Category Archives: writing

2 Broke Girls, S3E5 “And the Cronuts”: A TV Review

cronuts

I’m not going to bore you all with the same  old “this show has lost its premise” talk again; we’re past that, it is now the topic that shall not be named. What I do want to focus on, however, is how much this show appears to struggle with conflict. There’s a simple formula in sitcoms [and every other form of media] that goes as follows: (a) a problem arises, (b) that problem is solved. I cannot boil it down any simpler than that. I obviously don’t speak for everyone, but for most viewers what’s really important is what happens between those two points.

Let’s take this episode and view it through the formula above:

(a) The words “Cupcakes are so over” spell out doom for the girls’ business, and they must find a way to make their product appealing once again.

(b) Max’s tendency to dip french fries in frosting leads to “Cake Fries” which are a huge hit both flavourfully and monetarily.

That on its own is really not a problem. I’m always going to be down for an episode of television that revolves around chimeric foodstuffs [though adding too many parts lead to disaster], but as mentioned it’s not so much the end result as it is the journey that takes us there. Continue reading

Fame Day: American Literary Piracy

As I’ve already mentioned in a previous post, I’m back in school, so I feel like it’s my duty to share some awesome learning with you. After the piracy debate broke out between Evan and Gordon a little while back I settled on the perfect topic: how piracy saved American literature. Or, as we have been learning in my Canadian Literature class, how British Imperialism screwed over early Canadian writers. Quick, name 5 great Canadian writers! If you are anything like me you probably weren’t able to think up more than one or two. There are a lot more than that, by the way, you just have to look a little harder… and not necessarily in Canada.

Continue reading

Why Writing Strong Female Characters Is[n’t] Hard

For the past several months I’ve been compiling what different people on the internet have been saying in regards to creating strong female characters, while also observing how others feel about those three words in general.
While not a topic you’d think would necessitate a lot of discussion, the truth is that there’s a lot more to this discussion than “Yes, I like them they’re great and we need to see more of them.”
As a disclaimer I would like state that I let the research in this post come to me. I did not do Google searches for “female writers’ opinions on strong female characters.” All of the quotes and articles below I found organically, if we can use that word to describe my internet browsing habits. Continue reading

Black, Yellow, Brown, Or Normal

The title of this post comes from the image below, which I see floating around the internet from time to time. It might’ve been from one of Cracked’s PhotoShop contests, I really have no idea.

ornormal

The reason I’m bringing this to your attention is to underscore the fact that, by and large, “White” really does equal “normal,” at least in North America. You don’t really have to search hard to stumble across that fact, either. Think about how it works when you recount stories to other people-

Imagine you’re talking about this weird dude who sat down next to you on the subway. If he was White, would you bother mentioning that? How about if he was Black, or Asian, or Latino?

The terminology used in this gif aside, you probably never make reference to a White person’s ethnicity.

Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S3E1 “And the Soft Opening”: A TV Review

Ladies and gentlemen, a little under half a year has passed and here we are again, with the first episode of 2 Broke Girls Season 3. For this season I am committed to bringing better reviews and not just play-by-plays of each and every scene. After all, this is the first full season of a show I’ll be reviewing [I took over after The AV Club’s TV Club dropped it from their list], and I’d like to improve as much as I can.

When last we saw the girls they had just discovered a back room area of the diner in which they will be breathing new life into the dead dream that was their cupcake business. As for the rest of the gang, both Oleg and Sophie are “back”; I recapped the whole thing pretty thoroughly back in May]. Continue reading

Abrams and Eve Address Your [My] Issues With Star Trek Into Darkness

Spoilers and such.
                                                                                                                                                                     

When I came across two articles on Spinoff Online that were interviews with J.J. Abrams and Alice Eve, respectively, I couldn’t believe my luck. I suppose this all had to do with the fact that Star Trek Into Darkness was released on DVD and Blu-Ray today and they had to keep its title in the news cycle, but I was pumped because they addressed a few . . . criticisms that myself and others had with it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Alice Eve

I’m going to start with the less spoilery one, which was helpfully titled “Alice Eve on ‘Star Trek Into Darkness,’ Carol Marcus & That Controversial Scene.” This was a great way of referring to something that most everyone knew about, and I used a similar method of titling in a post I wrote in June, “The Internet And That One Scene In Star Trek Into Darkness – You Know The One.” If you really don’t know what this is all about I can sum it up like this: Alice Eve’s character, Carol Marcus, was featured in a scene where she was standing in her bra and panties; this did not add to the story and made little sense given the context of the scene.  Continue reading