Carbomb

I was never young enough to read them as a kid, so I'm automatically at a disadvantage by that metric. There's plenty of kids'/YA literature I did grow up with that I can compare them to unfavourably in terms of their construction, even if they're a little dated and a bit more problematic, like Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Hobbit, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, and The Chronicles of Narnia, but BomberPat already raised the best example, which is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Less accessible to small kids, but for a ten or twelve year-old, no fucking comparison - and they're the gift that keeps on giving as you get older. Only other series I can think of that's comparable in that regard is Asterix.

FUCKING YES. Fantasy and sci-fi make up the bulk of my reading, and the Potter series just comes across as derivative as hell, nothing original or inventive at all. Obviously, there's a reason they've done well, and I reckon it's because she did a decent job of making the characters seem comparatively more realistic and relatable to the reader than your average fantasy character, which is usually quite heightened and theatrical. It does bug me just how undersung LeGuin is regarding Earthsea - I remember the whole to-do when the TV series got made and she disowned it because they'd cast all the main characters as white.

Yup. Same with East Asian representation - before Bruce Lee emerged as a self-realised, potent model of an Asian identity, the only representations ever presented in the West who had agency and prominence were either Fu Manchu (a completely Western-created and racist model, and mostly played by white men on screen) or Charlie Chan (equally racist in presentation, and partly Asian-American-realised, but played by a white man). Other than that, Asians were portrayed as impotent/childlike figures, like Mickey Rooney's really rather horrendous portrayal in Breakfast At Tiffany's.

She's always done that, I think. I also remember someone some years ago calling her out about her claims that Dumbledore was gay, effectively saying that if it's never represented in the story, it's not representation.

Given what we know about his insecurities about only ever being successful in wrestling and no other business, I'd fucking love it if he started up another promotion and it bombed, leaving the vile old cunt completely pruned. Especially if it lost him a ton of cash. (Not that any of this will happen, of course.)

Seems to me that the shape the industry's in is probably the best it's been for wrestlers since the territory days - if a worker gets cut from WWE, they don't have to go to AEW: there are also the options of TNA, NWA, MLW, AAA, CMLL, and NJPW for those looking for middling-but-acceptable paydays in wrestling. If you're a jobber, you have the indie circuit and the smaller Japanese promotions as well. Also, the TV and film industries are good places for goon/henchman gigs.

What's also a bit mystifying is that, with Age of Sigmar and the introduction of Fantasy Space Marine cash-insStormcast Eternals, that has extensive artwork depicting women Eternals, you'd think there'd be a bit more acceptance of the idea.

Presumably the introduction of the Primaris Marines they had an opportunity to switch the lore up canonically. 's what I would've done to shut the Well-Actuallies up.

I can't point to anyone off the top of my head, but I've seen quite a few people on various commentaries, on here, on other online platforms - admittedly, these are all fans at the end of the day, so it would all have to be taken with a pinch of salt. It never occurred to me that Savage was ever on Hogan's level until I saw this many people saying it. Would he not have been given the same push if Hogan wasn't around? I genuinely can't think of anyone in the WWF at the time who would've enjoyed the same kind of attention and popularity - Andre was on the tail end of his career, Piper was great but better suited to heeldom at the time, and most of the other faces at the time were fun but not exactly main-event.

A thought occurs: if AWA had kept Hogan, or he'd gone to JCP, might the WWF have been able to do well with Randy Savage in the same spot? It's often been stated that the only reason he wasn't the guy in the Fed was Hogan, and that he was just as over, just as charismatic, just as capable of milestone matches, and had just as memorable a gimmick. What would the MTV/Rock n' Wrestling era have looked like with Macho Man at the forefront of it instead of Hogan? Obviously, this changes the nature of the original question somewhat, because it would have to assume that Vince did still do what he did, utilising TV and culture in the way that he did.

It's amazing how many GW fans never question the fact that the overwhelming majority of characters in the 40K universe are male. If you can accept that the Sisters of Battle exist, surely it's not such a fucking stretch to think there might be female Space Marines and Custodes? No, that's this place.

Looking forward to Wednesday morning.

