This topic came up when I was talking to my brother recently. He has three girls and they just finished watching the Obi-Wan show and my brother said that show was such a blatant example of pushing girl power where it made no sense and it clearly showed the writers didn't know or didn't care about Star Wars. Now my brother likes Andor and Mandalorian so he isn't at my level where I cancelled Disney plus and truly despise disney Star Wars, but around his girls I remain positive since I don't want to ruin their fun because the sequels were the first Star Wars they were exposed to and then they watched the rest. I am thinking for Christmas I may buy some EU books for his daughters to get them into that timeline.
But he was just frustrated at the endless push to get women into things that generally appeal to men and he said men and women generally like different things. It's just that simple.
I would love to be at one of the panels at a Con where someone like Anita Sarkessian or the Star Wars, RIngs of Power, Wheel of Time writers give their usual speech about not seeing many women, people of color, etc. and simply ask them why they don't understand that certain thing appeal to more guys than women or that there were always women/minorities that were into these hobbies but they think something is wrong if a large number of white guys enjoy something.
Anyway, do you see this trend waning? I'd like to think so but even with constant flops nothing changes. I really miss the days of being laughed at for reading comic books or a sci-fi novel because the worthless activists in charge of the shows or the ones winning the Hugos or Nebulas were most likely the very people who mocked nerds or thought gamers were losers until they saw those things being trendy and jumped on board.
One thing that isn’t talked about very often is the impact of the streaming model. Streaming services have essentially “socialism’d” our entertainment. Used to be a media property had to stand on its own two legs in the free market. There were exceptions to this, of course. Government subsidized media, studios using successful movies to fund unprofitable projects, etc. But today? You have monolithic streaming services spending billions of dollars on countless hours of woke content that seemingly no one is watching, all supported by a mixture of tent pole franchises and quasi-syndicated classics. There are no meaningful consequences for woke shows tanking hard because everything is flying under a Netflix or hbo banner.
One benefit of streaming are the free streaming services with commercials. They tend to have a lot of older content which is much rather watch. Ironically the hyper obsession with diversity and representation has made every show pretty much the same.
I love that they give you 30 and 90 day free trials. I watched Ted Lasso, Mythic Quest, See, Severance, Servant and others all for nothing on a 30 day Apple TV trial - then just cancelled and moved to Amazon free trial. After that one finished I did a free trial with Britbox. By the time I'd finished looping through I created a new email address then signed up for my seconf round of free trials all with new content. I won't pay a cent to these companies.
Were those shows any good?
Severance was my favourite show of 2022 (except for making Christopher Walken gay). See was quite brutal but had some serious plot hole issues. Ted Lasso was actually a bit disappointing given the Hype but Mythic Quest is great.