Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

I’m feeling a little more optimistic about treatment

Sounds good! All best wishes for a healthier you in the near future.

*puts Big Boi on David’s head and tests if cute-o-therapy works*

Kitten has opened his teensyweensy eyes! Not completely, but he is definitely cracking them open and taking peeks at his surroundings!

I think that, subconsciously, I expected Ursula Le Guin to be around forever. Sometimes I’ll see the name of an old-timey SF/F writer, such as Harlan Ellison, and think “wow, they’re still around?” But never Le Guin, because the world needed her.

Re Ursula LeGuin.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

I feel the way some Mammotheers felt about losing Bowie. She was 89, so it’s sort of to be expected. Still Damn. Damn. Damn.

My favourite of hers was “The Word for World is Forest”.

Damn.

Speaking of movies, there was a great quote I found on GamerGhazi about Iraq/Afghanistan movies like 12 Strong, apparently by Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle:

“Because not only will America go into your country and kill all your people, but what’s worse I think is they’ll come back twenty years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”

The Ghazi thread was about this Noah Berlatsky article on 12 Strong that I think sums up one of the major problems of war films in general: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/12-strong-proves-hollywood-still-believes-only-american-lives-matter-ncna839081

It’s one thing if you’re doing a piece on WWI or WWII where war was openly declared, the US was a liberator (more WWII on that one) in a broader coalition and vast segments of the civilian population had fled (those who could at least). Contrast that with the slew of Vietnam era films, and they’re all about alienation and PTSD from the perspective of the American GI. The Vietnamese populace are little more than plot devices. Ditto Bush-era war films in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There’s an odd almost… cowardice for lack of a better word, a fear of confronting the complicity of the government and by extension the American people for their participation in the wars that left their own soldiers so damaged and hundreds of thousands of non-combatants dead in their wake. To an extent I can understand that the average movie-goer doesn’t want a character pointing at them and saying “You did this!” and yet that remains the subtext of any film that doesn’t glorify the soldier.

It’s just so telling that Hollywood (and the games industry) is still trying to wring nobility out of WWII when all their past colonial conflicts have fallen down the memory hole. I mean, you’d think Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders would be ripe for an historical epic, but it’d go over about as well if Paul Gross followed up Passchendaele with a movie about the Boer War.

@Mish

Good job, me. Much articulate.

Articulate or no, the sentiments expressed are perfect.

There’s an odd almost… cowardice for lack of a better word, a fear of confronting the complicity of the government and by extension the American people for their participation in the wars that left their own soldiers so damaged and hundreds of thousands of non-combatants dead in their wake. To an extent I can understand that the average movie-goer doesn’t want a character pointing at them and saying “You did this!” and yet that remains the subtext of any film that doesn’t glorify the soldier.

Possibly that’s because, even in spaces like this one, supposedly built entirely on progressive ideas, suggesting that an American soldier is less than a hero gets the same reaction as spitting on a crucifix in the Vatican.

@Katamount (formerly Gussie Jives)

May i suggest “Spec Ops: The line”? It’s a video game where you play a soldier and end up commiting a few atrocities. It does very much point a finger at you and tells you that you did this. In fact, one loading screen literally says: “This is all your fault”. I think it’s excellent despite the gameplay being a bit generic. I’m afraid i can’t think of any movies that do that.

If you want to pick an internet fight, please take it somewhere else.

who is picking a fight? Their comment deleted already?

@Weird Eddie Well, that sucks. :/

Is anybody else kinda grossed out that Nassar got absolutely no media coverage whatso-fucking-ever until just this week? I follow this shit like a hawk and even I hadn’t heard about it until the Goddamn closing arguments, what the fuck.

And that’s before we get to all the brogressives on Twitter throwing tantrums because the meanie-pants judge is a woman insulted the poor innocent child rapist, how dare she, it’s not like judging criminals is her job or anything like that.

And in honour of the late great Ursula K. LeGuin, I’m linking this essay of hers that was just as profound when she wrote it in 1974, when I read it in 10th grade English class at the start of the Bush Presidency and in the alt-right infested America of 2018:

https://alllies.org/en/americans-afraid-dragons/

The one thing I don’t think LeGuin could have accounted for 40 years ago was the impact of the internet. The subject of this blog alone is a testament to the stunted emotional growth that renders certain man-children unable to separate fantasy from reality. But, all things being what they are, things are certainly better now than they were then, if our openness to imagination is any indication.