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Anyone here like old sci-fi? I always thought it was a pity Disney's take on John Carter didn't take off.

>>93299410
I quite liked it. I thought it was a good fun adventure.

>>93299410
I miss when space stories could be weird and interesting instead of
A. Whacky GotG/ricknmorty humor
B. The most horrid empty soul-crushing shit imaginable.

>>93299602
Hey man, that's capitalism.

>>93299868
Capitalism seeks to maximise profit. If a customer is unsatisfied, that's not the result of the system being too capitalistic, it's the result of corporate hierarchies that encourage creators to follow whatever the biggest trend is because that's the safest way to keep their job, no necessarily because it brings the most benefit to the company.

>>93299410
Oh, year! The GOATS of the 1950 were amazing at the time. I know the space-drama of the Honorverse and such are popular now, but they don't touch the creativity of those guy.

A lot of it didn't cross the cultural and generational gulf. Too bad, really. About the most creative stuff is the anime these days, but if I see any more Isekai stories, I'm going to commit seppuko.

>>93302934
>encourage creators to follow whatever the biggest trend is because that's the safest way to keep their job, no necessarily because it brings the most benefit to the company.
I hate to break it to you. Minimizing risk is EXTREMELY capitalist.

>>93302934
>>93303783

At the risk of being seen as non-PC (I'm not, but Internet.) you wouldn't be able to tell with all the DEI stuff and marketing to LGBTQ+. Its fairly obvious most of these groups are niche, but the efforts to appease them seems to be at the cost of ignoring their existing fan base. Star Wars comes to mind, for example.

>>93299456
I have to agree. The solid acting really carried it, but the writing was fairly respectable, too. They acknowledge the camp but weren't silly about it. They allowed plenty of cheesecake and beefcake - without trying to shoehorn in any vapid faux-feminist commentary. They good pacing. The dialogue was well crafted, we didn't have obnoxiously juvenile slogans or anything. It was a fun fantasy for big kids, crafted with respect, care and solid budget.

>>93302934
Capitalism seeks to maximize profit because that's what all markets try to do. Capitalism is by definition that private entities own and control the means of production as well as the profits generated by those means. It is not the only system that uses markets. Stop spreading misinformation.

>>93304203
>you wouldn't be able to tell with all the DEI stuff and marketing to LGBTQ+
Straight white men make up a fraction of the population and beyond that straight white men are perfectly capable of enjoying media about other demographics. Companies include a wide variety of representation because it allows for a greater variety of stories to be told and it draws greater interest from more communities. It's like how snack food companies will make more than one flavor of chip. It would be dumb and a financial fuck up not to. Not everyone just wants to eat just one flavor and making new flavors doesn't erase old ones. That's not
>ignoring their existing fan base
That's trying to expand it.
>Star Wars comes to mind, for example.
Star Wars was a ripoff of media written for Japanese audiences (The Hidden Fortress says hi), features both a strong female lead and a major Black character (not to mention having voice work by phenomenal James Earl Jones as Vader), and the entire work is a thinly veiled attack on fascism and support for *the Viet Cong*. Any part of the existing fanbase that has a problem with it being woke or appealing to niche segments of the population are fake fans or idiots. The fuck are you talking about?

>>93304203
>DEI
Land owned a fucking planet my dude. If you want to complain about black people be fucking specific.

But yeah. But you make the mistake of thinking that people who will actively boycott Star Wars because they 'went woke' is larger than the LGBT fanbase, and the progressive fanbase (cause there's a lot of straight people that like gay people).

Anyway queerbaiting is just another symptom of capitalism. It's easier to just tick off a box and have some progressive signaling than it is to try to make something that's genuinely artistic. It's more risk aversion. Disney knows X amount of people will want to watch their shows if a lesbian or gay dude is in it or whatever. Ergo it'll make a certain ammount of money back. It's the same reason why everything is a sequel or reboot these days- companies knows that has X amount of people who will go see it.

Again capitalism at it's finest. And I find it weird how people don't want to admit that capitalism is 'woke' in so much as it appeals to people who aren't neo-nazis, since that's most of the population.

