It’s fascinating to me how every time a developer on a major franchise tries to introduce an overhyped rival-type character who turns out to be kind of nothing the moment he has to carry a title rather than lurking at the periphery, they always give him the same stupid backstory.
“I want to avenge myself upon the protagonist for a personal tragedy which I’ve decided is their fault, but since the writers can’t allow the hero’s image to be tarnished even by proxy it’s made textually clear that they were barely involved, so in practice I’ve inexplicably devoted my life to vengeance against someone who was just sort of there.”
OOOOOOOOH. So that’s why Mr. Ulysses McBear&Bull of New Vagas fame was just kinda… like that.
Maybe. It comes up so much that it can be genuinely hard to tell when it’s the classic “we wanted the villain to have a personal connection but marketing wouldn’t let us have the hero have done anything to actually warrant any sort of animosity” deal, when it’s just someone thoughtlessly replicating the trope even though they didn’t have to because they’ve seen it a thousand times, and when it’s being invoked on purpose to Make A Point.
I never wanted to teach “creative writing” or be a writer-in-residence, burdened with students’ writing and required to go to staff meetings. My belief that fiction writing cannot be taught would make me unwelcome in most English departments. But encouragement is necessary to anyone in the arts—to any youthful ambition—so perhaps the value of a writing program is just that, encouragement.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 16, 2025 is:
conversant • \kun-VER-sunt\ • adjective
Conversant, usually used in the phrase "conversant with," describes someone who has knowledge of or experience with something.
// The ideal candidate for the sommelier position will have expert knowledge of the various wines served in the restaurant and be conversant with the rich world of viniculture.
"The advantages of franchise expansion are obvious. These shows benefit from name recognition and a dedicated audience, as well as writers, producers and crew members already conversant with that audience's expectations." — Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, 6 July 2025
Did you know?
The adjectives conversant and conversational both descend from the Latin verb conversari, meaning "to associate with." Conversant dates to the Middle Ages; an early meaning of the word was simply "having familiar association." One way to associate with others is to have a conversation with them—in other words, to talk. For a short time in the 19th century conversant could mean "relating to or suggesting conversation," but for the most part that meaning stayed with conversational while conversant went in a different direction. Today, conversant is sometimes used, especially in the United States, with the meaning "able to talk in a foreign language," as in "she is conversant in several languages," but it is more often associated with knowledge or familiarity, as in "conversant with the issues."
It’s fascinating to me how every time a developer on a major franchise tries to introduce an overhyped rival-type character who turns out to be kind of nothing the moment he has to carry a title rather than lurking at the periphery, they always give him the same stupid backstory.
“I want to avenge myself upon the protagonist for a personal tragedy which I’ve decided is their fault, but since the writers can’t allow the hero’s image to be tarnished even by proxy it’s made textually clear that they were barely involved, so in practice I’ve inexplicably devoted my life to vengeance against someone who was just sort of there.”
Artists on this site will say they’re doing their part for small dick representation and then post a link to a drawing of a character with a statistically average size dick.
Artists on this site will say they’re doing their part for small dick representation and then post a link to a drawing of a character with a statistically average size dick.
It’s fascinating to me how every time a developer on a major franchise tries to introduce an overhyped rival-type character who turns out to be kind of nothing the moment he has to carry a title rather than lurking at the periphery, they always give him the same stupid backstory.
Today’s aesthetic: fictional characters whose whole deal is an allegory for the struggles faced by a real group that they’re actually part of.
It probably says something about this blog’s followership that half the people in the notes’ first thought was Madeline Celeste and not, like, a gay X-Man.
Today’s aesthetic: fictional characters whose whole deal is an allegory for the struggles faced by a real group that they’re actually part of.
It probably says something about this blog’s followership that half the people in the notes’ first thought was Madeline Celeste and not, like, a gay X-Man.
Basically, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are my litmus test for the minimum amount of ninja a fictional ninja can be before I start to feel mislead if you describe them as a ninja. If your ninjas are less ninja than the Ninja Turtles, promoting your media on the basis that it has ninjas in it is false advertising.
This is a really good test because, even excluding the turtle aspect, the TMNT are really good at ninja-ing. People rarely if ever see them, they use their tools and training to incapacitate or blind people who may see them, and they actually wear masks.
