u/DanEosen

I read Piers Anthony as a teen and into my 20s (80s and very early 90s) Firefly and first book of Tyrant series turned me off.

So last week I got a Kindle so came across Piers Anthony and it had free Xanth books. I downloaded Question Quest. I am halfway through and his creepiness is so apparent.

A) A female demon D Metria is always truthful but she can lie about her age since a woman lying about her age is not considered a lie.

B) Looks and intelligence of women are linked. Plainer you are smarter you are with some exceptions.

C) Again obsession with teenage girls panties. It comes across as a fetish Anthony has that he puts on paper.

D) Innocence is tied to sex. This disturbs me a lot. Maybe it’s the era we live in but we have seen this idea weaponized against women especially children. I know he is from the Silent Generation but even then it’s a problematic concept and more so now. I know in 40s cartoons with Betty Boop she wouldn’t have sex since she would lose her Boop which I interpret as innocence.

I wish he held back on writing about sexual topics. He wrote them in a rather creepy way then and today it’s even more transparent. I should have relied more on my memory then to give him a second chance. Sadly he can be quite clever with his writing, I enjoyed his various tics for a clock and how they mutated to frantic, antics and critics. If he stuck to creating this clever lighthearted world it would have been better instead of sidetracking about women, their intelligence, lying and worse concept of innocence.

At least John Norman with Gor deliberately went down the exceedingly creepy and misogynist path.

Any other good fantasy series like Xanth minus the creepy baggage. I notice his last Xanth book was in 2025 has he lost his creepiness and outdated concepts towards women? Or was the last Xanth book written by his frequent cowriter JR Rain?

I watched Scary Movie 3 today. I got all the references and just didn’t like it. I love the Naked Gun movie series (Liam Neeson movie though was bad) and the Airplane movies.

I never felt any flow to the movie. It just seemed like a series of random sketches connecting modern horror films. Yes there was a main storyline invoking Ring and Signs but the connection to Sixth Sense, The Others and rap seemed forced. The Michael Jackson/The Others seemed out of place and it was more cringe than funny.

The fight scene with Sadako/Tabitha when she crawled out of the TV was funny and it lead to a fight. Yet on the face of it the idea of Ring/Ringu about a cursed tape and a woman climbing out of your tv is already very absurd can you really take an absurd concept and make it more absurd? I love the first two Ring movies and the Ringu movies.

Why Airplane and Naked Gun movies work is they take a serious subject flying on planes and police work and makes it absurd. I would say Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein works is because it shows the absurdity of vampires and Frankenstein. Also Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman stayed true to their characters. I think if the aliens, Tabitha/Sadako stayed true to their characters it would have worked better. The humor should have come from the human characters interacting and dealing with the situation.

One scene I really liked was when Cindy watched the tape and got the phone call. The caller acted the same as the movies but her reaction was where the humor worked with her trying to figure out what a week meant - business week, calendar week and does a holiday count. I liked how the caller had made this call numerious times before and now gets one person questioning what he means by a week. I wish Tabatha/Sadako never spoke or teased. It was already funny watching Cindy and Cody.

I did like Leslie Nielsen as the president but he played it too much as Frank Greben as President.

Are the others better movies?