Z.F. Lang

Are there still kids out there who’s uncles “work at Nintendo” or is that a casualty of the internet age?

Nothing is more painful than reading aloud a picture book that opens with rhyming lines then never rhymes again

I’m starting a new writing project, hopefully there’s a market for “like Gene Wolfe but with less Christian allegory and more pronouns”

The library is hiring a new children’s librarian and is having try out storytimes for the candidates. I feel bad for them, Miss B has set the bar for OC library storytime very high.

Why is Dilandau voiced by a child?!

Escaflowne has some amazing world designs and art but holy cow, this is the first anime I’ve watched where the dub has been distractingly bad.

I read so many webcomics in the mid 2000s through the 2010s before getting out of the habit. I started again recently and feel like an old man telling the kids to get off my lawn every time someone recommends a webtoon to me.

Realized today that the toddler calls the car “home” because half the time we get in it I’m saying “let’s go home.”

Brake, not break. Autocorrect, am I right? Knowing smile, profuse sweating…

In neutral? Check.
Parking break off? Check.
In neutral? Check.
Parking break off? Check.
Repeat until out of the car wash.

I keep seeing an ad for a walking app that tracks your steps on a map of Middle Earth. I would try it, but only if there’s a Dune tie in that requires you to walk without rhythm or it will reset your steps.

Someone is drawing little monsters and hiding them around town. It makes my day every time I find one.

Anyone else ever notice how post-scarcity societies (everyone has infinite funkopops) are utopian coded but post-want societies (no one is interested in funkopops) are dystopian coded?

It turns out that Gundam G-Quack is not a show about ducks piloting mechs. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

I feel like watching some awesome fight scenes then being made to feel like a piece of shit for enjoying the idea of violence…
Gundam it is!

Nothing says quality reporting like “All the experts said ‘no’ in the most definitive terms, but I didn’t think they were worth trusting.”

As an artist, I find flawed media far more inspiring than perfect media.

Large Language Models are the horseshoe theory of the anti-intellectual to intellect enthusiast spectrum.

Shout out to Last War for having some of the worst written scripts and worst acted mobile game ads I have ever seen. It’s all deeply terrible but I feel in my gut that these are all written and performed by humans. Good on you for making your slop the old fashioned way.

I see you’re using the word “unintimidating”. This seems wrong, do you mean nu-intimidating?

No Scrivener, but thanks for reminding me about the late 90s.

My foreign language experience would have been much different if the high school French teacher had put issues of Metal Hurlant on her wall instead of pictures of the Eiffel Tower.

I’m happy with my first finished manuscript’s themes, plot, characters, etc… but the thing I’m most proud of is like one and a half pages dedicated to a society of dinosaurs that worships the Tyrannosaurus Deus, which they euphemistically call He Who Would Consume the World and Shit it out Anew.

I left the room for 30 seconds and came back to find my little miracle of life high centered on a stack of pillows with his head stuck under a chair. The real miracle of life is that any humans make it to adulthood.

Every so often I run into a string of words that feel deeply unnatural to understand as perfectly as I do. “Millennial cutesy squeecore infantilization” is the most recent example.

Every spec-fic novel introduction: I have never understood why academia and the literary elite shun those imaginative works that illuminate the human experience like no other…

The book: Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death: the novelization

Could be a dire wolf spider, I hear we’re bringing those back.

Me: I really want to order a physical copy of Cry for Dawn but I don’t want the local bookstore to think I’m weird. I know, I’ll pick up a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow while I’m at it.

Narrator: and so everyone at the bookstore thought he was really, really weird.

Honestly, I’ve come around a bit on Data, at least he has a supportive community around him to explain his well adjusted behavior.

Free-range tongues

Fine, I’ll accept that robots are the default autist metaphor, but in return creators need to expand from the default loveable dorks who don’t understand emotions.