It’s Time to Dethrone Tolkien as the King of Fantasy

Content Warning: This post does mention some racially loaded language that J.R.R. Tolkien used to describe the orcs in his works. I don’t like that language, but we do need to acknowledge his flaws.

Hey, everybody! It’s been a minute! We are now in the wonderful season of Hobbit Girl Autumn, and that means I’ve started a Lord of the Rings rewatch. Yes, I’ve been watching the extended editions, although particularly when I watch the extended Fellowship of the Ring, I realize I have the theatrical version’s story beats memorized. I read the books years ago, but I much prefer the Peter Jackson films.

There, I said it. After nearly 20 years of pretending I understood and preferred the books, I can finally admit it.

Now I have to just sit and wait.

Wait for what, you ask? Oh, I’m waiting for the diehard book fans to show up and talk about how I’m a stupid, ignorant person who can’t finish Go, Dog, Go. That I’m nothing but a dum-dum stupid-head who will never, ever understand true art or the meaning of Tolkien’s works, and that I’m probably one of those awful, hideous, moronic people who have been enjoying Rings of Power.

And that just isn’t true. I’ve read and finished Go, Dog, Go many times.

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Wakanda Forever: I Have a Crush on Namor the Sub-Mariner

NO SPOILERS for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever because I haven’t actually seen the movie yet. Everything discussed here comes from the film’s official teaser and official trailer as well as Tenoch Huerta’s interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Okay, so ever since the teaser trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever dropped, I have been obsessed with Namor the Sub-Mariner. Who’s that? This guy:

I mean, how could I not? He’s a very handsome dude who has pointy ears and ankle-wings, wears Casino Royale-esque green swim trunks and a bunch of jewelry, and radiates the intensity of a thousand burning suns. What’s not to like?

What I really like about him, though, is that he just seems so highly specific.

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Why Star Wars Fans Think They Can Bully the Franchise’s Actors

SPOILERS for pretty much ALL of Star Wars, including and especially Obi-Wan Kenobi through the fifth episode.

NOTE: Bullying Moses Ingram and any other Star Wars actor (or anyone else at all) is wrong. I do not condone that kind of behavior, especially since I’m a survivor of years of bullying and verbal abuse from my peers growing up. However, the responses from Lucasfilm and Ewan McGregor and other actors out there seem to treat this as a problem and an experience unique to Moses. It’s not. That’s why I’m writing this post.

The Star Wars fandom has a problem. Or at least, a certain segment of it does. Whenever a piece of Star Wars content drops and that segment of the fandom doesn’t like it, they flip out and attack anyone they can. They often attack the actors who play the characters they don’t like. The latest actor to deal with this behavior is Moses Ingram, who plays Reva/Third Sister on Obi-Wan Kenobi. She recently posted to her Instagram story about how racist Star Wars fans/trolls have been sending her direct messages (DMs) full of racist slurs and hurtful comments.

However, she’s not the first Star Wars actor to endure such horribly charged ire. Both Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega faced racist attacks when they appeared in the Sequel Trilogy. But this type of actor bullying goes further back than the sequel trilogy. Ahmed Best (the Black man who played Jar-Jar Binks), Jake Lloyd (the white kid who played nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker), and Hayden Christensen (the white man who played Anakin as a young man and now plays Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi).

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Hey, VICE: All Art Is Collaborative Content

Okay, okay, I read VICE’s article, “The Marvel Cinematic Universe Is Not Art,” today. I mean, the title is clearly clickbait, and the whole article itself is a lot of gatekeeping. And it draws an elitist line between “art” and “content” without really telling us what art should be. It reads like the screed of an angry 40-something guy who really wanted to insult the MCU and everyone who’s ever watched one of its films. And looking at the author Patrick Marlborough’s Twitter page, it seems like he is an angry 40-something guy who wants us all to leave the MCU and Star Wars behind and…watch Mad Men? Uh, okay, Patrick.