Basically, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are my litmus test for the minimum amount of ninja a fictional ninja can be before I start to feel misled if you describe them as a ninja. If your ninjas are less ninja than the Ninja Turtles, promoting your media on the basis that it has ninjas in it is false advertising.
For more than two weeks, I had it on my schedule to write about This is Spinal Tap today, December 15, 2025. The day before this, director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer were (allegedly) murdered in their home. I sat in my office a lot of the day trying to decide whether to keep this on the schedule, whether to delay it, or whether to remove it from the list of comfort watches entirely, to be replaced by some other movie. I can’t pretend that Reiner’s death isn’t on my mind right now. I can’t pretend that it doesn’t make me terribly sad. I can’t pretend that a vast number of other people feel similarly, not even counting those who knew and loved him personally.
Here’s the thing. A day like this is exactly the day for a comfort watch, a movie that can give you joy at the lowest of times. This is Spinal Tap offers a lot of joy. It is one of the funniest movies ever made, a movie that can make you laugh until you cry, and also, make you laugh even if you have been crying. It is a film for a moment like this, when one feels bereft and out to sea and nothing makes sense.
So, you know what, fuck it. Whaddya say, let’s boogie.
Rob Reiner, it should be noted, was a master of comfort watch genre. When Harry Met Sally? Total romantic comfort watch. The American President? Total political comfort watch (although harder to get into at the moment, given the state of the White House). Stand By Me? Absolute “coming of age” comfort watch. And, of course, The Princess Bride, arguably the Greatest Comfort Watch of All Time, as I have essayed elsewhere. There’s probably no other single filmmaker whose entire canon is so damn rewatchable. This is not a skill that necessarily wins awards (Reiner was nominated for the Oscar only once, for A Few Good Men, a true legal comfort watch), but it is a skill that endears a filmmaker to their audience and peers. Rob Reiner is beloved, by fans and colleagues, like few modern filmmakers are.
It all had to start somewhere, cinematically speaking, and Spinal Tap was where it began, Reiner’s first feature film as director. It was not the first “mockumentary” ever made, or even the first rock-themed mockumentary: Eric Idle’s All You Need is Cash, which followed a Beatles knockoff band called The Rutles, for one, precedes it by six years. But it’s the one that really seemed to stick in the public consciousness. Riffing off the Beatles is one thing; that’s a known quantity. Spinal Tap, now. No one quite knew what they were getting into with this one.
The premise: Filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Reiner himself) documents the 1982 US tour of Spinal Tap, a British hard rock band, whose new album, Smell the Glove, is on the verge of release. The band consists of singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), plus touring keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and drummer Mick Shrimpton (RJ Parnell), to whom one should not get too attached. As the film starts, there’s a big launch party and a mostly successful concert, and everything seems to be going well. And then…
Well, and then everything that can goes wrong starts to go wrong, and in truly awful ways: Cover art controversies, dropped tour dates, venue navigation issues, technical problems involving Stonehenge, the list goes on. The band and their manager Ian (Tony Hendra) try to weather this all while DiBergi gets it on film, interspersed with archival footage and interview scenes in which the band are asked to explain, among other things, what’s happened to all those drummers over the years.
The movie is famously almost entirely improvised, mostly Reiner, McKean, Guest and Shearer but also, one assumes, by the supporting cast as well, who are (generally) not saying as many funny things, but are certainly giving the band members things to play off of. What are not improvised are the songs, both the “in concert” and archival numbers, in which the members of the band, their actors all also actual musicians, are playing their parts. The “live” song as the full-fledged Spinal Tap are indeed loud and ridiculous, in a way that’s only a smidge off from actual early 80s hard rock and heavy metal. But for my money the real gold is in the archival bits, where Spinal Tap, with earlier members and earlier names, surf through whichever rock genres are of the moment, from Merseybeat to psychedelia.
In one beautiful bit, David and Nigel talk about the the first song they ever wrote together, and even sing a bit of it, a little snippet of skiffle called “All the Way Home.” It is, unreservedly, lovely, and the best song in the film. In that one moment, we learn something really important about David and Nigel (and by extension, the band): They in fact have the capacity to be really good musicians, and have had that capacity right from the start. But then rock n’ roll kind of got in the way.
