awmperry

This is a short - very short - fic I wrote in about an hour, just for the fun of it. It's not terribly good, and this is the first draft, so there's a lot of work to do before it's postable, but I've had a couple of requests for it, so... Here you go.

( Read Prelude To A Shower... )

Comments and feedback are always appreciated!

In other news, I recently found myself pondering an issue I mentioned a month or two back; that of violence in gaming.

I haven't changed my stance; I still find the dispassionate way we gamers view violence to be somewhat disturbing. I still support age ratings on games and hard policies on not selling games to people below those ages. I still strongly believe that it's up to parents to police what games their kids play. And I still find the thought of governments or special interest groups legislating what games may be made to be even more disturbing than the violence itself.

We have laws against violence. People who commit acts of violence against others without lawful justification are criminals, and are treated as such. People who advocate bans on violence in games, or try to ban games outright because they object to their content... that's not trying to look out for society. That's trying to control how people think. And indulging that, no matter how noble the motives or how good an idea it seems at first, is and always will be a Bad Thing.

Anyway, that's as far as I got on that train of thought. My main point is that... well, I don't really have one. But this is the internet, so it doesn't matter - I can dribble out any mind-numbing ramblings and someone will still find it worth reading.

Anyway, once again my gaming enjoyment has been spoiled. This time it started with Flatout 2, a racing game where drivers can actually be thrown from their cars. There are game modes where the aim is to demolish all the other cars - if drivers are thrown out of theirs, does anyone make a point of avoiding them? Of course not. Unconscious driver lying on the tarmac between you and your target? Sod it, he's probably dead anyway, just run right over him. There aren't many things that disturb me on moral grounds, but that's one of them.

Another casualty was Knights of the Old Republic 2, where I tried - once again - to play through as a Dark Side character. It didn't work. Every time I tried for Dark Side points, I ended up thinking "that would be mean" and saying "You know what, I was going to kill you and steal your stuff, but here, have a hundred credits" instead. I'll never get my black cape at this rate.

And then there was the game adaptation of Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End, which was offensive for so many other reasons, mainly for being so bad. I'm just glad I got it for free with a magazine subscription rather than spending actual money on it. Heaven knows I won't be spending any time on it.

Anyway, another thing that I've found curious on similar grounds has been the Violent Crime Reduction Act, which came into force in the UK in October last year. It prohibits the manufacture, sale and import of "realistic imitation firearms" - in other words, anything made to look like a gun, regardless of whether it can actually fire of whether it's a plank sawn to shape and painted black. So reenactment, amateur theatre, and particularly airsoft are in trouble. We can still keep the guns we have - though there's apparently talk of banning them too - but we're not allowed to buy any new ones. Unless...

Yes. It's a government thing, thus there's a loophole. Of course.

There's a specific defence for airsofters; you're allowed to buy more airsoft guns if you can prove you're a legitimate airsofter. Which is great - personally, I've lobbied for some sort of licensing scheme, rather like a driving licence for airsoft guns. But what annoys me is the definition of a legitimate airsofter. It's someone who is a member of "a legitimate skirmish site". And the guidelines say that a member has to actually play at that site regularly; I'm not sure how often, but before being offered membership you have to play two or three games over the course of a month or two... or something. I can't remember offhand.

Now, this would seem like a fair system - indeed, without being fairly immersed in airsoft, it would be. But not all airsofters are skirmishers.

I find skirmishes incredibly dull; run around in the woods shooting at people? Where's the fun in that? I enjoy milsim - military simulation - and I enjoy the LARP aspects of airsoft. I enjoy playing a character, getting the kit right, getting the accents and mannerisms and background right. I went to a four-day game in Sweden back in 2005, where I fired twelve shots in total.

I enjoy playing the part. I'm as serious an airsofter as any other, I just prioritise other aspects of the hobby. But the government says that someone who plays for the talking - and thus attends a few major "event-type games" a year rather than skirmishing once a month - isn't a serious airsofter, and thus can't buy any airsoft guns. But someone who just runs around in the woods shooting at anything that moves... they''re safe and healthy and wouldn't hurt a fly. Does that seem ludicrous to anyone else?

---

Anyway, on a more cheerful note, I thought I might plug a couple of incredibly funny web comics: DM Of The Rings (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14) which spoofs Lord of the Rings by working on the assumption that the whole thing's a roleplaying game, and Darths And Droids (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/darthsanddroids/) which does much the same thing for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. They're both hilarious, at least for anyone who's ever played an RPG.

