The Velvet Zebra

Oh the weather outside is

—

by

The Velvet Zebra
in

DISGUSTING!  

It’s not raining cats and dogs. It’s raining ELEPHANTS AND BLUE WHALES!!!

Today we’re trying hard to break the records for inches, feet, maybe even yards. As I sit here at work, performing emergency storm duties, I’m hearing the only route home is flooded and closed. Joy to the World.

I picked a fine day to not bring enough food.

Last night we lost power – which sucked because you can’t write by candle without burning your hair, or your pages, or your retinas. All I could do was sit there and contemplate my plot, which was helpful, I admit. But I didn’t get Tin Man recorded! I set the DVR for a later showing, though, after the power came on – so I’m going to be biting my nails hoping the rest of the thing records before we go dark again.

/end whine. Thanks for listenin’ 😀

Comments

37 responses to “Oh the weather outside is”

  1. Soccer Mom Avatar
    Soccer Mom

    Don’t fret. You know they’ll replay Tin Man like forty-eleven times in order to get their money’s worth (and since they don’t have new episodes of shows being written.)

    Reply
  2. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    Yeah, at least that many! I have these high hopes for it, but the fact that Sci Fi made it gives me the willies.

    Reply
  3. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    It doesn’t snow over here on the island, but it pours and has gale-force winds.

    I didn’t go to work, because I hate getting stranded on the Seattle side because they can’t run the ferries in gale-force winds, or getting on a ferry that strands in the middle of the Sound because it got caught in gale-force winds.

    Also, the power went out here and I’m running on UPS power alone at the moment. And for four hours on my laptop battery. If it goes for longer I’ll be preoccupied thinking about how much food I have to throw out from the fridge and the freezer, and I just went on a shopping trip over the weekend… gar.

    Hang on. You’re in Poulsbo, right? How come you get snow and we get rain and falling trees?!

    Reply
  4. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    I work in Poulsbo, but that’s not where I live. The snow was Saturday and Sunday, now we’re dealing with flooding. And I’m wondering if these New Beetles float like their predecessors do 😀

    Reply
  5. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    Where do you live?

    We did get lovely snow here on the weekend before it all turned to wet.

    The island at least doesn’t flood. Bits of it just fall into the bay from time to time. Along with the waterfront property that’s on it.

    Reply
  6. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    I live in the Ether. In the mist between light and dark. I exist on a plane of shadows, between here and there.

    But I commute to Poulsbo 5-days a week, for the ol’ paycheck 😀

    Reply
  7. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    They’re replaying Tin Man tonight, I believe, Muse.

    Reply
  8. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I caught about five minutes of Tin Man. I thought, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto,” and changed the channel.

    Haha. You got snow. Haha.

    We had snow that turned to sleet, that turned to rain, that froze.

    Winter is here.

    Reply
  9. tjwriter Avatar
    tjwriter

    I watched Tin Man last night, and I liked it. It’s a three part mini-series, Lori. Part two is on tonight, twice back to back, and then part three on Tuesday. It’s interesting to me. Not exactly the original story, but interesting in its own right.

    Has anyone seen Pete online today? *Worries about everyone.*

    Reply
  10. tjwriter Avatar
    tjwriter

    Then I realized that the first Tin Man came on again this evening before the second and Lori was totally right. That’s what I get for only looking at part of the schedule.

    Reply
  11. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    We’re expecting snow starting at noon and ending at 6am tomorrow morning. Oh joy!

    And Tin Man will be played in it’s entirety back to back to back on Sunday starting at 4pm Central time.

    I caught a good portion of part 1 last night before my wife said, “What is this?” in that tone of hers that said, Why do you watch such crap? Change the channel.

    So I’m DVRing it Sunday.

    Anyway, what I saw was interesting but the snide in me wondered why people can’t do anything original any more? Why do they have to rip off other people’s ideas and change them? The novel “Wicked” comes to mind, too.

    Reply
  12. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    I know, I do hate remakes – I’d prefer original work. But this is a complete re-imagining (yeah, I know) okay so to be honest, it stars Neal McDonough! 😀 Did you ever see a tv movie (years and years ago) called White Dwarf? I might have to blog today about it.

