've read significant portions of Worm here and there. Some parts of it stand out vividly, like the confrontation in Arcadia, or the end of Alexandria and Tagg. I've read quite a lot of Worm fanfiction. What I have never done is sit down and start Wildbow's story and read it all the way through from start to finish. It is undoubtedly a well-written and interesting take on the superhero genre, but I just find the constant hammering of the characters by fate to be depressing as hell. It's the same reason I could never get into the Walking Dead, I guess. I want a little more entertainment in my entertainment? Maybe that's why I enjoy Taylor Varga so much -- take a world that really is interesting but make it fun and vivid instead of the type of slog you get from great Russian literature.
The Dresden Files: I've read all of the Dresden novels, including the short stories published in other works. I love the fact that Harry as a character has an honest desire to do what is right rather than what is easy, and yet he still makes plenty of fairly substantive screw ups that make his life harder but also lead to unanticipated consequences that aren't always terrible. I think I relate to that. I also really enjoy the inversion of the whole Harry Potter "Statute of Secrecy." The supernatural world in the Dresden-verse doesn't go out of its way to flaunt itself, and uses secrecy as a protective cloak. Yet here you have this dude who is something of a victim of fate, and he advertises himself as a freaking wizard in the phone book. Part of the reason he does it as a kind of, "up yours," to the establishment of his world, but he also does it because it legitimately lets people who need his kind of help reach out to him. Jim Butcher has also done a great job of putting together a consistent set of rules for the supernatural here. I just wish he would get back to urban fantasy. I've just read way too much epic and heroic fantasy in my life to get into Calderon and his other works to the same degree -- and frankly his characters in his other works just aren't as iconic.
Star Trek: One of my first memories of Star Trek is of a day when I was being punished for something -- I was relatively young, so I'm sure it was exactly the same kind of stupid stuff my own kid now-a-days sometimes gets in trouble for doing. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, but my mother called me in and let me watch an episode of the original series Star Trek (this was well before TNG), and she said it was because she knew I really liked that show. What's funny is that until she said that, I hadn't realized that was the case. There's a lot of stuff written about the social impact of the show, so I won't belabor it here, but Star Trek and the Twilight Zone were the two shows that made me think that you could get interesting concepts in a television show, even beyond the quality of the story itself. (Edit of this entry: I like Miles O'Brien because he basically is the character most like the folks you work with on a day to day basis. He's competent, experienced, and good at his job. While he has principles and bravery, he isn't the core protagonist or hero in most stories. He likes playing darts and RPG's with his best friend, and spending time with his wife and kids. He gets crapped on a LOT, in part because his job puts him close proximity to all of the crazy that seems attracted to the more heroic types.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I could never catch this show consistently when it was on, as it was during a period when I didn't consistently have access to television. I binge-watched it on DVD in later years, and I think doing it that way allows you to appreciate its nature as a metaphor for growing up. Each individual episode seen in isolation was...OK. (There were a few exceptions...the episode Hush, for example, is just a great examples of successful risk-taking by a creator.) Taken as a whole, it becomes something better. What's interesting to me is that if I had watched it piecemeal, I probably wouldn't have become a big fan. (Edit: I realized I didn't explicitly call out Xander Harris. There are two things I like about this character: he participates because he chooses to, rather than because fate handed him a superpower, and he doesn't let his own insecurities and poor upbringing keep him from doing extraordinary things -- including saving the world when everybody else is too busy to notice.)
Stargate SG-1: This show is driven entirely by its characters. The adventure-town/monster-of-the-week format is nothing that hasn't been done a hundred times before by lesser shows. Richard Dean Anderson is frankly just watchable in almost anything he does. I enjoyed the work of Christopher Judge and Amanda Tapping. Ironically (at least when you look at my omake), I think Daniel Jackson was my least favorite character at first, but he's undoubtedly the character who undergoes the richest character development. Seriously, sit down and watch the various shows and focus on him. By Stargate: Universe, he's completed a journey from being a clumsy and slightly awkward academic and has turned into an extremely well-educated member of a special forces team. The degree of confidence and commitment he shows is astonishing. Compare that to the first few seasons, where his driving motivation was trying to get his wife back from the body snatchers. (I even enjoyed the addition of Ben Browder and Claudia Black, but then I was already a big fan of the off-the-wall Farscape before it prematurely ended.)
