HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
5hr ago
I'm not praising Troy for sticking to the text, I'm praising it for looking, or at least trying to look, like it's set in Ancient Greece with some idea of the arms and armour. No, they also fall for the black pleather look at times as well, but it's not all "we shot this in a Scottish wood with everyone wearing black unless they were the Giants whom we put into anachronistic faux-mediaeval tin cans".
You can give me an adaptation that has Penelope complaining to her besties about how "he never writes, he never phones, he never even sends me a dick pic anymore" just so long as she looks like the Queen of Ithaca and the sun shines on blue waters.
HereAndGone2
5hr ago
I think he had an idea, back at the very start, of what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. Worldbuilding is not his forte so he didn't stress too much about "how do seasons/dragons/magic work?"
Then as he went along over the years, he started writing side-quests and new characters (because I do think he gets bored trying to stick to the outline) and that meant he wrote himself into several corners, with no idea how to get out of them, and the original ending is now badly outdated but he can't create a new one because he's tangled up with too many plot threads and new characters.
He did give an unmerciful hostage to fortune with that crack about Aragorn's tax policy, even if it was meant as a joke, because dude. You can't even figure out how your damn seasons work, and that's more important than tax freakin' policies. He was trying to say he would be more realistic (translation: write the smexy with rape and incest and bare boobies all over the place and also gory violence and torture, just like Real Adult Writing) than Tolkien's work, but that only works if you the reader need descriptions of bare boobies and gut-ripping every five pages or you get bored.
HereAndGone2
5hr ago
I think the natural ending is "Winter comes, the civilisational cycle for the humans on Westeros goes into decline and the non-humans take over and expand into that niche, and for however long it lasts this is how it goes".
How the warmer lands fare in that, I don't know (because I haven't worked out the geography, geology, and the entire rest of the worldbuilding). Probably something like a massive, centuries-long Ice Age that means humans can only live in a small band of what is now temperate climate territory, until the stellar orbit swings round again to gradual thawing and civilisation advancing again.
Of course, that's the SF-style explanation à la Brian Aldiss, and Tolkien managed to work out what a year in Middle-earth would be (can't remember where I read it, but he mentioned somewhere, or maybe Christopher Tolkien put it into History of Middle-earth, how he worked out the Middle-earth year/Númenorean year to be just slightly better than our Gregorian measure) , but Martin apparently says it's all to do with magic? Which makes it an even shittier explanation in the light of him going off (admittedly a jokey line) about tax policies. So he's writing grimdark Low Fantasy ripped off from his notion of the Wars of the Roses, but it's also post-apocalyptic in some fashion since there's references to lost higher tech with survivals from the past, which puts it in science fantasy territory, but he doesn't bother explaining anything (unless this is all tucked away in notes from decades past) so it's all put down to magic which doesn't seem to have any particular basis in his worldbuilding (is it the gods? natural force similar to non-magical energies like electricity? spirits? deals with the Devil?) and seems to come down to "whatever Martin wants it to mean, so it lets him have dragons but religion is just priestcraft").
HereAndGone2
8hr ago
(just put the bag tightly sealed in a chest and send it to the bottom of the ocean)
Not much good to do that when you need those winds to fill your sails, just don't open the bag and let them all out at once, but of course some idiot does that.
HereAndGone2
9hr ago
Yeah, but the resource consumption provides jobs elsewhere - like adults, kids have to be clothed, fed, housed, and receive medical attention. On top of that is childcare and education, and things like toys and products aimed at kids. Close down all the toy factories because no market, and the jobs have to be found elsewhere (they could be, of course, but there's an entire economic sector there that isn't simply "kids take all resources and give nothing back").
HereAndGone2
9hr ago
Not speaking for Sweden in particular, but a big part of the problem is people who want to be child-free but very much resent the implication of selfishness and so claim the reason is that they can't imagine bringing kids into the world as it is today. Previous generations the excuse was nuclear war and overpopulation, today it's climate change and the horrible conditions that will be in place once the kids are twenty or so.
HereAndGone2
9hr ago
Again, I'm only going by reviews and clips, but Nolan also seems to pin the rationale for the Trojan expedition as Agamemnon taking the chance to break the Trojan trade monopoly under the excuse of avenging his brother's honour. So there is definitely a modern take percolating through modern versions.
