"Okay, we have a literal billion dollars here, what should we do with it?"
"Manipulate all the reviews!"
"Overpay diversity consultants to the point where we're accused of money laundering!"
"...Make an actually good show?" [crash out the window]
An accurate summary.
But you missed the not-in-the-books mixed race (elf-dwarf) romance subplot.
Aaaand that's about it. Goofy fight scenes, weird shoehorned subplot, drags on way too long, still better than Rings of Power.
...Exist at the opportune time?
I'll listen to a woman once you define what a woman is.
Otherwise, how am I to know when to listen?
Very strange metric. Netflix started (after it's discount-blockbuster vending machine days) using lots of old IPs, well over a month old. Their profits were almost entirely sourced in things that were worth watching a month later.
If a show or movie has a random renaissance of popularity, it will be capitalized on, even if its original airing is lackluster. That's really basic logic, basic enough even for Nonceflix.
They could have just gone with an above-average Onlyfans thot and gotten a more attractive, AND more talented actress than they had. For cheaper, likely, too.
The internet is a horrible place, because it shows how awful the choices made by others are, through demonstrating a million alternatives.
...I maintain my stance: If a movie is good, it will be advertised on the merits of "it is good". If a movie is bad, it will be advertised on the merits of its morality.
This is likely a bad movie, they're just changing up the pandering message to experiment on sales figures.
All that stated, there is merit in "falling for" the ad experiment. Media drives culture, after all, so showing that pandering to be profitable could lead to more such media being created, even if the initial testbed isn't good.
Well, they weren't exactly treating it like a disease, were they?
Lock them up, total isolation until all symptoms, even minor ancillary ones that might not be related, are fully cleared for 10 days. If you're seen outside, sent to a concentration camp. I learned from COVID that's how you treat a disease.
"All people are the same and equal in value and potential, no one is inherently good or bad."
"If you call the cops to report theft, you must hate black people since only black people commit crimes."
Somehow these people hold both these thoughts in their head at once as guiding morality waystones.
If they want to be racist, be racist. Don't hide it, own it! Plenty of race supremacists get on CNN as anchors, they're accepted and paid well in society. If they want to be all egalitarian instead, then they need to shut up about "incidental" race stats in poverty or crime and simply address it blindly.
I just wish people wouldn't be hypocrites.
77 Newspapers still exist?
Still not the best definition...
Would blanket-charging black people more for insurance (car, health, or house) be fair? Actuaries would say it would be. Non-actuaries would say it probably wouldn't be.
If you're doing a movie on Shaka Zulu, do you cast a white woman to play him? It isn't "fair" that some groups are arbitrarily excluded from top-billing of any given movie, after all. Plenty have argued this exact point (though usually the reverse scenario example) as being a matter of fairness.
The Nigerian complaining about example #2 also doesn't let Nicaraguans into his store for the simple reason that he doesn't like their particular skin color. He's fine with Nigerians, of course. On a macro-scale, they're both "black", they're the same race, but he's hating based on skin tone. Most people would call "discrimination based on skin tone" to be "racism", but based on your wording, it is not the case here.
Maybe it's just me being a shitlord scum, but wouldn't it be MORE impressive and empowering if the leader woman was leading an actual competent and skilled group?
Putting a woman in charge of WISH-tier stormtroopers only says that women are only competent enough to lead WISH-tier stormtroopers.
Like, villains have to lose, yeah, that's understandable, but they don't have to be incompetent.
"It looks like they're ready to take that step once again"
...Ready? They've never stopped. Not once has Lucasfilm stepped back and said "huh, could we be in error here? Let's tone it back a bit, and see how the revenues look.", not a single time.
Pretty sure I've seen some works that have a chocolate elf as one of the MCs, so I think they're going to need to be even more needlessly specific in their "first"ing.
Their rat utopia was brought low by actual rats. Or rather by the fleas upon them.
I wonder how our rat utopia will go?
Solution: Don't have sex with anyone who hasn't been tested recently, with "recently" being defined as "hasn't had sexual relations with anyone except you since the test".
