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Unkempt posted:Blyton did plenty of public school shenanigans books too, hers were Mallory Towers iirc. Mallory Towers - I so wanted to there and have a chocolate brown pleated tunic with orange sash. When I did eventually win a free day place at a 'posh' girls' school I lasted a year - hated it and skived a lot. She did Noddy and Big Ears too. I think they've changed some of that years ago. Also The Faraway Tree. I wanted to go there too. Not Blyton but we still read original version Little Black Sambo at school in the 60s. Apparently when it was written on 1899 it was considered the first positive book with a black hero. I'm not really in favour of changing the wording. I think do what someone up thread said put a 'warning' on them. I think learning how societal values change is part of growing up too. I enjoy Agatha Christie books and she spanned over 50 years of writing. Seeing how she reflects the society around her and how it changes in that time is interesting.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:30
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Ol' Georges Remi another good example of an author growing and learning? Unlike, y'know, her.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:33
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Arsenic Lupin posted:AOL was not free. That's why they spent millions mass-mailing floppy disks and CDs to get people to sign up. There were craft projects based on "how do you use up all your AOL CDs?" And you had to pay local dialup charges on top before they introduced free phone numbers (but you could still locally dial in if you got frustrated with permanent engaged signals on the free phone numbers). My monthly internet including dialling in was over £50 in the late 90s. I remember the day I discovered I didn't need to use the AOL interface to get on line but could press the internet explorer button instead.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:34
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HopperUK posted:Yeah kids still read books. Fucken NERDS
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Feb 18, 2023 18:37
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Hah! Convoluted clients to get online when all they actually did was set up and hide Windows DUN. I had the free 56k thing from NTL when I got a cable box, the "free" catch was it dropped after 2 hours online. Bin the client, set up DUN yerself, set it to autoredial when dropped, wallop, "always online". Windows 98SE, my beloved.Failed Imagineer posted:Fucken NERDS
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Feb 18, 2023 18:45
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I still honestly do not understand how anyone ever though harry potter was original in any way. Kid goes to magic school is an entire genre of kids books. Like i saw Harry Potter and thought 'oh its like the Worst Witch i guess'. And like a lot of kids fantasy its actual setting and magic is the most boring basic stuff ever. They ride broomsticks and wave wands. Even the spells are just latin sounding nonsense which is even more dull than usual. As for Dahl i'm personally for just just putting a disclaimer on it and not forcing kids to read it. I grew up watching and reading a lot of stuff that wouldn't fly today and i'd rather have been exposed to that and learned why it was wrong than never know how poo poo things were in the past. Like sure change some if the worst stuff (and put a note in the book about it). Changing the gender of the fantastic mr fox's kids seems wildly silly though, was anyone asking for that?
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Feb 18, 2023 19:04
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The changes don't make any sense in the context of the stated motivation so I'm assuming a right-wing think tank has astroturfed the whole thing and the changes are from a stage adaptaion for children.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:07
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I just realised about the Dahl book changing thing - they are going for a Dahl Cinematic Universe, remade The Witches with Anne Hathaway, Wonka with Timotei Charming is coming, more are on the way, it's got to be related.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:08
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I was reading discworld contemporaneously with the later harry potter books and it's baffling how little I can remember of the latter while the former still articulates foundational principles of how I think about the world.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:27
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Never read Harry Potter, never will, I was the one sneering at adults reading them on public transport back in the day. Always thought she 'stole' where Terry Pratchett should be, known by everyone. I would kill for a Tiffany Aching movie, but not kid friendly, actual showing the roughness/toughness of living a rura life on the chalk. Only Kindness posted:I just realised about the Dahl book changing thing - they are going for a Dahl Cinematic Universe, remade The Witches with Anne Hathaway, Wonka with Timotei Charming is coming, more are on the way, it's got to be related. There was meant to be a Giant Peach live action movie a few years ago, probably still in preproduction
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Feb 18, 2023 19:30
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Pistol_Pete posted:The human body is remarkably unhappy in low-oxygen environments and will go from unconsciousness to irreversible brain damage to death in a remarkably short number of breaths. You'd think that as people can hold their breath for a minute or two with no ill effects, they'd equally be able to breathe in air lacking oxygen for a bit with no ill effects, but nope. I thought in an enclosed environment, carbon dioxide poisoning would get you before the oxygen would run out
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Feb 18, 2023 19:30
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The thing about Harry Potter is that it has fairly decent writing by the standards of genre fiction - at least in terms of being engaging and playful, not so much all the other things like plot and setting and whatnot. I'm not saying I love it or anything, but there's a reason why it was so wildly popular.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:33
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boots_theory.rtf JoKoRo was running on will-this-do by the second book. (In the spirit of know-your-enemy I did start reading them a decade ago, just to see, gave up at the start of the 4th, couldn't take any more of the poor prose and sent them to the charity shop.)
