Content with terrible themes is often defended as a ‘product of its time,’ but this argument holds no water with me.
No more ‘product of its time,’ please

stillness is a lie, my dear
Content with terrible themes is often defended as a ‘product of its time,’ but this argument holds no water with me.
Creators sometimes justify graphic, troubling scenes with the claim that we need to see to ‘understand.’ Well, do we?
If fiction doesn’t consider food an important part of the worldbuilding, and the characterisation, it will ring hollow for me.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations in the last year about the public distrust and sometimes active hatred of the media — at the same time that the New York Times is raking in subscription dollars and every media outlet has an annoying popup nagging me to defend the future of journalism, I keep getting sidelong […]
Why is the manic pixie dreamgirl such a mainstay in youth adult literature, and what does that say about our attitudes on mental health and young women?
Criticising representations and challenging embedded attitudes in text is common, but what happens with authorial context is introduced?
Can we get a moratorium on parents exploiting their children for kudos and profit in the world of pop culture?
The danger in hero worship is that when authors fall, they fall hard, and it makes a mess that could have been avoided by admitting that authors are human.
With an increase in diverse fiction, can we finally get some representations that are about something other than hardship?
Very Special Episodes are bad enough, but pop culture’s occasional sly nods of ‘awareness’ are just as bad, and sometimes more damaging.