Category: random

Women and “The Thing From Another World”

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, recommendations, ruminationsLeave a comment

The Thing From Another World is usually dismissed as the “original” version of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and considered to be an inferior adaptation of the original short story. After all, 1950s special effects were simply not up to the task of making a shapeshifting monster, and the direction of most 1950s movies cannot measure up to one of the greatest horror/sci-fi movies of all time.

But despite the carrot monster, I do think this is a good movie seen on its own merits. Not because the story is particularly interesting or unique as 1950s sci-fi goes, but because of the way its characters are presented.

Specifically, the female characters.

The 1950s weren’t the best time for female characters in movies. Not saying they were all bad, because the existence of this movie clearly shows that they weren’t. But there were some extremely misogynistic attitudes in many movies that went unchallenged. These weren’t even hateful in many cases – some of them were just people who couldn’t break out of their mindsets, like in Forbidden Planet or It: The Terror From Beyond Space.

So it’s worth noting that The Thing From Another World has a pretty egalitarian approach to its characters, and treats the women with an impressive level of respect. The most basic level is just the fact that they’re there at this scientific/military outpost, holding important positions. And at no point do they fetch coffee for the menfolk, on the assumption that men will turn to sea foam if they make their own food.

But that isn’t enough to really earn my respect. It’s more that the women and men interact casually as equals – the men don’t treat the women with the casual condescension often found in old movies. In fact, they banter and pal around with the female lead in the same way they would with a male character, including when she teases her male romantic partner.

Speaking of which, the romantic subplot is also refreshing. Rather than a macho hero sweeping a woman off her feet, the two have a cute backstory that involved him falling asleep during a date, and being kind of embarrassed by it, especially since she thinks it’s so funny. It feels much more organic and realistic, and less like a personal fantasy.

Furthermore, the women don’t end up as damsels. Despite the DVD cover, there are no screaming women in peril here… or at least, no more peril than the men are in. There is a woman threatened by the monster at one point, where she is forced to hide behind a flaming mattress, but she isn’t screaming and she actually chose to take this perilous position rather than being transparently corralled into it by the screenwriter so the men can save her.

So while The Thing From Another World isn’t a standout as old sci-fi goes, it does have some qualities that bring it above the herd. It can’t measure up to The Thing, but it’s still worth seeing.

Truly Great Acting – Christopher Lee

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Here’s how to tell when you’re watching truly great acting.

Way back in ancient times, when The Lord of the Rings movies were in theaters, I went to see Fellowship of the Ring thirteen times. Thirteen. I saw it in the company of many different people, from screaming four-year-olds afraid of the Nazgul to my elderly grandmother, whose immersion was ruined by the presence of tomatoes.

Honestly, I think that that movie trilogy is probably the finest display of its actors’ talents; I’ve never seen a better performance from any of them. And one of the best displays of this came from the late, great Christopher Lee. I feel a bit sorry for him because apparently in his earlier days, he dreamed of playing Aragorn or Gandalf… and I’ll admit, in his youth he would have made an excellent Aragorn. Tall, kingly, imposing, et cetera.

But make no mistake – nobody else could have played Saruman as well as he did.

And I know this because not only did he look like Saruman, but he had the compelling, persuasive voice that the character is supposed to have.

This was evident from the audience at one of these screenings of the first movie, when he’s revealing his master plan to Gandalf. Some of the people in the audience started getting glassy-eyed and looking like they were thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense…” until the film snapped them out of it by reminding us that yes, he is evil and he’s in league with Sauron. He consistently had that effect on people, and it was amazing.

RIP, Mr. Lee.

The aliens of “Battleship”

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The movie Battleship is bad. Very bad.

I could write a book on all the ways this movie is terrible, starting with the fact that it is essentially a Michael Bay movie without Michael Bay. Everything you hate about a Michael Bay movie is here – the destruction porn, the fetishization of the American military, the hot women that exist to be hot, the obnoxious lead character, the ludicrously dumb plot… it can go on forever.

I will be fair, however, and note that it is better than a Bay film in several ways. There is no racism on display, not much terrible comic relief, the obnoxious lead character is actually acknowledged as being an idiot and a perennial screwup, Rihanna is realistically de-glammed, and real military personnel are shown genuine respect rather than being treated as square-jawed macho dolls for Bay to make pew-pew noises with.