(Oh, and you may notice the "Current Music" listing for my last entry. The Not So Grand Funk Jam Band is a Finnish band I found after meeting two of their singers at a blues jam in Stockholm. They sent me some of their tunes, and, well, those guys are phenomenal. Pretty much the entire band are in their late teens, early twenties, and they play a great blend of proper old-school funk with hints of rap and modern stuff. A bit of Hancock here, a bit of JB there... Their pronunciation of the English language sometimes leaves a bit to be desired, but I tell you, those guys can groove. They've got some great trumpet licks, too. I'd suggest starting out with 21st-Century Funk, Groupies and Not So Grand Funk Jam Band Jam, but the main thing is that you have to hear these guys play.)

(Also, as you may notice from the "Current Music" for this post, I've recently developed something of an addiction to two or three of Gretchen Wilson's songs. It's weird. Country isn't supposed to rock like this. It's great.)

Another New Year's in Sweden. Another iteration of Tennyson's interminable poem. Another half-hearted clinking of glasses while the Swedish suburban version of Beirut erupts outside.

Fortunately, I like cake, so the evening was partially a success.

Happy new, folks.

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I should be asleep. But I'm not, as you may have gathered, knowing as you do that even I am not so attached to my computer as to be typing on a blog at six in the morning... in my sleep.

Anyway, I've been thinking. Do you ever have qualms about your hobbies?
I'm not so bothered about Warhammer, though it involves the wholesale slaughter of troops in their hundreds. Because it's all highly abstracted - and, of course, there aren't a great number of real Orks hanging about the place.

No, what I'm really bothered about is computer games.

Oh, don't worry. I'm not buying into the Guardian nonsense of "OMG LOL WTF Teh Gamez Is Killing Teh Kiddies!!!11!" Okay, violent games might make people more inclined to acts of violence, but only if they're violent and unstable nutjobs in the first case. That's not the point.

What concerns me is the stuff that gets into games, and, more importantly, gamers' reactions to it. Take the furore over Manhunt 2, for instance. Fans have been decrying the developers' decision to blur the execution scenes (if it sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, there's a good reason for that; speaking as someone who's played a whole bunch of SWAT 3 and 4 missions going through summarily executing suspects Judge Dredd-style, the Manhunt games are a couple of levels beyond even my violence threshold), which apparently makes the games not worth playing.

Then there's the Soldier Of Fortune series (particularly SoF2), where a great deal was made of the GHOUL 2 system which allowed for dismembering bad guys. This had some justification; it gave a new level of consequence to in-game violence, where injuries and their effects were shown realistically (for certain values of "realistically") as opposed to adversaries simply dropping into nonexistence with a vague bullet hole decal on their texture. And sure, that's a fair point; sane people are less likely to commit violence if they know what the consequences really are (though it's arguable that sane, intelligent people should be able to figure out that bullet holes aren't a great idea in the best of cases). But a lot of people played through the game deliberately dismembering the corpses; perhaps because of the novelty of the feature, perhaps as a sort of "I'd never do this in real life, I wonder what it'd be like". But they enjoyed it, and that's the point.

It's a recurring theme. In Bioshock, players are given the option to "harvest" the little girls that go around collecting Mystical Magic Goo from corpses, a process which would entail killing them to collect the MMG they've accumulated. In early builds (as far as I can tell from preview articles), this was shown fairly graphically, with the player breaking the girl's neck on-screen; in released builds, the game employs a fade-to-black technique so only the aftermath is seen. This move has been criticised by some, for various reasons. Some - like a writer in PC Gamer, IIRC - have argued that it stops the player from having to face the effects of their actions, making the choice between "harvest" and "save" a much more abstract one; others (thankfully few) have argued that "Aaw, I wanted to see that".

In Company of Heroes, I send my infantry into battle, watching gleefully as airstrikes scatter the naughty Germans like... well, really scattered things. Up on the screen pops a message: "Medal objective completed: 250 kills!" And then I think "Well, hang on, what am I really celebrating here?" The game's rewarding me - and I'm letting it - for simulating the slaughter of, when you think about it, 250 conscripted, brainwashed propaganda zombies who probably didn't want to be there in the first place.

