BC CULTURE
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1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

 2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.
3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.
4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"
5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."
6. How do we locate the achievement of Stan Lee? I think one place to start is that even when he was despised by the likes of Mario Puzo Lee took his work very seriously, It was, for him, "the most important thing in the world."
7. Lee's legacy, at least among the comics cognoscenti has become clouded by debates over authorship. Many, me included, now think that the many creator of the 1960s books were the artists (Kiby & Ditko but also Wally Wood, Gene Colan etc).
8. I think one way to recast Lee's legacy is to think of him as an Editor who added dialogue more than a writer. And he was an editor of genius, far better than his peers in terms of recognizing the talent of Kirby & Ditko, giving it room to breathe.
9. It was Lee who first conceptualized the Marvel line as a coherent universe (an outgrowth of encouraging his artists to put in cameos to cross pollinate the titles). And his carnival barkers voice, sometimes grating, gave the Marvel titles a tonal unity.
10. The framing of the Marvel books as a coherent interlocking universe was the key shift. We're very used to this now in pop culture. Even frigging Lego has their own cinematic universe! But Lee in 1960s (perhaps influenced by sci-fi) was pioneer https://t.co/q8DbtCTKcj
11. The key to Stan Lee's life is that he wanted originally to be a novelist (Stanley Leiber!) and did comics as a day job & pen name (Stan Lee). By the time he was 39 he realized the novel wasn't coming and so threw himself into the day job with a passion.
12. My more extended thoughts on Stan Lee and his legacy here: https://t.co/UcwrGbrgnc
13. My Lee piece should be read in conjunction with my earlier Kirby piece https://t.co/THtOKcrVt7
14. And also my Ditko obituary: https://t.co/7fg65diYqK

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The Quest for Community - Robert Nisbet

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
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Chris Pramas
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I did no design work on the core game, but I was in roleplaying R&D, so I was involved in the internal playtesting, meetings, and discussions. Everyone involved in 3E got a Player’s Handbook with their name embossed on the front cover. The pictures show mine. #CuratedQuarantine


Now AD&D Second Edition had been published in 1989 and WotC bought the ailing TSR in 1997, so it made sense to do a new edition. The goal was to retain the core of D&D but to rationalize the rules to make them more consistent & ideally easier to learn and play. #CuratedQuarantine

In previous editions, sometimes you wanted to roll high and sometimes you wanted to roll low. Sometimes you rolled a d20 and sometimes percentile dice. A lower armor class was better than a higher one, with the result that +3 armor actually reduced your AC. #CuratedQuarantine

This is the sort of stuff that 3E addressed successfully. There was a core mechanic for everything. Roll a d20, add modifiers, and try to hit a target number (hence the d20 System). #CuratedQuarantine
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Joshua Todd James
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Sunday thoughts:

I've had an untold number of abusive bosses over the years (I speak primarily of before I became a screenwriter.)

A large number. Same is true of teachers, instructors and coaches. I had those before I ever had abusive bosses. 1)

2) I've also lost jobs when it was clear I wouldn't put up with a abuse, or wasn't hired when it seemed like I wouldn't take shit. I interviewed for an assistant manager position in a business in Union Square eons ago. The manager looked at my resume, then looked at me, and said,

3) "it says here you've done a lot of martial arts, and you're a black belt. That worries me," he said. "The owner of this establishment is a former football player. He likes to throw his weight around. You don't look like someone who'd be okay with him screaming at you."

4) He screams at his employees? I asked.

"Among other things," he said. "He's a big guy, he might challenge you to step outside, if he doesn't like the look on your face. How would you respond to that, since you're a black belt?"

"I'd probably call the police, first," I said.

5) I didn't get the job. This wasn't the only time. There were other times I DID have a job & my employer vetted me, knew I needed the job, knew I'd be homeless without out it, I had no family or resources to fall back on.

And proceeded to torture and torment me as a result.
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