I said a long time ago that Normies don't work for their entertainment. They sure as fuck don't do homework.
This is not how it's done.
Normies have a toleration for two prior movies or series before they quit in big numbers; this is known to the Hellmouth, which is why Trilogies are a thing and long-running franchises have soft resets between them as well as recaps/reintroductions and why there are few exceptions to this rule.
Feige could easily sort all of this continuity stuff in the opening minutes of this movie--Bond films have used the opening credits sequence to do this, and Jackson did this with the LOTR films with the loredump as the sequence--but he's turned out to be a collosal retard so no we have to witness this incompetence in action.
This applies to Tabletop.
As Macris noted recently, most Tabletop products are bought to be read and not played; they are not real gameplay products, but instead disguised Setting Bibles and Adaptation Pitches with extraneous game shit attached.
This is why, in addition to the Cargo Cult, we have the majority of buyers being Lore Nerds and Worldbuilding Wankers who inhabit a space without engaging with it at all and get mad at anyone--publishers and players alike--that do.
Cargo Cultists that play hate being constrained by Lore as it gets in the way of their autonomy. Real Players, being The Man In Command with agency, make the lore their bitch by assuming the roles of those able to shape it and then doing so.
The reality is that players only care about what happens in play. Everything else does not exist. This is why making players run all actors with agency in Braunstein forms is the hobby that works, why Cargo Cultists keep crying about shit games, and why publishing publishes disguised Setting Bibles because the real hobby does not need or want what they find viable commercially.
No one wants to do homework for entertainment. Feige's just the latest to figure this one out the hard way.
The former is Normie-acceptable in price and difficulty. The latter is pricy as fuck for Normies, but has the depth that most Normies will cap out on. You can go harder, but this will satisfy most of those wanting your bog-standard dungeon crawl kill-loot-powerup experience. The former is more PVP while the latter is PVE.
Yes, your Gloom/Frosthavens and your Descents and your Mordheims (etc.) are all out there. That's more than most Normies will tolerate; these are within Normiesphere expectations for what a game is and is expected to work. The only one I'd even bother with getting out is Orcs and the Gates, if you can find a copy because (again) Normiesphere-ready.
(I should get an affilate link for the amount of linking to Amazon that I do.)
Different costums. Different set dressing. Exact same story, BEAT FOR BEAT.
Yet they will tell you that these are three separate genres. That can only one of two things; either those specific genres are fake, or the very concept of "genre" is nothing more than a product label the same that you put books separate from shoes separate from toothpaste.
What this is, consistently, is a Drama. That's the substance--the narrative structure--that defines what a story is; too many professionals and wanna-bees mean "product category" when they say "genre" and that's how publishers, distributors, developers--all the business types--see this topic, and they always have.
Too many creatives--such as John Truby--confuse "product label" with "narrative structure" when they say "genre"; if you doubt this, get your library card out and go read Truby's book on Genre.
We see how fake "genre" is again with Appendix N, where Adventure Fiction is split between two equally fake genres: "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction".
"Horror" is also a fake genre.
If they are not real, what are they? The lead in Kristen McTiernan's latest interview makes this plain: Audience Expectation Templates-cum-Product Categories.
And in Tabletop, we have two well-known Brands that prove how fake genre is: TORG and RIFTS. (There are others, but these are go-to.)
It's all the same thing. For us, it's all Fantastic Adventure. That's what we do; the rest is just varations of costumes and set dressing, as the substance--the strucutre--is always exactly the same.
Which is why well over 99% of all Tabletop products can't justify their existence, are surplus to requirements, and and thus have no right to exist and must be abolished.
Not just Vidya. Tabletop too is like this. They just lie about it.
The reason is the same as it ever was: LLMs are such a massive advantage that you AUTOMATICALLY lose against someone using it because they can ship more product faster, find and fix issues sooner, and do so with less human talent.
Retards and hobbyists eschew competitive advantages, and end-users show via Revealed Preferences that they don't care about anything but the results. In media where speed of output is directly and immensely rewarded with user and customer loyalty and thus revenue--Vidya, Tabletop, Novels, Comics, etc.--you are going to see the adopters win and the holdouts lose over time, and sooner than later.
