#<- episode number according to netflix

[librathefangirl]

@whumpgifathon | Day 31: Colors | Highlight a specific color in your art: Red + Green The Seven Deadly Sins | S05E15 | Meliodas & Zeldris

[philsmeatylegss]

I’m am ashamed to admit that I wasn’t sure I was that into Dead Boy Detectives an account of its dog shit name but I find myself relating a bit too much to Edwin’s backstory episode one and then I got to the consensual cat king in episode two and I’m terrified to admit I’m so beyond hooked

[savequeerstories]

Mini data dump!

Dead Boy Detectives and KAOS matched viewing numbers with The Terminal List in their debut weeks. Accounting for series length, DBDA got ~3.46 million viewers, The Terminal List got ~3.33 million, and KAOS got ~3.6 million. Notably, DBDA and KAOS also got much better critic scores.

The Terminal List is renewed for a 2nd season. KAOS and DBDA are not.

Dead Boy Detectives and KAOS were also watched as much as Netflix's FUBAR (~3.5 million viewers) at debut, while again earning vastly better critic scores. FUBAR is also renewed.

Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla released on February 25, 2022. According to the Nielsen ratings for its debut week, it got ~1.6 million viewers (and a little over 2 million the following week). Critic scores were good but viewer scores bombed. It was renewed for 3 seasons.

I have GOTTA emphasize that queer shows are held to a different standard than every other show. Either they achieve staggering numbers like Agatha All Along and Arcane, or they're axed. Other shows are considered successes at a much lower threshold.

I'll add that Our Flag Means Death's viewing numbers are harder to compare because it was released episodically. Viewership fluctuates when this happens. But by demand numbers and critical scores, we know it did extremely well. I'll see what I can dig up.

In the meantime, as always, feel free to check out our data at savequeerstories.carrd.co

[disneytva]

Disney Pulls Transgender Storyline from Pixar Television Animation ‘Win or Lose’ Streaming Series 

Pixar Television Animation's original animated series Win or Lose will no longer include a transgender storyline in a later episode. The character remains in the show, but a few lines of dialogue that referenced gender identity are being removed. A source close to Win or Lose said the studio made the decision to alter course several months ago.

A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the story arc was removed and provided the following statement to THR: “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

Chanel Stewart the transgender actress who voiced the trans character has said she is “very disheartened” by the situation.

“[They said] my character would now be a cis girl, a straight cis girl.” “I was very disheartened. From the moment I got the script, I was excited to share my journey to help empower other trans youth. I knew this would be a very important conversation. Trans stories matter, and they deserve to be heard.”

Gender identity has become a charged and divisive topic across the United States, especially around youth and sports. Most recently, Disney Television Animation's series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur made headlines after some who worked on the show took to social media to say Disney banned the release of an episode focused on a recurring transgender character. The company denied that the episode was “banned” and said the decision to hold on releasing the episode was made more than a year ago and was not because of the transgender character inclusion. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney is far from alone in grappling with potential fallout from politically charged content in TV and Film. All of Hollywood is bracing for what could be a tumultuous four years under the Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump, who won in a sweeping victory last month, has routinely criticized Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts, and it’s been widely reported that a number of businesses have started to pull back on DEI programming, a trend that underrepresented groups fear will only continue. Top media execs have already met with Trump, including Apple’s Tim Cook, while Netflix’s Ted Sarandos is scheduled to meet with him at Mar-a-Lago today

[queenmelancholy]

It’s really nice to see the Thomas Barrow fandom thriving here. Obviously I’m a newbie, and I’m curious to know more about how you guys first came to like Thomas as a character (aka when “the evil one” became “HIM!!!”). So, if I may ask:

Notes: names for non-recurring characters are not used here; episodes are numbered according to ITV/Netflix version

Looking forward to seeing the results. I hope I’ll get surprised! Please reblog for larger sample size. Thanks!

[leothil]

Introduction to TV ratings

Hi! I know a lot of us in the 9-1-1 fandom have started looking more closely at episode ratings this past year, but every time I see them posted I also see a lot of comments from people being unsure what the numbers really mean. I'm someone who first got introduced to tv ratings from being involved in the pro wrestling fandom and learned a lot about them through osmosis, so I thought I could make a small informative post explaining the main concepts and why tv ratings matter!

What I'll cover below:

What are tv ratings?

What exactly are they reporting?

How do I know what the numbers mean?

Are the numbers any good?

Let's dive in!

What are tv ratings?

Tv ratings, or Nielsen ratings, is an audience measurement system operated by Nielsen Media Research that tries to figure out the audience size and composition for tv programs in the USA. The Nielsen company has been measuring this since the 1950's, and their ratings is the currency that drives business between advertisers and broadcasters. To simplify it, the higher the rating a program gets, the more the broadcaster can charge the advertisers and agencies for broadcasting their ads to the audience during that program.

The data collection methods have varied over the years, but right now they're using Portable People Meters and track data from DVR:s. Since 2017 they're also tracking data on Hulu and YoutubeTV, and select programs on Netflix. It is an approximation, since they (naturally) aren't getting the full data from every single tv in the country, but they are good enough (and trusted enough) that their reported metrics are what's considered official.

So what exactly are they reporting?

A couple of different things! The most interesting numbers are total viewers, demographic shares, and demographic ratings. According to Nielsen they also track "gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, occupation, etc." but those are usually not reported as openly as the aforementioned three numbers and are mostly used by advertisers.

Sites like Tvline, Tvseriesfinale and Showbuzzdaily often report daily ratings very quickly after Nielsen releases them. The Fast Nationals are usually what gets the most attention, since they're released the morning after, but they're time period ratings, which means it only measured what was watched during primetime. The more accurate Official Nationals are released later the day after, and are program ratings. So if a program was moved from its usual slot for some reason, the fast nationals will still count the original time slot towards its ratings, while the official nationals will count the slot it actually aired in.

