To get annoyed by a badly written novel with serious factual mistakes

[PhaedraIsMyName]

Author thinks the witness to a crime can decide who the Crown calls as expert witness.

Expert witness is a therapist who was treating the witness to the crime. Expert witness is married to a lawyer. Expert witness has been discussing the background with lawyer husband. The person accused of the crime is the crime scene witness'father. Author thinks the lawyer husband can represent the accused and this is not a conflict.

Lawyer husband is actually employed in a government legal department and author thinks lawyer husband can, whilst still employed, act as a defence lawyer.

It's tosh. Did nobody bother to edit or proof read it?

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

north - yes, I never got that. I also don't follow how they're different ages. I had assumed the average age of slayers must be gradually increasing as Buffy failed to die ... or else is is deliberately unpleasant and if you pass (say) 16 as a potential and the slayer in question isn't dead yet, you pass your sell-by date?

I can't remember if this was a fan theory or in one of the tie in books, but each potential has a watcher, by the time they get to their 20s It's assumed they won't be called and they get dropped. But some ended up as watchers?

Yes, and they're always in candle-lit halls using the correct knives and forks. Not drinking dodgy red wine out of mugs
I admit, it annoys me that the college librarian has Peter put on cotton gloves to touch it, because they don't do that (the natural oils in your skin are actually good for the manuscripts, and you're more likely to be cack-handed wearing gloves). Though I suppose maybe they did in the past.
I'm not that old, honest, but I did both (not Oxford, t'other one) as a student: formal hall up to twice a week (just an excuse to put your gown on and eat by candlelight, really) and when I was doing my final year dissertation on 18th century poetry, I was supplied with the little white gloves for handling some early 18th century books and manuscripts. Just call me Harriet Vane.

all the potentials congregated in Sunnydale, were there no middle aged or elderly proto slayers.

I thought all the watchers were killed in Oxford at some sort of watcher convention

I can't remember if this was a fan theory or in one of the tie in books, but each potential has a watcher, by the time they get to their 20s It's assumed they won't be called and they get dropped. But some ended up as watchers?

Ooh this makes me want to write angsty stories about former potentials, now watchers, who are bitter and disillusioned.

I really need to get a life.

I thought all the watchers were killed in Oxford at some sort of watcher convention

And you'd never get a conviction for their murders, as the vamps would confess to Morse or Lewis without being cautioned.

sashh I'm so bad at reading people on here sometimes! In real life I'd get it in a second when someone is joking, but I sometimes get it wrong on here. And I often write things as a joke and find that people take it seriously, which is probably even worse.

Natasha Henry the thirteenth?! Wow, they really got that wrong! ;-)

There are some great examples of bad or non-existent research on this thread, will read through later, just thought that was quite funny!

How has it got to 327 posts without any mention of Connie Willis Blackout/All Clear?

Set during WW2, the characters use the Jubilee line. Finished in 1979.

'We bought a book for my 1-year-old nephew called That's Not My Monkey and in the end couldn't give it to him because there were mostly apes not monkeys in the book.'

To be fair to the author,if that's the case then the title is rather accurate. An ape is definitely not his monkey,or anyone's.

sashh yes, you're right. All the Watchers got killed at once. I think it was the episode where There was an attempt on Giles as well.

I love Buffy.

LRD I had a particularly memorable law lecture once about free movement in the EU and, er, Slipknot. Buffy must be an easier tie-in than that, surely?!

I don't know the book but I am imagining something like Where's Spot? with the title constantly being repeated. You could have gone through it and added the sentence 'That's some sort of ape.' on all the relevant pages. You would have been thought to be quite bats eccentric but you would have contributed greatly to your nephew's education.

Also, the Librarian of Unseen University would approve and he's not easily pleased.

As we're also mentioning TV and movies:

I don't watch CSI-type dramas, but even dramatisations of crime documentaries have bullets or casings being dug out with metal tweasers or somesuch. That's a good way to destroy potential evidence.

Added sound effects that are completely false, such as the sound when a sword is drawn:

There was a contradiction in Reservoir Dogs which annoyed me, where they were all told that they were getting code names of different colours as they were not allowed to know anything at all about each other. Nothing. It was stressed as being very important because if one of them were caught, he wouldn't be able to rat out the others with the information they had about the others.

