This is why I hate Twitter.
These people react to the frothing, screeching lunatics who come in both /pol/ and Tumblr refugees varieties. And act like anyone cares what their opinions are outside that hellsite.
Swear to God India and Uganda have the right idea.
When they pick through the rubble of this era, social media will be compared to the Romans use of lead water pipes.
Jesus that tweet is tone deaf. Does she think what Blizzard is doing is something new and fresh that the audience just isnât ready for?
mind blown.
Edit: Nevermind, after finding the real twitter comment she was talking about the new Loki show and not herself.
Baal you took that tweet out of context.
I didnât read it that way. She does have a point about todayâs entertainment media. We are getting to the point where people are getting afraid to try something new, fresh, or bold.
Everyone is getting offended by something. Social media is making it worse. As a writer myself, I understand that feeling. Iâve found myself looking at my work and wondering what I just wrote would be okay. Then I bring myself back and think that if they are offended by what I wrote, then they need to get a life.
Itâs gotten ridiculous.
Admittedly Iâm super ignorant on this subject, but wouldnât it be likely that investors just want to have guaranteed returns? Once something is seen as profitable, out come the sequels and knock-offs to milk that cow for all its worth. Taking a chance means risking losing money, and the people footing the bill donât want that.
That happens a lot. Just look at marketing and business throughout history. One brave soul invents a product and takes a chance. If it bombs, people ignore it. If it works, then others do their best to jump on the bandwagon. The fast food industry is a prime example and even WoW in a way.
See thatâs only as much of a problem as you let it be. I absolutely believe in doing your due diligence if youâre trying to lift heavy subject matter.
However if you find yourself threat modeling then youâre not creating art anymore imho. Threat modeling is an important part of my work. Because we live in a very litigious society and even an observation as seemingly harmless as âproperty in walking distance of a synagogueâ would put a massive target on my back.
Bur itâs not really a part of my artistic methods. Because I think fundamentally art has to be something foremost for you, and if it finds an audience great. Theyâll enjoy it and interpret in ways you never even conceived of anyway. And no matter what you do, someone is going to stare at it until they get mad.
Again that doesnât mean you donât do your research or throw all caution to the wind. But yeah somethings always going to piss off some loser whoâs only hobby is media consumption. You canât be worried about that.
Sheâs referring things that she herself endured, câmon now
Nah itâs not that. Studios cancel shows all the time now if they donât have hit ratings.
Lovecraft Country was actually new, fresh, and bold, was nominated for almost TWO DOZEN awards, and it got canceled.
Netflix and Hulu and HBO cancel shows like their life depends on it.
None of it has to do with death threats, just corporate bad faith.
And the reproductions always suck
Compare Get Out (2017), a movie created because Jordan Peele got mad as hell after the director of the Emoji movie asked him to voice the poop emoji (this is literal fact, I am not making this up)
with Karen (2021), a movie created by the white Coke Daniels trying to imagine Black Horror
Yup, and theyâre failing, miserably
I try my best to not let it affect me at all. I write what i want to write as long as itâs not truly offensive. And yeah, I understand writing heavy subject matter. One of my recent books dealt heavily with PTSD, its effect on a young female soldier, and the reasons why itâs affecting her.
Thankfully, I have found an audience for my work. They enjoy what I write and I take great joy in entertaining them. As for angering a reader, thatâs happened already with one.
It was part of a scene and a single line from that same book referenced above. Looks completely innocent. Everyone else didnât have a problem with it at all, but this one woman was actually angry over it, confusing the hell out of me. What did I do? Ignore her. Itâs all you can do, really.
Itâs mainly my fantasy work that the couple times of threat modeling as reared its ugly head. I mean, there are Succubi and politically incorrect Imps involved here. Plus, trying to create interesting new cultures, so there have been a couple of times when I wonder if I went too far.
Speaking of going too far, my one reader (who reads everything before it goes to print) did point out to me that I had to know my audience. That same book from above used to have a bit of gallows humor. I took it out because I realized it was a little over the top for who was going to read it.