This is why Wizards of the Coast flat-out lied to the audience. They know what it takes, so they're going to do it and then lie about it until the stupidity burns off. Every other would-be competitors is going to do the same thing because that is what the commercial pressure will force them to do to stay in the game; holdouts get pushed out.
What will have to happen for a lot of people is to admit that they are really hobbyists; it is okay to be a hobbyist. Doing it for love of the game, and setting prices to just cover costs, is fine. Long-time readers know that I've said so for years, pointing to Basic Fantasy as the model proving this to be true.
If you want to be a commercial operation, you are going to use LLMs. This is no longer negotiable.
It's okay not be a commercial operation. It's okay to be a hobbyist doing this for fun. It's okay to just cover your costs so publishing isn't costing you money. This is your way out, holdouts: surrender your pretentions of commercial viability and return to hobbyist status. Otherwise WOTC crushes you, and the Clubhouse will not open for you.
Jon Del Arroz at Fandom Pulse reports on Tabletop news.
TLDR: Current Edition is for wankers, Daggerheart is for bigger wankers, and Acquisitions decided to side with the biggest loser.
Wizards of the Coast continues their pivot of the company into a Lifestyle Brand company, and all of these retards think they can do the same thing so they do it faker and gayer.
It's all going to fail for the same reason that everyone that isn't The Only Game That Matters fails: there can be only one!
The same that happens to the vast majority of Tabletop product has already happened to Daggerheart: sold more than played. Why? Because the friction increase from defecting from the dominant Network Effect means YOU DON'T GET PLAYED!
They want to play the game- the one they already know. They will not waste time not playing when they could be playing; that is what Network Effect dominance looks like, and it is why everyone loses to D&D and has lost for 50+ years.
Revealed Preferences are Revealed; whenever they run into that friction, after having learned D&D, they bounce EVERY SINGLE TIME!
This is why Daggerheart is a Fantasy Heartbreaker. This is why the only serious "competition" has been clones of The Only Game That Matters and those few who got lucky with a First Mover advantage (that turned out to be irrelevant).
These people are narcissists, and narcissism leads to stupidity.
No one will play Not-D&D because some retards on screen pretend to do so anymore than they play D&D now.
They may enjoy the fake show, and collect books, but they will never play. They are not us; they are not gamers- and they never will be.
WOTC gets this, which is why the counter is as soft as it is; they only need to be as good as to beat them.
Meanwhile, the Clubhouse carries on doing the real game because Jon is right: this is a hobby where being a commercial pursuit is stupid.
Remember what Arch did yesterday? Hilary Lane comes in for the layup.
The reality is that Public Relations professionals--the secularlization of ancient cult indoctrination techniques--knew this over a century ago; again, read Propaganda by Edward Bernays and Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann (they're the two founders of Public Relations, the category that holds Advertising and Marketing as jobs).
Pay attention to her usage of a woman's perception of Korean men being warped by K-Dramas as an example. This is how Public Relations techniques can create an illusion of How Things Work, and if the systems of everyday life don't match up to the illusion then that disparity becomes the liminal space wherein weaponized resentment becomes the festering wound from which Death Cult political action roots itself.
Yes, this is how Hannah the Post-Wall Heifer gets radicalized (an irreversible process, like Chaos Corruption) into voting for Death Cult people and policies so long as they can hold out believable promises to guarantee that Hannah gets a state-mandated K-Drama Korean man issued to her for her enjoyment.
Hilary brings the receipts. She shows the troon in Minnesota justifying child access to porn (specifically child porn) as being necessary and proper for the cultivation of troon identity. Talk about giving away the game.
Watch it. If you are an honest man, you will see that she is indeed right- and the tell is that all the right people are furious with her.
This is becoming more than just about porn-addled shitlibs Hannahs.
Late last weekend, Jon Del Arroz cut this video on the end of Rise of the Merlin.
Near the end he makes plain the same thing that Professor DM did with regard to his YT channel: if you are not talking about The Dominant Thing YOU DO NOT MATTER!
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (i.e. SEARCH ITSELF) deliberately tanks whatever is not the dominant thing in a niche; this is a Second Order Network Effect because what is happening is that one technology utterly dependent upon Network Effects exerts its power over a lesser (and yes, Trek is lesser than Social Media in itself) Network by culling all discussion within its network of anything but The Thing On Top within that niche.
This is before any deliberate manipulation. The technology, by its nature, does this.
