Random Thought Thread

I managed to skip that problem in my first novel, with 3 MCs. Granted the gaps between planets are a bit longer
than a boat ride down river. Saved by the time/space jumps between things of importance.

 

Yeah, I considered just doing a jump-cut to their arrival, but the thing is this is at the beginning of a chapter that opens ~4 years after the end of the last chapter. So we do need some time to check in on everyone, see how they're doing etc. Otherwise it would be like "oh now they're in a totally different place, doing different things, wait what happened".

Plus there are some key world-building beats I need to hit along the way...I dunno, I think I can make it not-dumb. Maybe I'll shop it around here for a sanity check as soon as it's respectable (ie years from now).

 

A nap with some interesting dreams or an unexpected event. Huck Fin and Tom Sawyer had many unexpected events on their trip downriver.

 

Don't get me wrong, I liked the first book well enough (haven't actually gotten around to the second, or the partial third). It just didn't immediately grip me and I didn't adore it.

But it no way is anything less than a good book. I just found it rather quaint. I just was hoping to be ardently in love with it, but I was simply pleasantly entertained.

Now the series is not even an adaptation for the books to my mind. It's actually a totally different beast altogether.

So it's not so much that the show is a better Dirk Gently than Adams's stories—it's something else entirely that just happens to have the same name and a bit of the premise.

It's like my feelings towards Howl's Moving Castle as Ghibli animation and Diana Wynne Jones children's book: they're both brilliant in their own ways but are not the same story at all. And the fact that I love the book better than the film does not detract from my love of the film. It's like eating an apple and eating nashi; sure on the surface they look an awful lot alike, but they're still very different fruit. And my love of nashi does not mean I don't thoroughly enjoy apples.


So I do in fact love the BBC America Dirk Gently series far more than I love Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently novel(s), but I don't think Adams's novels are any less because of my preference.

But I definitely feel an uncomfortable guilt at the fact that I love this show more than I love his book(s). So maybe I'm just panic rationalising to myself. . .

But have you seen the use of colour? The vibrant primaries & secondaries popping both casually yet defiantly out of the muted mundane shades & hues of everyday life? The conscious colour palette of each scene meticulously working in conjunction with the staging & the lighting to intensify both the humdrum & the absurd? I mean it isn't award winning artistry but I'll be damned if it doesn't make me giddy. It makes me think of the more absolutely brilliant uses of colour in Vertigo and in Contempt, that while it isn't anywhere to those levels the underlying associations in my mind serves to reinforce my admiration.

But I'm no film major, so what do I really know? (>_<)

Edit: The above was not meant sarcastically. I've honestly little to no experience with film & cinematography. I'm only an admiring and voracious viewer thereof. Sorry if it was obvious, but I'm so frequently accused of having a tone in text I never intended that I wanted to be sure I wasn't coming off as a smart ass

 

Doesn't it piss you off when your MCs contact gets shot with a rail-gun, before they get to
speak with them? It sure is a pain in the ass trying to keep them alive long enough to share
their information.

 

The most epic gun in history.

Spoiler

 

Just enough to trigger a felony charge, but not enough to take down a medium-sized cockroach.

I love it!

Counterpoint, the LeMat" a .42 cal cap and ball revolver with a 20ga. shotgun barrel underneath.

 

That would make a mess in duel.

 

No problem... I think if you have an opinion, state it boldly... or as my old man used to say, "Son, even when you're hopelessly lost, walk with great purpose."

That said, I don't think the books adapted as written would work particularly well on the small screen. I do like the actors they've chosen for the tv series, though they are nothing much like their counterparts in the books. The few episodes I've watched are a bit bouncy, for lack of a better description. But a fun show to sit down with. It's sort of like, 'Fight Club'... one of my favorite all time books and the movie version. Sort of different animals, but both well done. In fact if I'm not mistaken, even Chuck Palahniuk who wrote the book thought the movie was better... as did I.

Yes, I noticed the use of bright colors against washed out backgrounds. It's definitely effective.
For me, it's the underlying theme of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things and how absurdly clues come together to solve a crime he didn't know he was solving. It's also a very good lesson in plotting out our own stories, and not being so dead-focused and tied to an outline. You let the story brew some, let the characters you create take it in directions you never imagined.

What I like most about the character of Dirk Gently is his unwarranted confidence. In him, I find a kindred spirit.

 

The Great French Duel, by Mark Twain

 

I only just started/finished the first series of DGHDA and only the one viewing so far. I'll have a better grasp & analysis probably my second run through (which is inevitable because my friends seem to think film & television is solely a communal experience so it becomes incumbent upon me to watch through each movie & show in their entirety with them—generally individually).

But I think what I liked best about the colours was the focus on primaries in the beginning episodes:


Red, yellow, and blue all accounted for—generally at their most vibrant, somewhere in the scene, either by costuming or by props or by set design or usually a combination.

Then, as the series progresses, it starts becoming a mix of two primaries and it's secondary:


The one that readily comes to mind was the frequent blue, yellow, and green in quite a few scenes.

Then, as the show progresses, the colours subtly become further from primaries, less vibrant, and distinctly more muted or washed out. This is the most obvious in Dirk's wardrobe, as he was the most vibrant thing on screen at any given time (and I mean that in every sense of the word) while Todd even at his brightest was still an understated sort of colour.

I theorise the gradual abatement of colour coincides with the characters' change in attitudes, but I haven't any definitive evidence as of yet. It could be as simply as as the tone of the series becoming darker & more serious, the colour palette adjusted to match. But I feel such a strong connection between Dirk's wardrobe & his energy & confidence that I feel instinctively it has to be more & other.

