Pixel Scroll 6/6/16 You Don’t Send Me Pixels Anymore

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(1) MIDWIVES OF THE CURSED CHILD. In “Why J.K. Rowling Endorsed ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ for the Stage” the New York Times presents edited excerpts from a conversation between Colin Callender and Sonia Friedman, producers; Jack Thorne, the playwright; John Tiffany, director; Jamie Parker, who plays Harry; and Noma Dumezweni, who plays Hermione – in which they spoke “about everything but the plot.”

You both share story credit with J. K. Rowling. How did it work having three writers in the mix?

John Tiffany Jo Rowling was incredibly generous. I met her first, and I already had a soft spot for her because she used to write in the cafe of the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh when I was the director. It was only after the first book came out that I realized it had been her, nursing one cappuccino for four hours. When we met to talk about the play, she asked, “What do you think the Harry Potter stories are about?” I said, “Learning to deal with death and grief.” There was something in her eye — I thought, we didn’t say it’s about transformation or magic or flying on brooms, and we’re on the right track.

Thorne We all met in Edinburgh and as the day developed, we knew we would take the epilogue of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” as a starting point.

Tiffany All the seeds are there; we start with that scene in the train station. Am I allowed to say that? Anyway, it was clear that she was going to let us take those characters and have our own ideas.

Callender Of course, Jack came to the table with an encyclopedic knowledge of Harry, so that helped.

Thorne All right, I’m a nerd. With abandonment issues.

(2) YOUR NAME HERE. Cat Rambo tells how to win a Tuckerization in one of her stories.

This month my newsletter subscribers and Patreon supporters have a chance to win a Tuckerization in one of my stories. It’s not too late to get next week’s newsletter with details about how you can enter.

If you haven’t heard of a Tuckerization, that means you supply the name of one of the characters for a story – you may want to name them after yourself, a friend, or someone else you want to pay tribute to. I will offer you your choice of three possible genres, and do reserve the right to reject names that will not work with the story. In such cases I will work with you to find an acceptable name.

(3) SARKEESIAN. “Lingerie Is Not Armor” on Feminist Frequency, a video series is created by Anita Sarkeesian.

The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project aims to examine the plot devices and patterns most often associated with female characters in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective. This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.

Click here for the full transcript, links and resources for the episode.

(4) BEWARE SPOILERS. The latest installment of Slate’s series about the nastiest folk in Game of Thrones — “This Week’s Worst Person in Westeros: The High Sparrow”.

After each episode in Game of Thrones Season 6, we’ll be answering a crucial question: Who is currently the worst person in Westeros? This week, technology and culture writer Jacob Brogan is joined by Slate pop critic Jack Hamilton.

Brogan: Hi, Jack. Thanks for joining me to talk about “The Broken Man.” Last week, Dan Kois and I declared the waif the worst, with Dan going so far as to claim that she is, in fact, the worst person “in all episodes in which she appears.” While that’s a bold statement on a show that includes the (still mercifully absent) Ramsay Bolton, this episode went a long way toward proving Dan right. She shows up briefly, using mere seconds of screen time to repeatedly stab Arya in the stomach. While I have little doubt that the girl-formerly-known-as-the-girl-with-no-name will survive, I’m mostly looking forward to her doing a little stabbing of her own at this point.

(5) WORLDBUILDERS. The charitable fundraiser Geeks Doing Good 2016 is in full swing.

GDG-2016_mik3tc

Worldbuilders was founded in 2008 by New York Times bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss to bring the geek community together to make the world a better place. We work hard to raise money for reputable charities while giving back to the community who supports us with things like giveaways, auctions, and our online store.

To date, Worldbuilders has raised just shy of $5 million for charities like First Book, Mercy Corps, and Heifer International, and this year, we’re continuing  to expand our fundraising efforts.

In addition to our annual end-of-the-year fundraiser, we have another tradition: the week-long Geeks Doing Good summer campaign. This is different from our usual lottery and auction set up, where you might win fabulous prizes, or you pay top-dollar at auction for something rare or limited. Instead, for this summer fundraiser, we’ve taken the chance out of it.

When you donate during this Geeks Doing Good campaign, you are guaranteed to get the advertised reward. They’re affordable, they’re cool, and there’s no guesswork. You pledge at the soap level, you will get a bar of beautiful, handmade soap. Wha-BOOM! Hit in the face with Awesome!

 

(6) SHE REALLY DUG DINOSAURS. “Unearthing History: Mary Anning’s Hunt for Prehistoric Ocean Giants” from the Smithsonian Libraries Unbound blog.

You may not have realized it, but you’ve been acquainted with Mary Anning since you were young. “She sells sea shells by the sea shore.” Remember this grade school tongue-twister? What you probably didn’t know is that this nursery rhyme is based on a real person who not only sold seaside curiosities by the seashore, but became world renowned for her fossil discoveries.

(7) LEGACY. Steve Vertlieb invites people to enjoy his post “Careening Spaceships & Thundering Hooves’ … Children’s Television in the 1950s & The Legacy of Buster Crabbe”: “Here’s my affectionate remembrance of children’s television during the comparative innocence of the 1950’s, the early days of televised science fiction and cowboys upon a deeply impressionable young boy, and the towering influence of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Captain Gallant Of The Foreign Legion, all of whom both looked and sounded like the personification of celluloid heroism…Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe.”

