Cyberpunk Dwarf | Facebook - "My favorite "Star Trek was always woke" moment is in DS9 when Kira defends a nawtzee filing clerk as innocent of war crimes. Woke westerners would never try an old dying person for pushing papers during the.... Oh. Oh wait."
Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders
Starfleet Academy Defenders SAY Star Trek "Was Always This Way." My Response. - YouTube - "Star Trek Picard was a very nihilistic view of the future, which is what I believe that we've seen a lot these days is a lot of nihilism... Starfleet Academy opens up with a mother and son who were trying to steal food because there wasn't enough, which completely goes against the original idea of Star Trek where they had replicators so that there would not be a food shortage within the Federation... That is a reflection of modern-day progressivism or I would say the progressivism of 5 years ago. Perhaps we've seen trends in media recently where um concerns over toxic masculinity have just spread to all masculinity being toxic. So Starfleet Academy becomes a very feminized show because it was traditionally a franchise for men... that is a reflection of the modern-day progressivism that sees all masculinity as toxic... There isn't a lot of truth to these modern-day shows though, which is why I think a lot of people reject them. For example, with the whole body positivity thing in this show, Starfleet Academy, it doesn't make sense. This is a military academy. You need people to be at their peak physical strength. You can't have a lot of 5-ft tall women or people who are clearly out of shape in this military academy. You can't have people who are infantilized and treated like children in this military academy."
"Old Trek written by war vets. New Trek written by Disney adults"
Meme - "NEW "STAR TREK"
Starfleet Academy: 43% Avg. Popcornometer
Section 31: 16% Avg. Popcornometer
Strange New Worlds: 70% Avg. Popcornometer
Discovery: 34% Avg. Popcornometer
STAR TREK
The Next Generation: 90% Avg. Popcornometer
Voyager: 80% Avg. Popcornometer
Deep Space Nine: 89% Avg. Popcornometer
Enterprise: 80% Avg. Popcornometer"
Following Backlash, the New 'Star Trek' Series Falls Out of the Streaming Charts - "The first eleven days of life on our screens have been anything but quiet for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Following the January 15 debut of Episodes 1 and 2, the series was met with review bombing on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with its audience rating currently 43% — just under half the score awarded by critics (88%). Sadly, following the premiere of Episode 3, "Vitus Reflux," on January 22, things have gone from bad to worse for this seemingly ill-fated Star Trek series. At the time of writing, just three days after the premiere of Episode 3, Starfleet Academy has been ousted from the current Paramount+ streaming charts in the U.S. This is made even more damning when considering the lack of brand-new content providing competition for Starfleet Academy... Despite the backlash, critics have proven much more receptive to this new entry in one of TV's biggest franchises"
And the ratings are out. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiered to 2.1 million viewers, on par with Doctor Who Series 15's premiere, 3 million behind SNW S3's premiere, and 9 million behind Star Wars: The Acolyte (also, 500k viewers behind MrBeast's Beast Games) : r/trektalk - "With an estimated budget of $10 million per episode, that's Paramount spending about $5 per viewer per episode. Assuming viewership holds, with 4 episodes a month...that's them spending $20 a month to earn their monthly subscription fee of $13.99 from those viewers. They would have been better off remastering DS9."
"It's even worse cause if that's not new subs.the show effectively made them nothing"
Initial Data Shows ‘Starfleet Academy’ Performing “Well Ahead” Of Other Paramount+ Star Trek Series
Star Trek's Controversial New Spinoff Is More Popular Than Anyone Imagined
The media spin is amusing
When Everyone Is Different No One Is, Star Trek Proves It - "Who stands out from that group? Caleb, because he’s a human, and I am confident I can pronounce his first name. The rest are like the roster of an unsuccessful superhero team with names I can’t remember or say. I don’t know what most of these words are; it’s a bunch of newly invented letter configurations with no real meaning. It all runs together into one big blob of alphabet nothing...