Spider-Man: My biggest motivation for including Peter Parker was taking my son to see Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. I rank that movie up with Black Panther and Infinity War as one of my favorite superhero films of all time. We live in a golden age of cinema for superheroes. Honestly, in the 1980's, Wonder Woman would have been considered one of the best pictures of the year, especially among genre fans. Now, we see it as one of the few current-gen DC movies that lives up to the potential of the character. We have that attitude because so much of what's come out recently is just that good. I have to say that Peter Parker is such a popular character that depictions of him are slightly over done, but I respect the intent of creating a relate-able superhero...somebody with the same problems as everybody else, rather than somebody whose only weakness is kryptonite and lazy writing. I did, for a while, read Spider-Man comics, but to be honest I was more of a fan of the various X-Men books.
DC Comics: *Sigh.* I was never as big a fan of DC Comics...not because the characters are inherently bad, but because they're far more prone than even Marvel to just hit the reset button whenever it is convenient. Don't get me wrong -- Marvel certainly doesn't get a pass on this. With DC, though, you look at things like Crisis on Infinite Earths and it seems like they get lazy with the editing, and then they make a business decision to consolidate everything. It's like your favorite characters have to go through a corporate layoff. I included Jimmy Olsen in this story because he suffers a lot of abuse as the infinitely variable background character. Hell, Snyder literally offed him as a throw-away gag. If you look at Web sites that cover superdickery, Olsen is the one who is the butt of the worst behavior by heroes and villains alike. I think he deserves better. He's literally an experienced investigative journalist who in many continuities has won a Pulitzer Prize. In the real world, he would be an awesome person to know. In the comics, he suffers because he hangs around with Superman and his Superfriends.
Alien: I have seen the first two Alien movies, as well as Alien vs. Predator, and I've read a number (although certainly not all) of the comics from Dark Horse. I have not and will not watch Alien 3 (although I have read some pretty detailed summaries online), because it pisses me off that they completely wiped away her accomplishments in the second movie. Aliens had one of the most badass scenes by a heroine in cinema, with Ripley using a freaking power loader to fight off the alien queen. She's not being saved by the marines, or by her love interest, or through a deus ex machina ending. She literally had to go toe-to-toe with one of the most frightening movie monsters of the 80's and 90's and physically pummeled and pushed it out an airlock, inch-by-freaking-inch. Next movie comes out: nope, the kid died, and you got implanted anyway, just like Paul Reiser wanted you to be. F-ing weak. Now, the continuity of the comic books is pretty wacky, especially when you add in the predators. I don't think everything done there makes sense. This is, in my mind though, a perfect example of how cool concepts can live past some wonky implementations. As universes go, it's also a little light on some of the background details, and you have to wonder if one of the main criteria for being a manager at Weyland-Yutani is a complete lack of survival instinct.
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UnfortuWatcher
(Verified Lovecraftian Horror)
- Location
- Genellian
If you did like the Aliens movies, then you might want to take the time to play Alien:Isolation. Scariest game I have ever played. It fits well with the Alien storyline, but you also get to explore a little behind the first movie if you get some of the in-game lore while screaming and trying to hide.
- Location
- Not quite sure
Well, damn. Stop living in my brain!
Seriously, you just encapsulated pretty much everything I love about these various series.
P.S. I highly recommend the Vorkosigan series. I'd start with the two stories about Cordelia. Collected conveniently into the book, if I remember correctly, Cordelia's Honor.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
As I understand it, do not play the game with a Kinect or PS Camera set up. If you do, that screaming while trying to hide? It'll get you killed. As will eating potato chips, putting your glass of water down too hard, or saying "What?!"