The article I’m responding to talks about both the MCU and Star Wars, so here are some random images from both franchises.

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Moon Knight, Ep. 5: Character Study, Ahoy!

MAJOR SPOILERS for Moon Knight Episode 5, “Asylum.”

CONTENT WARNING: This post discusses the trauma and abuse featured in this episode.

Wow, okay. This episode. THIS EPISODE. See, the reason that I love Moon Knight is that it’s a superhero show that isn’t really about being a superhero. It’s about a person with mental illness struggling to get through life and figure out what’s happening to them. The superhero genre is just a backdrop for all that. The story is really intriguing, but not in the usual, plot-ish way. This is a story about a person, a character. No, not all the things with the Ammit cult and the Ennead are going to make sense, but they’re not here to make logical sense. They’re here to facilitate Marc and Steven’s personal journey together.

Here are my reactions for this very intense episode:

Steven and Marc are just out here, staring into your souls.

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Moon Knight, Ep. 4: It’s Getting Trippy in Here!!!

SPOILERS for Moon Knight Episode 4, “The Tomb.” Yes, ALL of that episode.

Just when I’m like, “Oh, this is very Indiana Jones,” things took a turn. But more on that in a minute, after the cut.

Me explaining this show to myself from two months ago.

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Moon Knight, Ep. 3: Let’s Have a Random Solar Eclipse

SPOILERS for Moon Knight Episode 3, “The Friendly Type.”

Alright, the story’s moving forward. And as always, I have thoughts and feeling about it. If you haven’t read my other two reactions to Moon Knight, please expect personal reactions and not any predictions for future episodes. I prefer to let the story unfold rather than predicting that something has to happen. Anyway, here’s how I feel about the third episode of Moon Knight:

We’re gonna party like it’s…the Middle Kingdom, I think?

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Moon Knight, Ep. 2: We Don’t Talk About Khonshu

SPOILERS for Moon Knight Episode 2, “Summon the Suit.”

We don’t talk about Khonshu-u-u-u!!! WE DON’T TALK ABOUT KHONSHU!!!!!

(Thirteen-foot frame, moonlight on his back, when he calls your name, it all fades to black…)

Okay, I didn’t think I was going to do another reaction post about Moon Knight, but here we are. I have more reactions and thoughts. So let’s get into them!

Marvel asks the question: What if Batman…had MORE mental problems? And was way less predictable?

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Moon Knight: I Just Really Need To Write Down My Thoughts

SPOILERS for Episode 1 of Moon Knight, “The Goldfish Problem.”

Well, the first episode of Moon Knight was an experience. And I mean that in the best way possible. It’s a bit darker than the usual MCU fare, but not as grim as Marvel’s recent Netflix shows. It’s trippy, but not so nutty that general audience members can’t follow it. And it’s just so much fun.

Since we only have one episode so far, I’m going to put my thoughts down here in list form because I don’t really have one theme or character to write about more fully yet.

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Characters Who Are Similar to Donald Trump

SPOILERS for ALL fictional works mentioned below.

Okay, folks. We are one month away from the election that could save or damn the United States’ soul. We just had the presidential debates. I did not watch them, though I saw some clips from it on social media. Instead, I read Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump, Ph.D. She’s Donald Trump’s niece, and she’s a psychologist who specializes in trauma, so she has a lot of fascinating insights about her awful uncle and her family at large. (To sum up: Donald Trump and his siblings are very strange people who were raised by a sociopath and his emotionally needy wife. They don’t trust or even like each other.) Between reading this book and just paying any attention to Trump’s antics over the past four years, I realized he reminds me of several prominent fictional characters.

This is the only photo of Trump that will appear here because I don’t want anymore photos of him saved to my computer.

Before I begin, I want to point out that these character are similar to Trump, but they are not exactly like him. In fact, I plan to point out the differences between Trump and these characters as well as the similarities.

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