But in the many ways that this movie is bad, one thing really stuck out at me: the aliens.

Yes, instead of making some kind of period wartime story about depth charges or missiles, they decided to make it a science fiction story about a bizarre alien invasion. Again, I could write a sequence of essays about the many ways this is mishandled, but today I’m going to address the fact that the aliens are really bad.

A lot of this comes down to the design. If you’re going to have your aliens show up in scary-looking all-concealing armor and masks that hide them from sight, one of two things has to happen.

One, they have to remain armored and masked so that they seem more menacing.

Two, they have to be really well-designed. If you pull off that mask, people have to gasp in horror at what they are seeing, and marvel at just how alien and freaky the creature underneath looks.

Battleship… does neither.

The sad thing is that the alien armor is sufficiently menacing-looking that the aliens could have worked if they had just kept it on, maybe with some subtle glimpses of something weird peeking through the visor. The problem is, partway through the story, the Navy captures one of the aliens and pulls off its helmet.

And it looks… pretty bad. By “pretty bad,” I mean it’s wildly unimaginative – they basically took the overall look of a human, stuck some keratin spines on the chin, gave them catlike eyes, and tweaked the details just enough that they don’t look technically human. It’s a design that you’d expect to see in a subpar episode of Star Trek.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the sheer lack of imagination in their design really killed any sense of menace they had for me. All I could think was a sarcastic, “Oh no, the Earth is being invaded by goat people.” Even when we saw them striding around in their intimidating armor, I couldn’t stop seeing those terribly-designed goat people. There’s nothing about them that activates instincts of fear and revulsion.

And remember, this was a tentpole blockbuster. It had a budget of well over $200 million (which seems like way too much for a movie that doesn’t have a well-proven franchise or director behind it). I do not for a second believe that it didn’t have the money to spare to make something really bizarre and creative! I’m not talking about John Carpenter’s “Thing,” but throw on some nonhuman skin textures or a bunch of extra eyes or tentacles or something.

Recommendation: Diana Wynne-Jones

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I feel like fantasy author Diana Wynne-Jones doesn’t get as much love and attention as she deserves.

Oh, other authors often laud her, like Neil Gaiman, and Studio Ghibli has adapted two of her books into animated movies (one amazing though a loose adaptation, one mediocre). But she’s not a household name despite the charm and imaginativeness of her books, and the movies based on her books are more associated with Studio Ghibli than the original author.

She did experience something of a renaissance several years ago during the Harry Potter craze of the late nineties to late aughts – it was a time when people were hopping on the bandwagon of children’s/young-adult’s fantasy stories, hoping to strike Potter gold. Some of these would-be franchises were good (Artemis Fowl), and some were bleeding-from-the-eyes-bad (G.P. Taylor’s Christian fantasies presented as Potter alternatives).

Diana Wynne-Jones seemed like a natural choice to reprint and promote – she had already written a huge number of fantasy stories, often involving witches and wizards. She was also British, and she had a great deal of the same charm of style and setting that had been presented in Rowling’s books. And she was imaginative – arguably much more so than Rowling – with multiverses, dimensional hopping, twists and even science-fiction woven into the fantasy.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t become as famous as Rowling – her books take more effort to comprehend, and a structure and framework that take more time to comprehend. A school for magic is a little easier to understand than the Chrestomanci universe, which has many different parallel worlds. Or a story based on the ballad of Tam Lin. Or the time-bending antics of A Tale of Time City. Or the plot twists that blow your mind in Archer’s Goon, The Power of Three and Deep Secret.

But obviously, less popular doesn’t mean less good. Jones came up with some wildly clever ideas and plumbed them to their depths, sometimes with clever yet affectionate parodies of the fantasy genre (and many affectionate nods to J.R.R. Tolkien). She was also even better than Rowling at writing twisty mysteries within her fantasy stories.

The Chrestomanci stories are a wonderful series of stories about Christopher Chant, a supremely powerful magician born with nine lives who travels between worlds. He’s not always the center of the stories, because they tend to be focused on the people who become involved with him in these worlds – kids forbidden from using magic, a seemingly ordinary boy whose narcissistic sister is a gifted sorceress, a Romeo and Juliet story, a boy cursed with bad karma, and so on.

