Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi

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It seems I don't have that kind of hobby? Harpies are rare over here.
 
Hobbies? I've got hobbies. Lots of hobbies. Too many hobbies. And I'm not waiting on total strangers to tell me which hobbies I can like.
 
George Lucas did not just write a movie. A small army of spacecraft designers, vehicle designers, costume designers and all those charged with actually making it - Nothing like this today. Nothing.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Arjen said:
It seems I don't have that kind of hobby? Harpies are rare over here.
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Just wait. They'll get to you in time. Right now they're working on scolding those who engage in the innocent, child-like joy that is Warhammer 40K.
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Turns head in opposite direction. Why bother with the "I looked under a rock and found fascists, racists and as many other ists as I can" crowd?
 
Orionblamblam said:
edwest2 said:
Turns head in opposite direction. Why bother with the "I looked under a rock and found fascists, racists and as many other ists as I can" crowd?
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Ignore them all you like, they won't ignore *you* if they decide that you are "problematic."
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Gosh. They sound just like the people they don't like who are bothering them.

"He started it!"

"No! He started it!"

Puhleeez.

OR --

I don't like ze French!

Ja! Let's start a war...
 
Red Letter Media on The Matrix Resurrections/Reiterations/Recursions/Reincarnations/Regenerations/Refutations/Refulgences/Remonstrations/Reptilification/Redecoration/Regency Style/Renal Dialysis/Retina/Reverberation/Rutabaga/Rhinoplasty/Roget's Thesaurus/Ruritania...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpSo4fu1rgM


A more complex appreciation than 'It sucks!' Haven't seen it yet myself...
 
Orionblamblam said:
edwest2 said:
Orionblamblam said:
edwest2 said:
Turns head in opposite direction. Why bother with the "I looked under a rock and found fascists, racists and as many other ists as I can" crowd?
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Ignore them all you like, they won't ignore *you* if they decide that you are "problematic."
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Gosh. They sound just like the people they don't like who are bothering them.
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Yeah, no. The two sides are not equivalent. See: Uncle Hugos.
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The two sides sound like high school. Someone finds a reason to not like someone else and literally gets in their face about it. But both sides can sometimes resort to similar tactics. And at least one side is committed to starting something, i.e. violent protests and similar. Or at least try to drag the other party through the mud - online if not on TV. Yawn. The Protest Industry is always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing to protest.

Warhammer 40K is bad/wrong! Etc.
 
edwest2 said:
Rhinocrates said:
Also, this is why, if something is a 'franchise' or has a 'fandom', it's advisable to just 'quite like' something.
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Drawn by someone who has never seen an actual fandom.
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In years past I would go to the occasional sci-fi/Star Trek convention. I didn't see a whole lot of fighting, screaming, anything like that. Disagreement, debate, even argument... but actual efforts to damage someone? Naw. About the worst of it was "Trek vs Wars" and "Kirk vs. Picard."
 
edwest2 said:
Rhinocrates said:
Also, this is why, if something is a 'franchise' or has a 'fandom', it's advisable to just 'quite like' something.
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Drawn by someone who has never seen an actual fandom.
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It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this year’s Worldcon disinvited the owner of Baen Books, one of the biggest SF publishers in the world, because someone who would identify as ‘liberal’ complained about sh*t talkers on the Baen Books forum. Previously there had been attempts to game the awards process by folks from the conservative side of the spectrum.
 
starviking said:
edwest2 said:
Rhinocrates said:
Also, this is why, if something is a 'franchise' or has a 'fandom', it's advisable to just 'quite like' something.
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Drawn by someone who has never seen an actual fandom.
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It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this year’s Worldcon disinvited the owner of Baen Books, one of the biggest SF publishers in the world, because someone who would identify as ‘liberal’ complained about sh*t talkers on the Baen Books forum. Previously there had been attempts to game the awards process by folks from the conservative side of the spectrum.
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Similar is happening in the world of tabletop gaming. Various persons are being carefully examined by the Official Accusers. Once identified as bad/wrong people, they are railed against and there is much hand wringing. Thanks to people trawling through Twitter posts, and tracking down statements made elsewhere, you - yes, you - can be the next victim of the Official Accusers. You can even be asked to leave a convention in progress.

Specific to the owner of Baen Books, I can say that as a moderator on my company's forum, I hit the delete key on a daily basis. Thanks to the "freedom" of the internet, complete idiots can post whatever they want, and try to get around the rules. A competitor of ours simply took their forums down. As far as "gaming" the awards process, if it can happen it can happen. One of the last conventions I attended had a program book and a specific person who had nothing to do with the fandom being presented there. Someone, or a group of someones, wanted to introduce others to their lifestyle choices. Totally inappropriate.
 
Anyway, I recently reread the Dread Empire's Fall series. Highly recommend Walter Jon Williams, he's not as popular as maybe he should be.
 
