physical media

Geek Punditry #182: Sony Reminds Us Why Physical Media Matters

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It’s a bold choice for any company to take away something that its customers have been enjoying for decades. It’s even BOLDER to do so only days after reminding those same customers why having that very thing is so damned important. So the nicest thing I’m going to say about the Sony Playstation people in this column is that…they are BOLD.

Just last week, the Playstation Network informed its customers that a whopping 551 movies – basically the entire catalogue distributed by Studio Canal – will be deleted from their libraries on Sept. 1. These aren’t teeny independent movies either (not that it would make it okay if it was), but blockbusters and classics like Terminator 2, First Blood, Total Recall, Cliffhanger, and even several films that don’t have anything to do with Schwarzenegger or Stallone. These are not movies that are being dropped from a streaming service, like HBO Max did seven times since you started reading this sentence. Nor are these movies that people had previously rented, with the rental agreement expiring. No, these are films that the customers allegedly “purchased.”

“Hasta la vista, Sony.”

The trouble here, as with all digital media, is that if you pull out a magnifying glass and examine the terms of service that nobody in history has read since Eve clicked “agree to all” and then started chatting up that serpent in the tree, you will find a notification that what you are actually purchasing is a LICENSE to access the movie, and that license can be revoked AT ANY TIME. Which is what is happening to Playstation customers. Presumably the licensing agreement between Sony and Studio Canal is coming to an end, and as always, it’s the customers getting the shaft on this one. There has been no word from Sony as to whether the people who’ve spent money on these movies will be refunded or given any other compensation, but I’m begging everyone not to hold their breath because it’s summer and it’s hot out there and we don’t need to make it even easier for you to pass out.

This is one of those situations where – due to the nature of the contracts between the companies and the exact wording of the terms of service – what’s happening is entirely legal. It’s also one of those situations where just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s not a crappy thing to do. 

“We have consulted with our legal department and determined that you can all go screw yourselves.”

Then there’s the real kicker – just a few days after reminding all of its users that anything they don’t own a physical copy of can be yoinked away from them like a dog stealing your hot dog on the Fourth of July, the same Sony Playstation company that had already pissed off its customer base released ANOTHER statement that, beginning in 2028, they will no longer produce physical media AT ALL, and that any games purchased in the future will be exclusively available via the Playstation network.

The same network that just scammed you out of over 500 movies that you paid for.

Yeah, I’m feeling great about this.

Now none of the Playstation Shenanigans affect me directly. I don’t own a Playstation, I’ve never bought a movie from their store, and I’m not a video game player. But this is a really disturbing reminder of just how messed up it is that we live in a world that is requiring “licenses” for everything instead of allowing anyone to actually OWN something. When I got my first laptop computer to go to college, there were things called “programs.” Things like Microsoft Word and Photo Gallery were computer programs that either came pre-installed with the device when you purchased it or, alternatively, that you could purchase on a disc and then install on your computer. Then you could just…USE them. And it wasn’t only productive programs like Word either – GAMES were distributed the same way. And if you had a Nintendo or a Sega or any of those consoles, you purchased cartridges right up until the time that they evolved to using discs. And that cartridge or disc would sit there on your shelf as long as you wanted it, or you could sell it or trade it or do whatever you wanted. 

Then came smartphones, and I think this is really where it all went downhill. Because of the nature of a smartphone and, later, a tablet you couldn’t really install programs from a physical copy, so they were mostly made downloadable. (They also changed the word from “program” to “application,” then just “app” around this time. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because Apple tested “There’s a prog for that” as a tagline and it didn’t work.) At some point, someone realized that rather than making people pay for an app ONCE, they could charge them on a REGULAR BASIS – annually, monthly, if they thought they could get away with it they would 100 percent be metering you and charging you by the minute – and just keep cranking money out of the same people over and over again. And once this became the norm on phones, it spread to computers and game consoles and now we’ve reached a point in our society where you need a subscription to turn on the seat warmers in your car and a password to access your refrigerator. 

Usually a rant like this would make me feel like an old person shaking his hand at a cloud, but I feel like most younger people are on my side on this one too.

We’re all Abe on this one.

Anyway, this rant started with Sony and their infuriating choices regarding movies and video games, but we have to remind ourselves at this point that this could happen to literally ANY content that is only available through a download or a license: TV series, books, comic books, music…if you don’t have a physical copy, then there’s always the chance of some jerkwad like Ignatius Q. Playstation there deciding one day that this thing you thought belonged to you does, in fact, not. 

I don’t think this is the MAIN reason that vinyl record albums have made a comeback, but I guarantee you it’s a reason collectors cite every time their wives ask them why they’re bringing home the LP of the Xanadu soundtrack. 

And I get it. I have a lot of books and comic books and DVDs, and while so many people decided to abandon those things as the digital age crested around us, I can’t see myself doing it. Digital media is convenient as hell, I agree. Walking up to the TV and putting in an actual Blu-Ray disc of Top Gun: Maverick when I could just hit a button and stream it on Paramount+ feels like something our ancestors would do while they were churning butter. And digital backups are a good thing too. I have a hard drive where I rip most of my DVDs so that I can access the movies and TV shows on my Plex server, which is an app that allows you to view your own, personal library. It’s like making your own Netflix, only better, because I’m not gonna come back in a few weeks and tell me that I have to pay more if I actually want to be able to hear the sound clearly. But you gotta have the discs in your hands first to make that work. 