Now here’s the cast of the original Star Trek series... Among that group, Spock stands out as unusual and exceptional, because he’s very different from the types of people we’re used to. It doesn’t diminish the others, who become extremely well fleshed-out characters through their personalities and actions. However, it does give Spock an unusual starting point. If I’d never watched Star Trek, I wouldn’t know how to pronounce Uhura, but I also don’t expect to be able to pronounce African names right off the bat. So that’s a good thing.
Let’s try a different Star Trek show. Here’s the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation... Who stands out in that group? Worf, because he’s a Klingon and that’s weird on a Federation starship. I know how to say “Worf!” without anyone telling me. Better still, it’s a fun word to say. Try it: “Worf!” Data also stands out because he’s a robot. He also has a four-letter name, and it’s made up of a word I already know. What’s going on with that Betazoid? She sounds interesting. Her last name is odd but simple and easy to remember. Would a half-Betazoid stand out if everyone with her on the ship was a half-something? No, no, she would not.
Let’s try Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. That Star Trek show takes place on a totally alien space station, which means if any Star Trek series has a good reason to have a really wild group of characters, it’s Deep Space Nine... Who stands out in that group? Now it’s getting more complex. But half the cast is still composed of straightforward human characters with straightforward human names, people I can understand without a 5-episode story arc to explain their superpowers... Deep Space Nine’s strange alien characters also have straightforward, simple names... Deep Space Nine managed the increased complexity of its cast’s origins and identity and then intentionally kept their names straightforward and simple. Then it gave the audience a lot of human characters mixed in with the aliens, so they had someone to easily identify with, without the need for extensive explanation
When you compare the cast of Starfleet Academy to the shows that came before it, you start to see the problem with the modern push to cram differences into everything. When all characters are a deviation, a subversion, or a novelty, difference isn’t contrast anymore; it’s the baseline. Classic Star Trek worked because difference was relative. Spock stood out because everyone else was human. Worf mattered because Klingons were rare. Data was compelling because he was the only android in the room. The audience had a stable “normal” to measure against, which made the outsiders meaningful. Identity had narrative weight because it created friction. In Starfleet Academy, there is no friction. When every character is defined primarily by how unusual they are, uniqueness collapses into sameness. The half-Klingon isn’t strange because there are multiple hybrids. The hologram isn’t unusual because the show already treats the artificial as routine. Nothing challenges the world because the world is already maximally diversified. Half the fun in classic Trek is in exploring the differences between people who are otherwise the same. Those characters weren’t defined by their identity, which gave them more room to grow into individuals with their own selves, defined by their actions rather than a bunch of made-up words. By defining your characters with diverse identities, this doesn’t create richness, it creates homogenization. Everyone occupies the same narrative lane: “I’m different, but I belong.” When that’s everyone’s story, it stops being a story and becomes wallpaper. Difference only matters when it’s rare enough to cost something. Without contrast, identity becomes aesthetic rather than dramatic. In trying to make everyone special, Starfleet Academy and most other modern shows doing the same thing prove that distinction requires limits. Without those limits, all differences blur into none."
Meme - NPC: "The ratings are fine, it's not made for you!"
Normal person: "I know"
Variety: "EXCLUSIVE: "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" will end with its upcoming second season. The show failed to find a significant audience, not ranking on Nielsen's Top 10 streaming viewership charts at any point during its 10-episode first season."
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to End With Season 2"
NPC: *upset*
Of course, the cope was amusing, with left wingers blaming "incels" for somehow managing to get it cancelled
RUMOR: Secret Hideout Deal Officially Dead as Paramount Cuts Ties with Alex Kurtzman - "The writing appeared on the wall months ago, but now, inside sources are saying Paramount has withdrawn the tentative deal offered to Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout, effectively ending the most controversial era in Star Trek history... Kurtzman’s tenure produced some of the franchise’s most divisive content. Discovery alienated longtime fans with radical departures from established canon. Picard drew criticism for its treatment of beloved characters. Section 31 became universally reviled despite an astronomical budget. Now Starfleet Academy appears to be the final nail in the coffin. Tachyon Pulse reported that “rumblings around the studio are that Starfleet Academy is beyond the disaster that fans were expecting.”... CBS insiders view everything Kurtzman produced as “non-canon” and set in an alternate universe. The studio plans to bring Star Trek production in-house, projecting costs at 25% of Secret Hideout’s budgets through improved efficiency and AI integration."
