My Childhood Hobby Was Satanic, Or So They Told Me
The moral panic around Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games—and what it tells us about religion.
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Only The Good Die Young: The Moral Universe of Game of Thrones
If Lord of the Rings was the epic for the Cold War era, then Game of Thrones is the epic for our time, with the disappearance of the clear oppositions that once enabled easy discrimination between friend and enemy.
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The Trouble With Harry (Potter): Religious Conservatives Do Have Something to Fear
Harry Potter’s world would be more familiar to a scientist than to a mystic. Yes, it includes goblins, charms, and curses; but these are all basically explicable according to their own internal logic. Yet there isn’t anything that transcends human knowledge.
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Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians
The characters in this adult, anti-fantasy novel of hope (and magic) lost appear to teach the lesson that Harry Potter probably ended up hating himself, and life, after the end of book seven. But would a less dour novel have been so highly praised?
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