(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.

Did I already give a blog entry this title? I could swear I did. I could probably go through the archives and check, but that would be Letting the Terrorists Win. (Also, for those of you picking this up on Facebook, I’d just like to maintain that I really do update this every Sunday. Facebook [...]

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 [...]

SPACE RACE update next week when I have all the requisite photos for a glorious illustrated entry. In the meantime, they’re baaaaack…

(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 [...]

You know what makes me feel super accomplished? Putting together IKEA furniture. An essay is just, “So what?”, because when you’re done, all you have is a slightly larger Word file on your computer, and you can never finish a story just the way you wanted it when you set out, but with IKEA, it’s [...]

(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 [...]

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?” – Hamlet, Hamlet II.ii If you take a virtual stroll through an online fandom to which you don’t belong, it can be mind-boggling how passionate some fans get about fictional characters. From the outside, it’s ridiculous that actual people — presumably [...]

Normally, I don’t do two entries of short reviews in a row, but this first one is the reason.