Like how Silver Age comic book superheroes stumbled into their superpowers as teenagers? Or how Dickensian orphans turn out to be heirs to title and wealth? Or Theseus learning his father is King of Athens?

Anne Rice is one of a scant few authors/creators in these genres I can think of whose works explicitly note "vampirism makes you more physically attractive".

You might have a point. All the SF&F and comics I read growing up, and the people I met through my geeky hobbies, and the Cronenberg films I watched, and all the subcultures I was inspired to investigate via my readings and hobbies, made me pretty easy-going about kink. (I threw off the hangups of my Catholic…

This was a couple of years ago, but I remember reading a study that suggested the most successful couples tend to have similar levels of education.

Similarly, 2000 years ago writing was still a rare and highly specialized skill, and being "wise" meant you'd memorized some pithy and probably lengthy anecdotes and parables. The written word meant we needed to expend less mental effort memorizing everything. Does Crabtree suggest writing made us stupid too?

But it's that 10% which counts, and Charlie isn't wrong about it.

Re: Your point #1

But at least that conversation took place. Probably because of the double standard. Have we had the cultural conversation about the flipside "awkward geek guy deserves the wish-fulfillment but still mostly a one-dimensional trophy hot girl over the mean jock" message that utterly dominates media these days? We might…

I'm almost certain at least some readers who grew up with Harry Potter moved on to Twilight later on, like how I went from Dragonlance to Anne Rice.

It's easier to accept once you realize most of what you liked when you were younger was also garbage. And sometimes good things came from it.

Me too, but my Catholic school Grade 9 health teacher strongly implied AIDS was a punishment for bad lifestyle choices.

While you're checking those numbers, see if you can find out how many children in those countries end up in state care. And the quality of that care. Recommend you start with pre-1989 Romania.

It was such a polarizing film I'm polarized on my own opinion of it! In general I found the cast to be worthy successors to the original actors (my least favourite was Pine, but that could be having to carry most of the film on his shoulders) but the writing was fairly terrible (Orci & Kurtzman? You don't say...). I…

I wasn't quite as hardcore as you, but I did play a lot with toads and snails and crayfish in construction sites and unmaintained creek beds.

I've been introducing my girlfriend to Bond, starting with the Craig films, and if it wasn't for Judi Dench, it would have gone very poorly. The best "M" the series ever had by several astronomical units.

Admittedly the only parts of MK:Legacy I watched were the proof-of-concept pilot and the first 3 YouTube videos, but I thought Tancharoen's take on Mortal Kombat was supposed to be "gritty & realistic" a la Nolan's Batman (which actually wasn't, but people want to think it is). How does this Jedi/Harry Potter nonsense…

This might be why I like the Hunger Games but have been extremely disappointed by every other YA dystopia I've read (except maybe Uglies). There's a real verisimilitude to it. It really explores the cost of liberty from oppression—not just "a one-dimensional sidekick character gets killed" but "you hide your true self…

Who do you think reads all those licensed Star Wars, D&D, and video-game novels? It's not just the 18-35 year old fan demographic.

Yeah, that made me run off to check and see if Laurie McLean or her agency represented Veronica Roth. Turns out they don't. Hunger Games isn't a masterpiece, but it's a compelling rendering of imperial oppression and the high costs of gaining freedom from it. Divergent is a simplistic political diatribe dressed up as…

It's definitely a nice callback to SPECTRE from the first seven Bond films (although Goldfinger might not count).