EAST: Harold Bloom on Harry Potter (2000)
asuperfluousman: Harold Bloom’s review of the Harry Potter series is brilliant.
Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.
Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won’t end it. The…
Harold Bloom is an over-nostalgic blowhard with a painfully constrained concept of what constitutes canon
taking his criticism seriously is an error
there are legitimate criticisms of Harry Potter to be made but “it is not Alice in Wonderland” is not one of them
The Female Perspective in Game Development
I happen to be fortunate. My team of writers on Dragon Age currently consists of nine people— most of which are female. It’s reached the point that, when we consider new hires and transfers, I tend to joke “ummm, we could use some more testosterone in here…” and give a big goofy grin. Mine is probably the only department that could get away with saying something like that.
And I’m not truly serious about it, anyhow. If having such a large number of women on my team has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t lump them into one category of preferences any more than you could the guys. Yes, there are those among my female writers who are more averse to combat and more attracted to the romance plots… but, you know what? That’s equally true for the male writers. Considering there are those among the women who would be seriously put out if a plot didn’t engage in some serious bloodletting, and who roll their eyes whenever the subject of gooey romance comes up, I think it’s pretty safe to say the stereotype of a “female gamer” doesn’t exist outside of the heads of men.
Which meant I was a little surprised when I learned something new the other day.
[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “Graduate with BA in English” Bottom text: “Now have time to read those classics you lied about reading during college”]
oh look it’s me
“There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it ‘vengeful’ and ‘primitive’ and ‘perverse’ regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. ‘That kind of stuff is opinion,’ they say, ‘and the reader is cheated if it’s not labelled as opinion.’ Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal ‘objective journalism.’ Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called ‘advocacy journalism,’ I’ve used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.” -Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Wherein this is my response to anyone who claims my reporting is crap because it contains opinion…
so, Prometheus
is the most beautiful narrative disaster I have ever seen.
In a curious parallel with Snow White and the Huntsman (coincidentally also featuring Charlize Theron), Prometheus is staggeringly lovely in its production, but more than a bit scattered in its plot. Accordingly, this review will be a scattered mess too.
spoilers ahoy
Call this an announcement of an announcement - I’ve finally got around to creating the ebook version of Tales From The End, and you can download it in all its majesty (and in a handy variety of formats) over here. However, because I’m awaiting for the gods of formatting to formally approve it to be sent off to Apple, and Amazon, and all those crazy places, I can’t yet justify to myself the notion of making you pay for it. With that in mind, if you enter the coupon code JV66H before February the 6th, the $0.99 asking price will be reduced to absolutely nothing - not a bad deal, if I do say so myself. Of course, feel free to pay for it - and it’s worth pointing out that if there are any formatting issues, paying now guarantees you the revised edition when it comes out - but for now, consider this a goodwill gesture.
Oh, and do feel free to share this with other people. If you’re the sort of person that does that sort of thing.
IT’S AN AMAZING FREE SCIFI BOOK REBLOG AND GET IT
I think Chris is a pretty cool guy, eh writes SFs and doesn’t afraid of editing
(Source: chris-archived)
Second Life: yep, it’s still Second Life
A model of a nuclear plant maintained by the University of Indiana.
For my ENGL 384 class my prof asked us to create an avatar in Second Life as an exploration of virtual worlds and cybernetics and what have you, and then blog about it. At that point I hadn’t touched Second Life for years. I remember seeing glossy ads for it in my game magazines when I was a wee lad without broadband and cursing my flimsy dial-up connection. When I moved out and got decent internets, I gave it a shot, and promptly gave up because the interface was clunky and the lack of goals left me drifting aimlessly. I went back to World of Warcraft for a while before ditching the massive online model entirely.
super 8
with today’s release of the movie super 8, i will take this opportunity to renew david foster wallace’s assertion in 2001:
…the founders of the Super 8 motel chain must surely have been ignorant of the meaning of suppurate.
__
source: david foster wallace, tense present; harper’s magazine (April 2001).
game set match
(Source: ragbag)
