Literary litigation (briefly) revisited: also, junk food junkie gives off

[dianeduane]

I’d been wondering in an idle way what was going on with the New Line / Tolkien family lawsuit when I stumbled across this link to a good LA Times article on the situation (in an LA Times blog entry that also referenced this equally good article about “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”). I must watch out for Rachel Abramowitz’s stuff in the future. I particularly note the line at the end of the first article:

Still, I bet you Warner Bros. isn't treating " Harry Potter's" J.K. Rowling this way.

No, I bet they’re not. …Meanwhile, like many others, I sit around waiting with considerable interest to see what comes of the Warner Bros. et al vs. RDR et al lawsuit. (Kind of amazing how long that discussion over at the Leaky Lounge has been going on.) It’s been, cripes, since April since the case went quiet. Though the judge is apparently quite a busy man, and is (I’d guess) also making sure he has all the pertinent case law neatly stacked up before ruling.

(sigh) …Anyway, time to get back to this screenplay (after a pause for a grilled cheese sandwich). Another day’s work will see the first draft .PDF’d and in the email boxes of those who need to see it. But meanwhile the grilled cheese is a sop to all the fried / junk food I immediately get the desire to be eating when I’m doing script work. (Don’t even ask how many bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos I went through when I was rewriting Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King.) (aka Ring of the Nibelungs, aka Sword of Xanten ((I nearly typed “Sword of Camden” there. SUCH a different story)), aka forty other titles in ninety other markets. Hey, IMdB has a lot of the aliases. Not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.) Oh sweet Goddess but could I not demolish a case of Wise Potato Chips around now.

(SIGH) I’m whinging; don’t mind me. (Note to self: investigate why American slang apparently does not contain the word “whinging”. Investigate etymology of word. Investigate why there are no potato chips in the house.)

 

Tags: J.R.R.+Tolkien, New+Line, George+Lucas, Star+Wars:+The+Clone+Wars, litigation, lawsuit, Rowling, RDR, Warner+Bros., Ring+of+the+Nibelungs, Sword+of+Xanten, Dark+Kingdom:+The+Dragon+King, Wise+Potato+Chips, Leaky+Lounge, junk+food+junkie, etymology

Comments

[rebelsheart]

So I keep meaning to ask, why do you have plusses in your tags?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Not clear about that. Apparently BlogJet puts them in.

[geekosaur]

The blog relay software encodes spaces as +s the same way search fields do (try any multiword google search for an example).

Now you've got me curious

[mithriltabby]

Hmmm... it must’ve fallen out of use in the States; Merriam-Webster says it goes back to Middle English *whingen, from Old English hwinsian; akin to Old High German winsōn to moan, and dates to the 12th century. Whine goes back to Middle English, from Old English hwīnan, to whiz; akin to Old Norse hvīna, to whiz. (Whiz being in the sense of rapid motion here, such as could cause a whining sound.)

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

It's funny how much recrimination there has been over people not getting paid what they've been owed for the Lord of the Rings films, given how Zaentz never compensated Peter S. Beagle adequately for his work on the animated film…

[dduane.livejournal.com]

I know. We seem to have a very convoluted version of "what goes around, comes around" going on here. Except possibly backwards.

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

I've been assuming that 'whinging' is the same as what we call 'whining'. Means complaining, yes? Often for no good reason?

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

There was a massive flame war over this on a mailing list I'm on, where one member of the list (American) accused other members of the list (British, Irish, etc) of either persistently mis-spelling, or making up the word. One way or another, he reckoned, it wasn't a real word.

Anyway. There is a very subtle difference between whining and whinging. Whining, for a start, is the noise made by unhappy dogs. They're not able to whinge. I've always thought of whinging as the noise a child makes when they've run out of energy for screaming and crying, but still wish to indicate that the world is Not Satisfactory.

In adults, whining is a step above whinging. Whining might be justified. Whinging rarely is. Whining is usually directed toward other people, whinging might not be.

Of course, this is all from my one small native corner of Hiberno-Anglian, so it might all be different in the next county where dduane is...

(For the next chapter, "scraub" vs. "scratch"!)

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

So basically, it seems like you have two words where we have one.

I can use whining to mean:

1. the noise a dog (or other animal) makes when in pain or hungry (when a child makes a similar noise, I'd call it whimpering)

2. the semi-communicative noises my children make when they are bored, tired, unhappy, or just not getting their way

3. a similar communication to 2. only used by an adult, often not directed at anyone in particular

4. a communication used by an adult to express their displeasure with a particular person, thing, or situation, directed at same person, thing or situation, but with no intention of trying to actually solve the difficulty

If I read you right, you'd use whining for 1 and 3, and whinging for 2 and 4?

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much bang on.

[fiveforsilver]

one member of the list (American) accused other members of the list (British, Irish, etc) of either persistently mis-spelling, or making up the word.