>>93304755
>The fuck are you talking about?
The problem with these 'woketards' is they act like only all of sudden NOW Hollywood has gone liberal.

When George Lucas was a hippie and based the Emperor on Nixon (a direct quote of his) that's not him being political because most of these worktards hadn't even been born during the Nixon Administration. So to them all the political allegories are just normal things that are in movies (which they are) because all the political points fly over their head. Heck- not too long ago I saw the original Planet of the Apes which featured a black astronaut in it which was hyper-progressive for its era (for reference it was five years prior to the first real life astronaut- so yeah that was a political statement back then).

I'd argue that the only difference is that most films these days are more obvious, insomuch as capitalism has made films way more formulaic and staid. So I'll admit that political critique (while I wouldn't say is less subtle when you look back on films) sticks out more. But that's hardly an excuse for thinking that Hollywood is somehow been taken over by cultural marxists or whatever the fuck.

>>93304956
>they act like only all of sudden NOW Hollywood has gone liberal.
You need to learn about the Overton window. The liberal of George's time is wildly different to what it is now. They are not the same or even all that similar.

>>93303783
>I hate to break it to you. Minimizing risk is EXTREMELY capitalist.
No it's not. There's a whole venture capital industry based on taking insane risks for a big payoff.

Either way, the point was that in a hypothetical abstract ideal of a capitalist system corporations would take whatever action would bring them the most profit to the owners, but in reality employees often sacrifice what would benefit the shareholders the most to advance their own careers.

Ideally, an entertainment company would serve all potential customers, investing in each genre relative to the potential return. You'd get crowd-pleasing blockbusters that don't take any risks, and you'd get more niche films that can pay for themselves because they have a lower budget. However, because films serving a niche market have a higher risk of failing, no one wants to work on them even if on average they'd return a profit for the company.

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>>93308749
>There's a whole venture capital industry based on taking insane risks for a big payoff.
Anon, the people investing are doing so with other people's money and the sums they are investing are those other people's chump change. There is no risk for anybody involved here.

Can you fuckshits try to not be political for five minutes?

>>93309413
What is "non-political" to you?

>>93304203
Most estimates have the LGBT be about 5% of the population, but that's 1-20 of the human population. That's VERY large from a marketing standpoint. Then you have to factor in how half of straight people like gay people. Which gives you 55%. Bigots tend to assume everyone who isn't gay hates gay people, which isn't fucking true.

Same is true for non-white people. Who by the way are 40% of the population in the US. And a MUCH larger part of the global population, that's set to only get bigger. And again, half of white people like them.

And stop using 'DEI' it stands for 'Diversity Equity Inclusion' which is a meaningless buzzword for what you're actually talking about which is 'I hate black people'.
>>93305973
Yeah. And by that margin, Lando was EVEN MORE WOKE than anything Disney has done because the overton window was further to the right in the late seventies.
>>93308749
Imagine you're in the investor class. You're a millionaire. You have a ton of money in banks and asset that will naturally accrue wealth over time. As they say, in the time it takes for Bill Gates to pick up a hundred dollar bill he finds on the sidewalk he'll have made five-thousand dollars in interest.

So if you're going to invest in a company, what will you invest your money in? Let's say you could put your money in an arthouse film about Belgian soldiers during WW1 that'll be done entirely in french and black and white. That's quite a risk right, because those kinds of films don't make all that much money in the US, or globally. What's more, the movie needs to not just make back its budget, it needs to make more money than you would have made if you just sat on your money and acrue interest for it to be worth your time, or else it is essentially lost money.

Or you could greenlight the fifth Minions movie.

Where do you put your money? Well you know the Minions movies make a lot of money, so that's just the right choice.

Now explain to me how that's not capitalism.

>>93309767
It infuriates me that people use the word 'political' to mean 'controversial'. Because like say, whether slavery should be legal or not is considered non-political because largely everyone agrees it should be illegal, and we don't treat people who argue otherwise as people we should respect and accommodate. But that wasn't true in the 1860's, that's what the civil-war was about. It was INTENSELY political.

