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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
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Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
So... are we actually pretending like we're actually confused why Hollywood won't depict bisexual or gay poly relationships as the solution, or is this just a round about vent at the obvious reason?

It's because general audiences won't watch it.

It's difficult enough for Hollywood getting audiences to watch even "regular" gay romance. The two biggest gay romance films recently- Spoiler Alert and Bros, bombed hard. Maybe there were marketing issues I didn't know about or it's part of a general decline in box office of romcoms so Hollywood learned the wrong lesson, but modern Hollywood is uniquely risk-adverse and/or planned by committee, so they're definitely not going to go to something even further outside normie expectations.

Sucks, I liked that it was the ending to the Striking Vipers Black Mirror episode, but it is what it is.
 
Sarissa said:
It's because general audiences won't watch it.

It's difficult enough for Hollywood getting audiences to watch even "regular" gay romance. The two biggest gay romance films recently- Spoiler Alert and Bros, bombed hard. Maybe there were marketing issues I didn't know about or it's part of a general decline in box office of romcoms so Hollywood learned the wrong lesson, but modern Hollywood is uniquely risk-adverse and/or planned by committee, so they're definitely not going to go to something even further outside normie expectations.
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I don't know, I never heard of either of these films. We've had decades of executives assuming that no one would watch queer media and supporting them accordingly, I don't think it makes sense to assume this is purely a 100% natural product of audience preference. If the only gay films are niche or unsupported then that would naturally lead to abysmal profits.

I'm not saying that's exactly what happened in this case but we shouldn't be so quick to assume it was intrinsic to the concept.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
I don't know, I never heard of either of these films. We've had decades of executives assuming that no one would watch queer media and supporting them accordingly, I don't think it makes sense to assume this is purely a 100% natural product of audience preference.
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Huh? That's literally what I said though? Whether the audience won't watch it because of reasons outside the preferences doesn't matter, all Hollywood cares about is that audiences aren't watching it-- and they are constantly learning the wrong lessons from failures. I'm not justifying it, and maybe it reveals latent homophobia on their part, just explaining it.
 
DoobleDeeDooble said:
More stories should just have things get resolved surprisingly easily and be nice for a bit. And then have that new, positive state of affairs lead into or encounter a new problem.

Episodic or arc-based conflict structure doesn't just have to apply to who the current villains are, after all.
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This. Plus, sometimes I just want to read about good times, to see how people are when they aren't dealing with stupid conflicts.

My favorite is propably from Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Two main protagonist get into jspat where they think other wants to end the relationship. And in the exact same episode, they resolve it by... sitting down and talking through it. That's it. No entire season worth of arguments, misunderstandings or anything, two sit down and (after initial misunderstandings) talk it through.

Turns out both wanted to do "lewd things" (kiss) but both were too shy to do anything, expecting other to initiate things. Hence starting to think other one didn't "care". Once they talk it through, they end up kissing
 
NemoMarx said:
Right but consider unhealthy poly.
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My unpopular opinion on fiction is that I want to see more fiction containing healthy relationships of a variety of types.

"But Morgan, then they will have to get drama from something outside of the relationship." YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE.

-Morgan. Also, slice of life exists.
 
Sarissa said:
Huh? That's literally what I said though? Whether the audience won't watch it because of reasons outside the preferences doesn't matter, all Hollywood cares about is that audiences aren't watching it-- and they are constantly learning the wrong lessons from failures. I'm not justifying it, and maybe it reveals latent homophobia on their part, just explaining it.
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Sure, I don't think that you were justifying it. However it's pretty clear your post was assuming that audience desire was a major driver of the sales, which I disagreed with. That you mentioned alternative possibilities is fair but I don't think it's justified to treat those things as comparably important. Audience preference matters but it doesn't seem as plausible as executive interference as a possible reason for failure.
 
I mean, yes, Bros and Spoiler Alert didn't do well, but on opening weekend Spoiler Alert did make back about half its budget, and Bros made back roughly 2/3s of its budget back in total? I'm not saying those are good results, the movies absolutely did flop. But honestly given that I had never heard of either of these movies, that doesn't seem that terrible? And Bros did do relatively well in terms of streaming and video rentals after it left theaters., which feels like it should be at least partially considered a mitigating factor.

