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Parmandur

Book-Friend
Who the hell is chasing you around, forcing you to have this discussion? You are the one who is making this a major thrust of this thread.

Are you seriously suggesting that Lord of the Rings and Star Wars have not peaked, years or decades ago?

Again, you are allowed to like something that is past its prime. But just liking something doesn't magically make it be on a creative or commercial upswing.
I agree with your point, but the works of Tolkien are in a sort of different category at this point than a lotmof "media properties": has Shakespeare peaked, or Homer...?

Someday Tolkien's stuff will be public domain, then we'll see some wild stuff. By the time Star Wars or Harry Potter are public domain, I doubt many will care that much.
 


Gradine

The Elephant in the Room (she/they)
Huh. I was going to say that it was unfair to Kanye. As far as I know, he's mentally ill and hasn't been funneling his money to hate causes.

I guess people are willing to excuse a lot when it comes to nerd books they like. YMMV.

Not convinced that’s what she’s done.
It is, and the only way to deny that is to willfully ignore the sheer over-encompassing weight that is her Twitter feed and every op-ed she's written in the past few years and at least one of her crappy crime novels; OR that you* generally agree that trans people shouldn't exist.

Both of which are a "you*" problem



*To be clear, this is a you in the generic sense, not in the directly personal sense
 

Again, you are allowed to like something that is past its prime. But just liking something doesn't magically make it be on a creative or commercial upswing.
There's a difference between an upswing and holding study (which has been my point), unlike Hitchhiker's guide things are still happening with the IP like it or not it is still bringing in massive amounts of money and despite what many would justifiably like to happen I don't see that changing anytime soon .
 

TheSword

Legend
It is, and the only way to deny that is to willfully ignore the sheer over-encompassing weight that is her Twitter feed and every op-ed she's written in the past few years and at least one of her crappy crime novels; OR that you* generally agree that trans people shouldn't exist.

Both of which are a "you*" problem



*To be clear, this is a you in the generic sense, not in the directly personal sense
I don’t see that she has ever said that trans people shouldn’t exist. It seems such an outrageous thing for anyone to say and I don’t believe she has ever said or indicated that. Presenting her view as that undermines everything else that sits alongside it.

Whatever you think about her as a person. She has some pretty specific concerns about single sex space spaces, domestic and sexual abuse and child protection. These issues resonate with many people… not frothing hatemongers but every day people. There will be solutions to all these challenges of course, but by turning her into public enemy number one, and subjecting her to the abuse she’s experienced, of course that’s hardening her position and because she’s a scrapper she comes back fighting in kind.

We should be persuading people to understand and solve the difficult social conflicts we need to in order to make it work. Instead I see a lot of people shutting those challenges down as transphobic, and de-platforming. Which is letting the extreme/alt-right have a field day.

i really think people are setting up the wrong enemy here. Cooler heads need to prevail in reasoned debate.
 


Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
There's a difference between an upswing and holding study (which has been my point)
It wasn't a point I understood you to be making.

In any case, "the franchise is still doing great, because the old cow is still giving some milk" isn't something particularly impressive, IMO. You can buy Big Trouble in Little China merchandise to purchase nowadays, but some Funko Pops are hardly the sign of a thriving IP.

More specifically, I suspect the days of "and now, here's all the Harry Potter books, reissued in house specific covers" (a real thing) are behind us. I would bet the illustrated editions when/if they finally finish them off, will mark the point that they park the series and just keep a single paperback and a single hardcover edition in print on each side of the Atlantic, much like other in-print franchises get. (Discworld, for instance, is in the process of a multi-year rebranding like this, which includes updating all the audiobooks with new recordings.)

If the TV series actually happens and is a big success, it'll likely goose the franchise again, but we'll see if either or both of those happen. I wouldn't expect Zaslav to still be at HBOMax Discovery Max by the time it does.
 
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Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
I don’t see that she has ever said that trans people shouldn’t exist. It seems such an outrageous thing for anyone to say and I don’t believe she has ever said or indicated that.
She amplifies and retweets people who have.

And, moreover, one of the richest humans to ever exist in the history of the world spends most of her time nowadays mocking and harassing a population of people twice as likely to kill themselves as the average person, who are also massively more likely to be physically or sexually assaulted or murdered.

