Toxic media and representation

You claim you want diversity, you claim you want strong female characters and you claim you want representation. Yet why is Avatar and the Dragon Prince the most inclusive shows out there? Seriously for as much as the toxic media, Disney and various Twitter activists seems to ignore the existence of what they seek, thus shooting themselves in the foot and making people hate them.

Lets rip into everyone favorite poster boy for failure. The new Star Wars trilogy misses all the marks of success by miles. The ex stromtrooper Finn, and the character of Rose Tiko are for all intent and purposes diversity hires, which are supposed to represent minorities in USA. That is well and all, but they’re relegated to side characters and pretty much gets written out of the plot. This is in spite of being much more interesting than the rest of the cast. Rey is female and a main character that we all can agree on, sure she covers the female representation. But her character is as flat as a brick and is just very boring. Did I mention that her actor is white, so already there they failed in being progressive. This series was an excellent opportunity to give a minority actor a more prominent role and agency in the story. Then there is the fact that the movies are directed by white men, which was another wasted opportunity. Though the biggest shame is that both Rian and Abrams sucks at their cushy well paid jobs.

The Last Jedi is promoted as the second coming of Christ by the shill media. Whom will gladly scoff and look down on Alita: Battle Angel. An excellent movie adaptation of a fantastic media series, where the main heroine is represented by a Latino actress.

The media outlets that kisses the bum of Hollywood companies is not helping very much. These schizophrenic entities made of shrill voices that loves to post opinions on various pages, will gladly ignore good characters, brilliant shows, and many most media that actually does what they preach. Every now and then they will gladly post two opposing opinions on the same site. In all honesty I just think they thrive on the negativity, more than a fair representation and promoting positive messages. I can only assume this has to do with opinion pieces selling clicks, outrage driving traffic, and most of the journalist being activist. As in they have loud opinions and demand change, but does not have the mental fortitude do proper investigations, or actually do a fair take. Keep in mind this is a stream of thought from my perspective.

There exist multi cultural heroes in all of the media produced in USA, so let’s look at some of the stuff they conveniently gloss over, for the sake of opinions and censorship. Blade is a black hero, a vampire killer and has several movies behind him. Hancock is an example of a black super hero, sure the movie is a bit of a deconstruction of the genre in general, but if anyone dispute the color of Will Smith, they’re utterly bonkers, or colorblind. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a fairly recent series on Netflix, that is also very diverse, a bit progressive, a bit preachy some might say. However it is entertaining and got interesting characters, so they are clearly doing something right. Heck, Black Lightning is a super hero series with many colorful characters. Did I mention Luke Cage, well I suppose I just did.

When it comes to comics, well the applauded Captain Marvel was brown at one point, now she is white and blonde. Then there is the sadly neglected Blue Beetle, whom had a short lived comic and showed up on The Brave and the Bold. Oh, oh, Storm from X-men, you know the one that can call down the thunder and blow anyone away with a typhoon. I suppose Mystique count as well, seeing as she is blue and can be anyone. Yes there exist more but I generally do not reed many super hero comics. They’re like Donald Duck here in Norway. Too many comics with incoherent plot-lines and a backlog of multiple decades.

On the other side of the world in the land of the rising sun they’re actually a lot more diverse in every sense of the word compared to western media. Which means mainly mainly companies from USA. Sailor Moon is a great series, even if the transformation sequences went on for far too long. The show actually had romantically involved male villains, a lesbian couple that actually adopts a child, and female protagonists. Not that you would know this, due to censorship in the American dub. Kissing cousins is so much more moral guardian friendly after all. I could go on and on, but the fact that boy love is a genre, says more than enough about the selection out there. Once you find a fan translation, or learn to read Japanese. Pat labor, Dirty Pair, and Ghost in the Shell, covers a fair bit of this as well, on top of being very good.