Then there are the Magid stories. Sadly, Jones only wrote two of these – Deep Secret and The Merlin Conspiracy, but they are among my favorites. The first one is a bizarre sci-fantasy story set at a scifi/fantasy convention, in which a colorful cast of characters are trying to figure out who the heir of an interstellar empire is. The second is a world-hopping love story between the best character of Deep Secret and a girl from another world, where royalty is magic and a conspiracy may take over magic throughout the multiverse.

I won’t summarize every book she’s written, only say that they involve time travel, Norse gods, a malevolent old woman with supernatural powers, a Goon, a star in a dog’s form, a ghost attempting to solve her own murder, a game diving into everyone’s favorite books, a Celtic-flavored fantasy that I can’t describe without spoiling the twist, and various other things.

So if you like stories with imagination, a dark edge and that clever, slightly quirky Britishness, than her books are a must-read.

On criticisms of Detective Pikachu (extensive spoilers)

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminations1 Comment

I’ve seen some criticisms of how the movie Detective Pikachu handles its disabled lead villain. Simply put, some people don’t like the use of the trope of a disabled person going to great lengths to be “normal,” as people interpret that as meaning implies that their life is worth less or is unbearable because of their disability.

On the one hand, I can understand not wanting your life to be seen as “less” because of a disability, and wanting people to realize that you can be happy and fulfilled despite the limitations it puts on you.

But this criticism rubs me the wrong way for two reasons. Spoilers below.

First, I am not going to police how disabled people feel about their disability. Demanding that all disabled people be happy and content with their disability – or even want it – is far worse than implying that they might be unhappy with their limitations. It seems to feed into the idea that being disabled is an “identity” – I’ve seen people talk about the “disabled community” – rather than a simple problem that your body has, and thus nothing negative can be said about it, and you have to be proud and happy.

And before you challenge me on this, I am facing a disability in a few years’ time. I will not accept anyone telling me that I shouldn’t be angry about this, or that I shouldn’t want to be “normal.” You don’t get to dictate how I feel and what I want, and how I feel is not wrong or incorrect. Got it?

The second problem is that… no, being disabled isn’t the villain’s motivation for wanting to merge people with Pokemon. It was his original motivation, several years ago, in that he was looking for a cure for a debilitating disease that put him in a wheelchair. But by the time of Detective Pokemon, his plans have evolved drastically – they don’t really have anything to do with his disease anymore. I don’t think he even mentions it in the present.

That’s because his plans for merging people with Pokemon include merging every human with a Pokemon, not just himself. He believes that Pokemon are superior to humans, and that he would be elevating humans by giving them Pokemon bodies. So not just disabled humans, but all humans are considered by him to not be good enough. That his his motivation, not escaping his disability.

In fact, he seems to be the only one who doesn’t benefit from his plan, because his method of “merging” with Mewtwo just involves controlling him with a mechanical headset. They don’t merge physically, meaning that he is still confined to his wheelchair in the long-run, even if he can temporarily transfer his mind to Mewtwo.

This is what happens when you do a surface-level critique of something based on tropes you think are “problematic,” without actually examining the plot and characters for what they actually are. I would understand having an issue if the villain’s motive was “I want to escape my disability by merging with a Pokemon,” but that isn’t his motivation, and pretending that it is is just disingenuous.

