One question is: How many fleeting moments of physical consciousness a decapitated person experiences before slipping away into eternity?  A friend seemed to think that decapitated people actually do have a quick moment of consciousness after being beheaded -- NO, MY FRIEND HAS NOT BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT, LOL.

A recent news article said that judicial hangings are actually intended to snap the neck and cause immediate paralysis and unconsciousness, and that some hangings do literally decapitate the victims.

This brings to mind a show I saw on History Channel's Wild West Tech.  The show was on executions and had a lot on hanging.  What you mention was covered, there is apparently a science to where to put the knot and a formula to calculate victim weight to length of rope and number of turns.  The desired result is immediate breakage of neck, which to the best of their knowledge causes quick painless death.

However if they get it wrong you get a result like one I just read about in a bio of Teddy Roosevelt. Apparently in the hanging of a murderess, they got it very wrong and she dangled and strangled for about 25 min, crying and sobbing the whole time.  Don't recall if that was a PUBLIC hanging or not.

Public hangings were common till turn of the century depending on locale, and people turned out for them like they were parties, complete with picnic lunches.

I could really see Edward Collins dragging kid Carl and kid Quentin to one of those, to teach the scamps what happened to kids who, in the parlance of the time, were "born to be hung."

Quote from: IluvBarnabas on January 03, 2007, 01:58:41 AM

I was sorry to see Joe go, I always hoped that he and Maggie might get back together.

Karlenfan once wrote a story where they indeed get back together.  It was a great story.  Ah, fanfiction! 

And don't forget that in the backstory they mention for Return to Collinwood, it was said that Joe and Maggie had been married for a number of years.  If I recall they said she had been widowed either a few months or a year before the beginning of the play.  She was just getting out of mourning and had made tentative steps toward some sort of a relationship with Quentin as the story opens.

Have any of you on this message board ordered the new audio CDs of "Dark Shadows?"  It's brand new stories featuring some of the original cast of DS.

The first one that came out is called "Return to Collinwood."  That one can be ordered at MPI Home Video.  The newer ones are from (URL)

"The House of Despair" and "The Book of Temptation" are already out on audio CD.  "The Christmas Presence" and "The Rage Beneath" comes out in January 2007.

Glad you've found all the new DS audio dramas.Hope you'll enjoy them.  If you've ever been to a fest, you may know that they've done radio play style dramas there too; actually, that is where Return to Collinwood premiered.   I have reviews of a number of these productions on my David Selby review site.  Here's the links to the exact pages if you want to read about them:

Return to Collinwood: http://mediafanfiction.tripod.com/jeanniesdavidselbysite/id16.html

The House of Despair:  http://mediafanfiction.tripod.com/jeanniesdavidselbysite/id29.html

The site hasn't been updated for way too long, but once life calms down I DO intend to continue with reviews of all the Big Finish audio dramas.

www.clayguy.com

  I have his Quentin of course.

Thanks for the link (and ask me if I'm surprised about the Quentin.... )  These look like they'd be a nice addition to the Majestic Quentin I got at the Fest.

Quote from: arashi on December 30, 2006, 08:03:07 AM

AUGH! T_T Okay I'm on disc 2 of boxset 17 (which I got for Christmas thanks Mom & Dad) and [spoiler]Beth has finally figured out with much help that Petofi is in Quentin's body.[/spoiler] OK I figure she was probably hoping for a happy ending here and was putting on blinders... my gripe here is that the writers had her run to TIM SHAW for help?! WHY?! What the hell was the logic behind this decision? Because he's had dealings with Petofi? So has nearly EVERYONE ELSE in town! Why the hell didn't she run to Quentin for Chrissakes?!

Oh my God. Seriously.

AND THEN! To get away from him she ran from town to WIDOW's HILL?!?!

True, she really should have gone to Quentin first, rather than Tim Shaw. But she was so scared when she realized the truth, she probably wasn't thinking straight. And she was scared out of her wits when [spoiler]Tim brought Petofi to her and when she saw a chance to get away, she took it. Going to Widows' Hill in hindsight wasn't very bright either, but again she was terrified out of her mind, trying to get away from Petofi.[/spoiler]

Poor Beth....no matter what we think what she could or should have done, she didn't deserve what happened to her.

I agree with everything everyone has said on this one.  There's enough loose ends in how they chose to write Beth out (and assassinate what was at the beginning a very spirited and intelligent character) to crochet a dozen new afghans! 

I LIKE Beth, like writing her, and she really got a bum rap from the writers.

Not to mention the [spoiler]way she fell off Widows Hill.  When you actually look at it closely, it's really hard to believe that she had to falll at all.  He has her hand and she does like a dance dip under his arm.  ALL he had to do was grab her hand and fall backwards and they would have fallen backwards onto stable ground, her on top of him.[/spoiler]

I used the latter scenario in a Quentin and Beth alternate I wrote that is slated for the next issue of World of Dark Shadows (end obligatory plug  )

I know what you mean that certain boards accept any and all fanfiction, and many of it is either knocked down or praised whatever quality it is, but I don't agree that there is no real critiquing out there. It does exist on a few rare groups. Maybe I just lucked out, but I have found a group where people, fellow writers, ARE willing to take the time to critique and beta read each other's work before it's posted to a board...I know my writing (which is far from perfect - as i joke with friends, I am an artist, not a writer) has definitely improved because of my association with DS writing groups. The pointers and lessons I have learned from tough critiques have even helped with my college writing classes as well...

Sorry for the delay in responding to you on this, but work has been eating my life the last few weeks.

In any case, thanks for reminding me of the exception to the rule. If the group you mention is the one I think it is,  you must mean the julia b & j group.  Thing is, I don't think of that group even in the same light as the other groups in that venue.  I'm very glad you found such a group, for all the reasons you yourself point out.  Given the sea change that's happened with the rise of net fiction and the decline in fanzines, where authors learnt  by being EDITED -- not just proofread -- its really the only way left for writers interested in turning out an interesting, readable product to learn how to make their work better.

I only wish that there were more groups like that one, catering to authors writing for characters other than Barnabas and Julia.  But, as has been mentioned,  most of the self-styled "fanfiction groups"  allow anything to be posted, no matter how incoherent plots, characterizations, etc. are.  And don't even get me started on the blatant historical or medical inaccuracies that are so basic that a five second google search could have eliminated them.

Coming in late on these posts (yeah, I know, what else is new) but this one caught my eye.

It was all so spontaneous and rushed on DS, that I'm guessing Thayer just happened to be there.

That sounds like a very plausible explanation to me.  They seemed to have been "making it up as they go along" even more than Han Solo.

And 1897 was darkly, disturbingly "romantic".....

Now THAT is an excellent description of not only, 1897, but the Victorian era in general.  Juxapositions of flowery romanticism and extreme cruelty and cheapness of life, not to mention moral rectitude and extreme vice. (Keep in mind that these proper and moral Victorians also had a massive cottage industry going in child prostitution.  Not to mention that its now thought that more of the stories that Freud heard about incest were fact and not oedipal fantasies than society was willing to believe at that time.)

Nabbed Jason on the rebound, did you?!    Hi!

[spoiler]Rebound from being DEAD, MT?[/spoiler]   (Sorry, couldn't resist)

And welcome,  Mrs. McGuire.  You'll love it here -- this is where the FUN conversations are!