Games got a lot of female protagonists, heroes and villains as well. However the toxic media cant take their eyes of a big set of tits. Lara Croft is a very good example of this, sure she is fit and very attractive, but she is anything but a helpless damsel in distress. She, shoots, loots, and kill all across the globe. There is also Samus Aran whom wear a full environmentally sealed armor and is in fact a woman. It came as a surprise for most people back in the day, yet people kept coming back for more. Mostly because it was well made and fun. A thing toxic activists is wholeheartedly against. It is hard to hold on to an ideology with so many great distractions to go around. Pretty much any mmorpg under the sun lets the player be male or female and they’re pretty much equal in every regard. Some exceptions occurs when it comes to gender exclusive races. Other than that a great deal of videogame characters is anything but a human, so the whole gender, race and sexual orientation seldom comes into play. Kirby is a pink, plump blob that eats things in Dreamland for example.

Lastly I have to mention some kick arse films out there with strong women and we did not care, because the movies in question is actually good. Such as Alien, Aliens, the third movie and resurrection. Terminator 1 and 2 counts as well, seriously Sigourney Weaver knows how to kick ass and take names. Alita which I mention earlier and I can’t complain too much about the Tomb raider adaptations. There are more, but I’ve gone on for far too long already.

But one final point, I love a good and interesting female protagonist and I'm so glad they're becoming more and more common and ignoring this fact is a gave mistake.

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Californiacation

Let's face it Hollywood kinda sucks and a lot of the directors, producers, actors and writers are egotistical pricks. As evident with the movie "the Room" and its enigmatic director, that also act in said film. Not to mention Uwe Boll, the blowhard German boxer responsible for a so bad it's good game adaptations of movies. Which brings me to today's fine to death topic. Movie adaptations and the problems they all suffer from.

A generic Hollywood story approach to action is very formulaic, full of cliche and exceptionally bad writing. Which is why these movies almost never win any rewards and so many of them exist. Heck, they go under name popcornflicks and it ultimately very forgettable, full of action and ends up with the hero getting badly injured. Said main character will also very likely have a love interest and be exceptionally skilled at surviving explosions.

The thing though is that these movies are seldom based on an existing work and they're usually stuck at a highly specific length. Now, if a book is being adapted a two hour movie is way too short to do the original work justice. Essentially everything deemed non important to the plot has to go. Like characterization, we can't give the girl too much agency. Yes, especially women and side characters will get the shaft, or become a damsel in distress.

These script writers also got the uncanny ability to ignore most of the source material. Some goes as far as never reseaching it in the first place. Yes I'm looking at you Rian and the terrible ignorant behaviour relating to Starwars. In fact he is the poster boy for this attitude, sincw he succeeded in making a worse movie than the holiday special. A bit sad really, because Looper was fairly well made, but is ultimately a predictable movie.

A very relevant example is Max Payne, the game that made slow motion gunplay a main stay in action games. It's a noir detective plot, with a moody atmosphere and flowery dialogue. Sounds like a perfect fit for a movie, right? For all inventive purposes it is that, but what we got was not that.

The Max Payne movie is a slow and droll flick with some slow here and one gun fight. They even made the opening sequence uninteresting and went hard on the valkyrie drug effects instead. I'm fairly confident that you can make a fairly fun and simple movie based around Max murdering goons for sixty minutes, same with Doom. Ironically enough the best movie that could have been a game I've seen, is Shotem Up. Where even the sex scene is a shootout.

As a side note, there does indeed exist a couple of Doom novels. I guess the producer never heard of those. Personally I'd get a better movie experience out of watching a long play on YouTube. It also got a much better production quality.

To actually bring some more examples to the table. Captain N the game master so comically exemplifies my point of wiev. The man behind the show did not even play the games he appropriated characters from. Samus is no where to be seen, yet Mother Brain is there as the villain along with Wiley. Megaman was painted green, said mega a lot and looked like a misshapen gnome, instead of a blue eyed boy bot.

Yes, the list is long and I could make it even longer, but in the end I do believe that it's mostly lazy directors, with a big ego that is to blame for these movie abortions.

I suppose I should end on a positive note and not just Sonic, starring Jim Carry as Robotnik. There exist a Phoenix Wright movie and its actually quite good and follows the source material. Then again Takashi Miike seems to actually care about his art.