Like, again, I'm not saying this was some kind of sterling showing for queer cinema, but if you're doing an experiment, and two films that I had honestly never heard of before you brought them up, which at the very least I feel suggests weren't heavily backed the way plenty of big releases are, don't do great, and you then decide "Yeah, this is clearly not going to work", I feel like that says something about your commitment to it as an experiment? Like we can talk about "risk averse" all we want, but it honestly feels more like a token gesture than anything resembling an honest committed attempt to hitting this part of the market.

I'm aware you're leaving open the possibility that bias is also at play here, but I think you're giving the studios too much credit frankly.
 
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Stop: mandemon has been infracted under rule 6 - acceptable content on SV
  • Staff Post
    • mandemon has been infracted under rule 6 - acceptable content on sv
    Mandemon said:
    So let me give a scenario.

    You come to a city.
    You see group of Nazis having a nice peace talks with locals.
    Turns out they were lying and were planning an attack all along.

    Is the story now bad? Should the story have revealed that no, nazis were actually genuinely looking for peace?

    This is why I have hard time buying "you can't have a group that have history of mass slaughter and not show any animosity towards them as wrong".

    Like, every argument made in defense of demons is basically an argument that can be made in defense of Nazis, and I have suspicious a lot of people on this board aren't exactly sad about the fact that Nazi Germany got bombed to oblivion, instead of Western Allies going "Oh well, let's live and let live".
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    Rule 6 asks that users handle high-impact content maturely, and specifically do not glorify hatred. Equating a species to the Nazis does not meet this threshold.
     
  • Staff Post
    • Morganite said:
    My unpopular opinion on fiction is that I want to see more fiction containing healthy relationships of a variety of types.

    "But Morgan, then they will have to get drama from something outside of the relationship." YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE.

    -Morgan. Also, slice of life exists.
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    Stories where two characters derive strength from their extant, healthy and happy relationship that aids them in their efforts to overcome the plot's central conflict slap, true facts.
     
    Here is my unpopular shower thought: "Ready Player One" aged well. Yes parts of it are cringy post-gamergate and the writing is hit or miss besides. But the core premise is that socially maladjusted nerds have managed to build a place where they can embrace their subcultures without judgement and created a pretty healthy community in the process, one that manages to bring them some prosperity and general social prestige thanks to its importance to the economy- and they now must protect that place from the vile hands of a megacorp that seeks to transform it into a venue for nothing more than peddling their shitty products.

    In this creeping Flaccid Cyberpunk Future of ours, where monopolistic financial institutions seem dead-set on turning the internet into a sanitized mall parking lot to the detriment of all even slightly nonconformist content creators, that strikes closer to home than it did ten years ago.
     
    Girlbonzo Bean said:
    But honestly given that I had never heard of either of these movies, that doesn't seem that terrible? And Bros did do relatively well in terms of streaming and video rentals after it left theaters., which feels like it should be at least partially considered a mitigating factor.

    Like, again, I'm not saying this was some kind of sterling showing for queer cinema, but if you're doing an experiment, and two films that I had honestly never heard of before you brought them up,
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    Bros was literally the highest budget gay film ever, I was reading news articles about it long before there was a trailer. There was a lot of buzz for it. Suggesting that it failed because of lack of audience interest wasn't even my idea, its star Billy Eichner directly said it failed because of homophobia.

    You not hearing about it doesn't mean much, I have no idea how often you are in a position to see the marketing for movies, maybe you just don't hear about romcoms because they have lower budgets for marketing. However I can truthfully say I was constantly seeing the previews, trailers, and posters for it.

    But we have actual numbers to determine this by comparing it to Anyone But You, the last most recent romcom I can think of.

    Bros had a budget of around $22 million. Anyone But You had a budget of around $25 million, and given how big Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney are, much more of the budget probably went to casting than marketing. So basically the same budget, and within the usual range of romcoms.

    Anyone But You's trailer on YouTube currently has 8 million views, Bros' trailer currently has 14 million views, almost twice that. It's been out for a year longer, but the bulk of its views would have occurred immediately after it dropped.

