On the fifth and final volume of the 14th century Chinese epic Water Margin, in the Dent-Young translation (The Marshes of Mount Liang). It's thrilling stuff, the big granddaddy of so many anti-hero action stories. 108 bandits driven out of society find themselves forming a community of their own in the hostile…

I think Sirens may be my favorite Vonnegut.

I'm about 2,000 pages into one of China's national epics - the Water Margin - and it's fantastic. Was written down in the 14th century, so it's roughly contemporaneous with the other things you're reading.

Just to make sure we're on the same page here: I'm saying that the sarcastic dismissals of a guy discussing his wife's reaction were unwarranted and there's nothing wrong pressing people for more nuanced and critical engagement. That's what you find unfair, overthinking. Gotcha. Have a good night.

But you are getting responses like, Oh, I guess we have to burn down all of Da Vinci now because some guy's wife was uncomfortable. So, yes, you are getting roundabout ways of saying "fuck your wife."

But that's what I was trying to say above, too: nobody's doing that! In fact, the OP got mocked for asking "what the point" was (i.e. looking for reasons other than sociocultural implication) because he was trying to give Lynch the benefit of the doubt to reassure his wife. The defensive responses are just reflexes at…

I mean, it's true of Lynch in general - Mullholland Drive's Los Angeles makes La La Land look like a Benetton ad - but heck, that's also true of the Coen Brothers and quite a few other critically loved directors. I think it's just a blind spot for the industry.

Irony here is that the thread began with all these caveats about how much the OP enjoys the show and Lynch's work overall, but just explaining his wife's discomfort brought out all these defensive commenters. We see this all the time in online fan communities: if the question of misogyny in the work is raised, that…

I don't understand why people can't register their discomfort with something without commenters making dismissive, smartass remarks in response. @comfortablecam:disqus isn't saying he's no longer a fan or that we need to burn Lynch in effigy, just that the treatment of women in the show is kinda gross. And he still…

That corridor scene felt like Lynch had watched It Follows and got some ideas.

I think it's 4:30, and he left after 5, so he'd been waiting over a half hour.

I think Shea/Sasha is legit, even if they got a little cranky with each other by the end (lack of sleep and whatnot), and they seem to have maintained that friendship since. I also think Trinity/Eureka growing into a respectful rivalry was legit, and you can imagine the two of them going on tour together as a…

I mean, she was an accomplished songwriter before she got into film, but yeah, film's a different medium and that was only her second. Under the Skin, her first, is a score for the ages.

Agreed. There's a kind of bitchy that's fun to watch (I never got enough of Willam in s4, and even on this ep. Trinity v. Eureka was a lot of fun), but most of this felt downright uncomfortable.

Wait, what? McLevy literally calls him "a tyrannical autocrat who sheds blood behind closed doors," a "thug," and a "human-rights violater." I disagreed with his take on the economy (see my long comment above), but I don't get the sense he's ignoring or downplaying Putin's human rights record, at all.

That's fair - that was kind of (head of French intelligence) Poupard's argument, that we should just assume moving forward that we're under perpetual information warfare from both state and non-state actors. I do think there has to be some kind of public response - just like when you catch a spy, you have to make a…

I don't understand why it's hysteria even if the second is untrue, i.e., that there was attempted foreign government interference that should be rigorously investigated even if we don't know what kind of impact it had. It shouldn't be a surprise that people are up in arms over the fact that there's been some…

It makes me wish I'd gotten in on this whole Russian faux-expertise scam on the ground floor… I could have parlayed this into media fame!

Or a former director of national intelligence saying Russians are genetically predisposed to hate Western democracy.

Oh, one good thing to come out of the Stone interviews: this meme.