How nerdy are you?This week Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died. A whole generation of pasty dice-obsessed nerds owes him big time. Me included.
So, in his honour, how nerdy were you? Are you still sunlight-averse? What are the sad little things you do that nobody else understands?
As an example, a B3ta regular who shall remain nameless told us, "I spent an entire school summer holiday getting my BBC Model B computer to produce filthy stories from an extensive database of names, nouns, adjectives, stock phrases and deviant sexual practices. It revolutionised the porn magazine dirty letter writing industry for ever.
Revel in your own nerdiness.
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chthonic, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 10:32)
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I'm not defending LoTR from being by today's PC standards racist and sexistbecause back then PC didn't exist.
To blame it for either makes little sense. Imagine, if you will, that eating meat has become socially unacceptable in 40 year's time (and no, I'm not a veggie). It wouldn't make sense then to review stuff created today and say "oh, JK Rowling was at fault because they serve up lots of meat at Hogwarts". The same thing applies to LoTR and to the Narnia books.
So it doesn't make sense to criticise them by today's moral standards, but only as to whether they are well-written.
That in itself is difficult to quantify - well-written as in "highbrow" or well-written as in engaging enough to appeal to many people, which presumably is why anyone would write a book and then publish it ? The former, no, it almost certainly isn't. The latter, it obviously is.
Enzyme, by all means feel free not to like LoTR - it's not my favourite book either - but like I've said, it's nonsensical to apply today's moral judgements on something that was written in a completely different social environment. And trying to "PC-ize" published works is akin to Orwellian re-writing of history - something to be avoided at all costs.
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I_Was_Mordred, Fri 7 Mar 2008, 12:30,
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