Don't get me wrong; I think military service is a good thing. I think defending one's country is noble, and a good thing. I think wars sometimes have to be fought, and that some people are evil in absolute terms and have to be stopped. I'm a strong believer in the adage that "Every country has an army; its own, or somebody else's." I think that sometimes, it's acceptable to ask someone to die to protect others.

But I don't think it's something to enjoy.

That's why I get quite worried when I find myself enjoying it.

I should point out that I don't usually; when I play SWAT I go in with the pepper-ball guns, aiming for a 100% clean arrest record. When I play Knights of the Old Republic I keep meaning to try to play as a Dark Side character, but never manage it - after all, that would mean being mean to people. In shooters I have the guns set to single-shot, I minimise casualties, I make sure of my backstop.

Why, then, do I sometimes enjoy just shooting my way through a SWAT mission?

Perhaps all of us, to some extent, have a primitive caveman bit at the back of the brain that enjoys inflicting pain and suffering on others. Or perhaps we've been indoctrinated that ego is all that matters; certainly it is an attitude that many people nowadays have - "I'm more important than anyone else, so I don't need to care about them". It's visible in society, on TV, on the roads, everywhere.

There's a similar phenomenon in films. I can understand the validity of showing gore and violence in film; indeed, I have no major objection to it, when it fuels the plot. But in recent years (and in the past, of course, but it's only in recent years that such films have entered the mainstream), the violence has become the plot. Seven caused an uproar when it came out, but now - while still pretty nasty - it's relatively tame. Slasher films (You know the drill. College kids do stupid things and get gruesomely killed.) have lots of gore and minimal plot. And series like the SAW and Hostel films take the gore to new extremes for no apparent purpose.

I don't usually buy into the stuff about people getting desensitised, but in this I have to say that it seems terribly plausible. We're getting more accustomed to seeing gore and violence, and with fewer of us experiencing it for real - no military service, no really big wars like previous generations faced, fewer of us living in the country and seeing where our food actually comes from - we seem to seek it out. I don't pretend to know why. Perhaps we as a species have evolved far enough to dislike real violence but still yearn to experience violence vicariously, perhaps we're just evil bastards who enjoy watching violence but don't dare take risks ourselves.

But recently it's gone further, thanks in no small part to the internet, digital camcorders and filesharing. Fictional violence no longer hits the spot; people download videos of Russians shooting people in Chechnya, of hostages being decapitated in Afghanistan, of insurgents being mown down in Iraq. Some have legitimate reasons - news organisations, for instance, or intelligence agencies - while most "ordinary people" who watch them... I don't know, and I'm speculating wildly here, but I can't believe that it's out of anything but prurient interests. And that worries me.

At this point I should clarify my own level of interest. I've watched the guncam videos; the Apache chaingunning people loading RPGs out of a tractor, the AC-130 shelling an insurgent stronghold. I could watch them with the detached, objective mindset of a soldier - "These guys are enemies, they're carrying weapons, they're preparing to kill my mates; they have to be taken out" - but I couldn't dehumanise them. I didn't (I was about to write "I couldn't", but then I wasn't trying to) enjoy watching the videos, which is one major difference. I've also watched that video shot from a Humvee in Iraq where an IED under the road goes off, making the road between the Hummer and the Bradley in front erupt, completely missing both; that I enjoyed, because nobody was harmed despite the intent. It's the same with the clip filmed by, as I understand it, an insurgent sniper's observer; the sniper shoots a US Army medic, whose body armour stops the round. The medic and his squadmates turn and return fire, neutralising the sniper and his observer. And then, to compound the irony, that same medic treats the sniper who just shot him. Again, I found that amusing, and reassuring in a way I can't quite explain.

But I haven't watched the others. The executions, the decapitations, and so on. I have no particular wish to, and if I happened to see them I really can't imagine enjoying them. I've heard people giggling over them - "And then he sticks the knife in, and it's like squirting, and it's really cool..." - and that reaction scares me. Violence is a fact of life, an integral part of being human, and a part of human nature that I don't think is likely to disappear any time soon. But real violence is, and should be, always something abhorrent and insupportable. A last resort, an undesirable and unavoidable side effect of protecting oneself. It shouldn't be a source of entertainment (happyslappers, for instance, are just begging for a punch in the teeth), or something to exploit to get your face in the papers, or something deployed just to get something you want.