HereAndGone2
9hr ago
To be fair, it's hard to make that pun work in English, and Nolan's script seems to be rubbish (if I go by reports); at least, he can't write/hire someone to write dialogue.
Re: Item 1, did Stark have any explanation as to where he was, why he decided to drop everything and leave without a word to anyone, and whether or not he was with Branning? Why was his DNA on the steering wheel of Branning's abandoned car? Who was the third guy? Because it could be possible they both decide to do a midnight flit independently, but it's certainly one heck of a set of coincidences. The conviction probably is shaky, but it's more "we have very strong suspicion he dunnit but we can't prove that on the evidence we have now, so we'll have to lean on him having a past violent criminal history".
Not ideal, but it's also not like they just plucked some random guy off the street and said "you are the man!"
EDIT: Looking up online, reports of the case indicate that Stark was not completely reformed between 1994 and 2021:
Weintraub noted that there is a bench warrant out for Stark’s arrest in Monroe County — about two hours north of Philadelphia — for failing to show up in court on charges of resisting arrest and drug possession and he will be extradited if taken into custody anywhere else. The district attorney asked anyone with information to come forward.
It's an odd case, because if Branning was just giving Stark a lift and loaning him money on foot of a sob story where Stark planned to skip town, why would Branning also leave? Why head off in the same direction as Stark? Certainly it can't be proven Branning was murdered, or if murdered Stark did it, but there's something fishy going on there. I can see how it's highly unsatisfactory for everyone involved, from the family of Branning to the courts:
The Lexus was found abandoned without its license plate in Virginia in December 2021 with Branning's driver's license, credit and bank cards inside. His body was discovered in a ditch a half-hour outside Baltimore, Maryland a month earlier, but he was not positively identified through dental records until April 2023.
At trial the prosecution did not offer a motive for the murder, but revealed that Stark was $13,000 in debt, addicted to crack cocaine and about to lose his job programming machines at Enchlor.
How did he end up with the car, if he had no idea what happened to Branning? I suspect this is one of those cases where we'll never know the truth unless and until the mystery third guy is located or somebody decides to give a death bed confession:
Branning’s Lexus was located in an apartment complex parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia, in December 2021. The SUV had a flat tire and a missing license plate. Inside, detectives found crack cocaine vials, Branning's driver’s license and credit cards.
DNA on the steering wheel matched a sample from Stark.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
Haven't seen that one because I can't take Brad Pitt as Achilles seriously, but that at least does seem to have tried to stick to the story. I'm more interested in Hector as a lead character in the Iliad anyway, because he's not a psycho like Achilles (could be read as) and he's a decent guy caught in a trap because of his no-good younger brother.
HereAndGone2
1d ago
I think the juror was probably trying to be fair and honest. And "I only did all this fraud because I'm persecuted and oppressed" may go down well with white liberal middle to upper middle-class types, but someone who also has experience of being oppressed knows that's not the reason; if they could manage to be honest and not embezzle public money even under the same conditions, what is that guy's excuse other than "Yeah I'm a criminal but I'm trying to avoid taking responsibility for my crimes by blaming society"?
HereAndGone2
1d ago
Odysseus, charming trickster hero, or villain set for the inner circles of hell?
Dante puts him in Hell, no questions asked. I think he is an interesting character; he's clever, and he wins the war for the Greeks through stratagems not the heroic epic battle prowess of Achilles (whose end is to die young in a blaze of glory, more or less, but only for personal glory).
He doesn't want to go to the war in the first place, and is entangled in it by an ironic twist of fate (or karma coming to get him) because of his ploy back at the start to keep the peace between the warring suitors of Helen and make them all swear to come to the defence of her husband, whichever of them got picked as her husband. He wins the war by a series of shady to dishonourable tactics, and really does only want to get back home (he spends seven years as the sex toy of Calypso, weeping on the beach by day longing to get away before being dragged to the bedchamber at night).
When he does get home, it's not the triumphant return of Agamemnon (which got him killed in revenge), it's another trickster move and finally he kills all the suitors in the proper, heroic warrior, style (though very blood-soaked, and his hanging of the maidservants reads uncomfortably to modern eyes).
Some of his troubles he undoubtedly brought upon himself by being too clever for his own good (or not taking the long-term consequences of his deeds seriously enough, at times he's really just "get out of this immediate pickle and deal with the fall-out later") and it was only by having the patronage of Athena that he survived at all.
