Oh. Oh, that's a "but for the grace of flying spaghetti monster" moment if there ever was one.

Please make a special note to not ever do this. The career-killing response to what was, all things considered, a fairly kind review and the dog-piling in the comments. I've bitched about bad reviews. I've giggled over the bad behavior of others. These are both normal human impulses that don't even make you a moderately nasty person.

But for the love of tiny, dyspeptic puppies, people, do it off the internet.

Talking about Sucker Punch

Mainly the fact that Sucker Punch was hideous, and Zack Snyder has a thing about rape that makes Frank Miller's thing about prostitutes look downright classy.

But there was a point in cinema, particularly horror, in which rape was viewed as a bad thing.  Rape/revenge films made a lot of money in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The only rape/revenge films that I see making money in the 2000s are either remakes (the pretty good Last House on the Left), or are films made to deliberately made to fit a 70s exploitation aesthetic which, ironically, is more socially just than films made to fit current priorities (the excellent Death Proof, which I urge everyone to watch, both for the fact that it's a damned engaging movie on its own merits and then also because Tarantino is actually saying a lot of tremendously cogent things about rape and rape culture that he manages to slide past without outright acknowledging, the very best way to teach).  I am alternately optimistic and wary about the upcoming I Spit on Your Grave remake, because there is little way that this particular film can be made without stating outright that rape is among the worst things you can do to a person without murdering them that doesn't dismantle the whole damned thing.

I have a lot of ~thoughts~ about the horror genre, both as a fan and from the bygone days in which I was actually an academic.  I laugh in the face of anyone who says that genre fiction cannot also speak to the human condition; good lord, I know it's cliched, but who did Shakespeare speak to if not the groundlings?  Rape/revenge films were big on the second wave of feminism because people were talking about such things, and they were acknowledging that they were wrong.  Part of the reason that I am a fan of horror as a genre and "genre" as a genre is because so few people take it seriously that you can slide all kinds of lovely, subversive details in there without anyone noticing.  Criticism becomes irrelevant in the vacuum in which no one gives a damn from the outset, and instead you are touching the very freakin' heart of what concerns a culture at that moment.  

In this culture within the USA, right now, rape/revenge films are irrelevant.  Rape films, as Snyder as proved three times now, make money.

This bothers me, guys and gals.  This bothers me a lot.

There are days in which the words sing, everything is easy, and you can see yourself cranking out a readable first draft inside of a month.

And then there are days in which you ask, without a trace of irony, if photographs work off of mirror images.

Both of these days were today, actually. It was strange.

Ice Twisters might be the greatest movie of this or any other universe.

Yes. Yes, I am telling you, Gentle Reader, that it might even be better than Sharktopus.

Except for the part where I can't quite tell if one of the female characters is the hero's daughter or his love interest. That is a fairly important distinction to make.

I'm in love with this guy.

I am slightly concerned about his driving skills, however.

Crushing despair, y'all. CRUSHING.

I came to the reluctant conclusion today that I can't have my dream cover for Super ≠ Model, damn it all. There's this whole thing where it involves a ledge (which looks much higher than it actually is!), and heels, and apparently we can't shoot during the day and then apply a filter to make it look like night…yeah. Doing it up both right and safely would involve lights, safety equipment, and permits, none of which I can handle while working off of pittances and pennies from heaven. (The current plan is to snap as many shots as we can as quickly as we can and then run like hell.) I work with the model's mother. It is going to be really awkward if I accidentally kill her child.

I heave a sigh for my clearly difficult life, don't you? *goes in search of wine*

I feel so cheap.

It's not uncommon for a writer to fall in love with one of their creations.  Stephanie Meyer dreamed of Edward Cullen, Anne Rice was utterly head over heels for Lestat, and so on.  Lest I seem to be picking on the ladies, I also am utterly convinced that George Orwell had a thing for Napoleon.  I'm not talking exclusively about romantic or sexual love, here, though this is a space in which all sexualities in which everyone consents are coolies and I will not abide otherwise.

I, for example, am completely, utterly, ridiculously twitterpated with this jet.