Yep. It's not even to say that SNW wasn't notably efficient and fluid in how it characterized its main cast through just the right little moments. Discovery had a harder job to do, and it also made a much less impressive effort when you give it that handicap. Acknowledging that is different from using the one show to give the other a shiner.
Doesn't help that Discovery started off coming across meanspirited and offensive in its own right in the first season even within the text and not just creator comments. I think there's a portion of that that's unavoidable the moment when a) a contingent of the fanbase exists that really is going to cry "mary sue" with a character who isn't white and male in situations they're trained to write off for one who is, and b) that character is actually, genuinely a mary sue even by white male character standards. That's why for seasons 3 and 4 I really had to take the approach of asking myself, okay, if I pretend the first two seasons didn't happen and I wasn't sick to death of this show, would this oversight or that handwave bother me? (And often the answer was still yes, and the result was a mixed bag of a lot of irritations and a lot of little good bits like you're saying.)
I do think there is a section of guys who really were alienated by a show that focused on a black woman and made a point of reminding the audience that someone was gay every episode, and those guy probably are going to be more comfortable with a show where the top three spots are two white guys and a white woman and anyone's LGBT+ identity hasn't come up. That's kinda been in the background since early S2 Discovery when it had one good episode and it was a Pike episode, and we all already wanted to jump ship for the Enterprise. You know, it's a bit silly to call it a "woke agenda", but the neckbeard contingent that got deep into Captain Marvel production lore aren't wrong that some TV shows really do want to challenge their expectations in ways they find uncomfortable, and I don't feel inclined to accommodate those guys either. Any of the folks who where genuinely upset by SNW recasting an incidental character from TAS as black, for instance, that seems like a learned immune reaction to threats to their personal bubble.
And I think there's a learned reaction on my part in turn, where I just start to expect that sort of antiwoke rage from certain types of fans, or even just expect they'll be more accommodating to it and make excuses for it in others. I don't think I'm alone in that, and I think some of the other folks with that reaction also care a bit more about Discovery.
For me Discovery is a show that's okay if I grant it the mulligan of having dropped through a wormhole into a different show and just try really hard to swallow my frustration when they use science words. They finally got it rolling, but it's always going to be a little wobbly, and I'm going to cringe every time I see a bump coming ahead. When I feel defensive around Discovery, it's more like I think the particular things that people latch onto to complain about probably aren't the actual source of their frustration and often wouldn't bother them in another context. You know, music you'd otherwise jam to can be unbearable with a headache, and Discovery had two seasons of beating us around the head.
But for people who really love it because particular characters speak to them, whether that's as a minority group thing about feeling represented in the future or speaking to an experience they have, or for some completely unrelated reason that just makes that character click with them? That's going to turn into a much deeper defensiveness when the entire internet is telling them their fave sucks, and it'd only take a little of that defensiveness to start lumping some of the easier criticisms and the people who make them into the genuine "hater" category. I have more sympathy for the misguided, angry fans who want to defend their problematic fave than I do the rather more deeply misguided, equally angry fans who are really just upset about the "girl with blue hair and pronouns" but would rather not say so outright. I'm not in either of those groups and I do not want for a moment to be confused with them.
None of that bears really directly on SNW, except in that I expect there are some people who are going to be very loud about how much better SNW is than Discovery as a means to talk about Discovery, and because they're butthurt for "woke" reasons rather than "fan" reasons. I still don't want to have anything to do with those guys. I pity the kids who are demanding acknowledgement for their ham sandwich with Miracle Whip when there's this double-stacked buffalo burger with mushroom and swiss to live up to and they don't understand why everyone likes it so much better. The burger, meanwhile, does not need comparison to the sandwich to be delicious. If anything, I'd rather not be thinking about cold bologna while I'm savoring this greasy masterpiece.
Doesn't help that Discovery started off coming across meanspirited and offensive in its own right in the first season even within the text and not just creator comments. I think there's a portion of that that's unavoidable the moment when a) a contingent of the fanbase exists that really is going to cry "mary sue" with a character who isn't white and male in situations they're trained to write off for one who is, and b) that character is actually, genuinely a mary sue even by white male character standards. That's why for seasons 3 and 4 I really had to take the approach of asking myself, okay, if I pretend the first two seasons didn't happen and I wasn't sick to death of this show, would this oversight or that handwave bother me? (And often the answer was still yes, and the result was a mixed bag of a lot of irritations and a lot of little good bits like you're saying.)
I do think there is a section of guys who really were alienated by a show that focused on a black woman and made a point of reminding the audience that someone was gay every episode, and those guy probably are going to be more comfortable with a show where the top three spots are two white guys and a white woman and anyone's LGBT+ identity hasn't come up. That's kinda been in the background since early S2 Discovery when it had one good episode and it was a Pike episode, and we all already wanted to jump ship for the Enterprise. You know, it's a bit silly to call it a "woke agenda", but the neckbeard contingent that got deep into Captain Marvel production lore aren't wrong that some TV shows really do want to challenge their expectations in ways they find uncomfortable, and I don't feel inclined to accommodate those guys either. Any of the folks who where genuinely upset by SNW recasting an incidental character from TAS as black, for instance, that seems like a learned immune reaction to threats to their personal bubble.
And I think there's a learned reaction on my part in turn, where I just start to expect that sort of antiwoke rage from certain types of fans, or even just expect they'll be more accommodating to it and make excuses for it in others. I don't think I'm alone in that, and I think some of the other folks with that reaction also care a bit more about Discovery.
For me Discovery is a show that's okay if I grant it the mulligan of having dropped through a wormhole into a different show and just try really hard to swallow my frustration when they use science words. They finally got it rolling, but it's always going to be a little wobbly, and I'm going to cringe every time I see a bump coming ahead. When I feel defensive around Discovery, it's more like I think the particular things that people latch onto to complain about probably aren't the actual source of their frustration and often wouldn't bother them in another context. You know, music you'd otherwise jam to can be unbearable with a headache, and Discovery had two seasons of beating us around the head.
But for people who really love it because particular characters speak to them, whether that's as a minority group thing about feeling represented in the future or speaking to an experience they have, or for some completely unrelated reason that just makes that character click with them? That's going to turn into a much deeper defensiveness when the entire internet is telling them their fave sucks, and it'd only take a little of that defensiveness to start lumping some of the easier criticisms and the people who make them into the genuine "hater" category. I have more sympathy for the misguided, angry fans who want to defend their problematic fave than I do the rather more deeply misguided, equally angry fans who are really just upset about the "girl with blue hair and pronouns" but would rather not say so outright. I'm not in either of those groups and I do not want for a moment to be confused with them.
None of that bears really directly on SNW, except in that I expect there are some people who are going to be very loud about how much better SNW is than Discovery as a means to talk about Discovery, and because they're butthurt for "woke" reasons rather than "fan" reasons. I still don't want to have anything to do with those guys. I pity the kids who are demanding acknowledgement for their ham sandwich with Miracle Whip when there's this double-stacked buffalo burger with mushroom and swiss to live up to and they don't understand why everyone likes it so much better. The burger, meanwhile, does not need comparison to the sandwich to be delicious. If anything, I'd rather not be thinking about cold bologna while I'm savoring this greasy masterpiece.
