Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The EU hosted a summit where over 40 countries and global organisations promised a starting figure of over $8 billion to the development of a covid-19 vaccine.

Much of the world is starting to experiment with opening up again in a new sort-of-post-Covid19 world, with places like Germany and Spain relaxing, gradually, some of the lockdown protocols, with strong limitations and provisos.

In New Zealand, consistent reminder that competent politicians exist Jacinda Ardern has suggested that the country may not have open borders for a long time to come.

In the UK, a phone app is being developed for contact tracingM and notification of people you may have been in contact with who develop Covid19, though in true current UK style, it's going against every other countries developed app by not using the personalised data storage method (Where your information never leaves your phone), but a centralised database, which is raising some concerns about the storage and disposal (or not) of this data.

The US government is planning on borrowing around 3 TRILLION dollars in the next quarter to pay for pandemic support initiatives. That's 3,000,000,000,000 (Which I only mention because I've never had a reason to type an actual number that big in a real world context!)

The US is also starting to open up in places, though the wisdom of this is being called into question by... well, pretty much everyone else on the planet, and a goodly number of the local population of course.

The Clone Wars seventh and final season came to an end with a frankly spectacular arc which saw Ahsoka Tano facing off against Darth Maul in the sort of iconic fight scene that, truth be told, the sequel trilogy was mostly completely lacking, at least on an emotional level), and giving us a chance to see the impact of General Order 66 from the point of view of Ahsoka, as well as the actual Clone Troopers who we have got to know and care about over the years of this series. THIS is how you do it!

The long overdue, repeatedly delayed, New Mutants movie was briefly appearing as forthcoming video on demand from Amazon, though without a release date, but it has now disappeared again. This DOES seem to suggest it might go straight to digital with no cinema release.

Also a new image of a new baddies form the movie have been released in the shape of the Smiley-Men.

And I've clearly been watching waaaay too much anime, or at least listening to too many anime soundtracks when a random video from something called Argonavis (A games based anime from what I can see) popped up and I thought "Gosh that sounds like Unison Square Garden" (who did "Orion o Nazoru", the belter of an OP for Tiger and Bunny) only to discover it's not, but it was written and arranged by two of the members.

In terms of podcasts, alongside old favourites like "Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men" (pretty much what it says on the tin and currently looking at Age of Apocalypse), "The NoSleep Podcast" (Horror fiction) and "The Arkham Sessions" (An actual qualified clinical psychologist, Dr Andrea Letamendi, examined, firstly "Batman the Animated Series" and is now looking at the "Doom Patrol" TV series for their depictions of mental conditions), I've just started Mockery Manor, a horror/mystery/drama set at a gloriously awful (and thankfully fictional) British theme park in the late 1980's.

So today's extra curricular activity for the community: What podcasts are you currently listening to that you'd recommend to others?

Comments

[locuatico]

Yeah. basically the marketing department did such a garbage job at it, that I have to wonder what the thought process was. Like, they honestly thought the movie was like that? or were they purposefully mismarketing the movie? did they thought the controversy would help the movie stand out? or did they want the movie to bomb?

[janegray]

My guess is that they are so drenched in sexism, it didn't even occur to them that it was an offensive message.

It reminds me of a comic I saw once, where the author meant to express his frustration that people always go for mainstream superhero comics and ignore indie stories. So he drew a fangirl scornfully walking past the booth of an indie comic, and excitedly going for a generic superhero stuff.

A valid sentiment.

Except that the indie comic had a pair of giant half-naked disembodied boobs on the cover.

This person went through the entire process of thinking up, writing, drawing and uploading the comic, and not once did he stop and think that it very much looked like the fangirl was rejecting the oversexualization of female characters, and that the "poor downtrodden indie author" was actually being creepy.

After the backlash, he wrote a post where he basically said that he just wanted to put something un-superhero-like on the cover of the indie book and the first thing that popped into his mind was half-naked breasts, and he went for it without a second thought.

So I'm pretty sure the people behind the marketing simply assumed that of course the fat girl was ugly, duh, so the draw of the movie would be the novelty of an ugly princess.

[locuatico]

I remember that comic. It was so bad that I originally thought the punchline was "sexist asshole doesn't understand why women does not like his work"

I also recall a post on Tumblr that said that kind of people, more often than not, fail to be seen simply due to do not understand the importance of (or simply are not good at) marketing in general.

[lilacsigil]

Considering the trailers for the Melissa McCarthy movie "Spy", I would think that they immediately thought "Oh, fat female character, the joke is that she's ugly and incompetent, this will be an easy campaign!"