Here’s why the VFX world of the movies is so extremely broken.

Color-blind casting is supposed to create a fantasy world for a broader set of audiences. But it comes with its own problems. See also: “Does colonialism exist in Bridgerton’s world?”

The wonderful Gabrielle Bellot considers Netflix’s Sandman.

Conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies are unalloyed misogyny.

The CEO who (allegedly) raised everyone’s salary to $70,000 is an abuser, and he has been known to be one for quite some time. Please stop RTing his content!

What makes a dumpling a dumpling? (Challenge: Read this story without achieving semantic satiation on the word “dumpling.”)

“[She] sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain” is the funniest description I can imagine. Anyway, here is a compassionate and smart profile of Meghan Markle!

I am obsessed with this London Underground-style map of the human body.

Why have US universities let themselves become pipelines to Lockheed Martin and similar defense contractors?

JK Rowling has uh. has written a new book. of sorts.

How Normal Gossip (a newish favorite podcast of mine!) gets made.

Masiyaleti Mbewe considers the state of African millennial fiction — though tragically without mentioning the very millennial (in my opinion) The Eternal Audience of One.

Charlie Warzel reflects on the mistake that led to him being Twitter’s main character for a day, and considers what we can learn from it.

Add this to the list of Scientology’s abuses: It relies on a steady stream of immigrant labor that it acquires by cheating the R1 visa system and abusing immigrant workers.

One of my favorite genres of article is “THIS SYSTEM IS TOTALLY UNREGULATED.” For your consideration today: dog training.

“Hollow moral leadership upheld by a spectacle of extravagant, ill-gotten wealth has enabled Britons to remain proud of rather than reflective about empire and its destructive impact today.”

“The Queen is not entitled to your grief.” Ayan Artan, a Somali-British writer, considers the marketing effort on behalf of the monarchy to conceal and erase the damage of British imperialism.

“People like Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who has gone all in on The Rings of Power, have more wealth than they could possibly use in a single lifetime, and in many respects more power than any king could ever have dreamed of; the rest of us face rising rents, inflation, and a gig economy that affords few protections when we get sick or injured.” On the new crop of fantasy TV shows.

Chinelo Okparanto considers the ethics and aesthetics of writing across racial identities.

Sarah Weinman reflects on Serial and all that it did and didn’t do.

Tips and tricks to run a good book club.

It’s always a cause for celebration when Lamar Giles has a new book out! He has a new book out AND he’s writing about social horror, yay!

Scaachi Coul is terrific as ever on the downfall of the Wife Guy. Linda Holmes on audience entitlement re: same.

This is superb TikTok journalism and I think Kady Ruth Ashcraft for doing it.

“The Very Online never leave: they hate it here but they’re never anywhere else.” On the digital afterlife of my beloved Constantine Cavafy.

So-called “secret menus” that go viral on TikTok are making the lives of fast food workers hell.

Hell of a kicker on this piece about how India’s movie industry has been affected by the rise of Hindu nationalism.

Maori polar explorers!

Happy weekend, friends!

The post It’s Scary How Many Links There Are: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Nasim Mansuri finds a way to love a book — CS Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy — that doesn’t love her back. (link)

The first generation of school shooting survivors has grown up. (link)

Who gets to go with their gut in the movies? Who gets to be the hero who saves the day? (SPOILERS, it’s men.) (link)

Anne Helen Peterson’s description of why Candy Crush is addictive and empty, and Wordle is fun and sweet, is so spot on. (link)

In news that will surprise nobody, Noom is just a diet app, rebranded. I hope the Maintenance Phase podcast does an episode on Noom soon, but I suppose that would be giving them more attention I don’t want them to have. Fuckin diet culture. (link)

Another review of To Paradise, this one getting into Hanya Yanagihara’s pretty messed-up attitude toward disability! Among other things! (link)

I absolutely love The Secret History, but even so, this essay about the moral vacuity of its world is very good. (But I still love it.) (link)

Do you want Bernardine Evaristo to recommend you some books, of course you want that. (link)

“Let people like things” is a credo that has stepped way beyond its original context. (link)

How much do influencers charge brands? NOBODY REALLY KNOWS, not even the influencers or the brands, but one company is trying to change that. (link)

“For kids today from poorer backgrounds, the path I took through education no longer exists.” A $4000 Pell Grant changed Tara Westover’s life. (link)

What is all the constant tracking and counting doing to our reading habits? (Despite having insanely read 31 books in January, I cannot relate to this article because I never set numbered reading goals.) (link)

Sarah Raughly considers what it means that it takes Black tragedy to get publishers interested in Black books. (link)

That’s all for now! Wish me luck on a very busy weekend!

