This week, another conservative commentator was schooled for their misogynist take on fictional entertainment.
People has had no problem giving him a lesson.
In Netflix's new show, The Witcher, the story is fantasy fiction and focuses on a lone monster hunter and a princess, who find their destinies to be crossed. The season focuses on world-building and how these two distinct characters, as well as many other sub-characters, mature in this environment.
As a guest podcaster on The Daily Wire, crime novelist Andrew Klavan visited and decided to comment on The Witcher after having given it a view. His comments, however, were extremely misogynist, anti-progressive and just historically wrong.
Klavan jumped right into his critique, giving away his position:
"Immediately I was put off by the fact that there's a queen in this who fights like a man. There's a couple of scenes where women fight with swords."
"And I just hate these scenes, because no women can fight with swords. Zero women can fight with a sword."
Klavan then felt the need to elaborate on what he meant:
"What I mean by that is in a situation where you are fighting men who are used to fighting with swords, you are going to get killed if you are a woman fighting with a sword 100 percent of the time."
"A woman with a sword could kill somebody who doesn't know how to fight with a sword. But in a war situation, where you are swinging this five to ten pound sword again and again and again, against much, much, much stronger men, they are going to kill you."
Klavan then suggested a more realistic take on the fantasy fictional show, since monster-slaying appears to be more realistic than a woman handling a sword.
Klavan suggested:
"They should have made the character a man. She's a man."
"She's gross. She swaggers around and she rips into the meat and tears it with her teeth and curses people."
"It was a feminist statement and I was like 'please, give me a break.' I don't know if that is in the book but this is not the way that any woman behaves."
You can watch his full critique here:
Daily Wire host reviews 'The Witcher': "No woman can fight with a sword. Zero women can fight with a sword" https://t.co/RJuUoujkAG— Jason Campbell (@Jason Campbell)1578014228.0
Twitter, of course, felt the need to respond.
They gave Klavan a little history lesson in sword-fighting and common fantasy fiction elements.
@JasonSCampbell Um what— The Guillotine Shouter (@The Guillotine Shouter)1578146660.0
Some started off easy on Klavan, pointing out his inaccurate portrayal of the weapon women apparently can't wield effectively.
@_Milo_De_Venus_ @JasonSCampbell Seriously. A zweihander, one of the heaviest swords ever used in warfare, was only about 5-7 pounds.— Crustaceans🦀 (@Crustaceans🦀)1578106355.0
Or, ya know, Joan of Arc.
Also, while we're talking about wielding, there were multiple comments about how the making of swords is specifically meant for easier handling.
And never mind the popular female figures who viewed swords as their weapons of choice.
@JasonSCampbell Counterpoint: Julie d'Aubigny, the bisexuals cross dressing opera star and swordsman who famously a… https://t.co/ZWX18Q62HP— Kim Cavill (@Kim Cavill)1578015539.0
@JasonSCampbell so glad this guy is speaking the truth, i.e., that in a sword fight Ben Shapiro would win against S… https://t.co/6OWLt4099h— Max Kennerly (@Max Kennerly)1578107148.0
@MikeLamentino @JasonSCampbell There's actually quite a few examples of real life women swordfighters, it all depen… https://t.co/7p4eIowph4— I am Jack's itchy taint (@I am Jack's itchy taint)1578016039.0
Also, apparently women being proper sword fighters is much less predictable than monsters and monster-slaying.
@JasonSCampbell Guys like this are the ones who need to be ridiculed as snowflakes. He can watch a show with magic,… https://t.co/JBrhbfbTRi— DarkMatter2525 (@DarkMatter2525)1578126931.0
@JasonSCampbell Every time a woman does anything on screen other than play a one dimensional, passive love interest… https://t.co/g9h1sS0Zaa— Claudia B (@Claudia B)1578076711.0
Clearly, before Klavan comes forward with another film or TV critique, he should be careful to double-check his historical, and patriarchal, facts before speaking out about the "issues" he's seeing.
He may also, where applicable, want to give the books a gander, too.
You can get The Witcher Boxed Set: Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire to check out the accuracy of Klavan's rant here.
As it turns out, there are a lot of universal fears out there. And the people of Reddit have a thing or two to say. Suck it, Roosevelt. WowADeadMidget asked:
What's your biggest fear?
I haven’t even started this article yet, and I’m already sweating. Let’s dive in.
That would keep me awake too.
“Drowning, getting stuck in some tight place and asphyxiating/dying of hunger in there, or getting steamed to death.
That's pretty much the shared 1st place."
