Babylon 5: Reboot and Zooty

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Babylon 5: Reboot and Zooty

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Vavrek posted:

Does he? His post on Usenet has a far more "whoops" tone to it than "I've never read that book."

Emphasis mine. Like, same point, it wasn't a deliberate reference, but I'd never heard that he'd denied reading Canticle. (Which he neither confirms nor denies, in that quote.)

I dunno about Usenet but he denies any and all influences on B5 if you ask him about it on twitter. I remember him getting especially mad about that one. Maybe he was more willing to talk about it back then.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:27

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# ? May 17, 2024 22:14

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

At some point he got pretty frustrated with people trying to make everything a reference to something else. Regarding "Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?":

quote:

"In WHTMG, Marcus is talking to G'Kar about his friends and says he's had "drat few of them, and most of them are dead." My instant reaction was "That can't be an allusion to Return to Zork." Can it?"
Y'know, if I were to read this group as an outsider, I'd think that this jms person was incapable of coming up with a single line on his own.

NO, it wasn't a Zork reference, for chrissakes. Can we possibly get any more obscure here? I don't even know what this REFERS to. Marcus came from a mining colony. The shadows struck, and killed everyone there. Hence, the line above.

There was some goofing around with SF references early on in the show; this got out of hand, and it stopped. I don't sit here, thinking, "Oh, goody, I can make a reference to The Day The Earth Stood Still here," or some other show. I write what is appropriate for the character to say. Period.

I'm sorry if I'm a bit cranky in answering this, but jesus christ, people, give it a rest and stop looking for references that don't exist. There are only so many permutations in the english language, and something has got to echo somewhere for everyone...but that ain't the source. "Oh, look, he use the word THE in this episode, he must be nodding at "The Ipcriss Files" or "THEM" just leaving off the M to throw us off."

Your point of reference is your point of reference, it's nothing to do with me. It's like a Rorscharch test, you see what you're familiar with.

As a writer, you work your brains out trying to come up with something, and you try your damndest to make it original, and fresh, and interesting...do you have any idea how infuriating, how maddening, how bottomlin *insulting* it is to have 10,000 people parsing every sentence and saying, "Oh, here, did you take this from that? Is this a reference to this over here?"

NO, IT'S NOT.

I allowed a little of that in the first season or so, often in scripts by other people, on a couple of occasions by myself, but that's the end of it, because everyone decided that the show was one big easter egg hunt. Fanfic is full of this stuff, which is perhaps why everyone keeps looking for it here.

If it's an absolutely blantant, and extremely recognizeable line, like the Tolkein reference in year two's "Geometry," then yeah...but some of this is getting so obscure and ridiculous that it's starting to make me crazy.

Can we *please* declare a moratorium on this for a while?

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:33

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Edit: never mind

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:38

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

He has a point that people do get crazy with assuming everything is a reference to something else, but then he goes a little nutty and acts like nothing has ever influenced him and B5 is entirely original.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:40

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Grand Fromage posted:

I dunno about Usenet but he denies any and all influences on B5 if you ask him about it on twitter. I remember him getting especially mad about that one. Maybe he was more willing to talk about it back then.

I could see being pissed off about people saying either "Oh, he made a Canticle for Leibowitz reference" or "JMS totally just ripped off A Canticle for Leibowitz" when the truth was he was just thinking along similar lines, and drawing similar conclusions, without recognizing the parallel work until he'd established his own.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:44

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

I honestly think that Jordan Peele's "gently caress it, Being John Malkovich is a prequel to Get Out" response is a lot easier to respect.

Why would you care if people theorize about what references you're making in your work.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 20:52

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

Grand Fromage posted:

I dunno about Usenet but he denies any and all influences on B5 if you ask him about it on twitter. I remember him getting especially mad about that one. Maybe he was more willing to talk about it back then.

I mean, both statements can be true. He can have read, or at least had Canticle explained to him, and then come up with the story without referencing it, only later noticing the similarities.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 21:09

Chevy Slyme: May 2, 2004; We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

Alhazred posted:

Why would you care if people theorize about what references you're making in your work.

I mean, this level of absolutely moronic, baseless fan wank drives me insane as a fan. I can only imagine how annoying it must be to 1) have it constantly applied to your own work, but then, 2) to be endlessly asked about it by people, so I can see how you get there.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 21:10

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Grateful thanks to the Rangers Propaganda Corps for funding and supporting this series

# ? Oct 3, 2021 21:12

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I once spent about two months trying to come up with a name for a cowboy character that hadn�t been used before in a movie or whatever

Finally I settled on �Shane� and published

Lmao

# ? Oct 3, 2021 21:13

Hollismason: Jun 30, 2007; FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

I'm on Season 5 Episode 6 Strange Relations. I really don't like Byron. This whole telepath sheltering thing is going to go loving sideways badly.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 22:30

Narsham: Jun 5, 2008

Alhazred posted:

I honestly think that Jordan Peele's "gently caress it, Being John Malkovich is a prequel to Get Out" response is a lot easier to respect.