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Hobbies on the decline? Which hobbies? Tabletop, like Dungeons & Dragons, has boomed. The nature of the current health crisis has more people playing indoors. You can order thousands of dollars of Warhammer minis and paint away. Who's taking away your "sense of control"?

And who is this we? Transgressions in the media? You mean heads of game companies, for example, being accused of saying various things that are considered bad/wrong by the Official Accusers? They, not some mythical WE, are on the warpath. Lifting every rock in the hope of finding some transgressor.

Note to the Official Accusers: We don't live in Utopia. People aren't perfect. I don't condone harming anyone, either verbally or physically. Any confirmed accusations should be directed to the proper authorities as opposed to forming a lynch mob.
 
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
 
The problem is as noted in the review I quoted in post 1038 not so much that people are calling for a 'diverse' range of authors, it's that those authors are convinced it's their duty to make everything they write "...self-important message-mongering."

Which is the death of effective storytelling.
 
A review, by a reviewer I trust of 'The Matrix Resurrections' which they regard as 'strictly average'. To quote the review:


I was really liking The Matrix Resurrection in the scenes with Keanu back in his role as Thomas Anderson. It was Lana Wachowski deflating the fannish mythos that had been built up around the series and equally winding in her own reluctance to return to the series. On the other hand, when we exit The Matrix, the film became far less interesting. Much of it thereafter becomes extended talk about the nature of The Matrix, the changes that Zion and the machines have undergone and the need to have Neo and Trinity re-enter it.
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https://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/matrix-resurrections-2021.htm
 
Say hello to your new Star Wars.

The High Republic Adventures: Galactic Bake-Off Spectacular

Torban "Buckets of Blood" Buck and Kantam Sy face off in a brutal, intense, ruthless... bake-off!

Lightsabers and Jedi robes are put aside in favor of whisks and aprons as the two competitors bake Master Yoda's special pastry recipe. But the recipe requires one extra special ingredient: a story! "Buckets of Blood" and Kantam recount the tale of an epic battle as they whisk away, both hoping to win the prize of Padawan approval.

Daniel José Older and Vita Ayala team up in this heart-warming one-shot. Plus, bake Master Yoda's pastries yourself, with the recipe included in the back!

In Shops: Jan 19, 2022
For ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛋ sake. Who is this *for*?????

HighRepublicAdventuresBakeOff_RI.jpg
 
publiusr said:
Foodies...they'll get their mitts on everything.
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I've seen a number of people knowledgable about Marvel comics point out that in recent years as the writing has been taken over by non-men, there has been a trend towards not only emotional validation ("you're just the *best*"), but characters spend a *lot* of time eating, sometimes half or more of the issue. Instead of action, you get walls-o-text and non-stop lunch. This new issue seems to be the inevitable result of that trend.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Say hello to your new Star Wars.

The High Republic Adventures: Galactic Bake-Off Spectacular

Torban "Buckets of Blood" Buck and Kantam Sy face off in a brutal, intense, ruthless... bake-off!

Lightsabers and Jedi robes are put aside in favor of whisks and aprons as the two competitors bake Master Yoda's special pastry recipe. But the recipe requires one extra special ingredient: a story! "Buckets of Blood" and Kantam recount the tale of an epic battle as they whisk away, both hoping to win the prize of Padawan approval.

Daniel José Older and Vita Ayala team up in this heart-warming one-shot. Plus, bake Master Yoda's pastries yourself, with the recipe included in the back!

In Shops: Jan 19, 2022
For ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛋ sake. Who is this *for*?????

HighRepublicAdventuresBakeOff_RI.jpg
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Deeply based cooking anime comes to Star Wars.

Hopefully there's a space Gordon Ramsey.
 
drejr said:
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
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Nobody is forced to use the likes of facebook, myspace (yeah, I said it!), etc..
 
martinbayer said:
drejr said:
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use the likes of facebook, myspace (yeah, I said it!), etc..
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use electricity either.
 
drejr said:
I've never seen Discovery but looking at the analytics is interesting, it's probably more popular than anyone here suspects with young women. A lot of the writers who aren't Star Trek veterans came from CW shows.
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Women is like the only demographics worth catering to.

when it is ad supported media.

Who makes the purchasing decisions in a typical household? Women

To whom does ad work best? Women

Even when men spend money, it is to impress women all too often

It is rather hilarious that a websites can get double digit of millions of male users and barely make back the cost of the server. In some sense, the most rational demographic is almost completely worthless to advertise to, they can figure out their purchasing decisions just fine. Now not all of media runs around the ad supported revenue model, but enough of it does to set the tone and the norms of related mediums.

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Video games is a better medium in some sense for many kind of information. For world builders like sci-fi, a good 4x game or well thought out tactical model is more fun than just about any traditional story. Something like SMAC is more interesting than some Sci-fi series that does not go into details on how the technological background actually impacts the operations of the civilization system. Even for the personal, there are games like crusader kings that highlights the considerations involved in kingdoms.

Games is not better at supplying information on systems, it is also a better adventure and provides better projective identification with games like Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex and Fallout. Why watch the last starfighter when you can fly it?

