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

Mir geht es genauso. Ich krieg mittlerweile kleine Panik-Attacken beim Lemmy und Mastodon scrollen und werde da dieses Wochenende zumindest mal eine Pause einlegen. Die Zeitungen, Talk- und Newssendungen ertrage ich schon eine Weile nicht mehr.

Ich habe das Gefühl wir werden von Karrieregeilheit und Angst regiert. Aber was wir brauchen ist Ehrlichkeit und Menschlichkeit.

Auf der einen Seite kann ich einfach nicht mehr, auf der anderen hab ich das Gefühl, dass ich auch nicht nichts machen kann. Darum schreibe ich an einem Brief den ich diversen Politikern dann handgeschrieben zukommen lassen möchte. Das scheint mir der effektivste Weg da noch irgendwen zu erreichen.

Klar, ich erwarte jetzt nicht, dass die schmilzt sobald man heißes Wasser reinfüllt. Aber nachdem immer wieder Studien rauskommen, dass sich aus verschiedenen Plastiksorten dann doch Stoffe über Zeit rauslösen, wenn sie warm werden, hab ich da einfach kein Vertrauen mehr, auch wenn es angeblich sicher sein soll. Aber das darf gern jeder für sich entscheiden.

Bei der stört mich, dass alles aus Plastik ist und ich da heißes Wasser reingießen soll.

Not sure if it’s underrated, but Sunshine (2007) is really great!

That looks cool!

Found a Colorized Version on Internet Archive as well as the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack!

Das gleiche könnte man in Sachsen auch über Die Linke sagen. Aber ob das geschickter ist eine 5% Partei mehr drin zu haben statt einen großen Gegenpol mit der CDU zu haben, weiß ich nicht.

Threads (1984) by Mick Jackson

Not sure who recommended it to me, but IMDB says its about “[t]he effects of a nuclear holocaust on the working class city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.” Didn’t have a lot of motivation to seek it out, but it has great ratings. Top review says “Very few films have the ability to suck the life out of a viewer and leave them feeling drained and shaken in quite the same way that this does.” Yeah, so I’m not sure if I will ever be in the mood for that to be honest.

“Wie der Schmäh mit Überraschungen rennt”???

Second monitor and huge mousepad

Buhhhhh /s

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 🤷

Amazing movie poster!

Kann ich bestätigen, insbesondere die Computerspielebranche

Data hoarding