The post When your favorite Narnia book is the racist one: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

I have never heard of this alt-lit writer from a time before I was quite as online as I am now, but this profile of her was still fascinating. (link)

By contrast, I was around for the full four hours of the recent YA authors / NFT kerfuffle, and since it was very brief and ended up harming nobody, I pronounce it a very enjoyable Twitter kerfuffle. Here is the recap of this scheme that multiple people apparently thought was a good idea. (link)

Don’t feel guilty for your guilty pleasures! (Or, yet another piece of proof that what I have come to mean when I say “guilty pleasures” is not the same as what other people mean when they say “guilty pleasures.”) (link)

I swear this will be the last of my links about the bad art friend. (link) And this one too. (link) And that’s it. Sorry.

The plumber is not trying to kill you, and other thoughts on where white-lady true crime has left us. (link)

When people leave Q-Anon, they need support, and that support has been very hard to find. (link)

“Being complicit pays.” Kayleigh Donaldson pans the new documentary series about Brittany Murphy’s life. (link)

Social media work and audio producing are their own forms of ghostwriting. (link)

Another excellent Fan Service column from Stitch! This one’s about ways of thinking about the morality of darkfic. (link)

What online stories have you been reading, friends? Also, I don’t really think your hands are unlovable! That was only a figure of speech.

Also, today is Oscar Wilde’s terrible ex-boyfriend Bosie’s birthday. Celebrate accordingly, I hope by cleansing your house and mind of any traces of your own terrible exes.

The post A Few Kerfuffles: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

YES THAT IS RIGHT IT IS THE BOOK PREVIEWWWWWWWW. (link) I haven’t read it yet because I discovered it’s there approximately thirty seconds before writing these very words. I am saving it as a treat for the end of the work week. Yay. Yay. Yay. I love this book preview. I thank The Millions so much for doing it. I know it is a lot of work.

Okay! On to the rest of the links! A lot of them are about television! Watch Leverage: Redemption on IMDBtv!

LET LEVAR BURTON HOST JEOPARDY (link)

Jeannette Ng unpacks some of the history and political assumptions of the wuxia genre. (link)

Molly Ostertag considers queer readings of Lord of the Rings, and what Tolkien might have meant. Including: a surprise guest appearance by Mary Renault! (link)

“Sex/Life is the most boring and meager of sexual fantasies for straight women stuck in mundane marriages who wish they had something better to cling to.” I love a good pan, and Scaachi Koul’s of this Netflix show I’ve never heard of is excellent. (link)

“I do not want to win someone else’s game.” Nikole Hannah-Jones’s statement on why she is walking away from UNC is excellent, and heartbreaking. (link)

Products that go viral on TikTok are typically a flash in the pan. (link)

NEW LEVERAGE IS HEEEEEEEEEEERE so please enjoy this interview with the cast. Then go watch New Leverage. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be. Except for in my vision there would be more Hardison, but I understand Aldis Hodge is a fancypants movie star with a fancypants movie star schedule, sob. (link)

So-called “pot-hunters” regularly loot Native American graves, removing not just funerary artifacts but even human remains. When will it end? (link)

Surprise! People actually enjoy commutes. I can confirm this: Adding a small commute to my day (like 15 minutes) gives me time to decompress before and after work, and get some dedicated reading time. (link)

The life of an assistant in Hollywood has worsened drastically with the fall of network TV. (link)

Not prosecuting people for low-level misdemeanors turns out to reduce crime all around! Hooray! Let’s all just do that, then! (link)

This joint interview with Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham, of Ted Lasso, will make your heart sing. What a lovely pair of women. Also you should watch Ted Lasso. It is not a perfect show but it is really great in many ways. (link)

I am crushed to learn that despite the incredible cast, Gunpowder Milkshake is boring and bad. CRUSHED. (link)

In closing, please watch New Leverage. If you don’t know what New Leverage is, I highly recommend repairing to IMDBtv (it’s free!) or Amazon Prime and watching the pilot of Leverage. It is very close to being a perfect pilot. Every time I think about the pilot of Leverage, I want to watch the pilot of Leverage. I want to watch it right now, typing this. It slaps. Thank you for your time.

