Here’s the place where I write about non-fiction things. Sometimes about writing, mostly about pop culture – you know, movies, television, literature, what have you – and occasionally the topics can be a little out of left field.
Is The Holdovers Cozy?
Yes. Let me tell you why.
My Favorite Pop Culture Things from 2023
I know, I know, it’s already March, can we please give up 2023 and memory hole it already? How dare I try to talk about last year this late in the game. Well, truthfully, I wasn’t planning on releasing this. I did one last year and wanted to do a follow-up, but I tried writing…
The Marvels Commitment Problem
The Marvels was not a good movie. You know that. I know you know that. We don’t need to go over all the ways it wasn’t good again. I will say it was better than Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania but that bar is so low demons in hell have ripped the bar off the…
My Favorite Final Fantasy Game
Final Fantasy XV came out in 2016 but I’m talking about it now because I just purchased the Windows Edition on Steam and I am still in the purest, most wholesome love with this game. I want to take it to the drive-in and then sit chastely in the front seat, holding hands over the…
How I Learned to Start Worrying…
I don’t think they teach about nuclear bombs correctly in American schools. And I don’t know whose fault that is. If you’re American, do you remember when that first came up? I mean, if you’re not American, same question. I only specify American schools because that’s my experience and I can’t nor want to generalize…
Prestige TV is Killing Me
I’m old enough that I can actually remember the change in television beginning in the early 2000s, and what television was like before it. Mainly: it was… Okay, I guess bad isn’t exactly the correct word, because there was some good shit going on. But even the good shit was wrapped up in the way…
I Am Not Immune to Propaganda
I don’t usually write about internet drama because a) that’s not really what I do here and b) I’m always paranoid about attracting the wrong sort of attention. I’m just a little guy, over here in my corner writing up my weird stories and random thoughts about popular culture, I don’t need any heat. But…
Some Thoughts On Christmas Songs
Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You The year is 1981 and Billy Squier has had exactly two Billboard hits, and only one has survived into the twentieth-century: “The Stroke.” Which, while an absolute banger, includes lines like ‘keep your contributions by your side,’ and ‘work your way right into my face.’ Like,…
Bicyclists With a Death Wish
At least people who love skydiving aren’t trying to land in the middle of I-95.
The Oldest and the First: Yellowstone
I’ve never had so much fun while simultaneously terrified a grizzly was going to eat me.
Sorry I Was Out Last Week, I Had Covid
The irony of getting Covid while releasing short stories about a flu pandemic is not lost on me.
I Wish I Was Playing Zelda
I don’t want to write an excerpt. I want to play Zelda.
Some Bad Things About the Internet
What else am I supposed to do, though? Go outside? Preposterous. There’s bugs out there.
The Met Gala Proves Rich People Don’t Understand Anything, Apparently
Anybody who shows up in a plain suit should be stopped at the front and politely, but firmly, asked to leave.
Let’s All Go to the Apocalypse: Why We Write the End of the World
In a post-apocalypse world there won’t be a forty-hour workweek, beer, student debt, guaranteed heating, or hot water, but you know what there will be? Pure vibes.
I Hate Lily From Duolingo
How do you say ‘I don’t need your attitude’ in any language ever? Asking for a friend.
Maybe You Should Play Death Stranding
Hey, did you see the trailer for Death Stranding 2 (working title) that dropped at the Game of the Year Awards a couple months back? If you haven’t played Death Stranding then you probably had no idea what was going on. Well, good news! I did play Death Stranding and I was pretty fucking lost,…
The Warped “Minds” of Corporations
They’re not really human so they’re impossible to understand.
A Character Actor Trapped in a Leading Man’s Body
Can YOU play Joe America? Or would you be cast as the quirky best friend because you don’t have a cleft chin?
More Favorite Video Game Music
Good music can make you feel a lot of things!
My Favorites Pop Culture Things from 2022
Notable Mentions: The Morbius memes tricking Sony into re-releasing the movie and then it bombing again; Goncharov; and The Game of the Year Awards letting me know my 2023 is effectively shot.
Andor: Taking Fun Seriously
If I wanted to watch a bunch of twelve years olds losing their minds because they were holding lightsabers I’d go to Galaxy’s Edge.
What I Want in Video Games
If I did as much light jogging in my real life as I do in video games I’d be able to crush a walnut between my calves.
