I don't think characters even need to be written with "flaws" (I'll note, I think your and my definition of flaw is very different. I don't consider Batman's no killing policy to be a "flaw", but rather part of his set of morals. Joker tests his morals, but that's an assessment of his character. A flaw, to me, is how Batman constantly alienates his team members, family, and friends due to his paranoia and need for control. Situations like "Tower of Babel" are caused because of Batman's arrogance). But for compelling story writing, writers need to execute on some kind of narrative. Perfect example of this is Huck by Mark Millar. Huck is basically perfect. Kind, handsome, super strong, seemingly indestructible... The story doesn't try to bring him down, or say that he's wrong for trying to help people. In many ways, it takes the "with great power" line, but rather than treating it like a burden or shackle, treats it ultimately as a privilege. Huck gets to do good in the world. It's a responsibility, but it can also be the reward. Angst is easy. But are writers talented enough to have a theme, and execute on that theme? That's more challenging.
You're right, I don't mean 'flaw' in the traditional sense of the word. I do mean it as a bit of an edge on a perfectly straight ball that rolls down a hill. The flaw in that ball makes for the ball to not roll straight down, pick holes in some parts of the grass or even go in a curve when rolling down. They're the interesting aspects that make a character unique and easier to play off of. For Batmans refusal to kill it's what makes him both a hero, but also makes his solutions temporary in the corrupt Gotham. Or for your Batmans desire to always be in control of every situation: it's what makes him a great superhero too. He is able to defeat his opponents thanks to his own intelligence and perseverance. Alternatively, refusing to give up when down can lead to a Robin feeling useless and open to doubt and ultimately betrayal.
Moffat might have had too many long arc mysteries, but at least 1) they were integrated into the season, even if the payoff was often lack luster, and 2) The man understood character. 11 and 12 and their companions were all distinct personalities with their individual goals, ambitions, flaws, and arcs. I'd take 10 more seasons run by Moffat before ever wishing even 1 more episode by Chibnall. Also, I'm gonna say it: RTD is overrated. Completely wasted the Toymaker, and seems to always come back to the same trick: Sad Doctor. The man can plot an arc, I'll give him that, but he's got the subtlety of a fucking wrecking ball.
I do appreciate the idea of leaving a thread in a story of an eternal time traveller, leaving an option for future show runners to return to your story, so that's all fine. He did try and look back into Who to grasp some of those threads from other stories to serve as a nice easter egg for fans.
But to me the problem with mystery boxes that the payoffs are lacklustre, as if they weren't really planned ahead. To me that's what Moffats mysteries often were. Clara being the impossible girl still doesn't make sense to me. She's important to the Doctor's life and all, how did she end up in that Dalek?
Moffat was at his best when he kept to character driven stories. He had a tendency to make the stakes way too big. To me, the best Modern Who episode is The Girl In The Fireplace. The universe wasn't at stake, it was a beautiful stand-alone episode (with dare I say, a very pretty Madame de Pompadour) with a personal drama.
I'm not sure if you've watched BBC's Sherlock, but how did Sherlock survive The Reichenbach Fall? We got an other Moffat special there. No answer, just a bunch of in-universe theorising how it happened (mocking them) and not a word on the topic after that.
As for RTD: today's RTD is completely different than 2005's. He focused on storytelling in the first season, now he's obsessed with the not so subtle messaging. He's also been vocal about it; only a complete eejit would equate Davos to all wheelchair users and as such equate all wheelchair users with evil. What an eejit. Bigeneration? Whatever.
His first run was fun, say what you will of 10 and Donna, that wasn't the sad Doctor. It was the most fun she show has been, that fun is long gone now.
Nah, if it were just Bad Robot, than we wouldn't also be having such hack writing in books, comics, musicals, video games... Like, from a thematic standpoint, Dear Evan Hansen is horrifying and Evan is absolutely a monster. But the fans somehow completely missed that until the movie adaptation cast a 30 something year old as a high schooler and drew more attention to the creepiness of the entire situation. Five Nights at Freddy's, both the games and the movie, are only "complicated" because its audience seems to have the reading comprehension of a third grader, while the only adults playing in that space do the whole "I came up with a theory, and am cherry picking evidence that supports this to form a coherent video".
I did specifically limit myself to Hollywood failures.
I sort of agree. I absolutely think it's the job of the rights holder to hire the right people for the project. When you hire people that have no interest and more importantly, no understanding of the material, you get shit like The Witcher. But at the same time, most things can't be adapted 1 to 1 and require some amount of streamlining to work in the new medium. And also, if a writer had any talent, then the new story can be compelling. The Boys is a great example. Absolute garbage comic, narratively speaking, with shallow characters and basically no intrigue. The show is compelling because even if the most loyal fans get pissed that XYZ character was changed, the show itself still has a strong narrative.
Or you have talented writers like Jonathan Hickman that didn't know much about the Fantastic Four, but read basically every comic after he got hired, and then wrote one of the most amazing runs of Fantastic Four ever.