    Quality wise, Anyone But You has a 6.2 on IMDB, Bros has a 6.4. Both are pretty good.

    The only film Bros competed with opening weekend was Smile, which made around $217 million. Anyone But You competed with Aquaman 2 ($434 million), Migration ($297 million), Iron Claw ($44 million), and Poor Things ($12 million). So the weekend of Anyone But You was almost four times as crowded as that of Bros in terms of competition.

    And of course we have the box office. Bros got $14.8 million. Anyone But You got... $219.2 million.

    So a straight romcom with basically the same budget, almost half as many people seeing it's main trailer, considered just as good, and in an opening weekend four times as competitive, got almost 15 times as much in the box office as the gay romcom.

    Given that audiences usually love sex appeal in movies, the simplest answer is that when that sex appeal is targeted to a sexuality that the majority of the audience are not, not as many people will want to see it. I don't know why people bother to dispute this-- people like to see the shit they personally like, so they want normie shit.

    Like I can personally attest that I only watched Anyone But You because of Sydney Sweeny as did my friends (none of whom can tell me anything else about the movie). Can't say I've ever been interested in a queer romance film. Cool that they exists, just not interested.

    Edit: FYI, movies need to make 2-2.5 times it's budget to be profitable because the box office revenue is split between the distributors and the studio
     
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    Sarissa said:
    SNIP
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    Lack of star power could be a major factor, though also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    From what I remember, Billy Eichner was offered to have Chris Evans play his the love interest by Judd Apatow, but he stuck with his guns on the LGBT cast, which is admirable, but I'm sure a lot more people would have gone to see it if the opposite number were Chris Evans instead of Luke Mcfarlane.
    Then again, Glenn Powell has been doing decently well, but he ain't Chris Evans either. I guess Sidney Sweeney was draw.

    On that note, I just saw Anyone But You on Netflix. It was perfectly serviceable rom-com. If it were released in the early 2000s, it would have blended in with a dozen others like it. I've heard Sidney Sweeney is supposed to be a really good actress (in addition to being really hot) but she was definitely the weak link in the movie, acting wise. It doesn't seem like she's got comedic timing.
     
    Meanwhile, me who's heard of neither bros nor anyone but you is sitting over here going o_O

    But, like, also i'm not the normal marketing subgroup for romcoms, being an agender critter who was raised from an early age being told that romance is advanced friendship not advanced lust. I don't really understand what's romantic about 'romcoms'? they seem like an exploration of the social aspects of lust?
     
    Tithed_Verse said:
    Meanwhile, me who's heard of neither bros nor anyone but you is sitting over here going o_O

    But, like, also i'm not the normal marketing subgroup for romcoms, being an agender critter who was raised from an early age being told that romance is advanced friendship not advanced lust. I don't really understand what's romantic about 'romcoms'? they seem like an exploration of the social aspects of lust?
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    Depends entirely on the romcom, apply Sturgeon's Law. A good romantic comedy has, well, romance and comedy. Ironically one thing the much maligned Hallmark romance movies actually do is usually spend the movie building relationships and connections. The quality may vary, it may be predictable, the moral may not always be so great. But they are usually connection first.
     
    I don't personally see a clear break between romance and lust, anywhosie. I know there is a distinction, distinguishing romantic attraction and sexual attraction is common for a reason. But as someone who experiences both, I can't cleanly separate them: romantic attraction tends to induce the other attraction along with it. So romantic desire is partly sexual for me, and thus I suppose an admixture with lust to another perspective.

    Never actually been in a romantic relationship, though.

    I think a lot of romcoms may be reflecting that kind of thing; more about romantic desire with the romance itself as The Happy Ending, with maybe a middle period of romance before The Troubles Happen. Leaning on the lust-component maybe because it's easier to show, a bit more visceral, less introspective, easier to make crass. I only really know shitty romcoms though, I haven't really watched any intentionally, more just been around while they played. Mostly ones aimed at men as the main demographic, which that formula may be specific to, I wouldn't know.

    So I think it is also partly a way-people-conceptualize-things thing, as well as something varying depending on the romcom?
     