Now, as people go, I'm fairly comfortable with violence. I enjoy shooting (at cardboard), and I'm confident that if I had no other choice I'd be able to shoot someone to protect myself or those I care about. I'm passably competent at deploying violence in self-defence, though it's competence that I've fortunately rarely had to use. And I play airsoft, a game which basically boils down to "Meet new people and shoot them". But there it's all voluntary; everyone's in on it, safety precautions are taken, and nobody is seriously injured, and rarely if ever even injured to a level sufficient to remove their enjoyment of the game.

But there's one more aspect to be considered, and one which I've touched on in this column before. The disparity of taboos.

Modern society has a lot of taboos; manners, drugs, toilet jokes, political incorrectness. And the big two: sex and violence. The curious thing is that violence has become accepted, commonplace, even making it into children's TV. In The Lion King, the murder of Simba's father is shown on screen - but beyond a bit of affectionate nuzzling, there's no reference at all to any sexual interest.

Okay, so none of the characters are human. Bad example.

But it's a pattern that crops up again and again. The Harry Potter books contain huge amounts of graphic violence, but apart from kissing, the closest potential reference to any sexual activity is "a particularly pleasant hour by the lake". I've even heard someone criticise CSI - you know, the show with lots and lots of violence, autopsies, and clinical discussion of sexual topics? - because "during the autopsy scene, a nipple was gratuitously shown for several seconds on two occasions". On the whole, it seems that you can pack a whole lot of violence into a "family film" and still keep the rating, but the merest hint of sex and up the ratings it climbs.

But I've discussed that before. I don't think graphic accounts of sex are suitable for kids, but they're a damn sight more suitable than graphic depictions of violence. I don't think there's any good reason to put foul language in films, but I don't mind it as much as I mind the implications that precocious kids being snotty little delinquents are "cool".

But that's the deal, it seems. Violence is fine. Disregard for other people and their property is fine. (Don't get me started on those "protesting" morons who vandalise things and justify it with "Things belonging to people is wrong, they should belong to the people". Guess what? It's not their opinion that matters.) But heaven forbid that it should be suggested that there are bits under those stupidly over-sexualised clothes that are apparently perfectly fine to promote in kids' programmes!

Ah well. Guess I got sidetracked there... Ah well - can't say you don't get value for money!

To quote someone clever, "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice"?

Once again, a potential sex reference in Potter turns into "OMG WTF That's like so bad for teh kiddies". But we're still okay with cutting people open, right?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by amilas [/i]
[B]I definately thought Ginny and Harry were going to get it on. I was wondering how on earth Jo could include this though, since she has such a HUGE fanbase which includes children.[/B][/QUOTE]

What's that got to do with it?

She's got a story that includes murder, suicide, mutilation, torture, kidnapping, child abuse, mind rape, executions, self-mutilation, drawing, and all sorts of violence, but the slightest hint of sex and people start screaming "Think of the kiddies!"

Now, I don't think graphic sex scenes have any place in the HP books, nor do I particularly like them in other books. But certainly an allusion to it would have been appropriate at that juncture. So I'm going to echo my remarks in the "Almost Grown-Up Scenes" thread: Sex is healthier than violence. Sex creates life, violence ends life. I know which I'd rather have my hypothetical kids read about.

So Rowling's fine with writing seven books filled with violence and cruelty, but she chickens out of letting two people - in what, after all, is established to be a thoroughly committed long-term relationship - have sex before they go off to, potentially, their deaths. That, to me, smacks of misguided prudery.

Sex good. Violence bad. Easy.

http://forums.fictionalley.org/park/showthread.php?s=&postid=1722605#post1722605

Today's sermon is in Swedish, because I posted it in reply to a thread on a Swedish airsoft forum. The translation is left as an exercise for the reader, for I am evil. And, possibly, a pedagogue.

"Nysvenska" är inte svenska, det är lättja.

Det är skillnad på neologismer och helt enkelt dåligt språkbruk; mycket av det som betecknas "nysvenska" är helt enkelt affekterat dåligt språkbruk - liknande det vi börjar se i UK med s k "mockney" - som sprungit ur de senare årens fåniga idé att det på nåt sätt är "coolt" att låta outbildad, trögtänkt och allmänt nedknarkad.

Nejdå, jag är inte alls fördomsfull mot analfabeter....