Now, regarding DC comics I have to say that while I love the characters, Marvel has better stories (in general). DC heroes are simply too powerful. You can't really challenge them. In one issue of Flash you see Wally West on one side of a street while Mirror Master is on the other side. Mirror Master fires a laser that will paralize whoever it hits at Flash, and Wally casually does the following sequence of events:
1. See laser coming towards him
2. Run across the street
3. Grab Mirror Master
4. Run back across the street while carrying Mirror Master
5. Place Mirror Master in the path of his own laser blast
At which point you may be going "Well, so what?" I'll tell you why this indicates the character is too powerful to be challenged. Flash is literally so fast he can grab someone and place them in the path of their own laser blast before it can cross a street. This means he can move so much faster then the speed of light that nobody can possibly threaten him unless they are just as fast. After the arc introducing the newest Zoom they had Wally have Specter (Hal Jorden) erase everyone's memory of who the Flash is. Oops, Wally forgot too. Okay, this could create some interesting stories. And it did. The first arc after that was interesting as hell. But it again demonstrated why Flash is too powerful to be challenged. Wally accidentally entered 'high gear', and the world froze around him. This allowed him to leisurely walk around a car crash in progress and pull everyone to safety. This is something Wally can do at any time. In fact such perception of the world was implied to be his default setting when using his powers, and he has to intentionally slow down to the point things can happen around him. With that in mind, just how is it any of his villains can possibly be a threat to him or the city? They are a threat only because the writers allow them to be a threat by not having Flash use his powers even remotely to their potential
When I stopped reading the comic regularly there was a villain who was literally trying to turn everyone in the city into a personal computer hard drive. Including Flash. Flash should have been able to travel throughout the entire city as soon as he knew what's going on and shut things down before the badguy could do much of anything. And that's based on the stuff he'd been doing in the previous few arcs. Instead this badguy manages to run Flash ragged, then plug into Flashes brain by connecting a cable to Flash's head. What. The. Hell.
DC has this problem with all their heroes. Batman is an awesome character. But because the writers have to keep living up to the legend they created, he is capable of doing things that should be impossible. Such as dodging an Omega Beam. Something Flash with all his stupidly ridiculous speed can't do. Yet Batman does it with ease. After an arc where the Legion of Doom managed to get their hands on Batman's plans to take down the JLA it became known that Batman is capable of taking down any hero or villain in DC, and his plans to do so are fiendishly clever. He has plans to take out the entire Justice League if they ever go rogue. Plans which had proven devastatingly effective and were only thwarted because of Batman and his immediate allies. When asked what his plan for if Batman himself ever went rogue was? He said it was the Justice League. In it's entirety. Yes, the 30+ hero strong group that his plans nearly wiped out are his contingency for if Batman ever goes evil.
- Location
- Maryland
- Location
- Maryland
I intend to address in the fic some of the oddities of the DC universe. Just as an example...did you ever notice how many of the heroes in DC aren't actually human beings? They're from Krypton, or Thanagar, or Atlantis, or Mars, or Themyscira. Many of the ones who are...don't actually have any super powers? Green Arrow, the Bat Clan, Booster Gold, the Green Lanterns (the human ones) -- it's all gadgets and training. (Admittedly, calling a Green Lantern ring a "gadget" is like calling the Internet a database, but Hal and Guy and John, et. al., don't have much to call on if they haven't got it.) The third category of hero is basically witches and wizards. Dr. Fate, Zatanna, Raven, and even Shazam are mystically empowered.
When I try to think of a hero who isn't an alien, gadget and training driven, or a wizard, I come up with...Plastic Man? Sure, there are others, but that's the most well-known one that pops into my head (that could show a personal bias based on the old cartoon, though -- gotta love Hula Hula).
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Nice list and descriptions. I read most of the way through 'Worm', but didn't finish it - I still have the bookmark. Someday?