Fewer Than 40,000 People Watched Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - "his source told him the series has only been viewed 400,000 times. That’s 400,000 views in total for the entire series... If Mike’s numbers are correct, not only does it mean that Starfleet Academy is one of the most colossal failures in the history of streaming, it also means that most of the show’s defenders are bots. It means that the petition to resurrect the show is also fake, since it has 10,000 signatures. Unless you’re willing to believe 1/4 of all the people who watched the series actually found out a petition exists and then went through the trouble to sign it. It’s impossible to overstate just how terrible those numbers are. For comparison purposes, GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s rather small YouTube channel has done numerous videos on Star Trek. Our least-watched Star Trek video got more than 40,000 views. A video we did on what’s wrong with modern Star Trek got more than 250,000 views. Red Letter Media’s new video discussing old episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (in which they broke this news) has already gotten nearly 500,000 views, and it’s less than a day old. There were also similar reports of ratings disasters for the previous Star Trek release, the movie Star Trek: Section 31. And the franchise has already canceled nearly everything else it had going, probably because the ratings simply aren’t there. All of this calls into question why Alex Kurtzman, the man in charge of Star Trek, still has a job at Paramount. And it makes you wonder who might be behind all the fake bots and paid defenders out there, pumping up the show. Who’d benefit from that kind of fake support? Alex Kurtzman?"
Time to blame the small unrepresentative minority of incel chuds for getting it cancelled despite its immense popularity, and blaming clueless studio executives for listening to them (I've actually seen this cope in woke Star Trek groups)
Clearly, this is a fake leak and it's actually hugely popular, which is why it's being cancelled
Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "Doesn’t matter, it’s the least important detail in regards to how they butchered her character in the most banal ways possible. In the books, she’s an incredibly ancient, wise sorceress on a quest to rule over her own kingdom in Middle-Earth. She’s a fascinating, complex, powerful being with complicated motivations and a potentially checkered backstory. In the show, she’s a one-dimensional 20,000-year-old adolescent on a nonsensical petty Dollar Store Da Vinci Code revenge quest. Her only characterization is to repeat reductive stereotypes of women in media wherein women can only be powerful by being petulant, argumentative, and constantly subverting the low expectations of other men. It’s so fucking boring and stupid and poorly written and offensive it’s hard to believe."
"I had this pegged from Season 1, Episode 1. Why is every writers idea of a feminist someone who’s just mean for no reason? I didn’t even finish Season 1. What a disaster."
"In the book, she's considered one of the most esteemed and respected elves in Middle Earth. In the show, she's condescended to and belittled because "she's a womyn""
"It's like a misogynist's vision of what a modern feminist wants to see coupled with a person who only reads novels bought at a drug store's vision of what Tolkien should have been."
"It never ceases to amaze me that people claiming they to want to empower women manage to write women so one-dimensional and cringe. Galadriel is a powerful woman, whom you could write volumes of fascinating stories about... but they chose this."
"It's insane that they claim to be against gender inequalities but they think the best way to "improve" female characters is to make them bad ass, tough-guy, men. It's just lazy ass writing. Great and inspiring female characters are already in the world of Tolkien and only need their stories adapted to the screen, but instead let's make her a middle earth Rambo with the personality of a petulant child."