I would not care if the ghost of Roger Corman rose out of his unquiet grave to make a schlocky version of the Iliad or Odyssey, just somebody please give me a movie full of the burning Mediterranean sun and bright colours, and armour that looks like armour not "the costume department bought in a job-lot of black leather-type material from a closing down sale of fabrics manufacturer" or "soldered together a load of tin cans".
You can make the script as modern-day relevant as you like with Menelaus going to therapy over his PTSD and Clytemnestra being a Strong Independent Woman, I don't care, just no more "everybody schlubs around in unbleached fabrics and earth tones in the cloudy grey rocky nowhere". Give me colour, embroidery, jewellery, armour, brightness, dazzle, the golden world of the past in mythology!
I don't care if they cast Lupita Nyong'o as Helen, but let her appear as this Helen:
Now when they saw Helen coming upon the wall, softly they spake winged words one to another: “Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for such a woman long time suffer woes; wondrously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look upon. But even so, for all that she is such an one, let her depart upon the ships, neither be left here to be a bane to us and to our children after us.”
HereAndGone2
4d ago
I heard about that bit, and I can only think it is supposed to refer to "I solved the problem of how to conquer Troy and have Greece win the war, which meant the Greek fleet all heading home at the same time, and then they (like myself and my ships) had to invade islands for food and supplies, and killed the inhabitants, woe is me, the Bronze Age Collapse is all my fault".
Funnily enough, reviewers whose tastes often align with mine (we all agree Rings of Power is terrible) saw the movie and really liked it, so it must come across way better on the big screen when you watch the entire movie, because the trailers were dogshit.
HereAndGone2
4d ago
Hmm. Can people more au fait with what is current tell me if "Fag Hag" is still an acceptable term or is now a disgusting slur?
Okay, you like girls, you're straight, you're just metrosexual. All good.
HereAndGone2
5d ago
My friend, were I listening to a female colleague going on about how she kept being hit on by lesbians even though she was a straight cis woman, and then it turned out she regularly visited lesbian clubs and bars in the company of lesbian friends and was always being identified as a lesbian because she dressed like one and had the regulation lesbian haircut and was having confused hot chicks hitting on her at Pride parades...
... I'd wonder. I'd wonder a lot why she didn't just stop hitting up lesbian bars if she didn't want to be hit on by lesbians since she was so terrifically straight?
"Gosh, why am I putting on these love handles? It sure can't have anything to do with the boxes of Cadbury's Roses I keep eating!" 😁
I was in Glasgow to see a woman. She was busy, so I killed time at... gay bars.
And your wife doesn't understand you, and you're only staying together for the sake of the kids, and you're getting that divorce any day now, honest, so just keep hanging on while we have this affair, O mistress mine. Yep, I believe you!
HereAndGone2
5d ago
Seems to me that Mamdani loses face with his supporters.
Nah, he falls back on "legal advice told me I couldn't do it, all fault of Orange Man Bad and MAGA" and they cheer him on.
HereAndGone2
5d ago
Per WP, he bought 5.8 billion masks
My eye skipped over that at first and I went "oh, five million, yeah that's a lot of masks but if it's one for every health worker?" and then I read it again. BILLION? Okay, that is definitely "funnelling money to the party donors" territory.
The surrogacy thing is particularly juicy, since the usual accusations of hypocrisy about gay politicians go "you are secretly gay yourself yet vote for and support anti-gay legislation", hence outing campaigns. Gay surrogacy is a novel twist on this!
HereAndGone2
5d ago
But it's Nolan so maybe the action will look awesome and kick lots of but.
Not if I go by the trailer with the Laestrygonians. I hope the battle scenes are much better than that mess.
I saw a clip someone uploaded and oh boy. Nolan just went straight for the liberal political discourse. It was Penelope and Odysseus in bed at night with baby Telemachus beside them, and she was trying to persuade him not to go to the war, and he came back with the geo-political strategic reasons why the establishment were pursuing this war and it was unavoidable (Agamemnon was using Helen's abduction as his excuse to break Troy's trading monopoly, he would not give up on that, so Odysseus had no way to say no).
Well doesn't that just scream ancient Greek epic of martial honour and warrior values to you, modern audience citizen? How can you not love and applaud this movie?
