Tea at Trianon: An Open Letter to Chuck Wendig

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

An Open Letter to Chuck Wendig

From Ann Margaret Lewis at Catholic Geeks:

The number one rule for any entertainment venture, be it film, play, book or comic is this: Do not waste the audience’s time and money. They are there to be entertained. Your job is to entertain them. If you don’t do that, they will not give you money in the future.

The Last Jedi broke this cardinal rule. It really is that simple. The Last Jedi did not entertain, but wasted my, and much of the broader audience’s, time and hard-earned cash. Only hard-core fans saw it more than once (which gave them more to complain about on social media). Now, I have seen Solo. But I will tell you that I did not want to initially. I had to be cajoled into it by my husband, who was willing to try it. I was one of those who felt burned by The Last Jedi and it had nothing whatever to do with the diversity thing. I was angry because my time and money was wasted the last time, just as it had been with the prequels. No, it didn’t ruin my childhood. My childhood was my childhood and it will not change. I wasn’t angry about the old characters being misused, etc. I was angry that the whole thing was a time suck beginning to end and not worth what I paid to see it. In fact, my comment on leaving the theater after TLJ was this: “For what they spent to make that film they could have fed a third-world country and the money would have been better spent. They couldn’t pay a decent screenwriter to give them a well-structured story?” (Read more.)