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Magic and immortality in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
So that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise. Albert Camus – The Plague Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End took me a bit…
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On Visual art and politics in the 2024 edition of Dungeons and Dragons
The former lead designer of D&D 5e, Mike Mearls has been doing a bit of a vlog tour lately about what he feels are the failings of the system he designed and his opinions regarding the 2024 revamp of said rules. During one stop on that tour, Mearls stated that he believed that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) had decided to eschew the construction of setting in the 2024 revamp in favor of more…
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Fame and Death: a review of MaXXXine
MaXXXine (2024), the capstone installment in Ti West‘s X trilogy, took me somewhat by surprise. Considering the ground tread in the prior films, X and Pearl, I expected, going into the film, something that might tread similar ground to Scream 3. This was very much not the case. Instead, MaXXXine delivers a thematically messy conclusion to a thematically messy trilogy which largely serves as a…
World-building: a genealogical approach
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following…
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The Terror of Psychosexual Development under Patriarchy: A review of Poor Things
I don’t know how to start this review. There’s a challenge to introducing a thing so singularly odd as the 2023 film Poor Things. This movie, directed by the esteemed Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, with cinematography by Robbie Ryan (who previously worked with Lanthimos on The Favourite), costume design by Holly Waddington and with art direction by Géza Kerti is a visual feast. With a setting…
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This is just getting absurd: Hugo 2023 fallout
Where do I even start? A brief chronology: On January 21 Ada Palmer published a blog post on the topic of self-censorship. This became relevant to subsequent discourse. On February 7, File 770 and Jason Sandford’s blog co-published a report derived from Diane Lacey’s now-public comments regarding her role in censoring the Hugo Awards. The report surfaced two important details that had…
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Chengdu 2023 - the least important front of the new Cold War
Stop the presses! There have been voter irregularities involving second and third placing Hugo award finalists at Chengdu! The stakes have never been higher! I don’t have any great respect for the Hugo Awards. What little respect I had for them was fully torpedoed after the incident where a Washington DC Worldcon, at which a lot of people got COVID, was sponsored by Raytheon. For anybody in my…
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The Monster Is Not Nice
Earlier this month Alexander Chee wrote an article for Guernica Magazine about Dracula which proposed that some of the evil of Dracula was the sublimated eroticism that Stoker felt toward Walt Whitman. This article principally focused on the monster as a figure for interrogating evil and, midway through the article Chee recommends that his readers, ” Ask yourself what you might really fear, and…
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A short reflection on September 11 and economic hegemony
Throughout 2000 my university plans and activism were very settled. I would be focusing on economic globalization academically and on the “alter globalization” movement – the organized and powerful mass-movement that sought to push back against this key process of neoliberal extractivism. But by early 2003 it was evident that our goose was cooked. 9/11 era security laws gave police unprecedented…
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The Scold
This comes as an additional reflection arising from, not so much the Neiman book from yesterday’s review, as the media campaign that originally brought it to my attention. See Neiman was interviewed by CBC and the interview, which led me to expect the typical centrist hand-wringing over “Wokeness” was largely focused not around Neiman’s impassioned defense of Kant nor her burning hatred of…
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Mirror-Universe Foucault in a land without Marx: The bizarre phantasmagoria of Left is Not Woke by Susan Neiman
This book is not what I expected. When I initially opened the cover and was confronted by the statement that, “Except as occasional targets, they {‘leftist’ ideas of universalism, justice and belief in the possibility of progress} are hard to find in contemporary discourse. This has led a number of my friends in several countries to conclude, morosely, that they no longer belong to the left.…
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Zhuangzi in Carcosa - a review of The Wingspan of Severed Hands by Joe Koch
ve been wanting to get my hands on this one for ages. The Wingspan of Severed Hands is a 2020 novella written by Joe Koch and I was aware of it since before its release but after its initial publication I struggled to find a print copy for purchase in Canada. Weirdpunk Books recently issued a second print run of the book and this seems to have broken the digital-only barrier I was facing as I was…
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Note regarding the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes
After listening to both SAG members and other members of the critical community I have decided that I will withhold reviews for any film currently released by a struck studio. This means that while I will continue to review movies from independent studios that are outside the bounds of the current strike action any planned reviews of films from struck studios will not be released until after the…
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This Shit is Bananas
In 1954 the United Fruit Company (which later rebranded as Chiquita Bananas) conspired with the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatamala. This became an exemplar of a category of 20th century political apparatuses called “banana republics” – autocratic dictatorships, generally in the global south, which were supported by the United States with the express purpose of…
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Kid's Stuff - The Double Binds of Barbie
Barbie (2023) is perhaps the most thoroughly postmodern children’s movie produced to date. The marketing material for this film promised that it was the movie for you whether you loved Barbie or hated Barbie and the film delivers almost precisely this – a story that attempts to shatter any grand narrative surrounding this toy. This is done from a variety of directions: first by establishing, as…
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Hauntology and social reproduction: Stranger Things, Starship Velociraptor and Starlight Patrol
The general sense in the public discourse is that Stranger Things is a product of nostalgia but that’s not quite right. I’ve struggled to write about this television show – I’ve been promising a review since June 2022 and yet nothing ever came together. Part of the problem has been that I’ve struggled with the question of who Stranger Things is for. Certainly it’s most popular among kids. My…
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Adaptation and the Powers of the False: A Review of The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang
(I try to avoid “spoiler warnings” but, as a courtesy, since this book is not yet published I will note that my approach to review will include discussion of plot elements including from the end of the book. Please consider yourself forewarned.) This book kind of drove me crazy. The Water Outlaws is an upcoming 2023 novel written by S.L. Huang and published by Tordotcom. It is a loose…
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