Interesting Links for 22-09-2021

[andrewducker]

"Why I Can't Write Competence Porn"

(tags:competency scifi writing )

We are living through a Russia-controlled fossil fuel shock. Net zero is the solution - not the problem

(tags:electricity energy russia uk europe renewables )

r/BritishFoodShortages - cataloguing the sunlit uplands of our glorious future

(tags:Doom food shopping UK trade )

Kat Dennings Tells Us How Neil Gaiman Honest-To-God Told Her To 'Be Yourself' While Playing Death In 'The Sandman'

(tags:neilgaiman sandman acting audio )

Edinburgh's Christmas to be spread across more of the city

(tags:Edinburgh Christmas )

Government Strikes Deal To Reopen Key Plants Amid CO2 Shortage Crisis

(tags:co2 UK )

Britons getting less tolerant of racist and transphobic language on TV, Ofcom finds

(tags:language racism transgender LGBT UK swearing )

Online dating site OkCupid Features "Pro-Choice" Badge

(tags:abortion relationships internet )

Biden pours cold water on prospect of early US/UK trade deal - reiterates that the UK shouldn't force a closed border in Ireland

(tags:uk ireland NorthernIreland usa trade europe )

Are President Biden's comments on 'the Irish Accords' a life line for the Human Rights Act?

(tags:Europe UK law humanrights rights NorthernIreland )

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I do like it when I can guess the source from the title. (Last link.)

[andrewducker]

Your are particularly good at recognising his style!

[mountainkiss]

One gets the sense of what interests him.

'Competence porn'

[anna_wing]

The world would be a much better place if competence were a quality that is respected and aspired to.

But then, I loved 'The Martian'. And 'Shin Godzilla', which was basically a fantasy asking the question, 'What if the response to the Fukushima disaster had been competent?"

Re: 'Competence porn'

[andrewducker]

I loved The Martian. Heard great things about Shin Godzilla.

Re: 'Competence porn'

[anna_wing]

It's brilliant. Japanese bureaucratic-industrial complex vs Godzilla, bureaucrats win on points. No vapid love-interests, no ghastly cute kids in peril. There is a maverick hero with a team of mavericks, but they are all maverick bureaucrats, so there is heartwarming inter-agency bonding ("maybe those MITI bastards aren't so bad..."). There are evacuation plans that actually happen, officials and politicians actually care about minimising casualties, there are heroic Japanese unionists mobilising heroic Japanese technology, and a stupendous scene involving the Giant Shinkansens That Could.

Also the West wants to nuke Japan (of course).

[calimac]

1. Doesn't really define competence porn, just points to examples, including The Martian which certainly is. I'd define it as stories where this repeatedly happens: Character proposes something daring and audacious; authority emphatically forbids it because it's too dangerous and risky; character goes ahead and does it anyway; it works like a charm, even when that strains credulity.

4. I listened to the first couple episodes of the audio Sandman. Dull and boring, not like the comic. This was before Death even shows up.

9-10. Joe Biden: Willing to Piss Off Allies to Make a Point. Having to sit there and listen through eight years of Emollient Obama seems to really have had an effect.

[simont]

That seems like the one thing that the author of the article specifically said that competence porn wasn't:

Your maverick who doesn’t play by the rules but always gets results does not give me a competence boner.

Competence Porn isn’t about geniuses, it’s about people who have jobs. People who play by the rules and get results.

I don't know that I'd want to propose an alternative definition, but I do agree that I like competence in my fiction. Especially anything adversarial: if there's going to be Good Guys and Bad Guys, then I'd prefer that plot complications arise due to the Bad Guys doing something clever rather than the Good Guys having a moment of pre-scripted incompetence, or vice versa.

For example, I go 'yay!' quietly to myself any time the hero breaks into the villain's base, is spotted by a henchbeing, and instead of immediately attacking the hero and getting defeated, the henchbeing calls it in first so that the hero can't continue quietly taking everyone down one by one without raising the general alarm.

My anti-example is old Doctor Who, in which it was commonplace for the scriptwriters to have apparently thought "Hmm, we need to pad this story out by one more episode. Let's have the companion wander off for no reason at all and get captured, that'll give us an extra cliffhanger and rescue mission."

[anna_wing]

The Evil Overlord List as a wish-list for fantasy competence porn...

[dewline]

1. A British cultural allergy to "competence porn"? I suppose I can see it...

2. Interesting to see a right-wing case made for sticking to a "Green" energy plan.

7. And that lack of tolerance for racist and transphobic language from the British public is coming at a time when officials are being installed at OFCOM and BBC - according to suspicions and/or accusations published in several places including some of our mutuals' accounts here on Dreamwidth - with an eye towards steering that same public back towards finding it acceptable again.

[anef]

7. And the Charity Commission! https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/government-faces-legal-challenge-over-charity-commission-chair-recruitment-process.html (Sigh)