Dark Alex's Really Long Post Thread.

[Alex]

Pretty sure that if you alter someone atoms into some sort of transmittable signal, beam it somewhere else and then reconstitute them, you have indeed killed that person and then recreated them. Which means of course, Kirk is a zombie.

Or as Bones would say "It's life Jim, but not as we know it."

[Alex]

Yes, I know that was a terrible joke. No, I couldn't resist making it.

[Alex]

So what kind of characters do you find the most interesting in films / books / TV shows / games or what ever?

For me a hero is only a good and as interesting as the villain allows him to be. Batman is a pretty boring character and the movies tend to be more defined by the bad guy (just ask Micheal Keaton) than the good one.

Bad guys... well they always seem to lose and for any number of stupid reasons like the hire people who apparently are incapable of firing a gun with any degree of accuracy. Still, they do tend to have a good sense of style and make movies interesting.

Antiheroes now though. Well there is something I like. I've been watching 'Blakes 7' recently and remembering just how much I liked Avon (played by Paul Darrow). He might never have just took off and abandoned Blake despite his frequent threats to, but you just knew that he was tempted and one day he'd get fed up of all this saving the galaxy stuff with a bunch of people who were quite often by and large useless. His costumes may have dated but back in the late 70's they were the business. Always black and silver. Even though Avon would do the right thing in the end, it never seemed a forgone conclusion.

If Callly or Jenna had any brains they'd have jumped ship with him and ran off to a life of crime, big profits and home made pornos. Part of me would like to see a remake of that show, but I am sure it wouldn't have quite the same magic nowadays.

Some of the James Bond films I'd count him as a bit of an anti hero, especially when played by Sean Connery. He'd think nothing of slapping around a woman to get information and all round was a bit of a bastard really. I've never read any of the books, but I am told this is closer to the character Fleming created.

[indianasmith]

Ever read THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT?

Now there was an anti-hero!  Leper, rapist, and yet he winds up saving the world on multiple occasions.

[Alex]

I started reading one of those books, but I just couldn't get into it. I think they were stuck trying to open a door at the start of the book and I lost interest after a while. I think a Sandgorgon was beating on the door or something? Since it was midway through the series it might not have been the best one to start with though.

EDIT. I think the book might have been called Lord Fouls Bane. We are going back to when I was a teenager though so I might be misremembering that title.

[ER]

I started reading one of those books, but I just couldn't get into it. I think they were stuck trying to open a door at the start of the book and I lost interest after a while. I think a Sandgorgon was beating on the door or something? Since it was midway through the series it might not have been the best one to start with though.

EDIT. I think the book might have been called Lord Fouls Bane. We are going back to when I was a teenager though so I might be misremembering that title.

That's my exact experience with Lord Foul's Bane.
I also couldn't read The Wheel of Time.

[indianasmith]

The Sandgorgon was in one of the later books, not in LORD FOUL'S BANE.
LFB is the first one the series.  I found the whole series engrossing, especially the first trilogy.
But they are not for everyone.

[ER]

Lord Foul's Bane also had probably the most disturbing rape scene I'd ever read. I don't say that as a criticism, it portayed rape as anything but titillating, and could have been a lesson to writers like Ken Follett, who wrote rape in some of his books almost as erotica.

[indianasmith]

It was awful.
There is no doubt about that whatsoever; and its very awfulness probably makes it far more true to life than drivel like Follett's scene(s) in THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH.

However, it was the all-consuming guilt that Covenant felt about that terrible moment that drove him from that point forward.
The man PAID, many times over, for what he had done. 

The book is not everyone's cup of tea, nor should it be - the world would be a boring place if we all liked the same things.

But it's still one of the great masterpieces of modern fantasy.  I rank the Covenant books a little bit below Tolkein but actually better and more beautiful, in the end, than George R.R. Martin's A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE.

[Alex]

To be honest, I suspect I would put the book down about the rape scene and not go back. My friend once deperately tried to get me to read Lovely Bones convinced I would love the novel. Didn't get through the first chapter. As you may have noticed I have issues with people who do these kinds of things and reading about it tends to just get me feeling angrier and angrier.

