Jim Fear elaborates a bit [https://jimfear138.blogspot.com/2017/03/clearing-up-some-confusion.html] on his earlier post on hard SF. This paragraph caught my eye: > I view what we’re trying to do here in military terms. Maybe I’ve been listening to Sabaton too much lately, which is entirely possible, but this is how I’ve been conceptualizing it. There is, as I said, a crumbling edifice that I’ll dub Tradpub (yes I stole that from Brian Niemeier shaddap). Tradpub is a kingdom on the decline. It r…
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Over at Castalia, on guilty pleasures no-one has played [http://www.castaliahouse.com/guilty-pleasures-rpgs-you-probably-wont-play/]: > I’ll always have a bit of a soft touch for Palladium games. I mean… no sooner had I stumbled across a stray copy of the iconic Moldvay Basic D&D set, than I had a desire for something like that, but weirder. And Palladium was right there waiting with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. After the cartoon and the movies, it’s hard to imagine how f…
LLoyd Jenkins made this comment to my first post [https://nightlandsredoubt.blogspot.com/2017/03/tha-backstory-tha-whole-backstory-and.html?showComment=1489437897749#c1201425096865877563] on “backstory” (I promise, I will get around to John Wick). Hollywood is in love with the idea that the Hero changes during the movie. I get tired of it. What about setting right what was made wrong? I admit the backstory affects the actions of the characters - but that is characterization in my book. Hollywo…
Walker has recently had some excellent posts on SF in Anime, including looking at the influences that Votoms, Dougram, Macross, and Crusher Joe have had on, among other things, Battletech. So it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of evidence that they’ve not been as susceptible to Social Justice Convergence [https://bradfordcwalker.blogspot.com/2017/03/red-sff-japan-has-your-back.html]. They certainly inspired one of my favorite movies [https://thelastredoubt.com/2016/10/building-better-groundhog-…
Ben Cheah has an insightful writeup on why‘Gritty’ and ‘Realistic’ SFF Isn’t [http://www.benjamincheah.com/2017/03/01/gritty-and-realistic-sff-isnt/]. The whole piece is worth a read, but the following puts very poetically something I’ve told a lot of people in response to “but it’s realistic!”: > Everybody knows the darkness of the human heart. Open a newspaper and you will see terrorist atrocities, gangland wars, murderers, child abuse and lying politicians in abundance. Evil lurks everywhere…