Slate has done one better than forums where commenters become trolls; now most of their actual writers are trolls.

That is one of the most profoundly stupid, delusional, childish and logically-inconsistent pieces I’ve ever read.

But even the myriad defenders of YA fiction admit that the enjoyment of reading this stuff has to do with escapism, instant gratification, and nostalgia.

I’ve read 200+ YA books now in the past 10 years, and this isn’t why I read the genre – no, I read because the characters are more realistic, usually more interesting, and the plotting is far far better than the plodding pedantic nonsense most literary authors tend to foist off as worthwhile writing.

And this article as all such pieces written by whiny mossbacks denigrates anything that features any fantasy or supernatural themes, despite those being a way to explore more deeply or more fully the human condition.

I stopped reading Slate for several years for idiocy such as this. Looks like it’s time to do so again.

So since Maya Angelou died I’ve been taking a look at her works. I’d never really read much of them before.

Verdict so far is that her poetry is just not very good. It’s mawkish, maudlin and sounds like something I would’ve written in junior high. It’s surprisingly bad given then esteem in which it is held.

However, her prose is great. It’s everything her poetry is not.

I’ve noticed this in a lot of writers: if they write great poetry, their prose is awful, and vice versa. Why this is, I am not really sure.

Both Misty Day (Lily Rabe) and Zoe Benson (Taissa Farmiga) had spectacular outfits in AHS: Coven. Most of the best ones are on that site, though not all of them.

In fact, all the outfits for all the characters were great but those two castmembers particularly stood out. You can really have a lot of fun with witches and the costume designers this season outdid themselves. This outfit of Farmiga’s was one of my favorites. If I had that, and looked good in it as she does, I’d wear it even in summer.

Costume design is really an undervalued language of its own, and tells its own stories; the costume designers in this show were so good that if I’d just seen any one of the character outfits laid out on the floor I could’ve told easily which character they belonged to, even if they’d never worn them before.

Farmiga’s character as she embraces her witchhood gradually changes her dress from mainstream fashion to the above sort of raiments. Literally her story is told in her clothes, piece by piece. That’s skill, right there.