And Iâd say thatâs the only approach you can take. Knowing your audience can be a sort of impossible task because itâs an arbitrary collection of individuals. Whoâll obviously have different tastes and reactions.
I think you should only really engage with people acting in good faith who understand youâre merely trying to entertain here and if you fail it wasnât intentional. I seriously wonder about some people. If they get a subpar steak do they feel as if the chef meant to personally spite them?
I really should finish that series.
My issue was it just had so much happening that I kind of lost the plot. Like thereâs the ghost of a mad scientist and his victims and I go okay thatâs the story. But then thatâs sorted out and now thereâs like wizards and also like an Indiana Jones dungeon in the basement of a museum. Certainly captured a surreal nightmare logic but in a good and bad way.
just relying on some Lovecraft stories and invoking Black Horror/Postcolonial Horror
e.g. the Eternally Enslaved Indigenous Woman, held captive and hidden by the White Colonist only to be betrayed by the Black Man
e.g. Evil Jim Crow Doctor that tortured Black folks, using African Diasporic Magic to banish his Evil Spirit
etc
But there are also good and bad ways of handling a story or themes.
This is not a good way to handle genocide, suicide, or survivor stories (whether genocide survivor, abuse survivor, or SA allegory)
Ultimately, it is a business and awards means nothing if it can have the audience to be profitable. Of course constantly cancelling shows means their subscribers are less likely to stick around/give new shows a try which ultimately is its own problems.
It had high ratings, above many other platform-produced shows (that did get second seasons), and was nominated for almost two dozen awards lmao
Who knows, maybe they still thought that audience base was still not enough/risk to reward was still too high. We do live in a TV age where most shows donât seem to have much longevity. I think even the longest netflix series are at best 7-8 seasons long.
Supernatural ended last year after 15 seasons.
Even Arrowverse shows are somehow surviving, now for around a decade.
Platform-based shows are the only ones constantly being gutted.
Them, and cartoons. Disney has been axing cartoons every 2-3 years like clockwork, rarely giving more than 2 seasons.
Argument does hold no matter what metric youâre looking at. Lovecraft Country was successful, viewed, talked about, highly rated/reviewed, higher ratings than parallel shows, and had a loyal fanbase that was already doing fanfic and art after just one season.
See I got that. But I felt you might want to give that stuff room to breathe. It all happening in rapid succession didnât really give you time to dwell on anything.
âThatâs pretty interesting I wonder wha- okay moving along then I guessâ.
Agreed. Why I think social media is a bad format to discuss any of this is because it all comes hurtling in as one giant wave.
And when youâre looking at piles of correspondence, the craziest comments are going to stand out. We know well from these forums there are plenty of people with outright concerning opinions. Like seriously Iâve plenty of unkind things to say about Sylvanas but wanting her tortured to death by Arthas is an idea so gross Iâm disturbed people hold that opinion earnestly and itâs not just inflammatory nonsense.
So Golden getting defensive tracks. I donât know enough about her to gauge how self aware about her work she is. But I donât think Shakespeare would be in a mood to chat if your thoughtful insights came directly alongside purposefully hurtful, inane dribble.
And this is deeply problematic. Because it seems like Twitter, somehow, is the only way for the playerbase to have any interaction with the storytellers. And itâs not a platform that encourages long form discussion. Which is the only way meaningful criticism can be discussed imho.
So, weâre screwed, basically.
Eh.
Supernatural/Buffy/superhero shows/etc are all âmonster of the week/episodeâ shows, also dealing with complex mythos, yet rarely is this criticism given to them 
Itâs a choice of the person.
If youâre online and have a following over 1000 people, you will get death threats and harassment.
Period. Full stop. Unavoidable. Unescapable. Itâs the internet. There is no stopping it. There is no preventing it (except locking).
If youâre online you have to have a support network and learn how to correctly deal with such things via therapy or training.
See though I think it wasnât working as that, because most monster of the week shows go with monsters everyone already knows the rules to. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc. And if thereâs a twist to the expectations you can just announce that via exposition.