Random facts about me

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment
  • I love rodents. Most rodents, in general, but the smarter or friendlier ones obviously take precedence. Rats are my favorite, but their lives are too short.
  • I have a deep fondness for Ikea, based in my childhood visits there.
  • Hate-watching/hate-reading is a fond pastime for me. Unlike most people, I freely admit that I love screeching about how abysmally bad something is.
  • Least favorite book of all time (not including books that were written specifically to promote hate): Battlefield Earth, which in my review I compared to swimming in a sea of sewage.
  • I have no life.
  • Among my favorite movies: Alien, The Age of Innocence, Psycho. Not necessarily because of the content itself, but because they are filmed and directed so flawlessly that I basically don’t have to pay attention to what might be done wrong.
  • I admit that I was a Snyder Cut disbeliever before it was announced that it actually existed, but I am now a full supporter.
  • I hate fish. In every way. I dislike fish because they barely seem like living things to me – they’re like evolutionary leftovers with barely a brain. And I don’t like eating them. The only exception is tuna, which I can tolerate – all other fish are viscerally disgusting to me, both in taste and texture.
  • My favorite food is probably pizza, meat toppings.
  • I am afraid of the ocean. Both because most of it is lightless, endless cold depths, and because it contains creatures ranging from the nightmarish to the grotesque. I love being near the ocean, but I don’t like wading more than a few feet into it. Very contradictory.
  • I love cheese. I wish there was an inexpensive way for me to sample various cheeses aside from the ones you find prepackaged at the grocery store.
  • I watch way too much Youtube.
  • I’m a contrarian. Pompously tell me I should be on your side because your ideology is right, and I immediately want to point out how you’re the worst and nobody should support you. Tell me I’m bad if I don’t do X or Y, and I’ll immediately want to not do it just to spite you.
  • I suffer from depression. No, not the “I has the sads because society” kind that every basic person on social media claims to have, the serious mental illness that warps my perceptions, my emotions, and plunges me into nihilistic hatred of humanity and life itself unless I take several medications. I also have fairly severe anxiety with paranoid features.
  • I don’t believe people should have heroes or role models… at least, not living ones. Living ones will inevitably let you down by revealing themselves to be terrible people who have used systems like politics or Hollywood to conceal their misdeeds. Only admire dead people whose bad stuff has been thoroughly parsed and examined.
  • Favorite color: green, preferably a darker forest green.
  • I like bread. I sadly don’t get the opportunity to eat much of it, but I love different types and flavors.
  • I have never had a dog or cat.
  • I can’t choose a least favorite movie, because there is such a variety of bad movies with different degrees of ineptitude, bad quality and enjoyability that I can’t pinpoint a single one.
  • Favorite authors in terms of overall consistent quality: J.R.R. Tolkien, Garth Nix, Susan Cooper, Maggie Stiefvater. I may be forgetting some…
  • I don’t know how to dance.
  • I am terminally single.
  • I like science fiction, but many science fiction authors don’t like me.
  • Favorite podcast: Welcome to Night Vale. The randomness, weirdness and unexplained qualities are something that strike a chord with me.

Maybe I’ll make a sequel blog post if other factoids about my uninteresting self pop up in my head. Anyway, ciao!

The Mummy 2017 and Sexism

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One of the many changes made to Mummy lore in the Tom Cruise movie The Mummy is that it focused on a female mummy rather than the traditional male ones. Despite Twitter’s beliefs that all gender/race flips are greeted with sexist racist fanboy hatred, the viewing public did not have a problem with gender-flipping the mummy, especially since she was played by the wonderful Sofia Boutella, who gives the character a real sense of wiry, acrobatic physicality.

Unfortunately, the movie sucked for myriad reasons. Among the reasons: the crushing lack of research, the lack of Egypt, Tom Cruise’s midlife crisis, the need to shoehorn a S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization into the story, the script full of holes, the blatant ripping off of An American Werewolf In London, and so forth. It’s not a good movie, and I didn’t enjoy it.

But the thing that really stuck out to me is that despite deciding to make the mummy female… the movie is actually rather sexist towards her. This is best highlighted when you compare the 2017 mummy, Ahmanet, to her male counterpart in the 1999 movie, Imhotep. And two things really stuck out at me.

One, Ahmanet is weak. I don’t mean she’s weakly characterized – although she is – but that she’s not very powerful for an undead mummy powered by divine sponsorship. About midway through the movie, she’s captured by the troops of Prodigium (the monster-hunting equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Do they use magical tools and amulets? Do they somehow neutralize the power of Set, rendering her helpless? Do they use centuries of research and knowledge and technology and the supernatural to overwhelm this godlike figure’s godlike powers?

Nope. They use ropes and hooks to catch her, then chain her up with a mercury drip. It isn’t even hard for them.

If that doesn’t sound weak, stop for a moment and remember Imhotep from the 1999 movie. Imhotep was powerful. Ridiculously so. He had his weaknesses (like kitties), but it’s hard to imagine him being completely incapacitated by some guys with ropes. Yet the female mummy is weak and gets taken down almost effortlessly.

