domain:gurwinder.substack.com
Throwaway05
8hr ago
I saw on Twitter someone comment that the idea that the company that owns Marvel, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones would need to look for a new IP to help draw in young male audiences in their teens & 20s is pretty hilarious and absurd.
You know it's fascinating. If the movies were actively actually bad (like worst Transformers movie bad) and you ran that for 20 years it would still be easier to recover from than what we got.
It's worse than bad.
Truly one of the most epic bag fumbles of all time.
Anecdotally - I was a kid who grew up a Star Wars nerd and it was a big part of my identity, establishing my interests, and so on. I spent a ton of money on it when I didn't have a lot of money to spend.
Now I'll never spend another cent not just because its bad right now (it is), not just because it hates me for demographic reasons (it does), but because it's associated in my mind with all the extremities and terrors of shitty social justice and all that did. I've seen too much fucked up stuff, lost friends, etc and Disney dropped their flag on that behavior.
Lots of people are never coming back and they didn't really connect anyone new.
I am fully open to the conspiracy theory that Iron Heart had writers who were self-aware and actively rooting for its downfall.
The thing to remember here is that the show was conceptualized much closer to the Floyd/BLM time period. It's just been delayed forever, presumably because they realized what they made after the high faded and tried to cut it into something viable or dump it when it would do the least brand damage.
In light of the absurd views on crime that flourished then, I can understand why they decided to make the genius with the full scholarship to MIT a criminal without really considering the "Stormfront or SJW" implications.
The shaming of "mediocre white men" or "nepobabies" is just par for the course. It's a reflex.
Throwaway05
8hr ago
It's really hard to tell what you are asking for specifically - are you asking for no romance at all? That's hard! Stories of any kind usually jam in a romance element because it is a "cheap" way to add additional appeal. Stories written for women or by women are more likely to do this because women are generally more interested in people, it's usually only hyper-masculine coded stories and themes that avoid any romance at all and even most war/military properties will find a way to slide in a romance element, even something close to explicitly homoerotic like Top Gun.
I've been on an anime binge recently so:
Full Metal Alchemist - written by a woman, most people can't tell.
Dan Da Dan - written by a man, many would guess the writer is a woman. Has lots to appeal to women and to men. Has a cute teenage romance that even some of my gym bros enjoy.
The Apothecary Diaries - written by a woman, clearly teenage girl fantasy elements but still enjoyable for many who hate that. Female lead has "super powers" but is helpless at the appropriate times and weird with significant character flaws. So yeah "basest" urges of women, maybe? But also illustrates that if you do a good job who cares. Same thing with hypermasculine product that everyone loves if it is good enough.
Now all three of those are Eastern so yes a possible theme here is The Message tanking artistic product, so to take it in another direction - how about Shrinking* and Ted Lasso? Two modern comedies with low levels of romance elements, strong female characters who aren't perfect (even the literal girl bosses), strong female coding in the form of lots of feelings discussion, therapy culture, and so on.
Non-slop and um, quality slop? still exist.
*only seen season 1 of Shrinking.
GBRK
8hr ago
I don't disagree with signaling, I just disagree with the particular signals I get from literary agents. I would still love to be able to signal that I am not just a writer, but an Author; I want the cachet that comes with being able to tell people to look for my writing in their local bookstore.
... and also, this is entirely petty, but I have to defeat my nemesis. I have a (2nd or 3rd degree) cousin who is published, does make their living writing, and has their book in my local Barnes and Nobles. (They live in another country entirely). They're also about my age. So despite the fact that they have no clue I exist, and that at a glance I don't have any problem with their writing, I've determined that they're my rival and made it my life goal to surpass them. (Only partially kidding.)
As for a vanity business... probably never. I'm either going to approach the problem with killing intent or not at all; if I just want status and creative freedom without regard for income I can go write fanfiction.
Tanista
8hr 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.
In this case, it seems like the decisions were made by the director who had a blank cheque due to his animated work and wasn't the most objective about John Carter's place in the modern scifi landscape (the perilous place of having influenced deeply successful and beloved works while not being as popular)
Throwaway05
8hr ago
My wife's disabled, non-binary friend
Out of curiosity in which way is she (assuming natively she, correct me if otherwise) disabled?
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
8hr ago
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.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
8hr 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
8hr 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
8hr 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
8hr 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
8hr ago
I’m struggling with the sale in that case if video games were generating 700m of FCF pa
hydroacetylene
9hr 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
9hr ago
Please, for the love of dog, actually fucking write this. I NEED to see the Burger Xianxia cinematic universe.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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.
9hr 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
9hr 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
9hr 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.
I initially read this as "in which way is she otherwise disabled?"
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