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Feb 18, 2023 19:33
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OwlFancier posted:I was reading discworld contemporaneously with the later harry potter books and it's baffling how little I can remember of the latter while the former still articulates foundational principles of how I think about the world. this should make you a very lucky human being, but then you didn't dodge reading those books. I remember potter books being bad, with relative badness being mainly proportional to the number of pages each book had
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Feb 18, 2023 19:34
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Netflix paid a shitload for the rights to produce Roald Dahl films a year ago, so I’m sure they’ll be imminently churning out as many as they can
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Feb 18, 2023 19:35
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The famous wizard looked at the red goblet.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:35
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Is Matilda an X-Man
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Feb 18, 2023 19:35
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Private Speech posted:The thing about Harry Potter is that it has fairly decent writing by the standards of genre fiction - at least in terms of being engaging and playful, not so much all the other things like plot and setting and whatnot. I kept reading because of inertia and ended up hating each character for separate and individual reasons by the time I was finished
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Feb 18, 2023 19:36
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:I thought in an enclosed environment, carbon dioxide poisoning would get you before the oxygen would run out Do you mean monoxide? I think Carbon monoxide replaces the oxygen in your blood, so yeah it can cause you to die while there is still oxygen in the room. As for Carbon Dioxide, this is present in the air naturally, but very low.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:37
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Fantastic Mr Fox is pretty much my boy's worn out Lion King VHS. (Isle of Dogs also rules)
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Feb 18, 2023 19:40
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Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is the weirdest poo poo ever and I'm not sure why it exists
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Feb 18, 2023 19:43
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Has anything happened in the saga of Frozen-account Crypto-scam What-do-you-mean-illegal-things-are-illegal-hey-I-pay-my-taxes Guy?
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Feb 18, 2023 19:43
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I would love an Equal Rites adaptation. It's on my list to reread, but currently reading all the night's watch books interspersed with some Tamsyn Muir.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:45
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:this should make you a very lucky human being, but then you didn't dodge reading those books. I remember potter books being bad, with relative badness being mainly proportional to the number of pages each book had I never finished the harry potter books, I just grew to like them less and less and while my mother kindly bought me the last one when it came out I never actually read it. I gave it to one of my grandmothers who was reading them after I did. I agree very much that they get worse the bigger they get. The first three are OK if uninspired (and a sensible length) while the later ones are just far too long and suffer greatly from her not knowing what the gently caress she was intending to do with the story.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:51
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History Comes Inside! posted:Old white imperialist being replaced is nbd Like kids are any likelier to read Austen...
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Feb 18, 2023 19:52
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Private Speech posted:The thing about Harry Potter is that it has fairly decent writing by the standards of genre fiction - at least in terms of being engaging and playful, not so much all the other things like plot and setting and whatnot. Does it though? Again at the same time we had His Dark Materials which I really enjoyed, and "attack and kill god to liberate humanity" is a hell of a premise. Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy are also very good and I think nail a much better atmosphere than the harry potter books. HP is not a standout in terms of quality even at the time, it just has a lot of inertia behind it.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:54
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There is also a very German "kid learns magic powers" - story : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krabat_(novel)
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Feb 18, 2023 19:54
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Runcible Cat posted:Like kids are any likelier to read Austen... Yeah but on the other hand at least now she’s just a quirky old book enjoyer instead of a quirky old book enjoyer who is at risk of forming some spicy opinions
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Feb 18, 2023 19:55
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Anne Mc Caffrey has a magic/technology universe, though only read one that sounds like a Potter clone called 'The Rowan'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rowan Loved this book so much at the time I was going to name my first kid Rowan.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:58
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Mr Phillby posted:Changing the gender of the fantastic mr fox's kids seems wildly silly though, was anyone asking for that? To even up the gender balance maybe? Because 'default human = male' is still the usual assumption, and as a result authors tend to include far more male characters than female ones (in turn reinforcing that 'default human = male').
