![]() Tolkien’s world is, among many other things, an attempt to come to grips with the industrial revolution, and everything in Middle Earth is constantly twisting in the corrosive stream of time. One of the observations he makes is about the role of time and change. ![]() John Clute, the one unquestionably brilliant critic in sf/f (when you can understand what the hell he is saying) has all kinds of interesting things to say about the difference between Tolkien and his imitators-being able to distinguish between Tolkien and Brooks is the minimum standard for any critical apparatus applied to the genre, in his opinion. Once, in a discussion about why there's so much bad writing in high fantasy, a friend of mine said: ![]() Her imitators, as often as not, miss the point. I'm not done baking." Even as she was touted as "the blonde who strikes back" in gender studies courses and pop culture crit, she was busily disarming our heroic archetypes with plain, good-old goofiness. Even when she was bitchy, she was prone to saying things like, "I'm cookie dough. I don't mean to imply that loving Buffy herself was inexplicable. ![]() ![]() I blame Buffy for the rash of ass-kicking, smart-talking, bitchy female vampire slayers and the legions of sidekicks who inexplicably give them unconditional love. ![]()
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