There are also C3 and C7 ratings (live viewing + DVR three/seven days after the airing), but they are seen much more seldom and are largely a fighting point between networks (who want to get paid for more days) and advertisers (who only want to pay for live viewings).

How do I know what the numbers mean?

Let's dive into that! I'll use tables from Tvseriesfinale and Showbuzzdaily with ratings for Monday March 20th (the air date of 9-1-1 S6E12) as my examples.

Here's how Tvseriesfinale reports the ratings, they're using the fast nationals (or "fast affiliate ratings"). The %change is compared to last aired episode of the same show. If you're wondering how the demo change can be positive while the number of viewers change is negative, I'll get to that in a minute.

And here's Showbuzzdaily, they report Live+Same Day which include live viewership + DVR views from the same day (which should be the same as fast nationals, but sometimes varies a bit). You can see that they colour code according to how far above/below the average rating of the night a program placed in different ratings categories.

Now for what the different columns mean:

Viewers (mil) or Persons 2+ (000s): the total number of viewers, in millions, who watched the program. So here Tvseriesfinale reports that 4.3 million people watched 9-1-1, and Showbuzzdaily reports that 4.413 million people did.

18-49 demo and Sales Demo Ratings Adults 18-49: These are the numbers that everyone is really looking at! The demo rating means proportion of a certain group (in this case adults 18-49) that are watching a particular show. In other words, this is the percentage of all adults aged 18-49 in the United States that were watching the show. So a 0.6 (or 0.59) rating for 9-1-1 means that 0.6% (or 0.59%) out of all people aged 18-49 were watching 9-1-1. This is the money demo, this is the number all advertisers and networks are looking at. Persons 18-49 is considered the most lucrative demographic, so the more people in that group your show can draw, the better for the network since they then can ask for more money from the advertisers. Persons 18-49 are considered to be the group to best target advertisements towards for a variety of reasons (disposable income and interest towards buying new things being two of them).

As you can see above, Showbuzzdaily also reports the demo numbers for Adults 18-34 and Adults 25-54. Some advertisers are more interested in these demographics, but overall 18-49 is still the most popular demographic. As you can see, the audiences skew older for all programs. I believe the general consensus is that younger people (<35-year-olds) watch much less tv than older generations, and these numbers support that. This is also why total viewers and demo ratings can have different %change - the 18-49 demo rating cuts off a relatively large part of the audience.

Demographic shares: While the ratings are based on percentage of all people in a demographic, the shares are based on percentage of the number of people who were actually watching TV at that time. So a 6.0 in Women 18-49 means that of all women aged 18-49 watching TV at 8PM, 6% chose to watch 9-1-1.

So... are the numbers any good?

That depends on what you're looking at. TV ratings as a whole have been dropping steadily for many years now, so trying to compare ratings to even, say, five years ago can be hard. For example: in the late 90's, pro wrestling regularly pulled in ratings of 5.0 and higher (I'll put a few below as an example), but those same shows would now be ecstatic if they managed to get above a 1.0 rating; their regular numbers the past year (for the big shows RAW, Smackdown and Dynamite) have mostly hovered around 0.4-0.7.

The first number is the demo rating

For the best overview, it's best to compare ratings for a certain show to the ratings of other shows on air, and I believe that's what the networks are doing as well. In that context, 9-1-1 is doing very well, as it regularly ends up near the top for scripted shows, even when looking at all shows over a week. The average rating for S6 so far is 0.63, which is lower than the average rating of 0.76 for S5 (which in turn was lower than the average rating of 1.05 for S4 and so forth). The ratings consistently dropping year over year are a concern for the industry at large, and it's pretty clear streaming services have played a big role in causing this, but I find it hard to believe tv networks would consider stopping producing shows for live tv anytime soon.

And that's it! If something still feels unclear, feel free to drop me a message and I'll do my best to answer any questions! If you want to dive a bit deeper into the different metrics, I recommend this page on Showbuzzdaily, and if you want to look at ratings from previous seasons, Tvseriesfinale's 911 ratings tag is a good place to find articles summarizing both individual episode ratings and ratings for a whole season.

[sgiandubh]

I found OL on Netflix in the summer of 2021 by pure coincidence

And you're right, nothing compares to the magic of the first season

That female gaze is clearly evident in Anna Foerster’s direction of the wedding episode

And You're always welcome to come to Saudi Arabia

Dear (returning) Saudi Arabian Anon,

Thank you so, so much for coming back with more, so I hope you won't mind if I'd gladly like to continue our dialogue of sorts.

Yes, Anna Foerster did wonders for OL and singlehandedly elevated what could very well be pathetic porn to flawless Art, which is spectacular and responsible for at least half of the immediate sympathy (and more...) tsunami, on behalf of These Two and of the whole project. I personally did find Gabaldon's gaze a bit wanting when it comes to intimacy, but cannot really blame or fault her: I think it might be a generational thing, rather. What the series brought to this was novelty and magic and (well, yes...) truth. When you add these three elements, the result is dynamite.

Take this particular (very loaded) moment, for example:

This is a woman's gaze on an intimate scene totally (shamelessly?) owned by another woman. He is under her spell and happy to remain there (for the rest of his life, as we know from the books) and this is Moment Number Two - not yet love (that would be Tartan Moment Number Three, in my book), but raw (and yes, very modern), devastating physical attraction. The genius is to put that very cerebral, almost subdued filter on the circumstance and let the tiny gestures (his hand throwing the shirt in concession) speak for themselves.

