domain:vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com
odd_primes
2hr ago
Apparently they had a deal with Hasbro for a minimum of $225 million in royalty fees for the three new movies. Lucasfilm would get 20% of the wholesale price in royalties, which would kick in once the minimum threshold was crossed. For comparison their deal with Hasbro for the prequels had a minimum royalty fee of over $500 million, which seems to indicate that they expected lower merch sales.
https://www.jeditemplearchives.com/2018-09-16-the-cost-of-hasbros-star-wars-license/
throwaway-7742
2hr ago
Also a boy's hero journey might be more interesting to a girl than vice versa because women have higher levels of cognitive empathy or perhaps it resonates with women in an evolutionary "selecting a winner" kind of way.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
I mean, I'm a girl (at least a good while ago) and I like SF and I thought they ruined "John Carter" because they didn't know what to do with it or how to market it - dropping "of Mars" from the title was the first signal they hadn't a clue.
There will always be more boys than girls who like certain properties, and even for the girls who like the SF properties, the way they handled things was terrible. Who on earth liked the Force witches or whatever the hell these things are supposed to be? (Just a hint here, if you're doing a sacred mystic ritual, try not to have it look like an am-dram society pretending to have epileptic seizures).
"The Mandalorian" worked because the female appeal was Pedro Pascal plus baby Yoda (and I understand the female lead was not actively terrible in a Girlboss mode, so of course Disney bounced her for badthink) while having enough of the SW lore to appeal to the guys. The later SW movies with Rey could have worked if they'd concentrated more on the ensemble of Ray and Poe and Finn (and had managed to retain a coherent plot arc, instead of every new director deciding to drag the plot in a different direction). Also don't fuck up Luke's character, but they couldn't resist doing that.
But as it is, the properties they get their sticky fingers on are then revamped to lose the core audience (coughRingsofPowercough) and introduce the Girlboss who has to be so much better than the icky Patriarchy. Girls who aren't interested in SF won't watch this stuff, girls who are and like the original IP will be turned off, boys won't watch it either, and so the expensive new series that is going to be the star show of the streaming service falls flat on its face.
And then they do it all over again with a new one.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
2hr ago
It's used widely elsewhere in modern zoomer-ish parlance from what I can tell.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
A quick search indicates that this forum saw its first use of "glaze" in this sense 11 months ago.
Jiro
2hr ago
Let's say "pandering to the stated desires of progressive women". Whether their actual and stated desires are different, or whether girls and adult female progessives want different things anyway, isn't going to matter.
Defer to people in positions of authority
Well, women, anyway.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?
It's relatively new, but I've seen it around more than one week. What you observe happens with all buzzwords, including "psyop".
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
I hate everything, but I like Bluey.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
glazing
Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?
I don't think we had a lexical gap here. I don't think a new word is called for, and if it were, I definitely don't think it should be that one. Nothing about this feels organic or warranted.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2hr ago
Well, State-Owned Enterprises are a feature of one notorious, nominally Communist state that the US is dedicated to beating, and this does look like a market-flavored convergent evolution in this direction, but no, I don't think it's theoretically leftist. It is of course statist and industrial-policy-pilled. Probably prudent; will allow the state to strongarm Intel into restructuring by TSMC executives, which seems to be the plan to save the beleaguered corporation.
Are there risks of corruption arising in the Trump administration
Oh yes.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
Are you asking for "girl stories" (that aren't smut-adjacent) or "stories written by women that aren't girl stories"?
I would argue that Harry Potter is not a girl story. While Rowling has some problems writing adolescent boys (and for that matter, her adult Cormoran Strike novels sometimes show a bit of women-writing-men weaknesses), the Harry Potter series was very much a boy's adventure (and was sometimes even criticized for that, despite its fanbase being majority female). However, as a story that appeals to girls yet doesn't also alienate boys, it's probably the ur-example today.
Dragonriders of Pern is, as you say, something that appeals to spergy horse girls and I have seen female authors inspired by it refer to it as "girl-canon," but back in the day it had a broad cross-gender appeal. (The "Harper Hall" sequel trilogy was much more of a for-girls thing.)
There are a number of female authors who write decent novels that appeal to men: Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, C.J. Cherryh. Leaning more towards "feminine perspective but still readable by a man," Leigh Bardugo, Cathrynne Valente (the author is insufferably woke and has one of the worst cases of TDS I have ever seen, but I really do recommend her Fairyland books, which are both very much "girl" stories but something I would totally read to a boy), Naomi Novik (a lot of people love her Napoleonic wars-with-dragons Tremaire series though personally I didn't), Ursula LeGuin. And outside the SFF genre, Alex Marwood, Sara Gran, Lisa Brackman.