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Feb 18, 2023 19:59
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happyhippy posted:Do you mean monoxide? No I mean from exhalation, it's something like 4% of the air you breathe out, and to quote the top google search result "Concentrations >10% may cause convulsions, coma and death."
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Feb 18, 2023 20:00
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OwlFancier posted:HP is not a standout in terms of quality even at the time, it just has a lot of inertia behind it. It’s entirely running on that inertia at this point and you can tell because everything else Rowling has tried to do has absolutely died on its rear end, even the stuff in the same universe which you’d think they’d go wild for. The new game is doing gangbusters from the looks of it specifically because you get to go to the school and live your own little dumb Harry Potter wizard boarding school adventure, because that’s the only thing that anyone gives a poo poo about from the whole franchise. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s a little much to paint everyone who still likes the lovely wizard stories as a giant TERFy Rowling lover, when based on the fact that nobody seems to give a poo poo about any of her other work it seems more like they don’t give two fucks about her at all and just really like the lovely wizard stories they grew up with.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:00
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The Wicked ZOGA posted:Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is the weirdest poo poo ever and I'm not sure why it exists The absolute seismic tilt into insane stuff compared to the already quite weird Charlie & The Chocolate Factory took me for a spin too when I read it as a kid. From my vague recollection it had the grandparents turning back into babies? Floating heads in space?
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Feb 18, 2023 20:02
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OwlFancier posted:Does it though? Again at the same time we had His Dark Materials which I really enjoyed, and "attack and kill god to liberate humanity" is a hell of a premise. Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy are also very good and I think nail a much better atmosphere than the harry potter books. HP is not a standout in terms of quality even at the time, it just has a lot of inertia behind it. It's very jrpg. I re-read dark materials recently and found it really good
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Feb 18, 2023 20:02
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Weren’t they making a series of dark materials adaptations at one point? I feel like they made one and then stopped
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Feb 18, 2023 20:05
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History Comes Inside! posted:It’s one of the reasons I think it’s a little much to paint everyone who still likes the lovely wizard stories as a giant TERFy Rowling lover, when based on the fact that nobody seems to give a poo poo about any of her other work it seems more like they don’t give two fucks about her at all and just really like the lovely wizard stories they grew up with. if they've paid for the game I don't think it's too unreasonable to point out to them what that money is going to end up being used for
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Feb 18, 2023 20:05
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History Comes Inside! posted:Weren’t they making a series of dark materials adaptations at one point? They did but apparently there is a netflix series or something on it now? History Comes Inside! posted:It’s entirely running on that inertia at this point and you can tell because everything else Rowling has tried to do has absolutely died on its rear end, even the stuff in the same universe which you’d think they’d go wild for. For sure, but that to me is also pretty... sad? Like the idea of people going apeshit for "british public school but with a bit of magic involved" is very depressing to me. Just play skyrim or something seriously, there are cooler settings and there must be better games mehcanically out there. Like if you know the author is a poo poo, why would you want to go to JK Rowlings Bad Politics Zone as your fantasy escapism? Cos the books absolutely replicate a bunch of monumentally miserable elements of real life pretty uncritically. For a franchise that trades on the setting, it has a woefully uninspiring setting. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 20:08
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There was a BBC His Dark Materials series that did the first three books. They did a pretty good job.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:10
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Both of Garth Nix's series are goated, Edge Chronicles is also goated.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:11
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OwlFancier posted:For sure, but that to me is also pretty... sad? Like the idea of people going apeshit for "british public school but with a bit of magic involved" is very depressing to me. Just play skyrim or something seriously, there are cooler settings and there must be better games mehcanically out there. Yeah it’s definitely something, but that’s more of an “ah well, the majority of people just have poo poo taste” thing more than anything. OwlFancier posted:
That’s my point though, the majority of them don’t care that it’s JK Rowling’s World of Wankery, they just really like the World of Wankery because it’s what they grew up reading. They’d like it just as much if it was written by literally anybody, the author doesn’t matter to them at all. History Comes Inside! fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 20:13
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