Socialism And Capitalism

You might remember the old saw “If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain.” Even if it wasn’t pretty obvious who benefits from that one, it’s never been true in practice anyway. I don’t think I need to list extremely smart people who are liberal or lefter than that, nor the shall we say less gifted out there who use their conservatism as counterfactual proof of their intellect. I will simply say that I have reason to believe I am not a moron, and as time goes by and the injustices produced by our various (but not terribly varied) current systems become harder and harder to miss it pushes me further into the guillotine-sharpening camp – and that is from someone who did an MBA so any claims that I do not understand business or capitalism in general are not going to hold a lot of water. [Read more…]

Double Dactyl: Fuck Twitter

Twitter's logo, a stylized blue silhoutte of a bird, under a red circle-and-bar 'NO' icon.Flibberty Bibberty
Twitter’s engagement scheme
Spreads around viral memes
And with them, hate

Since nothing can redeem
This vicious spite machine
Unjustifiable,
You should vacate

In the last few days I have changed my Twitter habits from “multiple times a day” to “almost never look at it”, and experienced a huge upward spike in my mood and mental health. I am on the fence about whether to delete outright, I might, but I have to recommend quitting the damnable thing as an act of self-care.

“Good”, “Fun”, and Kim Jong-il

A portrait of a black, scaly, golden-eyed, horned, and very artificial looking dragon: North Korea's 'Pulgasari'.Given where I’m trying to go with my career at this point, I’ve had to build up (what I hope is) a deep and nuanced understanding of media. What I think of a given book or film is going to be a detailed opinion, with a lot of ‘this worked, this didn’t, here’s perhaps why’ for anyone who is interested in those details. I’m sure most or all media critics say the same thing, but there is one thing I refuse to do like the stereotypical critic, and that is be snobbish.

Specifically, I’ve realized that I think of any movie is to sort them into or out of three overlapping categories, and I mention this because I think most critics tend to collapse these into a single set: “Good”, “Fun”, and “I Liked It”. I’m going to talk about the difference a little, and then tell you what the truly amazing monster in the attached picture is. If, like me, you have a taste for the awful or absurd, I think you will need this guy in your life. [Read more…]

Living Mythos: Fuck You, Jobu.

Screenshot from the movie "Major League". A fit, shirtless man holds the flame of a lighter to a cigar in the mouth of a short wild-haired voodoo loa figurine in a locker.

People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald’s hash brown if it’s all they’ve got. – Patton Oswalt

I’m a huge believer in taking your inspiration anywhere you find it. Anything that makes your life better, gives you focus, helps you live, no matter where it comes from is a good thing. Even if it was from something as horrible as Mein Kampf, as long as it doesn’t encourage you to hurt others along the way. The ‘philosophy’ I am going to talk about here is not from anything like that, though it is from a strange place to find inspiration: a crude, dude-ish, unthinkingly-problematic-product-of-its-time 1989 sports movie called Major League.

Major League is in every way an 80s sports comedy movie. A group of misfits wind up on a team together, drive each other insane for a while, get molded into shape by a kindly old mentor figure, and – genre-wide spoiler alert – ultimately defeat the much more professional and well-oiled Bad Guy Team in an exciting last-minute sportsball upset. Along the way there are funny moments and crude moments and touching moments and crude moments that were considered funny when it was made. Major League in specific is of course a baseball movie about a fictionalized version of the Cleveland Indians (years before the mainstream were talking about the problems inherent in that name and logo), and if you can get past the dudebro 80sness of it, it is actually quite a good example of the genre. As a writer, I’m always impressed by how virtually all the main characters each got a moment to be the big hero during the inevitable bottom-of-the-ninth showdown against the New York Yankees, and it is the the one of these who made the others possible whose hero moment has a valuable lesson. [Read more…]

Spoons Hammered Flat

A collection of souvenir silver spoons with enamel coats of arms on their handles. Photo by Lourdes Cardenal via Wikimedia Commons.So, those of you who followed me may have noticed that my blog spiked and then slowed a great deal. There’s more than one reason for this, and it seems like that might be something worth talking about.

The main thing, I think, is that I do have a pretty busy life! I was excited to have this new platform so I went a bit intense at it at first. Things are now settling down to the level that I think will be sustainable: one or two posts a week, plus a few smaller bits and pieces from time to time like the double dactyls. I’m very definitely not quitting, I have two drafts for bigger posts partly done and a whole raft of things in the pipeline.

What I have noticed, however, is that blogging is a pretty vulnerable act, for me at least. Not only does it involve putting one’s thoughts and feelings out there to be picked at, but FtB has always been a principled network that attracts detractors, people for whom the cruelty is the point as much as any MAGA-hat-wearer, people who enjoy taking pieces out of anyone who exists here. Now, I knew that when I applied and have no regrets about it, but it really does take a toll, at least enough of one that it adds an extra layer of emotional cost to creating blog posts. [Read more…]

Sunday Fakespeare: The Breakers of Spirit

Shakespeare's WardRHYS
Hail Gol-Goroth, hail Lord of Ruin dire!
We greet you with a great respect and awe.
But hark, we bear a vital message for
your great and august self. Our country dear,
fair York, its folk and King, hath sent us hence
and in their name, now hear ye this: depart!
Forthwith, go, quit this place anon, and cease
your magics fell and dark. Begone at once,
to whatsoever land or eldritch place
from whence you came’st, or else some isle remote
as you prefer – but go, and go at once.

[Read more…]

How Fanbros Stifle Critique

A screenshot of The Simpsons in which Comic Book Guy stands behind his shop counter telling Bart "Without a doubt the worst episode ever"[Possible indirect spoilers for ‘The Rise of Skywalker’.]

Here we are on the Internet in the year 2020, so I’m going to take the leap that my readers do not need a primer on toxic fandom and the entitled fanbros who engage in it. We’ve seen Gamergate rise and fall and be subsumed into the Alt-Right and Trumpists; heard the howling shrieks about “Fake Geek Girls“; and seen them gatekeep everything from Sherlock Holmes to Steven Universe with weird trivia demands. They are the ones I tend to think of as the ‘acquisitive’ fans, who care immensely about canon and trivia and feel like they can take ownership of the act of liking a franchise, in contrast to the ‘creative’ fans who create art and fanfiction and tend to use their fandoms as a joyous jumping-off point for other work.

We’ve also seen them absolutely shit themselves trying to shut down any critique of the things they love (and believe therefore are Objectively Excellent). We’ve seen them scream “feminism is cancer” at Anita Sarkeesian until their throats are bloody with hate. In this respect, how they stifle critique is obvious and direct, and even outright stated as an objective. This is not the kind of stifling I’m going to talk about; instead, I want to examine the subtler stifling of critique that happens if someone in part agrees with them. [Read more…]

Living Mythos: Molly Grue’s Mistake

Screencap of the scene from 'The Last Unicorn' where grizzled, cynical Molly Grue meets the Unicorn for the first time. She says, "Where were you when I was new?"I’ve held off on this sort of topic a little. Now that I come to think of it, the reason for that is actually a sort of faint internalized shame, so now I am going to take a dose of the medicine I offered in my previous post and go for it.

Starting today, I will from time to time dip into one of my favorite topics under the title ‘Living Mythos’: pop/geek culture and the philosophies and life lessons found therein. These will be sort of straddling the line between personal reaction and cultural criticism.

“The Last Unicorn” is a 1982 animated feature produced by Rankin-Bass based on the eponymous 1969 book by Peter S. Beagle. It is a quirky, slightly deconstructionist high fantasy musical that stands a good chance of breaking your heart. [Read more…]