I'd tend to leave 'Alien' off my 'best' list, as though it's got some nice bits, horror, whether science-fiction flavoured or not, rarely works for me. If you're looking for horrific stuff, you might like to check-out 'The Laundry Files', which I was led to by the author, Charles Stross - in fact, I can recommend just about everything that Mr. Stross has done. Nice chap to chat to, too. In particular Accelerando (though it can get difficult to get into) - that and other of his work is free-to-read, online. If you're inclined to depression I'd suggest thinking twice before reading 'Scratch Monkey'... Messy...
If you're looking at tv, then I'd recommend Andromeda, serious space opera, interesting characters. I will point out you didn't list Doctor Who.
On the comics front there's a lot of manga out there, but, you need to be a bit selective, as the genre and style varies so much. Some like GitS, for example, though later Shirow gets very strange...
Looking at (horror) books, you might like Brian Lumley, though his quality varies.
And, there's an amazing range of often quite high quality webcomics and fanfics!
I do encourage you to keep writing Ship of Fools.
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I know, it's really awful. HOWEVER, you should still watch the movies, because even taken as standalones they are still decent and well worth seeing at least once. If nothing else, "Ripley" is still just as well played as in the earlier movies.
Heh, kinda funny that what got me to start watching Buffy was that i by purely random chance ended up watching an episode at one point, which episode?
Oh yeah, "Hush".
Before that i was just ignoring it because my only knowledge on it was based on having seen the preceeding movie, again by pure random chance(younger cousin rented it while i was visiting them). Also, had i tried starting to watch it from the beginning, i'm not sure if i'd continued to watch either, because 1st and 2nd season have a lot of issues that got fixed over time that might put you off.
Seriously though, "metaphor" this and "metaphor" that, why can't people just enjoy something as it is? Yes i know it's official with the metaphor stuff, but i just find it to damage the media when you try to overanalyze it, or worse and far more common, people try so hard to throw in metaphors that they ruin a story while making it.
(cue me thinking of all the jokes about people trying to analyze art or something and they get a response from the author/artist like "eh no? It doesn't represent anything, it's a damned stick!")
No, no it really isn't. Grimdark tragedy derp does not make something better, despite how popular it has become in the last decade to apparently think so. It has even less internal consistency than Harry Potter, without the good sides to make up for it. Almost nothing makes sense in context. Entities and their cycles is one of the most absurdly contrived ways i've ever seen to setup a situation. The PRT is ridiculous. The idea of "parahuman feudalism" is so epic stupid that it would be hilarious if not for how its attempted implemenation is actually a massive influence on the setting. Powers do not make sense(just adding more dimensions to something does not equate "power bullshit"). And above all else, the PEOPLE does not make even a shred of sense(if it was just the people with shards, this could MAYBE be excused at least to some extent, but it isn't). And so on ad nauseam.
It replaces good storytelling with excessive detailing of suffering. Essentially a splatter horror movie trying to justify all the blood and misery flying around.
It's basically built on one of those list of "how you MUST write a story", where the #1 point of the list is "the hero must suffer!", quickly followed by ways of saying "the hero must have absolutely no chance to win without author fiat against the evil opposition"...
It's generated lots of good fanfiction, but i've forever stopped trying to read the original. My eyes just cannot take so much sarcastic rolling while reading it.
And the best fanfics tend to be those that goes more AU instead of wallowing in the grimderp. Like Taylor Varga.
And now i'm gonna stop writing or this will turn into a book all by itself!
- Location
- Maryland
I have heard of Stross but I wasn't familiar with the Laundry Files books. You have definitely drawn my interest -- it sounds like some thing I would enjoy reading. I also discovered that Stross is responsible for the two races of Gith and the Slaad in Dungeons & Dragons, which gives me an idea of what kind of mindset he's bringing to the table (i.e., a very atypical one that sounds both disturbing and entertaining in equal measure).
I will point out you didn't list Doctor Who.