When I was a little kid, prior to the Civil War, I had an imagination as fertile and as wide as my large brown eyes, dreamily filled with awe and wonder.  My dad brought home our first television set in 1950.  It was an old RCA Victor TV with a screen not much bigger than my youthful head, but I was glued to its black and white imagery like flies on butter.  I was but four years old. In those early days of television, programming didn’t even begin until late afternoon or the dinner hour, but I would sit in front of the little brown box staring longingly at the Indian head portrait frozen in Cathode promise.

(8) QUINNFUNDING. Jameson Quinn’s YouCaring appeal to fund his trip to MidAmerCon II has raised $580 of its $1400 goal at this writing.

For the past two years, a minority of slate nominators have managed to pick a majority of the Hugo finalists. Last year, I helped propose an improvement to the voting system, E Pluribus Hugo (EPH). I raised funds to attend Sasquan, and I was there to help explain the proposal, which passed the Business Meeting by a 3:1 margin after extensive debate; if we ratify it this year, we can start using it next year.

This year, my coauthor Bruce Schneier and I were given access to last year’s nomination data in order to see how EPH would have worked. We found that it would have helped significantly, ensuring that at least one nominee in each category was slate-free. But we also found that there would still have been several categories without a choice between two or more slate-free nominees.

There are several ways we could deal with this. We could use just EPH, and live with the possibility of only one slate-free nominee per category; we could strengthen slightly it using a proposal called EPH+, which would tend to raise that number to two; we could pass a proposal called 3SV, to allow voters to disqualify disruptive slate nominees before they become finalists; and there are other, related, proposals that have been floated. I believe that there will be at least two new proposals on the table this year, and I think that, as with last year, my voting systems expertise could be valuable in helping the Business Meeting understand the implications of these options and decide what to do.

So, again, I’m raising funds to go to Worldcon this year (MAC II). I’m also hoping to raise extra money for The Center for Election Science, an incorporated charitable organization which supports reforming election systems more generally. (I’m a board member for the CES, and of course I feel that we do good, important work.)

(9) ART SHOW There’s been some discussion of Arisia 2017’s art show space and pricing policies.

Applications for space in the 2017 art show are now open.

New for Arisia 2017, we will be allocating space by lottery. More information is available on the reservations page.

Unlike most other science fiction convention art shows, sales at Arisia 2017 will be at fixed price only.

Since I don’t know the answer I thought I’d throw open the question – are these policies unusual, or increasingly common?

(10) TENTACLE TIME. Gamespot’s introduction to a new Independence Day TV commercial points out a fresh alien image:

It might have taken twenty years, but the sequel to ’90s blockbuster Independence Day finally hits cinemas in a few weeks. Independence Day: Resurgence sees the human race once again forced to defend itself against extra-terrestrial invaders, and the latest TV spot provides a first look at the aliens’ queen.

 

(11) TART SENTIMENTS. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dead Horses is keeping an eye on Indiana Jim.

https://twitter.com/SurviveStarWars/status/739934152305168384

https://twitter.com/SurviveStarWars/status/739934881648496640

(12) THE LUCHA LIBRE APPROACH TO SCHOLARSHIP. “Mexican ‘Spider-Man’ weaves web of knowledge for science students” – Reuters has the story.

A Mexican science teacher has come up with a novel way to get his students’ attention – giving lessons dressed as Spider-Man.

Moises Vazquez, 26, said he was inspired to pull on the tight blue and red suit of the superhero after reading in comics that the Marvel character behind the mask, Peter Parker, worked as a science teacher after his time as a freelance photographer.

“I do the same job as anyone else, I don’t think it’s the best class in the world just because I put on a suit. But I assure you I want to be the most honest and dedicated there is, I just want to make the classroom a better place,” he said…

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Steven H Silver, Martin Morse Wooster, Dave Doering, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John M. Cowan.]

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142 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/6/16 You Don’t Send Me Pixels Anymore”

  3. I just want to make the classroom a better place,” he said…

    There’s a photo of my aunt Imelda dancing on the window sill of her class, because she told her students she would do that if they all passed an upcoming test, and they did.

  6. (10) The more trailers I see, the more I think Resurgence is going to be bigger, dumber, and rubber-science-y than the first.

    Oh well. I’ll use up my entire popcorn allocation for the year when I go see it.

  8. @snowcrash thank you, I lost my bookmark for that a few months ago when my computer went boom. (The hamster inside the tower died or something, I’m no expert)

  9. (6) SHE REALLY DUG DINOSAURS

    Anning gets name checked in The Laundry series by Stross, with the codewords Anning Blue Skull and Anning Black for the Elder Things and their squamous servants.

  12. “Mexican Spider-Man” is actually quite offensive to people familiar with it as a sexual position.

    Anning gets name checked in The Laundry series by Stross, with the codewords Anning Blue Skull and Anning Black for the Elder Things and their squamous servants.

    Also been name checked here on File770.