    Reply
  13. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    No, I never saw White Dwarf or heard of it. Neither have I heard of Neal McDonough. Which one was he?

    To me, a re-imagining is even worse than a remake. At least the remake tries to be true to the original material. In my mind a re-imagining is nothing more than fanfic.

    Reply
  14. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    :O

    I know, and I agree with you on that point – but Neal McDonough! It’s a girlie thing, falling for steel blue eyes, blond hair and piercing gaze. He was great in Boomtown. You might have enjoyed White Dwarf, but only me and three other people watched it. A 90-minute TV movie that was originally intended as a Science Fiction series pilot back in 1995.

    Reply
  15. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    In my mind a re-imagining is nothing more than fanfic.

    All of mythology and folklore are, basically, re-imaginings. Much of mystery owes its roots to Sherlock Holmes and Watson; Star Trek and Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica hold odd similarities just as they hold many differences; most PI fiction goes back to Chandler and others; the anti-hero goes all the way back to the second book of _The Tale of Genji_; The Hero’s Journey covers practically all of adventure, journey, and bildungsroman fiction; Pratchett drew his satire from fantasy, which in turn draws much of its influence these days from Lord of the Rings, which in turn drew its influence from Norwegian sagas and Norse mythology, which in turn drew their influence from the great well of common mythology; much of world mythology shares odd roots, sometimes parallel evolution, sometimes actual descendency, from lightning gods and sun gods to death gods and water gods, rebirth of the world after final destruction, and the even wars between new gods versus old gods (all those battles between Greek gods and Titans, and the Aesir and the giants); a lot of religions are derivative from each other.

    And everything has its roots in fire-side stories told long ago.

    And yet so much of that is different that we may view them as entirely different species, even if every single one has the equivalent of a backbone or gills during gestation.

    Sometimes drawing on archetypes or modern references is part of how you tell a story and make a statement, even if its about the original work itself; perhaps especially if its a comment on the original work. Certainly that’s how I approached it for the books I wrote during GTD.

    And sometimes you just can’t help drawing on archetypes; for instance, there’s always a synergy between opposites, which pop up so often through fiction that you can’t call it anywhere near an original idea anymore.

    Nothing is new. I don’t let that bother me, because from the fishies in the sea you get dinosaurs, and from dinosaurs you get birds and mammals, and from mammals you get us. There’s a difference between a blue jay and a cardinal, even though those two are relatively closely related; there’s a difference between a mouse and a chipmunk and a squirrel.

    Ah, the joys of comparative literature.

    Reply
  16. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    (I used to hate remakes and re-imaginings too. Comp lit pretty much beat that out of me, for good or for ill.)

    Reply
  17. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I agree with you that there many stories evolve from myths and legends, but this isn’t a remake or reworking of a myth or a legend, though Arachne. This is a full-blown ripoff of the Wizard of Oz! Had there been no Wizard of Oz, this series wouldn’t exist.

    This isn’t the borrowing of archtypes, in my mind this is almost blatant plagiarism.

    Reply
  18. Lori Basiewicz Avatar
    Lori Basiewicz

    If there hadn’t been Tolkien, there wouldn’t have been a lot of the fantasy fiction we had today. If there hadn’t been certain European myths, there wouldn’t have been Tolkien. It’s all interconnected, Ed.

    Reply
  19. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I think you guys are missing my point. There is a difference between borrowing ideas from myth and reworking it, which Tolkein did (and admitted he did it). And a blantant ripoff story that uses “Oz,” a girl with Dorothy’s initials, a scarecrow like guy, a guy based on the tin man, a lion like guy, a road similar to the yellow brick one, a city like the Emerald City, a wicked witch with flying monkey, munchkins, and so on. That is plagiarism.

    Using creatures like elves and trolls on a quest and creating a fantasy world variation is not. I’ve yet to read anyone reuse the term Hobbits, which was Tolkein’s word, and write a story with a quest of those Hobbits, with a magic ring, and so on. If someone did, that would be plagiarism.

    What Feist, Brooks, and others have done was acceptable, just as all the sword and sorcery stories that borrowed from Conan were acceptable.

    Its one thing to take some ideas and reuse them, another to take those EXACT SAME IDEAS AND NAMES and blatantly rip them off.

    If I was Frank Baum’s family, I’d be suing.