You can't blame Elon, Dorsey, the lizardman at Meta, the Illuminati, or whatever for this. This is entirely on the Nomries themselves. What the technology did is give real power in real time to the Revealed Preferences of the anonymized mass of Normies, Tourists, and Casutals that dominate all niches within the global culture industry.
You are seeing, in real time, just how difficult it is to fight against an undesirable position when Network Effects are so strong a factor in How Society Works.
No, you can't Thousand True Fans your way out of this; mass media, by its nature, cannot be splintered down to such small silos that you can have that be a viable option and yet maintain the mass media cultural institutions- nevermind seize control of them.
What this means is that a lot of discourse about the corpo-controlled mass media brands and their Network Effects is 100% wrong.
Paramount gave no fucks about JDA's book. Paramount brought out the big guns against Axanar, and Paramount is dog-fucking Seth MacFarlane over The Orville. The Revealed Preferences are the tell. Books DO NOT MATTER. Comics DO NOT MATTER. Film, Television, and Streaming matter.
We see this repeated in Tabletop. WOTC ignores most of Tabletop because Not-D&D DOES NOT MATTER. Games Workshop only cares about minis (still, for now, the cornerstone of their business model) and tie-in mass media (i.e. videos and Vidya). Not-40K? DOES NOT MATTER. Not-Fantasy? DOES NOT MATTER.
Normies, et. al.--i.e. THE AUDIENCE YOU'RE AFTER--will not, even if God Himself said so, turn away from the Brand until it is so disgusting and repgnant that it triggers a critical mass of them all at once; then something equally ruinous (for us) happens- they switch off THE ENTIRE CATEGORY permanently, barring successful rehabilitation attempts (rare, expensive, but possible), and nothing will convince them otherwise- and no, you're not going to rehabilitate it.
Network Effects are the strongest Walled Garden system that there is. They reinforce Brand Loyalty by making the friction for defection so high as to be ruinous for Normies to do so, until it is preferable to amputate that cultural element entirely than suffer futher.
If you want to win, you have to be seen by the people you're fighting over. Like it or not, "Complain about Brand, then offer The Same But Different alternative actually fucking works and moves the needle. No one would care about the Bros if we didn't talk about D&D. No one cares about what Josh Strife Hayes says if he didn't talk about World of Warcraft. You get the idea.
You are not fighting this war as an equal. You are waging an insurgency. Your job, right now, is to generate and sustain support by the population. You cannot do that outside the Network, so you cannot succeed outside the Network; you have to learn how to leverage it to your advantage- the Bros successfully did this by changing the discourse about The Only Game That Matters such that YT grifters try so hard to either steal them for their own gain or to defame the Bros to the same end.
Therefore a different approach must be taken, one that well-meaning dissidents will balk at, but the tells from the corpos show--by their fears--what needs to be done.
Make your own Branded material. Corpos play dirty; you gotta play dirtier to win, and the tools they use--information disparties, global arbitrational arbitrage, etc.--are now at your command also.
Make that 40K fanfilm. Host it where GW's lawyers get told to pound sand. Hide your names behind global privacy rules. Learn how outlets like Caribbean Thule publish and distribute actually banned books and shamelessly copy their methods; this includes their finances. Make that Trek series; host it where takedown requests get routed to /dev/null. Make a 40K rulebook that isn't shit, share the PDF freely and include a POD-friendly version so folks can run off their own copies at-cost via unlisted Lulu uploads (or something like it). You get the idea; this is Samizdat Territory, so act like it.
Then promote the hell out of it; show off your hardcopies on your socials. Screen it at cons; have QR codes on hand for folks to access it online. Get folks to donate to Uncle Gene's Better Space Literature Society and be surprised (LOL) at getting your own copy of The Trek Show That Paramount Won't Make arrive in a 20 disc BD boxed set a month or so later.
"But that's-"
No one cares. Normies run off vibes; corpos went hard after Axanar because it has better Trek vibes than anything official so the Normies embraced it as legit. That is what must be done; make things with superior vibes and shove it into their faces. Trek, Star Wars, D&D, 40K- you name it, it can be done. Now YOU control the Netwok Effect, and that vast mass media audience will default to listening to YOU.
That's what the enemy understands--go read Edward Bernays; this has been in the open for over 100 years--and it's time to face that these are the rules of the game.
