Randomness Challenge! Tangents Only Thread

[dsmiles 35885]

I was 10 when I read IT.

[Darsc Zacal 46997]

IT was... a movie I never intend to watch again.

[ShadowRaven 56016]

I don't like Stephen King. Not even The Green Mile. Everything of his I've read has been beyond my ability for suspension of disbelief 

[dsmiles 35885]

I don't like Stephen King. Not even The Green Mile. Everything of his I've read has been beyond my ability for suspension of disbelief 

I don't know, From a Buick8 was pretty good.

[Darsc Zacal 46997]

 

I don't like Stephen King. Not even The Green Mile. Everything of his I've read has been beyond my ability for suspension of disbelief

 

I don't know, From a Buick8 was pretty good.

I've not read The Body but I did like Stand By Me.

[dsmiles 35885]

 

 

I don't like Stephen King. Not even The Green Mile. Everything of his I've read has been beyond my ability for suspension of disbelief

I don't know, From a Buick8 was pretty good.

I've not read The Body but I did like Stand By Me.

 

[buglips*the*goblin 93884]

 

 

I've never seen IT, but i've never liked clowns which is why I haven't watched it =P don't plan on seeing it either

IT is a freaky movie.

... book was better.

 

Still should have been about 400 pages.

[EvilJames 8076]

Yea I could never get into Douglas Adams either...

They way I see it you can get into this jar of brine or Douglas Adams. :P

 

I really liked the first 3 Hitchhikers books and the Dirk gently series, but the later Hitchhikers books were not quite as good. Also he died after ending a book on a down note so now the entire series ends as bit of a downer. :(

 

This will not save you.

 

Why not? If I make friends with him, I can send him after you someone.

 

we only pick on him because he's evil. Not all clowns are evil. Many are chaotic neutral

 

Have you proof of his evilness?

 

He offered me suspicious soup! he keeps leaving jars of pickle brine outside my lair! D= how can you say HE is the one picked on? 

 

and he honks his nose at me! The nerve! 

 

 

He was being nice and trying to feed you soup and other yummy goodness when you weren't feeling well!

 

Honking his nose at you is how he tells you that he's happy to see you.

 

See, he's just misunderstood! 

 

 

See. He understands. I don't want to harm any one. I just want to make a everyone happy... and eat souls... but mostly make everyone happy.

 

 

we only pick on him because he's evil. Not all clowns are evil. Many are chaotic neutral

Neutral good with chaotic tendencies.

 

I'm not a clown.

 

we only pick on him because he's evil. Not all clowns are evil. Many are chaotic neutral

 

 

Have you proof of his evilness?

it's in his name.

 

...Well that's an excellent point. Can't really argue I guess. *Considers* Also I guess I don't really want happiness as much as I want fear, but they're basically the same thing right?

 

As for IT. That is a creepy movie, and certainly not appropriate for kids. I even find it creepy and clowns have never bothered me (obviously), but the juxtaposition of happy clown and horrific monster is quite startling. Unfortunately like all Steven King films it falls apart at the last half. The man can build suspense but he can't do anything with it once he has it.

Funnily enough my wife can't stand horror movies and doesn't like to be scared or creeped out much at all, but she found IT to be hilarious since that juxtoposition I mentioned just doesn't work for her. for her Nothing about a clown can ever be scary.

[Flamehawke 39483]

Well I suppose for that mindset it is wonderful for you. That means she does not find you scary or evil for you are a clown. That logic works out in your favor in regards to her.

[buglips*the*goblin 93884]

I think we're sort of into "How long is a piece of string" territory here.

 

Some stories need many pages and some need few. And I don't think that the number of pages between the covers is a good way of describing how long the "book" is. (While it's extreme, calling Jordan's Wheel of Time a single serial novel isn't unreasonable*; after all, I don't think there were any stories that ended before the end of the last book.  ) LotR was intended as a single novel, was published under three covers for book-binding reasons, and is internally divided into six books. FWIW, I think the six book division is probably the best, as each of them tells a coherent story and ends at a dramatically appropriate point, but I could make a case for other numbers or divisions.

