#investment franchise

[yujateaandpi]

Thank you to @somerandomdudelmao for giving us PEAK heart wrenching storytelling this year

[mementomoriwithacherryontop]

Thoughtful and heartfelt article written by Lacy Baugher about the cancellation of Dead Boy Detectives, and why the decision just doesn’t make sense for Netflix.

I could literally quote the whole thing. Instead, I’ll leave you with these three (lengthy) quotes and encourage you to read the article in its entirety. And you totally should. It’s worth the read.

Quotes Below:

“On paper, the Dead Boy Detectives has all the ingredients to succeed. Its cast is charming; its vibes are fun and accessible. It features a genuine connection to an established and successful genre property, but not one so deep that new viewers would find themselves overwhelmed by lore. Perhaps most importantly, it has so, so much heart.”

“The pieces were in place for the series to run multiple seasons with rich character dynamics between the core quartet and a template that allowed for all sorts of adventures for the living and the dead. If this had been a show introduced during the heyday of The CW, it probably would have run for the better part of a decade. Alas, that's almost never a possibility in today's streaming landscape. Even the most successful series tend to come with a built-in expiration date. (Five years, max.)

Netflix has something of a history when it comes to cutting promising genre shows off at the knees. In recent years it has unceremoniously dumped all sorts of series, from fantasy (Shadow and Bone, Warrior Nun), and supernatural (Lockwood and Co., First Kill, The Midnight Club) to sci-fi (The OA, 1899). Dead Boy Detectives is certainly joining a good company. But the fact that its main characters were part of the same universe as The Sandman makes the show's cancellation even more galling. What streamer doesn't want a franchise to call its own? The Sandman is still one of the most popular comic series ever, and Netflix is currently gearing up to drop the second season of its successful TV adaptation.”

“That Dead Boy Detectives wasn't given more time to build an audience — or a bigger promotional budget to let viewers know of its existence — feels particularly criminal because Sandman's second season would have almost certainly given the drama a needed awareness boost.”

[yuri-ambassador]

Cw blood

She is kinda cute…

[iam93percentstardust]

one of the things that really bothers me about modern franchises, and in particular over the last 5 years or so, is their refusal to commit. what i mean here when i say this is that it's not uncommon for a major franchise to make a decision, whether about the plot or the characters, that should have had huge, world-changing consequences... and then just never address that again or worse, immediately go back and undo it. and i'm gonna pick on star wars and the mcu here because those are the two big franchises i'm into at the moment (and i think they're kind of the worst at this), but i don't want you to walk away from this thinking that this is solely a disney thing. i've seen this happen with game of thrones and supernatural and plenty of other non-disney franchises. spoilers ahead, you've been warned:

in ant-man & the wasp quantumania, scott and hope make the life-altering decision to stay behind in the quantum realm and defeat kang instead of going through the portal to return to their world. this should have been a huge meta decision for the mcu, and when i first saw it in theaters, my immediate thought was wow, what is this going to mean for the mcu going forward? are we going to get a movie/miniseries about scott and hope helping to rebuild the quantum realm? how are cassie, janet, and hank going to react to the losses of their loved ones (in some cases, for the second time)? is cassie going to become the "first" young avenger because she has to take her father's place among the team lineup (and i only say first because as of this moment, none of the other young avengers introduced to the franchise are official avengers yet)? except nope, because less than 2 minutes later, cassie had fixed the portal that had broken way back at the beginning of the movie and brought scott and hope back.

and it felt like such a cheat. i was so disappointed in that theater, not as someone who was invested in these characters on a personal level (because yay, cassie gets her dad back!), but as someone who has spent years investing themselves in the story of the mcu. what was the point of wasting screentime on scott and hope accepting their new lives in the quantum realm if it was just going to immediately be undone? the entire scene could have been cut to scott and hope making it back bare seconds before the portal closed and it would have had the same emotional impact. there was nothing added by making scott and hope (and us) think that there was no way back only to rip the rug out from under us and go "gotcha! you really thought we were gonna give this movie a sad ending? haha! you're so dumb!"

and this isn't the first time the mcu has done this. one of the biggest complaints about endgame was the decision to set it five years in the future with no consideration for how that would actually change the setting of the mcu. characters were brought back to the exact place they disappeared from with no consideration for how things might have changed in the interim five years (like planes that weren't in the air anymore, buildings no longer standing, even just something as simple as a chair being unoccupied). and then the mcu didn't even really have the courage to address how this would have shaped the world other than a few jokes and making the bad guys in the falcon and the winter soldier people who cared about how the world had screwed them over during the blip.