Sunday saw Jeffro go on with the Superversive crew.
Winning Secrets is going to be a world-shaking book, first in Tabletop and then--because Tabletop exercises stupidly-outsized cultural influence globally via Dungeons & Dragons--into other culture-shaping media, where it is not out of line to conceive of Jeffro being a hidden pillar in the future culture to come by the end of the century as Gygax and Arneson was for the 20th (and preserved that of the 19th via Appendix N).
This not being a Gaming show, we get to see Jeffro talk about the intellectual and spiritual side of the hobby.
You want the other side of the matter? You'll get it here.
Last weekend, Iassc Young explained again why the Critical Drinkers, Geeks & Gamers, Doomcocks, etc. are worse than useless.
To be clear, I am well past the point of arguing YouTube critics should stop doing what they’re doing. It’s weak moral scolding that also sucks oxygen out of the room for independent creation. Also, the opportunity for boycotting Hollywood has long passed—had it ever been real to… https://t.co/cusUgYokaZpic.twitter.com/Hl8wTZzuVo
You can't beat one from the outside, so you have to fight from within it; you also can't offer non-Brand alternatives so long as the Brand that generates the effect is active and functional.
Only Alt-Trek (e.g. The Orville and fanfilms & Old Trek (past series) threatens Current Trek.
Only Alt-D&D and Old D&D threatens Current D&D.
Only Alt-WOW (private servers) and Old D&D (Classic) threatens Current WOW.
The only one who's figured out how to make it work at all is Jon Del Arroz. He pitches in-category alternatives after catching attention by leveraging the Network Effect of a Brand Cult to get eyeballs and use that dissatisfaction to pitch his indie substitution. The least you can do is copy that formula; complain about Brand, then offer alternative to Brand.
Hollywood demands Seedance 2.0 removal after AI Video goes viral.
The Motion Picture Association issued a takedown demand to ByteDance after Seedance 2.0 generated a photorealistic Tom Cruise vs Brad Pitt fight scene from a short prompt.
One: No, it's not. Well over 80% of people watching these things will not notice that this is AI-generated; they will, at most, think of this as a SFX showcase to drum up software sales and business contracts.
Two: This is as bad as it will be. It only gets better from here, and the rumors of v3.0 on Chinese social media state that single-prompts go to 10 minutes at a time in length. Nine of those is a 90 minute movie, which remains the ideal length that exhibitors want for maximum revenue potential
Three: They will not be able to regulate or lawfare the threat away; this is a global issue, so the rules are actually defined by the party that cares least about IP law- and that means Russia, China, Southeast Asia, and the Stans between them. China, in particular, wipes its ass with US and European IP law. They already have no problem with hosting content that violates it; they will be glad to host and stream AI-generated content that does so.
As we are already seeing with prose/comics (an AI-generated LN already won awards) and Tabletop, we shall see with Vidya and film/TV: total disruption of the existing market and social State of Play. Go ahead, go to YouTube; there's a flood of AI-generate Star Wars fanfilm shorts, which will only get longer and better over the next few years, which itslef is a follow-on from (very formulatic) Human Fuck Yeah audiobook channels (increasingly with accompanying illustrations).
If I'm posting Doomcock, it's not to signal-boost him.
No, this is not about how bad this Fake Trek is anymore than how bad Mouse Wars is.
What I am going to put to you is that those of you thinking that the demolitions of these franchises (and others) by the Death Cult are coming to an end are going to be disappointed. No, not for the very obvious reasons--the replacements are acolytes of those departing, so it's only going to get worse--but for a reason that only David Stewart (and myself) have said: The Normies are not going to abandon the Brand.
Normies do not go out of their way for a damned thing, and Normies do not trust anything that lacks the (seeming of) institutional support. They'll keep coming back to these two Brands because they are The Ones That Matter; Your Favorite Not-Film/TV Thing does not matter because that support does not (seem) to exist.
This is the vain hope akin to all the D&D YouTubers thinking that Wizards of the Coast are fucked and Current Edition is dead.
You are not getting that Netflix deal. You are not going to be scouted by Hollywood (or its counterparts elsewhere). You are outside the Normiesphere, and because you are outside that bubble you do not exist.
