As the showrunner grows his darkly comic satire into a franchise — and spoofs a certain trial and presidential election in the new season — he says he’s fine losing the viewers who just figured out his social agenda: “Go watch something else.”

  • @BeatTakeshi
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    8610 days ago

    They are not gonna “go watch something else” because as he also says:

    Some people who watch it think Homelander is the hero. What do you say to that? The show’s many things. Subtle isn’t one of them. So if that’s the message you’re getting from it, I just throw up my hands.

    Basically many are hopeless

  • @kernelle
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    4310 days ago

    As a European, I thought that was obvious from the first episode. So many stabs at a specific worldview, it’s obviously a criticism on modern politics.

  • @MehBlah
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    1710 days ago

    I can’t believe anyone ever thought it was anything but a representation of trump and his worldview.

  • @[email protected]
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    110 days ago

    I stopped watching the show because it seemed a little over the top and graphic. I may check it out again, though.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    011 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    But it was a cheap, genre show on an unsexy network, The CW, so even an ensuing string of doubles (Revolution, Timeless) did little to move his needle.

    But Kripke crafted a scathing satire of 21st century America where Homelander, the chiseled superhero in the American flag cape, is an authoritarian proxy for Donald Trump.

    Critics immediately took a shine, but its commercial success — the most recent season earned more eyeballs than The Rings of Power, with 106 billion minutes viewed in 2022 — made Kripke a priority at the streamer.

    Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism.

    It’s happened now almost every season, and we write them sometimes close to two years before they air and again we’ll find that the news is accurately reflecting whatever we’re talking about.

    But, especially for young showrunners, I do wish there was still that Syfy channel and CW model of learning how to stretch your dollar, both in terms of writing and producing.


    The original article contains 2,169 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • @[email protected]
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      1310 days ago

      Sometimes just cutting out paragraphs to “summarize” the text is just plain bad. This is one of those times, and time for me to finally block this thing.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 days ago

        But but suddenly critics it’s but. I’m not defending the bot this is just the first words of each paragraph and it’s really annoying to read.

      • @BeatTakeshi
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        -910 days ago

        You realise you are reacting with feelings to a bot? I read the whole article and it’s just an interview format which makes no sense to summarise. I mean you can always disregard, but it does save some time most of the time, helping you quickly judge if the content is worth a full read or not without opening the link. It’s a technology

        • @[email protected]
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          910 days ago

          I am very aware of that it is a bot 😄. And I have to say: a rather bad-its-job one, not just in this case.

          Whenever I read one of its “summaries” it was blatantly obvious that it just cuts parts, often times mauling paragraphs and destroying contexts. And that does not offer any value to me, hence I permanently disregard it now by putting that account on a block list (next to other not-so-great bot accounts).

          • @inspxtr
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            310 days ago

            cuts parts

            that’s actually what the underlying method does, as this is extractive summary, hence it mostly cuts and stitches things.

            From my naive understanding, this type of method does not use or “understand” context.

            The alternative is abstractive summary, which is where LLMs (or even small/medium language models) are good for. But I suspect that would be a controversial choice on lemmy.

        • @jeeva
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          10 days ago

          I think that this is the logical place to put those opinions - it would make less sense unlinked to the post.

          I dislike that it’s been shotgunned at nearly every post I see, regardless of how relevant it might be, and I don’t trust the output to represent the link.

          Given there’s no “bad bot” style feedback functionality (that I know of), what else is there to do than block it?

          • @BeatTakeshi
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            10 days ago

            Github feedback? The bot’s code didn’t write itself. I doubt the programmer(s) read all the posts that the bot generates

  • Jake Farm
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    -2510 days ago

    The comic book came out in 2006 so way more likely it was about George W. Bush’s america. I don’t know what this guy is on about.

    • @Weslee
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      7610 days ago

      It’s an adaptation - things change

        • @[email protected]
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          3510 days ago

          I saw the first comment and thought you might be a bit dim, but as of the second, I see what you’re doing there. It’s satire, right? You’re making fun of people who are really this stupid! Well done, you’ve pretty much nailed it.

        • @[email protected]
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          1510 days ago

          Uh… Homelander is very different in the comics.

          Hell, Black Noir is an entirely different character.

          • Stern
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            1310 days ago

            Not to mention Stormfront, M.M.'s backstory, and Soldier Boy’s whole plotline.

    • JackbyDev
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      4810 days ago

      This guy is making the show, I think he knows what the show is doing.

    • @jacksilver
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      1310 days ago

      The original definitely took swipes at George W. Bush, but definitely felt like it had more focus on anit-capatilistic/corporate America than the show. The comics also have a better subplot around vengeance and finding forgiveness/moving on than the show.

      Its interesting, cause while they start with exactly the same setup, the show and the comic are completely different stories. If you like the show it may be worth reading the comics (although they can be a bit much).

    • @MehBlah
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      79 days ago

      it is not a copy of the comic book plot verbatim. Its without question a parody of modern politics in the series.

    • @Isthisreddit
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      610 days ago

      Conservatives were always about what Trump is about, they only hid behind dog whistles pre-Trump, but nothing is different. The only difference, Trump was too dumb to understand he was supposed to not say the quite stuff out loud