(See? See what I did there?) I’m blogging today about three works that made me think a bit more about how expectations and knowledge can affect the way I experience stories.  Yeah, you’ve been warned.

When the season finale of House (or Dexter, or The X Files, or whatever single TV show I’m into) airs, I promise myself: next season, I will not fall for the same old trap. I will not seek out spoilers from Wikipedia or fanboards. I will not skim through fanfiction.net to see what curious things [...]

(Yes, I know this is long. But I’m out of the country come Monday, so this makes up for no blog next week.) I love surprise endings. I enjoy reading them — nothing makes me feel more satisfied with the ending of a book or movie than a well executed twist — and because I [...]

(PRE-POST NOTE: There are lots more important things to blog about this week than what I prepared for today. But it takes me a long time to think about things until I’m satisfied with my conclusions and even longer to write them up in a way that makes sense to other people. So this is [...]

(Happy Victoria Day long weekend! And happy birthday, cousin M!) What does it mean to say a story is “like fanfiction”? The phrase is almost always used with derogatory intent. No one says a TV show, movie, or book is like fanfiction to highlight its attractive qualities, even though there are many excellent fanfiction writers [...]

I hope she dies. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about someone real. And what I’m actually talking about is why I love single-story media like books and movies so much more than I’ll ever love series media like TV, despite the way I get obsessed with TV shows. Which I’m going to illustrate by explaining [...]

Or rather, I just want girls to have friends. In fiction, I mean. In case I’m not being perfectly clear, I would like to see brainy female characters in fiction that does not necessarily focus entirely on “the battle of the sexes”, women, or romance have the same social network the guys do. Of course [...]

In my head, the title of this entry is spoken with the same intonation as The Muppet Show’s “Pigs… In… Space!” *ahem* The title actually might as well be “Religion… In… Stories!”, but as I’m Jewish, this is really the only aspect of religion I’m somewhat qualified to blog on. Here’s my basic thesis: we [...]

(But first, parts of  this made me smile. Warning: language, sexual and politically loaded themes) When I think of the differences between point-of-view in written media, like books, and visual media, like TV and movies, I tend to focus on person – what’s the cinematic equivalent of a story written from the point of view [...]

Disclaimer: any time a familiar story chooses to do an installment from the point of view of a character not the protagonist, I immediately and involuntarily compare it to the Pinky’s POV episode of Pinky and the Brain. You’ve been warned. *sigh* It’s about House again. Sort of. One of the major ways both the [...]