Lovecraft was actually *unusually* racist for his day, and his extreme xenophobia is actually something that is altogether different than merely an expression of upholding the white supremacy of his day, although it is certainly something that grew out of the cultural environment in which he was raised. Lovecraft is…

Shirley Chisholm had much more in common with Bernie Sanders, though. She was the progressive candidate that college students flocked around, and even Mrs. America went out of their way to depict her as an outspoken idealist with radical populist politics unpopular with mainstream Demcorats but synonymous with the…

I think, if the writers were smart about it, you could probably do a song about being extremely pale, as long as it wasn’t framed about being about caucasian in general. 

Yeah, he’s always kinda been a boogeyman character. He works best when he’s just an inexplicable character without much mythology, grounded in real violence but lacking much context. The fact that he is so persistent and seems to slip away colors the idea that he can show up anywhere at any time, even if you think…

This episode aired in 1992, before the Simpsons episode referenced. Of course, Bart also sings these lyrics in the first ever Simpsons episode in 1989, but the 1993 episode referenced is generally more memorable. As a kid - albeit a big fan of superhero cartoons - I was definitely more familiar with the Joker version…

Tolkien at least seemed to hate apartheid and segregation, from the very very few references in his letters to them. But yeah, there’s a lot of really iffy stuff in his works.

This was well on display in Nashville last night, where most of the violence and vandalism (that resulted in a state of emergency and calling in the National Guard) was carried out by white people. It was a white kid that set the courthouse on fire (and also personally did a lot of the damage to the courthouse, such…

Heathers is, hilariously, one of the better musicals adapted from a movie. It’s a lot of fun.

You could do a list like this with just Sondheim songs. He is in my mind the greatest living songwriter right next to Bob Dylan - not just in musical theater, in all of modern lyrical music. I don’t know if that’s considered hyperbolic, or a hot take in these parts, but it’s my opinion.

Assassins is one of my favorite…

The specificity of the lyrics is actually one of the main reasons why I like musical theater songs so much. A lot of popular music is generalized to the point of meaninglessness, or else is about some mixture of romance and horniness. A good musical - where the music is a balance of releatable and tied into character…

Marvel’s possibly gonna try their hand at elements of one of these in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Shang-Chi’s father and arch-enemy is Fu Manchu in the original comics (later retconned to an original character named Zheng Zu after Marvel lost the rights to the character, although Zheng Zu has stuck…

I’m happy it’s on the CW so that more people can see it, but I’m also a little bit worried that it’s on the CW, because I don’t want it to transform into another Arrowverse show. I like the DCU approach better, Titans aside. Very different vibe.

What’s really off about that place is Mog. Is he selling his Moogle Medals to Don Corneo? When you break into Don Corneo’s vaults, they’re FILLED with these medals, which up until now are presented mostly as a novelty collectible that kids collect. Nobody really seems to care for them other than this obsessed kid…

To take it further, on the two tries, I reckon it goes like this. Cloud shows up, and they’re like “Hey Mr. SOLDIER, why don’t you try out our training game?” And he’s like “Uh sure, I’ll take a few whacks” and immediately shatters all of their records, because he’s a grown ass man. (And again, I imagine the set up…

And yet my favorite entry doesn’t have any nudity in it.

Peter III wasn’t actually much of an idiot. You’re buying into propaganda spread by Catherine’s faction to justify his ouster and the reversal of his reforms.

It’s Sylvester Pemberton. The show has made a composite character of Starman and the Star-Spangled Kid.

I’ve not seen the show, but the vibes I’m getting is that is that someone’s going to horribly maim Pat Dugan, forcing Courtney to reach out to others for help. He’ll survive, but will be shipped off to the hospital and maybe be in a coma or something. It matches up with the writer being disappointed about Pat being…

The season had already wrapped shooting when the decision was made, so it wasn’t Covid, and the show probably isn’t going to resemble the other Arrowverse shows at first. 

This was not built as an Arrowverse show, and was only moved to The CW after all the season had wrapped shooting. Any resemblance to the Arrowverse is either a result of the DC Comics source material or is accidental. This show was made by and for the DC Universe streaming service, and seems to fit the feel and…