The positive is that this isn’t a full revival or reboot, but instead a limited run. So, still could be horrible, but if done well could serve as an “epilogue”. I wouldn’t hype or get hopes up, but it could be a nice “Well that was fun” ending for everyone’s story. The finale was good, but one thing I always wished is that we could have seen how their lives turned out, and this could be a nice way to see that.

I looked for the teaser across 5 different “news” articles and none of them had it. Finally found one, it’s literally a 10 second trailer of the shaver shaving hair off (someone’s) back, and says it’ll return in 2026. Don’t bother giving any of them (including this “article”) clicks

I’ve seen way way way too many marketers try to fluff up https as “encrypted”. They clearly heard a keyword and they go off the walls like they’re the most secure company that ever existed. Usually just a single follow up question like “is it encrypted at rest” or “is my data encrypted with a different key than other users”, or even “does your company have the ability to decrypt it” falls flat on them.

I’m glad more people are hearing how it’s this group of standards assholes who are causing it.

I agree with you, and go a step further that gamers and movie goers and more have nuance and expectations with media.

As you said, Fortnite, Overwatch, CoD, I don’t expect much immersion, I’m expecting a quick romp where the story is only there to set up the gameplay. So quips and jabs are not only welcome, but they can be nice to have because I explicitly do not want to get invested in those stories. Same with Marvel movies, I think the Bathos works well there. They can break the fourth wall a bit and play with it, we have come to expect it and outside of the main thread between movies, we aren’t terribly invested.

Then you compare that to very serious movies and games and that changes, and I agree I think that’s the nuance Hollywood forgot. Hollywood and studios seem to think that since Marvel movies were fun to have quips that we would want that everywhere, and we’ve lost a lot of “serious” tones in movies/media. DA4 should have been a serious game with how much was set up before it.

I like what you set up there. GTA was a goofy game which is a satirical mirror on our society which we fully welcome tongue in cheek humor like that. Cyberpunk is a game which is still a massive mirror on society - but humor like that would cheapen and worsen the experience. If they added Bathos-style humor to Cyberpunk it would cheapen and ruin the tension the game builds, and it would show that they were afraid of letting that tension land.

I warn you, once you see it you can’t unsee it

Watch the video when you get time! He gets most of the credit because he opened my eyes to it. I didn’t realize how much it caused me to hate most stories now because I didn’t know why I felt it was crappier

I strongly disagree with this approach, and if you’ll bear with me I think you may see why.

There’s a reason that some stories seem “Good” and others seem “Bad” right now. Think about some major video games. Why are Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077, and the Witcher “good” stories? Is it their depth? That plays a part yes. What about the number of characters, species? Lore depth? Number of codex entries? All of that is fine, true, but what about other mediums, like movies? What about Lord of the Rings who had good lore but less of other items? Why is some fantasy/sci fi really good and others is just godawful?

Let’s take another series, one with a very recent addition: Dragon Age. Dragon Age 1, 2, and even Inquisition are great stories. They drop you in Thedas, with something called the Blight suddenly corrupting everything around. You’re put on a quest to stop the blight, and the only way to solve it is to navigate the political intrigue of Ferelden. The story and lore are very interesting and the world building is deep. Dragon Age 2 builds on that stress and expands the borders, and Inquisition has everything culminate in a twisted sense where even magic itself is becoming corrupted. What you find out alters the shape of the histories and religions of Thedas.

Released just last year though, Dragon Age 4 released to negative reviews. The story continues and finishes what was built, the lore is there, the story continues and ultimately finishes in a satisfying way, but the story feels cheap, and awkward. You’re in the same world, you’re doing relatively the same things, but you don’t feel invested in the story at all compared to the previous installments. Why is that? The characters are more flat, but even then the main story is still based in the original story that they created back for Dragon Age Origins. Why does it feel “bad”.

This is not uncommon. Mass Effect with Mass Effect Andromeda. Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit movies. Why are these later installments so much worse even though the worldbuilding has been done?

