I have no interest in seeing Rings of Power under any circumstances because I don't watch Fantasy series as a rule. I care very little for Star Trek in any of its forms. I have long since given up about Star Wars and I have no interest in DC or Marvel universe. But when I heard about the review bombing that was taking place on Rings for Power for just this reason, I was going to write a longer article. I won't repeat her because you've covered the themes, but I'll give you the broad strokes.

It is not enough that the geek culture has basically destroyed entertainment so that the only movies that get released are comic book movies or franchises, not enough that half the shows on TV have to do with comic books, not enough that you can't find serious movies or TV shows about anything without being labeled 'political'. No, we have to agree with them that any deviation from source material that is decades or centuries old is 'liberal'. They have no problem with Doctor Who being a shape shifting time lord, but god forgive that time lord transform into a woman or a african-American man or you know, traveling to a time that isn't actually historical relevant. An All-female GHostbusters is pandering, as if Ghostbusters were you know, Citizen Kane or Casablanca and not a middling 1980s comedy. (Yes, i said it. It needed to be said!) They will say Black Panther's plot was too 'convoluted' as if somehow all Marvel movies are scripted by Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They will tell you that any comic book movie like Captain Marvel or Batwoman is terrible because the actresses are too political. And of course, no minority, woman or LGBTQ person should ever be cast as the lead of any superhero or sci-fi franchise because you know that's not what 'real fans want'. What they want of course is straight white males beating up vaguely foreign villains, the women being love interests and the minorities being sidekicks and just take our scraps because if we're being honest, we wouldn't even give you those.

Let them have their own movies, their own TV shows. You could tell them that's the literally definition of 'separate but equal' and they'd shrug it off. It's not they watch them anyway, they feel free shit on them just for existing. People want 'stories' they say. To them, Die Hard is the perfect movie, not Citizen Kane. Of course, there can't be minorities or people of color in Tolkien, just as they're can be minorities or people of color in Science fiction. Richard Pryor was making jokes about this in the 1970s; I never thought the Internet subculture fundamentally agrees with them.

Battlestar Galactica: 1979 was a cheap Star Trek ripoff that fans would never let go off. When Sci-fI REMADE it and Starbuck was now a woman, it became GINO. tHAT'S the culture we wallow. They want old stories in new vases, but they must always be gypsum white ones.

And of course it never ends. In a couple of weeks, I expect the new Quantum Leap to be review bombed the same way The Wonder Years was before it aired a single episode. Never mind that both series were more or less cult hits; they're now part of 'pop culture' which of course means white. The old Wonder Years was a brilliant show but it was for people who only like the music of the 1960s and joined the national guard instead of being drafted. Sam Beckett leaped from life to life for five seasons, covering the back half of the 20th Century, only occasionally dealing with all the trauma that it caused. Scott Bakula leaps into a black man or a woman; its breaking the bounds of television! The first time Raymond Lee leaps into a white man; 'race-shaming!" Because the past is only something white people can appreciate. But we've been seeing school board meetings. We shouldn't be surprised by that either.

It's obvious. People of Color or any minority do not belong in the far future, the far past, fantasy or space travel, any comic book or popular franchise or anything that would get in the way of nerd culture's obsessive believe of canon. The fact that this is not how the creators meant it doesn't matter. As we know now, everything is about originalism.