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Lousy Film/Comic book sites

Totenkindly

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So I just want to gripe because my feed has been inundated for months (due to my personal interests) by film and comic book "articles" -- and I just have to say I find most of them as annoying as shit because they are just lousy. They pretend to have content, but typically it's about 10% content with about 90% filler. It's not just one article, it's the majority of them. Yes, sure, we all know the Internet industry is based on advertising revenue, hence the more pages you have up that people read with ads that appear, the more they get paid (and the margin is very tiny), but.... no wonder, because these articles are often crap.

I feel bad busting on a BCS article and I've seen worse, but this is what I have at my fingertips right now.


Here is the article quoted in full, so I can do a cross-out on all the redundant / fluff all the fluff parts as way of exercise. (All rights -- as much as they can be called such, for such intellectual lightweightedness -- belong to the site/author or however they have them set up. Also, no slur meant towards Julie Clark Downs.) Basically it all ends up being Trumpist word salad, repeating the same ideas in as many vague ways possible to extend the length of the article or obfuscate how little information they actually have. Comic Books Resources and Screen Rant often do this. There are other sites as well. It's not even good creative writing -- at least if you're gonna make shit up to fill space, do it the Harlan Ellison way and make it crazy-interesting and actually creative. This all smacks of really bad writing for high school topic papers, where you only have 250 words of content but have to stretch it to 1000.

Better Call Saul season 6, episode 9 included a touching tribute to a mysterious woman, but exactly who is Julia Clark Downs and what is her connection to the show? Although the hit show heavily fictionalizes aspects of the New Mexico criminal underworld, part of what makes Better Call Saul so compelling is its commitment to realism. Such an accurate atmosphere simply wouldn't be possible without the involvement of real people like Clark Downs.

In many ways, both Better Call Saul and its predecessor, Breaking Bad, tell larger-than-life tales of criminal enterprise and the drugs trade. However, throughout both series – in particular Better Call Saul – is the sense that the fictional characters that appear on screen are not too far removed from reality. In particular, the titular character of Saul Goodman née Jimmy McGill feels like a genuine representation of the kind of unscrupulous legal expert who is required to facilitate the top end of the drugs trade. Creating such a compelling character is no accident. In fact, much of Better Call Saul's authenticity is owed to the involvement of people like Julia Clark Downs.

Who is Julia Clark Downs?

Julia Clark Downs was a real-life Alberquerque lawyer who acted as a consultant on the show in order to make Better Call Saul feel as genuine as possible. Having practiced law both independently and as part of the District Attorney's office, Clark Downs could offer unique insight into the machinations of the New Mexico justice system. Although the full extent of her input is unknown, it's clear that her expertise were pivotal in making Better Call Saul's legal scenes as accurate and representative as possible. Tragically, Clark Downs was killed in a motoring collision, explaining the title card used in Better Call Saul season 6.

Julia Clark Downs Helped Make Better Call Saul Great

Writing any prequel, especially to a show as beloved as Breaking Bad, is never easy. Beyond telling a compelling story, the real point of difference can be found in the details. Building a believable and engaging world requires more than explosive set pieces – it's about crafting settings and characters that feel like they could actually exist, particularly in an environment as grounded as the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe. This is where the expertise of people like Julia Clark Downs are indispensable.

Consulting with those who are actually entrenched in the New Mexico legal system provides Better Call Saul crucial inside information, making it seem even more insightful and informative. Given that the show primarily revolves around legal settings, this approach is absolutely essential. Were it not for the ability to pick the brains of a genuine expert like Julia Clark Downs, it's likely that Better Call Saul would feel far less deeply-layered and would suffer as a result. In many ways, it's the details provided by Clark Downs and people like her that have made Better Call Saul the incredible success it has undoubtedly become. As such, her importance and contribution cannot be understated.

It's not like all the sites are terrible. Distractify actually bothered to do some research, for example -- they managed to describe her accident in more detail + actually bothered to read her obituary and pass along information regarding it. Screen Rant authors seem to be far lazier.
 
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Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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I think the site like this that seems the most familiar to me with this kind of thing is Screen Rant. I've definitely read a number of low-quality articles like this; I haven't kept track of all the sources perhaps as well as you have.
 

Totenkindly

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I think the site like this that seems the most familiar to me with this kind of thing is Screen Rant. I've definitely read a number of low-quality articles like this; I haven't kept track of all the sources perhaps as well as you have.
I think this is the only one I actually dissected an article with my cross-out pen, but every time I accidentally follow up on a link from those and similar (hoping maybe something better) I'm like "this is a load of nothing."
 

AlexSD

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Oct 1, 2022
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So I just want to gripe because my feed has been inundated for months (due to my personal interests) by film and comic book "articles" -- and I just have to say I find most of them as annoying as shit because they are just lousy. They pretend to have content, but typically it's about 10% content with about 90% filler. It's not just one article, it's the majority of them. Yes, sure, we all know the Internet industry is based on advertising revenue, hence the more pages you have up that people read with ads that appear, the more they get paid (and the margin is very tiny), but.... no wonder, because these articles are often crap.

I feel bad busting on a BCS article and I've seen worse, but this is what I have at my fingertips right now.


Here is the article quoted in full, so I can do a cross-out on all the redundant / fluff all the fluff parts as way of exercise. (All rights -- as much as they can be called such, for such intellectual lightweightedness -- belong to the site/author or however they have them set up. Also, no slur meant towards Julie Clark Downs.) Basically it all ends up being Trumpist word salad, repeating the same ideas in as many vague ways possible to extend the length of the article or obfuscate how little information they actually have. Comic Books Resources and Screen Rant often do this. There are other sites as well. It's not even good creative writing -- at least if you're gonna make shit up to fill space, do it the Harlan Ellison way and make it crazy-interesting and actually creative. This all smacks of really bad writing for high school topic papers, where you only have 250 words of content but have to stretch it to 1000. What surprises me is that articles on socially important topics are written by all and sundry, and often even many information sites copy each other's material without the slightest change. When it comes to replicating news articles, this is normal. But it seems that this has begun to affect the quality of education due to the fact that the quality of content in articles is falling. When I was looking for quality writing about the Black Lives Matter movement before I found https://edubirdie.com/examples/black-lives-matter/ I read dozens of articles and unfortunately they were all of poor quality. But I hope that due to the great competition among educational sites in the future, this situation will change and this will benefit all Internet users because the content will become better.



It's not like all the sites are terrible. Distractify actually bothered to do some research, for example -- they managed to describe her accident in more detail + actually bothered to read her obituary and pass along information regarding it. Screen Rant authors seem to be far lazier.
Unfortunately, there is very little useful content on the Internet. Very often old articles are reprinted and new content is added extremely rarely.
 
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