What episode of Season One did you like the most? And what do you think about the IC's work in the last seasons, ignoring for a moment the fact that, according to the last SAG-AFTRA agreement with TPTB, their presence on set is now almost mandatory when nudity scenes are scripted?

And yes. I shall definitely come visit. Now yes. More than ever :) I raise you a coffee in Athens or wherever I might be posted next on this planet. Deal, Anon?

Thank you!

[gunsatthaphan]

hello! i hope you're having a good day!

i don't really know who else to ask this but i feel like you always have a good overview over what's going on.

i'm a little confused because i've seen a few people say that only boo! isn't doing well in terms of popularity 🤔 and while as newbies they obviously can't beat a pondphuwin show like we are, they have almost double the average views of 23.5 for example (on youtube at least). and while that was airing i had the impression that 23.5 was quite popular tbh

what would you say determines if a show is doing well and for example would make gmmtv consider giving the actors more projects, etc. ?

hello there!

I'm having a good day thank you :)

I would say Only Boo did fine overall, considering it was mainly an all-newbie project. Looking at the views on youtube, the episodes have an average of ~2.5-3 Million views per episode which is pretty solid and the traffic on Twitter was also not too bad.

According to the CEO P'Tha, the popularity of a series is not measured by views on youtube or other platforms but by engagement on social media, which I think can be said for pretty much all bls. Twitter is the main platform for these shows, meaning the number of tweets is what's crucial when determining how successful something is, whether it's a show or an event associated with a show or a person like a concert etc., which is why they make posts about the number of tweets for each episode with the ranking in each country etc. - because that's what counts to them.

The reason why 23.5 didn't get many YT views is that it aired on Netflix for most countries, which is the case for most shows that have a third provider aside from YT and TV. If there's another platform involved, the YT views go down. But it also depends on the geoblocking situation which changes for each series.

23.5 got an average of ~700K views on youtube but over 2 Million tweets per episode so yes, it did very well. We Are can be considered very successful all around with an average of 6 Million YT views and 2 Million tweets per episode, while Wandee Goodday is currently the weakest link with an average of ~2.5 Million YT views but only 100k tweets per episode.

So yeah while Youtube views are not redundant, they're not really representative for how well a show is doing, at least from the perspective of the company. Twitter is the measure of all things ✌🏻 lol.

I hope this answered your question anon!

xxx

[burningthrucelluloid]

Christmas Carol-Cember Day 11

I'm gonna step outside my comfort zone for this one. Alright, here goes.

Let’s talk about the My Little Pony Version of a Christmas Carol.

Huh, didn't vomit in my mouth as much as I thought.

Full disclosure, I completely avoided “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” when it was on the air back in the day. I, like many other adult men, looked at this show’s popularity and was stunned with how it had a large fandom amongst older male fans than it did young female fans. That feeling of fragile masculinity kept me from really giving it a chance as I focused on other things that appealed to me, like anime or Doctor Who.

Now with a older mindset willing to challenge these gender conventions, plus a friend who became an open fan and was forced to watch a show he did not enjoy due to losing an Oscar betting pool with me, I checked out a few episodes to ease his suffering.

To my surprise? It wasn’t as horrid as I was expecting nor was it that feminine as I was lead to believe.

A major part in that was thanks to it's show runner Lauren Faust, animator on films like “Cats Don’t Dance” and “The Iron Giant” and animation director for 2000s cartoons like “The Powerpuff Girls” and “Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends.” According to the Netflix series “The Toys That Made Us” that focused on the My Little Pony franchise, Lauren grew up with the pony dolls like countless others girls who grew up in the 80s, but for her and her friends, what meant the world to them were the stories and adventures that she and her friends made up using the dolls as well as the quirky personalities that they made up for each pony doll. Taking that ethos to heart, Faust went into “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” with the mantra that the story and characters would be central and the product would be secondary.

Her intuition proved correct. “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” was a smash hit upon release that spanned nine seasons, an equally successful spin-off series, a theatrical movie and saw Hasbro’s profits skyrocket. Additionally, the show caught on with men just as much as it did for girls, legitimizing the show runners to write the show with a more accepting approach as they became aware of the fans watching. Presumably that is how we got this episode, “A Hearth’s Warming Tail” during its sixth season. 

I wasn’t planning on checking it out, but when @clarktooncrossing brought it up in conversations, he mentioned a small detail that made me tilt my head and ask a question:

“How do you tell a Christmas Carol when the fantasy world doesn’t have Christmas?"

In the fantasy world of Ponyville, all the little horses love the holiday “Hearth’s Warming” and look forward to the sharing of gifts, candy and season tidings…and scaring away yetis or something? I dunno, I’m going by wikipedia to confirm this.

Well all but this one horse with a name that sounds like she took it from a disco album, Starlight Glimmer (played by Kelly Sheridan). She finds the whole thing silly and intends to skip it, but the pony possibly named after an Electrical Light Orchestra album, Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) won’t have it so she sits her down and proceeds to read a book about a mini horse with the same hairstyle and voice actor named Snowfall Frost, a name that sounds like a Scandinavian metal band, preparing to cast a Level 9 ritual spell to erase the holiday forever.

But lo and behold, three ghosts of Hearth’s Warming past (voiced by Ashleigh Ball), present (voiced by Andrea Libman) and future (voiced by Tabitha St Germain) show up to get her to change her mind before the ritual reaches it’s casting time requirement. 

Complete with music numbers. Get yours today for $29.99 plus shipping and handling.

So having to rely entirely on Wikipedia to tell me who is who as well as the small handful of episodes I have seen, I can name one problem that might be problematic for anyone coming into this blind: the characters and their stories require context.