    (Also Mark-check-marked there, I see.)

  18. @Hypnotosov

    Can we get Jeffro and the Pundit in the same room?

    I have to say I’ve not seen the sort of Appendix N purism in OSR that he’s claiming. Mind you, I don’t go too deeply into OSR, so I may just not have encountered it – my group tend to only look at OSR games for the occasional inspired mechanic to jam into our system, which used to be 3rd Ed and is now some sort of hacked-up monster.

  19. I was particularly disappointed by the delivery of There has Been Nothing Written Worth Reading Since 1975 Appendix N by Hilary Savage Jethro Johnson in the Hugo pack. Couldn’t even be bothered to turn it into a file for reading offline. Just an ePub of links that my Kobo can’t follow. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

  21. (too late to edit)
    And I’m sure that’s JJ sending over a link to a blog page rather than putting in sixty minutes work with Sigil or equivalent rather than Hilary Savage being an awful person.

    Still enough to shift from bottom of the ballot to below No Award.

  22. @Hypnotosov
    The link you gave seems more like an attack on this James Maliszewski person. Quick scanning of things leads to Kickstarter drama.
    I’m not saying that the author does not have a point regarding N, just that their actual point seems to be that “JMal” is a nogoodnick.

  24. @9: Most of the shows I’ve seen allow artists to set an immediate-sale price; Wiscon has even allowed people buying at those prices to take the art away before the show is over. Live auctions have also been fading; I know of shows that don’t schedule one at all, but have on-site showdowns if a work gets some (predefined) large number of bids. However — I also don’t get around as much as I used to, but I’ve certainly never heard of a convention completely dropping the silent auction. It will be interesting to see what happens, especially when added to the >>hour waits to register last year (so everyone could read and e-sign a conduct policy before getting their badge), although Arisia is so big it can probably survive annoying away some attendees.

  27. aaaaannnd — it looks like I wasn’t paying attention after finishing setup (which I did at Wiscon 2000-2014). Their website says

    The Art Show operates like a gallery or store. It’s open for viewing only on Friday evening. Starting on Saturday morning, if you want a piece, you can buy it.

    I can see this reducing paperwork, and maybe even speeding up payment of artists (although maybe not to Picacio’s demand of payment when the show closes). I haven’t been monitoring Arisia artshow bid sheets; they may have decided they weren’t getting enough action to make the traditional complication worthwhile.

    I remember when Sean Spacher was notorious for deliberately setting low starting prices on his pieces, and most artists who spoke up claimed they got better prices in the frenzy of live auctions (and an auction was a centerpiece of Boskone programming — boy, am I dating myself…). I wonder whether this is another aspect of the graying of fan-run con attendees — people making fixed decisions instead of chasing pieces? — although I wouldn’t have guessed that Arisia is graying much.

  28. (9) – I have no idea how prevalent this is nowadays, but the Art Show was where I cut my teeth at conventions. From set-up\tear-down, security, art runner during auctions, and finally running one at a Con. I have done every job outside of Auctioneer (I’ve worked with some great ones, never needed to do this part) and Artist.
    While I am sad to see this, and will be more sad if this is the current state of things, I had seen the writing on the wall by the early-2000s. Art prints, once a tiny section of the Art Show, started showing up on the walls to be bid upon. The print-to-original ratio being sent by larger artists became the new print-to-old print ratio. By the time I stopped attending Cons regularly, you could tell which artists were local\attending by which pieces were originals.

    Wow. That came out more maudlin than I expected.

  29. Just felt like shouting Fifth in a crowded scroll.

    Shouting “Pixel” in a crowded Scroll.

  30. (9) I feel like I’m missing something, what part of those policies is considered new/causing discussion? The lack of silent auction?

  35. Is that covered by the Pixelth Amendment to the Scroll Constitution?

  38. I went out to the pixeled wood,
    Because a fifth was in my head,
    And cut and peeled a pixel wand,
    And ticked a comment in the thread.

  39. The BFA has an excellent shortlist. Especially the Comics/Graphic Novel category.

  40. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a pixel in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a scroll.

  41. Current Reading: the first Felix Castor novel, The Devil You Know. Mike (M R) Carey’s novel length debut captures the inner London suburbs nicely, the tension in the rows of terraced houses and the slightly grimy nature of city life. There are glimpses of where his work is going to go, even if Felix Castor is a slightly less morose version of John Constantine…

  42. In a scroll in the ground there lived a pixel.

    In Hugo-related stuff, I’ve been reading a little in There will be War, in particular the rabid-nominated “Seven kill tiger”. I am no longer surprised that Jerry Pournelle considered that publisher a swell guy to hook up with.
    (And boy, is that story box-checking message fiction.)

  44. Scrolled pixels are all alike; every unscrolled pixel is unscrolled in its own way.

  45. Let’s not forget Pink Floyd’s classic “Several Species of SF News Stories Gathered Together in a Scroll and Grooving with a Pixel”…

  46. But, hard! what pixel through yonder scroll breaks?

    With apologies to Dr Tingle and some english bloke.

  48. @johan. I haven’t read the story or the anthology. What boxes does it check?

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