I was a very pretentious teenager and read almost exclusively things that went way over my head out of principle. Rereading some of these things now and finally getting "it" (or at least some of it to some degree or another), I sometimes wonder what I got out of the experience then, considering that I must have missed…

I was defending the "A nice ass is a perfectly fine reason to fall in love with someone in a silly popcorn movie"-postion upthread, but I have to admit that this is also a very compelling argument. That hair was really a character in its own right int hat movie, truly a marvel to behold.

As a fellow useless degree holder I relate.

I can't believe that I'm doing this, but I'm actually going to defend this movie, the waterfall scene to be precise. I've always loved that it was the girl who got to be shallow for once; you know, female gaze and stuff. You don't get this all that often, so you're grateful for every little morsel. I was of course too…

Obviously procreation is still to be discouraged in such a scenario (where the siblings only meet later as adults), but it would be more on the basis of rational considerations, not so much a visceral sensation of disgust. That aspect would be greater for me in the in the "actually grown up together" rather than the…

Interesting reaction.

I think it's a great testament to how well that show portrayed the sibling-relationship and got viewers invested in it, that this scene of technically-not-at-all-incest seems to provoke a lot more visceral reactions among viewers than many of the other ones listed here calculated towards maximum edigness.

Westermarck-Effect! Which is why in ASOIAF-fandom, I find shipping Jon/Sansa or, God beware, Jon/Arya a lot creepier than say Jon + a certain other prominent female character he might be related to if a certain theory about his parentage holds true. Arya and Sansa are very probably not his biological sisters after…

I found it interesting to look at the reasoning behind the varying creep factors: The decisive ingredient for the really high scores seems to be an element of deception, which, fair enough. It doesn't count as consensual when consent is given based on false pretense. But I don't think the Morgan/Arthur thing would…

Exactly; I suspect the best bet would be to pick something ever so slightly old-fashioned (but not old-fashioned enough to fall into hipster/bobo naming patterns; think Mom names, not Grandma names) to avoid the pitfalls of ubiquity due to excessive trendiness.

Daniel Desario in Freaks and Geeks! James Franco has somewhat overstayed his welcome by now (in my estimation), but in that role he was quite a sight.

For what it's worth, my first association with the name Nathan is Nathan the Wise, of Lessing's Ring Parable. He's a Jewish merchant who gets asked by the Sultan which religion has the truth of it and comes up with a pretty elegant answer. You could do worse.

You say "scrawny", I say lithe and lean. Paul Bettany wouldn't eve have to be funny, is what I'm saying.

That's the great advantage of having a name common as dirt like mine: Any potential negative association due to a particularly unpleasant namesake is likely to get diluted by the many perfectly inoffensive people you are also likely to know with that name.

I was so disappointed. I would totally watch a movie about fairy-tale Alibaba.

Thanks for the reply! Now I remember that I might just have had a kneejerk reaction against that MPDG/salvation through love + fetishism aspect aspect of it. There's only so much you can save with self awareness. (For some reason I do love David Foster Wallace though, who also has lots of protagonists wallowing in…

Super Sad True Love Story managed to somehow annoy me just with its blurb/synopsis. Is "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" sufficiently fundamentally different? (I know, I know, that question would be easier to answer if I could pin down what exactly annoyed me about the Super Sad True Love Story concept, but sadly…

As a person who wears glasses I can tell you that this is the kind of vision you don't want blurred.

It's easy to forget if the last thing of him you saw was his last season of Downton Abbey. But I can't blame him for phoning it in and getting out of dodge.

My dad has just turned 60. He's definitely a more dedicated (and probably also competent) facebook user than me. (I just can't conceive of him as a Grandpa though, mainly because I couldn't conceive of myself as a mom).