The Rings of Power gets funny

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792411"][quote="Greg the Grouper";p="2792409"]
Surely it couldn't be that a bunch of people were being annoying, and they got annoyed as a result!

Look, I gotta go to sleep, alright? Try not to delve too far into this frankly stupid conspiracism.[/quote]


Look... some people are upset, ok, so you need to know about it and validate their feelies! Oh and that fucking woke mob, amirite?[/quote]

Now wait just a minute! We're not really dealing with a "woke mob" at this point. We're just dealing with woke whining. Here is true "woke mob" material:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... embly.html

And anyone can feel free to piss and moan "but the Daily Mail!" but the fact remains that during this RIOT, the windows of the Louisville Public Library building shown were busted out and a flare was tossed in, that all the books might go up in flames for great justice. That's how you know you're really on the right side of all things: when it's time to try to incinerate books in the name of all that is good and true.

Ultimately I think this all had to do with a violent career criminal speedballing himself into an early grave and vocally predicting his imminent death two-and-a-half solid minutes before the Knee of Doom® was planted on his shoulder blade (as opposed to the neck—do NOT believe your lying eyes, much less your ears) but, again, we are not talking about a mob, just a bunch of very whiny individuals.

[Spearthrower]

https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success!


Beware the woke mobs: they're coming for you AND your favourite shows!

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success!


Beware the woke mobs: they're coming for you AND your favourite shows![/quote]

"Favourite". So, OK, my previous question is answered. (Unless you're a hoser.)

Why does Amazon have a tiff with Nielsen then?

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]Beware the woke mobs: they're coming for you AND your favourite shows![/quote]

I'm more worried about woke mobs torching libraries, whether the books therein are my "favourites" or not. I can at least rest easy knowing that the Patron Saint of Fentanyl is looking up at me right now with an expression of sheer disgust, rather than committing more violent robberies.

But as far as taking FAANG companies and those close to them at their word (ha), yeah, this is another instance where my background in computing shouldn't be seen as elevating myself to an unreasonable degree of importance if your work with film and TV also matters about as much.

[Spearthrower]

Hordes of purple-haired lesbians, unable to convincingly bring down Western civilization through usage of enforced kooky pronouns, now joined with the forces of wokeness to burn down libraries near you!

It's so pressing to manufacture outage in every single corner of the internet, just to make sure the Good Word is heard, lest the Great Reckoning not come to pass.

[Azaghal]

A little more detail on what I just said about half-an-hour ago:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/

Netflix actually gave this blatant softcore "cheese pizza" film the green light and of course the 3.5/10 average rating on IMDb is just from a bunch of alt-right trolls who know they are on the losing side.

I've seen unbelievable amounts of naïveté here: people actually believe that a company justly compared to THIS below (scroll up and/or click back to refresh your memory about how Amazon loves us so as to gift us with paramedics from near-Death Valley conditions) gives a good Goddamn about whatever social justice objectives you might have in mind?



News flash: they're just stupid. And you're naïve.

I'm a big fan of the overall idea of machine learning and the like playing a bigger role in our society but boy, oh boy, am I not very happy about how it's actually turning out.

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792416"]Hordes of purple-haired lesbians[/quote]

Yes, yes, absolutely. Not only that, but I will also even qualify for Section 8 housing programs while working as a software engineer inundated with all kinds of shitty JavaScript code, because the hand of compassion in the Silicon Valley is unusually very limited in most cases, more usually extending to guys sleeping with NodeJS T-shirts in their cars than icky, icky homeless people for whom actual treatment would be a huge violation of the "NIMBY" principle.

But hey! Amazon is making Dwarves black for exactly zero reason! That's progress! That's justice!

[Spearthrower]

Civilization rests upon us keeping our fictional Dwarves white!

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792419"]Civilization rests upon us keeping our fictional Dwarves white![/quote]

No, what it really rests on is driving Amazon workers so hard that they just collapse while exalting Jeff "Cueball" Bezos because he took a dumb failing gamble on looking super-virtuous to everyone else.

Your reply will inevitably finally mention the nefarious alt-right actors involved and reconcile everything here with my mild philo-Semitism, Thórin, Azaghal, and all.

[Spearthrower]

[quote="Azaghal";p="2792421"][quote="Spearthrower";p="2792419"]Civilization rests upon us keeping our fictional Dwarves white![/quote]

No, what it really rests on is driving Amazon workers so hard that they just collapse while exalting Jeff "Cueball" Bezos because he took a dumb failing gamble on looking super-virtuous to everyone else.[/quote]


[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success![/quote]

When the world doesn't present the facts you want: just wiggle your nose, click your heels, and hey presto there's a sentence you can form to generate an assertion that's at least as good as boring old factual reality, surely even better considering the huge and weighty ramifications!

[Spearthrower]

#Make Middle-Earth White Again!

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792422"][quote="Azaghal";p="2792421"][quote="Spearthrower";p="2792419"]Civilization rests upon us keeping our fictional Dwarves white![/quote]

No, what it really rests on is driving Amazon workers so hard that they just collapse while exalting Jeff "Cueball" Bezos because he took a dumb failing gamble on looking super-virtuous to everyone else.[/quote]


[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success![/quote]

When the world doesn't present the facts you want: just wiggle your nose, click your heels, and hey presto there's a sentence you can form to generate an assertion that's at least as good as boring old factual reality, surely even better considering the huge and weighty ramifications![/quote]

There are also people out there who will tell you that Cuties was a very morally appropriate film for all ages that didn't at all flop. What you are doing right now is not helping your case and—"hey presto"—you are just now learning not only about how to try to disguise your dialect but also why the long run here is not in your favor.

[Azaghal]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792423"]#Make Middle-Earth White Again![/quote]

Failed hashtag but anyway...

