Maddd Science Dark is kind of like Stranger Things if it was way less interested in 80s pop culture and way more interested in how even time travel can't help a small-town community stop the cause-and-effect cycles that determine their pasts and futures. So it's not

Maddd Science One thing we can all agree on: The Last Jedi is easily the year's most entertaining movie when you factor in the sheer variety of opinions everyone had on it. I enjoyed it overall, and am seeing it for a second time today. I'll

Maddd Science Ho ho ho. This newsletter is packed with the true meaning of Christmas, by which I mean cliches, horror, cannibals, and slut-shaming. Let's get into it. 'Tis the season for journalists to stop rolling out cliches! I'd call this article amusingly Grinchy, but

Maddd Science I'm starting out with two articles about why the most quintessential writing advice of fifth-grade English teachers everywhere isn't all it's cracked up to be. Because why tell you when I can show you much more eloquent people telling you? Viet Thanh

Maddd Science I hadn't heard of game design lead Jennifer Scheurle before her viral tweet asking game devs for their game mechanic secrets in September, but I followed her and I've definitely appreciated her game wisdom since. I'm really not a huge gamer — although

Maddd Science Jurassic Park works because the idea of an amusement park coming to life and rebelling against its creators is an immediately delightful idea that appeals to the same instinct for excitement that draws people to amusement parks in the first place. It’s worked for Jurassic Park, Westworld,

Maddd Science If you're going to study the tropes of modern storytelling, movie trailers are a great place to start: They're about a hundred times shorter than films, and since their only purpose is to sell an audience on the film they're signing up

Maddd Science Superhero films: They've sprung up faster and taken over quicker than any past genre in the relatively short history of film. Five of the top ten highest grossing films this year were in the genre, the highest number since last year's top four, which

Maddd Science I'm sure you've heard people complain that Hollywood movies are all just franchise tentpoles nowadays. Welcome to an issue about that. This first essay, which is the whole reason I themed this issue on franchises, is from 2014, but it addresses the whole thing

Maddd Science As a fan of examining the structures that stories rely on, I love meta narratives like Stranger Things. Stranger Things isn't set in the 80s. It's set in a movie-80s that never existed. Granted, that approach has plenty of flaws, but I try to

Maddd Science So I'm planning to center each of these newsletters on a theme, but then not to let the theme take over the newsletter. In other words, just the first few links here would be about scary stories, giving me space to cover the rest of the

Maddd Science Welcome to the first issue! I'm planning to have themes for each issue ("Horror," "Sequels," and "Disney Princesses" are all on the list), but this first one will just function as the calibration issue. I've been thinking about