I think I really do love the hollistic assassin addition, but I definitely am wary of & ready to intensely dislike the whole big bad CIA conspiracy or creation or experimentation of the special individuals.

It's just so American & Hollywood at its most basic and predictable and repetitive. I don't need some grandiose backstory or plot point to unravel. I'm okay with eccentric characters with questionable abilities, without complex explanations or explorations of their origins.

But then I'm in the minority, because audiences must eat it up or else why would Hollywood & American television regurgitate it everywhere in everything.

 

@Iain Aschendale That was a hell of an ordeal.
Thanks for that this morning.

 

Just bought Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch. Good-bye any form of adulting possible.

 

Hollywood, and for that matter the American audience aren't interested in anything too deep.
The last Hollywood movie I watched was The Martian, which was pretty good. But it wasn't like it made me think or stuck with me after the watching.

I tend to view odd foreign movies, the ones with (gasp) subtitles! I last saw Hard to Be a God, about a small band of astronauts sent to nudge the inhabitants of a planet stuck in the Dark Ages to a renaissance of sorts... an age of enlightenment. The main character is supposed to stay clear of politics and bloodshed... but what fun is that? He knows that before enlightenment there's a butcher's bill to pay. The movie is very Eastern European/Russian in flavor, dark and gloomy, with not even the pretense of hope. No primary colors in this one. It's black and white and gray.

 

So I accomplished very little of what I wanted to do today, and I've been beating myself up for it, but I just realized that getting news of the death of an old friend grants me a partial exemption for the day.

Vacuumed at least.

And remembered to get drunk.

 

You know my friends plan to celebrate someone's 27th birthday by building a blanket fort in their flat and marathoning a Korean drama, everyone donning matching PJs & junking out.

We've got computer & game programmers, a disability assistant, and I'll be working at a law firm as something akin to a Copy Editor. We pay our bills, bought our own cars, et cetera.

None of us know how to "adult."

Go ahead and just enjoy yourself〜

See, I too enjoy a generic mindless blockbusters. It's like how I occasionally enjoy candy or love deserts. Sure, there is absolutely no nutritional value to skittles nor can a person live continously on triple chocolate cake, but it is absolutely delectable & enjoyable upon occasion & even consumed in excess every now & again.

There is absolutely nothing provocative or intellectually engaging in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the cinematography of the smooth pan in conjunction to the fluid choreography of the infiltration/fight sequence on the ship was an immense pleasure. And Napolean Dynamite's long shot of Pedro's "sick jump" followed with the shakey zoom on Napolean's reaction was perfection, but the film was in no way groundbreaking.

Sometimes one can find themselves in the mood for binging on junk, and that's okay.

But I definitely enjoy real artistry & meaning in films too. I watch foreign films also—but they might be just as empty & fun as blockbusters, while others can be deeper.

Он • дракон is just a pretty fantasy romance while La Belle et la Bête (2014) is merely a breathtakingly gorgeous one. Neither are anything like A Man Called Ove or even Hiroshima Mon Amour.

And sometimes I just like that easy middle ground, where there's just enough detail to pick at but nothing too deep, like with Dirk Gently, or even better yet the film Penelope.

Is Penelope a simple surface-level feel good movie? Hell yes. Do I also like to dissect it on occasion as a retelling of Homer's The Odyssey and consider the ramifications of combining Odysseus, Telemachus, and Penelope into one heroine? Absolutely. Doesn't really make the story that particularly deep, but it does make it a bit more fun to engage with.

But I'm also the sort of person to love both Shakespeare and Saturday morning cartoons, so〜

 

Not even the theme about how easy it is for well-intentioned paranoia to be exploited by others more malicious than oneself?

"Project INSIGHT was Director Fury's idea, Captain."

 

I don't think it was particularly thought provoking, but I definitely enjoyed it's themes.

It's by far my favourite MCU film all across the board, from the writing, cinematography, acting & cast, etc.

And I've never been a big fan of Captain America, so I feel that speaks volumes to its overall excellence.

But I've been called a film & literature snob frequently(dismissive even of what I myself enjoy), so I might have irrationally high expectations.

 

I woke from a nap and checked my phone to find two missed calls... both from Tunisia

I have no idea where Tunisia is, but I know enough to know it's a rather strange place to be receiving calls from.

 

Yes, just done a bit of digging. Apparently they only let it ring once, to help ensure you get a 'missed call' and then call back out of curiosity without noticing or checking where it came from. The call will be premium rate of which the scammers get a portion.

 

Thank you. I shall enjoy myself gloriously!!

@OurJud -- That reminds me of the infamous "Nigerian Prince" email scams. For the unaware: Nigeria isn't a monarchy.

 

And I thought sorting through my books for the move was tough.

First, how did you organise this, obaachan? You didn't even put the volumes of the same books together.

Has anyone ever tried to pick what books to keep for someone else?

Basically I'm just looking at the quality of the book & trying to judge which ones haven't been touched, which ones have been worn with repetitive reading, which ones have been carelessly shoved in bags for one time reads on trains or vacations, et cetera.

She seems to prefer murder mysteries and psychological thrillers, with a few SF for good measure. But I've honestly read less than 1% of these books & recognise a handful of titles of those I hadn't read, so I have absolutely no ideas which ones are good.

 

That's only because selfish Westerners like you won't contribute the minor sums necessary to restore His Excellency to His Rihgtfull Place upon the Throme!