The fight for the culture is fought in the Normiesphere. That's the battlefield, because the Normies are both the prize and the battlefield; they, as an aggregate, determine what the culture is by what they consume and demand. This is why AAA Gaming matters, while Indies (outside a few Noticed By The Dorito Pope) struggle to make headway, and so on.
It's why the Death Cult seized, and holds, the gates separating the Normiesphere from Everything Else.
How then to deal with it? I've told you this several times before; it applies to all cultural elements.
You want to fight? You have to do so FROM THE INSIDE!
This is why The Orville matters while Your Totally Original Take On The Premise, Really, You Mean It does not. The Orville has institutional support, and thus is within the Normiesphere; your Indie Darling does not, so it is not, so no one sees it and thus it has no impact on the culture.
It is not enough to do good work. It is not enough to get good word of mouth. You have to be seen by the Normies to matter. That means finding a way into the Normiesphere and hijacking the Network Effect to your advantage. Seth had good relations with FOX, so he got to do his Trek Fanfic Show. Vic Mignolia had some acting pals, some time, and some money so he could do his his own Trek Fanfic Show which got an audience and even Shatner's approval of Vic's performance as Kirk.
This is where we are now, like it or not, and the enemy knows it; that is why they are relentless about seizing and holding Brands and gatekeeping the Normiesphere- and it's why they are so relentless in pursing any they don't control (see the recent fuckery regarding 40K). They can only rule when they have Total Narrative Supremacy, so they have to have Total Media Control across the board- not even your hobbies and passtimes are exempt.
The good news is that it is possible, increasingly, to cut the corpos out of the loop entirely and hijack the Network Effect for ourselves. The release of generative AI means making your own Brand stuff is easier than ever, and it's not hard to do better than incompetent Death Cult corpo crap. Just take a look at how fans clown on the Mouse. Even the shitposters mocking it all are putting out better stuff than the Mouse, and because it has the Brand Normies will watch it.
Fight where the war is, not where you wish it was. Fight in the Normiesphere, inside the dominant Network, where the people that matter will see it and care about it, and seize its Effect for your own advantage.
It also means that creating outside the Normiesphere now must be done for its own sake, and as that realization hits expect a lot of people to GTFO and go where the action is.
But, in invokving Le Gamergate yet again, it reveals the fact that the original indeed succeeded and continues to succeed because the pushback continues to take scalps.
As President Trump--himself, at one time, called "The Gamergate President"--continues to sever the funding and power of the Death Cult (i.e. doing actual damage to them.
Again, we're the Off-Tank, and our job is to step in and take hits until the Main Tank can recover and resume the job) they take out their increasing frustration over their falling power and prestige (especially against Japanese, Korean, and Independent Western alternatives) on their not-so-captive audience.
We're going to see more of this as the incompetence of the enemy allows for us to take back what is our becasue their patrons are no longer covering up their failures and covering over their mistakes.
We interrupt the gaming talk because my sister took me to see Tron: Ares for my birthday.
Bottom Line Up Front: This is neither a good film nor a dumpster fire. It is Very Okay, but it is still not a clean film; the poz is there, just muted. Wait for cheap tickets or home video as this is the weakest Tron film yet. I did not like it. It tries to say things and flubs it. Forgetable film.
I am not unbiased. I saw the original Tron in 1982 in the theater. I saw Tron: Legacy in the theater (again, a present from my sister). I am a fan, and I love both of the prior films. I have heard all about how this particular film came to be and I am disappointed that no one other than Kevin Flynn (and thus no one but Jeff Bridges) would be returning.
I was prepared for a total dumpster fire, a Last Jedi treatment. This was what I expected. I did not get this. I did not get a dumpster fire.
That does not mean that I saw a good film.
Ares is a severely flawed film crippled by Hellmouth fuckery. Before I get to what was done okay let me talk about what is wrong:
The Girlboss: Yes, our female lead is a girlboss. She is not a Mary Sue; her narrative arc in this film is not She Was Great All Along, but she's driving this narrative bus and she presumes that what she does is correct and the plot contrives to make it so. She is the Protagonist, but she is not the Heroine. There is a secondary Girlboss (Mama Dillinger) and a Tertiary Girlboss (the Hero's Number 2).
The Designated Enemy As Antagonist: Yes, our primary antagonist is a straight White man who is a manbaby consumed by hubris.