I have seen a few episodes -- one of the ones with the weeping angels, and the one set in the library filled with the swarm of all-consuming shadows. There is obviously some quality television there, but I haven't been able to motivate myself to try and watch a full season. Maybe it is because I can't help but think of it as a premise that has been stretched past the breaking point multiple times? It's pretty prejudicial to say that before watching more of it, I guess.
I do encourage you to keep writing Ship of Fools.
I intend to, as long as Taylor Varga keeps updating or until I get to the planned ending. I could see it being twice the size it is now...maybe up to 100k words, which would make it the longest thing I've ever actually posted online.
- Location
- Maryland
Yeah, it's not at all the same tone, ignoring the difference between a TV show and a feature film. The fact that my primary memory of a film with Kristy Swanson is a hammy death scene by Paul Reubens tells you that there is something seriously wrong there.
I get that, but I think a lot of the problem is that media analysis tends to be pretentious, and far too prone to promoting the author or lecturer's own viewpoint over other opinions. It becomes a huge ego thing. Little is more frustrating than being in a class with a teacher who only gives good grades to the opinions he personally agrees with, even if the alternatives are well-argued.
For Buffy, though, the parallels are so obvious they should just be taken as a given. I'm thinking of one particular scene right after the vampire Spike gets chipped in season 5. He goes to bite Willow, only to find he can't. We then cut to a scene of the two sitting together on a bed, talking about her insecurities about her attractiveness and his performance anxiety. She says out loud, "Maybe we can't wait a little while and try again," before remembering he's trying to kill her.
True, and I think I said something similar earlier about why I don't write for Warhammer 40k. "And then, a dark thing happened, which made everybody question everything, as they were still recovering from the last dark thing. Then Steve got his head bitten off and the Commissar executed Todd, whose job was to keep Steve's head from getting bitten off. Then everybody screamed, 'By the Emperor!', and jumped out of their battle barge without parachutes so they could all squash an ork with their feet when they landed."
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
(Snip lengthy rant about The Flash)
I think the best treatment of this was in a fanfic by dogbertcarroll. To misquote Xander: "why do you think Flash's villains are so lame? So nice? Because they're the ones he allows to exist. Anyone else? Anyone who goes around, say, killing kids? He just runs back in time and distracts their parents from ever meeting. The villain never exists."
Now, he was saying this mostly to distract a couple of out-of-town villains who were robbing a bank...
But it does make a scary amount of sense.
I think the best treatment of this was in a fanfic by dogbertcarroll. To misquote Xander: "why do you think Flash's villains are so lame? So nice? Because they're the ones he allows to exist. Anyone else? Anyone who goes around, say, killing kids? He just runs back in time and distracts their parents from ever meeting. The villain never exists."
Now, he was saying this mostly to distract a couple of out-of-town villains who were robbing a bank...
But it does make a scary amount of sense.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
As I recall, Xander was just talking out his ass, and Flash was horrified at the conclusions Xander came up with...
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Theirs
That said, The Flash does have a Gentleman's Agreement with the Rogues in most continuities. They stick to certain rules(Don't target kids, don't go after his family, don't kill), and he doesn't search the city for them the moment he becomes aware they're in town.
He also looks after their health and will do everything he can to help the ones who want to reform. Hell, in some continuities, he even shows up and gently reminds his rogues to take their meds if they're having a bad day. He's a super nice guy.
He also looks after their health and will do everything he can to help the ones who want to reform. Hell, in some continuities, he even shows up and gently reminds his rogues to take their meds if they're having a bad day. He's a super nice guy.
- Location
- Maryland
The best part was that after he had gone back in time, he would cease to exist due to the change in the timeline, and the current version of flash would never know it had happened. Pretty much freaked out everybody who heard that explanation...