Och när jag ändå håller på, VEM I DET ILLGRÖNA LILLA HELSIKE tyckte att särskrivning var en bra idé? "Korv kiosk", "special erbjudande", och andra idiotiska våldtäkter på språket, varför har inte alla fått lära sig korrekt svenska i grundskolan? Ja, jag vet att vi ska vara snälla mot de små barnen, men vi har stavningsregler och grammatikregler av en anledning.

I min gamla lågstadieskola förklarades det med att "Ja, men vi har många invandrare i skolan, och de kan inte förväntas tala perfekt svenska." Varför inte? De är sju! De kan lära sig perfekt svenska precis lika lätt som alla andra sjuåringar, som klarade det utan problem för 40 år sen. Tusan, jag är invandrare, tekniskt sett, och min svenska är - eller var en gång i tiden, det har gått utför med den på senare år - utmärkt. Nej, man kan inte skylla på invandrare; de som vill lära sig korrekt svenska gör det, och det är väldigt, väldigt många. Nej, det stora problemet är lata lärare och idiotiska politiker som tycker att bråkiga elever har mera rätt till utbildning än de som faktiskt vill lära sig.

Dåligt språkbruk, bråkigare samhälle, allmänt dåligt hyfs och vett... allt det där hänger ihop. Man ska uttrycka sig för att göra det så lätt som möjligt för folk att förstå, och då gäller det att tala rent (inte en dialektfråga; dialekter är inga problem så länge man pratar rent och inte mumlar) och använda korrekt svenska.

Vill man inte prata svenska har man ingen anledning att vara i Sverige - och tro inte för ett ögonblick att det är främst invandrare jag pratar om där...

Discussing it later with a mate:

"But Torak, language evolves, it always has and always will :P"

"Evolving is one thing. We evolved from monkeys. But strapping a monkey down, shaving it, and performing surgery with a chainsaw to make it look human is different."

And, to preempt any misunderstandings in view of a question he then asked, no, I'm not comparing immigrants to monkeys. I'm comparing the language to a monkey, and the startingly inept Swedish education system to some lunatic Frankensteinian plastic surgeon.

That's about it. Bad use of language annoys me - our languages, whatever they are, deserve far more respect than they get; partly because they embody our identities, partly because how we treat our languages reflects how we treat other people. If we speak messily and improperly, shambling around slurring and lazy, like badly-postured hordes of diction zombies, we're deliberately making ourselves difficult to understand, something that shows a hideous lack of respect and consideration for others.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why diction + grammar = manners.

Fox News - how surprising that a news network for morons by morons should publish this - have released a column by Roger Friedman which quite heavily slams Studio 60:

Lights Go Out on 'Studio 60'
By Roger Friedman
'Studio 60': Say Goodbye To A Sure Thing

"Studio 60" is over. Some news services are reporting that the sets have been struck, others are talking about the new dramas NBC has ordered to replace last May's "sure thing."
( Read in full... )

I found that posted to the SunsetTalk Yahoo group, and decided to post a reply; so here it is. (You'd never guess I have fairly strong opinions about getting more intelligence and less Big Brother on TV, would you?)

: But this much is known: On Monday, NBC will formally announce the end, thank God, of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

...and Mr Friedman is delighted to hear it, because he had twenty dollars on it down the bookie's.

: One of the most expensive hours in TV history, "Studio 60" was a goner even before it hit the airwaves. The ill-conceived drama about a comedy sketch show wasn't funny or tense, it was simply annoying.

The sketches weren't funny, I'll grant him that. In fact, the sketches were disastrously tedious. But the show was funny - I guess Sorkin's just better at writing funny when the scenes are supposed to be subtly funny, rather than overt "This bit is funny, you vill all now please laugh".

: Meanwhile, Sorkin and company have cost the network millions that they will never recoup, even on DVD sales that were targeted at weird "West Wing" geeks who tuned in less and less each week.

"Weird West Wing geeks"... Sour grapes, anyone? I guess he just isn't familiar with having to use what he is pleased to call his brain when watching TV - indeed, his whole tirade suggests that his is just the type of "thinking" that leads to the TV being called, in Sweden, "dumburken" - "the idiot box".

Overall, Mr Friedman exemplifies the kind of person the Rev. Spooner might refer to as a shining wit, perfectly reflecting the trend of dumbing down to appeal to the broadest possible demographic by lowering the bar so no fool gets left behind.