Unless you were watching this show from the first episode, you would probably be confused as to who was who and what their personalities are and what is their relationship to one another.

I point this out because at one point early in the episode, a dragon character acknowledges a previous transgression Starlight Glimmer committed. I had no idea whether that was true or some easter egg I didn’t get since I never watched those episodes that involved this character. Then again, anyone would run into this problem if you are watching a narrative-driven show. It’d be like watching “Avatar the Last Airbender” and you start with the season 3 episode “The Western Air Temple.” You would, understandably, be very lost in why these characters are in hiding, why they don’t trust the angsty guy with the eye scar and who this big dude who shoots explosions out his forehead is.

But that’s literally the only negative I have to say about this adaptation.

Once you get past that context hurdle, the story follows along the Charles Dickens novel enough that you understand the character beats and motivations easily enough. Granted all the Dickens-era characters are played by characters from the show, but it’s not necessary to know who they are to understand the story. 

It also doesn’t hurt that the vocal performances are fantastic.

Kelly Sheridan really gives the Scrooge character here a dominant and icy personality that the character calls for and she pulls that off swimmingly, as is her change of heart as it becomes clear her hatred for the holiday is derived from her past traumas and a reassessment of her belief system for what bettering the world looks like.

Ashleigh Ball’s Ghost of the Past is clearly leaning into Bette Midler for influence, especially with the Southern twang she puts into the words she has to sing. She’s also the only established cast member in this who provides both the speaking and singing voice.

Shannon Chan-Kent really leans into the jazz influence all while keeping the high energy that comes with the character for the Ghost of the Present. Andrea Libman, to her credit, sticks the landing with a character I would prefer to get off a bus to get away from. If you could deliver these lines while talking fast, acting hyper and NOT trip over them, you deserve your roses.

Tabitha St Germain, a woman whose IMDB is like going through a real “holy sh*t, that was HER?!” of voiceover roles does not perform the singing voice for the Ghost of the Future, but credit to Aloma Steele for doing a pretty spot-on job sounding close all while performing in this operatic dirge regarding the visions of the future where everyone died.

Lyrically, the songs vary from being too smaltzy and direct but serviceable to being genuinely poetic. More on that later.

As for the animation; even for a show that was aimed for young children, it’s quite colorful but not overbearingly so. A problem I have with a lot of media that’s aimed for kids is the colors can be too bright, to the point of clashing with each other or causing eye strain. Even when there’s a lot happening on screen as the scene changes from different location, the animation team knows where to draw your eye without filling the screen with too much at once and allowing the backgrounds to match the tone intended. Whether it’s soft and minimal as seen in the visions of the past, vibrant and colorful for the sequence set in the present or dark and gloomy for the visions of the future.

The story itself, while doing enough to keep the themes of Dickens intact, can be summarized with “don’t be a humbug for the holidays and enjoy spending time with people, even if you don’t get the holiday.” Which is a nice message for kids, but as an adult? Might come off as disingenuous, but then again, I’ve worked retail during the Christmas season for years, if that doesn’t make you jaded, I can’t imagine what else would.

Honestly, I was ready to write this episode off as nothing special until this one moment came up that made me stop and think when I reflected on it.

During a trip to the past, a vision of a young Snowfall decorating her classroom is interrupted by a curmudgeon professor called Flintheart, William Samples, who harshly puts her down for these “childish fantasies” that is getting in the way of her magical studies and declares that if she’s serious about becoming a powerful magic user, she needs to focus on her studies or “play with her toys and make nothing of herself.”

What really made me pause was the lyrical line “feeling helpless, can’t make it hurt less, so you go and change your point of view.”

Children are more receptive than I think we recognize. The beliefs and opinions they exposit are formed from their environment that shape them to become the adults today. So when adults impart harsh lessons or speak carelessly down to them, they stick and can shape them to become our own mistakes.

Whether it’s telling them celebrating the holidays makes them lazy and worthless or making them believe they’re superior to the opposite gender, race or religious creed, we need to mind what we tell them lest they grow up so jaded they don’t care how the future is shaped. They’re willing to let the world burn up and leave nothing behind for future generations to enjoy.

Can’t believe that, of all things to make me consider this deep insight, it was My Little Pony.

This Christmas Carol challenge is bringing out the weird in me.

If you’re a parent with kids or a fan of animation, take a chance with this. The colors are pleasing to the eye, the vocal performances are surprisingly good and even when Christmas is never mentioned, it still retains the holiday spirit that we associate with December while giving a pretty decent message of unity.

But if you don’t want the stink of Hasbro to plague your algorithm, just stick with the Mickey Mouse version.

“A Hearth’s Warming Tail” is available to stream on Plex or you can find the whole episode on YouTube.

Next time, we look at another TV musical where the music was created by a Disney Legend and the woman who wrote The Preamble Song for "Schoolhouse Rock."

[hellomynameisbisexual]

“I’m not even sure bisexuality exists. I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown,” Carrie Bradshaw famously said in the offensive, misinformed 1998 episode of Sex and the City in which she dates a bisexual man. These words are still painfully seared into my brain. How could a sex columnist, a character written predominantly by gay men, have such a limited view of queer identity? Nearly ten years later, a 2016 episode of HBO dramedy Insecure sees Molly (Yvonne Orji) finding out that the man she’s seeing, Jared, nonchalantly had a sexual encounter with another man. After exposing her biphobia to her friends, another character declares Jared to be gay. Ultimately, Molly and Carrie both decide, despite the chemistry and their attraction, that they could not get past their own compulsory monosexuality to continue dating a bisexual man. Why does television, a medium primed for long-form character development and storytelling, continuously fail at representing bisexual men?

