The thing about that is that it's...normal, actually?? Like, making a series is supposed to take several years; the reason it didn't feel that way before is because studios would actually do their job and hide it from you. They would build several episodes' worth of backlog (sometimes multiple seasons) before the premiere, so that a show could run weekly-yearly with minimal interruption, outside of summer rerun seasons.
What I assume happens now is that studios are too cheap to greenlight more than one season of a show at a time (money over artistic integrity, like I was saying...) so even if a show turns out to be a hit and the execs are willing to pay for another season, the crew has to start production from scratch, pushing the wait time onto the audience.
I have seen shows get ruined by that kind of situation, and in my experience it's easy to tell when that, specifically, is the reason for a show's writing problems. It's not something that just randomly happens; having a large crew working on a show (even just a large writing room) is also very normal.
It's like having a lot of cooks working in a big restaurant-- contrary to that saying, 'many cooks' are necessary to keep it running. It only becomes a problem when there's no head chef or restaurant manager to take charge and do quality control. When the customers rave about the food one night, and go home with salmonella the next night...you can end up in a situation like that with just two cooks in the kitchen, simply because the team doesn't cooperate.
I think the difference between those times and these is that we've gotten to a point of technological progress AND wealth concentration that allows "the rich" to live in a completely different reality...while at the same time, consuming all the same entertainment media as the poorest of poor folks, and thus genuinely believing themselves to be part of our reality. That's the point I was trying to make; it's not just the wealth, it's what that kind of wealth does to a person in our current culture.
You didn't see aristocrats going "how d'you do, fellow plebians" at pubs the way CEOs and politicians will debase themselves for likes on Twitter. People with the funds to buy and sell entire cities' worth of lives now make a habit of playacting like "normal people", in ways that previous generations of wealthy people would have been ashamed of.
And that puts them in an interesting position when it comes to media production, which usually costs uber-rich levels of money while relying on the non-rich for popularity and acclaim. In the past, wealthy people usually had their own media ecosystem; now everyone's part of the same one, which means we have to be exposed to their ideas (and they have to try to relate to ours) much more often than before.
Like, literally, I don't think there are enough rich people to maintain the multi-billion-dollar industries we have now; they've put themselves in a position where they need our input whether they like it or not. ^^; I don't think it was like that when Shakespeare was alive...
...Well, that's fine and dandy, because that's not what I was saying. =/ Just because I think writing from the rich tends to be bad (what I said) doesn't necessarily mean I think that writing from the poor tends to be good (what you're arguing against). I mean, I get it...but writing is a difficult craft to master for anyone; you can't just assume the argument is invertible, and I would never expect you to.
1) I don't think 'reshuffling' popular media is necessarily a sign of poor writing ability (I am a fanfic author, so...). It's also not necessarily a sign of low economic status...there are plenty of wealthy amateurish authors out there; who either don't have the organizational/leadership skills to produce an anime (or the insane amount of liquid cash needed to hire a studio...), or simply don't want to.
2) ...You don't actually need any considerable educational background to become a good storyteller. You just need access to stories (in any format), and insight...that's it. The history of storytelling itself is largely oral and informal (which is why the invention of the printing press was so revolutionary for literature); that's kind of a weird thing to say. ą² _ą²
Like...it's more normalized now for artists of all kinds to be educated, yes...but that doesn't mean uneducated artists can't produce good work. I don't know how it works in the professional writing sphere, but in the professional visual art sphere that's laughably untrue.
I'm genuinely interested to know what you mean by that...'internal mythology'.
Like, are you saying these narrative miscommunications happen because our society lacks some sort of unified narrative schema...? I'm not 100% sure I'd agree with that, but it sounds like an interesting concept.
...As someone who grew up with overbearing, hypercompetent, controlling and demanding parents in poverty, I'm gonna have to hard disagree on that one. ^^;
It's more common than you think for that to happen in the lower classes (ask any child of an immigrant household...sure, some of us grew up rich, but many of us did not, and we still have to deal with the same tiger-parent BS).
It just looks different for poor people...instead of nanny cams installed all over the house and daddy taking away our credit cards if we talk back, it usually just takes the form of constant family conflict, often aggressive child abuse that people don't really want to see in popular media.
Of course, rich children can be horrifically abused too, but people honestly talk about that even less (I assume because rich parents have even more power to silence it and cover it up)...
Basically, if you want to tell a story about awful parents, it's easiest to just discuss the psychological warfare waged by rich parents who have the time and money to engage in it, and often to make it creatively twisted and interesting to audiences. That kind of parent actually takes many forms across many different class strata; their over-representation in the upper class has more to do with social taboo than anything else.
As true as that is in some cases, I don't think a genuinely good storyteller has any more to fear from that now than they did at any time before. I never see a good story that makes a real impact on their audience get torn apart by that same audience for doing something that feels surface-level 'problematic'.
For example: 'Andor' is a great show. And its primary female protagonist (well, heroic protagonist) spends most of her time in the series being tortured, sexually assaulted, and strung out on drugs, before ultimately leaving the fight to raise a baby.
Some fans do take issue with this; and if you were real cynical you'd probably assume that everyone complains about it all the time and hates the writers for doing it. But from what I saw during and after the show's run; that's not actually the case. ^^ Fans can appreciate this storyline as a valuable part of the show, because of the way the character is humanized throughout her experiences, and the thematic commentary they provide on the world of the narrative.
Even fans who genuinely hate it can still analyze it and defend it from bad-faith critique if necessary, simply because it is well-written. And I see this happen all the time; good fans will fight for you if you're willing to fight for them and trust them to absorb your work in good faith.
Conversely, if you can't trust your future fans enough to write from the heart...I hate to say it, but that just might be a 'you' problem. The more I hear that, the more it starts to sound like old comedians complaining that they "can't tell jokes anymore"-- pure projection of their own insecurities over their limited skills.
I'm not saying the risk of being 'canceled' or doxxed or cyberbullied over your work is "all in your head" or anything, but I think that has more to do with the general risk of being targeted by specific keyboard-warrior communities (that everyone has to take), than any large-scale public sentiment or modern taboo. I have enjoyed plenty of raw, authentic, even provocative work by people on platforms famously filled with keyboard warriors (Tumblr, Bluesky...), simply because these artists/writers are willing to mute notifs and trust that their words will reach the right ears.