Uh, what do you mean exactly? I can actually supply citations if needed and won't make excuses. There were very noble Easterlings in the Silmarillion, for sure. Also, the Ranger Faramir deeply regretted killing a "swarthy" man from Harad, in the films, just as in the books:



See, I can give actual details. You can learn from the same!

Again we are also involved with "far-right" individuals lacking any real sort of basis outside of I guess Trump willing that Amazon warehouses become total nightmares for their workers.

[Azaghal]

This thread is dogshit but it still just now gave me a little silver lining of Tolkien and, rather than my supposed slavish imitation of all he wrote, a little taste of him giving us a—no pun intended—"last ditch" sense of Orcs being a bit more than mere vicious animals:

‘No, I don’t know,’ said Gorbag’s voice. ‘The messages go through quicker than anything could fly, as a rule. But I don’t enquire how it’s done. Safest not to. Grr! Those Nazgûl give me the creeps. And they skin the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side. But He likes ’em; they’re His favourites nowadays, so it’s no use grumbling. I tell you, it’s no game serving down in the city.’

‘You should try being up here with Shelob for company,’ said Shagrat.

‘I’d like to try somewhere where there’s none of ’em. But the war’s on now, and when that’s over things may be easier.’

‘It’s going well, they say.’

‘They would,’ grunted Gorbag. ‘We’ll see. But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d’you say? – if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.’

‘Ah!’ said Shagrat. ‘Like old times.’

Honestly, these guys with their actual citations of what they have to say make me want to play tabletop role-playing and strategy games. In an oddly cheerful way, they're actually very sort of likable. I still want to read Brutal Kunnin' (a Warhammer 40K novel written entirely from the point of view of Orks) the whole way through by 'oomies but until that happens I'll be satisfied with puzzling over why 'oomies just ain't logical.

[Spearthrower]

[quote="Azaghal";p="2792424"] I can actually supply citations if needed and won't make excuses.[/quote]

[quote="Azaghal";p="2792424"][quote="Spearthrower";p="2792422"][quote="Azaghal";p="2792421"][quote="Spearthrower";p="2792419"]Civilization rests upon us keeping our fictional Dwarves white![/quote]

No, what it really rests on is driving Amazon workers so hard that they just collapse while exalting Jeff "Cueball" Bezos because he took a dumb failing gamble on looking super-virtuous to everyone else.[/quote]


[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success![/quote]

When the world doesn't present the facts you want: just wiggle your nose, click your heels, and hey presto there's a sentence you can form to generate an assertion that's at least as good as boring old factual reality, surely even better considering the huge and weighty ramifications![/quote]

There are also people out there who will tell you that Cuties was a very morally appropriate film for all ages that didn't at all flop. What you are doing right now is not helping your case and—"hey presto"—you are just now learning not only about how to try to disguise your dialect but also why the long run here is not in your favor.[/quote]

[Matt_B]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success!


Beware the woke mobs: they're coming for you AND your favourite shows![/quote]

That list tells me that neither mediocrity nor diverse casting pose much of a barrier to success in US television these days.

[Animavore]

The thing is the I don't even think the majority of people are aware or don't care about the culture war stuff on the internet. The internet has a way of amplifying the few voices, especially when they take up comment sections and social media. I think for a lot of people who have lives and or kids a lot of this noise doesn't even factor.

They just want something to watch when they get home.

[Cito di Pense]

[quote="Azaghal";p="2792405"]Here's a good rundown:[/quote]

Oh, look. You get your 'good' rundown on an academic topic from fucking YT. I'm just mad because you called my thread 'dogshit'. It's my thread. Mine! My precioussssssssssss!

I gotta thank you for one thing, Bra. If my thread was a dick, you'd be the elongation elixir boys like you have dreamed of all their adult lives.

[Matt_B]

Getting vaguely back on topic, Charlie Hopkinson posted some of his thoughts on the series.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxuVebP2 ... _2SAtKX8m2

Thanks for watching all the ROP and HOTD stuff. Some of you may be curious as to my actual thoughts on Rings of power.
I enjoyed some of it, but overall thought it was pretty mediocre.

Pros: A few performances (The stranger, Arondir, Dwarves), 2nd age was a great time chosen, I actually thought the shortened timeline was a good idea, some of it looked great, I’m a bit of a sucker for a mystery box.

Cons: The accents (mainly Bronwyn and Halbrand), plotholes and some generally weak writing, comedic blows didn’t hit, generally felt like some of the actors were let down by the dialogue (Elendil, Galadriel).

The rest was just fine. I was surprised how apathetic I was to watching it each week, which I think demonstrates how I didn’t feel like I needed to know what happened to the characters.
In the context of the cost of production and the fact that it could have been much better, it feels like an opportunity missed, as the second age is now not going to be revisited on screen probably in my lifetime.

I have never wanted to be part of a social media pile on and have tried to vary the jokes in terms of their target throughout, I didn’t want to go in on the show in gratuitous fashion. But at the same time If something is there to be made fun of I wasn’t going to pull away from it.

That seems fair enough to me, although I'm not one to get too bothered by accents so long as they're neither ludicrously affected nor unintelligible.

[Spearthrower]

[quote="Matt_B";p="2792429"][quote="Spearthrower";p="2792413"]https://www.nielsen.com/top-ten/

1) Dahmer - success!
2) Hocus Pocus 2 - success!
3) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - bombed!
4) House of the Dragon - success!
5) Cocomelon - success!


Beware the woke mobs: they're coming for you AND your favourite shows![/quote]

That list tells me that neither mediocrity nor diverse casting pose much of a barrier to success in US television these days.[/quote]


It really is a bizarre industry in every country.