Twenty-five years after that infamous Sex and the City scene, bisexuality (for the purposes of this piece, I am using bisexuality as a term that encompasses all people with the capacity to be attracted to more than one gender, including those who identify as bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer, and more) on television has made significant strides—from young-adult programming like Euphoria, Riverdale, and Gossip Girl, to adult dramas like Game of Thrones, The Magicians, and obviously, The Bisexual. Bisexuality is no longer relegated to a very-special episode, and is slowly leaving the realm of bad, misinformed jokes. According to GLAAD’s 2021-2022 Where We Are on TV report, queer representation on television is at an all-time high. After two consecutive years of decreases, bisexual representation increased by one percent over last year: nine non-binary characters, 124 women, and sadly, only 50 men. Fifty may seem like a solid number at the outset, but consider the quality of these representations. Aside from a few stand-out examples, like Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) on Netflix’s much-loved Heartstopper, many are relegated to supporting and recurring characters, at best, and stuck in tropes, at worst.

Maria San Filippo is an associate professor at Emerson College whose research focuses on screen media’s intersections with gender and sexuality. In 2013, she published The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, a pathbreaking monograph on the state of bisexual representation in both mediums. “Bisexuality was only beginning to be central and recurring, rather than peripheral and episodically one-off or short-lived,” she said over email. “Bisexuality’s representational legibility has been expanded; it’s less easily deniable as ‘just a phase’ when bisexuality becomes an ongoing character trait.”

Broadly speaking, on-screen storytelling has struggled to construct bisexuality in ways that reach beyond the word landing at the butt of jokes or framed through the lens of disgust and abjection. Nowhere does it fail bisexuals more than television, a site of endless discursive possibilities. Television’s long-form narrative offers unique opportunities to watch sexuality unfold over time, but rather than exploring and showcasing every permutation of bisexuality, bi men on television are far and few between.

“Bi+ male representation has always been the biggest challenge,” San Filippo said. “Bisexuality threatens heteropatriarchy and phallic authority, and so must be hidden or, if acknowledged, desexualized and disparaged through mockery or else hypersexualized as in porn (and even then bisexuality is rebranded as ‘gay for pay’).” She said it’s not unlike the uncommon sight of male frontal nudity on screen, which she explores in her 2021 book, Provocauteurs and Provocations. “Dan Levy’s character David on Schitt’s Creek is one high-profile example of recurring, more nuanced male bi+ representation,” she said. “We need more.”

The phallic authority, as San Filippo calls it, is not as threatened when it comes to the representation of bisexual women characters, who were more than double as numerous in the 2021-2022 television season. Nate Shu, a bisexual comedian based in Boston who spoke with me over Zoom, suggests that feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s work on patriarchal ideologies in film still applies here. Mulvey’s seminal 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” uses a psychoanalytic lens to look at the way women have been depicted in film primarily for the pleasure of the male viewer. She coined this theory the male gaze.

“Lesbian and bisexual characters are more attainable when they’re female because there’s something for male viewers to hold on to,” he said. “A bisexual woman is still an attainable woman to a straight man, whereas a bisexual man is both a threat and an anomaly.”

These conventions are sewn into the fabric of on-screen storytelling, a part of the canon of cinema that queer storytellers are working hard to reform. But despite this hard work, bisexual stories are still too-often made palatable to viewers through a handful of storytelling tropes: the coming out story, reasserting the status quo of a relationship or identity, or hinting at a character’s dishonesty or shiftiness (it pains me to bring it up, but Frank Underwood on House of Cards is a great example here).

The CW’s 2015 musical-dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend showcased one of the more fleshed-out bisexual men on television, Darryl Whitefeather, played by Peter Gardner. His unapologetic musical sequence on how he’s “Gettin’ Bi” was an audacious and refreshing moment for a middle-aged character embracing his sexuality—despite his entire storyline being framed around coming out. We tend to see these coming out narratives again and again, to the point where it begins to feel like viewer manipulation. The coming out scene will only lead to the catharsis of Heartbreaker-level tears if it feels earned through a character’s arc of self-suppression and pain. However, the gay blueprint has already been established, and thus the coming out story is relatable and palatable, rather than depicting a character already living their truth.

Shu, who identifies as bisexual and biracial for the sake of alliteration in his comedy (as opposed to pansexual, a term to which he more closely relates), asked me poignant questions: “What is queer representation? Having a character make an off-hand comment and it’s never acknowledged—that is a queer character, but it’s not a queer story.” His ideal bisexual representation allows characters to be authentic people living outside of constructed narratives that are more viewer-friendly like the coming out story. He could only name one example of an Asian bisexual character on television that he felt somewhat seen through—Magnus Bane, played by Harry Shum Jr. on the Freeform supernatural drama Shadowhunters. “It’s tough to get out of the boxes of what culture, film, and TV have defined for decades,” Shu said.

Marvel has been a site of critique around its inability to flesh out queer characters in an authentic way, awkwardly suggesting that all superheroes are heterosexual. The 2021 Disney+ series Loki made headlines for a 20-second scene where the titular character confirms his bisexuality after admitting he has been with princesses and princes in his past. This kind of casual bisexuality has become more commonplace in the streaming era, to the point of forgettability: Bill Pargrave on Killing Eve, playing Eve’s MI5 boss until he was eventually stabbed by murderess Villanelle, also identified as bisexual in a passing conversation. Other examples include Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) on Halt and Catch Fire and the titular character (Tom Ellis) on Lucifer. Does the off-hand knowledge of a character’s sexual fluidity, without an in-depth exploration of his sexuality, qualify as queer representation? Perhaps a better question would be, does it make bisexual viewers feel seen and understood, and add to monosexual viewers’ understanding and empathy of bisexuality?