The Harmless Eunuch: Yes, the girlboss's sidekick is a fat soy White guy.
The Multiculti Crew: Yes, the girlboss's crew are all Approved Minorities arranged in Progressive Stack status order; the Jeet is the most competent of the bunch, and even he needs to be tard-wrangled by the other chicks. Teritiary Girlboss's crew are all Neutered GoodWhites.
The Inability For The Title Character To Be In His Own Film: Not even in disguise, or in a flashback; there is no Tron in Tron: Ares.
You Can See The Wires: You don't have to have any formal training or practical experience in storytelling to see every single narrative beat well before it happens; this is the sort of plot the average 5 year old child can see coming. Thankfully the trailers this time don't give away the entire story, thus defeating the point of seeing the film entirely. This extends to what was not originally shot, but picked up in reshoots to mollify negative test audience reactions to the non-appearance of returning characters.
'Memberberries: Misaimed; Gen X is this IP's audience, but all the use of this is aimed at Gen Y, who would not remember the 1980s.
The Wrong Narrative Structure:Tron is a Boy's Own Adventure property; don't let the trappings fool you. Ares is not that.
You expect me to say that there were things done right, yes? Well, sure, but that's a short list. Better to say what was not done wrong-badly, but not wrong.
The Premise: Encom is in competition with a heretofore unknown Dillinger corporation, formed by the original Dillinger post-Tron (implied to be after the end scene where Young Kevin flies in to a rooftop landing at the end of the 1982 film), and somehow directly in competition post Legacy as they were not in 2010. They are both in the 3d Printing/AI space, with the former (following Flynn) being pro-social and the latter (following lore and character) being the usual Military Industrial Complex-aligned shitbags. They deliver on this premise and it drives the plot.
The Dream vs. The Nightmare: The original film, and Legacy, contrast the potential of the speculated technology vs. the obvious applications for Technocratic control.Not only is this theme maintained, the Girlboss (and her sister) are both Flynn acolytes and thus equally motivated idealistic dreamers. The new Dillinger is very much cast in his forefather's mold, resisting his mother's attempts at tempering his ego to make him play the long game (which said mother was winning when he took over), and this family curse theme is made explicit by the end.
Timely Themes: This film uses speculated advancements in 3D Printing to build on what was explicitly pointed out as potential in Legacy and how it would work in the real world. It does so poorly, as the rules of how things work on the grid--remember, these are meant to be simulations--does not translate to reality consistently.
Returning Themes: The original was a pure Boy's Adventure film. The second blended intergenerational reconciliation. This? This takes up the question of mortality that Legacy put into question, but runs with it in unexpected directions; the Girlboss and the Antagonist are both dealing with permanence and accepting mortality, with the former learning to accept the necessity of mortality by helping the Hero solve his problem with it.
He Fights For The Users: This is the catchphrase of Tron, said again in Legacy, and it guides the Hero--Ares--in his own change from Dillinger's warlord to Girlboss's protector; he stops fighting for his original User, and instead comes to fight for the User of the ENCOM system who is the proxy for the population at-large and the Progressive Drive To The Star Trek Utopia.
Characters Get What They Deserve: There are no subverted expectations; every character gets what the narrative tells you that they deserve. Mama Dillinger gets got as a result of family hubris, the company gets wrecked by the Feds due to corporate fuckery that makes the usual Shadowrun or Cyberpunk jobs that go sideways look tame, the lesser Girlbosses suffer for being Bad Bitches, while the Girlboss gets to fulfill her sister's mission and the Hero gets his freedom (and is implied to be seeking Sam and Quorra) after meeting not the original Kevin Flynn but a program based on him because Quorra is the only other digital lifeform to persist outside the Grid
Grid Segments Are As Expected: We only get brief views of the ENCOM, Dillinger, and OG Flynn (i.e. the archived original ENCOM Grid). They build on what Legacy did, but not by much, save for how they depict outside actors intervening into a Grid. (Watch for people to clip those things and upload them.)
Previous Elements Logically Interated Upon: Yes, there's a Lightcycle fight; it's done on Real World city streets, and how it's shown is framed to remind you of how past films depicted them when they were on the Grid. Yes, there are Disc Wars and all that stuff all reframed for being in the real world. No, it's not done consistently, even accounting for Movie Timekeeping.
