polishgenius

Him letting Noel do what he did in the sandwich clip I put in the first post knowing full well what the second part of the task was is another. Not a man afraid of humiliation for the sake of entertainment.

I'm feeling a little for Sarah Kendall in the current series coz she seems to have cottoned on watching the other's attempts what the show is actually meant to be like and is having to spin that into a persona and use it as her bit in the studio bits. She's doing quite well to be fair, she's funny on the stage, but her live tasks so far have been largely dry.

Daisy May-Cooper was the worst part of both of these. Half the time she'd roll out not bothered, especially with the item task, other times she'd get over the top and seemingly genuinely peevish- and at one stage literally screamingly angry- over doing badly. She wasn't season-ruiningly bad but she was annoying. Ian Sterling was fun because he was similarly overly competitive during the tasks themselves, especially the team tasks when he could be unpleasant to his team, but then went through a week-by-week personal awakening that apparently his whole life he'd been a wanker while watching himself back on tape.

My favourite task so far is the exotic sandwich task in Noel Fielding and co's season. Lou Saunders is my favourite contestant I think. But been a few excellent ones. It definitely rests on the strengths of the cast obviously, but not been a season I've really not liked yet. DMC was the only contestant I really haven't liked but the rest of her season's cast was excellent and her petulant anger did have some moments too.

Shame. Shame. Shame. Wang's wang. That was an excellent season. Probably the most chaotic overall crew to date.

On the right board this time. Made in honour of the new season (featuring Lee Mack and other hapless funsters), airing now. For those already in the know, let's watch and laugh. For those not in the know, watch the first episode of the latest season below* (second one is also up) and join us in watching five entertainers perform some very random tasks like trained seals for the pleasure of ourselves but more importantly the judge, jury and executioner of the show, Greg Davies. And also watch the entire back catalogue, which is up (apart from one season I think) and is consistently hilarious. *if you're not in the UK. British lasses and lads you'll have to go to... more4 I think? Whatever the catchup service is called. But British lasses and lads presumably all already know if they like it or not. For those who want a shorter taster of what the show is like from an earlier season watch this legendary moment

I wouldn't start with Mort. It's not as out of whack from later tone as some of the other early ones but it's not really a great introduction to Death as we know him later. I started with Reaper Man and that's a great intro. I'd say that any book in between Wyrd Sisters and Small Gods (apart from Eric! which is crap) works quite well, really - it's the starting sweet-spot between him figuring out where he wants to take it and the self-referentiality and buildup of continuity (I actually don't particularly love Wyrd Sisters but I know I'm fairly minority in that view). I'd also say that once you start a sub-series you're probably fine continuing that one along to the end, though the wizards in particular tend to jump between them.

I mean if you're gonna insist on spaffing how arbitrarily sceptical you are over this over the enjoyment of a topic full of fans, you've got to be prepared for someone commenting that that's weird, dude. I read my first Bardugo the other week, not connected to this - Ninth House, a Yale-set horor type thing. I didn't love it coz the premise just really wasn't my thing, but it was well enough written that between that and an interesting trailer here I may well crack open the books and will give this show a try.

Some less-generally-discussed but worthwhile reads: Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, set in a future cape town. Big anticorporate focus in this one, follows four main characters through their dealing with how their shit world works. I tend to put Beukes on the Richard Morgan sort of level when she's writing this sort of thing, less flashy with her prose but more mature (Zoo City also has a very cyberpunk attitude but it's urban fantasy. Still a must-read though). She's since gone on to break out much more with a different style of book, supernatural murder thrillers, but don't write off her early work. Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, which is kinda cyberpunk-meets-space-opera. Not a classic of the genre but it's worth a read for anyone who thought Hannu Rajanemmi had some great ideas but could do with upping the noir and dialling down the utter madness, and anyone who enjoys Hairlock from Malazan. Should read the sequel which I forgot came out... Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge. Bit less noir than cyberpunk tends to be, less dystopian, but it has some of the same themes so I'm counting it. It's almost kinda like the book Ready Player One wanted to be and also has shades of the anime movie Summer Wars if anyone's seen that (you should it's cracking).

To be fair though Dance with Dragons took two and a half between the final revisions coming in and publication.

History is much more compressed in general in Kay's novels from my basic knowledge. Justinian is immediately succeeded by a Leo 3 analogue, who was nearly 200 years later in real life, and the end of the Reconquista over in 'Spain' took about ten-fifteen years rather than several hundred.

Fair nuff on all that. Didn't mean to insinuate you hadn't thought it through or anything and true, the selfpub market was way different then. But yeah, your perspective is defo different to the other two guys here.

Pat, consider that from your blog you were already a recognisable name in the fantasy scene when you went to publish your first novel so your experience and expectations might have been and still be a bit different to the majority who are not? Also consider that with your platform and some of the connections you got, if you went self-published or indie you'd still have a massive head start in promotional platform on almost any other selfpub writer, but whether you want to use that or not is your call I guess.