Voices: Getting Your Characters To Sound Different
There’s roughly eighty thousand variations of the southern accent and whichever one you pick you will be wrong.
Streaming Shows Need to Tighten Their Shit Up
Thanks to the internet we all have problems concentrating now so save the slo-mo horsey rides for someone who cares.
Oh No! The Mario Movie Might Be (Mostly) Good?
Is there still time to bully Nintendo into changing the voice of Mario like we did with Sonic’s face?
You’re Getting Florida Wrong: Hurricane Edition
When your whole town floods, you don’t have to worry about alligators or sharks. They’re chill. Worry about the Burmese pythons assholes dumped in the Everglades. They’ll fuck you up.
How to Name Locations During Worldbuilding
Definitely don’t name a town after your grandmother, because what if, somewhere down the line, you make that town rob a bank or something?
You’re Getting Florida Wrong
Hollywood: Every Floridian knows when you’re trying to pass off Southern California as Florida, okay? It’s the palm trees.
The Minor Annoyances of Reading
Quibbles, really, but haven’t we all been launched into the stratosphere over a quibble or two? Or ten?
The Rings of Money
An untethered rant about high fantasy budgets.
You Should Reread That Book You Hated in School
Can you imagine getting to read some Bradbury or Steinbeck and not having to write a five page double-spaced essay on it?
I Am Not Okay
Don’t ever look up videos of humans with rabies. Just…don’t.
How The Beginning Was Ruined
Cannot stress enough that this is a comedy piece and not something I’m actually preaching.
Some Thoughts on 1996’s Independence Day
When someone asks you, “Is that glass bulletproof?” The correct response is, “No, sir,” and to immediately start firing at said glass.
A Variety of Opinions I Have That Don’t Deserve Their Own Column
Short thoughts on Stephen King, Reddit, the days of broadcast television, Star Wars, and a mystery bonus topic that is definitely not a flash grenade in a ball pit please don’t @ me.
Disney Adults: Leave Them Alone
Unless a Disney Adult personally stabbed you in the kidney with the God Damned Keyblade I don’t want to hear about it.
Articles You Can Write When You’re Out of Time and Self-Respect
Was Newsweek ever a respected periodical? Asking for a friend.
My First Draft Sucks
As all first drafts should.
Sad and Angry and Scared
I’m just tired, guys.
Pantsing Vs Plotting
The difference between setting yourself on fire from the minute you sit down to planning exactly when you will set yourself on fire. Or something. No one should listen to me.
More Horizon Forbidden West Being My New Best Friend
The back half of my rambly review, where I go over Erend, the open world, the armor, and the photo mode.
Horizon Forbidden West is My New Best Friend
Turns out there’s too much I like about this game so this is part one of two. Come on in for thoughts about the story and characters.
Fantastic Beasts and Oh, Wait, No, I’ve Just been Informed These Movies Are About Wizard Nazis
Hey, kids! Want to watch fun adventures about a nice, competent man who works with magical beasts? TOO BAD. SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, IT’s WIZARD NAZI TIME.
My Favorite Video Game Music
Runner up to the list is definitely the Final Fantasy Victory Fanfare, but specifically when Prompto sings it in XV.
The Internet Can’t Keep It’s Fat Mouth Shut: Spider-Man Edition
Yes, I have Spider-Man spoilers in my rant about internet spoilers. No, it’s not ironic because I have warnings up. Do not proceed past the Spoiler Chocobo if you haven’t seen the movie.
The Batman Movie I’ve Been Waiting For
You know how you start a new job and you suck at it for a while until you get comfortable? That, but in superhero form.
Do You Taste Metal? Inevitability and the Emotions of HBO’s Chernobyl
Besides vaguely describing a scene in the first episode there are no spoilers present for the show. Unless you don’t actually know what happened in Chernobyl in the first place. I got around to watching HBO’s 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, and of course I went about it like an absolute buffoon. My husband didn’t want to…
The Cascadia Subduction Zone: Why the PNW is Boned
A sort-of choose your own adventure novel wherein you have to escape the worst earthquake and tsunami the continental US has ever seen.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone: The PNW Has Been Boned
There’s a cataclysmic fault line hidden under Oregon and Washington, and it only took hundreds of years, ghost forests, orphan waves, a drag-out brawl between Thunderbird and Whale to find it.
Hot Take: Tony Stark is a Selfish Pissbaby, Actually
He spent most of that first Avengers movie jokingly trying to make Bruce Hulk out. Would he still be laughing if his attempts had actually worked?
