I’ll answer with a specific example. I tend to be turned off by books that have characters that espouse cultural feminism. This is because it’s a philosophy many in my life have followed, and I personally(as a feminist myself) feel that it’s an extremely harmful form of feminism that creates many more problems than it solves. So when I encounter it in a book, that’s an immediate red flag, warning lights flashing, what is this? Does it have an agenda? Critical reading engaged!

There’s three ways it can go from that initial surge of repulsion and alert:

1. While a character holds these beliefs, they’re shown(or implied) to be untrue. The philosophy is subverted, rather than reinforced. These are good books that I will recommend, albeit with a warning that it might seem dodgy there for a while but trust.

2. Or maybe these beliefs go unchallenged. Maybe their truthful status is central to the plot, part of the thesis of the book. I do not enjoy these books, and I can’t recommend them.

3. Or, the third option, is that these beliefs seem to be present in the material, but aren’t central to the plot or premise. The author’s bias is seeping in, but their thesis is in another castle, so to speak. These books are…eh. Complicated. I may or may not like them. It depends on how egregiously it offends. I might even recommend them, but with a caveat.

Moria, though! The movie had nothing on the atmosphere of that sequence in the books. The movie’s focus on keeping the action moving there took something away from it.

I’ve never had them frozen. I don’t think I would like that, because I like the contrast of sensations they way they are. I did used to freeze milky way minis when I was a kid(they were the only thing my mom would buy), because then I would be able to eat the bottom half first and then the top, to enjoy it without mixing the textures.

I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I love three musketeers bars. The flavor is simple and uniform, and the texture is incredible. There’s none of the bullshit you get in other candy bars where there’s several competing flavors/textures, or the distribution(ie of caramel or nuts) isn’t uniform. Barring air pockets(nobody’s perfect) every bite is the same. Feels bad to see them at current price point, though. I understand that candy bars are now standard priced $1.50-$2, but a three musketeers clearly has less going on than a snickers or a milky way.

Sure, she definitely had internal prejudices (some of which were evident in the HP books), but she wasn’t hateful by any stretch of the imagination.

She was to certain acceptable targets. The most glaringly obvious is probably fat people. The HP books are dripping with fatphobia, both in terms of which characters are fat and how those fat characters are described. She’s by no means unique in this, but it’s glaringly mean-spirited. You don’t write those descriptions by accident.

There’s also a very interesting(perhaps unconscious, on her part) thing she does in differentiating fat-evil and skinny-evil. Characters who are fat-evil aren’t going to redeem themselves, but skinny-evil characters(the ones who are explicitly described as being skinny, to be clear) are more likely to have hidden nuance to them, like Aunt Petunia’s reveal. The most obvious case of this was Dudley’s transformation in book 5, with his weight loss correlating with a change in behavior toward Harry. Oh but the dementor was responsible! Yeah, but what was stopping him from still being fat when the dementor did its thing? Why did JKR make that choice? Could it be that she couldn’t bring herself to introduce that nuance to a character who had previously been described as that disgustingly fat?

There’s also Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing…” series. Oh, I know they’re in the non-fiction section. But I also know that man, and I really don’t trust him to deliver a non-biased take on subjects like Lincoln, Reagan, and Jesus. 😂

There’s also Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing…” series. Oh, I know they’re in the non-fiction section. But I also know that man, and I really don’t trust him to deliver a non-biased take on subjects like Lincoln, Reagan, and Jesus. 😂

Friends to lovers. I hate it on two levels. First, I hate that it nearly always involved dismantling the friendship in the process of forming the romantic attachment. There’s often a tension point of “well if this doesn’t work out then our friendship is lost!” and that just bothers me so much. The reason this makes me so upset is point two, in that I loathe the fact that our society has decided that romantic relationships are the be-all-end-all. Platonic relationships pale in comparison to the One True Love, apparently. This strikes me as absolute bullshit, and I think it has a negative effect on a lot of people, between stressing out over not having the most important relationship slot filled and feeling like they have to demote other relationships now that they’ve got a romantic partner.

The only time I don’t get angry at friends to lovers is when they manage to retain the friendship that initially brought them together, developing it in a new direction without dismantling it or acting like it’s gotten the big level up or something. This is rare.

Are you not scared by what’s happening with(for just one thing) abortion? Obviously the fight isn’t over, but the attack is fucking terrifying, especially how quickly it moved from a hypothetical “oh they’ve been threatening this for years” to an “oh shit this is actually happening right now in the 21st century” reality.

We’re on edge because we’re actively under attack. And that “we” covers a hell of a lot more than just women of childbearing age, at this point.