And you may be thinking, “Well, it’s to show how amazing Prodigium is! They’re so capable and strong that they can stop a god-powered mummy!”

But no, that isn’t the case. Because that is the second time that Ahmanet is taken down by mere mortal schlubs – the first time was in ancient Egypt right after she murdered her family, and she was newly juiced-up with Set’s power. Not only were the people who caught her ordinary people, but they didn’t have technology, centuries of organized study and gathered magical power. They were just people. Not only did they catch her, but they successfully mummified her alive (which is not possible, incidentally) and transported her to another country before properly imprisoning her in a neutralizing element. That is, for a mummy, quite weak.

For the record, Imhotep also was caught and buried alive by ordinary humans… but that was before he had most of his powers. So it made sense that the Medjai could catch him!

The other part of Ahmanet that struck me as sexist is her ultimate goal. Her initial goal seems to be to rule Egypt, because she apparently was raised with the belief that she would be the queen regnant when her father died, but then his wife had a baby boy so she was knocked out of the succession. For the record, pharoahs had many wives, so the chances of a pharoah having only two children in twenty years is… very unlikely. That’s a more medieval-European trope.

Anyway, she was so upset about not becoming queen that she summoned the god Set, and he gave her… skin text and four pupils, and a knife. So she wandered off and killed her entire family, baby included, and then decides to bring Set into a mortal man’s body because she’s in love with him. When she revives in the present, her motive does not change – she wants Set to incarnate in Tom Cruise’s body.

Now, let’s again compare her to Imhotep.

Imhotep also had romantic love as the centerpiece of his quest. He was the secret lover of the pharoah’s mistress (why not a lesser wife or concubine? Again, very medieval-European!), until she committed suicide so that the Medjai wouldn’t capture Imhotep. So his goal was to bring her back to life. He was captured and sealed away under a magic spell, and when he is revived as a mummy, his ultimate goal is also unchanged – once he has his body restored, he wants to bring his lover’s soul back in Rachel Weisz’s body.

Similar motives, similar goals, similar story progression, yes?

Well, no. Like I mentioned before, Ahmanet’s goal is to revive an evil god, so he can rule the world. She wants to be his queen, not a queen regnant. She even explicitly says this, and she acts like a lovesick fangirl for most of the story.

Imhotep, on the other hand, never gives the impression that he’s going to be subservient to any person, and at no point do you imagine that his lover is going to be the one sitting up on the throne while he’s just the arm candy.

I don’t know much about the production of this movie, but I will say that this motivation feels a little like it was shoved in there. It may be bad writing giving the character inconsistent or poorly-explained motives… or it may be the obviously-insecure-about-his-age Tom Cruise insisting that all women in the movie must be dazzled by his toothy charm. I don’t know.

But either way, the handling of the female mummy was not good, and they should have simply followed this rule: if it isn’t something you can see Imhotep doing, leave it out.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Part 2 (Spoilers)

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

I’ve finished the entire film now, seen it multiple times, and formulated quite a few thoughts about it. Among them:

Thankfully, the random Russian family is absent from this cut of the movie, being one of Whedon’s many baffling creative choices – I mean, why give Cyborg a whole character arc when you can just show random nameless people that we don’t care about? In this cut, the Russian town is completely deserted, which seems like a more likely choice for Steppenwolf’s secret headquarters… and, somehow, makes the whole event seem much more sinister. It’s a mission of death, brewing and blooming in a place that is, effectively, dead.

Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth is, by the way, a delight. The fact that he’s more prominently featured in the Snyder Cut is another point in its favor.

A pretty effective horror scene in which a hapless janitor finds a parademon lurking in the lab… very good at establishing mood and the sinisterness of the parademons. I honestly never felt that in the Josstice League cut.

The firing of the message arrow was longer and more ritualized here, giving more of a feeling that the Amazons are using magic, and very ancient means. It’s also specified that the arrow is an arrow of the goddess Artemis. Overall, it has a slight “lighting the beacons of Gondor” feeling.

It also leads into an excellent scene of Diana investigating the temple where the arrow landed, which – again – increases the feeling of atmosphere and menace considerably. In the Josstice League cut, she just saw it on TV and immediately knew what it meant. Here she knows its significance, but we see her uncovering what it means through non-verbal means and an Indiana Jones-style infiltration of an ancient secret chamber. Compared to the hamfisted dialogue of the Whedon cut, it’s refreshing to have a director assume his audience is smart enough to decipher what’s going on.