The Best Dads in the MCU, Part 3
One’s a good dad but a better Dad Friend, and the other is not only the best dad but also potentially one of the best people? I don’t know, you decide.
The Best Dads in the MCU. Part 2.
Who’s a better dad than Frank Castle? Well, I mean, a lot of people, honestly. But specifically today we’re talking about two very FAR OUT dads.
The Best Dads in the MCU. Part 1.
You’ll Never Guess Who Numblarghabdlarhabdh. Sorry. I just threw up in my mouth a little. It’s Frank Castle. Frank Castle is number 5, come find out why.
No One Understands The True Meaning of Christmas Like Folgers Coffee
Christmas is for weird, pervy families, too, God damn it.
I Rate Christmas Related Things
Here’s a freebie: Candy Canes: Hard candies that are destined to break and taste like toothpaste? Hard pass, 0/10
How to Name Your Characters
How do you solve a problem like Buffy? Also: PAAUULLSS! IIINNN! SPAAAAAAACE!
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Turn and Face the Wheel
Guys, I lived through the 2000s, which meant I already lived through Peak THEY CHANGED THAT FROM THE BOOK. I don’t have the energy for that anymore.
Things I Want From the Wheel of Time Show
Paul Rudd should be Tam Al’thor. Because Tam is basically one of the best people in the books and should be represented as such. Also, Lil Sebastian as Bella?
Midnight Mass and the Queen of Mean
Talking about a certain character from Midnight Mass. SPOILERS WITHIN, PLEASE GO SEE THE SHOW FIRST.
Netflix’s Midnight Mass: Nothing Good Ever Happens On an Island
Dissecting Midnight Mass, the newest horror series from Mike Flanagan. SPOILER WARNING, DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN THE SHOW.
I’m the Nurse You Should Be Afraid Of
I didn’t want to ever write about nursing but here I am with three thousand words and a tumbler of Jameson.
Give Me the Fucking Instructions! The Wide Awake Nightmare of Crafting and Recipe Websites
I don’t want to hear about how crafts got you closer to your Great Aunt Esther. I don’t want to watch your YouTube tutorial. And I definitely don’t want to download your shady as fuck PDF.
Discover Yourself Through Writing Short Stories
Way back in the bad old days of the late 2000s, I was an idiot college student trying to get an English degree with no idea that the economy was going to collapse a few months before I graduated. I mean, I also had no idea what I wanted to do with an English degree…
Subtle Pressure to Get You to Read Short Stories
I’m always consistently shocked when someone tells me they don’t like short stories. I know that doesn’t sound like a conversation that can come up a lot. I sound like some NASA douche at a party half-drunk on wine coolers and slurring at a friend of a friend’s neighbor I’ve managed to pin to the…
Live from Wheel of Time: Sexism? In My High Fantasy?
Spoilers for the series ahead. Let’s start this off with a simple message: I Am Not Saying Robert Jordan Was Sexist In fact, as I pointed out in another article, there are a lot of feminist aspects about the book that I really enjoyed. Hell, here’s one I missed: an Aes Sedai named Leane Sharif…
Live from Wheel of Time: The Seanchan Are the Absolute Worst
Spoilers throughout for the entire series, including the ending. As I discussed in a previous article, Robert Jordan’s worldbuilding in The Wheel of Time series is a masterclass on creating an entire continent filled with different, cohesive peoples and having them interact. The number one reason anyone who wants to write fantasy, especially a sprawling…
Live from Wheel of Time: Things I Didn’t Like
I already wrote about some of the things I liked about Wheel of Time. Definitely not all the things I like about the series, but I was bumping up to two thousand words and not everyone gets ten thousand words to make a point. Now that I’ve mentioned it… Today I Was Wearing a Black…
Lessons from Wheel of Time: Things I Liked
I don’t remember precisely when I started reading these books, but it’s been, like, five years. I wanted a super-long, super-involved fantasy series, and I was initially hesitant to read them for absolutely no good reason. None. I can’t be the only one who just hears about something and immediately shuts down, right? Like, I’m…
Said Isn’t Dead
If you use Pinterest at all for writing topics, I’m sure you’ve seen these pins come up. They’re always in some cutesy font and usually with little tombstones (subtle) and come with a huge list of words you should use instead of ‘said.’ If you’ve ever paid attention to these, though, you’ll notice that none…
Fuck It, Let’s Remake Sliders
Last summer, I made arguments that the shows Lost and Dollhouse deserved remakes, albeit with some major caveats. Lost needs a lot of work, but mostly that work consisted of ‘tighten that shit up.’ Nobody needs a whole God damned episode about how someone got their tattoos. Dollhouse mostly needs to be freed from the…