And then three of them all drive by together to collect Mr Orange from his flat, because knowing where he lived was apparently okay, it was just his name that would make him easily traceable.

We can't get to that bit of the film without me getting twitchy and DH muttering "don't start'' at me

Oh, Prince of Thieves! How I shrieked with laughter all the way through. Especially when he lands at Dover in his little dinghy, which he has presumably rowed all the way from Palestine, and announces he's going to be in Nottingham by that night. 'You ain't even got a horse!' because something of a catchphrase at that point.
I also loved the medieval treehouse village they created for about one and a half scenes in Sherwood Forest, which they then burned down. I suppose we have to excuse them for depicting medieval Sherwood Forest as a large conifer plantation, because that's basically what it looked like in the early 90s anyway.

I also get very irritated by fantasy and science fiction which doesn't adhere to its own internal logic.

I'm perfectly happy to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast any day but once you've set out your pitch stick with it.

cashmiriana - not sure what you mean about last British watcher in the 70s? Wesley and Giles were both British, in the 90s? Unless you mean the slayer Spike killed in the 70s (Robin Woods mother) - but she was in New York?

I assumed that the Watcher's council expanded (possibly from the mid 19th c to explain why it is so British) to cover all sorts of demon-fighty stuff all over the world, as one girl on her own won't be able to fight all the demons in every country. This is because it otherwise makes absolutely no sense that Buffy is never in 7 years asked to travel anywhere outside of Sunnydale to kill anything. hellmouth or no hellmouth it is a bit of a coincidence that there are no apocalypses/vampire gangs anywhere needing slaying. We know that other watchers are involved in training potentials, and that there is a 'wetworks' division (from the ep where Faith and Buffy switch bodies), and I assume a huge research department, etc, so I just assume that it has now become a huge organisation and the original purpose (to watch the one slayer) is just one aspect of it. Still doesn't explain why the only slayer is actively ignored for the majority of it though, although I assume it is because they just really hate Buffy and spend their time hoping she will snuff it...again.

re: Deborah Harkness - the part where they wandered into the yoga studio where vampires etc were casually balancing on one hand is where I had to give up. Not that I suppose it is inaccurate, per se. Just hilarious.

I work in an archive, and people are often VERY disappointed when I say they don't need the white gloves. Sometimes I let them wear them on one hand just to cheer them up (I get them to turn the pages with the other). Like a bunch of studious Michael Jacksons.

Nitram - can't believe that neither DH or I have ever spotted that one!

Has anyone read this? This book oddly appears to have been researched within an inch of its life apart from possibly the author never having heard 2 other human beings holding a conversation.

If you see a copy in a charity shop it's worth spending 50p on it's spectacularly bad. There was a bit of a fuss on Amazon as there were a number of 5 star reviews by people who apparently had never bought, read or reviewed any other Amazon product.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/075534457X?pc_redir=1405435321&robot_redir=1

cashmiriana - not sure what you mean about last British watcher in the 70s? Wesley and Giles were both British, in the 90s? Unless you mean the slayer Spike killed in the 70s (Robin Woods mother) - but she was in New York?

Yep, misremembered.
140 odd episodes in a few months have addled my brain, clearly.

Sorry this is going to spoil a beautiful thing for a lot of you.

Willow and the rest start off in the year below Oz, but they end up int he same year. Noe Oz could be repeating a year, but he and Willow are picked out by some guys in suits as high fliers at some career fair thing.

Granita it may have been corrected in later editions because there was quite a fuss about it in some quarters...

I think they do make some lame attempt at explaining the Oz moving school years - he does repeat. I think.

Unlike in Glee (we can do lowbrow, right?) where Kurt falls for popular and clearly older Blaine, who then moves schools and ends up in the year below him. I don't mind too much given that Darren Criss is so adorable. Glee is quite knowing though, and often has Sue refer explicitly to the gaping plot holes.

Nitram -I'm going to have to go and check it out now...

A friend of mine recommended a kindle book to me that a friend of hers had written. It was spectacularly bad - not just the writing, but the punctuation and spelling too. But the bit that made me howl like a loon was the sex scene where "he sucked her nipples, one at a time and then together." What sort of tits would she have had to have had to have had her nipples sucked at the same time? I am thinking spaniel's ears, sort of long and floppy. She also keeps referring to the clitoris as the "nub" and you get the bad rhyme of "he rubbed her nub..."