Storms, writing, EW's 20 greatest sci-fi characters, and ice cream

[sheryden]

1. The storm has been keeping me off the internet most of the day. I'm paranoid about my computer getting struck by lightning, because that actually happened a about a year or so ago. Fried my mother board, and I had to buy a new computer

Comments

[jenniferjensen]

That list is a piece of crap! Woody from Toy Story? WTF is up with that? Okay, there are maybe a few on the list that are o.k. and come on no Star Trek/Stargate love as usual.

[sheryden]

Agreed. How can they say that Woody has had more of a cultural impact than Jean-Luc Picard or Jack O'Neill? I think they were trying too hard be hip and trendy with the list.

[moodymuse19]

Austin Powers? Woody? Edward Cullen? I might agree that it is too soon to know if Edward will make a significant impact like, say, Buffy, Mulder or Harry. But these list is mostly crap!

Jack O'Neill should have been there, and Daniel too, why not. Mal Reynolds. John Crichton. The Doctor (the series started again only a few years ago, I don't care if it had origins 40 years ago!).

And since when is 24 fantasy or sci-fi?

[sheryden]

I felt like they were trying too hard to be hip and trendy with that list. I'd really like to hear their rationale for why they chose these characters. I mean, the cultural impact of someone like Buffy or Harry Potter is pretty obvious, but that character from District 9? That movie came out, like, last year. How can we know what the cultural impact of the character will be? And Woody? And Edward? Yeah, I think the list is crap.

And yeah, I was wondering about 24, too.

[semirose]

From what I understand this is SyFy trying to impose sff on EWs already crap but not genre list by expanding the definition of sff so that they can find 20 characters to make an even crappier list. Honestly at least half those characters don't fall in genre.

[sheryden]

Yeah, the original list is linked in the Sci-Fi Wire article above, and it's definitely WTF as well.

The execs in charge of Siffy need their heads examined. The network became popular because of sci-fi geeks, and they're alienating us by trying to mainstream it.

[n7of9]

gollum and buffy on the same list as shrek and toy story

and austin fuckng powers!

that's one shithouse list!

[originalpuck]

Hm. I kinda agree with some of the names on the list. Characters like Harry Potter, Buffy, Mulder and Scully, Morpheus, etc have had a huge culture impact. I also think characters like Jack Sparrow, Austin Powers, and Shrek are big names. NGL. I feel reasonably confident I could go out and stop most college kids and ask them who any of those folks are, and get a correct answer.

I'm a bit surprised at how many comic book characters they left off the list, and c'mon, no Star Wars prequel characters, either? WTF? I'd say it's because the franchises started before 1990, but dude, so did LotR. And wtf, if 24 was so big, you'd think people would know enough to know it's not scifi/f. *sighs* Pop culture fail.

[originalpuck]

* And that there weren't any Trek characters.

[sheryden]

Yeah, there are a few I would agree with, but there is a lot of fail on the list. The omission of Trek characters is perhaps the most glaring omission. And I don't know if you looked at the main list (linked to in the article), but they included the Joker and Tony Stark, both of whom came into being well before the 1990s. So yeah.

And another problem is the lack of definition: "impact on culture" could mean practically anything.