The Conclusion Makes Sense: You're not left going "Wait, that's not what happens given what we've seen." All of it is showed to you before the fact, even if what they did to do that is poorly done--no, you don't quote Frankenstein for setting up a conclusion into a Journey of Self-Discovery--and yes they again set up an obvious follow up film. Maybe in another decade.
Efficient Use Of RunTime: While you're watching the opening credits, you're being set up on the Premise so you hit the ground running and can Get On With It. There were bits that dragged, but only bits, and they used the obvious presence of omnipresent surveilance to justify brisk pacing by showing how fast opposing characters can catch on to what their enemies are doing.
"But the movie will bomb!"
Tron bombed. Legacy bombed. Ares bombing is, sadly, EXPECTED.
That means bombing doesn't mean shit. This series is a Cult Classic and built itself up on Home Video and Special Screenings; Ares is obviously a weak film, and it is obviously originally another film wearing this IP as a skinsuit. That said, they did put in Minimal Viable Work required to make it fit into the franchise. The Girlboss could not succeed without men to save her ass, and her mission was not her own- it was her sister's who was a massive Kevin Flynn fangirl (and don't tell me that's unbelievable; such women exist) that believed in his vision and took Girlboss along with her until she died. The Hero could not succeed on his own; he needed to encounter real people other than his original User to be able to think contrary to his programming at all, and thus see the value in saving the Girlboss. Only together could that happen, and it was not at all a forced romance.
Should you see this film? Eventually. I wouldn't have seen it if my sister didn't get tickets, instead waiting to watch it after Captain Harlock delivered a copy to me or just string clips together when I get bored, as this is not Must See Cinema. It is not Oscar Bait. It is not a World-Historical Work. It is a Very Okay movie, a mediocre mess of media, that you should not buy unless it's dirt-cheap or used. There is no urgency here.
A Note On The Message: It's there, but muted; the Diverse ENCOM wins, embracing Shitlib Priors is the Winning Behavior, and (likely unintended on the production's part) using Frankenstein as the catalyst for our Hero's Heel-Face turn (coupled with Dillinger being Dillinger, i.e. a serious asshole that treats people like programs and programs like trash) feeds into the Shitlib Prior that Listening To Women Is How You Win and not is how you lose- and White Men are, at best, dangerous and reckless geniuses that overestimate their competency when not tard-wrangled. (Yes, including that book in this theme; remember who wrote it.)
This is still a Disney film. It is still going to be pozzed; it just isn't smearing your face in it- they dialed it back a lot, leaving only the villains to display Pozzed Priors so openly where it is part of why those characters lose (an implicit crticism of taking the mask off too soon). The result is a loud and flashy mediocrity that doesn't leave viewers wanting to buy copies when the Home Video releases drop.
Last week, Roll For Combat talked tie-in Tabletop products for IPs external to the hobby.
Derik (yes, that's how he spells his name; blame his parents) got it: if you can nail emulating the feel of the source material, you will find sufficient success.
The Gold Standard for this is the d6 System iteration of Star Wars, which had the unique benefit of being designed and published in time for the 10th anniversary of A New Hope in 1987 but also in the lull time between Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Phantom Menace (1999) where Lucasfilm worked with West End Games to help achieve that end. (Oh, and Stephan nailed why Star Wars is so hard to get right.)
Very few licensors even bothered to do half as much, and it shows in the product; this is why almost all of them are dogshit that deserve to be relegated to footnotes or articles that come down to "It could have been cool, but it wasn't because they screwed the pooch."
Stephan had the other big thing driving this: most such product is bought because of Pop Cult dynamics; they exist to be Objects Of Worship and Adoration, not to be even read- let alone played. (Again, d6 Star Wars was the exception that proved the rule.)
Then Mark comes in with the reality check: even the best tie-in game utterly pales compared to Pink Slime Fantasy, especially D&D.
Also, I am reminded that post-2000 Tabletop design is terrible. Most people have no fucking clue what they are doing; I did an article abou this at the Clubhouse- read it.
Conventional Play is aware that there are too many products chasing too few dollars and buyers.
