Will Shetterly's Blog, page 77

Kubo and the Two Strings — mini-review, no spoilers

I enjoyed thisbut didn't love it as much as some people have, for a number of small reasons that aren't worth going into. So much depends on endings, and this one has a smart ending, but I felt like they didn't quite nail it. So I recommend it to fans of animated movies and give it a B+. Stick around for the credits to see a little of the making-of. While I quibble, I understand why the

How I would rewrite The Legend of Tarzan

As a number of people have said, The Legend of Tarzanis an enjoyable movie that doesn't succeed in overcoming its white savior proposition, and perhaps because that's so noticeable, no one I've noticed has said that it also doesn't succeed in overcoming its sexist girl-as-hostage plot. I was inclined to skip the movie until I readThe Legend of Tarzan (2016) | Steven Barnes, and after seeing it

Liavek 5 is now available! Four stories and four songs for only $2.99!

"An Act of Mercy" by Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) and Steven Brust ''The World in the Rock" by Kara Dalkey "Baker's Dozen" by Bradley Denton "Green Is the Color" by John M. Ford Bonus! Four songs: "City of Luck" by Jane Yolen "The Ballad of the QuickLevars" by Jane Yolen "Eel Island Shoals" by John M. Ford "Pot-boil Blues" by John M. Ford "Liavekis a place worth visiting. Get there before

Pet peeve: Being "nice" has nothing to do with being good—as Hitler proved

Many people offer niceness as a reason to support someone as though niceness is what matters. I could respond by pointing to all the killers whose friends and neighbors said, when they were exposed, that they seemed so nice, but I'll hammer the point with the 20th century's best example of evil, Adolph Hitler. His bodyguard, Rochus Misch, said Hitler was "friendly" and "nice" and a "wonderful

Debunking the myth of an immigrant/Muslim rape crisis in Sweden—and one of its promoters, Ingrid Carlqvist

On Facebook, I came across a rightwing Islamophobe who promoted the rightwing claim that Sweden is suffering from a rape crisis. As proof, he shared a video by Ingrid Carlqvist of the Gatestone Institute. I watched it, googled a bit, and found as I suspected that it's nonsense. Most amusingly, my research brought up an article by Ms. Carlqvist which partially debunks her own video by pointing

Adolph Reed expresses more clearly my reservation about the US's Green Party

FromVote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important: Jill Stein and Greens typically proceed from a quite different view of electoral politics, one that has much more in common with bearing witness or taking a personal stand on principle than with seeing it as an essentially instrumental activity. The Greens’ approach generally, and Stein has shown that she is no exception, is that all

Why I can't decide if I'll vote for the Greens or the SEP or another lefty party

Two things first: 1. Spare me the lesser-evil argument. Even if I believed in supporting lesser evils, I'm in a blue state, so, thanks to the Electoral College, giving my vote to either major party is the purest example of throwing it away. The only way my vote can matter is by helping a third party win major party status in Minnesota. 2. Capital-L Libertarians claim they're an alternative to

Sorry, girls didn't invent superheroes—Jews did. On Superman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel.

This has been making the rounds for obvious reasons: I shared it on Facebook because it's fun, but it's not true. When someone proposed Hercules as the first superhero, I replied, The canonical superhero has three things: 1. A unique codename. 2. A distinctive costume. 3. Special abilities. Hercules had one of the three. The Scarlet Pimpernel had two. The first superhero was

Speech, the greatest divider

“We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk.” —J. D. Vance, speaking of Appalachians, but noticing a condition that, to some degree or other, affects everyone. "[H]istorically it is pretty well proved now that the ancient Greeks and Romans knew nothing about race. They had another

Three fascinating facts about gender and apologies

Just readSorry, but it’s complicated | language: a feminist guide This is more interesting than I expected it to be. Three essential bits for me: 1. "Some studies have found women apologizing more than men, but others have found no difference." 2. In a test of gender and class, gender matters, but class trumps gender: "the most effective apology was by a male manager, followed by a female