Symbolizing freedom in more ways than one.

This latest wave of crap from Playstation has resurrected a battle cry that I hear whenever a story like this breaks: “If purchasing isn’t ownership, then piracy isn’t stealing!” Like most internet slogans, reality is a lot more complicated than that. I do not condone piracy, and I think most of the justifications that people come up with for doing it are flimsy at best. But even I have to admit that if I bought something and then the person I bought it from snuck into my house and stole it in the middle of the night, I would be inclined to look for a way to steal it back.

All of this is to say that physical media is still important, and anyone who’s trying to tell you that it isn’t is probably trying to think of ways to milk you out of as much money as possible. I’m not telling you to start cancelling subscriptions or anything. I’m just telling you that if you actually want to be sure that you have permanent access to something – ANYthing – there’s really only one way to do that, and the people who are trying to stop that from happening are the ones we should all be giving the side-eye. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. This is why he scours the DVDs any time he goes to a thrift store too, by the way.

Geek Punditry #83: The Simple Way to Save the Day

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The truth is, I kind of blame myself. The very first Geek Punditry column I ever wrote was to extoll the virtues of Star Trek: Prodigy on Paramount+. Then, like a thief in the night, the Paramount bigwigs decided to cancel the show, despite the fact that the second season was nearly finished, and even removed the previous season from the service. A few months later, at the conclusion of Star Trek: Picard, I made a powerfully compelling case (if I do say so myself) for using it as the launchpad for showrunner Terry Matalas’s proposed Star Trek: Legacy project. And yet here we sit, over a year later, with no movement on that front. You would think I would have learned my lesson, but no – upon the conclusion of season four of Star Trek: Lower Decks, I wrote about what makes it the best Star Trek series of the century so far. I may as well have signed its death warrant myself.

“WHY? Why would he TELL THEM he likes us?”

It’s enough to make a guy consider pretending to like crap just to get it off TV.

But no, I refuse to compromise my principles like that. I’m going to keep talking about those things I love, damn the consequences. The word from Paramount+ is that the Lower Decks will end after the upcoming fifth season, but consarn it, this show deserves more. Sure, some people point out that it’s ending after five seasons, same as Discovery, and while there certainly HAVE been “save Discovery” campaigns, they haven’t caught fire or gained traction like the Cerritos fans. I think what you have to remember here is that, as a half-hour animated series, a ten-episode season of Lower Decks only gives us five hours of content, a total of 50 half-hours. A season of Discovery would have as many as 13 episodes, with a runtime usually between 45-60 minutes, totaling 65 episodes at the end of the run. That’s far more than twice the Disco, comparatively. Or to put it in even clearer context, back in the 90s a season of Next Generation or Deep Space Nine could go on for 26 episodes. With commercials, that’s 26 hours of Trek. Lower Decks will end with five five-hour seasons – altogether the entire run of the show will be less than a single season of any of those series we grew up with. It’s simply not time for this show to end.

The good news is, it ain’t over yet. Netflix swept in and saved Prodigy, giving both the first season and the new season a home, and that second season has garnered immense critical and audience acclaim. Matalas still talks about Legacy in a way that doesn’t say “never gonna happen,” but rather, “not at this time.” And then last week, at San Diego Comic-Con (which, as you may recall, I was unable to attend), Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan talked about the future of Lower Decks in a way that seems somewhat hopeful. Specifically, McMahan was quoted by several sources as saying “You’re getting a closure that feels like the end of a chapter, but you’re not getting a closure on the Cerritos or these characters.” In other words, he does not see the final episode of this season as the final word on our pals Beckett Mariner, Brad Boimler, Sam Rutherford, and D’Vanna Tendi. And that’s great, because these are amazing characters with the potential to have more and more adventures for many years to come. 

But perhaps even more encouraging than McMahan’s statement was one made by Alex Kurtzman, the sometimes-controversial figure who is in charge of the entire Star Trek franchise these days. After McMahan suggested that fans “watch the hell out of this season when it airs,” Kurtzman further added, “Watch it twice because, actually, it does register. Finish it, and then watch it again… Guys, your petitions are incredible. They’re incredible. Look what you did for Prodigy. Do it again.”

“That’s right, people! It ain’t over ’till the fat Horta sings!”

If this doesn’t ring in your ears as a call to action, I don’t know what will. Talking to the fans, to the actors, to the creators, to the producers, it doesn’t seem like ANYBODY wants Lower Decks to end, with the exception of the boardroom guys at Paramount. THOSE are the people who have to be convinced. One theory I’ve heard – and one that I think has merit – is that they feel like Lower Decks has too limited a potential audience. To be fair, the show is VERY continuity-heavy and a lot of the stories rely on the audiences’ familiarity with the various incarnations of Star Trek. Paramount would rather focus on projects with an easier entry point for new fans. I get that. I think it’s stupid, but I GET it.

