One of my favorite novels, Deerskin, is based on that fairytale. Of course, it's a novel I recommend to precisely no one, because it's all about sexual assault and recovery, but it is amazingly beautiful and intelligent, considering the source material.

Yeah, it grew out of that, and now tends to mean a kind of self-referential euphemism for "shitty."

It's a talk he gave at the University of Kansas: "Cognition as Ideology: the Dialectic of Science Fiction"

Jesus, you listed about half my favorite authors.

Actually, I think "salty" has the connotation that your reaction isn't disproportionate; you're just in a mood that's particularly sardonic.

I want to marry you a little bit.

Literally the worst, especially since the characters who say sexist shit—Arya, Brienne, and Asha/Yara—all say things that amount to the opposite in the books.

Trans people give a shit. As should you.

Jupiter Ascending, while not in any way a good movie, is a direct refutation of that. He's the most interesting character in every scene.

Yes. There are dumb rednecks in every state of the Union. There are cultured, pleasant people in every state of the Union.

I guess more specifically, I'm think about the correlation noted by a few sociologists in sadistic porn and the objectification of women (ie, that men who watched more violent porn tended to think about women as less human than men). I think it's fine to watch porn (and enjoy some myself), but I felt that Savage was…

I really like your conclusion.

The show does such a good job of highlighting what a bad idea it is that it doesn't need further comment. It's the other shit, the Ross shit, that needs to be taken down.

And the word is with God, and the word is God.

All this talk of whether or not he'll become a violent sexual psychopath, and no question of whether he'll become a garden variety date rapist?

To be more clear, I was talking about stealing in the creative sense. No, it's not good, but it was created fully formed. And honestly, having read both things, 50 Shades reads like the kind of fanfic that has almost nothing to do with the original work except the names of the characters, and really ends up being more…

Yes, but "relationship dynamic" can't be an original thing. "Relationship dynamic" is mythology, or fairy tales—at the base of every human interaction, you find the same finite set of types of relationships. This one is similar to Twilight's, yes, but also to certain adaptations of Beauty and the Beast, to Phantom of…

I honestly want to know why you think that it's well and truly playing around in Twilight's sandbox.

Well that's super reductive.

Honestly, this idea that only "original" ideas can be considered art is incredibly new. Look at art and literature of the Western canon—most of it is either directly or indirectly inspired by other art/culture that came before it. It's only when we started to commodify and reproduce art that we started putting an…