Same would have been true in the 1770's and 'whether people should vote at all' was political. 'Should I be legally allowed to make fun of the King' was political.

Of course people think that the universe starts with their birth and ends with their death, and so if anyone has an opinion that politicians would argue over, you're being political, and you're being an asshole for caring about an issue just because people argue about it.

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>>93309413
After lurking these threads for several years, I swear it's the first time I've ever seen you lose your shit like this.

(By the way, it's not a complaint, just an observation. You have all the right to express your opinions and lose your shit whenever you deem it necessary.)

(Have one of my favorite art pieces too; Desperate moments call for pretty things.)

Okay so I’m doin a series of sessions between campaigns for my friends so I can iron out some details.

Totally ripping off the first Rise of the Runelords adventure, church gets burnt down with priest in it by his estranged aasimar adopted daughter. Friends have never played Pathfinder so they can’t metagame.

I’m playing more into a whodunnit angle- the church is burned down during the goblin attack on the festival and the players gotta figure it out. They find out quickly that the goblins wouldn’t/couldn’t have done it for [reason].

All of that to say, I’m asking for suggestions for red herrings and suspects for the players to investigate before they figure out the aasimar did it.

>>93310398
>After lurking these threads for several years, I swear it's the first time I've ever seen you lose your shit like this.
That's because it's not me. Look closely at his name.

>>93309413
And I'll thank you not to do that. If only because for a moment there I thought I'd had a stroke or something.

As for everyone else: I think it's valid to discuss commercial pressures on art in a writing thread, just try to keep it focused on that topic and not on a wider discussion about politics.

>>93312034
It's an unsolvable problem because it boils down to a bigger one- do you make art or sell out?

Selling out is doing what'll make you money. And what'll make you money is doing what everyone else is doing. You want to make art AND get paid, you need to get real lucky. It's not even a studio thing, to use Star Wars as an example, Disney actually didn't mandate all that much from JJ Abrams. They didn't order him to make a movie with a woman and a black person in it, or said 'our bad guys will be based on the NAZI'S!' or anything. About the only thing they told him was 'try to keep things open-ended so we can make spinoffs later' which was the wrong call because it turns out that's the opposite of what you should do to make spinoffs (compare to how tied down say Boba-Fett's backstory, or Obi-Wan's, compared to lets say Poe Dameron) and they told him not to blow up Coruscant in the movie cause they wanted to keep the setting (WHICH WAS THE RIGHT CALL).

So really it's just a matter of being in a position to make a film in the first place, and being CORRECT that your artful masterpiece will be received well and make money. I mean what dumbass greenlit Oppenheimer thinking a three-hour film about how the scientists made the atom-bomb was gonna make back its budget?

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I got a third in writing a story about a dude chasing a dragon for revenge before I realize I was pretty heavily ripping off Moby Dick. And I don't even really mean in broad strokes. Like I'm talking he wa a hip captain, there was a younger PoV character who recounts the man's revenge, a crew of people on his boat. I imagine I could change things enough with an edit, it's not like I got far and I can still take things in a wildly different direction but man was that a motivation killer. I might still use it a campaign for fun though.

>>93315002
Hey classics are good for a reason.

I think you should consider if your character is smarter than Captain Ahab who was dumb enough to chase a wild animal for revenge which ultimately led to his death.

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>>93315014
See I was considering that but then I thought; what if I made him dumber? I can make the POV character go off the deep end and maybe reign in the Captain, rather. Maybe have him realize what kind of example he's been setting for his men and ultimately choose them over his obsession when he realizes he was about to create some real lunatics or to at least maybe earn some redemption or another.

Or I'll just have them all go down screaming. I haven't decided.

>>93316941
Love how the artist apparently thought the moon the Apollo program was aiming for was one of the moons of Jupiter.

>>93315082
Weird thing is, are there even any examples of a 1st-person POV character "going off the deep end"? I can't imagine what the writing for that would even be like

>>93312286
>do you make art or sell out?
Make art to get noticed, sell out, then use your money and influence to make art again. Which is best both for creators and studios.