“I'm 34 years old and was very close to drowning last year. Got dumped out of a canoe and was pinned against a tree in a current. I pulled myself out and it took about every bit of upper body strength I had, didn't even really realize the severity of it while it was happening because if my head had stayed under I was done for. A person of smaller stature would have been in very serious trouble in the same situation. I think about it a lot too, usually when I'm trying to go to sleep lol."
A valid fear.
Snl GIF by Saturday Night LiveGiphy“I choked on a piece of steak home alone a few months ago and had to give myself the Heimlich maneuver. It took 3 tries. I'll never forget my dog staring at me and the thought of my girlfriend coming home to find me dead on the floor of our apartment.
Now I think about that every time I eat by myself. So choking to death alone is my greatest fear."
This is heartbreaking.
“Biggest fear is losing everything I have worked so hard for later in life. I watched my parents work hard do everything right build wealth and then almost towards their 50s my father got sick, lost his job. And now struggle to make ends they had to sell anything that had any value to them.
Now they just go through life with seemingly little enjoyment because they had everything set and in a blink of an eye it was gone and probably never come back.”
This is why you should check in with your friends.
“Being one of those people who dies alone in their home and doesn't get found for weeks or more because they have no one who cares enough to notice they're not around anymore.”
“There was an old man in our vicinity who died like this. Apparently he died on the toilet and been there for weeks in the summer heat with closed windows and doors so the smell was also not noticable to the neighbours. The firemen and policemen brought the body down from the flat in two bags apparently it was already falling into several pieces.
The smell was lingering in the apartment for a few days, one of my friends lives two floors down and he said it was unbearable.”
Let’s go deeper, shall we? Sorry in advance.
Good advice.
Will Smith Memory GIF by STARZGiphy“Memory loss!!! Literally, everything I know in my life is memories.”
“When I started to have memory problems, it super freaked me out. Now it's a little easier. I surround myself with trusted people and write everything down. Memory is important, but if you take care of yourself and find ways to keep them externally it can help a lot. Memory books, notes, friends.”
Spooky.
“Deep water or caves with no light that you have to crawl to get through. So a cave full of water would be the worst.
That or what happened to that guy who was repairing an industrial bread oven when it turned on and he couldn't switch it back off from the inside.”
I’m sorry, WHAT???
“Rabies.
You're fine one moment, and then the next day you have a headache. Turns out you got infected on that camping trip six years ago and it's been hiding in you ever since.
Now that you have a headache, it's in your brain and you're already dead. There's next to nothing doctors can do except put you in a coma and say a prayer, but odds are nearly 100% that if you do survive that you're a vegetable or nearly one.
You experience incredible pain, irrational hydrophobia, manic behavioral changes, and a total loss of motor control near the end. It's got to be one of the most humiliating, dehumanizing and terrifying ways to go, and it can happen just like that.
Rabies is terrifying.”
If that last one didn’t shake you, these next few will. Read at your own risk.
All we can do is stay optimistic.
heaven gate GIF by South Park Giphy“Not being alive anymore - the finality.
I'm not afraid of dying - the act of it, anyway. I'm not afraid of what comes next - I've not bothered myself with that one.
What I'm afraid of is being… done. Here one day, then gone. Not able to do anything else.
I cannot out it into better words, that's how suffocating the anxiety of being gone is for me. Maybe it would be better if I were religious and believed in an after life, but the best I can do is convince myself that I believe your personal energy spreads to other beautiful things in life when you pass. But the mind, the mind just being… done. That is truly frightening to me.”
Don’t watch the latest Purge movie.
“Societal collapse. A climate or economic or disease-based destruction of society as we know it. Every part of normal life ceasing to exist, and every person having to fend for themselves. There's a documentary called 'Collapse' that scared the crap out of me."
"An even more frightening thought is that collapse is already happening, and we just don't have the perspective to recognize it. After the collapse of Rome, people living in Roman territories still considered themselves Romans for a long time, even though the Roman state was gone. Granted, things happen a lot more quickly in the modern world, and that in and of itself is concerning - the rate of change is ever-increasing. What happens to any system that encounters increasingly rapid changes? What happens to an airplane or a bridge or a human being whose rate of change keeps accelerating? They spin out of control until failure.
Climate change is a potentially civilization-ending event amongst several other candidates for bringing about our doom. Nobody has bothered to fix it yet, and even with more mundane problems, I feel that the government has already abandoned us. Just like some poor farmers five hundred miles away from the city of Rome, we cannot hope for the state to come and save us once things break down - they'll be too busy enjoying the last of their feasts, orgies, or taxpayer-funded drugs before the lights go out."
