I Still Don't Know What I'm Doing

Today’s August Adipose is the voyager!! She’s going to the stars ⭐️

Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)

Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)

Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.

A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.

Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

“The real truth is, I would perform my show and I would meet kids after and young girls would come up to me and they understood what I was expressing in that bit onstage way more than guys my own age. Way more. So if there was a bridge between us that I had to cross to write the movie [Eighth Grade], it was built to me by them. I felt understood by them before I presumed to understand them.”

Behold! The ONE thing that bothered to relate its female audience with positivity:

Source: June 1998 issue of Newtype, in a special supplement/booklet titled 「まるごと富野」 (“Marugoto Tomino” / “All About Tomino”)

Clip from the NHK documentary where Tomino says this AGAIN and continues on to say that if they wanted a movie he knew they had to hold on to this part of the fandom. https://x.com/tayuta0079/status/1577387893135384577

i do think that if you're someone for whom media represents a significant portion of your interests/hobbies, and especially if you're someone who is interested in creating any works of your own, you have an obligation to try and engage with works that give women focus and interiority. Yes, even you, the gay guy reading this who is about to try and explain to me why your intellectual disinterest in women is justified by your sexual disinterest in women.

He then showed me several apps that played music using scores.

I explained to him: 'Your cell phone always plays that Debussy score in exactly the same way. You, on the other hand, with your emotions and flaws, will never play the score the same way twice. You will not play the same way on a sunny day when you have just fallen in love as on a cloudy day when a relative has just died. Music is not just a score - you too are part of the music. Art includes you in the experience; your human imperfections are also part of the work.'"

*checks wiki*

I'm seeing some of the same posts with ccod and saying Darkness Man and Cody is the first Murph PC romance, and I've been truly baffled by it but I think I have figured out what happened.

New fans start watching with cloho and make posts about how torsewell is going to happen -> fans that have been around longer caution them that Murph doesn't like to do romance, but do not explain how we know that. (it's in an acoc adventuring party, you don't always cite your sources. You may not even remember the source just that he said it once) -> fans interpret "doesn't like to do romance" as "doesn't do romance and never has," and with the relatively unpopular and niche ship of gooeybear as the counterexample, people just believe that to be true and repeat it a lot.

But it's not true! Gooey and Theo have multiple scenes together where they flirt, and explicitly agree to have sex with each other. Theobald's epilogue in the finale is that after talking to the royal family he goes and finds Gooey to have sex. Theobald is an active participant in their relationship. It may be primarily a physical one, and not particularly a sweeping romance but it does happen.

Gerard and Elody have a beautiful relationship but it does not end in romantic reconciliation, but there are definitely romantic elements of their story and it is a primary focus for Gerard's character.