The Game of Thrones Avoidcast - Week 2!

That's right, it's been a week, so how have I done in keeping away from Game of Thrones info that might spoil the next book in the series?

Find out by watching the new episode.

Or I suppose you could just ask me, but this is probably more convenient for both of us.

See you back here next time!

The Two Hundred Fiftieth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

 
I've yet to tire of how wonderfully kinetic Plastic Man action scenes always are.

The Game of Thrones avoidance-cast, Week 1

Yes, just as the title suggests, I'm going to be spending the foreseeable future avoiding spoilers about Game of Thrones! This journey will be chronicled in video format, starting below!



So join me hear each week for updates on how my trial is progressing - for the next eight weeks. If I manage to stay spoiler-free after the finale, obviously updates will slow down, since less people will be talking about the show!

The Two Hundred Forty-Ninth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Now a moment in the Quality Comics art sweatshop, circa 1944...

"Gosh, it's boring drawing this guy wandering around, looking for a bird... Hey, I know, I'll draw an overtly sexualized woman standing in the foreground! That's what kids like, right?"

The Two Hundred Forty-Eighth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I like the crazy technology far too much to be concerned with the casual racism.

The Two Hundred Forty-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

No comment needed here. Although I do need a question - did they have head-shrinking tribes in South America? I honestly don't know.

The Two Hundred Forty-Sixth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Oh, Manhunter. This may be a new low in keeping your identity secret. It's bad enough you're a cop with a dog who becomes a superhero with the same dog - at least don't brag about your love of quick-changing.

Come on, Clickbait, are you even trying?

So I was browsing the Internet, you know, as normal people in the year 2016 do, and I came across another bizarre example of the Clickbait craft-



Great pitch, right? People love celebrities, and there's a compelling melancholy that comes from seeing beloved celebrities in the hours before their deaths, so vital, so unaware of the fate that's about to befall them... it's chilling and can be upsetting, but I understand why people would click on it. Provided the clickbait professionals choose the correct celebrity and photograph. So let's see the one they picked!

Click for Embiggination!

That's the whole ad, as originally served up to my browser. No, you're not seeing things, that's Kim Jong Il. A hundred years of photographs of dead 'celebrities' (in the modern sense) to draw from, and they went with Kim Jong Il, North Korea's Dear Leader.

Just in case you're unsure of my interpretation, here's a closeup of the image, in which you can see Kim Jong Un at the top-right of the frame.



I'm baffled, Clickbait professionals - was this an attempt at a joke? A protest against your own industry? If someone were to actually click on it, would it take them to a page berating them for participating in a corrupt practice?

Sadly, because of their choice of image, no one will ever know.

The Two Hundred Forty-Fifth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

There's onomatapoeia, and then there's onomatapoeiest. This is the latter.

Oh, Clickbait, you don't know how English works, do you?

Clickbait - the art of combing an interesting bit of art with a catchy headline in the hopes of tricking the curious into heading over to some kind of an bloated content farm. Whether or not you acknowledge the crafting of clickbait as an art form in and of itself, clearly some effort is required to craft the perfect combination of grabby pic and tantalizing topic sentence. So if there are craftspeople out there, working day and night to craft clickbait, how do things like this happen?



What did the writer/artist/craftsperson think they were doing? What do they imagine that brackets mean?

I can tell them what they actually mean - they connote an aside/explanatory note/clarification designed to reveal a piece of information to the reader without needlessly complicating the sentence. In this case, however, the brackets exist only to negate the entire point of the sentence. If you were reading this title aloud, you would leave out any bracketed word, and wind up with the phrase '15 of the most family photos ever'.

Does 'most family' work as a description? Has anyone ever said 'That's the most family photo I've ever seen?'

I don't think so.

Take out the brackets, and you've got a clear sentence describing the series of pages designed to serve up the largest number of ads in the tiniest number of clicks possible. So why were they included?

Perhaps paying non-English speaking people minimum wage isn't the best way of  generating tempting internet content?

The Two Hundred Forty-Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Go on, Midnight, call them panthers all you want, those are pretty clearly long-tailed Terriers. I didn't know such a thing existed, but according to this artist, here they are!

The Next Day - Creep Edition

The film Creep ends with the villain, one Mark Duplass, revealing that he's been killing videographers and other random people for ages.

He's even on the phone as the credits roll, planning his next murder.

TheAvod, everyone!

That's right, there's a new episode of TheAvod - delayed slightly this week due to previous commitments as well as vagueness!

Get it here!

Production Secrets Revealed: Shades of Grey 103

See that candle on the table there? I've helpfully circled it. Note how incredibly out-of place it is. This is a classy restaurant with romantic mood lighting created by stylish shaded lamps on each table. Yet someone went and ruined the entire effect by plopping a drinking glass with a battery-powered electric candle at the edge of the table. Why would that happen?

To understand the story behind that candle, you have to hear the dialogue in the scene!

The Next Day: Intruders Edition

Welcome to 'The Next Day', a recurring feature which explains what happens immediately after the end of films with ambiguous finales!

This time we're talking about Intruders, the film about (spoiler alert) a home invasion which goes awry when the house's inhabitant, a shut-in, turns out to be a crazed serial killer!

At the climax of the film, after she's murdered all of the Intruders (hey, I just got the title!), and the house she hasn't left in a decade is set on fire, the serial killer wanders off into the woods as the credits roll and police sirens approach.

Yeah, turns out that I'm really fond of auto-balancing.

So, what happened next?

She was immediately arrested. Like five seconds later. This is a 23-year-old woman who hasn't left her house in a decade. She can't drive, has no social skills, resources, or idea how to avoid the police. Also she was pretty badly beaten during her fights with each of the three home invaders.

Honestly, it would have made more sense for the character, and been a better ending for the movie, had she stood at the front door and looked out into the world, then walked back into her burning house, going down with the ship. Whether it was because she honestly couldn't leave or because burning to death was preferable to life in jail could have been up to the audience, who would have left with a more logical, character-based resolution.