"It's extra infuriating because the exact same damn character was already portrayed as extremely powerful to the point of being revered by all of our heroes. She was a strong character without being aggressive or arrogant as a means of proving how tough she is. 10"
"It’s even more annoying because as far as I know the Elves didn’t have the kind of social structure where they treated female elves differently - certainly not to the extent that womanhood is treated in the show. It’s just using LOTR as a platform to tell some story about a woman who subverts gender norms and expectations. Galadriel was held in very high esteem and was a well respected sorceress, she didn’t need to prove herself by fighting in battles with a sword. If anything you could probably swap her out with Elrond in the show and take out all the super on the nose women empowerment material and the show would be better, even though Elrond also would not have needed to continually prove himself to his fellow Elves either."
"Great comment that accurately describes what Amazon just “doesn’t get” about lord of the rings. Strength doesn’t have to be only found in subverting gender roles. Instead, amplifying them can show that femininity does not equal weakness, and masculinity does not equal toxicity"
"I think this is because they already had a script before amazon got the filmrights to Tolkiens' works, and the writers were just ordered to rescript it slightly to make it Tolkien-themed. That's where this big disconnect comes from. Corporate Greed and the belief that branding is all you need, the hallmark of cheap franchise products"
"That’s the thing many that “love” this stuff in Hollywood/streaming services don’t realize… All of the iconic women in media in the past didn’t need these ridiculously stupid tropes to shove to the forefront. They just were iconic. Once they start pushing their identity it ruins everything. Anyone you know that have the qualities you admire, and recognize don’t start their day by being a label first. Everybody that’s written, and is great in the real world is a person that just so happens to be a certain type. Not the certain type pushed before their personality, and achievements."
Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "It never ceases to amaze me that people claiming they to want to empower women manage to write women so one-dimensional and cringe. Galadriel is a powerful woman, whom you could write volumes of fascinating stories about... but they chose this."
"And if you do not like the character you are considered a sexist."
" Y’all give them too much credit. I don’t think they even do it on purpose anymore, I think it’s just the only thing they know how to do. They do not know how to portray powerful women without the stereotypes."
"It’s funny because the people pushing it are women that hate men. Yet they write a “powerful” woman by just writing her like a male character lol"
Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "people always conflate tolkiens lack of female characters as misogyny. but people don’t consider how even though his execution of 3 different female characters (eowyn, galadriel, arwen) is done in a limited manner, it’s still done gracefully and offers diversity in characterization. rings of power characterization will make you realize what misogyny in writing really looks like"
"And those people are wrong too. Luthien plays the dominant role in saving Beren and stealing the silmaril, Idril saw thru Maeglin and planned ahead before anyone else before the fall of Gondolin, and Eowyn was the hero of the third book along with Sam. He always honored women characters but since the fellowship was all male that’s not good enough for some"
Amazon's $20 Million Cancellation Fee For Rings Of Power Revealed - "Amazon's initial deal was for a five-season run consisting of 50 episodes. If Amazon failed to stick to that plan, then they'd have to pay a kill fee of $20 million per season... One of the biggest questions is how to approach Rings of Power, which hasn't achieved the level of success expected from an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's seminal work... The first installment cost $465 million, not including marketing costs. Although costs have been reduced for the two more recent seasons, thanks to tax incentives and changing locations, the show has not been a major streaming breakout.
Each season definitely still costs more than $20 million this to make, so at this stage it's about ego and saving face
Even media shills can't pretend it's a success
Given how bad ROP is, maybe the Tolkien estate should waive the $20 million fee so as not to damage the brand anymore
katy 🌸 on X - "Bethany Hamilton speaking about the time Rip Curl dropped her to feature trans surfer Sasha Lowerson in their women's campaign. Many surfers under contract were silenced and unable to voice their disapproval. Shame on you, Rip Curl! Men don’t belong in women sports."
Retailer Closing 21 Stores, Loses $80 Million After Replacing Shark Survivor Model With Man Pretending to Be Woman
Meme - "Relooted (demo), the BLM game where you steal artifacts from museums, peaked at 22 players and currently has 3."
Meme - "GAME DEVELOPERS TODAY: I DON'T CARE IF A GAME IS GOOD OR NOT! I JUST WANT TO OWN THE CHUDS!"
