Posts by Craig Ranapia
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Every time I watch the Parliament coverage on TV, I am struck by just how awful John Key is. He doesn’t seem to have a strategy in Question Time beyond laying every current problem at the door of the previous administration and this surely can’t carry him much further, it’s pretty lame already.
And what’s Labour’s grand strategy – oh, that’s right. “National’s secret agenda”! “A vote for National is a vote for Don Brash eating your kitten!” “Yes, we voted for it but it’s still evil anyway!”
I'm sure this will be dismissed as concern-trolling, but I'd rather like to have a serious Labour Party back again. As a partisan Tory, of course I want Labour to keep screwing up. But as a citizen, we all need an opposition that can (or can be bothered) acting as a credible check and balance on the government of the day.
-
Labour turned Question Time into a series of questions for Key that, as John Armstrong noted the next day, the Prime Minister simply batted away. Or, rather, he returned each serve with spin.
And, I think it’s fair to note, degenerated into an incredibly serious allegation from Trevor Mallard (which he has refused to repeat outside the protection of Parliamentary privilege, naturally) that wasn’t so much half-baked as raw dough.
As National took far too long to learn, when you’re attacking the Prime Minister’s character it kind of helps if your attack doesn't have truthiness issues.
It might also help if Mallard wasn't re-Tweeting lame and offensive cracks about Maggie Barry being a "hoe". Not the kind of front bench support Labour's candidate in North Shore needs or welcomes, I suspect.
-
Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Is the difference that they are good?
Why, yes. And, sadly, most Austen sequels are like polyester knock-offs of vintage Channel run up in some Chinese sweatshop. You can imitate the silhouette easily enough, but the complex alchemy of proportion, structure, knowledge of how different fabrics drape and move, subtle and intricate craftsmanship and a clear aesthetic vision? Not so much…
-
And when it comes to fanfic gone wild, I've very pleased Kim Newman's sublimely batshit Anno Dracula is finally back in print -- with the sequels, various interstitial novellas and a new novel to follow.
-
Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Megan Wegan,
I hate those books that are like “let’s take a famous novel and make a sequel to it.
Well, yes and no… you can assemble a long (and depressing) shelf of sequels, prequels, ‘re-imaginings’ and flat out WTF-ness ( ETA: Snap, Megan!) spawned from Miss Jane Austen’s novels. (There’s even Austen slash out there, but you can find it yourself.) Still have a very soft spot for Clueless though.
But, like anything else, there are exceptions that prove the rule. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is much more than a prequel to Jane Eyre telling the story of the first Mrs Rochester.
-
I am surprised by the involvement (or rather predominance?) of straight cis women who enjoy writing about/drawing nominally heterosexual fictional cis male characters having sexual relationships with each other.
Well, in the context of yaoi manga you’ve got to be highly sensitive to the social and cultural contexts Japanese women (and female manga creators is what’s still an enormously sexist industry) exist in. It’s way too easy to bring a thick wad of privilege bingo cards to the table – and all too often, frankly creepy levels of man-tronage where Japanese women get scolded about not expressing themselves as Euro cis-males (both gay and straight) think they should.
Personally, it gives me a headache rather than a hard-on but unpacking your privilege is like that.
-
Hard News: Playing the Man, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Politics aside, has anyone actually heard of John Key getting angry?
No -- but since it actually looks like Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins shot themselves in the foot, the question should be this.
Why isn't John Key laughing? He really should because this reminds me of the undisguised glee Clark and Cullen used to take in batting away random and flimsy opposition attacks a decade back.
-
Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Lilith __,
I got no further than her assertions that (a) most women don’t much like sex, except for emotional reasons and (b) most women never have orgasms but there are more important things in life so what does it matter?
And that may well be perfectly valid for Ms. Weldon, but that's no more a sound basis for a generalisation than the period of my life marked by sexual bulimia (binge, purge while luxuriating in self-hatred, change your knickers and repeat).
I think (and this is just a guess based on what I’ve seen from the outside of all this) it can be really intimidating for many writers to engage with fan communities in anything but the most formal, structured ways, and reading fanfic (let alone commenting on it) is a kind of engagement.
It can also be an expensive, time-consuming nightmare if you're stuck defending yourself against charges that you plagiarised fanfic on a newsgroup or site you're on the record having visited. ( Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was an early example of fan-writer interaction on line, and he was pretty upfront that he'd withdraw from the moderated Usenet groups he posted to if the moderators didn't actively filter out fanfic.) I can understand why a lot of television writers -- and authors with long-running series like Martin -- are perfectly happy to engage with fans, but would rather keep fanfic well out of the mix.
Though, I must admit, in my next life I would like to open a wee village pub called The Magical Healing Cock -- though the town would have to be called Winc(h)ester.
-
Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Emma Hart,
I've always wondered if the casting in this was just Russell T Davies saying to fandom, "Oh yeah? What you gonna do now?"
No, it's the fine print in the Mark Sheppard Full Employment Act -- if he can't answer his phone because he's on set, the call goes straight to Marsters, I believe Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff and Lucy Lawless have a similar arrangement.
-
Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to bomber,
i’ve responded to your defamation here
Defamation? Martyn, darling, love you. Love your work. Harden the fuck up – because “defamation” is way too much WhaleOily Coddingswallop for one day. You think Russell has misrepresented your views, fair enough. Been there, done that, made a counter-argument with varying success and, usually, ended on a mutual agreement to disagree. But defamation -- nah.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 300 301 302 303 304 … 1235 Older→ First