#stuart slade

[theatrebubble]

BU21 at Trafalgar Studios

BU21 at Trafalgar Studios

After much success and a sell-out run at Theatre503, BU21 has found a well-deserved transfer at Trafalgar Studios. This highly political piece, playing on our class-consciousness and uncertainty in the face of rising racism in Western society, asks us to consider how we deal with trauma in contemporary Britain.

Stuart Slade’s cleverly crafted play tells the stories of six individuals following a…

View On WordPress

[theatrebubble]

BU21 at Theatre503

Watching BU21the same day as a terrorist attack on the continent was indeed a surreal experience. The show, dedicated to exhaustively and exhaustingly scrutinise the nature of grief and survival after such catastrophes, has undoubtedly been somewhat transformed by these fresh and haunting set of new circumstances – the pertinence and gripping commentary that may have come before can now be seen…

View On WordPress

[blogquantumreality]

Review: The Big One by Stuart Slade

So I ran across the TV Tropes page for this book (and sequels), and got interested enough to track down a copy of this book (and you can find out more about it at Amazon).

It feels very Turtledove-esque in its authorship and the focus on wartime periods of alternate history (Even Turtledove’s In the Presence of Mine Enemies focusses on a relatively turbulent period of the Greater German Reich circa 2009-2010 rather than on a period of peace and stability), and suffers some of the same weaknesses in storytelling mechanics. By this, I mean that outside of the actual rising anticipation of the military results of “The Big One”, things like characters dealing with the aftermath of a surprise attack on a US Navy battleship read very woodenly, probably aided due to Slade’s tendency not to use exclamation marks when they would appropriately signal urgency or need.

That being said, I liked the closing moments and the epilogue. I think I might try to find the sequels as well. :)

[lbasaba]

Cans @ Theatre 503 Review

Cans @ Theatre 503 Review

Stuart Slade’s debut play Cans premiers at Theatre 503, a cosy and lovely space where this play finds the intimacy it requires.

(more…)

View On WordPress

[polygianniba-blog]

Review: Cans by Stuart Slade, at Theatre 503

Graham O’Mara as Len, Jennifer Clement as Jen. Photo Tani Van Amse

Stuart Slade’s Cans, currently playing at Theatre 503, is both intriguing in its theme and tender in its approach. It focuses on a subject matter that, in its details relates to recent collective preoccupations (I won’t say more for fear of spoilers), but in its core is old and universal and inexhaustible: Do we ever know the…

View On WordPress

[slamjamnesiac]

What Geeks Hate: Non-Violence

 Geeks love violence.

This is such an obvious fact that I cannot fathom anyone saying otherwise.

Geeks used to emulate Superman, now they emulate Rorschach, the Punisher, Judge Dredd. It doesn't matter to them that Rorschach and Dredd weren't ever meant to be role models, because geeks are so entrenched in their violence fetish that they cannot conceive of a situation where violence is a bad solution to a problem.

Don't believe me? 

Think I'm exaggering?

Then explain why so many fanboys and fangirls send death threats over frivolous bullshit like shipping characters and such.

Nerds will respond to damn near everything that upsets them with death threats.

Bad videogame novelization? death threats

Forum argument? death threats

Console fanboy bullshit? death threats everywhere from all parties

Do anything on Tumblr that displeases anyone? Death threats piling ten high in your inbox

If it's not death threats, then you have geeks vocally wishing death on people. Go on Facepunch and read the news threads for a while if you don't believe me.

Now I admit that almost no geeks make good on death threats and I'm honestly glad that's the case, but let me ask you this.

Why do they make them in the first place?

Why do they send out a message, sincerely stating they will kill,not beat up but kill people who anger them?

Even if they never act on them, even if they come to regret it, there is no logical reason to ever threaten to kill anyone. Even once is a sign that something is wrong upstairs, but geeks do it constantly, even to the point where you can predict with a fair measure of success what'll get them screaming for blood.

And the violent fantasies are even more disconcerting that the threats, some times. When a geek wishes death on someone, they do it in great, almost sexual detail. They will elaborate, use colorful turns of phrase like 'hang them from the lamp posts', wax poetic about ending the life of another thinking human being in a rush of gunfire over something as silly as whether or not they ship Harry/Hermione.

Normal people do not do this. Sports fans, as insane as they can be, don't do this. Geeks do and they do it often.

I'm not going to say that geeks are violent because they read the Punisher or play GTA, that's dumb. I am going to say that it comes from a very toxic combination.

Geeks tend to be social outcasts growing up, this leaves behind a lingering resentment of other people, even past high school when most people get over it either on their own or with therapy.

Geeks tend to be socially inapt, which means they may not understand that firing off death threats at korrazula4554 on a forum makes them look like a psychopath, and a lot of them either have not much empathy or none at all due to said social awkwardness.

Geeks tend to be really, really entitled. The thing about not getting your way all the time is that it forces you to learn to see things beyond yourself and your wants and needs. Most geeks are middle class kids who haven't had to go through many hardships and got what they asked for more often than not, so they never really had to learn to think about other people.

Geeks tend to take things at face value. Look up the TV Tropes article for Watchmen and notice how many of the entries are cooing over how badass Rorschach is. Rorschach is not badass, he was never supposed to be badass and Alan Moore was not particularly subtle about it. Geeks, however, tend to favor shallow readings of their entertainment, either because they're young and lack critical thinking skills or because they're just stupid people, and they will see amajor non-antagonist character gun down an unarmed, screaming man and think 'so awesome'. It doesn't even have to be a flawed protagonist for them to miss the point, they're perfectly fine with thinking The Empire was in the right in Star Wars and there are people who think that, even after seeing them blow up a goddamn planet.

Also, fanfic tends to glorify violence far more than the subject matter, take Fallout Equestria. It glorifies violence to the point where there's a chapter where the hero pony slaughters an entire town and this is unambiguously portrayed as a good thing. Compare that to original Fallout, where killing entire settlements makes the game call you evil and MLP, where violence isn't even a theme at all.

For all Geeks like to talk about being smart and rational, they sure do resort to chimpanzee tactics when things don't go their way. That's all you can call this shit, because only fucking monkeys solve all problems by beating them to death. And the more you separate geek communities from public criticism, the more violent they get. Case in point, HPCA is a forum that split off from Stardestroyer.net when Stuart Slade got banned from SD.net for acting like a tool. In less than a year, Slade's own private forum was full of rabid geek fascists screaming for the death of 'ragheads' and every single person they did not like.

Geeks and geek culture has a really stupid, creepy obsession with violence and this bullshit needs to be addressed.

Put down your imitation katanas and learn to act like civilized human beings.

[bloodandhedonism]

Thinking up postmodern takes on religion(s) is amusing enough, but the main thing I've noticed is that it devolves into either magical realism, which Neil Gaiman famously covered in American Gods, or a hard-sci-fi take on it all (or as hard a one as possible), the biggest example I can think of that for the moment being Stuart Slade's The Salvation War.

Well, there's also the whole "religion is the sci-fi of the past/prophets actually receive visions of the glorious technological future" which also ties in with religion being a sort of proto-science (at least asking questions), but I can't think of anything off the top of my head for that right now.