90’s TV: The End of a Terrible Era
Okay, so, what happened is that I wanted to write about remaking a 90’s show (spoiler alert: It was Sliders), but as I was writing it I realized I should explain how 90’s television functioned to people who don’t remember, and then that segment got way too long so here we are. Basically, 90’s television…
Shared Solitude
This is the story of how I almost cried at the movies. This is not the story of how I did cry at the movies, although those stories do exist and are, in fact, numerous. I didn’t use to be so emotional. I have to say I was a pretty fucking stoic teenage girl. And…
Solarpunk: Chicken Soup for the Climate Catastrophe Soul
Hey, you guys hear about the billionaire space race? You know, all those billionaires spending millions of dollars to replace their dicks with rockets and then skimming the earth’s atmosphere and calling it space or shooting a car into space or, and let’s be real, probably a lot of secret space stuff we’re not told…
How To Explain the Internet to People Who Don’t Live There
Let’s be honest: It’s a scary world out there. Climate change. Global political unrest. A billionaire corporate class wielding late-stage capitalism as a weapon to strip both the planet and humanity at large of its lifeblood. Bears. But all of that put together doesn’t even touch the unhinged moral depravity planted in the nightmare garden…
Writing Tips for Beginners, From a Long-Time Amateur
Let’s Get the One I Hate Hearing Out of the Way First – Just Write Yeah, super hate hearing this one all the time. But it’s true, and that makes me hate it even more. God, it just sounds so…so…smug. Like, I immediately want to react with that Spongebob Meme: jUsT wRiTe. Like, I’m asking…
Every Writer Should Know the Moth Joke
On Wednesday, I told The Moth Joke and gave credit to Norm MacDonald at the bottom. The meat of the joke was all mine, but the general structure of the joke can be traced to an appearance Norm MacDonald made on one of Conan O’Brien’s shows, I think Late Night: Okay, so to start: Hi,…
The Tao of Pots
There’s a story that goes like this: There’s this college art professor. I don’t know what college and I don’t know what kind of art, except the assignment is to make pots, so…ceramics? Pottery? Ghost appreciation? I don’t know, I didn’t take any art classes in college. Unless you count writing, which most people don’t,…
RDR2 for R&R
Serious spoilers below, so if you’ve somehow made it this long not playing RDR2 and still know nothing about it and still want to play it spoiler-free, you should probably leave. But not before telling me how you’ve remained spoiler-free for so long while living on the internet. I haven’t seen anything beyond the first…
Hot Take: Movies Are Pretty Good, Actually
Fuck, I miss the movies. There seems to be this idea, among people who consider themselves casual movie watchers, that if someone says they are really into movies they must mean they watch sophisticated movies. Oscar nominations. Film festival indies. Black and white classics. Silent films. Like there’s an entire mahogany shelf in the middle…
Wanda’s AU Fanfic
Spoilers for the first four episodes of WandaVision. Proceed past the Spoiler Chocobo at your own risk. Listen, I have had a first class ticket to the MCU hype train since The Avengers. The only one of these things I haven’t seen in theaters is Iron Man 2, and I guess that Hulk movie from…
Nobody Offered Us Any Figgy Pudding
When I was a child, my family went caroling. Okay, so I wasn’t so much ‘a child’ as I was ‘in high school and college.’ But come on, look how sweet and cozy that sentence looks. ‘When I was a child, my family went caroling.’ A sentence like that is either at the beginning of…
Why Are Cats, Even
Why the fuck are cats, anyway? No, I don’t mean the movie based on the musical. I didn’t see that, and if you did, that’s a ‘you’ problem. I just mean, like…cats. The animal. You know, soft and squishy but with a lot of sharp and pointy parts. Yells a lot. Chews on things. Loves…
Evil Cosmic Entity Dressed as a Clown of the Morning
I’m ninety-eight percent sure everybody involved in this movie was high as balls the entire time. It Chapter Two is complete chaos. The director, Andy “What Are Frogs” Muschietti, has stated that he doesn’t want the second movie to be seen as a sequel, but rather the second half of a complete movie, like Kill…
The Next Right Thing
Spoilers for Frozen II. I like Frozen. I love Frozen II. And of course I love both of Elsa’s songs. “Into the Unknown” is a fun, energizing call to adventure, and I still have not gotten through “Show Yourself” without crying at least once, usually when she starts the duet part with her mother but…