Ryan Choi is in this. If you don’t know who Ryan Choi is, he is the second person to assume the mantle of the Atom, a size-changing superhero. Basically, our dear Zack Snyder was laying groundwork for a future movie if the character went over well. But like most non-white characters, he was eliminated from the theatrical cut, which is a shame, because he has some good energy and works well opposite Silas Stone.

Something about Joe Morton apparently just says “genius scientist.” I have seen him in several roles, and the three most prominent ones – this one included – all cast him as a genius scientist.

He’s also our entry-way to Victor Stone, aka Cyborg, whom we first meet being emo in a hidden apartment. This was… about all the character development Cyborg had in the Josstice League cut – he was just emo and wooden for the whole movie, and then he just sort of decided not to be at the climax. It was truly abysmal, and I actively disliked the character of Cyborg because he was so poorly-written.

Turns out that was all Whedon’s fault. Again. Thanks, Whedon. Thanks so much.

Ah, slo-mo. It wouldn’t be a Zack Snyder movie without slo-mo.

A new scene also introduces us to Vulko, Aquaman’s mentor figure, who is rocking the Elrond hair here. He’s appeared in the Aquaman movie so his appearance is not a huge surprise, but it would have been a fun way to segue into Momoa’s own movie.

One contribution Snyder has made that I’m not really a fan of is the air bubbles that Atlanteans generate whenever they want to talk, and their apparent inability to communicate verbally without them. If they’re able to breathe water, they should be able to talk underwater. Especially since sound does travel underwater – Snyder could have had some fun with it by coming up with watery distortion.

I do, however, love the way that Steppenwolf communicates with DeSaad in this movie, in which a giant slab of stone in the middle of a nuclear power plant (no, I don’t know why it’s there) turns into a molten representation of whoever he’s talking to. It’s a very cool-looking visual representation of communication, more so than just talking through a portal or something like that.

The Snyder Cut also does something that Whedon’s never did: makes Steppenwolf a three-dimensional villain. One of the things I (and everyone else) hated about Steppenwolf was how thin and cliched he was – we’re simply informed that he conquers because… that’s what he likes to do. That’s his whole motive. Nothing deeper or more identifiable than that.

But in Snyder’s cut, you almost feel sorry for Steppenwolf. His motivation here is that he somehow betrayed Darkseid once in the distant past, and now he has to conquer worlds to be allowed to return home. It’s a simple motive – he wants to go home – but it’s one that we can understand and sympathize with, even if he’s still obviously evil.

Diana also gives a more elongated version of the “age of heroes” retelling, with some notable differences. For one thing, it’s worth noting that Whedon trimmed out the African and Asian warriors fighting for the kingdoms of men. More attention is paid to the Green Lantern who dies during the fight. We also see more of the Motherboxes and how they work, which makes them feel more like they aren’t just MacGuffins.

But the biggest difference is that it isn’t Steppenwolf who gets his butt kicked by Earth’s defenders – it’s Darkseid himself, albeit before he started wearing a shirt and calling himself Darkseid. He also is forced to retreat because Ares critically injures him, to the point where he’s bleeding all over the place. We also get an idea of how hard it is to hurt Darkseid – even in his youthful, less powerful days, it takes two or three Greek gods to take him down.

It’s interesting that despite the rather bleak depiction of Batman in Batman V. Superman, It’s Snyder’s cut that has Batman being more optimistic about humanity and the possibility of heroes coming together, whereas Whedon’s is all whiny gloom.

Twitter legitimately scares me

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, ruminationsLeave a comment

For your information, I am on Twitter. This is only the case because the job I hope to have requires a social media presence unless you are very famous. I am not on Twitter because I enjoy it, or even feel like I am accomplishing anything. My follower base is tiny.

And honestly, I deeply wish that I were not on Twitter.

The entire environment on Twitter is both deeply disturbing and extremely harmful, both politically and socially. Everybody knows about the roving bands of half-witted, screeching teenage girls who cancel people for saying bad word or making a joke ten years ago. Everybody knows about the witch-hunts, the mob mentality, the hypocrisy.