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Relax you can make it easy

Difficulty selection in games is something I have gone one about before and will do once more. Yahtzee of zero punctuation fame has a show they call mostly civil war. A show where they pitch two game related opinions against each other. One of the topics was: Should a game l like dark a doula have a difficulty setting.

It is bit silly to ask if the game should have just that for a very simple reason. Prettymuch every From  software product has a setting. Sure it's not labeled easy, normal, and hard. Regardless of what it is labeled, the choice is there. Dark souls got so many options for places to go, hidden loot to find, and play styles. Combine this with grinding and the ability to min max stats and voila, there is your difficulty setting.

I have never had a more easy time  in dark souls than when I used soul arrows, these clunky and chunky boys are slow and has a terrible firing arch. But they will eat through most bosses in seconds, connecting a grand souls arrow with a boss is very satisfying and stupidly easy. Compare this to running up and slicing the enemy with a dingy sword, or to turn them into a pin cushion with bow and arrow. It is a cakewalk, hell the first boss can be bested with the dark fire bombs that can be picked from the start menu. Not to mention that the various presets in the character creation menu got various starting stats.

Like I stated earlier, there are plenty of places to grind, which makes it very easy to boost the stats to heck and back. Combine this with a proper build and suddenly I become a walking tank that shrugs off most damage and blocks the rest with a shield. Senior is an entirely different beast, but ultimately it also has a difficulty slider, which goes from hard, to holy hell this is bull carp. Once you find it that is, however the game is very hard in and is very unforgiving in the first place, with little room to make it easier outside of a trainer. One of those handy, dandy mister anitifun applications that makes and breaks the game.

Armoured core, one of those titles most people have forgotten these days, got customization up to the gills. Which is just another way to adjust the difficulty by design and choice. So there you go, a messy and a bit roundabout way to explain the fact that the choice to ake it easier is there. It is just a bit more hidden and quite possibly more inaccessible.

Also check out my original monthly updatesd story here. I really need to get myself an editor, got anyone to recommend

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Entitlement and Random Rambling

This is a free flow train of thoughs written early in the morning, you have been warned,

Are fans entitled? Hell yes! The same goes for authors whom loathe criticism with a fiery passion. This is a very human way to react, However many creators take it way too far and end up alienating wievers of every age demographic. When said creative individuals used an excessive amount of resources to call out critics and dissenters, that is where I begin to question their sanity. We've all been there where someone trigger us into reacting with anger and vitriol, but in most cases they just miss the point entirely. In my experience, pretty much everyone making reviews and critiques a product online through YouTube, are very down to earth, honest and a little bit sarcastic. It usually comes from a place of love and most of us just want better product. Or want the product to be the best it can be.

In my experience it is easier to physically or verbally attack opposition, when the sane option is to step back and de-escalate the situation. Most people unfortunately stays and fight. Personally there are a lot of times I want to fight and to hurt terrible people, but that is seldom the right option. Unless it is a school bully, they deserve a good kick in the buttocks anime style.

My ramblings and internal musing just made me realize I'm preaching to the choir. Many high profile creators are bat guano insane, self destructive, and extremely insecure. Take the caro show that is twitter, many writers clearly lives in a alternate reality and got anger issues, spruced up with quite a lot of narcissism.

Rambling aside. As a fan of a franchise such as starwars I greatly enjoyed the three first movies. The next three ones notes much, but I still watched them through and JarJar was an okay character. Then the new trilogy came around and it is utter rubbish. Take the Hollywood director Rian for example, he clearly has no clue how to expand an existing universe, nor can he handle criticism, and he is clearly high on himself. However if you have the gall to critique his botched baby, deranged people will come crawling out of the woodwork to support the man.

Don't worship heroes, false idols and people with power, they're just humans after all. However as in most things popularity attracts fanatics, people whom will die for the cause. Be it Starwars, or the bible. These folk can't handle questions and contradictions.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is this. When I pay for a product, I want quality and consistency. Which is reasonable and there is nothing wrong about that. Especially if improvements leads to more sales, which increases the chance for a sequel, then only a madman would reject that idea. Yet big business companies will gladly push out a half baked cake and wonder why no one like their product.

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