I’m sorry, but these protests are going to far! That was a perfectly fine soup!

Yeah, I can see our difference in how we defined what’s shoe-horned in. And I get that you’re not saying diversity in media is bad. However, respectfully, I don’t think your definition of shoe-horned makes a lot of sense if you think it through. Is the music shoe-horned in, because it’s not critical to the plot? You said yourself that adding information that isn’t critical to the plot is necessary or the movie will be bland. If it’s necessary to the movie, wouldn’t you agree that it is critical? It may not be for the plot, but it is for the movie. Movies aren’t just plot. A lot of great movies (Nomadland, Patterson, Dazed and Confused, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Straight Story, …) don’t have a lot of plot or tell a great story. Instead they focus on the characters and the mood.

I think your example with the “blond, blue eyed, straight white men” betrays your perspective. This isn’t describing the default human being. Most people on earth aren’t like that. But it is the de facto default in western media. Why is it that? Because for a long time it was white men who made the decisions. Now that it has become a norm, everything that deviates needs a justification. And that’s kinda fucked up, isn’t it?

So, I think the question isn’t, why don’t “normal” character traits get the same hate as “alternate” traits? The question is, who defines what is normal?

That’s kind of a weird argument. I always took “shoe-horned” to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn’t quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn’t mean it is shoe-horned.

Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don’t get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.

However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren’t based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.

Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.

I don’t think that’s how it goes, either. I mean sure, for Pride Month all the corpos glam on to it to market their stuff “to the gays” and there is the odd product line designed for them as well. But I’m pretty sure nobody is adding gay characters to video games, shows or movies, because the market research shows that it’s popular now. It’s still quite the opposite.

Companies would still rather have nothing that could be seen as “controversial” in their products, with the odd exception that wants to be controversial. Games, shows, movies are made by creative people and among them are and have always been queer people. They have always been pushing for representation. Over time this pushing of the envelop as well as social movements lead from characters that can be read as queer (mostly villains, though), to clearly queer coded (still mostly villains) to finally openly queer characters (only villains and side characters). Only in the last decade it has become acceptable to have openly queer main characters in media. Not because marketing pushed for it, or because it’s trendy, but because queer people exist and they also work in media and they write their experiences and it has now become socially acceptable enough for them to get a little representation in mainstream media as well.

In my opinion the reason why “queer” seems “trendy” and everything seems “woke” and “political” is because we are still so used to the conservative, status quo, straight white guy/girl media that anything outside of that sticks out like a sore thumb. And, as they say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

He does, too

…because they know how to swear in Russian?

I’m all for suing, but this is the worst kind of video. Vertical, with minimal information and no sources. There is no reason this should be a video 👎

We got similar stats here in Germany.

Not surprising to be honest, but considering how much fear mongering the right does about antifa and climate “terrorists” a good reality check.

Don’t get the down votes. That was a fun video 🤷

Data hoarding

Yeah, it kind of does. What made me think ChatGPT were the many awkward word repetitions that I don’t think non-native speakers would do:

“The world of anime has explored several genres and the Cyberpunk genre is one of the popular ones.”

There are more examples in the video. For example repeating the name of the show in 2-3 sentences in a row. I don’t think anyone would naturally write that, even as a non-native speaker. The sheer amount of videos the channel pumps out made me suspicious as well, but ultimately I don’t know…

Cool recommendations, but the video sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. Just read the video description:

Remember the times when you were forbidden from watching anime and you could not understand what the fuss was all about? Well, a first glance might give the feel that it is just a regular cartoon but many a times, the Japanese counterpart dealt with some deep, dark, and adult subjects. The nature of anime has always been more serious and although there were some anime for kids as well, most of the content was for a mature audience.

The world of anime has explored several genres and the Cyberpunk genre is one of the popular ones. As a subject that concerns some dystopian futuristic elements, it involves concepts of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies. They give importance to the visual aesthetic and primarily focus on the theme of ‘high tech and low life’. We can see a lot of Cyberpunk anime emerging every now and then but they cannot match up to the classics of 80’s and early 90’s. We have avoided popular anime in this genre like Ghost In The Shell, Akira and Bubblegum Crisis, because we wanted to cover a bit more underrated stuff. So let’s begin!

Honestly, the whole channel looks a bit sus.

Here is a way more in depth (and well written) video essay by STEVEM covering most of these Anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbE9LqPULZY

Same

Dark patterns are basically best practices at this point

Can you elaborate how and what actions will affect my feed? I don’t quite understand how this works without any login as I can’t vote or write comments. Also how do my subscriptions affect it if I’m logged in to an instance?

I do like it and would wish something like that as an app.

Definitely worth it even without the community patches!

I did heighten the phrasing for comedic purposes. I mean essayists like Lindsay Ellis ;)

I want to add that the box office income is simply one of the only objective metrics to compare the success of films.

But the original Ghost in the Shell is perfect! I just rewatched it this weekend and it still looks amazing! Why remake that?

The revolutionary part is -get this- to use the empty houses -you following?- to house the people who don’t have houses! Genius! We truly are living in the future!