So here's my question - how are the designers compensated when one of their designs is incorporated into Heidi's or Sarah Jessica Parker's, or whoever's line? I'm willing to bet the answer is "not very well"… and there we have the motive behind Heidi's *historic* team-challenge double winners. She wanted Viktor's…

They always take past designs into account, and I don't know why they're pretending they ever do it differently. In fact, that was one of the major deficits with the LA season - so many guest judges, that some trainwreck who managed to cobble together a half-decent piece would win one week, and a talented designer who…

While it's true that nothing ever changed in Sweet Valley generally, I would like to note that in one of the more bizarre "wages of sin is death" plotlines, poor formerly deaf Regina actually dies after doing a line of coke at a party. That'll learn you.

I loved Trixie Belden.

I was wondering if the terms of the plea agreement means the 3 can't profit from their crimes - do they have crimes, based on the way the plea was constructed? Someone who isn't me should find out.

If only Anna Paquin hadn't been in the picture, it would have been the finest few minutes of television I've seen in years.

I think the importance of the hymen is really overstated in the whole losing-of-the-virginity discussion. It's not necessarily the tearing of the hymen (personally, I can't say that I did or didn't have one - never noticed any blood), it's the insertion of an object, of whatever, size, into a cavity that may have…

"whoever thinks "ladyporn" is about romance with queezy fem-bots knows nothing about women"

Speaking of Chrestomanci… It never ceases to amaze me how thoroughly Diana Wynne Jones is left out of these conversations about genre. The Fillory bits of The Magicians, which was an interesting read - I thought it got a bit wacky in the end - reminded me a *lot* of Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm. She's so freaking…

Seriously, I had to Google Noah Hicks to remember who he was… I think maybe the craptacularity of the latter seasons washed the first few right out of my head.

Something this show could have done more with…
…is the central contradiction of Sydney's character. She's often protesting that she hates her job, and just wants to quit and have a normal life, or that she hates what her job makes her do… but let's be honest. This is a woman who is in her element jumping out of…

Am I the only one who noticed…
That it seems like SnowPants lady has visibly rotting teeth?

If you're not clear on how important it is for Buffy to be the Slayer, go to the Buffy Dialogue Database and search the phrase "I'm the Slayer." She says it fairly often. :)

That's an excellent and very interesting reading of the scene, Sophist. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I found the Potentials to be super freaking annoying… but I don't think they're unrealistically drawn characters. Buffy herself was less than excited about being the Slayer and being forced to fight the undead, and she had the magical strength and super-fast healing that comes with being the Slayer. I think that it's…

The pasted-on nature of the whole Alcide thing is, in my opinion, yet another bad outcome of cherry-picking plot from the books. Why is Alcide still in the show? Because he's in the books. But in the books, there's a lot more context/information/backstory/relevant plot that involves Alcide. Some of which the show has…

@Emily Excellent points. I've been thinking about this, too - Azor Ahai and R'hollr are "good" because they oppose the icy wight guys. But Azor Ahai is the champion of a god with a penchant for burning people - maybe even babies! - alive. Fun! So what makes them good, exactly?

This: "the agent pitching the novel to the publishing company probably used the connection as a way of getting the book published" is hilarious. A major U.S. publishing house is going to bank on pre-teens and teenagers' recognition of a graphically violent movie that was never widely released in the U.S. to sell a…

Bound feet = high heels? Really?
Having read the book, and its graphic description of the bone-cracking, pus-inducing, horrible, life-risking pain of having your feet bound - the foot is literally doubled over until the bones crack - it seems a little silly to suggest that high heels are the modern-day equivalent.…

If you're going to start disliking characters because they're terrible people who murder other people, including children, then you're left with very few people to like in the whole ASOIAF world.