You know what? I don't mind leaving fools behind. Some would see intelligent TV as an insult, mocking those who don't understand; these are the fools. Others - and I count myself as one of them - sees things they don't understand as an incentive, a goal to be reached, a reason to learn more.

If I come across a word I don't understand - an unusual occurence these days for this very reason, but it does happen - I don't get angry at the writer. I don't say "Why don't you use language ordinary people can understand?" - I get one of my dictionaries out and look it up. Knowledge, education, erudition; they're not bad things, they're ideals to be aspired to. Those who sneer at education aren't doing it out of some misplaced sense of nobility or folksiness, they're doing it out of embarrassment.

But here's the point: Ignorance isn't cause for embarrassment. It's not a valid excuse for complacency. It's a challenge to become better.

Some people become reverse snobs, wallowing in their ignorance and dullness, praising those who strive toward mediocrity. Others delight in knowledge, in erudition, in the joy of curiosity, and use those qualities to entice others to join them. And they will always be resented by the self-satisfied dullards who are too frightened to try to better themselves.

Andrew

And that, M'lud, is why self-satisfied dullards shouldn't be allowed to control TV programming.

The prosecution rests.

So Mamma and I were tidying up, and found a big box of my old Lego. We looked inside and found that there was a great mess within, so we decided to consolidate things a bit.

So we started going through all the Lego, sorting it, reducing the total volume by around 40%. We managed to get it all packed down, categorised, and packaged away in a matter of minutes.

...or at least that was the plan.

Well, what could I do? There I was, with a big box full of little plastic bricks. So I did what any self-respecting, red-blooded male would do.

I built a fire engine.




All right, so it's a bit crap, but come on - it's got blue lights! And a fire hose! And railings! And things!

A friend of mine recorded Hogfather for me off Sky One. I'd heard good things about it from those who saw clips at the Con, Pterry himself was very keen on it, and the production stills I'd seen had looked the part. So I was expecting a fairly passable, if not good, adaptation. I wanted to enjoy it.

And what a bitter disappointment.

The acting's reminiscent of a school play, the blocking and editing is clumsy, the funny scenes from the book have somehow been hacked to bits to remove any trace of humour, and Teatime, I fear, brings a whole new meaning to the term "deeply crap". The stupid laugh, for instance, and that utterly incongruous American accent? Even Peter Guiness, who was so good in Redcap, mugs it up badly as Medium Dave. And even the Wow-Wow Sauce explosion is disappointing...

And it doesn't help that any subtlety in plot is beaten about the head and neck by the blunt object of exposition, and every joke is battered to within an inch of its punchline and then explained, just to make sure that even the comatose couldn't fail to understand it. And the dialogue... oh god, the dialogue. If it were any more on-the-nose it would be up it.

Oh, it's not all bad. The production design has the right Discworld feel, Nobby's well cast, and I can just about buy Susan, but much of the casting is very curious. Ridcully¹ isn't suitably bullish, for instance, and both David Jason and Tony Robinson are largely wasted. Death's made of bleedin' styrofoam (and for heaven's sake, with modern special effects, how difficult can it really be to animate Death's jaw?), and the scythe appears to be made of tin foil.

And what about the sound mix? The Castle of Bones' collapse is silent - I can't remember if it was in the book, but on film it doesn't work - and the Voice Of Death (both in the Susan and Death versions) is the laziest I've heard. Just a reverb added, no bass... not a patch on the sepulchral and, arguably, definitive tones of Christopher Lee as used in the cartoon. Any Discworld film needs a good Death, and Hogfather, I'm afraid, hasn't.

And just as a final, departing kick in the teeth, the "Coming Next Episode" bit at the end of Part One gives away almost the entire plot of the second half. Notable scenes? They're there. Plot points? Yup, got them all too. The ending, complete with insipid happy-clappy waving? Of course!

(Of course, this is by no means Hogfather's first foray into spoiler-verging foreshadowing. Oh no - the whole plot point about the Tooth Fairy's castle being a drawing is clumsily driven home in the first half hour.)


Ho, ho, bloody ho.



(And for the sake of completeness, why hasn't Death's handwriting in the film got serifs?)

¹ - Ridcully should be played by Brian Blessed, quite simply. He is the only way.