For me at least, and I think a good many people the reason why is one that isn’t noticed until it’s noticed - and that is called Bathos.

Bathos is “An abrupt, presumably unintended juxtaposition of the exalted and the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect”. Essentially, it’s a cheap laugh at an otherwise serious moment.

Imagine that you’re watching Lord of the Rings, it’s the end of the Two Towers and Frodo says to Sam “What are we holding onto, Sam?” The music swells, you see the tears in Frodo’s eyes and even Gollum seems to be reaching out after centuries of being tortured by the Ring, and Sam says “Pff who even knows, I mean it’s a piece of jewelry right? And we have robed guys on flying lizards, how am I supposed to know”. That’s Bathos, and that is what has happened to our modern story telling.

There is one clear thing that has happened in most modern media I think people miss. It’s that modern media is afraid to be authentic to itself. What do I mean by this? Take all of that “Bad” recent content and what is one common theme with them: They cannot take themselves seriously. In that moment with Sam and Frodo it’s emotional, and it’s hard to watch, and as the audience you can feel the drama… and some people feel awkward because there is so much emotion in that scene. Hollywood and Studios have picked up on that, and instead of letting that emotion land with a line as powerful as “Because there is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for” they have replaced it with humor, because to audiences it relieves that tension. Only at the expense of a very impactful scene.

Back to Dragon Age 4; It’s in a world of elves, spirits, The Fade, pure fantasy and magic. These concepts would be normal to any citizen of that world - yet the characters routinely make fun of them, are confused by the concepts. They make cheap jokes like “You mean you just ‘talk’ to spirits, seems like a very odd career”. That sort of joke is to lighten the mood, but the expense is that you are pulled out of the world, and makes the world feel disingenuous and thus hard to connect emotionally with.

The effect of this is that it cheapens the worlds they have so painstakenly built, and it makes us the audience afraid to emotionally connect with the world. Not literally, but if we go back to the scene with Frodo and Sam, if they built up that emotional moment and cut it with a joke, right when your eyes were getting a bit misty, then the next time they tried to be emotional your guards would be up. You’d be guessing if it’d be another joke, and it makes the next moment that much less impactful. One or two instances of bathos can be funny, but if you miss it, if you screw it up, it can make the entire story feel cheaper and your audience will disconnect.

So should media avoid comedy? Of course not, comedy can be a wonderful tool - if used well. Mass Effect, another Bioware Game, never once let you believe that the world they had wasn’t realistic. They never “broke the fourth wall” or pandered to the audience to have a cheap laugh at the expense of the worldbuilding. That being said, there are genuinely funny moments that get audible laughs out of the player, but those jokes are authentic to the world. A great example is when we see an alien Volus (a squat frumpy race who resemble walking inflated beach balls) who is clearly in an altered mental state walk in with biotic (telekentic) powers. He talks himself up at this state, and if the player chooses to encourages him (the renegade option I might add), he proudly marches in and threatens an extremely powerful Asari, masters of the biotics. After a confused look she flicks her wrist and sends him flying offscreen crashing around. The is a joke that is 100% inline with the world they built, and it’s funny. It doesn’t make fun of biotics as a thing, like “gee whiz isn’t it crazy we can just move things with our mind?!”. It’s funny because biotics are a real thing in the world they built.

So back to Game of Thrones. The series was good because it was authentic. It created rules that we understood and it followed them. It didn’t make fun of the rules it itself set, instead it allowed us to get absorbed by the world it created. When Oberyn Martell was brutally killed did they have a cheap joke about how the champion law was ridiculous to begin with and how suddenly everything is solved? Or did they leave the audience stunned, letting the moment sink in and us feel that resonate all the way through.

This new show I think will be more Bathos-style humor. Cheap laughs pointing at how weird it is they have dragons, and houses, and things that should be respected in a world like that, and I think it will feel less authentic. I think it will be impossible to connect with emotionally if they go the route so many other hollywood items are.