[Alex]

Pay day tomorrow. Since I am getting a pay rise backdated to April it is a whole £200 higher than usual. Of course, they also backdated all the charges etc so what looked like a nice amount extra has quickly been whittled down. Still, it is the first time in ten years I've had a pay increase higher than 1% so I guess I am supposed to be grateful for it. My wage is still worth a damn sight less than it was 10 years ago.

Unfortunately when the system collapses under greed, it is not the greedy who pay for it. But then wither they be nobles, merchants, industrialists, military dictators or whatever the wealthy have always found a way to insultate themselves from the s**t they've caused and everyone else ends up living in.

Hell, most of them seem to think they are doing the rest of the world a favour while they f**k it up, that minimum wage jobs lift people out of poverty rather than keeping them trapped down there.

Still there is a more powerful force than money. And I am not talking about love, or some divine entity, or any of the other tropes that get trotted out regularly. It established the order of things before wealth and ultimately it still triumphs over it when the two clash. Without raw strength to back it up, riches are by themselves meaningless and easily taken by those with it, so they pay for others to protect their wealth for them and invest in a system that tramples over the very people that keep it going.

Says a lot about humans that this seems to be the best system we can come up with. Still, I can understand why those at the top are so terrified of anything that might upset their precious order, seeking to demonize these things.

The meek truly have inherited the earth, even if perhaps not in the way it was expected.

And no, I am not championing a communist revolution either. That only ends up in the same kind of situation, just under a different title.

[ER]

Pay day tomorrow. Since I am getting a pay rise backdated to April it is a whole £200 higher than usual. Of course, they also backdated all the charges etc so what looked like a nice amount extra has quickly been whittled down. Still, it is the first time in ten years I've had a pay increase higher than 1% so I guess I am supposed to be grateful for it. My wage is still worth a damn sight less than it was 10 years ago.

Unfortunately when the system collapses under greed, it is not the greedy who pay for it. But then wither they be nobles, merchants, industrialists, military dictators or whatever the wealthy have always found a way to insultate themselves from the s**t they've caused and everyone else ends up living in.

Hell, most of them seem to think they are doing the rest of the world a favour while they f**k it up, that minimum wage jobs lift people out of poverty rather than keeping them trapped down there.

Still there is a more powerful force than money. And I am not talking about love, or some divine entity, or any of the other tropes that get trotted out regularly. It established the order of things before wealth and ultimately it still triumphs over it when the two clash. Without raw strength to back it up, riches are by themselves meaningless and easily taken by those with it, so they pay for others to protect their wealth for them and invest in a system that tramples over the very people that keep it going.

Says a lot about humans that this seems to be the best system we can come up with. Still, I can understand why those at the top are so terrified of anything that might upset their precious order, seeking to demonize these things.

The meek truly have inherited the earth, even if perhaps not in the way it was expected.

And no, I am not championing a communist revolution either. That only ends up in the same kind of situation, just under a different title.

Money aside, you serve your nation and keep others safe. There are few more honorable ways to invest a life than that.

[Alex]

Lord Foul's Bane also had probably the most disturbing rape scene I'd ever read. I don't say that as a criticism, it portayed rape as anything but titillating, and could have been a lesson to writers like Ken Follett, who wrote rape in some of his books almost as erotica.

I've came across more than a few novelists that seem to write the same way, Piers Anthony and John Norman to mention a couple. When I read them I tend to think they are very sexually frustrated in real life.

Indy, does 'White Gold Wielder' sound like it could be it?

[Alex]

As I walked in to the office Swimmy was complaining about something he hadn't done. I asked if was talking about a full nights work.

[Alex]

Writing some stuff about some people taking drugs. Decided not to make it overly realistic, although the incident is based on one I encountered in real life, although it was on a late night train journey rather than a rural pub when a bunch of guys started passing around an assortment of illicit substances to each other openly in a crowded carriage with families present.