Why would you care if people theorize about what references you're making in your work.

You don't have to field questions about the references ALL THE TIME. I would get sick of it in days. Especially since a lot of the sorts of fans likely to Tweet JMS directly are the sort to say something like "Twilight was an influence on the Ivanova-Marcus relationship, right?"

JMS ruined his health and at one point was forced to double-mortgage his house because WB accounting screwed up on S4 and the production had no money for a month, bringing his world to the screen as close to his vision as he could manage, and then spends decades fielding questions that amount to "you pretty much just did Lord of the Rings, didn't you?" I'm willing to cut him a little slack in being tetchy. Nobody comes to our places of business and complains that we're changing a tire or hitting a baseball or filling out a form or writing an e-mail in an "unoriginal" way.

I have also never read anything from him implying or stating that he wasn't influenced by other writers. He just seems awfully disinterested in having long conversations about his work being someone else's idea first. If Grand Fromage can point to a tweet or statement JMS made to the contrary, I'm ready to stand corrected.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 22:55

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Hollismason posted:

I'm on Season 5 Episode 6 Strange Relations. I really don't like Byron. This whole telepath sheltering thing is going to go loving sideways badly.

You just hate him for his hair. His beautiful, gorgeous hair.

A minimum of 30% of the entire telepath colony budget was going to Byron's hair care products. I'm certain of it. (30 is probably way too low an estimate.)

Why would that raise any red flags at all?

# ? Oct 3, 2021 23:28

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

ultrafilter posted:

At some point he got pretty frustrated with people trying to make everything a reference to something else. Regarding "Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?":

Heh - it is a reference, but not to Zork. There's an old Scottish poem that accompanies a toast - and thus appropriate for Garibaldi to know - which runs thus:

Here's tae us! Wha's like us?
drat few, and most o 'em deid!

# ? Oct 3, 2021 23:39

Hollismason: Jun 30, 2007; FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

Got to episode 7 Season 5 Secrets of Soul. Franklin is pretty high and might about helping the Hiyaak. Still don't like the Telepath storyline.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 01:30

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.

_{...the meter only goes to 3.6...}; Pork Pro

I mean, say what you will about GRRM, but he had my favorite author's response I've ever witnessed.

Someone had asked him about ASOIAF and the changing lengths of seasons and had all of these questions about orbital periods and stellar bodies and held up, what I assume was, a stack of papers with the math explaining all of this and basically asked "is this mathematical proof I came up with to explain the long summers and winters what you made up for Game of Thrones?"

GRRM just looked at this guy and said "No: I just made it all up."

# ? Oct 4, 2021 02:19

Assepoester: Jul 18, 2004; Can't post for 10 years!; Melman v2

Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:

GRRM just looked at this guy and said "No: I just made it all up."

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3462468&pagenumber=727&perpage=40#post408124622

# ? Oct 4, 2021 02:44

Hollismason: Jun 30, 2007; FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

I got to the Penn and Teller episode. Also apparently it was also written by Neil Gaiman so that was a big surprise. Pretty good episode so far.

edit:

Oh hey big loving surprise that the telepath colony turned into a total poo poo show because their leader had a martyr complex.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Oct 4, 2021

# ? Oct 4, 2021 02:51

Narsham: Jun 5, 2008

Hollismason posted:

Got to episode 7 Season 5 Secrets of Soul. Franklin is pretty high and might about helping the Hiyaak. Still don't like the Telepath storyline.

Franklin is pretty arrogant throughout the series. It�s an interesting writing choice, but certainly consistent with some brilliant doctors I�ve known. And it drives the worst in him (stim abuse, because of course lives will be lost if he trusts anyone else to do the work) as well as the best (his refusal to hand over his medical research on the Minbari, his work running the underground railroad). After meeting his father, it�s clear it runs in the family, too.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 04:08

Small White Dragon: Nov 23, 2007; No relation.

Just got to the "Grail" episode on rewatch. For some reason I thought that was the dude who'd opened fire on the Minbari kicking off the war but I guess that's a later episode.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 08:05

neongrey: Feb 28, 2007; Plaguing your posts with incidental music.

Grand Fromage posted:

I dunno about Usenet but he denies any and all influences on B5 if you ask him about it on twitter. I remember him getting especially mad about that one. Maybe he was more willing to talk about it back then.

There's a huge huge difference between not writing in references intentionally and not being influenced by other works. I've never seen him deny influence.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 08:28

CatHorse: Jan 5, 2008

Small White Dragon posted:

Just got to the "Grail" episode on rewatch. For some reason I thought that was the dude who'd opened fire on the Minbari kicking off the war but I guess that's a later episode.