The post I Love Television: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Quillette is bad and people who write for it should feel bad.

We do not know what Baby Yoda’s first words are going to be, but we should not assume he will talk like Grown Yoda.

The BBC endeavors to identify some of the bookish trends of the last decade. I particularly like the first one.

This Arielle Gordon piece on a music fandom (fandom?)’s teen girl message board is… it’s a lot.

Fast Color is the small superhero movie we need. I am unbelievably excited for this movie to come out on DVD so I can watch it. Gugu Mbathu-Raw is gorgeous and great and should be in everything.

“I sit and ask myself: Does anyone else in this room know Jane Austen is… white? Do they even know they are all white?” I feel genuinely fortunate to have studied Mansfield Park in a class that was specifically devoted to Literature of Empire, because I think it made me more aware of like, what the fuck is going on in the background of a lot of these white classics (slavery! empire!), but anyway, this Marcos Gonsalez piece is about experiencing the white literary canon as a person of color, and it’s excellent.

Here is a weird and slightly surrealist piece about what the internet does to us all. (It’s surrealist because it’s so fucking real. What is this world.)

The worldbuilding of the A Christmas Prince franchise has… raised some questions.

Are brands ever just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing?

TIL Lurlene McDaniel was inspired to write all her tragic books after her son was diagnosed with NOT KIDDING juvenile diabetes.

Cancel culture isn’t a real thing: By the numbers.

“I’m pretty behind on every single geek franchise out there.” Keidra Chaney, formerly of The Learned Fangirl, considers herself geek-adjacent these days. Lightly geeky.

Here’s what your phone is really doing when you do those autocomplete memes.

“Ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?” A very blessed oral history of that Folgers coffee ad.

The memes that defined the 2010s.

Common Sense Media and their ratings system are enormously comforting for parents. Here’s what’s behind them!

Ruth Wilson left The Affair under mysterious circumstances. Now it appears that it may be down to the show pressuring her to do nude scenes well past her comfort level.

“This year I picked up a pastime I thought was reserved for white people: fighting with my family about their terrible politics.” Scaachi Koul on talking to her family about Kashmir.

This Jia Tolentino essay on Cats is broadly excellent but you WILL have to live with the knowledge that Known Racist and Anti-Semite TS Eliot and Entire Fascist Ezra Pound used to write to each other “in black dialect for fun.”

Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie have such a beautiful friendship, I adore them, I want them to be in a buddy cop movie together. A buddy cop franchise!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

The post Somehow Only One Link about Cats: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Black women have largely been left out of the conversation about harassment (quelle surprise). Rebecca Carroll talks about her experience of racist belittlement from Charlie Rose.

On the state of Kentucky and the borders of the South.

Gillian Flynn writes about how those men view women. It is rough. No wonder her books are the way they are.

Debut novelist Naima Coster talks about what it meant to have a black woman as her editor. (Her book sounds really good too!)

This season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been incredibly good. Angelica Jade Bastien talks about watching it while coming to terms (again) with her own mental illness and suicide attempt.

Melissa Harris-Perry contemplates the #MeToo backlash, and how we can stop it.

Nikole Hannah-Jones continues to do incredible work on school segregation in the US, and this interview at the Atlantic is fuego. When she writes a book, when that day comes, I am going to buy 29 copies of it and distribute them to a bunch of people.

On the poignancy of acknowledgements in books. I love acknowledgements in books. I am not ashamed.

Carly Lane talks about negative responses to Star Wars and the perils of becoming too committed to fan theories and headcanons.

How were the Porgs created? The answer is goddamn adorable.

Scaachi Koul thinks Logan Paul is an asshole and says so much more eloquently than I ever could.

And by the way, I’m not linking it, but there’s a Washington Post article making the rounds about how maybe Logan Paul did some good by drawing attention to the suicide problem in Japan. Among other things, it implies that media guidelines for reporting on suicide (which are based in research about suicide contagion) are similar in quality to the culture of shame and silence around suicide in Japan. It makes me want to punch a wall. It’s less harmful for the media to say nothing than it is for them to report irresponsibly (as they consistently do). I am wrath.

Happy weekend! Stay warm!

The post It’s Been Too Long Since My Last: Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.