I got a good chunk of this from the Youtuber “The Closer Look” who focuses on writing and worldbuilding. I didn’t mention Star Wars at all, which is an absolute perfect example of this cheapening of an otherwise serious world because he does a better job. I fully invite anyone who feels like fantasy or sci fi has gotten “crappy” but doesn’t exactly know why to watch his video: The Last Jedi - How Comedy Can Kill a Movie. It was light a lightbulb going off for me.

Thanks for reading this far!

Yeah I’m all for critiquing the end, and the end was a guy punch, but the key word is critiquing. Jumping on the gate bandwagon is a cheap endorphin release and it cheapens comment sections. Say what you want against the original series, but saying “there was no season 8” or similar to be is the comment section equivalent of “this” or “first” comments.

Overall I’ve been happy with Lemmy because of the quality of content added. Lazy comments are annoying

That one honestly helped me when I met my first person who was fully ready to die. It’s a weird feeling, running from the thought of death for your entire life then you meet someone who is content with it.

Okay that makes so much sense, because I knew I had calling before in Element but they wanted me to set up all this extra stuff. Is it still a thing to do the plugin?

Wait there’s a jitsi plugin?

Scrubs was a great show all around, but if you know you know - there are two episodes which are absolute gut punches that the show had no right to be that good.

• My Screw Up
• My Lunch

Exactly, there’s a saying that when you’re in a field you assume everyone else must know about your field too, and people just don’t. Not just the grandma’s either, but everyday people: friends, family, coworkers, people just want their tech to work. They need to know that they’ll be able to “use office” even if it’s a different program and “check their email” even if it means installing chrome at first.

Element on Matrix is the only one I’m aware of - but it’s not the easiest to set up. I would try creating an account on matrix.org’s server just temporarily to try it out and see if it fits what you’re looking for. I like the decentralized nature of it, but the support is very piecemeal, and onboarding people essentially needs a class.

Finally something I’m qualified to answer!

Family Guy - While more “Flanderization” when all the characters became parodies of their previous selves, the real thing is when all of a sudden every joke needed to be “explained”. i.e. someone trips while running and then one of the character says “AHHH HE TRIPPED AND HE FELL”. Ruined every joke for me, was done with it after that. Kind of one decision, I’m sure someone said “people don’t get the jokes” and ruined the show for me.

House - When they suddenly swapped the cast out. Some people really liked it, for me that was the end of the original premise of the show.

How I Met Your Mother - Lily and Marshall’s baby. Having a baby in a show is always kind of the “Okay the romance story is over and the writers are out of ideas” but it was done so badly. Lily was always an extremely selfish character, and she was insufferable through everything, from making the literal choice to have a child based on some fated chance to shaming Marshall for having the gall to - go to work to support all of them while she did… nothing? Did she even have a job? Constant guilt trips and manipulation, she was the worst character but their relationship was just straight-up toxic when she got pregnant.

That 70’s Show - Having Donna stay home from college - 4 years of characterization thrown out the window. She was always a strong independent woman and now she’s just apparently throwing away her future? She attends remote classes for a while then it just disappears. Then suddenly Eric has this big revelation later that him marrying her might lead to an unsatisifed future? It was all just very clear that the writers didn’t know how to handle her being gone - a very common coming of age issue

X-Files - The move to California. Enough said.

Agree there, pushing that everyone is using it. I have found with family that using phrasing like “It’s similar to ChromeOS”, which… it isn’t really - but it helps their brains adjust. Like “Okay it’ll be different, but yeah I used ChromeOS and it was fine”

This is a good callout. I’m not sure how much of the video will be “There are alternatives available” vs “Try linux!”, but if we get into Try linux directly I want people to know that yes it works completely

I think it’s more just how I discovered him, the YT algo pushed him to me for quite a while which made me really skeptical of him. His content is decent like you said, but I’m always wary of people the algo pushes.

Yeah that’s where it turned from story to joke for me