Same.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 12:10

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Grand Fromage posted:

He has a point that people do get crazy with assuming everything is a reference to something else, but then he goes a little nutty and acts like nothing has ever influenced him and B5 is entirely original.

I don't know where you may have seen that, but he absolutely does not. He goes on an on about how LotR influenced him, how the Prisoner influenced an episode etc. etc.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 13:34

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Doctor Zero posted:

I don't know where you may have seen that, but he absolutely does not. He goes on an on about how LotR influenced him, how the Prisoner influenced an episode etc. etc.

The Prisoner didn't just influence And The Sky Full of Stars. JMS nearly got Patrick McGoohan to play Knight Two after Walter Koenig was forced to pull out following a heart attack. McGoohan reportedly loved the script but was busy - making Braveheart, IIRC.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 14:02

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

i love that thread title so so much

# ? Oct 4, 2021 14:10

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Jedit posted:

The Prisoner didn't just influence And The Sky Full of Stars. JMS nearly got Patrick McGoohan to play Knight Two after Walter Koenig was forced to pull out following a heart attack. McGoohan reportedly loved the script but was busy - making Braveheart, IIRC.

Correct. That's exactly what I mean - he is incredibly transparent, and quite honestly won't shut up about, his influences and references. That's why that statement makes me go :raise:

.

E: The one thing that drives him nuts as stated earlier, is people who toss out ideas. I have to imagine that there have been times he's taught of something that someone happened to guess and post on twitter, and then he has to change it. That's got to be annoying.

Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Oct 4, 2021

# ? Oct 4, 2021 14:51

Doctor Zero: Sep 21, 2002; Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

sebmojo posted:

i love that thread title so so much

hey Reboot....

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Oct 4, 2021 15:17

Zaroff: Nov 10, 2009; Nothing in the world can stop me now!

Doctor Zero posted:

E: The one thing that drives him nuts as stated earlier, is people who toss out ideas. I have to imagine that there have been times he's taught of something that someone happened to guess and post on twitter, and then he has to change it. That's got to be annoying.

There�s the whole Passing Through Gethsemane thing, where the episode was originally planned for Season 2, but a fan messaged him on a BBS saying what a great idea a story about a mind wiped criminal would be. This led to JMS having to put the episode on hold until he was able to get legal documentation confirming that the episode was written/plotted prior to being contact by the fan and any similarities were coincidental.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 18:42

DeafNote: Jun 4, 2014; Only Happy When It Rains

Zaroff posted:

There�s the whole Passing Through Gethsemane thing, where the episode was originally planned for Season 2, but a fan messaged him on a BBS saying what a great idea a story about a mind wiped criminal would be. This led to JMS having to put the episode on hold until he was able to get legal documentation confirming that the episode was written/plotted prior to being contact by the fan and any similarities were coincidental.

I have seen fans try to sue people for less, so that was probably a safe call.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 18:50

Timby: Dec 23, 2006; Your mother!

Grand Fromage posted:

If you want to make JMS extremely mad tell him that. He insists he never read Canticle and that bit of the episode is all original and in no way inspired/a tribute.

He gets similarly mad when people point out the style of editing during, I think, The Exercise of Vital Powers (Garibaldi's interrogation), is directly aped from Homicide: Life on the Street and that he'd never heard of the show.

Doug Netter later said that JMS specifically asked for "the Homicide look."

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:06

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

I just really enjoy everyone posting a bunch of stuff that JMS, one of the OG Terminally Online people, supposedly said or do and no one is linking to poo poo.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:07

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

I once saw JMS and another piece of media in the closet and they were making references and one of the references looked at me.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:15

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

CainFortea posted:

I just really enjoy everyone posting a bunch of stuff that JMS, one of the OG Terminally Online people, supposedly said or do and no one is linking to poo poo.

Forget it, Cain, it's folklore.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:28

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

I don�t think you need rigorious sourcing for this really.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:31

DeafNote: Jun 4, 2014; Only Happy When It Rains

Any source at all would be nice.

Even then, its been decades.

I am willing to believe a man could forget certain things.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:41

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~ezk/b5jms/jms-says.txt

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:44

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

I mean it�s more likely JMS is just like that from what I remember from his time as a comics writer

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:46

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

The day I spend hours going through JMS' twitter feed to make a point on a forum is the day I need to log off forever. He's one of the few people I read there, he gets mad if you ask about B5 referencing stuff. :shrug:

I like B5, I think he's an interesting dude but he also can be super defensive. If you don't believe me, that is okay. I grant you that right.

# ? Oct 4, 2021 21:49

CainFortea: Oct 15, 2004

It's okay, I already had that right. I'm just going to start quoting people and going "nuh uh"

# ? Oct 4, 2021 22:19

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# ? May 17, 2024 22:14

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Why are you acting like a child

# ? Oct 4, 2021 22:26

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Babylon 5: Reboot and Zooty

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