    Reply
  20. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    There’s _Bored of the Rings_ which plays upon many of Tolkien’s concepts in _Lord of the Rings_.

    _Wicked_ does acknowledge the source material, and in addition presents ideas in a RADICALLY different way from the original Oz. There isn’t even the slightest resemblance apart from names–and even many of those are either non-copyrightable (Glinda/Glenda, there’s not much you can do about The Wizard, or the Emerald City) or else never existed in the original work (like the witch’s name). It might as well be a different work–except part of the point of its storytelling is drawing on the archetypes of the original books.

    So, basically, it’s not plagiarism. Read the books to see, or watch the musical; yes, there are flying monkeys, but then again, flying monkeys do appear in satirical works. It’s not just a reimagining, and it’s not just a variation on a theme; it’s a radical change.

    If the Baum estate tried to sue, they wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and they probably know it–or have tried in private, and found it out. There’s been displeasure on their side.

    Reply
  21. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    Plagiarism is taking my words, exactly as I told them, and saying that you wrote them. Plagiarism is taking Arachne’s comment that begins “All of mythology and folklore are…” and reposting it elsewhere under your name without giving proper attribution to her. The idea of taking a known story and telling it better than it was done before, is actually an age-old literary tradition. It’s the way things were done in ages past. This is getting back, in part, to what I was trying to discuss in my Shakespeare Was A Plagiarist article, Ed. The reinvention of age old concepts, making them newer and better than they were done before is genius. It’s brilliance. When it’s done well, anyway. When it’s not done well, it’s just a rehashing of old ideas. And that — the use of trite, cliche stereotypes — isn’t plagiarism either.

    Reply
  22. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    Satire, or parody, in my mind, isn’t the same as what we’re discussing. For some reason you’re allowed to blatantly rip someone off under the umbrella of humor.

    But we weren’t talking “Wicked” (other than my brief mention above and my considering it nothing more than fanfic) we were talking about Tin Man, which has so many similarities to Baum’s Oz stories as to be outright robbery. I’d be very surprised if Sci-Fi didn’t get rights from the Baum estate to do this.

    Maybe I just view this whole intellectual property differently than the rest of you. I know I’d be in court if I caught anyone “borrowing” my characters for something else.

    Reply
  23. mymidnightmuse Avatar
    mymidnightmuse

    That’s the big difference. These screen writers aren’t saying: Look what we invented, all by ourselves, and it bears no resemblance whatsoever to that little ditty by Baum.

    They’ve said: Look what we did WITH that story Baum wrote – check out our interpretation of an old classic. They’re not pretending they wrote The Wizard of Oz, that would be plagiarism.

    If someone came along and re-imagined Huckleberry Finn, my hackles would rise. I’d be angry that some new-fangled, wet-behind-the-ears, too good for his own shoes screen writer had come along and thought himself high and mighty enough to show one of my favorite classics in a completely different light – as if he had the authority and talent to improve upon something that has no faults.

    But if it were done well – if that retelling made me sit back and applaud with awe and wonder – if it made me think of Huckleberry Finn in a completely new and exciting light . . . I’d be thrilled. If he mucked it up, I’d be scoffing it.

    And for all I know, one day that huffy, upstart of a screen writer with more ego than talent who dares to reimagine Huckleberry Finn . . . could be me.

    Reply
  24. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    Arachne, just based on the title, without reading it, I’d say that Bored of the Rings was probably more of a parody, as such, it would have been protected by fair use. Tin Man is not a parody. Ed, I believe, is arguing that it is a derivative work.

    Reply
  25. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    _Bored of the Rings_ was indeed a parody.

    _Tin Man_ seems to be on a level with _Wicked_. Actually, it’s probably even farther from the original source than _Wicked_. So, not derivative work. In fact, you could probably view _Tin Man_ as a parody as well; more than _Wicked_, anyways.

    Reply
  26. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    A parody usually has humor in it. I didn’t see any of this as poking fun funny. They seemed to be taking everything rather seriously.

    Reply
  27. Arachne Jericho Avatar
    Arachne Jericho

    Usually, but it can be argued that setting OZ in a science fiction setting is funny. And from a certain angle, that is certainly rather amusing.