My personal systemizing thinking is just waiting for someone to develop good mechanics for quantization of the social structure (social climber, the game). Now meta-social structure from god perspective is already simulated in games like dwarf fortress... Do that and there is nothing left other than "rng roll" for game tree progression.

What is left for the traditional narrative consumption? It is stories that is neither an adventure or exploration of the worldbuilding, aka emotional support, parasocial relationships, wish fulfillment or introspection.

Now, as the resident anime watcher, I should confess to watching a good amount of cute girls do cute things 'genre' (there is enough of this to be a genre) somethings involving a season of cake eating and 'non-dramatic' "Drama." If you are within the demographic, all stories are of adventure is exhausted by 20. The nice part of comfort escapist stories is that novelty is not needed and can be consumed endlessly.

I think the end point of highly single, highly online, massive media consuming cohort would have very strange looking media. People with families are tool busy to consume much. In traditional media consumption people look for role models and within their gender role. In the new cohort, people consume media as a replacement to opposite gender relationships, and you get stories like those you see in anime:

1. Male coded "adventure" stories that is designed to show off the male characters from a female attraction perspective,, with addition of mystery, weird status demonstration and weird mindfuckery. This result in characters that is unrelatable from a male perspective. The end point of this genre is yaoi "male homosexual" stories that have almost completely female audience. Female characters are intrusive 'rivals' to the viewer thus unwelcome in this genre!

2. Female coded "domestic" stories that is designed to show off the female characters to male watcher, which can be differentiated from a story tailored to female audience in the complete lack of serious social conflict. Female watched domestic stories is about social status and conflicts, while male watched stories either does not have this at all, or have conflict get resolve in a masculine way (as opposed to passive aggressive scheming). Similar to the opposite gender story, the ultimate form involve homosexual stories with no male character.

As the function and demographics of the main target audience change, stories change. What used to be a fringe viewing demographics becomes the center and stories with the old structure shifts.

From the anime world, nothing is more dramatic than magical girls genre starting from a teen girl audience target and shifting and splitting to adult male audience target....you get elements like magical space battleships, magic space time bureaucracy, magic powered rocket hammers, beam cannons and so on.... (never mind the whole plot and characterization)

The megaverse super franchises in the TV/movie/comics world means everything gets stuffed in them instead of being a new thing though, resulting in conflict.
 
sferrin said:
martinbayer said:
drejr said:
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use the likes of facebook, myspace (yeah, I said it!), etc..
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use electricity either.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more. However, having made that Faustian bargain myself, I'd be hesitant to blame anyone but myself for getting jolted when sticking two nails into an outlet.
 
martinbayer said:
sferrin said:
martinbayer said:
drejr said:
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use the likes of facebook, myspace (yeah, I said it!), etc..
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use electricity either.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more. However, having made that Faustian bargain myself, I'd be hesitant to blame anyone but myself for getting jolted when sticking two nails into an outlet.
Click to expand...
Missing the point completely. Imagine a world where you were only permitted to have access to electricity if your ideological views were approved. Oh, you had the nerve to vote Republican? We'll be cutting your power off. If you don't like being censored just use something else. Nobody is forcing you to use electricity after all.
 
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False equivalence. Massively offtopic. But, this being The Bar...
 
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sferrin said:
martinbayer said:
sferrin said:
martinbayer said:
drejr said:
I hoped I edited that before anyone responded, because I'd rather discuss space opera, but while things like D&D may be booming in terms of sales, the average amount of time spent on non-screen leisure activities has fallen by half over the past two decades.

You may as well ask who are these mythical Official Accusers? They are we, the general public who is increasingly connected to a distributed surveillance network with cunning technological features designed to expose us to things we don't like. The platform is designed to reward you for sharing things you don't like, so you share it until it reaches an account on Twitter or Youtube that specializes in amplifying controversy and has a large number of followers who enjoy righteous indignation. Suddenly what might otherwise be a quite normal disagreement turns into dog-piling, calling for your job, or even being pilloried on national news.

All pronouns here are used generally.

The interesting relationship is that the tactics used originated (or are were least first adapted to social media) in early online fandoms on Livejournal and similar, so it's unclear to me whether fandoms are being subsumed by politics or politics is turning into fandom. I guess they're not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use the likes of facebook, myspace (yeah, I said it!), etc..
Click to expand...
Nobody is forced to use electricity either.
Click to expand...
Couldn't agree more. However, having made that Faustian bargain myself, I'd be hesitant to blame anyone but myself for getting jolted when sticking two nails into an outlet.
Click to expand...
Missing the point completely. Imagine a world where you were only permitted to have access to electricity if your ideological views were approved. Oh, you had the nerve to vote Republican? We'll be cutting your power off. If you don't like being censored just use something else. Nobody is forcing you to use electricity after all.
Click to expand...
I'd recommend to seek professional help for your persecution complex.
 
Should Space Keith Floyd have a light sabre? Or a blaster?
 
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