and things like this happen over and over and over again. the accords are put into place in civil war, but by the time we get to she-hulk, they're gone with no explanation because, as best as i can tell, the writers didn't want to have to deal with the worldbuilding that went into the accords. gamora is killed in infinity war, but heaven forbid quill not have an emotional investment in a film he appears for maybe 10 minutes in so now she's back in endgame. steve got to go live in the past with his ex-girlfriend (which is in itself a refusal to commit after the mcu both gave her a different husband and had the woman herself tell him to move on) but we need to establish that messing with timelines is bad because that's what the entire next phase hinges on so actually his ending was predestined and it's only everyone else who can't change time. whoever took this entire town and also wanda hostage and forced them to live out a sitcom fantasy is bad and needs to be stopped but wait, it's actually wanda and she can't be the bad guy yet, we need her for doctor strange 2, so actually everyone's going to defend her now and say that no one else could ever possibly understand her grief. thor has decided to accept responsibility as king of asgard, but we can't use him for any more movies if he's stuck in asgard, so actually he's decided to pass it on to someone whose entire leadership capability is developed offscreen. i could list more examples but this is making me angry, so let's move on to star wars instead.

with star wars, i look at first the oft-quoted meme, "somehow palpatine has returned." yeah, i shouldn't really need to go into detail on how that counts as a refusal to commit but. the last jedi was a study in how johnson refused to commit to anything that abrams had laid down in the force awakens, but rise of skywalker was almost like abrams had looked at the franchise and said "screw you for taking it away from me, i'm going to come up with the most bullshit stuff just to spite you for doing that in the first place. and i'm going to start by undoing the most important plot point of the first trilogy: the emperor dies." and yeah, disney's kind of tried to salvage this by dropping hints into the bad batch and the mandalorian about cloning, but that only really works if you're watching the franchise chronologically and not considering that both of those series came out after rise of skywalker.

and then there's the mandalorian, my sweet summer child, who is, in my opinion, the worst at backtracking their plot points. i'm not entirely convinced that any of the higher ups for this show really knew what they were doing when they started working on it and i'm not convinced that they know what they're doing now. yeah, there's the tie-in to the last season of clone wars, but the mandalorian has managed to walk back pretty much every single major plot point it's had. din is this legendary warrior who can't be beat, but no one will watch this show if he defeats everyone too early, so he's constantly getting beat up (tbf, sometimes some of the fights he loses makes sense like the krayt dragon and the mudhorn, but a lot of them don't. at all). moff gideon is dead, no wait no he's not, now he's imprisoned, no wait no he's not, now he's definitely dead, you can totally believe us this time guys. grogu can use the force and must be placed with the jedi, but wait, the only person still actively teaching the way of the jedi is luke and all of his students will be brutally murdered ten years from now, and we can't have that, everyone will be mad at us for killing off such a cute character and no one will buy baby yoda dolls (and also we have to set up luke's character degradation from hopeful, believes-in-love cinnamon roll to "i'm going to kill my nephew") so in between seasons let's have grogu decide to go back to din (and don't even get me started on how frustrating it is that a casual mandalorian watcher also had to watch book of boba fett to understand why grogu is back). din has the darksaber now which makes him king of mandalore, that's totally going to be important and what the entire series has been building up to, right? wrong! he might have spent the first two seasons making connections, learning about the world outside his sheltered upbringing, and demonstrating the various qualities that would make for a good leader, but the entire third season will be about din realizing that actually he's super unworthy and the darksaber should actually go to someone who... saw an animal in the water.

and it's really, really frustrating as a viewer! because how am i supposed to get invested in any of these plot decisions when they almost always get reversed? why should i care that mj and ned have forgotten peter when ant-man 3 has shown me that they'll remember him the next time they're all on screen together? why should i care that tech is dead when half of the last season of clone wars was about how echo was actually alive? if none of these decisions have any permanence, then where are the emotional stakes? why should i watch your movie if all you're going to tell me is that nothing matters?

[stupidhany]

I love this little meow meow!!!🥹🥹

Alt vers

[forecast0ctopus]

Sorry, it's really funny to me that we're watching your Star Trek obsession unfold. It's a great franchise. I love it, and ur artwork is great!