That was the mistake Disney made in hiring JJ Abrams: he's never made anything close to an art film. He's only ever done mass-appeal schlock. Gareth Edwards, on the other hand, started off with an arthouse monster movie that was very well-received, then made a moderately successful Godzilla movie. The yin and yang of moviemaking: art AND commercial appeal.

Actually, I think it's wrong to say that it's a dichotomy between art and selling out. A creator truly worth his salt should be able to make a film that has both artistic vision and is enjoyed by a large audience. Rogue One achieved both, while The Force Awakens only had the latter and Rise of Skywalker had neither.

As Franklin said, those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both. So we come back again to the idea that the goal of the employee - to keep their job - and the goal of the company - to make money - do not always align. JJ Abrams was the safe choice; given his track record of producing moderate blockbusters no one could say that he lacked the experience. If things went poorly, no one could say that the person who hired him was at fault. However, his shortcomings were also evident, and it was predictable that his lack of artistic vision would hamstring his Star Wars projects, because the original Star Wars trilogy was also that perfect blend of art and mass appeal and the franchise needs directors who understand that.

So the lesson is perhaps: those who trade art for money deserve neither and will lose both.

>>93322687
>I can't imagine what the writing for that would even be like

it's easy enough to see the narrator growing harsher and more severe perhaps even commenting on how long it's taken the captain to do anything because he's not harsh enough. The problem is how do you end it.

>>93322742
I'd say that the problem with hiring JJ Abrams is that he fundamentally think his job is to con people into buying movie tickets, and not to make compelling films.

>A creator truly worth his salt should be able to make a film that has both artistic vision and is enjoyed by a large audience.
And fast food should both taste good and help you loose weight.
>As Franklin said, those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both.
I'm sorry, how did this enter into the discussion of movie making?

>>93322742
>A creator truly worth his salt should be able to make a film that has both artistic vision and is enjoyed by a large audience.
Don't confuse a large audience with a broad audience.

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I love how a lot of mid 20th century sci-fi was just fap-bait for teenage boys.

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>>93329747
I love how modern retards act like that's somehow shocking or weird. You retards are broken and don't even realize you've been blinking 12.

>>93305973
>You need to learn about the Overton window. The liberal of George's time is wildly different to what it is now. They are not the same or even all that similar.
You could also say the same about other famous sixties iconic liberal writers like Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry.
So, yeah—they moved the Overton window far enough to make hollywood slide straight down the slippery slope and into the sewer.

>>93309767
>What is "non-political" to you?
Any ideological position he passionately agrees with?

>>93314314
That just makes me wish we could have a good film version of the entire John Carter series.
Of course I could say the same for the Oz series, or Captain Blood, or a handful of novel series written after the 70s.

>>93299394
What is the source of this image please.

>>93299394
Been away for two months, finally back. How is it going?

>>93299394
I'm writing a novel which takes place in a setting I used for a campaign years back, and features characters from various play by post and table top campaigns, both mine and some friends. I'm about 50k words in and about 70% done. Would that qualify for this thread? It's a first draft and mostly needs vibe checks, not copyediting.

“I thought we were heading for the Temple district.” Ron lowered his tone, as to not be heard by the two younglings. His grin dissipated and turned into a frown. “You’ve read the gazettes, Carl. The Black Bastard’s gone! Now’s the time to strike, spread chaos into the ranks of our enemy!”

“Don’t forget about the Silent Peace,” Carl was quick to remind him. “They tolerate us as long as we tolerate them. We can’t afford to escalate the situation when we can’t guarantee that the won can be won.

“Damn this Silent Peace of yours!” Ron raised his voice again. The two boys were lending their ears to the argument, all while making sure they weren’t being seen. “Those were their terms, not ours! I wasn't asked about making peace to the slayers of our brothers and children!!”

“That’s enough!” Carl grinded his teeth to avoid shouting and pointed his finger at Ron’s face. "Watch where you tread, Ron. I'm your higher-up, and you shall do as I say.