Kyle Smith on X - "Kind of a blockbuster here: Pixar made a movie about a gay 11-year-old; at a test screening not a single viewer raised their hand to recommend it; gay Latino director fired; America Ferrera quit b/c of this; movie reworked and flopped."
H. Billy Soros on X - "Shocking that the underlying theme of “I’m 11, have no idea what sex is yet, but am 100% confident that I like dick” didn’t resonate with regular people just trying to have some fun at a movie with their kids."
Perfect Dark Level Designer Claims 'Gamers Were a Mistake' - "Kolbe Payne, a level designer on the upcoming reboot of Perfect Dark has a lot to say about the people who might purchase his game. The designer’s longstanding hated of the very people that keep him employed was exposed by John Trent of Fandom Pulse in a recent article. These comments started back in 2021, when gamers voiced objections to figures from Norse mythology being race swapped in God of War: Ragnarok. Norse and Greek mythology, despite being deeply rooted in Norse and Greek culture, are always ripe for the picking when it comes to Hollywood race swaps. When gamers pointed this out, Payne threw a little baby fit over it and called them “racist pigs.” “That fact that it’s 2021 and gamers still get mad over a character being black just boggles my mind,” Payne said, failing to note the cultural significance of these figures in Norse history. “It’s time to grow up, you racist pigs. Angrboda looks absolutely STUNNING. Props to all the devs who worked on her. She’s without a doubt the most interesting character.” The race swapping of Angrboda is a creative decision many attribute to maligned narrative design firm Sweet Baby Inc., which worked on the Santa Monica Studios title. In February 2023, Payne responded to an article on reported harassment brought on actress Laura Bailey for her role as Abby in The Last of Us: Part 2. Payne responded simply by stating, “Gamers were a mistake.” Of course, no one should support harassment or death threats made to anyone. But instead of calling out the bad apples in the gaming world who allegedly undertook such inappropriate actions, Payne decided to make a sweeping generalization of the very audience he serves. Without the “mistake” that is gamers, Payne wouldn’t have a job… “If adding female protagonists to video games is all it takes to make the worst people you’ve ever met not want to play them, we should add female protagonists to every game,” Payne said in another post, this one from December 2023. His desire to push gamers out of gaming has a real, “this job would be great if it wasn’t for all the customers” vibe to it. Payne attacked gamers again in June, referring to them as bigots during Pride month. “Seeing a lot of comments turned off for Pride Month posts,” Payne said. “I wish all bigots to kindly f*** off and learn to love others for who they are. Gaming is for everyone. Everyone except the bigots.” After Fandom Pulse exposed this toxic and hateful rhetoric, Payne deactivated his X account. The reboot of Perfect Dark has already come under fire from the gaming world due to the “modern day” redesign of its main character, Joanna Dark. As has become all too typical in the gaming world, Dark’s jawline was widened, giving her a more masculine appearance. Perfect Dark was announced back in 2020. However, it’s believed that the game won’t actually release until 2026. Perhaps if Payne and his co-workers spent more time working on their game and less time tweeting about gamers, they’d manage to deliver a final product within a reasonable window."
Microsoft cancels Perfect Dark reboot, shuts down studio
T on X - "MARKET UPDATE: Black Rifle Coffee Co., who outed themselves as opportunists with no core values monetizing vetbro culture, is in a plummeting decline despite having drinks in every major gas station in the US. After disavowing Kyle @rittenhouse2a in 2020, being glowingly profiled by the New York Times in 2021 where they further disavowed their conservative/right wing constituency, Black Rifle IPO'd in 2022 at a price of $17.50 per share, reflecting an implied valuation of $767,000,000. Today, the share price is $0.76, which is a 94.76% drop from IPO. If you bought $100,000 of Black Rifle Coffee Company stock in 2022, you have $5,240 today. While it may feel old hat to say "Get woke, go broke", the consequences of decisions companies made under the Biden admin assuming a Kamala presidency and permanent Obamaism are still playing out. The corporate world moves slowly and the chickens are still coming home to roost."