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
In the comics the reason the rogues don't go after his family, try not to kill, and so forth is explained as "doing that brings down every freaking hero on our heads, so don't do it." Just look at what happened during Identity Crisis when the heroes thought Doctor Light had killed the wife of Elongated Man. The entire Justice League were and every single Titan, past and present, all went after Doctor Light. Of course the events also brought to light the fact that going after their families (or even the potential to do so) had caused part of the Justice League to abandon their morals enough to literally mind wipe the knowledge from their enemies. A fact which, when it came to light, nearly destroyed the Justice League.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
I can also second Charles Stross. His stuff is very good.
Doctor Who is definitely worth watching, but like many things there are episodes that are absolutely unbelievably good by any standards, a lot that are OK, and a few that are dreck. Which ones any particular observer puts into those categories is, as always, down to the individual in question
Blink is probably, in my view, one of the best bits of SF horror ever made, in any series. The various ones surrounding The Silence are also very good. I've found a number of the storylines that play up the unnerving side of the Doctor to be often rather better than the ones where he's all cheerfulness and light, although there are standouts in that area too.
I pretty much agree with your comments above. Stargate was very good, far above a lot of SF shows on the whole, and that was almost entirely down to the characters, which on balance were a lot more believable than often portrayed, on all sides. I didn't like the Ori arc as much as most of the others, but it was still pretty decent all things considered.
Adding half the cast of Farscape, another show I very much liked, worked better than it probably should have done But I always liked Vala, she was a lot of fun!
I gave up on comics themselves a long time ago, since I found the constant retconning to be extremely irritating. It's one thing to show a different possible timeline, but the way they tend to do it and more or less delete the others is annoying. Never mind the fact that even the damn comic creators don't seem to be able to keep things straight, so how can anyone else? DC are definitely worse in this respect, but Marvel are pretty bad.
As I've said before, though, it does allow for some interesting mix and match possibilities for omakes and fanfics, since because there basically isn't any coherent canon to follow in the first place, or rather, there are far too many contradictory ones, you have even more of a free hand than with most source material. This is, after all, more or less what both DC and Marvel do themselves... Pull out bits they like and stitch them together for any given project. The MCU is a good example of that, and actually works very well, having produced some damn excellent movies. DC, as people have said, is far less successful in this vein, although some of the older Batman movies were pretty good, and Wonder Woman was superb.
Like you, I haven't read all of Worm. I'm fairly familiar with most of it, through looking up specific things and reading lots of fics based on it, but the canon story itself is just so fucking depressing I can't stick more than a few chapters of it. The plot holes and internal inconsistencies are rife, almost everyone in it is either nuts, stupid, or both, many of the situations and institutions in it are completely self-contradictory at best and often very contrived, it shows a considerable lack of research in some places... Overall it just doesn't tick any of my boxes. I can see why it attracts a certain type of fan, who tend in my experience to be very keen on it, but from my point of view it's more useful as a fairly rich mine of background for something a lot more fun
Basically, I read things on the whole to escape from real life. Why would I want to voluntarily expose myself to something that's even worse than the news?
"Oh, yes, it's this story about the end of the world, where everyone is working at cross purposes, especially the people who nominally know what's going on, the main protaganist saves everyone almost accidentally through massive suffering more or less purely for the sake of suffering, anyone in a position of authority is a fuckwit, and at the end, the heroine gets shot in the head as a reward for a job well done. Yay."
This is pretty much actually how I summed it up for a friend who wanted to know about Worm. I also had to point out that despite this it's very popular.
Seems odd to me, but then, so are people...
As far as Taylor Varga goes, I have no intention of stopping.
Ever.
Mua ha ha
Doctor Who is definitely worth watching, but like many things there are episodes that are absolutely unbelievably good by any standards, a lot that are OK, and a few that are dreck. Which ones any particular observer puts into those categories is, as always, down to the individual in question
Blink is probably, in my view, one of the best bits of SF horror ever made, in any series. The various ones surrounding The Silence are also very good. I've found a number of the storylines that play up the unnerving side of the Doctor to be often rather better than the ones where he's all cheerfulness and light, although there are standouts in that area too.