THANKS lmao it was inevitable……… i do think its funny that you say obsession though ive posted it Twice here like. you are not wrong but i think i managed to spare most of you by relegating my Thoughts to my close friends story

theres too much star trek media though i fear ive condemned myself

[edenminx]

Mark Hoffman what happened to u🤣🤣

[ganondoodle]

there are multiple posts about there being made a deal with .. illumination ... to make a ....zelda movie..... over on twitter and i tweeted about me not being happy about it and hoping its not a thing (given how successful the mario one was ..... well, its gained alot more probabillity) and that yes i am 100% sure it will be bad and it WILL impact how i feel about the franchise bc i do care about it and dont want it to be bad-

it blew up over night and people got extremely upset about my opinion that i posted on my account so much so they either started insulting me over it, calling the zelda fandom toxic and insane (bc apparently i am the CEO of zelda fandom on twitter and am also toxic and insane) or start 20+ reply threads arguing with people while not untagging me on any of them

idk why it keeps happening that my random opinion posts blow up over there but maybe i finally reached a following size where i am in immediate danger of my harmless personal opinions to get passed around like i have some sort of authority over reality and i need to be rectified for it, but man its getting exhausting

so, hey tumblr!! thanks for not treating me like that for the most part! here goes my actually unfiltered opinion twitter would not be able to handle

i absolutely HATE the idea of a zelda movie, and i think it CANNOT be good unless you somehow get hayao miyazaki to do what he wants with it but we all know that aint happening and i also hate the thought of having to wade through and endless amount of screenshots of it bc it will make me see it, yes this time i actually do have a seething hatred for it, can you imagine crisp rat link????? i took psychic damage just wrtiting that and no its not even worth to have it just to make fun of it bc this isnt a funney ye olden times CDI crap but a modern billion dollar movie thats inevitably gonna be seen by millions of people and i will have to live with the knowledge most people will think of that first when i dare even mention liking zelda, i cannot express the shame i would feel i wish i actually had authority over reality to stop it from happening aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[dkettchen]

me, watching onsta play yakuza: I don't get this whole old man yaoi thing

me, resuming my cobra kai watch: oh right, I have my own old man yaoi, I forgot 😅

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Me, praying to all the gods for some Saowon related tom fuckery to appear in the new Reckoning of Roku:

[swan2swan]

And I just fixed my little plot itch of "Dinosaur fights could NOT have been lucrative enough of a prospect for people to go all-in on them":

Exactly.

They're not.

But you start with Dinosaur Fights. A cruel fight between two creatures that have no right to be alive save for your money...and that's where you put the line. You have established that "dinosaur dogfighting" is bad and evil, and that it's much better to keep the dinosaurs alive for other things.

Which then justifies farming. And pet sales. And military use. Because now you've shown the world something terrible, and they have a baseline. As long as you don't cross that baseline (which also turns people toward it, because look at how forbidden!), you can get away with anything. And people who insist that this is "wrong" will now have to back down any time they complain about dinosaurs existing in the first place.

[scarlet-bee]

I don't particularly ship Luigi x Bowser, but I've seen so much fan art of it that my brain now registers it as a canon ship. I'll see it, and react the same way I would react to Mario x Peach art. Like, of course they're in love, they're Luigi and Bowser. That's just how it is.

[jinglyjangly]

Hollywood keeps making more and more live actions of games/animated stuff and it’s like… if they aren’t faithful to the original then it’s not made for the fans of said thing. So…then if they try to adapt it to be more “appealing” to a new crowd… well the problem is they can’t bring any new or fresh ideas because it’s established so its just regurgitated bland storytelling.

I’ve seen posts say they saw the pilot of fallout prime and it said “fallout fans need to keep an open mind and realize it’s an live action adaptation” and also with the producers saying it’s for casual fans… ehhh. I’m just expecting it’s going to be stale and boring. It just feels like it’s going to be an extra long advertisement to sell more garbage with vault boy on it.

[paristexaz]

Rocky I (1976) dir. John G. Avildsen

Rocky II (1979) dir. Sylvester Stallone

[t4tklonoa]

Learn to accept Learn to let dreams go

[federfleisch]

Fnaf is gonna be 10 in a few days.... can the passage of time stop