    Sarissa said:
    Bros was literally the highest budget gay film ever, I was reading news articles about it long before there was a trailer. There was a lot of buzz for it. Suggesting that it failed because of lack of audience interest wasn't even my idea, its star Billy Eichner directly said it failed because of homophobia.

    You not hearing about it doesn't mean much, I have no idea how often you are in a position to see the marketing for movies, maybe you just don't hear about romcoms because they have lower budgets for marketing. However I can truthfully say I was constantly seeing the previews, trailers, and posters for it.

    But we have actual numbers to determine this by comparing it to Anyone But You, the last most recent romcom I can think of.

    Bros had a budget of around $22 million. Anyone But You had a budget of around $25 million, and given how big Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney are, much more of the budget probably went to casting than marketing. So basically the same budget, and within the usual range of romcoms.

    Anyone But You's trailer on YouTube currently has 8 million views, Bros' trailer currently has 14 million views, almost twice that. It's been out for a year longer, but the bulk of its views would have occurred immediately after it dropped.

    Quality wise, Anyone But You has a 6.2 on IMDB, Bros has a 6.4. Both are pretty good.

    The only film Bros competed with opening weekend was Smile, which made around $217 million. Anyone But You competed with Aquaman 2 ($434 million), Migration ($297 million), Iron Claw ($44 million), and Poor Things ($12 million). So the weekend of Anyone But You was almost four times as crowded as that of Bros in terms of competition.

    And of course we have the box office. Bros got $14.8 million. Anyone But You got... $219.2 million.

    So a straight romcom with basically the same budget, almost half as many people seeing it's main trailer, considered just as good, and in an opening weekend four times as competitive, got almost 15 times as much in the box office as the gay romcom.

    Given that audiences usually love sex appeal in movies, the simplest answer is that when that sex appeal is targeted to a sexuality that the majority of the audience are not, not as many people will want to see it. I don't know why people bother to dispute this-- people like to see the shit they personally like, so they want normie shit.

    Like I can personally attest that I only watched Anyone But You because of Sydney Sweeny as did my friends (none of whom can tell me anything else about the movie). Can't say I've ever been interested in a queer romance film. Cool that they exists, just not interested.

    Edit: FYI, movies need to make 2-2.5 times it's budget to be profitable because the box office revenue is split between the distributors and the studio
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    I mean, my hot take is that Bros fizzled because it just wasn't very good outside of the "First Mainstream Gay Rom Com Ever!" (which is also like, flatly untrue - In and Out is almost twenty years old, and Booksmart was a critical and commercial success and is basically "What if Superbad was gay(er)?"), and trying to market the movie purely on that level didn't work because nobody likes being told to eat their vegetables. It'd one thing if the movie had genuinely good word of mouth, and the fact that it's a straightforward gay comedy was like a fun bonus (You get to see a good movie AND be a good ally!), but the film just... wasn't that good, Eichner IMO's a bad choice for a romantic leading man, and trying to shame people into seeing it was a, perhaps, not the best marketing strategy.

    Like I don't doubt the movie had a headwind because of general homophobia in the audience but blaming it's failure solely on that feels like some major face saving on Eichner's part.
     
    General_Urist said:
    Here is my unpopular shower thought: "Ready Player One" aged well. Yes parts of it are cringy post-gamergate and the writing is hit or miss besides. But the core premise is that socially maladjusted nerds have managed to build a place where they can embrace their subcultures without judgement and created a pretty healthy community in the process, one that manages to bring them some prosperity and general social prestige thanks to its importance to the economy- and they now must protect that place from the vile hands of a megacorp that seeks to transform it into a venue for nothing more than peddling their shitty products.

    In this creeping Flaccid Cyberpunk Future of ours, where monopolistic financial institutions seem dead-set on turning the internet into a sanitized mall parking lot to the detriment of all even slightly nonconformist content creators, that strikes closer to home than it did ten years ago.
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    Have to disagree there. That's not what the OASIS is. The OASIS is one man's shrine to the pop culture he grew up with, where being intimately familiar with that pop culture is the key to fame, fortune, and prestige. It's not "the wild west days of the Internet" built by nerds as a place where "they can embrace their subcultures without judgment" - it's a gated community where the key is being obsessed with the '80s to an unhealthy degree.