 

On some level, I really like the approximately 250 page length popular in SF into the 70s. It's a length that can comfortably be finished in a single day and it's long enough to tell a compelling story.But then that was the length when I started reading seriously, so there's probably a bit of bias.

 

When I go back to read the 150-200 page books of the 40s and 50s, there's an attraction there as well.

 

And when it comes down to it, I think there's a value to writing to a specific arbitrary length, just as there is value to many (most?) other artificial restrictions on art.

 

* The Wheel of Time is quite probably unreasonable, but it's not obviously unreasonable to call it one book.

 

 

Do you sometimes feel like disagreement is the sturdy framework of our friendship? 

 

Anyway, while there is a grain of truth (or wisdom) in calling out the bloat trend of modern fiction, my post does (or at least should) come with the caveat not to take the musings of two inebriated scribblers much more seriously than the technicolour ramblings of a smokey room filled with hippies.  Although I would pay real money to see you argue something like string theory with Tommy Chong.  Just sayin'.

 

Also, I'm pretty sure we probably stole the "400 pages is the proper length for a novel" from somebody but forgot who in the subsequent conversation.  On some level the conversation was less conversation and more skit.  "The 400 page book" instead of "The 2,000 year old man". 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2014 by buglips*the*goblin

[buglips*the*goblin 93884]

Unfortunately like all Steven King films it falls apart at the last half. The man can build suspense but he can't do anything with it once he has it.

 

Trooth.  And, I will note, I say that despite paying a godless sum to have all of his books in hardcover (the only author I have all* the books for, and all in hardcover). 

 

*I'm sure I'm missing some recent ones, and there's a couple on the late 2000's between Buick 8 and Under the Dome I was just about to pounce on before being sidetracked.

 

This is also why I think all of King's best work is the stuff that isn't horror.  But, yeah, not much in the way of payoff.  The books just stop.  Stephen King is, IMO, a writer's writer.  You're not so much reading a story as exploring it with him.  He's the only one who makes me feel like I'm reading over their shoulder at the typewriter, and almost the entirety of why I decided this miserable and thankless profession was the path for me.  Say... 80%. 

 

The other 20% is because I love books and the adventures therein.  I know that inside my brain, if I can learn how to properly translate them into words, are all kinds of crazy adventures people might enjoy. 

Edited May 13, 2014 by buglips*the*goblin

[Flamehawke 39483]

I like books and reading. More of a fantasy person myself, but sometimes I read other things. 

[buglips*the*goblin 93884]

Fantasy fiction is something I avoid, but that's circumstantial.  In the beginning it didn't take because I got a bunch of "fantasy" books in the 1980's which were just weird and, in some cases, just partial bits of larger works.  I strongly suspect the discount paperback bin was raided to produce this questionable hoard.  So early on, fantasy (at least in my pre-D&D days) was synonymous with "weird crap I don't get".  This association was, actually, so ingrained it very nearly made me turn down the offer to play D&D.

 

The second hit to fantasy was a run of terrible and forgettable D&D themed books the game store couldn't get rid of (probably should have been my first clue).

 

A similar thing happened to me and sci-fi.  So probably I don't read sci-fi or fantasy because my circumstantial experience with the products taught me "nearly all of it is terrible".  This may not be wholly fair, since in reality it's more accurate to say "the selection I read was very terrible".

 

But the record for worst thing I ever read, out of some very strong contenders, has to go to the Planescape novels.  Poster child for what happens if you take the most interesting setting ever and hand it off to people who don't know what to do with it.  I wouldn't even be able to tell you what they were about, I expended so much subsequent effort to overwrite the memory. 

[dsmiles 35885]

I love the discount paperback bin. I love used bookstores even more.

[Flamehawke 39483]

See my introduction was more Andre Norton (Sci-fi, fantasy and Sci-fantasy). Which then led to some Anne McCaffery and a few others. Andre Norton though was the one who wrote the books I enjoyed the most though. I still like her books a great deal, especially her Witch World series