About to wrap up Dark Force Rising, which is the second book of the Thrawn Trilogy in the Star Wars EU. It's pretty awesome and fun and—were the actors from the OT twenty years younger—it would have made some pretty fantastic movies.

I'm really glad to see that Linda Cardellini's career is picking up/doing well. She deserves it.

Battle stations, lads!

Fuck off, they're delicious. You don't make friends with salad.

You just Can't Stop yourself from making terrible jokes, huh?

Remember when it used to be on Adult Swim every single night?

So, The Oblongs?

I guess I should have specified "sci fi/fantasy writing."

That's a good point, and I understand what you're saying. I guess I'm just speaking from personal experience as someone who dabbles in writing, as I've never had the desire to write fan fiction. It's good to hear the opinion of someone who (I assume) really does care about that.

But if you're serious about writing you SHOULD get bogged down in those details. There's nothing worse than bad or inconsistent worldbuilding.

That kind of reminds me of the NaNoWriMo people who come up with "tricks" (putting in lots of adverbs, making their characters hard of hearing so that they can just repeat dialogue, etc) to reach their wordcount.

Honest question: why do people write fan fiction? I really don't understand the desire to piggyback off the works of others, especially when there are a lot of fan fiction writers with some really creative ideas. Wouldn't it be so much more rewarding to write your own story or build your own world?

I don't immediately associate Björk with the riot grrrl movement.

Is this a Muppets-style telethon to raise money to save the AV Club?

Po, boy.

She's putting herself in a unique position as a writer in that she isn't "dead," in the scholarly sense. I think she clearly wants readers to consume the text on her own terms, which is . . . kind of troubling, I guess.

OF COURSE something as unholy and repulsive as the sarlacc pit is in Arizona

"Ho ho ho, now I have the Elder Wand."

This reeks of Lucas-style revisionist bullshit.

The funny thing is Manhattan clam chowder probably isn't even from Manhattan. I read once that it's more likely a creation of Portuguese immigrants in New England who adapted traditional chowder into a thinner, tomato-based version, because they weren't accustomed to creamy soups.