thread: 2009-01-13 : Storming the Wizard's Tower ... in SPAAACE
On 2009-01-16, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
Hi Ralph,
Thanks for replying.
I am about to bend the thread to the breaking point, but I did want to reply.
What I just learned, again, is all the ways people have different temperaments. (Or Humours. Or glands. Or deamons that haunt us. Or whatever the hell it is that make us each see the world differently!)
Reading your post made me realize I'm really not a Fan of anything. Or rather, I am a fan of specific executions, but not loyal to any specific character or setting of fiction. (I never knew this before.)
I have no specific concerns about how Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man, or Luke Skywalker are portrayed—except to the degree that I'm either engaged with a particular project or not.
I think the Bob Kane Detective Comics Batman is a thing of cartoon wonder—the lines are clean, the stories fun and goofy. Batman and Robin seem to be having a grand time. Seen from a certain perspective, Frank Miller's Dark Knight is a complete fuck up of the characters and their world. Batman is a miserable freak, Robin becomes a girl, Batman is training a team to do his bidding, and if I remember correctly, manages to get a cop killed with one of his own booby traps—which is SO not Batman. But... I liked it. The creator said, "I want to take this Raw Material and handle it this way." And I liked what he did. And that's pretty much how I am in every case. Did I like what someone did with their version or not.
I capped Raw Material, because I want to point out that's how I see all this. Fictional material to me has no solid form. It exists only ephemerally—only given form in a specific execution or telling. To me (and I say this only to explain how I see things, not as a corrective to anyone), there is no Luke Skywalker or Starbuck outside of a specific execution, so there is nothing to protect. If that horrible Richard Gere Lancelot movie exists, it's all right, because the Malory is still there. Both T.H. White and Stienbeck tell their own versions of Arthurian legends, and I'm richer for it. But if there's any comparison to be done, it's because three versions I like refract back and forth on each other because I'm doing the refracting. In how I see things, the different works have no bearing on each other until I decide to look at how they are similar or different. But that is only after I've experienced them as their unique expression and decided I like this particular work of whatever, or not. But one never can obliterate or tarnish the other. The works are what matter, not a fictional echo that exists outside the telling.
So, I am fannish about the specific telling of a tale ("You You must see Dexter I tell people. But I have no attachment or protective juices about Dexter outside of his character fitting a show that works amazingly well as a whole. If someone, ten years from now, remakes Dexter in an utterly new fashion, well, then, I'll decide if I think the whole is good or not. And that's that.
I think this matter does touch on gaming matters, however, it it comes closes in the following point:
You state, correctly, that the OBSG was a buddy show. This is true. And here's the thing. That never mattered to me. When I read that in your post I went. "Wow. Right. I never noticed that. They really did rip that out of the new BSG."
Because here's the thing. When I saw the OBSG I saw completely different things. As a kid watching it, the thing that struck me most was this: "Someone betrayed the fucking human race! What the hell is THAT about!"
The one thing that has stayed with me—for years—is that image of Baltar before the thrones of those insect/alien/whatevers (the things that controlled the cylons) with his reward (his 30 pieces of silver, almost literally, if I recall.) The hollowness in the actor's eyes was amazing—you could just seem him realizing what had seemed like a good idea—wasn't—and there was no going back.
There was, at least to my young eyes, a kind of shuddering darkness in that moment. And that, to me was what the series was going to be and the series I wanted.
And then we ended up going to Casino Planets.
I gave up after a while. I couldn't figure out why they were still looking for Earth if there were so many hospitable planets lying around. I couldn't figure out why the Cylons were still after them—not in any way that seemed as engaging as that moment with Baltar. So I stopped watching.
So, let me be clear. I wasn't particularly interested in the execution of the OBSG. But I did like the ideas floating around in there.
When Ron Moore and his team rebuilt the show (again, no different than with what Frank Miller did with Bob Kane's Batman) I was watching the first couple of hours and thought, "He took all the stuff I wanted to see as kid: the thematic content, the stress of the situation, the emotional mess, and made the show about that."
The new BSG is the BSG I'd always wanted. Because Bob Kane's Batman isn't Batman. It was a specific telling of comic book panels containing a guy called Batman. Frank Miller created another set of panels with a guy called Batman.
Each guy executed something specific and unique, and one can reflect upon the other if a reader wants to do that, but not because it has to be done. That would only have to happen if there was a Batman that had been taffy-pulled between the two versions. But there isn't. There is no Batman. There's just—to me—specific stories about a guy named Batman.
But, all that said, Ralph you've made me understand how my view is alien to lots and lots of folks. And as a writer, that's a really important thing for me to know. So thank you.