    Reply
  28. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    Nah. I’ve seen enough of Tin Man. It’s not a parody by any definition of the word.

    Reply
  29. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    Oz was speculative fiction to begin with. I have a feeling for every argument I present, you’ll present a rebuttal. I’m not going to convince you it’s a ripoff. You’re not going to convince me it’s not. Someone stealing characters and ideas in my mind has been, and always will be, plagiarism. All I know is if I had created these characters and someone put this out there, I’d be pissed.

    Better to end it here and go back to a discussion on snow. It’s coming now steadily here now.

    Reply
  30. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    Ed, how do you know that they don’t have the permission of Baum’s estate to use the setting and the characters?

    Reply
  31. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I don’t. And as I said upward, I’d be surprised if they were allowed to do it without Baum’s Estate’s permission. Even so, maybe I’m just a purist, but I think it’s lazy writing to use someone else’s characters.

    Reply
  32. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    That really makes you far more of a modern writer, divorced from literary history, than anything, Ed. (This is meant as an academic-like observation, not as an insult.) Tin Man isn’t Wizard of Oz. It’s not a remake. It’s something new and different. Does it make references that anyone born or raised in the 20th century would recognize? Yes. Still, it’s something different, not the same. It’s moved far beyond Wizard of Oz.

    Reply
  33. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I’m not divorced from literary history. I respect it and revere it and anyone stealing from it is a thief in my eyes. There’s a reason I don’t read anything about Conan that isn’t written by Robert E. Howard. It cheapens Conan. However, the sword and sorcery of Michael Moorcock’s Elric or Fritz Leiber’s Fafrd and the Grey Mouser? That’s expanding the concept of sword and sorcery, taking what REH did and broadening it with different characters and concepts. They’ve created whole new worlds and people.

    Just as as Anne Rice expanded and explored the world of vampires started by Bram Stoker without using the character of Dracula or Van Helsing. The high fantasies of Raymond Feist borrow from the concept of Tolkien but it doesn’t steal character names or places or what have you. It stands on its own.

    Tin Man though is taking Frank Baum’s world, his characters, his ideas, and warping it somewhat. It’s not unrecognizable. It’s totally recognizable. You see it as something new and different. I don’t. I see it as stealing characters, ideas, and worlds. Maybe the Wizard of Oz is just too close to my heart that I can’t appreciate this. Maybe in a few years I’ll see this as something clever. Today? I see it as thievery.

    Reply
  34. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    I say you’re divorced from it because you’re attempting to write without using it. You don’t see literature as a living, breathing organism, that grows and changes over time. It reacts to and is part of culture. Literature is not books. Books are icons. People buy them and put them on the shelf to show their devotion. Literature is stories. Stories are “in the air.” They reach across generations, through writers, and expand, contract, morph, and reappear in altered forms. They react, grow, change, evolve, and adapt along with culture to meet the needs of the people to whom they are presented.

    Reply
  35. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    I think I do exactly that. I think I would be unable to write anything I do without having been influenced by the past. Without Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lin Carter, et al I’d never have even become interested in writing in the first place, writing fantasy in particular. I certainly never would have created many of the characters and worlds that I have.

    I fully admit I’m influenced by what I’ve read and seen. I think every writer is and has been throughout history. Only the very first writer was probably original. Everyone else has been influenced by, or copied and morphed someone else’s creations.

    I don’t steal verbatim though.

    In being influenced by Conan the Barbarian I didn’t create a character called C the B, place him in the same world with the same people.

    I’m probably not explaining this write and I’m in a hurry to get the kids off to school. Sorry. Forget I ever said anything. *stares up at the thread and realizes the Internet never forgets*

    Reply
  36. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    The first writer wasn’t original, either. S/he was reacting to oral stories and traditions. The first bard was reacting to other traditions. Storytelling goes all the way back to the caveman, to the paintings on the wall, to the first time Ug sat down next to the fire, looked at Og and rehashed the day’s mammoth hunt, and that wasn’t really original either, because so many others had had a similar experiences.

    Reply
  37. Shadow Ferret Avatar
    Shadow Ferret

    That’s what I was refering to by “first writer,” the first caveman to come back from the hunt and tell his story. He was an original. The rest of us have simply been copying him for the last million years. 😀

    Reply

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