The executives are a problem, but just as much is writer ego. There's so much trying to "make their mark". And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nolan should explore different aspects of Batman than Burton or Bruce Timm. You don't need to necessarily love the source material yourself, but if you don't even understand it, that's the problem. Generally, I think Executives are just trend chasers: "Oh, that multiverse film did well, let's all do a multiverse movie. This movie has a quirky non-powered side kick, then our movie needs to have a quirky non-powered side kick..." The reason why I always refer to these writers as hacks, is because if they had even a modicum of talent, they could navigate the studio requirements, while at least delivering a solid plot. Instead, it seems they're more interested in telling "their" story first and foremost, and then often the studio requirement isn't integrated and thus sticks out even more in an already shit story.
Look, let's be real. #MeToo started off as a noble initiative to rid Hollywood of just a handful of perverts, which later escalated when willing actresses who were no longer young and pretty felt a desire to prolong their careers and decided to become professional victims. In other words, MeToo became a power grab. Mrs. JJ Abrams used and abused that power grab to gain more power. A bunch of talentless women got promoted beyond their skills and they got obsessed with DEI. It's the checkbox culture. The culture has changed. That changed culture meant a deviation from an emphasis on good storytelling. Heck, it meant good storytellers aren't even employed by some of the big companies anymore.
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published an open letter by a veteran Hollywood writer. Apparently
Male + Pale = Stale is a common saying in the executives offices these days. People don't even get a meeting anymore because of the colour of their skin.
Hollywood is no longer a business of merit, it's a segregated racist business that pretends it has good intentions.
And it often doesn't even have that. Funny you mention The Witcher. Beau DeMayo was a writer on that show and he's stated that writers for that show "actively mocked the source material". So the failure of that show goes further than the writers not understanding that show or facing issues translating the story from the text to the small screen. (Something the casting director definitely didn't do).
The people responsible for that shitshow merely saw the popular Polish ripoff of Elric of Melnibone as a platform to tell their modern day story for the non-existent modern audience. It was a gig for lazy writers who got in a position their talent didn't warrant, because they happened to tick the right boxes. Well, apart from the 'talent' box obviously.
Being a fan of a character doesn't make one a good storyteller for that character. But a fan generally does understand that character and that's where most Hollywood folk already miss. There's a reason many fans don't want to see their favourite characters be adapted to the small or big screen today. Hollywood is a long way from deserving our trust of handling it well.
I don't think anyone really likes multiverse stories. There are no stakes with them, which is exactly why they were invented in the first place: to reset a universe after it got messed up. They're no interesting storytelling mechanisms, so of course the non-fans who currently run Marvel Entertainment like it. They're the kind of people who feel the stakes should always be bigger as that equates for more excitement, whereas the opposite is true. After a big potential world-ending event the focus should be on the street level heroes, not the outer-world threats. But nah, Marvel wanted an other skybeam and inconsequential stories. As long as there was a woman leading the guy around, because that's the main studio note.
I think you misunderstood me. Young readers don't want to see sex on screen, because that ruins their shipping. They especially don't want to see characters in relationships because that ruins their head-canon couples. Look at the reactions to Voltron Legendary Defender and all the stupid arguments over character ages rather than even for a second looking at the character arcs and asking "are these characters even romatically involved by any on screen evidence"? Look at the Hamilton fanfics that are shipping these interpretations of historical figures because... reasons? The vitriol of Genji and Mercy getting romantic voicelines in Overwatch because fans were upset that this ruined their Hanzo-Genji and Mercy-Pharah ships.
Don't get me wrong: yaoi shippers have been there for years. But with the internet, they've found more like minded individuals to be loud enough that writers have to actually respond to their insanity.
I don't think it's transformation kinks specifically, rather that a lot of nonsense was treating "sexy" as "sexist". So for a while (and to an extent even now), there's been a downplaying of sexually charged content. But it's not like that market vanished. It's just an underserved market. So in the last year, we've had an uptick as content creators test the waters and determine: yes, sex still sells. Look, Baldur's Gate 3 is absolutely a great game. It's made even better by having some hot characters. Heck, Persona 3 Reload just came out and kept the High-Cut Armor. I guarantee you, if it was even 5 years ago, Atlus would have been crucified for retaining that "sexist" armor. But now, it's just a handful of sad people on youtube comments whining. Because the market showed, those people weren't ever customers to begin with and making changes to appeal to them isn't worth it.
I don't think the main issue people had with Game of Thrones season 8 was that the Jon-Dany shippers were proven right. The first season of Reacher made people happy, in part because Roscoe and Reacher did end up having naughty-time with each other.
When actors play their roles right, the shippers will get their way when two main characters do end up together. The problem is there hardly is any romance in films these days, leaving shippers (who clearly want some) with some weird fantasy about Professor X and Magneto.
But fact of the matter is that in today's Hollywood, executives don't want to define characters by their love for an other person. That negates their own agency. So we're not getting romance anymore. And if we do, the woman is in control of the situation. That's modern day Hollywood. But luckily it seems that trend is ending soon.
Aaanyway, to circle back to what started this all: a forced feminisation story. To quote Newton's Third Law: for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction. If the main character really doesn't want to be feminised (and that appears to be the case in K-Pop Idol), there has to be a lot of force used on him. When more force is used, I feel the one using that force has to be more evil. Otherwise there's a gap of logic. It's like Melissa doesn't really want to pick sides in this story and that is a bit of a narrative issue.