Spinal Tap is about a lot of mostly small things, but what it is mostly about is the relationship of David and Nigel (with Derek, who in another life would be a weird mead-swilling druid lurking in a valley, there for non-sequitur pseudo-philosophy). David and Nigel are two blokes who knew each other since childhood, trying to stay friends when everything is falling apart around them. Hilariously so, sure, which is great for us. But for them, it’s their lives, and while other things are played for laughs, the way these two feel about each other is the film’s unexpectedly serious emotional core. You might not notice that, the first two or three or eleven times you watch the movie. But look for it the next time you watch it. It’s there.
This film is beloved of cinema fans and lovers of comedy, but the people who really seem to love it are musicians, particularly of the 70s and 80s rock era, many of whom experienced in real life the various mishaps Spinal Tap have fictionally. Ozzy Osbourne is legendarily supposed have thought the film was an actual documentary the first time he watched it, and honestly, if anyone was like to have these sort of touring misfortunes befall him, it would be Ozzy.
Far from being offended that McKean, Guest and Shearer were taking the piss at rock, hard rock musicians embraced the trio and the band — in 1985, in the midst of the “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and “We Are The World” era of charity singles, heavy metal and hard rock bands came together as Hear N’ Aid to make their own charity single, “Stars.” Who was there alongside members of Dio, Judas Priest, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot? Why, Spinal Tap, of course!
For a fictional band, Spinal Tap has been prolific, with four albums in total, two of which are independent of a film. There were few actual tours in there as well, with McKean, Guest and Shearer playing their respective characters to much acclaim. There have been other successful fictional bands, from the Monkees to Huntr/x, but no one else has so successfully made the leap into being beloved after being portrayed as so, well, stupid. Spinal Tap is the best proof out there that hard rock and heavy metal fans are in on the joke, and love it.
Four decades (and one year) after This is Spinal Tap, Reiner, McKean, Guest and Shearer reunited for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which was about the hapless-yet-storied band reuniting for one last (contractually obliged) show. We know now that this is the last feature film Reiner would ever make, although there is apparently a Spinal Tap concert film film completed as well (Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale). Either way, Reiner’s film career is bookended by this fabulous, ridiculous band, doing their thing to the delight, confusion and hearing damage of fans.
It’s bittersweet and also unexpectedly lovely. How many of us get to go back to where we began? How many of us truly get to come full circle in our careers? Rob Reiner, who created some of the best, most entertaining and enduring films in his era of Hollywood, has done what David and Nigel sang first and best. He has come, truly, all the way home.
Loser generation. At Stanford, it’s a hack for housing, though and at some point, I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.
College is only for rich, healthy people who want to join a frat. He also disparages university education.
Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honour in the 2010s. Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.
…
No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities.
What great companies? Lonsdale was a member of the PayPal Mafia, and he made his fortune at Palantir — not a great company by any means, but a damned evil one. He got a BS degree in computer science from Stanford, one of those elite colleges that the rich pollute with their bogus aspirations. Who needs an education when any dumbass can get filthy rich by gouging government contracts and being buddies with other amoral billionaires.
Remember, this guy was a cofounder of the University of Austin — he’s undermining his own scam by scorning universities, which tells you he’s not very bright.
Joe Lonsdale defended open-air executions in a series of posts on X, saying their reintroduction would be an example of the “masculine leadership” the country is sorely lacking.
“If I’m in charge later,
Wait. Hold it right there. He has hopes of being in charge? Dear god no.
we won’t just have a three strikes law. We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others,” he wrote. “Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.”
Biggest sign of an entitled asshole: he throws around the word “masculine” as if it is a flawless great good, and treats “feminine” as a weakness. I want leaders who are human and humane, and don’t think more than half the population are unsuited for learning or leading because of their biology.
Rob Reiner directed some of the most beloved movies of all time, including Stand By Me, This is Spinal Tap, and The Princess Bride. His production company also made movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise and Michael Clayton. The film industry has lost one of its titans.
I don’t have much to add about Rob Reiner and wife Michelle Singer’s shocking death that other people haven’t said better, likewise any more to add about his career and political activism. It’s clear he was a good man and a very good filmmaker. What I will say is that very few people, much less filmmakers, had the sort of career run that he had as a director between 1984 and 1992: This is Spinal Tap. The Sure Thing. Stand by Me. The Princess Bride. When Harry Met Sally. Misery. A Few Good Men.