    Maybe what you're talking about is what was intended, but it's not what was written.
     
    MrBadExample said:
    Have to disagree there. That's not what the OASIS is. The OASIS is one man's shrine to the pop culture he grew up with, where being intimately familiar with that pop culture is the key to fame, fortune, and prestige. It's not "the wild west days of the Internet" built by nerds as a place where "they can embrace their subcultures without judgment" - it's a gated community where the key is being obsessed with the '80s to an unhealthy degree.

    Maybe what you're talking about is what was intended, but it's not what was written.
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    I always thought it had a very sad vision of fandom too. Everyone reveres stuff just because it mattered to this one creative they revere (so maybe in relation to some franchises it was kind of prophetic). No one seems to have a personal favourite Rush song or to have found it a gateway into King Crimson, it's simply that Halliday offered a prize so everyone got into Rush.
     
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    bluntblade said:
    I always thought it had a very sad vision of fandom too. Everyone reveres stuff just because it mattered to this one creative they revere (so maybe in relation to some franchises it was kind of prophetic). No one seems to have a personal favourite Rush song or to have found it a gateway into King Crimson, it's simply that Halliday has preached the gospel so everyone got into Rush.
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    That, too. There's an infamous chapter in the book where Wade lists off all of the media he has consumed in a three-page spiel, but the way he's describing it makes it clear he's only read/watched/played any of it on a surface level, never actually engaging with any of it. I've described it elsewhere as "he didn't consume it so much as he swallowed it all without chewing".
     
    This also extends to Halliday himself. Like, I will absolutely evangelise the things I love (a good part of my enjoyment in making kayaking videos was that I could foist Three Trapped Tigers, The Joy Formidable or Wolf Alice on friends) but it's because I hope people will enjoy them, not this... weird need to have them be respected. At least not since I was a teenager.
     
    Yeah, that's one of the (many) core problems with RPO trying to have its cake and eat it too - it's not just that Wade (and all the other Smart and Cool gunters) have the same media diet and tastes as a middle aged Gen-X'er, but they're fans of the same stuff in the same way as a middle aged Gen-X'er would be.

    Like, textually, Wade and the rest of the world is obsessed with the same shit as Halliday not because they too have an emotional connection to the media they consumed in their 80's and 90's childhoods, but because being able to do break down Ferris Bueller like the Zapruder film might net them a trillion dollars... except Wade is always like "Fuck yeah, my unironic favorite thing is <Incredibly Obscure 80's Thing>, despite being a teenager living decades after the fact". Why the fuck should Wade have any connection to this stuff, like why is he setting his personal AI psychiatrist to be Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting, a film that came out decades before he was born and (AFAIK) has no connection to Halliday's video will/Zodiac letter?

    It'd be one thing if the story leveraged that disconnect or explore the ways most nerds just memorize shit without really internalizing or processing it, but instead it's all "Hahaha good thing I already was the best at Joust this whole time!"

    *EDIT* I will say, while it's still Not Great and doesn't resolve the story's inherent contradictions, the film does improve on this aspect in a few ways - IIRC when the gang has to navigate The Shining, they're not geeking out over inserting themselves into a classic horror movie and are more "lol wtf is going on in this old film?", and the story in general is more about interrogating an artist's work to find meaning it in rather than just mindlessly consuming it - like Wade succeeds not because he's the best at D&D or remembering movie lines, but because he figures out the subtext behind each challenge and what they're really trying to say (the race is about Halliday's wish he could go back in time to fix things, IIRC having to LARP the Shining is about understanding his regret at missing out on love, etc). The ending is very much underlining this, with AI Halliday sincerely thanking Wade for "playing his game".

    It's still not great, IMO, but it is more self-aware and interested in interrogating the material more than Cline's pretty shallow fanboy'ing out.
     
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    look, it's the fantasy of millions of nerds that one day their obscure specialty knowledge will pay off somehow. Like by being isekai'd into a world that runs on D&D 3.5 rules or something.

    RPO is just an GenX version of that.
     
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