The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXXI

[caketastydelish]

I am looking for a music video which was released in the early 1990's. If I recall correctly there is two young men in the video, one of them playing acoustic guitar the other singing. I want to say it was a cover of a 1970's song. The cover was a hit, or at least got critically good reviews. Anyone know what I'm referring to?

 

[shadowplay]

Did they look like 80's leftovers, or did they come across as part of the post-Nirvana wave?

 

[shadowplay]

?

 

[caketastydelish]

I am fairly certain this was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is a question I was asked recently.

Why do people like anything that's made by Joss Whedon?

That's an excellent question. I love Firefly. I can't stand the rest of it.

But then I was a Nathan Fillion fan back when he played Joey Buchanan on the soap opera One Life to Live.

I also don't understand what sort of name "Joss" is.

It could be short for "Jocelyn"... which is considered a female name now, but in the past it was occasionally used for males.

Question for progressives: can someone transition to a different race or species? If not, how do they differ from gender-transitions?

(Not trying to be contentious here, I'm just interested in the answer.)

Contre has a thread here in OT on transitioning from male to female.

For the rest of your question, for a human to become a different species, you have to somehow end up in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or Star Trek: Voyager... or almost any other episode of the Pertwee/Baker era of Classic Doctor Who. Beware, though; in those cases humans were usually changed into plants.

 

[Snerk]

Has Steam workshop been released for Civ6 yet? If not, when is it coming? Answer pls!

 

[Farm Boy]

Nice shot, Shadowplay!

 

[warpus]

He claimed to have a disease which turned his skin white. IMHO, he was skin bleaching.

Here's the problem with changing races. There are IIRC 17 genetic markers which biologically determine race. People can have them in any combination. If you have 16 white and 1 black, you're going to look white. If you have 15 black and 2 white, you're going to look black. But how many to you need to switch in order to transition?

Legally, it's a whole new kettle of fish. States' Jim Crow laws differed. IIRC, in one state, if you were 1/64 black, you were black. In another if you were 1/64 white you were white. In another, you had to be 33/64 white in order to be white. Nowadays,, I don't believe there's a legal definition.

The larger question is should it makkter. Shouldn't people be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin?

Can biology determine race, when race is a social construct and not a biological one? Or is it both?

 

[Mouthwash]

Contre has a thread here in OT on transitioning from male to female.

Yeah, so?

 

[Takhisis]

You might not understand this, but Valka appears to be recommending that you check the thread out.

 

[EgonSpengler]

This is a question I was asked recently.

Why do people like anything that's made by Joss Whedon?

Joss Whedon is great at character creation, from what I've seen anyway. I've met plenty of people who disliked Buffy, Alien: Resurrection, etc. though so I don't think the question stands up to scrutiny.

He writes accessibly relatable characters, he knows how to mix action and narrative, and he's got an ear for dialogue with falling into self-indulgence.

I wonder how much Whedon can now be counted among the people whose work, in a strange way, hasn't aged well precisely because it's been so influential and so widely copied. Like wondering what's so special about Citizen Kane. Whedon's snarky, snappy dialogue and ability to upend genre conventions isn't so unusual today, in part because he did it so well. Buffy is 20 years old, Angel is 18 years old, and Firefly is 15 years old. There are college kids today who were too young to watch Buffy when it aired, and you can find any number of things that are the children (or grandchildren) of those shows. Just off the top of my head, Once Upon a Time, Supergirl, The 100, and iZombie are all daughters of Buffy. Former members of the Mutant Enemy writers room have written for Spartacus, Battlestar Galactica, Daredevil, Warehouse 13, Grimm, Gilmore Girls, American Horror Story, UnReal, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and Pushing Daisies.

 

[Takhisis]

I wonder how much Whedon can now be counted among the people whose work, in a strange way, hasn't aged well precisely because it's been so influential and so widely copied.

Off the top of my head, Seinfeld and Friends.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Joss Whedon is great at character creation, from what I've seen anyway. I've met plenty of people who disliked Buffy, Alien: Resurrection, etc. though so I don't think the question stands up to scrutiny.

The problem is that they find it incomprehensible that anyone likes anything made by Joss Whedon at all. One of the complaints is about the characters. There are too many and they are all bland, boring and poorly written.

I wonder how much Whedon can now be counted among the people whose work, in a strange way, hasn't aged well precisely because it's been so influential and so widely copied.

One of the things they've said is that even at the time, shows like Buffy and Firefly were considered terrible and all treated poorly by reviewers.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Buffy drew some critical acclaim at the time.

 

[Farm Boy]

Buffy/Firefly/Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog are some of the shows I've watched that were the most fun to watch. There's a sense of optimism that shines through the work rather than sullenness.

 

[Arakhor]

One of the things they've said is that even at the time, shows like Buffy and Firefly were considered terrible and all treated poorly by reviewers.

You know what to do about almost anything said to you by those people.

 

[Traitorfish]

One of the things they've said is that even at the time, shows like Buffy and Firefly were considered terrible and all treated poorly by reviewers.

Critical contempt was the norm for any sort of science fiction until very recently, in all mediums. Partly this is snobbery, partly it's because most critics are generalists who don't understand the conventions of the genre, let alone when they're being subverted. It's only in the last few years that it's become acceptable for critics, at least some of them, to enthuse about geeky media, and that's a shift in which Whedon himself played no small hand. When Firefly was on the air, a merely mixed critical response was like an Oscar for a sci-fi series, let alone a space Western.

 

[Mouthwash]

You might not understand this, but Valka appears to be recommending that you check the thread out.

I've been on there extensively but I just don't think my question was appropriate for it.

 

[warpus]

The problem is that they find it incomprehensible that anyone likes anything made by Joss Whedon at all.

I assume by "they" you mean "I"?

That's not a problem unless you make it a problem. It just means you have a very specific set of interests that does not at all intersect with any of the work Joss Whedon has done. It does make me wonder what sort of characters you usually like, though? Who are your favourite fictional characters and why?

I've been on there extensively but I just don't think my question was appropriate for it.

It was definitely not a very good question.

Off the top of my head, Seinfeld and Friends.

Weird, I can watch a random Seinfeld episode and enjoy it. I can't do this with many other TV shows and consider Seinfeld a show that is exactly the opposite of what the article you linked describes.

 

[Takhisis]

Oddly so, I also still enjoy watching Seinfeld. To anybody who didn't first watch it in its time, now it is unwatchable.