There are better ways to spend your time than defending someone who sits in a literal castle deciding she can behave however she likes, because she's decided that she's the real victim in a deeply unequal power relationship.
 

Gradine

The Elephant in the Room (she/they)
I don't have the inclination to waste my time and energy on transphobes, but for the rest of the home audience

"Concerns about single sex spaces" is code for "Trans women (it's always trans women specifically) are male perverts and sex criminals who: <pick a choice below>"
(a) Force their kinks on others
(b) Prey on women and children
(c) Seek some advantage over women
or (d) Whatever combination of the above or anything else they can make up to back up their point
The thing about transphobes is that they don't have any real coherent philosophy beyond "trans = bad" and so they'll make up whatever imagined fears they think will work on susceptible people. None of the above is real, by the way. Neither is any of the things they make up about regret/desistance (Regret/Detransition rates are extremely low and more often than not based on societal pressure and discrimination than anything) Not a single peer-reviewed study backs up anything other than the overwhelmingly positive impacts of transition.

Other nonsense code words to look out for:
"Male pattern violence"
"Socialized male"
"Transwoman"
"TRA/TIM"

All of these are nonsense at best and slurs at worst.

Oh and on the "eradicate trans people" most people aren't going to come right out at say it (except for the neo-nazis who have, of course, absolutely been invited to march/protest with transphobic speakers), they'll say things like "ideally we limit the number of trans people" or "trans people are a problem in a sane world" or "we need to eliminate trans ideology" which are all real quotes from the people JK Rowling has platformed and supported, and are also just roundabout ways to get to the same goal which is no trans people existing. The only real difference is how they want to achieve that goal: forced detransition or death.

Unfortunately, for a great many trans people, that's a distinction without a difference.
 

Gradine

The Elephant in the Room (she/they)
Like keep your books or whatever; if I couldn't fully separate the product from the people who make it I certainly wouldn't be posting on this Dungeons & Dragons website, but let's not fully deny reality in order to defend somebody who needs absolutely no defending, not the least of which because they live in a frakking castle
 


Gradine

The Elephant in the Room (she/they)
Also, and not to put too fine a point on it, but for a group of people who fell in love with a property that told its protagonist (and thus, vicariously, its reader) that they would need to choose between what is right and what is easy, when confronted with that choice in the real world with actual consequences for real people some of y'all couldn't slam that Easy button fast enough.
 





It wasn't a point I understood you to be making.

In any case, "the franchise is still doing great, because the old cow is still giving some milk" isn't something particularly impressive, IMO. You can buy Big Trouble in Little China merchandise to purchase nowadays, but some Funko Pops are hardly the sign of a thriving IP.
Well considering how you fee l,i doubt anything will impress you about the ip ;)

When Legacy launches on the switch later this year, I expect it to make money then there will be Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions when it releases (maybe later this year) I expect it to have the same launch as Legacy had: record breaking, twitch records etc. with her comments being a "by the way" in various articles just like there were when Legacy launched.
 

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
Well considering how you fee l,i doubt anything will impress you about the ip ;)
I haven't said anything about how I feel about the IP itself. I am just objecting to the weird notion that Harry Potter (or the works of Shakespeare or Homer) is anywhere near its peak, creatively or culturally. It's just ... not.

Now, it's possible to claw back into relevancy. Lord of the Rings did it with the Peter Jackson movies. Dungeons & Dragons did it with third and especially fifth edition. Star Trek is doing a good job of it currently.

But one has to acknowledge that, in the mid-1980s and 1990s, Lord of the Rings was no longer the buzzy fantasy series everyone cared about. In the late 1990s, plenty of people assumed that D&D was going to go out of print and die. And the Star Trek series has effectively died more times than Spock has.

Today, Gen Z kids snicker at Millennials for all knowing their Harry Potter house and view it as cringeworthy that they think it's worth inserting those references into their online dating profiles. The IP is demonstrably less cool and popular than it was when it was omnipresent and dominated the cultural conversation.

In each of those periods, there were still die-hard fans. But their existence didn't mean that the IPs were anywhere near as relevant or successful as they were at their peak.

None of this is a value judgement. It's just business.
 

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