On "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy"...

TBH, I personally generally dislike most "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy" stories / media. Among other reasons... they suck! 😜

1) Sci-Fi often inexplicably results in stores where some or other character you've come to love ends up facing some horrid unavoidable fate. (Kind-of like why I dislike stories featuring snowmen characters - Spoiler Alert: There's the "terminal melting scene"!)

Yeah... the psychological horror element here is the worst part.  

    * e.g. 1 -  There was a short story I came across via "New Scientist"'s homepage at some point talking about "face masters" - actors who have their faces bio-hacked so those attachments can attach to elaborate electro-mechanical "masks" to play imitations of a bunch of famous celebrities... I remember it quite vividly even now, as the tale was so mentally disturbing

    * e.g. 2 -  I've probably admitted this before elsewhere or even on here, but after watching "The Bicentennial Man" (i.e. that Robin Williams film about him playing a robot who becomes an almost biological human over 2 centuries... yeah that one), I was deathly afraid that night when making the walk to the toilet in the dark. For whatever reason, I just got the feeling that there were all these glowing pairs of eye-lights everywhere, lurking in the shadows and outside, all sentient, and waiting to "get me" in some way...

 

2) Fantasy - Ugh... weird / ugly / grotesque beings, acting in grating ways.  Or some other aspects of really wacky / lala-land wackiness). Oh, and all the while, the grand plot tries to be this "epic" thing that's all important...

Examples include: 

   * *ALL* stories depicting so-called Chinese gods/demi-gods/spirits stuff (including things like the bloody annoying "Journey to the West" and spinoffs...)

   *  Star Wars / other crap that Weta workshop often end up getting called to do a lot of work on (e.g. horrifying creatures, etc.)

   * Stuff like "Peter Pan" - Many will know that I really detest that story-verse, and hate how they keep reviving it every once in a while!  (It's only now that I know that a Children's Hospital has some kind of special rights / royalties / funding deal everytime someone produces this story again, that I'm now willing to somewhat "look the other way", and tolerate it a bit more).

 

That brings up an important point:
For both sci-fi and fantasy genres, writers who seemingly get drafted into doing these projects (i.e. TV writers used to working on other subject matter) have a nasty habit of producing garbage...

The same type of garbage they produce when their producer says: "We need a ''grand production'' drama for one of our annual anniversary series... so, let's do one of those 'big rich families' ones..."

 

I suppose what I hate most is that in all of these, the production becomes so enamored with "flashing the cash" to show off their big budget with lots of fancy eye candy (eg expensive props / costumes / sfx), that they neglect to put heart into the story contents

Either as they're distracted finding ways to flash the cash, OR because they think we'll be distracted by that and won't care so much...

Hence why I really like all those small intimate productions so much these days (i.e. those with a small core cast, telling small simple stories grounded in the real-life everyday challenges those characters face (or sometimes not so simple, but much deeper hurt while framed within the context of everyday life), and the way that their shared bonds help them grow and overcome those). A good bunch of examples if you need some:

* "Swipe Tap Love"   (TVB 2014)

*  "When the Weather is Fine"  (2020)

* ...