Yesssss this times a thousand. All of Hild's sex scenes (the sex scenes in the book but also specifically the ones with the character Hild) are amazing. They absolutely open up space to explore aspects of the society and the characters that are present but not explicit in the rest of the book—which is exactly how…

This is excellent. But (I guess I'm a total Nicola Griffith fangirl now?) Hild doesn't do anything like this. All the sex scenes are amazing precisely because they are so illuminating. The way people have sex can reveal so much about their characters.

Replace "sex" with "violence" and the same thing is true. If you…

Not Nicola Griffith though. Her sex and her violence are both exquisitely done. I am obsessed with how good Hild was, and usually I hate reading about sex—it's always SO AWKWARD. Or, awkwardly done, anyway. But Hild is amazing.

A friend leant me a copy of the first Rincewind books, and I enjoyed them. Then I read Equal Rites and a bunch of the Witches books, and I was TOTALLY HOOKED. The books are excellent. I resisted reading the Watch books, because I'm not into detective novels/noir, but then I did, and I loved THEM, too. Seriously. This…

"sexual maturity, in most cultures, occurs around 12 or 13 years old"

That seems like bullshit to me.

I have never seen/read AL:VH, but presumably in that story, the vampires were evil, and Lincoln was good? So in that story, the bad guys of history, loosely speaking (the Confederacy) were still the bad guys of the story (vampires), and the "good guys" of history (Lincoln, slave-freer and Union president) are still…

I know, but even if the actually-executed people were completely innocent and blameless, the reason they were executed was at least as much "the real witches redirected the Puritan fury toward those innocent people" as it was the Puritan fury.

I meant that it was mostly women who were persecuted, and primarily old, poor women (usually with no family).Yes, some men were also tried and found guilty of being witches, but it was primarily the weakest of the weak (i.e., poor old women). In Salem in particular, there were more men than normal found guilty of…

Right, but that still requires that the narrative include the part about the Salem witches being evil. Which is the part I have a problem with. I don't like to re-write (even fictionally) history such that the innocent victims become just as evil as the people who murdered them. It would be one thing if the people…

Yeah, Salem witch historical fiction in which the witches are actually consorting with devils is very, very hard to do without being wildly offensive. Even if the people being punished aren't witches, they're still being prosecuted because of the witches' behavior. The witch trials were really horrific, and the people…

You just basically described fiction. Or any kind of fantasy world—not just novels and comics, but also video games, RPG, movies, tv, etc. See also: a good chunk of the content of io9.

Even if a focus on the individual is a central focus of modern-day Western teenage culture, that doesn't make a Marxist critique beside the point. If anything, it would suggest that modern-day Western teenage culture is itself a cog in the capitalist machine.

I definitely thought that Lorelei was lying to Mae. Just to mess with her head. Because it's been pretty clear that Ward has been increasingly into Mae while Mae was (or was playing like she was) only in it for the boning.

Here's the thing: I agree with you that the video will be of Marty's daughter, probably being molested or otherwise hurt, but I don't think that Maggie's father will be involved. If he were willing to molest his granddaughter or offer up his grandchild(ren) to the Yellow King's cult, he would have probably done the…

That sex scene was totally not hot. It was so short and painful and awkward, and I kept thinking "God this doesn't look like fun for either of them." For Rust it was essentially masturbation, like he was very quickly jerking off (but using a body instead of his hand). And she was so perfunctory, and every time I see a…

It's not that "just because a story focuses on a character that is white and male does not inherently mean it marginalizes women or people of color," though. It's that the shows that consistently get made are the ones that are about white men, and while an individual show doesn't necessarily make its neglect systemic,…

re: Nice Guys

The best part of the episode was Rust's response to Marty shooting LaDeux: "Fuck him. Good to see you commit to something."

I agree. My partner has said several times that he doesn't get the love for this show in comparison with Top of the Lake, which is a far superior show (though in some ways less entertaining—a lot harder to watch, for example). It's frustrating to me that all the female characters exist only in relation to the male…

It doesn't matter that the characters are realistic—it's not sexist, racist, or otherwise problematic to depict characters who are sexist, racist, or otherwise problematic. In fact, I would say that the main characters show a surprising lack of racism, especially, considering that they're cops in Louisiana in the 90s.