I mean, come on. With the exception of The Sure Thing, every single one of those is a stone classic, and The Sure Thing is still pretty good! It made a star out of John Cusack! There are things we still say because Rob Reiner directed the film those words were in: “This one goes to 11.” “As you wish.” “You can’t handle the truth,” and so on. You could go a whole day talking to people by only quoting Rob Reiner films and you could absolutely get away with it. No disrespect to Stephen King, Aaron Sorkin, William Goldman, Nora Ephron, etc who wrote the words, obviously. It’s Reiner who gave those words the platform to become immortal.
It’s odd and in retrospect a little enraging that in that entire run of films, Reiner was nominated for an Oscar only once, as a producer on A Few Good Men, and not ever since then. One sole Oscar nomination, not only for his own work, but for the work his production company had a hand in. Of course others were nominated because they were in or worked on his films and Kathy Bates even won, for Misery. But for Reiner himself, that one single nomination. It’s a reminder that what wins awards, and what stays in people’s hearts and minds, are sometimes very different things when it comes to movies.
If you want to know who Rob Reiner was as a filmmaker, here he is:
The beloved man who comes to you at a low point, spins you a tale, and then, when it’s done and you say to him that you would be happy to hear another story sometime, says “as you wish.” Rob Reiner’s work was and is beloved and it will last because of it.
He did good. He’s going to be missed. He is missed. This hurts.
2 quick reminders: Scholarship applications for our 2026 cruise are open now until December 31st, 2025. You can learn more and apply here. AND early bird pricing for this cruise (going to Alaska in September 2026) ends on February 15th! Get your tickets here!
This week, Dan Wells opens up about how depression reshaped his writing process—and what rebuilding that process has looked like in the years since. The conversation ranges from tiny, mechanical steps to full-on cognitive reframing, with the hosts comparing notes on mindfulness, spectating, trauma responses, and even puppy-training techniques for rewiring your brain. They explore how environment, routine, and self-compassion can make the difference between staring at a blank screen and finding a way back into the work. Expect honesty, humor, and a lot of practical wisdom for how to care for your mental and emotional landscape while still trying to make art.
Homework:
Be kind to yourself—and extend that compassion to at least one person in your life who may be struggling, too. Then take a close look at your own rhythms, spaces, and habits to identify when and where you work best, and experiment with those ideal conditions this week.
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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Dan Wells, Erin Roberts, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and DongWon Song. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
This time, at Brown University. It’s deja vu all over again. For some of the students, this was their second school shooting.
As the deadly attack unfolded at Brown University, leaving students hiding under desks and reeling as gunshots rang out, the scene was eerily familiar for at least two students.
Years earlier, Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, had both survived school shootings. “What I’ve been feeling most is just, like, how dare this country allow this to happen to someone like me twice?” Weissman told the New York Times.
Two people were killed and nine others wounded on Saturday after a man dressed in black opened fire during final exams at one of America’s most prestigious colleges. Hundreds of police spent the night scouring the campus and nearby neighbourhoods as the suspect remained at large.
I’m working on some simple statistical problems for my genetics course — you know, basic stuff like the probability that two rare mutations would simultaneously occur in a single individual, etc. I’m not going to set up any problems around this kind of event in America, because this has become too real and too close to home. Also finals are an easy target: students are under stress, they’ve been openly studying (and complaining!) for weeks, and the finals schedules are easy to find online. It’s like we’re advertising that a herd of students will be gathering in a large space at precisely Day X and Time Y, and nobody plans on bringing a gun to such an event, other than cowards with nefarious intent. Maybe we need to start being more secure and confidential with this kind of information.
This story ends with another coincidence. Every story about a mass shooting somehow ends with a fairly typical and familiar conclusion.
Saturday’s attack has again cast a spotlight on longstanding calls for gun control in the US, where gun laws rank among the most permissive in the developed world. So far this year, there have been 389 mass shootings across the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines incidents where four or more victims have been shot. Last year, more than 500 mass shootings were reported.
Yeah, how weird that every story has to end with a conclusion deploring the USA’s insane gun policy.
I have another familiar part of the conclusion: nothing will be done.
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prokop_feed) wrote2025-12-16 02:23 am
