Assorted Heresies

The best thing Tolkien ever came up with is Tom Bombadil.

I feel a little bad for people who had their minds blown or their hearts embiggened by The Giver.

Grammar can fluctuate with public taste, but logic should not.

Style is substance.

There have been maybe half a dozen artists who strove for absolute realism or its closest approximation and actually produced brilliant work.

No medium is inherently stupider or more prone to brilliance than any other.

Freudian analysis only really works on fictional characters composed after Freud expressed his ideas.

Heinlein's last novels were his best.

If you feel someone taken in by one of these Nigerian Banking Scams is an innocent who was prayed on, you have your priorities wrong (or you aren't paying attention).

When Glee isn't being pretentious, it's just facetious.

Star Trek, classic OrigiTrek, is at its heart, about expansionism. Unauthorized intrusion into someone else's territory is an offense worthy of arrest, questioning and punishment.

The assumption that anyone is so famous or notable that *they* couldn't possibly have ever met them, is going to bite you - not on your ass, but - right up front.

"The specific begets the universal" and variants are just excuses to tell every story through the nearest available set of White het guy eyes. Woman if you absolutely have to. This goes doubly true for every real life story of a Black football player gone through the Hollywood rendering plant.

"If you don't like what you see, stop watching for it," only works for entertainment. In terms of real life, keep an eye out and ready for action.

Fictional characters can't make you do anything beyond jump sitting on the sofa, blush watching a scene, or laugh a bit. If what you do takes more than three steps to accomplish, it isn't a fictional character (or their creator) at fault.

Socially-conscious fiction is infinitely better than socially-pretentious fiction.

The Exorcist does get funnier every time you see it.