Will Shetterly's Blog, page 65

The campfire scene: the heart of every team movie and the greatest weakness of Rogue One

The campfire scene gets its name from stories in which people on a journey stop for a meal and have nothing to do but talk. Campfire scenes reveal character, both to the audience and to the other characters. They give the members of a new team a chance to bond. They make us believe a story is about individuals rather than archetypes. The campfire scene is to a story about a team what the falling

Karl Marx—explicitly anti-sexist and anti-racist in 1880

Marx wrote the preamble of Programme of the French Worker's Party in 1880. The first clause makes explicit what's implicit in his earlier work: Considering, That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race; That the producers can be free only when they are in possession of the means of production; That there are only two forms under

Shetterly's Iron Fist guide—which episodes to skip for a better overall experience

Iron Fist's greatest problem is the writing, which means you have to blame Scott Buck, the show runner. There's enough material for a good eight episodes, but it's stretched out for thirteen. A dedicated fan editor could probably create a strong version, but since that fanvid doesn't exist, I suggest you do the following: Watch the first two episodes. Then you have two choices: a) If you

Three and a half things I believe about writing and "cultural appropriation"

1. "Write what you know" does not mean we should limit our writing to our history. It means we should research the things we don't know, and we should research the things we think we know. When we get facts wrong, that's on us. 2. Readers have prejudices. Some readers out of ignorance or ideology or both will accuse writers of getting things wrong that we have actually gotten right. That's on

Using Jessica Valenti to rant about Clinton feminists, and a question about all men

A friend on Facebook shared Trump did to Merkel what men do to women all the time | Jessica Valenti, which has the subhead, "Men constantly ignore women – but most of the time no one notices it. Except, that is, when it happens on the world stage." So I've got a question and a rant. The question: Do all men do this? Note that Valenti's claims are not qualified: she says, "men constantly" do

What you lose if you make Iron Fist or Dr. Strange Asian

I get why some fans wish Iron Fist or Dr. Strange had been Asian. If no one else had argued they should be, I probably would have. Old comic books have no shortage of white male heroes. But. Let's be the best sort of conservatives and ask what's lost by making those characters Asian. The quick answer: everything interesting. 1. As white people, Iron Fist and Dr. Strange find purpose in a

Why antiracists misunderstand Hugh Davis "defiling his body in lying with a Negro" in 1630—or the New York Times gets it wrong again

I thought What if the Court in the Loving Case Had Declared Race a False Idea? - The New York Times makes an interesting argument, but Brent Staples bolsters it with a common shallow assumption. I read this: (In 1630, for example, a man named Hugh Davis was publicly whipped for “defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”) Colonial-era court records are filled with crimes related to interracial

Politics as Secular Religion: Special "Understanding Liberal Democrats" Edition

I made two comments on Facebook about liberal Democrats (meaning members of the US's quasi-Democratic Party) that apply to most people in large political parties. Freddie deBoer posted, Honestly a lot of this liberal Democrat "I fight with the alt-right and I fight with socialists therefore they are the same" delusion comes from this badly misconceived idea of politics as a social circle where

Guest post: Mark Twain's "Corn-pone Opinions"

Everyone should read this, so I'm making it easy. I got this copy from Mark Twain: Corn-pone Opinions and corrected a few minor typos. Corn-pone Opinions Mark Twain FIFTY YEARS AGO, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He

Naming the four waves of social justice

1. The Catholic Wave "Social justice" began as a Catholic concept developed in the 1840s by Father Luigi Tapparelli as an alternative to democracy and communism. Its earliest concept was a Catholic version of noblesse oblige: everyone should respect God's social hierarchy, but the rich should treat poorer people with respect and help them with charity. In the 1930s, the antisemitic Father