With undead intersex native person - like they were just a damn skeleton. But stabbing them works just fine, does it? Idk if I saw someone walk off being a skeleton I wouldnât even think to try that.
I kinda gotta know what the stakes and rules are here.
True. Man if only there was something connected directly to WoW. Maybe something specifically about its story, even. That was already heavily moderated and could facilitate long form critique.
Shame that doesnât exist. Guess itâll have to be Twitter, then.
Which was interesting cuz the show itself was an exercise in what is legible to whom.
The ceremonial magic and Enochian magic was legible to people familiar with Western Esoteric Tradition
The mambo drawing a blood barrier is legible to people familiar with African Diasporic Tradition
The idea of indigenous people knowing some ancient forgotten language is a common trope but also part of Native oral histories
The idea of curses needing to be drawn out is legible only to folks with familiarity with sympathetic magic
Ofc all these themes and more are familiar via other franchises using them, but there is a difference between familiarity via knowing and intimate familiarity.
I, having been an occultist for many years and âformallyâ trained in such, was yelling at the screen for most of Supernaturalâs 15 years.
Going back to WoW, Sylvanas jumping off icecrown because she sees no point in life and the aesthetics and vibe of Dazaralor and Bwonsamdi are intimate to me.
Thrall being a slave is familiar to everyone, but intimate to only peoples with specific histories.
Same with genocide.
Zovaal does not invoke familiarity beyond extremely basic themes that lack all depth.
I hear ya, but I do think if youâre dealing with less common mythology you really have to explain part of it. At least in regard to what parameters it is a threat, and how it can be survived/defeated. Otherwise youâre going to loose swaths of your audience.
For example if you had a vampire behave as Dracula does in the novel sans explanation youâre going to loose people. Because theyâre going to assume sunlight will kill them, which it wonât it if weâre going by book rules. To say nothing of the bewilderment it would cause to have the vampire cast a blue fireball, summoning a bunch of brigand tough guys to his aid.
Even with something as widely known as Dracula, the vast majority of people are familiar with more of a composite from various adaptations than they are with the literary character and his capabilities.
And per WoWâs awkward handling of themes, I really think it boils down to an disinterest in history and culture. Just like with Dracula I think most of this comes from tropes and adaptation rather than anyone bothering to check a primary source.
Take the whole Orc internment thing. Thatâs a very strange grab bag of a lot of histories. Even the word internment camp immediately brings to mind the treatment of Japanese Americans. Thrallâs whole story is most reminiscent of Moses and Spartacus, which invokes ancient slavery. But then thereâs parts like where Blackmoore forces a human woman to nurse Thrall. And no matter how you spin it a white woman essentially being dishonored by being forced to care for a different colored baby is going to conjure thoughts of American slavery.
And intentionally or not playing Mad Libs with atrocities is going to come off as stupid if not malicious.
Suffice to say if these creatives really are disinterested in the history and culture they implicitly and explicitly invoke, then maybe go write something else.
Yup.
I mean whatâs interesting here is that I would wager the Wow playerbase is as familiar with Baron Samedi as they are with Sauron, given characters like Dr. Facilier and American Horror Story Coven.
Hell, given how people responded to Bwonsamdi vs Zovaal, Iâd wager Baron Samedi is MORE visible than Sauron among the playerbase
And simultaneously we have the fact Bastionâs zone file is named Babylon Zone, with the Archon being a one to one copy pasta of one of the few surviving depictions of Ishtar.
So yes Blizzard took Ishtarâs appearance, slapped some wings on her (putting her in the genealogy of Zoroastrians-Hellenics-Christians-Muslims), slapped her into an Eden-Elysium zone with a DC Comics Silver City, then sprinkled some Catholic Theological/Cardinal/Heavenly Virtues on top, with some misapplied Buddhist theology.
I think your average player can in fact read and pick apart most of that
So I think blizzard doesnât give the playerbase enough credit and wrongly assumed familiarity when the generational moment has passed.
Iâll be honest, a good chunk of zovaal falling flat is a lot of the playerbase hasnât read LOTR and arenât part of the rewatch Tolkien movies annually gang, Iâd wager.