At the end of October 2022, Kit Connor came out as bisexual in a bitter tweet after months of being hounded and online bullied by Netflix Heartstopper fans, some of whom accused Connor of queerbaiting for playing a bisexual character. The fall-out made me wonder why any actor, let alone a bisexual actor who may still be processing or figuring out his sexuality, would want to play a bisexual character in the social media age. “I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye,” his tweet read.

Not to center myself in the discourse, but I can’t help but wonder how a more thorough cultural understanding of bisexuality would impact my own dating life as a gay man, what the dating pool might look like if there was a more rigorous acceptance and visibility of bisexuality and fewer “discreet” men refusing to send you photos of their faces on dating apps with fear of being outed in their real life. The latest 2021 Census data coming out of the United Kingdom suggests there are currently nearly as many bisexual-identifying individuals as gay and lesbian survey respondents combined. These numbers feel hopeful, to me. Previous generations grew up dissatisfied by the range of representation on television, leading to iconic shows like Pose that shifted the course of television at the intersections of queerness and race. I can only imagine what the landscape will look like in 10, 20 years as the bisexual-identifying Gen Zs—the queerest generation yet—make their way into creative fields. We’ll have to watch and find out.

[mayalaen]

my server vs netflix

Long post for a few mutuals who asked about this 🏴‍☠️

Netflix (according to the geeks on server forums -- so this could be off a bit) has individual servers that hold about 100TB of data each, and Netflix claims they have around 18,000 servers worldwide.

Netflix has about 3000 movies and 1800 TV shows available in the United States at any given time. It varies in other countries, but is similar.

This is my server below (pen for size comparison and purple sticky note covering the super bright blue light that bores into my brain)

It's got 5 drive bays, and right now I have 60TB of storage space in it (meaning it's just a little smaller than one of Netflix's servers), and only 37TB of which is currently used. I can easily expand with add-on bays once I fill up the 60TB.

I currently have 4470 movies and 862 TV series, all with closed captioning that I've curated and about 100 of the TV shows have bonus scenes and specials included.

My server cost me about $2700: $1200 for the 5-bay box and the rest was spent on hard drives over the course of 2 years -- 5 inside the server and 6 backup drives. I bought good drives when they were on sale.

I spent another $300 on a range extender for my house so mom and dad could watch in their bedrooms without interruption.

My home internet costs $50 a month and I'm able to serve friends and family in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. It's not always accessible (sorry Australia and your shitty internet), but it's up most of the time.

I never take movies/TV shows off of my server, and all the TV shows have their original DVD soundtracks, so nobody has to worry I'm going to remove their faves or ruin soundtracks.

I take requests from anyone, adding it when I find it with no judgement on content.

I don't charge anyone for using my server, and yet I'm paying less than I used to for internet and streaming services.

My payments for internet and streaming for my business and two family houses (Charlie's house and my house) used to be $900 A MONTH ($450 of it was the business internet because ISPs gouge businesses even though the internet usage at the shop is less than home).

Just before I quit Cox Internet, they were about to raise the cost and my new total would've been $1000 per month.

My monthly payments are now $220 for internet service and streaming services. So within just a few months, the server paid for itself.

I still have YouTube TV, Netflix x2 (one for each house), Hulu, and Discovery+.

I'm not saying the average person can set this up, but I want to make it clear that streaming services aren't the mysterious, unknowable magic that people think they are.

They're just servers (hard drives) with data on them and a good internet connection.

Anyone can set up a home server. You don't need a $1200 box like mine. Even an old computer/laptop or single hard drive will work.

A brand new 2TB good-quality hard drive that could hold about 1000 movies or 60-80 TV series would only cost $60 plus another $29 for a basic enclosure/case. (I bought mine from NewEgg for backups)

I use Plex as my media server program. It has a free version and a paid version. I bought the lifetime pass on sale for $90. It goes on sale 2-3 times a year. There are other programs out there too, including Kodi, which has a Netflix skin so it looks like you're using Netflix.

Plex and other programs like it already have a huge library of metadata, so I didn't have to create my own cover art or fill in any other information other than title & year for movies or title + season + episode number for TV shows.

Careful naming of files and sorting in properly-named folders is all you need to have this:

It took me about 3 months to download and organize most of the movies and TV shows in between working and taking care of my home/family. Now I update the server once a week and it takes about 2 hours a week to download/update new TV shows and movies.

I wasn't able to torrent when I had Cox Internet, but the new $50/month ISP doesn't give a shit. Even so, I use a VPN, which is $9 a month just in case they ever decide to get touchy about torrenting.

The server does regular maintenance on itself, and I have backups of everything.

I realize not everyone has the tech skills to set something like this up, but even if one tech person in the family or circle of friends has the ability, they could serve around 60 people.

The most I've had streaming at one time was 10 separate people watching different things, and my server handled it with no problem.

Others on the server forum claim they've maxed out around 25 people simultaneously watching, but 60 people is the number suggested because not everybody will watch at the same time.

Streaming, as it currently works, does NOT support anyone related to the creation of TV shows and movies.

Hopefully this will change, but even if it does, that doesn't change the fact that I can easily support creators myself by buying their DVDs, merch, going to cons, and donating to them or their projects directly.

Right now, pirating movies and TV shows doesn't hurt creators because streaming services and big studios are the main villains, and if all you did was donate $5 to your favorite TV show/movie, you'd be giving them more than if you streamed their content as many times as you wanted each month on a big streaming service.

I have movies and TV shows on my server that aren't even available from content creators anymore due to greedy CEOs and execs who dump their content for tax breaks.

