(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 [...]

I totally had to look up “Pharisees” on Wikipedia to make sure it actually meant what I wanted it to. It may wind up coming across way harsher than I wanted when I get into the actual topic of this blog, but, hey, that’s the price we pay for alliteration. This is my — personal, [...]

(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 [...]

Listen, I know I don’t fit most of the ideological and behavioural criteria for being Jewish, even supposing there are criteria, and whoever wrote them can have the moral right to make that call. I don’t believe in G-d or in the divinity of the Torah; I don’t celebrate most Jewish holidays the way you’re [...]

So a few weeks ago, when my cousin Emily was visiting me in Toronto, we went to see the new movie by Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop. And it brought me to this conclusion: I don’t like art.

(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 [...]

“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 [...]