Really, it isn't that hard to find good female authors who aren't writing didactic man-hating feminist novels or romantasy. Finding books that appeal to young readers of both sexes is harder but not impossible.
stuckinbathroom
2hr ago
Yes
ABigGuy4U
2hr ago
The right has begun to sour on Capitalism for a few reasons. The current iteration of the “free market” has so much government intervention that it’s basically corporate socialism already, making calls to preserve the free market ring hollow. Libertarians burned too much of their conservative cachet and are now fringe group without much pull. Also the right realized that “all that is solid melts into air” includes religion, nations state and families.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2hr ago
Worm was written by a man, and it shows. So was Practical Guide to Evil. It shows so hard that you can clock the author's sex just by reading the book, even when they use a totally sexless pseudonym and write an opposite sex protagonist.
A quick check confirms that Samus was created by a man as well.
If you've ever read chicklit, the difference is obvious. A female author of a female protagonist will linger on her interactions with every remotely relationship-appropriate male, to make sure the reader knows how desirable he is, and the flavor of his desire for the main character. Is he a good friend who respectfully hides it? A burning frenemy who offers aid even though he shouldn't? A simp?
As a man, reading that sort of book is alien in a way that few other things in sci-fi or fantasy manage. 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?
There is a male version of this, called "glazing", but it takes the form of gratuitous reaction shots to something impressive the male character has just done.
But women can more easily imagine being showered in attention and praise for doing something impressive than men can envision a world where they are loved and wanted just for existing.
Disclaimer: I think that last category might actually exist in anime, but I don't watch enough to know for sure.
phosphorus2
2hr ago
Evolutionarily speaking, a woman's worth is largely dependent on immutable physical characteristics (modulo things like plastic surgery), so these sorts of stories tend to psychologically resonate with women.
"worth is largely dependant on immutable physical characteristics" is true evolutionarily speaking about all forms of life
PreformancePertension
2hr ago
I guess that's a valid question these days - do we even want national legislators to represent a specific geography? My big-city House rep I can see is a party line liberal; that represents the district and I don't begrudge it, but when I look up her votes the single thing she broke with the party on was HR3633 (cryptocurrency regulation framework). I look up her social media, and 90% of her posting is on national issues, boosting other national politicians, Gaza, etc. My impression is that the idea of truly local representation has been broken for a while and that this dates back to the late 00s with the start of political nationalization and the decade-long earmark ban.
ThisIsSin
Liberty has an anti-privilege bias
2hr ago
Could a similar line of expectations dissuade other prospective male readers?
The last major intended-for-girls cartoon that didn't have this, that being MLP G4, had an absurdly large male following precisely because it lacked this.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2hr ago
Lol. Those were jokes, not serious statements of analysis. The crocodile penis thing was a riff on a silly joke I myself made -- she works in science, and understands very well that this was not how taxonomy works.
NewCharlesInCharge
3hr ago
Young boys also enjoy Bluey.
gattsuru
3hr ago
Sounds a bit like Bujingai or Asura's Wrath? Sounds like worth looking into.
Crowstep
3hr ago
Age of Empires II, except terrain matters, troops don't immediately break rank and jump into a mosh pit when you click attack and walls are both tougher and more expensive, so you have to put your farms outside the city.
gattsuru
3hr ago
I'd argue vanilla WoW is pretty unserious (and willing to throw random stuff that wasn't there historically, from goblins to kobolds). But to answer the question:
Fauns and satyrs, harpies and sirens, sphinx. The dog-headed ones were kinda universal myths in the Old World, but they existed long enough ago in European mythology that Augustine debated their historical existence. If you throw in shapeshifters, kelpies and selkies. If you include mere behavioral anthropomorphism, Reynard the Fox (and his whole company) and Puss-in-Boots, arguably Br'ers Rabbit Fox and Bear (1880s) -- which makes the 20th Century Disney variant more of a conversation with folk legends than you'd expect from first glance.
Some of these have Warcraft equivalents, but very few are furry bait even where they're fan bait (eg, there's a lot more Draenai fandom than burning-legion-proper-as-a-whole fandom).
What I've heard of the last Indiana Jones movie is depressing. They could have handled "guy gets older, his adventuring days are naturally now behind him, he can retire to that long-delayed happy domestic life and honored retirement with the respect of his colleagues and students after one last hurrah handing over the reins to the new hero/ine" but no, they had to ruin Indy for the cheap jokes.
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