But the most disturbing aspect of the Twitter community is that cancellation isn’t the disease. It’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of a mentality that is prevalent in the app’s community – that forgiveness and change are not possible, that discrimination and bigotry are laudable as long as they are aimed at the right people, and that seething hatred towards other human beings is a noble and unselfish emotion as long as you have some political goal to shill. And the whole vile mass is wrapped up in political extremism, an echo chamber that encourages all the angry, hate-filled teens to become ever more extreme, to shun the center, intelligent discourse and any kind of moderation in any area.

And that might not be the worst, because hatred, extremists and bigots have been on the Internet for as long as it has existed. That kind of numbskull will always be a part of humanity – a large part – because humanity’s sins never decrease. And there are a lot of other bigoted, extremist social media platforms out there.

The real problem is, Twitter has actual power.

Corporations bow to the whims of Twitter. People are fired, ostracized, have their lives ruined. Some politicians cultivate Twitter followings to bolster themselves and their views. Unlike other social media apps, it is treated as if it were real life and a substantial portion of the population.

And that is scary. Not just because it’s a hotbed for extremism and bigotry, but because it’s fueled by hatred and “othering.” Their hatred is likely to be reflected in corporations and the government, and their unwillingness to debate or engage in civil discourse is becoming the norm in society.

I’ve also seen a lot of people declaring that Twitter is a safe space for certain communities, such as LGBTQ teens. That’s fine. Whatever. I think it’s a terrible environment in which to find a “community,” but whatever.

The problem is, it’s a case of “safety for thee, not for me.” I have literally never felt safe on Twitter; barely a day goes by when I am not confronted by open, bigoted hatred for my beliefs by the same people who denounce racism, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia. They clearly could not care less about whether I feel safe, because they hate me for being who I am. Which means I can’t really take their denunciations seriously, because they are hypocrites practicing double standards – these groups of people should be safe and loved and validated, and these other ones should be hated and oppressed.

I really hate that, for the purpose of my work, I need to be on a platform where I constantly feel unsafe. I hate even more that the bigoted hatred of the people on this platform is normalized and supported in society, especially a society that preaches tolerance and acceptance.

Lord of the Rings: The Snyder Cut?

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Yes, more about the Snyder Cut.

One thing I’ve seen people say online is that the Snyder cut of Justice League is sort of like DC Comics’ Lord of the Rings. I understand perfectly well that they mean in terms of scope, epicness, and world-building, but the comparison really took me aback when I stopped and thought about it.

Why? Because Lord of the Rings‘ movie adaptations are actually sort of the opposite of how Justice League was handled. Consider the directors. Peter Jackson was a cult director when he was given the reins of a movie trilogy to rival, or even surpass, the original Star Wars trilogy – clearly talented and capable, but not a megastar. Zack Snyder, on the other hand, has given us several blockbuster movies with varying degrees of success.

Yet the movies were handled in opposite ways by the studios. Imagine if Peter Jackson had filmed the entire extended-edition Lord of the Rings movies, all three at the same time, an epic undertaking intended to give us a great and massive story. Then the movie Dungeons and Dragons flops at the box office, and New Line wets their pants.

Instead of making sure that the best possible movie is released, they take the first opportunity to replace Jackson with another director, popular but overrated, and not really capable of giving the movie the gravitas it needs. They also want the movie to be funnier, as well as only two movies instead of three.

And that new director – let’s call him Moss – takes a movie trilogy that is all but finished, rips it to shreds, and reshoots most of the scenes, making everything less epic, impressive and important, and adding in “funny” dialogue. Many side-characters are carved out completely (an awful lot of them non-white people, it’s worth noting), and main characters have their stories carved down to the bone until almost nothing is left. Oh, and a lot of that pesky world-building gets stripped as well. It’ll scare the normies. Plus, make sure the whole story fits neatly into two standard-length movies, and just keep trimming until it does.

Can you imagine the trash-fire that the Lord of the Rings would have been if New Line had treated those movies the way WB treated Justice League? It would have been a disaster financially, fans would have hated them, and non-fans probably would have been underwhelmed. We would likely have never gotten the extended editions, and seen the director’s adaptation as it was originally intended.