A parent’s worst nightmare.
“The thought of anything/anyone hurting or something seriously bad happening to my daughter.
I once heard someone say that having a child is like taking a piece of your heart and letting it walk around outside of your body.
That’s exactly what it feels like. I don't care for much things, but I would be nothing but an empty shell without her.”
Alright, now that you’ve read all of that, go drink some water and take a nap. It was a doozy.
Now I’m thinking about societal collapse. Great.
There is a sense of security in knowing that someone has your back.
But on the same token, as is typically depicted in movies, small towns have their fair share of nefarious activity that those in the know are sweeping under the rug to maintain their town's good name.
Curious to hear about bizarre cases that don't always make mainstream news headlines, Redditor descended_from_apes asked:
"Small Town Redditors, what's the weirdest unsolved crime in your town, old or new?"
Not all mysteries involve unsolved murders but are just as baffling
A Crime In The Turd-Degree
"Nowhere near the scale of disappearing children or Nazi collaborators, but my hometown's biggest mystery is who keeps sh**ting in the holes at the golf course."
"Person has been doing it for more than 20 years. Every 2-3 months, there's a hole that's been pooped in."
Outstanding Debts
"I found out my grandma played cards with the mob in a liquor store basement. I was reading a news article on a cold case from the former owner disappearing for an English assignment and my grandma kinda just frowned, told me she used to play cards with him and never payed his debts."
Unsolved missing persons cases like the ones mentioned below can be agonizing for family members.
Death Chair
"Happened this year."
"A man rented a room at a guest house. When he left the host went to go clean/ prepare the room for the next occupant."
"The room was covered in blood. In the shower there was a chair with a pool of blood-it is assumed the person died in the chair."
"So the baffling part is that there is a camera trained in the room's door. The man entered and left alone without a speck of blood on him."
"The authorities assumed the blood belonged to a woman whose chopped-up body was found in a nearby damm. Blood tests came back and it doesn't."
Missing Classmate
"1973: My 4th grade buddy, Guy Heckle, disappeared during a boy scout camping trip. They found his coat, that was all. Not another clue after all these years."
The Bar Patron
"Man got kicked out of a bar 3 years ago this December and went missing. Nobody has come forward with tips at all. He went missing from a fairly busy part of town too."
And sometimes, when the bodies turn up, their identities can remain forever a mystery.
In Deep Trouble
"Where I grew up they found a dude who was buried under the cement in a building, no history or information about him. It's clear that he got into some deep trouble with someone."
– KGhaleon
Remains In A Lake
"About 15 years ago. A town near where I grew up drained a man made lake that was used for recreational swimming. This particular year they decided to drain the whole thing to do a clean up. They discovered an intact skeleton that had been sitting at the bottom of the lake for something like 50 years based on the class ring that was still on the skeleton. From my understanding this person had never been reported missing or anything."
Some of the saddest cases involve the death of a newborn with no known causes.
The Infant
"About 30yrs ago a refuse worker found the badly burned body of an 18 month old boy amongst the bags and recycling. Forensics deduced that due to the condition of his liver he'd died less than a week before his body was found."
"Hospital and medical records were used to establish that nobody in the county was missing a child."
"He doesn't have a name on his gravestone."
"Edit: it was in Cumbria, England."
"The police likely didn't retain a DNA sample, or we might have heard something about familial DNA by now.The local police aren't very good - look up the case of Poppi Worthington as an example."
"Most local people assume he died of SIDS, then his parents panicked and tried to conceal his body. Whoever did it must have had an element of local knowledge in order to know where to put the corpse."
A Proper Burial
"There is a street in my city called Park Ave. It's a very small city, mostly blue collar."
"In 2005, a newborn baby boy was found dead near a factory on Park Ave. Doctors could tell he was born alive and likely lived for a few hours before he died. I don't know if he was abandoned (left to die) or killed in some way; that info was never released. Police made a statement saying please come forward, we want to help you bury this child properly."
"The mother sent an anonymous letter to the police station two weeks later, and said she would come to the station soon. The letter didn't explain the circumstances, but it did say she was afraid."
"She never came forward. The baby was named 'Baby Parker' and money was raised to give him a proper burial. People still leave gifts at his grave."
Thanks to horror movies, small towns get a bad rep.
Under the veneer of warm hospitality and kindness lies an unsettling sense of discomfort.
Are the denizens covering up a murder committed by one of their own? Or was there a grifter who dumped a body in their unassuming town and fled the scene?
In the game of life, no one gets out alive. But hopefully, your life's journey won't end in a small town.