Heh, I'm in a LJ comm that is mostly British with (relatively) few American and other non-Brits. I've decided it's not worth getting into it when people include in their posts nasty comments about stupid American spelling (mom, color, etc, how DARE we spell things differently, clearly we're all uncivilized idiots!!). But sometimes I really want to. Because I wonder, why do they care? Why does it matter? And why is it such a big deal that it's worth being rude about it? I don't understand...

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Funny side to the American vs. British English debate: on a mailing list I was on back in the Dark Ages of the Internet, someone posted that they had "leather pants" to sell, and included a picture oh him modelling a pair of very nice leather trousers. (For those Americans who don't know, pants is the British term for underwear.) The Brits said "How can we tell what pants are being worn in the picture?", the Americans replied "DUH!" and a huge row erupted. Luckily, the mod was an American ex-pat living in London, so she was able to bridge the language gap for us. :)

[fiveforsilver]

Hahaha

Yes, there was a post about clothes recently in that comm I mentioned, and I was careful to use other words besides pants for, well, pants (trousers, jeans, etc) because due to the nature of the discussion, things could have gotten very confusing.

On the up side, I've got fairly good British-American translation ability these days, which is especially useful since several of my favorite tv shows happen to be British...

[dduane.livejournal.com]

gw, immediate agreement that whining is a joint human/animal prerogative, but whinging is human-only. (Or requires the ability to be human-verbal.)

Peter suggested here that the difference between human whining and whinging is that human whining is rarely justified, and whinging often is. Not sure I buy this right out of the gate, but will think about it, as the delineation is very delicate.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

What was related to me by people who were at the the Warner Bros. et al vs. RDR et al court case suggests that the judge would prefer that the parties reach an agreement without needing judgment. Last I heard it seemed that what was required was mostly things like signaling quoted phrases and passages more clearly, possibly shortening a very few quoted passages, and some other minor stuff I can't remember.

Strangely this is approximately what was offered long prior to the case, and rejected (or rather, I think the offer was ignored) by Warner Bros. and JKR. I surmise that the judge was not impressed by some evidence from JKR which, apparently, turned out not to match the source material. (EG. a statement that a whole entry was copied directly from one of the HP books; it turned out, when reference was made to the original, that only a small part of the entry was actually a quotation.)

As best I understand, the judge does not want to create what could be a far reaching precedent. I think that judging in favour of Warner Bros/JKR would outlaw most forms of critical works or commentaries, probably even reviews. Ruling against might be taken to allow some things currently not currently assumed to be allowed. I don't know, maybe fanfic would be explicitly legal rather than just tolerated by the more enlightened.

[calenorn.livejournal.com]

Hullo Ms. D.

I have to shout for Wise Potato Chips, having grown up in Berwick, PA, the original home of Wise. Do they sell them on your side of the pond?

Even so I must say that all good Pennsyvania Dutch know that Middleswarth Chips are the best. Still, I believe, made with real LARD.

Good, but not good for you!

[snowydragon1776.livejournal.com]

I think on some level New Line is hoping people forget about the lawsuit. Last time I heard they were coming close to an agreement.

I do the same thing when I write. Junk food or just something to snack on (i.e. chips, popcorn).

Those chips look really good.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

Speaking of etymology, I watch several shows on BBCAmerica, and have noticed a terribly amusing little word: minging. I've heard it mostly on How Clean Is Your House?, when Aggie is remarking on how absolutely horrible something smells or how filthy it is. Does anyone know where this word comes from?

[azurelunatic]

I'm thinking possibly from minge.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

ew. Never heard that one.

[azurelunatic]

"Whinging" is starting to make its way into parts of the American vocabulary in the circles I inhabit by way of Harry Potter fanfiction. I've also enthusiastically adopted the exclamation "brilliant", with and without sarcasm.

[parakkum.livejournal.com]

Whereas I use "brilliant," (those Guinness ads do help, as did HP), I still can't overcome my intuitive response that whinging is, indeed, a misspelling of whining. Even though it isn't. :)

[azurelunatic]

I recommend a good inoculation at an early age with classic imported children's books, although it may be too late for you.

It made me furious that the Harry Potter books were edited for an American audience.

[tabbyclaw.livejournal.com]

I blame Spike from Buffy for a lot of my Britishisms, but really it started long before then with the Saturday night Britcoms on PBS. And now that an Australian, God bless the small world the Internet has created, has me hooked on Doctor Who and New Tricks, my vocabulary may never recover.

[jmswallow.livejournal.com]

"Sword of Camden". I smell series. Let's do lunch.

Whinge vs Whine

[chelle-sama.livejournal.com]

I always assumed that it got mis-spelled here in the US at some point and, in the manner of cats, we decided that 'Nu-UH, we didn't do anything wrong, YOU did and anyway anyway nobody cares you guys suck and we are TOO DIGNIFIED to argue with you until you stand corrected and humbled in our presence.'

I could be wrong. The recent displays of We Are Lord and Master of All We Survey and You Will All be Assimilated going on in the media could be colo(u)ring my view on the matter.