I quit watching Carnival Row when they introduced the fuckin' "Rich satyr character that everyone else in high society resents because he's not human", because they also had to cast him as a black guy.
Like it wasn't on-the-nose enough about the 'bigoted rich people hate the outsider' thing. They had to cast him a black guy while every villain was white, just in case it wasn't fucking on-the-nose enough for you.
I've had bad luck with sci-fi writing. I feel like 90% of the time the book falls into one of three categories.
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Childish bullshit. See, like, every single Star Wars novel ever written. Looking back I'm embarrassed I was into that shit.
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The opposite of #1: Sci-Fi that gets lost up its ass in complete bullshit, because the writer heard that sci-fi is supposed to be about 'messages' or 'themes' or something.
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The writer is clearly making shit up as he goes along. See: every Rama novel after Rama 2.
I'm starting to think 10,000 years of human civilization, 9,900 of which women weren't allowed political power, became that way for a very good reason.
Seriously. Take literally any group of people on the planet, from any background, and fling them into a wilderness survival situation. 99% of the time, the men are going to take charge and the women will fall in line. Even on shows like Naked and Afraid, the men basically take control right away.
There was some hardcore survival show that was done in Europe for Dutch or Danish TV and they had two 'tribes', all men, all women, on two different islands, and told them to survive. The men basically had shelter and fire on the first day, water and food on the second, and were getting along. The women were sitting around in the shade complaining and forming cliques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzCO0G8AGLU
Bear Grylls did the same thing and the results were identical. Men: "Here's the best option, let's go and do it." Women: "My feet hurt, I think this is stupid, this isn't fair." The producers had to literally give them cans of beans that 'washed up on the beach' to stop the women from starving to death.
There's a Canadian movie I saw covered on RedLetterMedia called Wicked World that literally ends with a text crawl saying to the effect of, 'Scientists are working on computer chips to plant in your brains to control all violent thoughts. Without the chips, we will all be doomed! But have hope! The chips will be ready soon! Suicide is not the answer!'
Dude I was just there Saturday! Do you know when this was? I didn't notice Trump stuff.
I'm so fucking sick of the "super badass woman who is as strong or stronger than all men" trope and it's not just because it's overused. It's because it doesn't accomplish at all what it claims to be for: "inspiring women".
How many badass, strong women do we see on movies? Nearly every single action movie has them. Are women 'inspired' by these 'strong female characters'?
Women still don't carry guns. Women still oppose gun ownership and self defense. Women aren't filling martial arts classes and committing to strength-training. Women aren't turning into rugged, strong individualists.
Instead, it's still the same stories over and over. "Oh I was raped in college, but I didn't say anything because I was scared". Fucking really? That's the 'strong woman' that we're still dealing with? Do we need another thirty Marvel movies of ultra-badass women who can beat up every single man to get that level of pathetic cowardice out of you?
"I was in an abusive relationship for 4 years and didn't leave because I was scared". "I can be healthy at any size". "I'm triggered by the word 'rape'".
I don't want women to be meek, submissive, pathetic cowards, but that's pretty much all they are, all they ever have been, and seemingly, it's all they appear to want to be.
So can we just fucking stop with this 'femme fatale' horseshit? How about in the next Marvel movie we can have Black Widow tied to a chair and she can cry about how triggered she is. How she doesn't have any guns or weapons, only a whistle, because "guns are made to kill!!!". Oh and make her weigh 210 pounds and she just smokes weed for the entire movie while wearing pajama bottoms, because that's more to Marvel's demographic.