I pretty much agree with your comments above. Stargate was very good, far above a lot of SF shows on the whole, and that was almost entirely down to the characters, which on balance were a lot more believable than often portrayed, on all sides. I didn't like the Ori arc as much as most of the others, but it was still pretty decent all things considered.
Adding half the cast of Farscape, another show I very much liked, worked better than it probably should have done
But I always liked Vala, she was a lot of fun!I gave up on comics themselves a long time ago, since I found the constant retconning to be extremely irritating. It's one thing to show a different possible timeline, but the way they tend to do it and more or less delete the others is annoying. Never mind the fact that even the damn comic creators don't seem to be able to keep things straight, so how can anyone else? DC are definitely worse in this respect, but Marvel are pretty bad.
As I've said before, though, it does allow for some interesting mix and match possibilities for omakes and fanfics, since because there basically isn't any coherent canon to follow in the first place, or rather, there are far too many contradictory ones, you have even more of a free hand than with most source material. This is, after all, more or less what both DC and Marvel do themselves... Pull out bits they like and stitch them together for any given project. The MCU is a good example of that, and actually works very well, having produced some damn excellent movies. DC, as people have said, is far less successful in this vein, although some of the older Batman movies were pretty good, and Wonder Woman was superb.
Like you, I haven't read all of Worm. I'm fairly familiar with most of it, through looking up specific things and reading lots of fics based on it, but the canon story itself is just so fucking depressing I can't stick more than a few chapters of it. The plot holes and internal inconsistencies are rife, almost everyone in it is either nuts, stupid, or both, many of the situations and institutions in it are completely self-contradictory at best and often very contrived, it shows a considerable lack of research in some places... Overall it just doesn't tick any of my boxes. I can see why it attracts a certain type of fan, who tend in my experience to be very keen on it, but from my point of view it's more useful as a fairly rich mine of background for something a lot more fun
Basically, I read things on the whole to escape from real life. Why would I want to voluntarily expose myself to something that's even worse than the news?
"Oh, yes, it's this story about the end of the world, where everyone is working at cross purposes, especially the people who nominally know what's going on, the main protaganist saves everyone almost accidentally through massive suffering more or less purely for the sake of suffering, anyone in a position of authority is a fuckwit, and at the end, the heroine gets shot in the head as a reward for a job well done. Yay."
This is pretty much actually how I summed it up for a friend who wanted to know about Worm. I also had to point out that despite this it's very popular.
Seems odd to me, but then, so are people...
As far as Taylor Varga goes, I have no intention of stopping.
Ever.
Mua ha ha
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
As far as Taylor Varga goes, I have no intention of stopping.
Ever.
Mua ha ha
So in a thousand years you'll still be writing TV, even though your body has long since decayed?
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Of course.
Why wouldn't I? The Demons want me to, the Lizards do too, and even some people here appear to!
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You can replace chips.
The spirit will write and heaven will read.
And hell will gain a new torture. Not to read
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
But - they already got the 'abandoned project' thing?
- Location
- On the sofa. (Probably)
I read recently that children born right now might never die. At the very least they will live well into their second century. We are beginning to see what nanotech and genetic engineering can do and tissue printers are 20 years away at most.Of course.
Why wouldn't I? The Demons want me to, the Lizards do too, and even some people here appear to!
In the near future (20-30 years) we might see the last person die of heart attack or cancer.
After that you will see life extension with tissue replacement for vital organs which will extend life by up to 40 years.
The next step will be genetic engineering such that cellular damage (due to oxidative stress etc.) does not accumulate but is instead fixed by the cell itself. If you are lucky and this process can be applied to adults then you will only die if you get into an accident, otherwise you will have at least have had the distinction of being among the last humans to die of old age.
It's a cool time to be alive. Unless we fuck it all up and elect even more morons to high office and the world ends in nuclear fire.
Not sure about the nuclear fire but the morons are guaranteed. Hopefully we can see the nuclear winter from Mars