If more people switched to using their own servers, MAYBE it would scare the greedy assholes into paying content creators what they deserve, but in the meantime it's a great way to enjoy content that was created to be shared and to support the creators.

EDIT: I need to add that streaming a TV show/movie as much as possible in the first few weeks of the release date DOES help the show get renewed and the movie execs are more likely to buy future movies, so please stream as much as possible then to help content creators. After that time is up and the streaming service moves on, then it's totally fine to pirate.

[librathefangirl]

@whumpgifathon | Day 25: Period Drama Alt. Begging The Seven Deadly Sins | S03E20 | Meliodas & Elizabeth Liones

[mariacallous]

“Netflix” was always a bit of a misnomer. In a well-worn piece of Silicon Valley lore, cofounder Reed Hastings once said “there’s a reason we didn’t call the company DVD-by-Mail.com,” noting that the service was always meant to evolve into a streaming platform. In choosing that moniker—rather than, say, Netshowz—the company positioned itself as a place for movies. Flicks, though, have never been its strongest suit.

Not to say that Netflix doesn’t have good movies—each year they pull out at least one or two Oscar contenders—but its series will always be what keeps its 260 million-plus subscribers coming back. Even when their shows get canceled after two seasons. Its first big hits were House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black and if there’s anything on the service making waves right now, it’s the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Ripley (as in the Talented Mr.) or (somewhat controversially) Baby Reindeer. This week, when WIRED went about compiling our list of movies to watch on the service, the pickin’s were slim.

It’s not just Netflix. Right now the best things to watch on almost any streaming service are shows. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, despite being the reincarnation of something once called Home Box Office and having a back catalog full of Warner Bros. films, has people frothing over its upcoming seasons of House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. Sure, it has the Dune films, but it’s possible people will keep coming back for its Bene Gesserit spinoff series, Dune: Prophecy.

Disney+ similarly has the entire back catalogs of Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, but staked a claim when it launched by offering original series like Andor and Loki. This week, Disney CEO Bob Iger conceded the company “tried to tell too many stories” in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean X-Men ‘97 isn’t one of the most talked about things on the platform right now. Or, consider this, Disney+’s most-watched movie in 2023 was Moana, with nearly 12 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen. Bluey more than triples that total with 44 billion minutes viewed. Yes, Bluey is the number one show parents love to play on a loop, but The Mandalorian also beat Moana for minutes viewed.

Netflix, much like Amazon, started from a different place than Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, because it didn’t, and doesn’t, have a decades-old vault of content. But if the last few years have demonstrated anything, it’s that streaming services want to replace television networks—or turn into them—and that means shows. If anything, streamers’ reimagined made-for-TV movies are a special treat, not the main course. Prime Video’s two-hour feature Road House is alright, but the eight-episode show Fallout is keeping the streamer in the conversation right now.

Nowhere has this been more evident than this week’s upfronts. An annual bonanza during which television networks convince advertisers their airtime is the best airtime (if you think it’s painful to watch Ryan Reynolds try to land a Deadpool joke in a room full of suits, it is), the entire dog-and-pony show has gone through a couple changes in recent years. Last year, as HBO Max was mutating into Max, the events got picketed by striking members of the Writers Guild of America. Netflix canceled its in-person event and went virtual. This year, Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube showed up. Their arrival was so feared/lauded that The Hollywood Reporter ran a piece about how “an asteroid is about to hit upfronts.”

That didn’t exactly happen, but now that nearly all the major streamers—Netflix, Disney+, Max, Prime Video—have ad-supported tiers, they showed up to come for bigger slices of the advertising pie than ever before. Amazon brought out Reece Witherspoon to announce that Legally Blonde was getting a prequel series tentatively called Elle. The company also announced a second season of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and a new Tomb Raider series. So that’s three shows that used to be movies, or videogames-turned-movies. Netflix touted Stranger Things, Wednesday, Squid Game, and a new show from Mindy Kaling.

Streamers also touted their sports offerings, with some of the biggest news of the week coming from Netflix, which revealed that it would be hosting the NFL’s upcoming Christmas Day football games. Sports have become something of a brass ring for streamers, and Netflix’s move ups their clout alongside Amazon’s Thursday Night Football deal and Disney’s range of offerings on ESPN, which can now be bundled with Disney+ streaming packages. Sporting events aren’t shows, but as streaming services morph into something more akin to cable, they offer more comfortable feeling ad breaks than the ones afforded by films. Some 40 percent of Netflix subscribers are now signed up for ad-supported models and the company has lots of ad-friendly content to give them.

Then there’s YouTube. The company’s Brandcast event on Wednesday trotted out big names like Billie Eilish while also promising that creators, not Hollywood productions, are the future. YouTube is the top streamer in terms of hours watched, and according to company CEO Neal Mohan, it’s “redefining what TV looks like, helping creators reach new heights and using AI to expand creativity.” It also just inked a deal with the WNBA. Mohan, not to be outdone by his colleagues at Google I/O this week, also penned a column for The Hollywood Reporter calling for creators to be eligible for Emmys. Creators, Mohan wrote, are pushing boundaries when it comes to using AI and, if we’re all cool with that, then they should be celebrated just the same.

Creators also provide something no sporting event, no miniseries, no film does: short-form video. As streamers duke it out trying to land the next Big Game or The Bear, younger viewers are already locked into MrBeast and Skibidi Toilet. Maybe it’s time someone in Silicon Valley dreamed up Netskits.

[roiunl-blog]

Three Bottles Problem

The first scene follows the English translation's approach of putting the cultural revolution scene first, but then it turns that scene into... suffering porn?

