brb having a normal conversation with a friend where I explain that if I had three wishes, I would literally use one of them to destroy TV Tropes

no single thing made my job as a critic harder than the existence of that horrible website

also! gonna be right back again because I'm gonna travel back in time and punch Joseph Campbell in the jaw while I'm at this

as someone who literally got paid money to break down art (and you know.. I think I was okay at it) I mean it when I say that the idea that stories are just neat little blocks arranged right or the results of formulas you plug numbers into is just....

wrong. it's so wrong.

any piece of art is a seething chimera of pain and hope and contradiction and tears and beauty and lost hours. manifested dreams somehow pulled from a mind and put to ink or film or code

the idea of that being something you can untangle? insulting. disgusting. arrogant