And of course it was as dark as the inside of a badger, but that's only because us proles don't appreciate subtle modern cinematography.
I really wish he had gone the Shakespeare adaptation route and set this in 1950s USA or 1890s British Empire or some damn thing. That would be a fresh take and he could then insert his Colonialist Politics For Beginners lectures without them seeming as much out of place.
EDIT: I'm not saying Nolan is wrong about that, in fact it's part of the historical interpretation take on the siege of Troy (and very well-established by now, so he's not doing anything novel for those who have read even a little on this), and of course Odysseus as a canny political operator himself would have been well aware of all that in the background motivation. But it's so jarringly modern to come out with it like that while in the trappings of ancient Greece that it breaks immersion and makes you go 'this is Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway' and not 'this is Odysseus and Penelope'. Odysseus and the other suitors swore the oath, back in the day, to go to the help of her husband. That's what is dragging him into this expedition: he is honour-bound by his oath (ironically, suggested by him as a solution to Helen's father) to join Menelaus and be under the authority of Agamemnon as leader. Helen's abduction by Paris (whether or not she went willingly) is an insult to the honour and reputation of Menelaus personally and to Sparta politically, and since Paris is the son of the Trojan king, Troy has to answer for it. It's all a tangle of obligation and status and upholding the warrior caste standards, as well as manoeuvring for political advantage. Reducing it down to "breaking trade monopoly" is tin-eared.
Odysseus doesn't want to go. How will he get out of it? Is being an oath-breaker better or worse in this case? If Odysseus is prepared to break solemn promises, how can you ever trust him? If he breaks this promise, what about promises to spare enemies or make peace? Is this war justified? Even if it isn't, can he break the oath?
I don't know if Nolan explores all this, or just has three hours of Damon mumbling and grumbling while squinting at the horizon.
HereAndGone2
5d ago
Says the guy hanging out in a gay bar for Pride who enjoyed the attention of having his backside pinched. Suuuuure you are as straight as a ruler 😁
HereAndGone2
5d ago
I recently used Copilot for a work task and it worked well, it gave me what I wanted (and indeed included a couple of points I had been thinking about but didn't tell it).
So that was good. But it was too good, because it incorporated stuff I had not directly linked or directed it to use. So now I'm even more suspicious of how much data the big corps are scraping from us and connecting all the little dots from the tasks we do and the information we upload every day. Butlerian Jihad when?
As for the story, yes. It reads like a parody of the kind of writing that wins such awards (or indeed the most recent Hugos. Put a bit of a SF/Fantasy spin on that story (like "The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere" about a second-generation Chinese gay guy worrying about coming out to his conservative parents), submit it for the Hugos, and it stands a damn good chance of winning). Before AI, you'd have to mug up all the winners in the favoured "quaint natives regaling us with their curious primitive folkways" style by yourself, now the AI will do it for you!
It's not even a particularly good story, it goes nowhere in the end, and while reading it I kept being reminded of Stephen King's "Dolores Claiborne" where the title character decides to get rid of her alcoholic, abusive husband by arranging for him to fall down an old well. Maybe that too was the inspiration for our author?
HereAndGone2
5d ago
I'm thinking Anthropic were polishing their haloes in advance in expectation that they, the moral arbiters in this field unlike the wicked devils of OpenAI, would be the ones appointed by Da Gubmint to handle all this, and they got a terrible shock when they got slapped about, is what I'm thinking.
HereAndGone2
5d ago
Nah, Mamdani is being very careful to not fall foul of the precise and exact letter of the law. "I never said I would arrest him, I only said I was taking legal advice on what our options were". So he can come back with "I was advised this is impossible" and he gets to shrug and tell his partisans "Sorry guys, hands tied, whatcha gonna do?"
If it were only "bad acts from twenty years ago", I agree that it was wrong. But the guy also had current "bad acts" that weren't used. I think they were desperate to get a conviction and over-did it, but I also think the guy had a lot of explaining to do, and without the transcript of the trial I have no idea if he did manage to sufficiently explain "Okay so I have his car because..." or not.
You're right about the weak case and circumstantial evidence and prior bad acts, but there's also the complication that the entire situation seems very suspicious and with no better suspect at hand, I can't say the prosecution were absolutely in the wrong.
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