There has been a bit of discussion on here before about people that experience ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response - pleasant tingles on the head in response to…whatever…).
When I was a kid I thought I was the only person on earth that had these tingles (and there was, of course, no name for it then), but HOLY CRAP there are a ton of videos popping up all over the place specifically to try to trigger such a response, and a huge community of ASMR-tists, and viewers that have their favourite artists, and discussion about why, etc.
I think you missed his point. He’s not dismissing fiction for being fiction. He’s dismissing the people who are treating fiction as if it had the same consistency as reality.
As an example, some people might note that a character’s middle name was supposedly William in one episode but in a different episode his middle initial was E. And they’ll come up with some elaborate theory about him having two middle names or some unusual spelling of William or having changed his name or something equally implausible. When the reality is simple - the scripts for the two episodes were written by two different people who made up two different names.
I have come across far too many people meaning the other way, though, so I get a bit defensive.
Like I am wondering what color the starship Enterprise is. I’d like to know so I could paint my model correctly. Should it be white, grey, pale blue, something else? I was told “it’s science FICTION”, therefore, it doesn’t matter.
But it does. In the fictional world, the ship has a color. And in the JohnT post, I read his comment as similar view. If the Doctor has established canon, and a new episode goes against that canon, that’s a fair point to nitpick. But I get complaining about excessive obsessing over some point. I try not to do that. Anymore.
The insane fandom types wouldn’t quibble about whether the Enterprise was white, pale blue, pale gray or something else. Nobody would argue that particular point isn’t important if you’re making a model. But the insane fandom types get way more into it than that.
They’d quibble about whether it was Testors Model Master Lichtgrau RLM63 - Semi-Gloss gray, Testors Model Master RAL 7001-7038 Mittleblaugrau KMS - Semi-Gloss, or Testors Model Master RAF Medium Sea Gray - Flat.
This classic example from the Simpsons illustrates the gripe perfectly:
“In episode 2F09 when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.”
[QUOTE=bump]
They’d quibble about whether it was Testors Model Master Lichtgrau RLM63 - Semi-Gloss gray, Testors Model Master RAL 7001-7038 Mittleblaugrau KMS - Semi-Gloss, or Testors Model Master RAF Medium Sea Gray - Flat.
[/QUOTE]
Precisely. And, though stones may yet be thrown my way, the same importance as reality.
It’s not enough to say "I (dis)like the way it was handled because… ", it was the “Moffat obviously didn’t watch this episode where it was established…”-type comments that irritated me.
I read plenty of fiction (of the 149 books I read in 2013, 109 were fiction) and I don’t dismiss it as unimportant. But I also understand that the creators are human, they make mistakes, and many times the specific medium on which the fiction is portrayed has its own dictates as to how it all plays out.
For example, in the 1970s, somebody wrote in a Doctor Who episode that the Doctor had 12 regenerations, never ever imagining that the show would last 50+ years and 14 regenerations.
In this instance, the medium dictated the message. Saying “they shouldn’t have done this because it establishes that the 4th Doctor was a liar, and that means that his words in other episodes could be a lie too” is truly taking it to an extreme. The Doctor has more than 12 regenerations because the show needed more than 13 actors to play him. That’s it. There’s not much more to discuss, other than “did you think the writers handled it well?” and “Thank God the show is still on, and more popular than ever, 50 years after its debut!” Saying that you’re not going to watch it any more because “it’s shitting on Tom Bakers Doctor” (direct quote) really misses the point, imho.
Parenting always brings out the freaks. Anti-vax nuts. People devoted to the lunacy of birthing twins at home unassisted. People who think baby carriages are some sort of plot to interfere with bonding. People who think a woman who goes back to work before the “baby” has entered college are guilty of child abuse.
You haven’t seen crazy until you’ve seen places like MotheringDotCommune.
You understand that they are well aware of that, right? (Well, mostly.)
It’s like solving a mystery or working out a puzzle together. Some of us find enjoyment in worldbuilding as well as stories, and finding little cracks in existing fictional worlds offers an opportunity to share that enjoyment with others who are familiar with those worlds. It’s not important. It’s just fun.
I’ll freely admit, though, that those who aren’t good at the worldbuilding game can be tiresome, especially if all they do is criticize the original writers or the proposed solutions.
I have a friend who spent a couple years as a professional video game commentator in Korea. His career was pretty intense-- the dizzying rise to fame, the world of groupies and rabid fans and exploitative managers, and the bitter burn out as new talent pushed him out. I keep asking him to write a book about it.
Eh, DW isn’t anywhere near a “favorite work” - hell, I didn’t bother to see the Christmas episode until last week. My response to Little Nemo pretty much contains my issues with how people in the group was discussing it.
Baby carriages aren’t a plot to interfere with bonding, but a plot to make our nation’s children fat and eat fast food.
Did you know that the baby carriage was patented exactly 125 years to the day before the first McDonald’s opened?
Did you also know that most nutjobs don’t fact check things they read on the internet?
I’ve been around the edges of knife collecting; not enough to obsess over it, but close enough to know some of the arcane stuff.
There are actual counterfeiters, who’ll take apart a rusty 80-year-old knife to replace sad original blades with modern ones, and fake the old stamping.
Some collectors look for a brighter red in the red bone handles, and you can use some industrial solvents to do that.
Real (old) ivory will click when gently tapped against your own teeth; the fake stuff will thud.
