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True Detective Night Country
There is a culture war internet discourse happening around HBO’s newest show True Detective Night Country. The discourse can generally be summed up as follows: HBO newest show TD Night Country is the 4th season of an anthology mystery/crime miniseries. The first season came out ten years ago and it starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two detectives searching for a killer in Louisiana. The plot does not particularly matter, but the show is widely viewed as one of the greatest single seasons of TV ever. Speaking for myself, I agree with this assessment. I return to it every few years and I am still impressed at how good the acting, story, and cinematography are.
Fast forward ten years…two mediocre seasons (2 and 3) were released, and HBO announced the release of True Detective Season 4, co-named Night Country. Season 4 stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as two detectives unravelling a murder mystery in Alaska and people were very, very excited for this season. Prior to release, Night Country received overwhelming critical reception from TV critics. It currently has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score (RT can be gamed, but the 93% score shows the general reception).
I was also very excited for this show. Critics were calling it the best season of True Detective since season 1; some were even saying it was better than season 1. With these very lofty expectations, I watched the show as it was released, week by week.
By episode two, I knew this show had problems. By episode four, I knew it just wasn’t very good. By episodes 5 and 6, I was hate watching. Many people have reviewed and discussed the show’s problems much more eloquently than I. This video is quite good and sums up the many many problems the show has:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y2TCOd_YZF4
What I will say is that the show is simply…boring. It is a six-hour miniseries and at least 70% of the show is filled with boring relationship drama (the remaining 30% being focused on the actual…criminal investigation). The characters are uninteresting, low stakes, and unlikeable. The easter eggs paying homage to season 1 are like a frying pan to the face in their obviousness. The story carries no emotional weight, has major plot holes, and the ending is unsatisfying and bewildering. It’s bad. I would not recommend this show to anyone.
Now here is where the culture war comes into play. Online, fans of the True Detective series are panning the series. Go check out the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it is a paltry 61%. The True Detective subreddit is especially critical of the show. People are especially disappointed and confused given how critically hyped it was before its release.
But what has happened is that many critics, podcasters, even Issa Lopez, the director, are blaming the backlash on sexism and misogyny. They say that male fanboys of season 1 are brigading review sites and review bombing the show. They are saying that the viewers dislike the show because it features two women lead detectives and that viewers can’t stand the lack of masculinity that was so integral to season 1. Even the professional critics who have dared to post their negative opinions on Twitter are being called misogynistic.
The problem with this read is that…the show sucks. It’s just not good for all of the reasons I’ve listed above. It’s extremely frustrating to see people called misogynistic and “anti-woke” for criticizing a show with two women leads. I find it particularly unfair because other detective shows with women leads, such as Mare of Eastown or Sharp Objects, were fantastic. It didn’t receive the critical backlash because those shows were actually good. We now exist in a bizarre universe where a magazine like Rolling Stone overwhelmingly praises the show while a magazine like Forbes pans it.
I’m not one who normally gets involved in the culture war, but I found this discourse particularly egregious. I don’t know what the future of this series holds, but I’m hoping someone at HBO sees the light.
Update: Issa Lopez has been hired to write and direct season 5 of True Detective. Whoosh.
A quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that season 1 was made by Nic Pizzolatto, season 4 was made by Issa López.
I think men and women think differently about stories, media and what matters in them. This is over populations of course, exceptions exist. There are male ways of telling a story - plot-focused, rational, consistent setting, character agency, combat, violence, progression and character advancement. Then there are female ways of telling a story - character-focused, plot doesn't necessarily make sense, emphasis on emotions and romance. Great writers can appeal to both but that's hard. You can tell I don't really understand or appreciate the female side of things.
I think this is most obvious with the weakest, most unrestrained authors. If you go on FFN or spacebattles or webnovel, you find stories about men advancing their position with hard work and clever tactics. They fight and overcome enemies and court women, sometimes getting a harem. In the case of Harry Potter stories, there's a trope of Harry Potter hitting the gym, using some rituals to get stronger, taking control of his money from Dumbledore and getting a harem of hot Slytherins. If you go through and search by likes, that's what you'll see.
Meanwhile on female dominated places like AO3, you find endless romance and homosexuality. Putting the ocean of Harry/Draco to one side, there's a huge emphasis on shipping. Who do people end up with? Are there love triangles? Can there be more love triangles? Angst, rape, therapy? Plot is unimportant in and of itself, character relationships are exciting. There are even tagging features so you can search for exactly what ship you want. Often they take characters out of their world (not mechanically like an isekai) and reimagine them in a different setting - they could be at a normal high school together. Just to make sure there's no combat. Or they make up this 'soulmate' mechanic where people can write words on eachother's skin. It's a whole other world to male fiction.
