domain:vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
8m ago
Fair enough! Not badgering, but curious: At what point would you be comfortable investing additional resources into this as a vanity business? And why do you care about status effects like being published considering the fallen state of these "institutions"? Is this an issue of living a "double" life where you care about public respectedness and signalling though you private disagree with it?
Dean
Flairless
12m ago
Is there a parody yet of the fake-hero archetype, in which everyone around the main lead thinks they are an amazing cultivating power-scaler, and in reality they're a bumbling fake?
birb_cromble
14m ago
I'm not positive because the light was bad, but I'm pretty sure I've seen one near Blacksburg a while back. It was either a mountain lion or the biggest bobcat I've ever seen. I don't want to completely rule out the latter, but it seems unlikely to me.
hydroacetylene
17m ago
I don't know anything about how the publishing side of it works, but Catholic fiction is A Thing That Exists and seems generally hungry for volume- Taylor Marshall and Raymond Arroyo have both published stuff in it, and if it's worth their time, it's almost certainly seeking authors that aren't quite so big name already.
zeke5123a
19m ago
I’m struggling with the sale in that case if video games were generating 700m of FCF pa
hydroacetylene
27m ago
There was a preteen movie when I was a kid- something like Big Liar- that my parents liked too(so I didn't just like it because I was a kid at the time) which was about an eighth grade boy who loses his creative writing assignment that by hilarious and unlikely coincidence is picked up by a hollywood director who proceeds to adapt it into a screenplay, and he engages in zany schemes and pranking with his plucky girl best friend to get credit for it. Very 2000's. But the concept that 'golly, these hollywood executives could have a random preteen come up with better movies than they do' isn't new.
GBRK
28m ago
Please, for the love of dog, actually fucking write this. I NEED to see the Burger Xianxia cinematic universe.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
33m ago
I think Disney has long refused to let the stories and universes be themselves. They seem to have to rebrand everything to be Disney friendly, nothing too weird, masculine, violent. And while it works for cute kiddie shows or girl-friendly shows, but not really for the more action-adventure series like Marvel and Star Wars.
2rafa
36m ago
In 2020 there were reports that they were making $3bn a year in Star Wars retail merchandise, and plastic toys, T-shirts etc are an ultra-high margin business. They were making 25% of revenue from licensed games, and in 2021 EA suggested that had been $2bn between 2019 and 2021 alone, and that’s pure margin. They spent $2bn on the Star Wars parks but parks revenue has grown since 2021 (or 2019) even if it slowed recently. Money was very cheap through the 2010s, so they may well have made out fine.
Dean
Flairless
36m ago
I am both dispirited by the increasing influence of Chinese cultivator tropes, and cheered by the reminder that, yes, people are people (and often have bad taste).
hydroacetylene
36m ago
I wouldn't underrate the effects of woke capitalism on shifting conservative attitudes among the rank and file. CRT and pride are very very unpopular with the republican base.
I would also point out that the current crop of senior republicans mostly realize that getting unions to defect from the democrats is a serious blow against their enemies rebuilding a winning coalition, and unions are likely to see this as Trump getting more ammunition to force a mutually acceptable deal.
Dean
Flairless
39m ago
I am fully open to the conspiracy theory that Iron Heart had writers who were self-aware and actively rooting for its downfall. It's hard to believe anyone would lean into Riri's 'Tony Stark wouldn't be Tony Stark without the money' when the 'Tony Stark made this in a cave with a box of scraps' was one of the stand-out lines of the early MCU foundation.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
40m ago
I'm not saying it isn't true, or at least very common. I'm saying that as a man who is usually invisible, it's not something I can easily relate to.
hydroacetylene
41m ago
It is of course statist and industrial-policy-pilled.
Dirigism. It's called dirigisme. Just tell Trump it's French if you oppose it.
hydroacetylene
42m ago
Skilled manufacturing labor, specifically, is something the US does not produce much of. We probably don't need unlimited H1B's for software engineering but there aren't enough millwrights, CNC machine operators and technicians, calibration techs, etc. These are good jobs because they require a high degree of skill and they are actually necessary for running factories. My heart goes out for qualified Americans being passed over in favor of Indian and Chinese skilled workers- an easy task, because they are imaginary. We are at full employment for these people. We are at full employment for Americans able and willing to train for these jobs, too. Yes, there's plenty of fat potheads who would totally be interested in journeyman's wages for these positions but they have no experience and can't pass a drugtest- to the extent they'll put the joint down and accept the training pay for these jobs, they get hired to train.
The skilled blue collar labor shortage is an actual problem and 'but America has universities' is not a retort. The only people interested in solving this are unions with their own interests- an imperfect interest group, to say the least.
GBRK
44m ago
Naomi Novik
also helped code AO3 and still writes fanfiction under a pen-name. Plus her fairy-tale retellings and scholomance series were very solid reads, if undeniably girl-coded.
She's like the spiders georg of female-author-male-appeal. Legit built different.
