The screenshot is a post by a friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, from several years ago. It's horribly relevant again, for obvious reasons.

I'd prefer to know, on the whole. Particularly when the artist in question is still alive: I may (or may not) still be able to enjoy their art that I already have, but I want to know whose pockets to avoid lining. Once they're dead, "separate the art from the artist" becomes a lot easier for me.

Of course I'd far rather there were nothing *to* know. I wish with all my heart that Edgar Rice #Burroughs and HP #Lovecraft were not raging racists, that Marion Zimmer #Bradley were not at the very least an enabler of child molestation and perhaps† a molester herself, that Joss #Whedon were a feminist in deed as well as word, that JK #Rowling believed the messages about equality and inclusion she gave a whole generation of children and their parents, that Neil #Gaiman were a kind and decent person who created mythologies to tell thoughtful stories about the human condition. But since they are what they are and were what they were, that's not an option.

There are writers I still regard as role models *as writers* even if I don't care for them much as people. Not monsters, for the most part, just garden-variety jerks. The way they put words together speaks to me, as I want my words to speak to my readers. I'm not in a hurry to give up what they've taught me by example.

Still. I don't have a whole lot of money to spend, and I'd rather that what I do have go to people I don't despise. Knowing is almost always better.

Je découvre la #série #Firefly (plus de 20 ans après sa sortie) et je trouve assez fun ce mélange de SF un peu datée et de western. Une série "feelgood" par le créateur de #Buffy (Joss Whedon).

#western #sf #Whedon

I've been very effective with #LLMs like #gpt4 using what I call the Dollhouse model:
Step 1: Take a blank slate AI
Step 2: Give it a personality that is very good at performing the desired task
Step 3: Ask it to do the task

#chatgpt #gpt #llm #ai #whedon

This is a piece by @austin_walker on authorial earnestness and buying into your own fiction. He's talking about a video game, but it's touching on the "Whedon-esque' dialogue that everyone is pondering on. Do you mind when an author winks at you through the text?

Post-Cringe: Forspoken and the Self-Sabotage of the Smirking Protagonist

https://www.clockworkworlds.com/post-cringe/

#Whedon #Whedonesque #Narrative #AuthorialVoice #Forspoken

me, labor day:

'...reminded that Joss #Whedon did the best, most perfectly realized work of his life while balancing three #TV shows... the show might’ve fallen down without... his most gifted male performer, the fucking #Canadian Nathan Fillion, who gave the performance of his life in a role as rich as #Buffy Summers... The fact that this show existed at all is one of its fallen medium’s rare #blessings; the fact of its cancellation is just another fucking crime...'

https://waxbanks.wordpress.com/2022/08/30/irreal-life-top-10-labor-day-2022/

So apropos of… something… we got to talking about the etymology of 'gunwales', and thence of 'gun'.

It turns out that “…Gunnhildr … was a name frequently given to ballistæ … on the introduction of gunpowder, be given also to cannon … the regular ‘pet-name’ in Old Norse for Gunnhild-r would be *Gunna , which would give Gunne in Middle English”

https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/82559?rskey=txXsKS&result=2&isAdvanced=false

It is the very first instance of “I call it Vera.”

#words #language #etymology #firefly #whedon