Ron’s complaints ceased, though Carl could tell that the insubordination that had crept up into his mind would not be easy to erase. Jovin and Marc followed the two men as they entered a narrow alley towards the nothern side of the Academy. The group blended into a group of merrymaking students and saw that Marc's scouting had been true; the Gallant Bridge towards Nicovanto was guarded by Redcloaks. Passage into the Isle of Sertan was now compromised. Carl searched for alternatives, but there was no other way through.

He had given up all hopes of meeting up with Fiddler when Jovin, some paces astray, whistled to them. He was standing by a pier, not too far from an exhibition by a pair of fire swordancers. Stealing a gondola was reason enough to catch the Watch's attention, but right at the summit of the Night of the Carnival? Carl didn't know whether that'd improve their chances or compromise them, but he went along with the plan anyway, for as the Maestro always said: "A messy plan is always better than no plan at all."

>>93341116
Michael Whelan_Isaac Asimov_Foundation

>>93341116
As >>93345590 said, it's cover art for Isaac Asimov's masterpiece: Foundation. The character depicted is Hari Seldon, father of psychohistory and the main architect of the events of the series.

>>93341909
It's going alright. How about you, did you have a refreshing two months?

>>93344570
No one's going to read 50k words, but if you post a pdf of the first chapter or two, someone might take a look.

>>93347541
>father of psychohistory
Whats that about?

So hey I saw someone complaining about star wars (for the billionth time) about how things that were mysteries in the original films all got backstories in subsequent stories. And their main argument is that good fantasy has a lot of unexplained facets. And basically that it relies more on a feeling than on something with concrete history and backstory.

I firmly disagree. I understand the idea that some things shouldn't be explained- for instance I don't want a definitive backstory to Darth Plageuis. I think the uncertainty of that story being equally something that directly happened to Palpatine (him killing his old master), an actual Sith legend that grew over time, or something he just randomly pulled out of his ass, is something that really adds to that scene, and I think actually covering Palpatine would completely ruin the whole point of that scene. But on the other hand, do I think it's bad that Boba-Fett has a real backstory now? No. Or that we know what the Jedi were like in their prime? No.

I figure that the idea that vibes is more important than the actual mechanics and backstory is the exact sort of mentality JJ Abrams had making the sequel films.

So what are your guys' opinions? Is it a bad thing to have a concrete backstory that makes a world feel like it has a lived in history? Or are unexplainable vibes more important?

>>93299394
on the retro sci-fi front, I've been vibing to Space Viking for a few months. I read some of the other stuff in the Terro-human timeline and looked at the sequels written by other guys. Space Viking has a lot of charm and cut-through I'd bottle and campaign with. It's not perfect but runs a parallel track to Foundation- talking dark ages and barbarism against reinvigoration. Merlin from Cosmic Computer versus the Encyclopaedists might be a hook I'd have to think on. Space Vikings in the time of the Traders and Merchant Princes too?

The Dwarfstar boardgame looks tight as well.

>>93347990
The old rpg Thousand Suns had a Transmissions from Piper sourcebook.

>>93348144
by gehenna, I hadn't heard of it but I'll start searching. Sad zippy is gone, because it seems like it had all been shared

>>93347541
>It's going alright. How about you, did you have a refreshing two months?
Not really, but on the other hand I feel better now.

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>>93347541
Fair enough. Here's a ten page sample of the novel. It's still a first draft, so a little rough. The novel is half sci fi crime thriller half slice of life, a ride along adventure of sorts.

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>Deuteragonist of story is searching for a winged lion, after an oracle told him his death would be decided with him on his knees before the creature

>Literally just found out about pic related
Change animal or bite the bullet and have people think I'm copying Dungeon Meshi?

>>93355950
The Winged Lion of St. Mark is one of the oldest symbols of heraldry and the emblem of one of the most important states in European history. Nothing to do with tranime

>>93347775
In the far future humanity has built a galaxy-spanning empire that's been a basically post-scarcity society for tens of thousands of years. Then a brilliant mathematician called Hari Seldon develops pschohistory: a combination of history, sociology and psychology into a collection of algorithms that can mathematically predict the future for large enough groups of people. When applied to the galactic empire, Seldon discovers that it predicts that the empire is in a terminal phase of stagnation and decline that will eventually result in the collapse of civilisation.

