As ever, I really want to see this, but there's no way I could do it in the theater, without being able to pause, mute, and/or run away without incurring too much shame.

The lack of world-building just kills me. Like, they show Quentin practicing a spell, the one he eventually uses to disastrous, yet somehow still victorious, effect during the Welters match, but they never tell us what the spell is supposed to do, or whether he's practicing it for a class, or on his own. So when it…

To me, Kanye defines the our current pop moment. Most of the time it's virtually impossible tell whether he's being hopelessly naive or incredibly savvy; his use of Twitter seems like he's both exploiting and falling victim to its potential for instant, supposedly evanescent gratification. Musically, I happen to love…

For me Kanye West is a great producer, whose greatest project is a hip hop artist called "Kanye West". Virtually everything he does is subject to radically different interpretations: is he serious about the things he says or is he just trying to shock us? He does pull his samples from some really esoteric sources;…

It's funny, because the deeper I get into my own version the more I understand the challenges facing the version we've got on TV. Granted, I'm still tinkering with the first episode, but there's a lot about the book that actively resists adaptation. The Fillory stuff is basically Quentin talking directly to the reader…

So, this one wasn't great. They punted on Welters, which is to say that while I was glad they included it, it was incomprehensible as anything besides a special effects showcase. Quentin's decision to show his father his ability to do magic was supposed to be moving, but their relationship is so sketchily drawn that…

Nope, I'm trying to see how far I can get holding her story in reserve, so that when we find out, it's a surprise, like in the books.

I commute every day on the NY subway system; I've seen people trying to get to work that act like they would rather stomp on a baby than miss a train.

Right, but imagine if the trolleys were designed and run by someone or something so powerful and capricious that they'd respond to any opposition by destroying the whole trolley system.

Sure, he was a dick to Juia, and by extension everyone who wasn't admitted to Brakebills. Basically spitting on them from atop his ivory tower. So yeah, he had to be punished, by Marina's standards. But I doubt she would have bothered if it wouldn't have been personally advantageous for her.

Evan Handler. So yeah.

Fighting a war against evil is totally the honorable choice. But there's no indication given in Cabin that waging war against the elder gods was even a practical consideration. We're talking about multiple beings powerful (and large!) enough that one of their forearms is the size of a building. Sure, they could be…

I don't think she cares about Quentin. Putting the whammy on him was just a smokescreen for her own agenda, namely jailbreaking her erased memories/powers from the Brakebills vault.

I think the leaves were Grossman's way of explaining how Quentin, a noted Chatwin family scholar, wouldn't recognize [SPOILERS BUT WHATEVER] Martin Chatwin instantly.

There are things I would actually steal from the show. It's not all bad! For example: I would totally crib the butterflies concealing the Beast's ID thing. Him walking around with a leafy twig floating in the air in front of his face is… hard to visualize. Did [SPOILERS, but nobody's reading this but us, and if they…

I worry a little about rights issues… but getting sued might not be the worst way to jumpstart my stagnating writing career.

I am unfamiliar with that. It's… what is it?

It would be hard to have Penny handless, or eventually with rad CGI golden hands. He'd have to wear green screen gloves and it would just be a budgetary nightmare. And wanton arctic fox sex would be… challenging in many respects. If (and it's a big IF) they actually go to Brakebills South, that'll be where the…

I am so tempted to write alternate episodes for my own personal edification.

I kind of dislike that Marina ended up being bad. Maybe she's just amoral, but in the universe of the show, that's code for evil, and because she's using magic selfishly, she'll be punished one way or another. She's on a quest for power (possibly one that ends with running into a certain giant fox god) anf it's going…