Hello, friends!

Happy Father’s Day! (A day late, but here we go.) My daughter’s birthday falls on Father’s Day this year, so we got to have fun celebrating together, and that was a sweet experience.

I have a ton of gratitude for my dad and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. Only becoming a dad has helped me get even an inkling of everything they have done for me. Thank you, to you all.

Also, on the sillier side of things—my favorite fictional dad? Probably the world’s most uncontroversial pick ever, Bandit Heeler.

Discussions—Corporate Annihilation

I’ve always been a much bigger Lord of the Rings fan than Star Wars—and I remember when debate between which fandom was better was culturally relevant.

As such, I didn’t have much of a stake in things when Disney bought the franchise, and I haven’t watched most of the Star Wars content that has come out since then—although I do find it depressing that old Star Wars was considered film and the new stuff is merely content. Anyway it has been interesting watching the war between Disney/Lucasfilm and the fans of Star Wars, though. I imagine when the dust settles, Disney will be taught in business schools as an example of what not to do.

Take a look at this:

Audience scores for The Acolyte were 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. And Disney continues to blame fans for the objective failure this series then the numbers suggest this is something the fans clearly aren’t interested in. Wild. No amount of critical praise will recoup soured relations and trust with your fanbase. Even of looking at it from the most cynical perspective possible, who is going to buy your stuff if you tell them all that they are awful for not buying your stuff? No one, in a free market anyway.

Now, granted, the Star Wars fanbase is extremely passionate and has loved other things that Disney has produced, like The Mandalorian. I am not bringing this up as an expert on anything Star Wars, I’m not claiming the franchise is dead, I’m not even trying to make a big point out of anything. Mostly I find this fascinating in the same way that watching a train wreck is fascinating. I’m glad I wasn’t on the train… I should probably look away… Maybe I should call 911, because even though an alert has likely already gone out, a little redundancy in getting medics to show up doesn’t hurt… Should I help? Can I even help? Even if I can, will the risk of personal injury for even approaching be too great?

The biggest direction this takes my mind, though, is worry over Lord of the Rings. Rings of Power was a visually gorgeous flop that, similarly, seemed to pit corporate heads against the audience rather than telling the people with the product that they were spending way too much on something that would make way too little. With Warner Bros trying to reboot the franchise with unnecessary, unwanted “content”—like this hunt for Gollum movie that’s supposedly been fully greenlit and may be Ian McKellen’s last role—well, I have no interest in joining on a cultural skirmish over the stuff, but I am depressed with how beloved IPs are being exhumed and exploited. Let what is excellent rest and make something new and interesting, perhaps.

Shoot, if your screenwriters can’t come up with anything worthwhile on their own, there’s so much in the novel space screaming for an adaptation that will kill if done faithfully. If there’s still space in Hollywood for a cinematic universe (people are probably burned out to that, but maybe), then Sanderson’s Cosmere will provide literal decades of movies. John Gwynne’s fantasy viking epics would visually scratch a Lord of the Rings itch while being unique and grim, which may appeal to modern sensibilities. On the sci-fi side of things, I’d far prefer an adaptation of Devon Eriksen’s Theft of Fire over more Star Wars or Star Trek. All of these, of course, come with built-in and very excited fanbases.

Then again, maybe the general moviemaking industry has gotten too big, too top-heavy, and needs to starve for a bit before it can once again consistently produce bangers. We’ll see.

Asides—Dumb AI Images

For some reason, WordPress seems very convinced that my blog posts will soar in success if I start using their AI-generated imagery as a feature. This is never going to happen, but I found this week’s imagery creepy and ugly enough that I wanted to share:

Aren’t these delightfully awful?

Writing Updates

Progress on Hazel Halfwhisker (draft 1.5) continues nicely. I’ve roughly doubled my page count from last week, added more of Thorn’s POV to the narrative, and generally cleaned things up (or beefed them up). Soon I will be out of Whiskerroot itself and revising Hazel’s adventure in the abandoned city. Not long after that I get to the mjurans… and that’s when heavy amounts of new writing begins.

Send-Off

I have yet to finish my current read, Witchy Eye, or my current game, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, so I have no business discussing those quite yet. (I am enjoying them both quite a bit, though. Also, Paper Mario has given me a lot of ideas for what I would do if given the opportunity to head the development of a video game.)

Do you have any thoughts on the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings situation? Or creativity in general, at least in our major institutions that drive a lot of culture?

I hope you had an excellent weekend, and I hope you enjoy your mid-week break this week!