It was always pretty clear to me that Rowling cribbed a lot of her style from Roald Dahl, who was massive on the whole physical manifestation of maleficence, so she’s really just carrying on a really lovely British literary tradition there.

I mean, yeah, it’s got that whole shitty liberal “if only the right people were in charge of the institutions!” vibe, but I feel that’s pretty baseline for a children’s series written by an upper middle-class white woman who hates trans people and Scottish independence.

Part of what made Harry Potter become so toxic…

It’s this.

I never understood how Harry Potter got its hooks into so many kids when it trucks in some pretty gross stereotypes and tropes from a Britain that only the most fortunate and exploitative should have any nostalgia for. 

I feel it’s also massively untrue, like, I’m not American, but a large chunk of your cultural exports are like “yee-haw my guns and truck!"

I think at this point, it’s pretty clear that Ghostbusters means different things to different people, and if what you want (and this is what I want) is a shaggy, slightly grimy, blue-collar comedy with early 80s SNL energy that happens to have a subplot about Elder Gods, then... this isn’t it.

But the majority of the…

I won’t be seeing Afterlife, because everything about it smacks of tedious pandering and I’m over winsome Amblin aping as a psuedo-genre, but a lot of these angry people don’t seem like fans on the 1984 film Ghostbusters, but people who have nostalgic memories of the toys and (admittedly better than they could have…

Then, great news! Its a platform-fighter, not a battle royale!

I was 3 when the cartoon came out, and the cartoon versions were my literal heroes. I remember seeing 2 in the cinema, often terrified at how close to horror it got.

It's a real sobering thought to realise that probably means he has slime inside his body cavities...

I was a “Real Ghostbusters” maniac as a kid who saw GB2 in cinemas first, and then GB on TV. They always used to edit out the taxicab ghost from Saturday afternoon screenings, so when they put him back in, I was freaked out by the added scene and how relatively graphic it was.

Good on them. Awaiting Boygenius following suite within the hour.

I don’t think Ansari is Satan, but pestering a woman for sex is the kind of mundane shitiness that women tolerate constantly and many men don’t even see as an issue. I think it kind of sucks for Ansari that’s he’s filed with some much, much grosser people, but that doesn’t mean that his behaviour wasn’t awful and that…

I consider myself leftist, but Kotaku continues to be “The website that got pre-emptively mad because they mistook the phrase ‘retort it’ for an ableist slur in a Persona 5 song”. If I have an issue with Kotaku, it’s not that it’s “woke”, because I want that from games criticism - it’s that Kotaku strikes me as…

The inclusion of a a Spencer mansion actually makes this a Resident Evil prequel.

I’d say its been Doom Patrol that’s made it impossible for me to go back to MCU stuff, by virtue of it being entertaining and imaginative, but also having actual characters.

I generally agree that this is a problem in film criticism, but Keanu Reeves comes to mind as the actor I’ve heard the “wooden” criticism thrown at the most, but Kristen Stewart must be a close second (she seems to rightfully be getting positive reviews for her performance in Spencer, though).

A gun maybe would have been better, because presumably a little flag with the word “bang” would have popped out, if this guy likes the Joker as much as he claims.

While there are incompetent or malicious military actors in the Marvel movies, they're pretty clearly aberrations within a system that works within the film's universe, where a militaristic organisation (supported by defacto troops and weapons manufacturers) keeps World order. If there's a lesson to the Marvel movies,…

Yeah, I’m trying to think of superheroes who don’t essentially boil down to some pretty conservative ideas. The Doom Patrol, maybe? Planetary? X-Statix/X-Force were at least very openly aware and cynical about their military connections.

This all feels very much like “the system is okay, there are just bad people in it sometimes” which is ultimately supportive of the status quo.