Succession and the end of Great Men — At the end of Succession’s second season, Kendall Roy, preparing to immolate himself to save his father, Logan, asks if there was ever a chance that he would have taken over as CEO of Waystar|Royco. His father declines, resigned. “You’re not a killer.” A little further down the road and…

* Note: in the years since the release of Nanette, Hannah Gadsby has come out as genderqueer, and now uses they/them pronouns. Any quotes here that use prior pronouns have been changed accordingly. ** I’ve wanted to write about Hannah Gadsby for years. Yesterday, I told myself today is the…

My story with Star Wars is, I would assume, common: I liked the films as a child, went into obsession after the special editions released in 1997, read the Expanded Universe books, had a collection of action figures, swung a fake lightsaber whenever I could, dreamed of being a Jedi. …

Somehow, my mid-30s have become an opportunity for me to revisit what I loved as a kid — yes, partially because that’s happening for all millenials, but also because I’ve reached a point in my own development where I can see what I actually learned and gained in these stories…

When True Crime Fails — Content note: this article is about true crime and Jared Fogle, and therefore contains mentions of sexual and physical assault, as well as child sexual abuse. We are living in the Golden Age of true crime. This is not, I think, due to a particular across-the-board excellence in its output…

The first in new series of essays — It’s only proper that, when tracing the influences for this series, I start with the music that pierced me as a teenager. I don’t think there’s a more intimate relationship than that of a teenage girl and her headphones; and though mine were blasting a typical mix of suburban malaise…

Exactly what you would expect me to do while procrastinating — Friends, I have been stricken with a head cold in the days before my next Disney World trip; a situation where I need to surround myself with distractions, but can only do so if it fits into my vacation-addled brain. Among all the YouTube videos I’ve watched about the parks…

A year ago I could not have predicted that, in the span of 2021, I would have visited every Disney theme park in the western hemisphere. …

The Disney Renaissance, according to most, ended after the release of Tarzan in 1999. The following 22 years have been a strange era in Disney animation, with the sad death of hand-drawn cartoons and the rocky entry into 3D animated films, along with the transition from the Eisner/Katzenberg/Roy E. Disney…