You didn't have to do that, Netflix. It's already a very heavy scene: Ye Wenjie (叶文洁) is already going through some serious trauma in the original version of this scene. And the discussion between her father and mother is not that complex, it's a pretty straightforward matter of her father saying "it was smart of you to start using Chinese names for western scientific concepts, since you saw the cultural revolution was about to start".

The fact that this scene has been turned into a conversation about "God" (who is the natural enemy of communism, according to this show (as opposed to fascists, who are actually the natural enemy of communism)) makes the entire thing suspect immediately.

Let's move on: maybe the carelessness about history is a small oversight in an otherwise good show, right? Oh, the scientists are literally seeing magical numbers in their vision, instead of just seeing a countdown printed on photographs? Oh, I see, okay. That means the "scientific" explanation of what is happening is going to be some deeply meaningless mumbo jumbo. There's no way around that now. They've written themselves into a corner immediately. Which just means they don't care about writing themselves into these types of corners.

18 minutes into the first episode of this show and I've already realized that this is just going to be a parade of nonsensical set pieces with expensive VFX.

[comicweek]

Launched during the pandemic with a playbook to shoot $150 million-plus seasons with no pilots, the Disney unit is undergoing growing pains and seeing the logic of "traditional TV culture."

...

Through it all, the company eschewed the traditional TV-making model. It didn’t commission pilots but instead shot entire $150 million-plus seasons of TV on the fly. It didn’t hire showrunners, but instead depended on film executives to run its series. And as Marvel does for its movies, it relied on postproduction and reshoots to fix what wasn’t working.

Even though they remain, along with Star Wars titles, the most watched shows on Disney+, Marvel series have recently faced a number of creative challenges and cries of diminishing returns from critics and audience metrics, causing a major shift at the studio to move to make TV shows the more traditional way.

“We’re trying to marry the Marvel culture with the traditional television culture,” says Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation. “It comes down to, ‘How can we tell stories in television that honor what’s so great about the source material?’”

With Daredevil’s new direction, Marvel hopes to right the ship on a project with sky-high expectations. The show is Marvel’s first to feature a hero who already had a successful series on Netflix, running three seasons. But sources say that Corman and Ord crafted a legal procedural that did not resemble the Netflix version, known for its action and violence. Cox didn’t even show up in costume until the fourth episode. Marvel, after greenlighting the concept, found itself needing to rethink the original intention of the show.

Marvel plans to keep some scenes and episodes, though other serialized elements will be injected, with Corman and Ord becoming executive producers on the two-season series.

Daredevil is far from the first Marvel series to undergo drastic behind-the-scenes changes. Those who work with Marvel on the TV side have complained of a lack of central vision that has, according to sources, begun to afflict the studio’s shows with creative differences and tension. “TV is a writer-driven medium,” says one insider familiar with the Marvel process. “Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.” 

On the Oscar Isaac starrer Moon Knight, show creator and writer Jeremy Slater quit and director Mohamed Diab took the reins. Jessica Gao developed and wrote She-Hulk: Attorney at Law but was sidelined once director Kat Coiro came on board. Production was challenging, with COVID hitting cast and crew, and Gao was brought back to oversee postproduction, a typical showrunner duty, but it’s the rare Marvel head writer who has such oversight.

Even though the company does not have a writers-first approach to TV, directors could feel short-changed as well. “The whole ‘fix it in post’ attitude makes it feel like a director doesn’t matter sometimes,” says one person familiar with the process.

As its shows ramped up during the pandemic, Marvel stepped outside its usual staffing approach and brought in outside execs after years of internally promoting creatives who had been sufficiently trained in the Marvel method. 

This change was felt most severely on Secret Invasion, the Samuel L. Jackson-led thriller that stands as Marvel’s worst-reviewed series. Kyle Bradstreet, a writer and executive producer on USA Network Emmy winner Mr. Robot, had been working on the scripts for Secret Invasion for about a year when he was fired after Marvel decided on a different direction. Enter new writer Brian Tucker, who penned the crime thriller Broken City. Thomas Bezucha, who helmed the thriller Let Him Go, and Ali Selim, who worked on Hulu’s 9/11 drama The Looming Tower, were on board as directors and to help crack the story.

[natlacentral]

‘Avatar’ & ‘Love Is Blind’ Take Over Nielsen Streaming Charts With 2B+ Minutes Viewed; SAG Awards Generate Low Audience

Avatar: The Last Airbender made quite the entrance on Netflix.

The live-action adaptation debuted on February 22 and, in just a four days of availability, it racked up 2.56B viewing minutes. Usually, that would easily place it in the top spot on the Nielsen streaming charts, but it just so happens that another Netflix original came in a close second.

Love Is Blind courted 2.41B viewing minutes during the February 19 to 25 interval, as three new Season 6 episodes became available. According to Nielsen, these new episodes generated nearly 1B viewing minutes on their own, while the entirety of Season 6 accounted for about 92% of the week’s viewing.

This is the first time in more than a year that two titles have exceeded 2B minutes viewed in the same week, and the last time it happened was with Manifest and The Crown — both of which had more than 50 episodes to lean on.  

Once again, a Max title found a new life on Netflix during this week as well. In its first full week on Netflix, Warrior skyrocketed to No. 4 overall with 948M minutes viewed. 

Speaking of Max, the finale of True Detective: Night Country aired during the last interval, but it continued to draw viewers into the next week. The series managed 889M viewing minutes during this measurement period.

It didn’t make the list, but Nielsen reports that the SAG Awards — which aired live on Netflix on February 24 — tallied around 170M viewing minutes. By Netflix’s standards, that translates to about 860,000 views, which is pretty significantly below the show’s performance on linear TV. Netflix hasn’t put out its own numbers about the telecast.