If this sounds like monogamy with extra precautions, congratulations! You're right.
The perfect game is one where you get an exact dopamine hit where the average consumer is willing to pay maximal additional money to get another dopamine hit. A pay2win or pay2progress system that makes people incredibly engaged while playing it, but ultimately incredibly meaningless.
That is, objectively, the "perfect" game, for corporations to create. A wire going directly into the pleasure center of the brain, that shoots a chemical electrical straight into the skull.
But that's not what "gamers" want. Gamers complained when Fire Emblem didn't have Lunatic difficulties. Gamers cried when Aerith died. Gamers beat SC2 without losing a single unit.
Gamers want stories. Whether that story is an emergent story grown from their own gameplay, or a story told to them through the game, gamers want a tale they can tell to other gamers. Pay2Winners just want a dopamine hit, like drug addicts. One of these is much more profitable than the other, and easier to create. And that's the one the AIs will make.
AI art/music is an excellent way to create a baseline, something you use as a placeholder that gives you a very "realistic" idea of what the end product will be like, while you're going through creating the product, since those elements are usually left for last. Then you're not encountering Missingnos when you're compile-testing play environments.
The answer to that question is rooted in rulership laws. For many countries, it is illegal to perform certain espionage or counterintelligence acts on your own people. But it isn't illegal to ask your ally to do it for you, while you do the same for them. In all likelihood, British people are wondering the same as you about specific American companies that occur surprisingly frequently.
They gotta get some more global warming. I hear that'll change the way the oceanic currents flow, might mean less hurricanes.
Or, you know, have an uncorrupt government, but honestly, I think changing the entirety of the Earth's thermo-regulation system and hoping it doesn't screw them worse is the simpler and more likely successful task.
Alternatively, the keepers of the peace could actually keep the peace.
You can't use the argument "oh, they hindu nuffin'. Racism 'n sheit.", as crime rates in lawless London by this demographic are higher than they were in occupied India, where the British policing force would actually be a symbol of hatred and oppression to the people and they'd have reasons to act out.
They're attacked because the police are weak, the people KNOW they're weak, and they won't do anything to stop being weak. Not because the imports are a foreign element.
The role of the lawkeepers is to keep the law, or to abdicate from that position and let the citizenry know in clear and certain terms that it is now in the citizenry's hands.
And lo Jesus did say "let he with the sickest tats throw the first stone.", and from his hand a mighty boulder let fly as fly as his tramp stamp.
"Linda Sarsour awoke on January 23rd" might be true, but given the rest of the article, I give it even chances she had some bizarre one-day coma.
Ah.
Well if that's the issue, then invented words should work equally as well, while simultaneously trimming the less intelligent from the pack.
"A squan begins its 90km jiit at 20 km/q, but finish in just 5 q. Assuming it never changes rate except at exactly 2.7 q, what is the rate they finish at?"
It will let smart people easily answer the question, and teach dumb people to simplify problems down to their core math components. So I can see the complaint if they're making it needlessly wordy without purpose to doing so. Still, it is overall a very dumb complaint, since math is not about word choices for anything less than maybe a doctorate-level course.
(EDIT: Because I know some people on this board are going to do it, the answer to the problem is ~15.652km/q.)
"MC"-sexuals, as they're known in some of the industry...
Hate it. Ruins world immersion unless you've built a very specific and odd world, and hinders good writing.
"Oh, I've always been attracted to INSERT GENDER HERE, it defined my childhood, you see, when a INSERT GENDER HERE helped me... pick up some shit or something? We can't have a gendered conflict in a backstory anymore because of the seventy-two options. You're going to find my backstory very similar to every other character, to justify our attraction to INSERT GENDER HERE."
Writers aren't going to write 72 different backstories, one for each mytho-demi-hemi-spirit-gender out there, which means they need to dial back, tone back, any meaningful development in that regard to be as generic as possible.
And to what benefit? It's not like it helps players immersion or empathy. I've played female lesbians, female straight characters... I'm neither. Didn't stop me from identifying with the trials and tribulations of the characters, enjoying their writing.