No-Necked Monsters: Whedon, Gaiman and Otters

I have been fiddling around with my bookmarks and setting up a del.icio.us page so that I can share the wealth. Basically, this page is a window into what gets me going on the web, which waves I am catching and which grottos I dwell in. Now you can come visit.

The best thing about it is that I (and you) can take a look at who shares my (your/our) interests and from there springboard into other pages that I (or you, or we) may like.

One such instance this morning found me tripping over this excellent interview/discussion between Time Magazine, Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman.

In it they discuss the ideas of writers, comme ça:

JW: That's the problem with doing anything. Everybody expects you to keep doing it, no matter what.

NG: For me, it's always that Mary Poppins thing. I'll do it until the wind changes.

(...)

JW: Every other question I get is about the Buffy-verse.

NG: Except the trouble is, as a creator...I saw a lovely analogy recently. Somebody said that writers are like otters. And otters are really hard to train. Dolphins are easy to train. They do a trick, you give them a fish, they do the trick again, you give them a fish. They will keep doing that trick until the end of time. Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they'll do a better trick or a different trick because they'd already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We've done it, so let's do something different.

As interesting as that is, the only reason I really put it in is to have an excuse to show you some more otters!