Labcoats and Lairs

For years, sci-fi has asked, what if aliens were wetter than us. Project Hail Mary posits a new, daring question. What if we are the wet aliens

@apocrypals

If you're going to ask me to take your media analysis seriously I'm going to need you to - well get a bit of perspective and stop describing mediocre YA genre fiction like it's Camp of the Saints for one. But also, much more significantly, not draw a line between 'wrote a bunch of stories that are maybe slightly more thoughtlessly racist/sexist/whatever then the cultural background of the time twenty years ago' and 'literally a serial rapist' as if they're basically equivalent moral failings.

One popular take on "deconstructions" of children's media I'll push back on is the idea that talking about how fucked up it is that a bunch of kids have to save the world is inherently pandering to adult audiences. Kids love it when kids' media is about how fucked up it is to be a kid who has to save the world – you've just gotta not be condescending about it.

Charlie Bucket was a final girl

Steven Universe Heritage post

The rhyme "Liar Liar Pants On Fire” was inspired by the English Inquisition, where the pants of heretics were lit aflame. The same inquisition also spawned the phrase, “Thief Thief Impaled On A Barbed Spike,” which is less known because it does not rhyme.

I have no problem whatsoever giving five stars out of five to a work of art. I'd be willing to give 10/10 to the tiniest handful. But I would never ever even with a gun to my head give a 100/100, that would require a perfection unattainable in this universe

yeah I feel like as the granularity of the ranking increases, a work that receives a perfect score also becomes less and less interesting? like eventually a million out of a million is essentially a perfect sphere, crystalline but also trivial in some sense, no texture or greebles to attach yourself to, it's empty.

I feel like there's a peak and a cliff, where stuff gets better and better and then at some point as all the loose ends are tied up and everything is regularised it becomes less meaningful, or worse is better in some ways? it's complicated.