I cant edit tags, I have just a little bit of rep.
People are so frustrating. Sigh.
I dislike it when people assume that they understand my meaning, rather than reading the words I've used. In their own mind, they seem to think that regardless I never said something, they can obviously determine my intention or what I was trying to say.
And usually nothing that I say can dissuade them once they've made up their minds. ;(
Retagged about twenty critique questions, starting with the very oldest ones. Most questions were fine, I deleted one old one that was really bad, and closed a couple more and left nice notes about the closure, linking to our guidelines.
The front page is gonna have lots of old questions there for a while!
Okay, did another ten or so questions. Closed a couple more "make this better" questions. I think that's it for the night.
I have managed to contact Mr. Beagle through some contacts, and here is what I asked:
Some of my friends and I are very curious to know where we can
purchase a high quality DVD copy of The Last Unicorn for which you
will receive royalties?
Here is his answer in full:
Hi Nathan,
...
That's the question. As someone who plans on writing professionally soon, it was personally important to find out, as I actually want to buy a copy of the movie
I wanted to make sure he got his due.
Related is this blog post that I made, which is also about P. Beagle
The animated Return of the King? The Rankin Bass abortion that was heralded for being a masterpeice in animation when it should have been called complete and utter garbage for shitting on the canon?
When I was a kid I loved the ROTK movie, before I understood canon
Now, I still have fond memories of it, because I literally watched it every day all day long for an entire summer one year, but, all the same. Garbage.
I saw Hobbit (was that Bakshi?) when I was a kid. LOTR too. I didn't see his ROTK until I was an adult and had read the series several times. I thought it was the worst thing ever
Maybe two of them, idk, I just know that that's the family that owns them.
Oh, I think one of Tolkeins relatives also has a small share .... Let me think.
I believe that there is a literary foundation or trust that owns the print rights to all of it, that's run by a Tolkein, but the media rights are owned by the Zaentz family, who has to pay royalties back to the foundation
That's a spotty memory at best, so, ymmv
The more I consider the more the memory comes into focus and I'm pretty sure what I said is true
There's the Zaentz family and then there's the actual Tolkien family and my understanding is that they can both authorize merchandise. My understanding is also that peter Jackson got blessings from both of them before working on the current incarnation
I have seen various combinations of interjections (or "grunt words", as they are sometimes called) used in fictional dialogue, such as:
uh huh (which I take for a yes)
uh uh (for no)
nuh uh (also saw that once for no, but I'm not even sure nuh is even a word)
whereas a standalone "huh?" usuall...
I edited this one a bit, to get it away from defining words and more towards how to use them. If they can be lightly edited like this, I think they're fine.
Yes. but the question you have highlighted (which we 3 answered quite well I thought) is exactly what I'm talking about. That is not a question on word usage; it's a question of the art and skill of writing
So we take a few lousy questions that ELU doesn't want. It increases the amount of questions and answers we get. Once Writers is in the SE big boys club then we can be more picky and choosy of the quality of questions we address
I think were missing an opportunity to get regular users from writers who are utilize ELU perhaps not knowing Writers SE even exists
I think that there is a middle ground between what the two of you are saying... Would taking a heavier hand to edits for all of the borderline questions satisfy both concerns?
So, something like "Hi, @username, you might want to try asking this question at the Writers SE [embed link] a budding community of writers, blah blah blah"
Well, I'm leaving, too. Ironically, there's something I have to write that has a Friday deadline. (may not nave used ironically in the most correct way, but I do not care)
My job right now is to make sure my employees don't do anything nutty when laying the groundwork for our application while I learn node.js
I'm letting one of them go crazy with writing an MVC type framework that will interoperate with the MVC in the frontend nicely, since he has expereince with node and with single page applications already and I dont, so the most important thing is that I'm available for questions and code review for him while I study :)
And I can't study 8 hours a day, so I break by looking here and there and maybe writing a little
Its nice to be the boss.
My transition to writing full time will start with scaling back my hours at my day job while my income from writing goes up, if it ever does (I expect it will as I've never failed at anything I've set my mind on due in a large part to my perseverance), until I'm in an advisory role. I'll stay on as an advisor indefinately as I have a stake in the company and I want to make sure it's protected
Going back to salvage old questions is always nice if you can have it :) But I agree with Neil that we shouldn't be bending over backwards to be accepting questions.
Not only does that negate the SE mission,
the immediate problem with ushering in low-quality questions is that it presents the entire site as low-quality. It discourages serious, experienced folks from getting interested and becoming/staying involved.
And, as an aside, as far as I'm concerned screenwriting is totally on topic :)
@NeilFein @Standback I agree that screenwriting would be on topic and welcome ... as would [shudder] poetry and just about all forms other forms of prose. Hell, I remember critiquing an email here a few weeks back. Let's take on all comers, that's fine with me (he said, thinking he had the ability to influence the matter.)
Although, that does bring something up ... there isn't a poetry SE is there? Was there one that died from neglect? Maybe an Area51 thought that got shut down? It just seems odd that there's a LEGO SE and a Biblical Hermeneutics SE and a (now defunct) Literature SE but no Poetry SE. Weird.
I tried, once, a few years ago to write poetry. But my poetry is very moon/June/spoon ... it's terrible. I thought it was bad until I found some old files when I was transferring stuff to my new PC. It was worse than I remember. It was so bad, I must have blocked it from my memory. One of the things I wrote was intended to be an homage to Shel Silverstein called "Hillary Dillary Floo" that would have him roll in his grave. I'm better off sticking with prose.
There is one exception to the I hate poetry rule. I love haikus. Love reading them. Love writing them. Something about creating art in a highly limited highly structured format that appeals to me. Of course, I was a journalism major. Which means I love writing in highly structured and unappreciated archaic formats.
I wrote a song once. Threw it away and burned it so there would be no evidence it ever existed.
No, I quite agree that they dont suck, even though the one that says its potentially bad in the title is expressing feelings that I havent felt since I was that age :P
So it seems silly to me now
Nice!
I'm glad you wrote them
Do you see what I mean about my poetry seeming destined to be made into a song?
I don't really see it in "Secret Savior". But I do see it in "un-named and potentially bad poem I wrote when I was 15" (which you should totally keep for the title). I could easily see that, with a chorus, as a decent track for Metallica.
Correction: "Secret Savior" could work as a Metallica track, but it's more like one of their slower ones like "Fade to Black" or "Nothing Else Matters"
I have managed to contact Mr. Beagle through some contacts, and here is what I asked:
Some of my friends and I are very curious to know where we can
purchase a high quality DVD copy of The Last Unicorn for which you
will receive royalties?
Here is his answer in full:
Hi Nathan,
...
I have seen various combinations of interjections (or "grunt words", as they are sometimes called) used in fictional dialogue, such as:
uh huh (which I take for a yes)
uh uh (for no)
nuh uh (also saw that once for no, but I'm not even sure nuh is even a word)
whereas a standalone "huh?" usuall...
The Overlook Hotel
The Overlook Hotel