Hereditary Might Have Done Permanent Damage
Fuck, I miss going to the movies. My husband and I love horror movies. It’s actually how we started dating. It Follows had come out and neither of us knew anyone else who wanted to see it, so we went together. It turned out to be the best movie to see on a first date,…
My Favorite Disney Remake
There isn’t anything left to be said about this new Mulan remake, and I haven’t even seen it. I pretty much checked out of the whole thing early on, once news came that they were stripping this new version of both “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” one of the greatest Disney musical numbers…
Someone Please Remake Dollhouse
Remaking Dollhouse is not the same as remaking Lost because Dollhouse is already a good show. Great, maybe. It was a two season sci-fi show that never seemed to get a lot of attention, potentially because everyone was still pining for Joss Whedon’s previous project Firefly, also unceremoniously cancelled by Fox who, just like your…
The Case for a LOST Remake
Just to catch everyone up real quick, Lost was a vaguely fantasy drama that ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010. It featured a cast of roughly three dozen people, shifting timelines, a smoke monster, ‘the others,’ a hippy commune that didn’t really seem to get hippies, a really concerning lack of communication, a never…
Music Videos in the Twenty-Tens
The Mayans did not predict the end of the world in 2012. Their calendar system was cyclical, so the date 12/21/12 was not meant to be the end, but a transition into the next cycle. Not the end of days, but a new era. And fuck me if the past decade hasn’t felt like a…
Music Videos in the Two Thousands
Good lord, I’m never going to know what to call this fucking decade.
Music Videos in the Nineties
“I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” by Meat Loaf Yeah, I’m pretty sure Meat Loaf is the human equivalent of a community theater production of Phantom of the Opera. The story of the video is vaguely ‘beauty and the beast,’ just with a lot more motorcycles and helicopters and power chords.…
Music Videos in the Eighties
There is an evolution to music videos. In the beginning, no one knew what the fuck they were doing, and it was great. Here are some of my favorite music videos from the eighties. “Young Turks” by Rod Stewart Okay, so, obviously music videos as we know them started in the eighties. Prior to MTV…
Seeking a Friend for the End of Hyrule
his is going to be the first in a series where I talk about my favorite scene from the video games I have played. As I only got into video games at the end of 2016, this won’t be long. The Best Cut will air the last Friday of every month until I run out…
The Dark Tower of Ass
Spoilers, hey. Okay, so, this isn’t so much a review of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, but a brief look at why I hate every single word in all seven books. Hate. Hate. I hate these books like I hate the Nazis. I hate these books so much Emperor Palpatine is somewhere in space…
The Appeal of the Apocalypse
When you hear the word ‘apocalypse’ you might think of the end of days. A meteor the size of Puerto Rico slams into the earth. Jerk-off scientists in some underground lab make the Rage Virus and unleash the kind of zombies that can run (it would have to be that kind of zombies. Most of…
Profanity
I’ve been getting in trouble for swearing since pre-school. One of my first memories is standing in front of my mother in the middle of summer, and I must have been…three? Four? Something like that. And I was sweating. And I wanted to say ‘I’m sweating like a pig.’ But I was a stupid little…
What to Expect When Shaving Your Head
So, about three months ago, I’m in the shower and I’m washing my hair. I’d gotten it dyed red and pink about two weeks before the country realized just how badly we’d all been lied to about the coronavirus and everything had started systematically shutting down. I was working from home. The only people getting…
Different Views, Same World
Let’s play a game, shall we? A game…of imagination (here I’m waving my hands). No, get back here, I’m not done with you, yet. I’ll stop. Now, imagine you’re a child born into a bitter dystopia. Like, real dark sci-fi shit. You’re living in a society on a distant planet, and from the first moment…
Let’s Talk About the Spanish Flu
Shall we? You know, because I want to. For no other reason. At all. It didn’t start in Spain. No one’s really sure where it started, but the first reported case was at a military base in Kansas. ‘Spanish Flu’ and ‘Florida Man’ actually have very similar origin stories: freedom of the press. The same…
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