The answer to this is Foundation: a new colony at the edge of the galaxy, which will hold a reservoir of scientists and other intellectuals who will be able to maintain an advanced society after the rest of the galaxy collapses into barbarism, and eventually re-establish galactic civilisation. Seldon leaves several recordings of himself with instructions for what to do when Foundation reaches critical phases in its future, as predicted by psychohistory.

While psychohistory is of course complete fiction, what's interesting is that it's kind of what people in Asimov's time hoped history would one day become. In fact from the 19th century to around the 1980s it was thought that if you could just get enough data about the past you could scientifically predict the future. In a way it's what Marx was trying to do when he wrote Das Kapital: analyse the economy of the past and the present, explain how it developed, and from that apply scientific principles to predict how it would develop in the future.

Then chaos theory came along to prove that "scientific history" is just another pseudoscience.

made a prototype tool meant as a creative aid for coming up with character concepts, please give it a go if you feel like it
https://xhal.itch.io/charactergenerator

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>>93356274
it looks interesting, but I can't scroll over to get the third column to show up
the json files save everything so I can get all of the character data
I guess I can just roll up more characters and save them

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William `Billy’ Thompson was born in the Kingdom of Eredan in the town of Briston. His father was a smith in the working-class Borrey district. Billy grew up learning his father’s trade which heavily relied upon the war. The town had a steady influx of refugees from the Great Isle. They came to Eredan to flee the constant warfare and destruction of their homelands. Not only did these refugees from the lower class quarters of the city take jobs meant for native Eredevans at lower costs, they were also staunchly opposed to the war. The sentiment in Billy’s native neighborhood began to turn strong with anti-refugees views. Billy was soon recruited into the fraternal organization that had formed in his neighborhood called the ‘Borrey Boys’. They would often commit violent attacks against refugees from the Isle. Billy, with his great physical strength obtained from blacksmithing, joined in on these attacks as one of their most feared enforcers. Eventually the refugees formed their own gang in response, known as ‘The Brave Islanders’. These two gangs would often engage in vicious and brutal street battles. They would use bat and steel to maim and kill each other. Billy was known as a strong and brutal fighter in these battle engagements and was greatly lauded by the men on his side for his feats in combat.

Billy understands that these foreigners deserve no quarter and is fiercely loyal to his organization. He is a Borrey Boy and a true Eredevan patriot.

I put this character firmly in Lawful Neutral but one of my buddies is trying really hard to convince me he's actually Lawful Evil. What are your thoughts /wg/?

>>93359514
He's Neutral Evil because he willingly joined a supremacist or anti-x group because he doesn't like their lawful choices that threaten a part of his livelihood. He illegaly and violently opposses the refugees choices, he also doesn't fight for order other than anti-immigrant supremacy so that makes his "lawful" stance go out the window when it comes to break laws.

>Billy was soon recruited into the fraternal organization that had formed in his neighborhood called the ‘Borrey Boys’. They would often commit violent attacks against refugees from the Isle. Billy, with his great physical strength obtained from blacksmithing, joined in on these attacks as one of their most feared enforcers.

It's this bit that is definitely evil.

I know you based this character on Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York and he is evil according to the alignment chart being willing to murder for power and beholden to no law, but his own interpretation of it.

Whatever good qualities you write for him doesn't make up the fact that he is a criminal, a hateful man prejudiced against people fleeing war. If the refugees were doing something other than being willing to work for lower wages, you could have a point there

>>93360588
Thanks for the clarification anon! I guess we were both wrong lol

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>>93356274
Nice character generator, anon.

>>93357344
What happens if you take a json textfile and use it in an image generator?

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>>93363645
Sometimes you get groups of characters.

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>>93355950
Keep it. A golden winged lion is part of my family crest, so I'm pretty fond of it.

>>93356232
Late reply but thanks for this, it sounds very interesting.

>>93366942
Spoiler: The books written by Asimov were better than the later ones.