HereAndGone
47m ago
Yeah, unfortunately it's the bingo card approach to writing characters (do they tick off all the right boxes?) and then any kind of development or interesting use goes by the wayside, because any criticism can then be safely dismissed as review bombing by the haters who are white straight cis male racist homophobe etc. etc. etc.
HereAndGone
52m ago
She also, uncritically, enjoys the second trilogy, which I can't excuse on any level except the second film, which I will defend as decent.
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh, yes. Worth suffering through Jar-Jar Binks and horrible little Anakin for. And Natalie Portman's costumes in the first movie are gorgeous. Hayden Christensen? Eh, Anakin is a whiny spoiled brat so that's tough to pull off, but the Master-Padawan relationships (and the betrayal involved) make it work.
Dean
Flairless
55m ago
You try to do the same thing with women? You create a woman that women want to be, and men don't want her
Male audiences might not want modern Hollywood female lead character because Hollywood writers often insinuate the woman of the show doesn't them in her life.
I firmly believe there is a good number of strong female characters that western/American male audiences have been fans of. Even in the action-centric genres, Ahsoka from the the Star Wars Clone Wars tv show, Katara from Avatar, and Vi from Arcane, Gwen Stacey from the newer Spiderman are all examples of very well received female characters. These aren't solely male fantasy waifu audiences either, and had strong female fandom components as well. They run a gauntlet from girly-feminine to tomboy, unabashedly straight to gay, supporting characters to show leads, and so on.
But they all also have very clearly dear personal relationships with men in their life- and not even necessarily romance fantasy waifu stuff either. Ahsoka is the apprentice for (secretly married) Anakin Skywalker, and it's a mentor-mentee relationship with no sort of romantic tension between them. Katara was the center of one of the larger (fan-insisted) love triangles of its time on television, but she's also a sister who simultaneously gives sass and cares for her brother and is almost defined by her consistently demonstrates compassion for strangers female and male alike. Vi is punk-butch aesthetic and unambiguous lesbian, but one of her closest relationships- and deepest regrets- is regarding her surrogate father-figure Vander, and her regret at getting him and her adopted brothers killed. Gwen may be in a tragic/doomed romance trope with Spiderman-Morales, but the emotional crescendo of character conflict/character arc in the second movie is her reconciliation with her father.
None of these characters are defined by their romantic relationship with the main man of their narrative. However, they also all have close and personal relationships with the men in their lives, the sort of thing that they worry/anger/fear over and would fight for. They wouldn't fight beside / for the men in their life merely because 'it is the right thing to do,' but because it's personal and they care and if someone threatened to take the men they cared about away from them, it would be visceral.
By contrast, what sort of personal male relationship does Brie Larson's Captain Marvel treasure enough to fight for? In the Star Wars sequel trilogy, what is Rey's emotional connection with Finn, her co-lead and the series larger self-projection male role? In Rings of Power, who is Galadriel's male emotional connection... besides the awkward love interest of the Dark Lord himself?
These aren't characters who show any particular desire / want / interest with an emotional relationship, romantic or otherewise, with the men in the setting who might serve as an audience proxy. Captain Marvel is stoic and most personal relationship is an abusive one she destroys the moment she girlbosses harder. Rey is... hard to place, since she's somewhere between oblivious / stuck in a fated romance / the trilogy was a thematic mess. Galadriel's indifference towards her own subordinates spawned sociopathic comparisons in her first episodes.
But note that all three of these characters have romantic love interests! It's forced / non-central / etc., but the nominal titulation is there if that was all that it took to get male investment. Captain Marvel got ship-teased with War Machine. Rey and Kylo Ren are having sexy abb scenes in the second movie. Galadriel and Sauron are the bad boy trash.
But I doubt much of the male audience could see themselves having a warm or interesting conversation over dinner, let alone something more. Polite discussion at best, maybe, if not barely restrained impatience / apathy. Oh, sure, they'd Do the Right Thing and save you if you were in danger, but only with the same emotional intensity as stranger #XYZ.
Compare that to a character who might not be a lover, but who might love you as a brother, or a mentor, or a friend... how many Strong Female Characters would extend even that?
HereAndGone
58m ago
Like, you really go through life keenly aware that most men you interact with are at least some level of interested in you? Just because? As the default?
Mate, in the last Culture War thread we had someone on here commenting about that immigrant case saying that sure, it's totes normal for an adult man to want to bang a 15 year old girl (because men are wired to be attracted to youth and fertility). Women do learn early that simply having boobs and a pulse gets you male attention in the "I'd hit that" sense. Not that they're interested in you as a person, that's where the fantasy wish-fulfilment comes in.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
What's this, Snow Crash fan fiction?
Skulldrinker
1hr ago
To be fair kids don't really play with toys at all anymore, they do the Roblox on their Kindles and watch 20something Influencers
Oh dear. I forgot that there was a third trilogy, that's the one I meant. I'm quite content with the second one myself, they're not high cinema, but they have their charm.
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