Now that you mention it, I think someone mentioned something related to that, possibly Heenan: that Verne, finally capitulating grudgingly to the idea of making Hogan the main guy, offered to making him champ, but also wanted the AWA to essentially be his agent, claiming half his earnings for whatever he did, which just further cements how brainless their mindset was. This guy would've made them the premier brand in wrestling, drawing them a ton of cash to the point where they wouldn't have needed to take any commission off him. It just comes across like a small-minded, controlling, grasping promoter's attitude.

It's interesting to read that there's confidence that the AWA might have been it if the WWF hadn't. Presumably because there would've been no other competitor to lure Hogan away? I watched a few shoot interview clips recently, like Bobby Heenan's, Beefcake's, Jesse Ventura's, and Greg Gagne's, regarding Hogan's jump to the WWF, and, with the exception of Gagne, they all appear to be of the opinion that Verne Gagne shat the bed when it came to Hogan, and that his promise to make Hogan the man simply came far too late. They all claim that Gagne was just too narrow-minded, sticking to his vision of what wrestling should be, which constituted an outdated, boring style of wrestling to the emergent crowds of the time, and that he felt Hogan and his character flew in the face of that.

Title of the UKFF's collaborative music project album right there

It's from drag - to "serve" means to present a stylish look e.g. "to serve 1960s boho chic" or "to serve classic Hollywood glamour". "Cunt" usually means "glamorous feminine beauty". Used a fair bit in Drag Race.

Racist

The Doctor is a regenerating alien who travels through time and space, and has seen all sorts of societies and worlds across countless locations, eras, and dimensions. Only issue I have with the casting of the show is when they had James fucking Corden as a companion. There's only one, minor thing I want with the castings of Gatwa and Whittaker, which is just a bit of tidying up in the storyline. If the Doctor can regenerate into anything, why have they been white, presumably straight, human males for the first 13 cycles? If they could explain it in canon just as something like "the reason why it's been believed to be thirteen regenerations only is because, in actuality, any regeneration past the thirteenth is, because of genetics, completely down to the choice of the individual and beyond anyone else's control, so the bastard Timelords do a bit of a Logan's Run and kill off anyone at the end of their thirteenth regeneration with an implant - and as the Timelords were out of the picture for so long, the Doctor's implant was never maintained and eventually destroyed by all the shit he's been through". Something like that.

Many happy returns, Dev

Carry-On Kross

Sorry, missed this. It is an issue for some, hence why I mentioned the commentary - there are quite a few people of colour who've mentioned it, both online and in the public domain in general, and also personal acquaintances. I don't know how large a group they are, but I definitely know this is considered a legitimate concern, largely started by the frequent discussion of Idris Elba being cast in the role; there is a well-stated concern that that particular issue could be "rehabbed", and end up silencing wider discourse (this is legit usage of the word, nobody @ me) on the highly problematic nature of James Bond as a property in general, and the unaddressed continuation of it.

Oh, believe me: I am not far from where you are. My mental health has taken a constant battering from the political situation for the last decade or so. Tories, Brexit as driven by the racist right wing (as opposed to Lexiters), Farage, Johnson, Trump, Ben Shapiro and his ilk, Thomas Sowell and his lies by distortion, the betrayal of Corbyn, GBNews, COVID, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, TERFs, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, it's just been one long litany of shit. Despite my frequent rants on here, there have been so many times I've just wanted to turtle up, and not engage with anything at all except ordinary, everyday life because it's so much less exhausting and depressing than having to re-litigate stuff that my dad and his generation had to in the fucking 60s. Sure, I don't have to deal with the "No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish" signs, but the kind of cunt that used to defend that shit has just taken on a different form now.

In fairness, there's quite a bit of commentary from people of colour as to why Bond shouldn't be played by a black person, because it ends up glossing over a certain political uncomfortability: that James Bond, as a spy for a Western government and the world's former foremost imperial power, is only able to be effective as a white, middle class, Anglophone man, and as such is of the one demographic that can go anywhere in the world and mingle with any level of wealth or power without his presence being questioned at all. EDIT: @wordsfromlee - thanks, genuinely didn't know that. Feel like my misheard lyric makes more sense though.

Well, he did compare a woman to a kiss from a rose on the grave, can't get more Shakespearean than that

'tis but a fiction. The role canst be caste however thou fucking want.