Consult with friends to discover the minimal tax burden amount I could keep (likely $10,000 a piece for me and my wife) and give the rest away. Let some other fucker deal with the IRS.

Ok, now that would be the show I would watch, TV writers and Execs forced to come up with increasingly ridiculous lies to cover up their high concept show.

That's not the friendliest Catholic in the world position. The Friendliest Catholic in the world position would be:
1. Everyone is a sinner. The saintliest Nun and the worst tyrant, are different in scope and kind, but they are the same in being sinners. Everyone's got equal need of penance.
2. Universalism is still a…

Susanna Clarke, of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, has a really incredible take on that and what it means for the 'mission' of fantasy - the ability of the genre to really build in points of empathy/identification across a crazy range of perspectives, literary/cultural structures, and backdrops.

I would like to point that that's exactly what the Lord of the Rings does. Frodo might be some sort of gentleman, but he's sure many many rungs closer to Sam than he is to any of the royalty/gods they meet almost immediately in the book.

It's inherent to the specific genre of high-fantasy which is explicitly developed as a complement to 'high-culture' so it's got grand operatic elements and all the stuff of old-style European political theater. It's also why it's firmly entrenched in novels, scripts, and visual art.

I'm not really certain how much of an economy the North has. It seems to be (at least from the books) a widespread society of fairly well developed small holdings. So your small Northern town probably has a lot more infrastructure than the comparable Southern town, but there are more Southern towns and larger Southern…

Really, it's that I'm very wary of author insertion claims in general, and, in specific, I'm wary of the way people tend to privilege speech in scripts over action or the development of the plot and characters.

It's probably getting rarer as a whole. Historically, however, it's a pretty useful pattern. Helps to keep the parties a little more honest.

Where was Romeny governor now?

Yeah, Once Upon a Time in America is revelatory.

I feel about her the way America supposedly felt about Jeb Bartlett. I just don't understand why she isn't our president.

A lot of the hero stories I like don't work that way - Hector dies, so will his city. Achilles is pretty much a jerk. - but I still find them compelling and fun.

I certainly agree that it's reductive to scream 'Fascist' every time you see somebody behave heroically in fiction.

Good lord that movie.

From Thucydides:
In short, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was lacking was equally commended, until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations sought not the…

Thanos believes in LOVE!

So… could you actually map that out with Guardians? Cause I'm not seeing it.

I think for that inclination to work you've got do some pretty shady things - analysis wise. (A) there's a clear theme in the incredibles that speechifying is not where the lesson resides. (B) it requires a reading where only certain parts of Brad's work are Brad's work - so only 1 character can be an author insertion…

I think this is really an example of the problem I'm talking about.