• homhom9000 [she/her]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Americans should have instead been reading YA romance novels and harems like I did as a child. I turned out fine

  • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    9 hours ago

    Somewhere between a third and half of Americans read at or below a sixth grade level so these books are at the reading level of the median American.

  • Ixoid@lemm.ee
    ·
    11 hours ago

    Does watching the movie count as reading the books for americans?

    • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
      ·
      9 hours ago

      yeah, I remember going to the bookstore dressed as Luna loveshit for the midnight release party of the final book and meeting people with more elaborate costumes who clearly didn't read the previous book.

  • Hestia [comrade/them, she/her]
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Harry Potter is the epitome of liberal politics. Throughout the series you learn how fucked up the wizard world is, magic hitler starts to rise to power because of it, and in the end they beat hitler and Harry becomes a cop. But nothing changes. House elves are still enslaved, and magic races are continued to be discriminated against.

    • Doubledee [comrade/them]
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Hitler beats himself, he literally gets killed by not correctly interpreting RULES.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        12 hours ago

        This is basically the main rule for every western fiction, even in fantasy and sci-fi where you would expect authors have the most leeway to ride on their wild imagination. Problem is, they don't have wild imagination or even the one required of imagining something other than capitalism (even their visions of previous systems like feudalism or slavery is still basically capitalism with historical costumes).

        • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          11 hours ago

          Its a little more free in literature, and since 2020 some good(ish) stuff is getting made.

          'Lovecraft country' (one absolutely fire season, tied up and concluded) if Malcolm x was a riff on 20th century fiction, primarily the Lovecraft mythos. Not if he did one; if he was one. It says and does more in its first episode than most shows do in a decade of long seasons. Has a beautiful sex scene that's ambiguously gay or trans and so gory it might not make it onto a theater screen, and thats not even the most interesting thing going on in that scene.

          'Andor' (final planned season in production) is a prequel to the one good star wars movie. Its extremely lefty, extremely well made at every level, and tense with zero sword wizards.

          'Severance' (second season delayed by strikes, in production) is an ontological mystery that explores cognitive dissonance corpo infantilization and the exploitation of labor, how it interacts with self, the theft of time, relationships, self-knowledge, all kinds of shit. Funny, surreal, dramatic when it needs to be, excellent visual direction.

          • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
            ·
            9 hours ago

            'Andor' is a prequel to the one good star wars movie

            that movie is so good, almost everything else Disney made feels like an 8-year-old's first fan fiction.

  • Goblinmancer [any]
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Umm actually real lib theory hours is that:

    trump = ulfric

    empire = dems

    thalmor = ruZZZia

    • Bureaucrat [pup/pup's, null/void]
      hexagon
      ·
      13 hours ago

      who's the dragonborn?

      wait trump is on the skyrim side, ulfric is on the irl side???? SKYRIIM CONFIRMED???

      • Goblinmancer [any]
        ·
        13 hours ago

        Hasan piker (he rigged all the votes cuz he listened to that one trump song)

  • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    16 hours ago

    I kind of empathize because Animorphs, Star Trek, Simpsons and Beast Wars permanently imprinted on my brain in a similar way. The difference is that I know to compartmentalize my child-brain and not trivialize adult issues by publicly saying things like Steve Miller is the Skorponok to Trump’s Megatron, regardless of how true that statement is.

    • Hestia [comrade/them, she/her]
      ·
      14 hours ago

      I don't remember much about Animorphs, but I do remember reading it. I can recall brainworms being the enemy, and there was one guy who got stuck as a bird because he remained in that form for too long. I also remember a girl turned into a fly and was getting pretty close to that limit, too.

      Oh, also sexy blue centaur people

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            5 hours ago

            I don't remember if that happened exactly but animorphs was pretty fucking dark, not just for a children's book series. They regularly get injuries which would absolutely be fatal if not for the morphing. The bulk of their enemies are their own mind controlled friends and family, and we do get scenes where we see said mind controlled people screaming and begging for death in cages between mind control sessions.

    • MamaVomit [he/him]
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Animorph voter guide:

      Rachel: Trump
      Cassie: Jill Stein
      Marco: No vote
      Jake: Kamala
      Ax: RFK

      big-cool

      • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        15 hours ago

        Jake is both Trump and RFK. A bullet grazed his head leading to him getting a worm in his brain. Marco is Anthony Scaramucci.

    • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
      ·
      16 hours ago

      I feel the urge to disagree with you because I expected issues that concern adults in power to be morally gray and complicated but these people are cartoonishly evil. So is it even less correct to compare them to Swiper the Fox or the Hamburgler?

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      15 hours ago

      Steve Miller is the Skorponok to Trump’s Megatron

      I can't wait for him to unceremoniously fall into a lava pit.

      edit: wow, how is that guy 39?

      • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]
        ·
        14 hours ago

        Miller falling into proverbial lava and a more aggressive, delusional lickspittle like Inferno replacing him actually sounds more likely than him just keeping his job for four years.

        • ryepunk [he/him]
          ·
          10 hours ago

          Alternatively, he's waspinator and he never fucking goes away, he just continually becomes a third tier right hand man to those in power but is so ineffective at any job he's given he probably should have been killed off immediately, if he wasn't just a walking punchline and scapegoat for those in power.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      15 hours ago

      Same but without animorphs. I gotta get my bins of childhood beastwarstoys from my folks to photograph and brag post. It's like a solid 40 or so and I kept the box cards for em too

      • Default_Defect@midwest.social
        ·
        14 hours ago

        I'm so fucking jealous. My parents sold all my cool shit when I was visiting family for a summer, then had to gall to ask me where it all was when they found out some of it was worth money.

  • Bureaucrat [pup/pup's, null/void]
    hexagon
    ·
    13 hours ago

    I spent so long trying to get chatgpt to write "harry potter and the philosphers stone" in MSE and it kept just slapping in umlauts and ø. Unrelated but it deleted my question when I asked it if it was not allowed to critique the us

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    17 hours ago

    Black Lives Matter! (Except in the one book series I have read and based my ideology on which has one black person in 7 novels)