Now if you're like me you might feel a little cringe at the male power fantasy stories. I imagine most here have more exacting standards of taste. But you'll feel revulsion at 370,000 words of:
Or:
Who cares about this stuff? Well, apparently women like it. I blame the influence of women on Star Wars. George Lucas's Star Wars was telling a male story, Kathleen Kennedy was telling a female story (boy does AO3 love Rey/Kylo). It's less obvious at this higher level since it's not out in your face but it is still there. Likewise in True Detective, I imagine.
Wasn’t FFN ridiculously female-dominated? I know early Harry Potter fandom was. A casual google doesn’t turn up much, but consider this thread where Redditors suggest 22% men is unusually high.
Point is, I think the gender balance within platforms is going to be swamped by the history of those platforms. Like Ao3 specifically refusing to ban certain taboos. At best you get a chicken and egg. Which came first: the forum dedicated to spaceship combat, or the audience of turbo-autists?
Mind you, I don’t disagree with the basic premise. The median masculine story is wildly different to the feminine one. And the 80th percentiles are probably mutually incomprehensible. Try to cite specific examples, though, and you’ll immediately run into Sturgeon’s Law.
Maybe FFN used to be female dominated and maybe they do dominate the boards I don't know or care about (Supernatural, One Direction). Since when has any man written a fanfic about One Direction or Twilight? But that subreddit discusses fanfiction generally, it seems to be mainly talking about AO3. I'm just talking about the FFN website. I don't know anything about Wattpad.
Harry Potter is the biggest board on both sites, FFN's top Harry Potter stories are extremely male. That's where HPMOR came from, just take a look and you'll see. Even the smut on FFN leans more toward male fantasy than female fantasy.
I can't emphasise enough that I was picking the absolute best of what each website has to offer. Yes, the second most popular fic on HP AO3 (451K works total) is about Hermione suffering, getting chained up and raped by Draco. It was translated into about 20 languages, including Welsh. They really like this stuff! The contrast with HPMOR is staggering, everyone who ever objected about HPMOR being cringe should have to read some of this. Then they can understand the full horror, the enormity of human variation.
It still never fails to impress me that one of the more well-known movies in the 2010s is literally just Twilight fanfiction with the names changed.
What do you even consider "male fantasy"? I'm pretty sure that "Hermione gets raped by Draco" is mostly a female fantasy (written by women, for women); while I'm sure you could self-insert as Draco I don't think that's the point. Yaoi fanfic is also female fantasy; you can tell because the dom/sub dynamic is pegged at 11 from the first word (the stuff that's actually intended for gay men is... different).
If nothing else, I'd consider yuri fanfic to be mostly by/for men; women aren't as interested in lesbians as men are. Most MLP fics (both porny and not) were probably written by twentysomething men (I don't think the target demographic for the show is that interested in seeing Pinkie Pie turn Rainbow Dash into cupcakes or meme about "Applejack pregnancy scare").
I still don't understand why people consider this unusual. "I can imagine attractive character from the show doing the sex to me in a way I don't have to feel otherwise morally conflicted about liking, also doing something nasty but not catastrophic to the character the reader is supposed to identify with means he would like me more than her" is arguably one of the more vanilla fantasies (and the more extreme variation of that, being "also, the self-insert doesn't survive the encounter", is an overwhelmingly-female favored fetish anyway).
Harems, casual consequence-free sex with very attractive women. More emphasis on physical activity, less on emotions. Zero angst.
Go read a couple chapters of Manacled. It is weird and unusual. It's not about the sex. The sex happens in about 5 lines where Hermione's super ashamed and humiliated about it. It is not written to arouse. The writing is good and I'm intrigued by the premise of this mysterious secret... but the actual content of the story is pure suffering (there's a heavy Handmaid's Tale influence). It's mostly about angst and severe trauma. I'm guessing that it's the ultimate 'I can fix him' fantasy where Hermione subdues this super-evil, hypercompetent Draco Malfoy with her wiles.
This is completely normal for female erotica. It's what gets women off. From "The elephant in the living room":
And from the comments of "Reaction 101: The reactionary red pill on women.":
Good point, the actual point of diversion in the story was Draco manning up and killing Dumbledore early in book 6. Some Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder and a Killing Curse out of the blue dealt with the most powerful wizard on the planet. He then goes on to hunt down and personally execute a good number of the remaining anti-Voldemort rebels under a false identity. He's got everything: aloofness, alpha energy and a secret identity.
I'm mildly sympathetic to such a manly, proactive character. In contrast, Hermione has a panic attack going down the hallway and spends most of the chapters I read plotting and failing to kill herself. She's exhibited no agency thus far, she gets chosen to be with Draco and the plan is that after she gives him 3 children they'll send her off to be bred by others. Instead of fighting in the war, Hermione was a Healer, undoing curse-injuries. She got the most passive, feminine, supporting role imaginable. Things happen to her.
And these women love the story! It's in all these collections:
If there's one thing that Jim and co got right most of all, it's that sex differences are very great. Completely different mindset.
I'm going to tattoo this on my forehead for the next time my girlfriend suggests we watch a Victorian period drama jfc
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