Yeah but it's not just the X-Men themselves, it's all mutantry. Prejudice against them just doesn't make sense in the context of the MCU, unless it also encompasses all other powers. I mean that was always somewhat a problem for the MCU anyway but it'll be a lot more glaring.

I'm still worried about how they're gonna introduce the X-Men at all. Like prejudice against them is obviously a key to their story, and in any case several of their characters make no sense if they're not long-established, but it just wouldn't make sense in the MCU as it stands. Wanda-ing them in seems the most likely option but I'm not sure I like it.

Hell, even that isn't always true. Raymond Chandler for example very specifically wrote detective stories where he thought scene and character were more important than plot. No-one was bothered by The Big Sleep... In terms of magic, although it does also very much depend on the author, I prefer my fantasy to be not too explained anyway. Tolkien rarely explains much even when he is explaining, so, ya know .

In their effect on the heroes they feel pretty much like a Nazgul prelude (which is what I meant by adjusting the threat - the bookends of the Bombadil sequence go from the grumpy-tree style folksy stuff in the Hobbit spirit that had been going on so far to a more soul-wearing, creepy threat. And as Helena says there's also the Dead Marshes and the Armies of the Dead, Tolkien loved his creepy dead stuff.

Obviously the way he talks is gonna infuriate some (most) people but the whole Tom Bombadil scene is a piece of genius for how it marks the last real interlude of whimsy and transitions the hobbits from facing silly (though real) threats to threats more in line with what Sauron will bring via the barrow-wights, all while also imparting information about the nature of the Ring and kitting the Hobbits out for their quest. Tolkien's use of rest stops to demarkate how serious things are getting throughout Fellowship in general is pretty great. He never really manages that again later in the book quite as smoothly.

Pfft. Single volume Malazan please, preferably with all of ICE's books included.

This is the thing really. While it's a terrible essay and the extent of Moorcock's criticism unfair, not everything he says about LotR is wrong. It's just that he skates over what could be interesting criticisms of the baked-in classism and a deeper engagement with some potentially fair points about how Tolkien's nostalgia for the green shire isn't based on genuine environmentalism but a simple fear of the modern (though in Epic Pooh itself Moorcock's framing of that argument is as pointlessly reductive as the position he's arguing against, what with him sneering at people who prefer to holiday in sunny countries). And he does that skating in order to give more space to petty criticisms of the writing and laughable misrepresentations of the 'happy' ending and what Tolkien really meant by escapism. In fact it's also pretty clear that not only has Moorcock not properly read LotR, he also hasn't properly read On Fairy-Stories, The fragment quoted from the essay is used to argue that Tolkien is saying pretty much the exact opposite of what that essay is actually about, especially when talking about escapism. When Tolkien says fairy stories are escapist, he is already countering the definition of escapism that Moorcock later used to try to slate him: Tolkien also at no point suggests that, even though he believes the happy ending is a necessary part of a true fairy story, sadness and loss shouldn't be present even at that ending. And hell, he isn't even talking about LotR there - all the essay is about is defining fairy stories as a narrative form, one that lotr by his own definition only parlty fits. There's lots of valid ways to criticise LotR and Tolkien, but constantly just referring back to Moorcock to do so just suggests a person doesn't really understand what they are at all.

That really isn't what the majority his problem with LotR was, which means that not only did you not understand Lord of the Rings, but you don't understand Epic Pooh either.

Imagine thinkin that Epic Pooh means anything. It's not even that all of its criticism of the politics embedded in LotR at some level are unfair, but it's a cowardly piece of work that, rather than actually seeking to highlight and refute those politics in any real way (which would have required really reading the book) it just tries to pick out fragments to prove he was a bad writer. I strongly suspect he actually came up with it with the Hobbit in mind (given his accusations of constant tweeness could be better levelled there and it is an essay otherwise aimed entirely at children's books anyway) but decided LotR was more relevant and splashy to criticise, regardless of whether his points (Tolkien doesn't engage with death, ffs what is that for a take) made sense.

I'm sorta with Vaughn tbh. Yes, GRRM writes friendships, but for me only really Jon and Sam struck home. It was one thing I thought the early parts of the show improved on. But I think my main problem with aSoIaF in terms of emotion is that by the last few books it felt like he was including shocking moments just to shock. Ned was stunning, Red Wedding made me put the book down for a bit, but after that most of the big shock moments felt a bit hollow.

I feel like there's similarities in that both are lower-key-magic (at least to an extent) series focusing more on politics and character development, but the manner in which they go about it is vastly different. I'm with Wert- if I was recommending more fantasy to a post-asoiaf newcomer to the genre I probably wouldn't send them to Hobb unless they had some specific tastes I knew about. I'd rec Abraham or Abercrombie first. But other people clearly have other experiences so who the fuck knows.

I find that the Sarantine Mosaic, as a whole, has a lot of Kay's best scenes in it but is just a little off with the overall structure, with the connective tissue between those scenes being a little thin compared to Al-Rassan or Under Heaven.