The Hardcore and the Gentle

Apr 25, 2021 | Covid-19 Diary, Dead Water, Goggle-eyes

I dropped in on the latest Netflix YA fantasy series Shadow and Bone. I was prepared to be >meh< about it, but I quite enjoyed the eight episodes. I was mentally ticking off tropes and obligatory scenes, but that’s OK because it was well executed with a talented and committed cast and an acceptable level of scenery chewing. Of course, its target demographic is forty-five years younger than me. I had a look at critical response and was struck by the almost uniform rush of critics to reference it against Game of Thrones. That’s just laziness, not least because Game of Thrones is, at heart, an attempt to subvert the likes of Shadow and Bone.

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I also watched Franklin Leonard’s 2018 TED talk, and found it informative, intriguing, and thought provoking:

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I was digging in some files as part of an ongoing tidying up process in the shed, and came across drafts of something I wrote in 1988 and early 1989. For the nerds, it was written at my then work on an early ICL system, UNIX based. I can’t remember now if it ran WordPerfect or WordStar word processing software; I think the latter.

As you might expect from philosophical ruminations of a pretentious 29-year old, it was gauche and over-written. The drafts are of an essay on ethics and, in its own terms, is dreadful. It has also now been shredded, but not before I realised that a stripped back version is perfect for a tension in the work-in-progress, either via character dialogue or embedded thematically. Even three-decades-old ramblings have their uses; after all, where would science fiction and fantasy be without cod-philosophical musings? Do it right and you end up with Dune.

Also, I was interested to see WordPerfect is still available as a $320 office suite. I’m almost tempted by a 30-day free trial. Almost.

GRRMartin still uses a version of WordStar.

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Music: sometimes a tune comes to visit and won’t go home. Between me writing that juvenilia and this record being released, we’d had two kids. Fancy that. Björk : Big Time Sensuality