What they are not accepting of yet is that "too many" is "More than a handful, after D&D". Most of Conventional Play is not commercially viable; they are delusional, but increasingly unable to maintain that delusion. I am now seeing that those able to break their delusion soon will be able to downshift to a self-financing hobby successfully, using crowdfunding to finance operations and offering premium quality books for backers while going POD thereafter to eliminate overhead. Everyone else will fold and shit down; no one will follow WOTC to Vidya.
Other Tabletop sectors are set to follow this trend as Network Effects play out there to the same end. Miniature wargaming is 40K, BattleTech, and Random Shit No One Plays; historicals are already well down that path, with Napoleonics still on top overall followed by World War 2 and Random Conflicts Most People Don't Care About. CCGs? Magic, maybe L5R, and Shit No One Cares About (which is sad, because Shadowfist is not a bad game). All of them are already showing signs of doing more or less the same thing: going self-funded hobby mode, defacto or de jure, and downscaling thereafter to conform to market realities. (CCGs would benefit greatly by selling the actual card graphics tied to a user-only print-at-home license, provided that they are printed on proper card stock.)
The realities of the market can't be ignored forever. Only The Only Game That Matters is truly viable; others can struggle to make a fragile niche, but they'll never break out of that struggling state and as soon as the one figure keeping it together is gone so is that other thing.
Not ever cultural artifact needs to be profitable to be worthwhile.
"Nazi" and "Fascist" are just weaponized words. Appeals to morality are just weaponized attacks using our decency against us. Yet, as the British discovered over the last weekend, they are not the majority that they pretend to be and when that becomes apparent to them they freak out and start reverting to type: instant appeals to hard power, if they control State organs, and outright criminality when they don't.
They didn't kill Kirk from a position of strength. They killed him as a stopgap move due to weakness; the reactions--including Trump agreeing to make Antifa a designated terrorist organization, something that has far-reaching consequences--are the revelation of this fact.
And Sam Hyde made it plain: either we get them now, or we're dead.
The first two or so minutes of Sam Hyde’s new video is probably the most powerful video content ever posted on this site. Not a single word of this superfluous. If you haven’t watched the full video, watch it now. pic.twitter.com/4dtKM5OWwT
We cannot co-exist. They have declared it so; there is no turning back now. There is only war. If our State power and majority status is not enough, then we'll be forced to do it ourselves the hard way. It won't be the first time.
Fortunately, the designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization is exactly that war mobilization.
This is, as is obvious upon looking at it, a Shadowrun hack. It is meant to be used in what the creator terms a sandbox, but regulars know here as the Real Game: Multiple independent factions, operating in conflict, acting under a Fog of War. This includes individuals, the faction of one.
Is this worth your time? Maybe; listen to the podcast and determine that for yourself, but I find it encouraging that someone has bothered to tackle the matter at all. Being one of the two cyberpunk properties in Tabletop that matter (along with R. Tal's Cyberpunk), it is obvious that Shadowrun is meant to be run properly as a Real Game but the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play held hegemony at the time (circa 1990) so it is not surprising in retrospect that both games got released in this lobotomized state.
The interesting question would be to examine this game's structure to see how to apply it to unfucking Cyberpunk.
Years ago, back during the Gamergate days, I said that the final line of defense for the enemy was the banking sector. I am now being proven right.
This is not just bitter bloated bitches screetching into their husbands' ears to add this or that to the Mastercard-10 List (the list that says "LOLno payment processors for you").
This is part of a larger pivot within the institutional positioning of the Death Cult and the Mammon Mob, seeing that they can't poz Eastern media before it eats their lunch, so they are reacting by choking off access to enemy offerings across the board as fast as they can.
Millenial Woes did a good essay about this shift in the enemy's consensus due to a combination of institutional dominance and social/economic incompetence. Go read it. It's generally uplifting, but not without caution; because the enemy has hard power, and it now feels (correctly) threatened, it is using that hard power as hard and fast as it can.
Cutting off the non-compliant from payment processors is what we're hearing about now. Flat-out banking access revocation is next, and remember that in many places in the West you cannot use cash to pay for things anymore so a loss of electronic banking access is tantamount to having your money stolen. Most people cannot withstand that pressure. The enemy knows this; they engineered the system specifically for this reason- and hate Crypto, as well as cash and workarounds like what Gab and Unauthorized use, accordingly.
It's scary. It's going to harm people. It's stil a sign that we are winning. Take heart, praise God, and pass the ammunition.