The sad truth is that the “business” part of “show business” is often what makes the creative decisions, and the only way to convince the boardroom guys that a show is worth saving is to give them numbers that indicate such a thing. So yeah, that means watching the show, RE-watching the show, and doing it as soon as possible when it drops, because something else they look at very carefully is how QUICKLY an audience engages with the provided content. 

And this is why it drives me absolutely CRAZY when I see fans talk about how angry they are at Paramount+ (I get that), how they don’t trust Paramount+ to give the show the love it deserves (I get it) and how, rather than paying for Paramount+, they’re just going to download the show illegally (you blithering idiots). 

“That’ll show ‘em!” they say. “I’m not gonna give those evil corporations one thin dime, but I’m STILL going to reap the benefits of what they make!” Swell! And in so doing, you’re putting the nail in the coffin of those things you love.

“For your information, MANY Orions haven’t pirated any movies or TV shows for over FIVE YEARS!”

I’m not going to sit here and debate the morality of pirating TV and movies with you guys. I know I’m not going to change your mind. But I AM going to point out that if you really want a series like Lower Decks to continue, pirating it is one of the WORST things you can do. 

Like I said, the studio looks at the viewership numbers. And to be certain, some of you will point out that large numbers of illegal downloads demonstrate that there’s a demand for a series. Sure, that’s true. But it’s even MORE true that the studio doesn’t give one flying fig for your download numbers because they do not make any money off of those numbers. In fact, every number that rings up for an illegal download is a number that they consider a loss.

“It’s not a loss,” you say, “because I wouldn’t have paid for it anyway.” 

My favorite argument.

I want to put yourself in my position for a moment, guys. You know that I’m a writer. I write books and then I try to convince people to buy them. I am not particularly GOOD at that part, but I try anyway. I’ve even got a little Facebook page where occasionally people talk about them. And there is, I believe, exactly ONE person who is blocked from that page, someone who had read one of my books and liked it, and that’s swell. And then she made a comment about how she downloads all her books to “beat” the big companies like Amazon. And I gotta tell ya, it feels GREAT to know that she swindled Jeff Bezos out of his cut of MY book when I’ve got to buy my kid school supplies with a royalty check that looks like a soccer score. But it’s okay because you wouldn’t have read it anyway? You know, I think I would have preferred that you didn’t instead of you popping onto my page and telling me how proud you are of getting away with something.

Independent authors are eating ramen noodles, but at least Lex Luthor had to settle for only six yachts this year.

But that’s getting back into the morality of it again, and I’m sure nobody wants to hear that, because it may force you to question your judgment. Let’s get practical. The guys in the boardroom look at the pirate numbers and ask – surprisingly logically – “why should we keep spending money to make something that these people are going to watch for free?” The point of a business – ANY business – is to make money, and to continue spending money making a product that loses money is foolishness. 

The way to save Lower Decks – to save ANY television show that’s on the cusp – is to convince the studio that keeping it alive makes financial sense. That means buying the DVDs, getting the t-shirts, snagging the merch, pre-ordering the comic books, supporting the sponsors, and (and this is the part that’s going to make some people angry) WATCHING IT ON A LEGAL PLATFORM. Whether that’s a paid subscription like Paramount+ or a free ad-supported platform like the Roku Channel, these are the ways that the creators of the shows make their money. If you want them to keep making the shows, you need to keep making money for them.

Plus, you’ll still have the physical media if the studio decides to remove it from the app as part of their plan to commit tax fraud.

By the way, I’m talking about TV shows because Lower Decks is the current show that’s sending out the S.O.S. signal, but this is all true of movies and any other form of media as well. Everyone wants to complain that Hollywood has “no new ideas,” that all they make are sequels and spin-offs and remakes. Guys, look at the top movies for the past decade. How many of them are sequels or spin-offs or remakes? Hell, look at the box office receipts for THIS year! As of this writing, the top TWELVE movies for 2024 are all sequels or spin-offs or remakes. You don’t get an original idea (John Krazynski’s imaginary friend fantasy IF) until spot number THIRTEEN. Now ask yourself how many lower-tier movies – movies that AREN’T sequels or spin-offs or remakes – have been downloaded. 

I took a screenshot in case it’s changed by the time you read this. Inside Out 2 totally deserves that spot, by the way.

If you love Lower Decks – and if you’ve bothered to read this far I believe that you do – you need to heed McMahan and Kurtzman’s call to watch it, watch it a lot. But if you don’t watch it the right way, it doesn’t matter at all. If you don’t, then our pals on the Cerritos will join the likes of Trelane, Beverly Crusher’s husband that Picard got killed, and those salamander babies Tom Paris and Janeway had  – a vibrant afterlife on Memory Beta, but in canon, merely a remembrance of something golden.

RED ALERT: UPCOMING PLAYING FAVORITES!

Well, friends, back to school is creeping up on us. Whether your kids go back next week like mine or if you still have a free chunk of August, the time is approaching…so I’m going to celebrate with another PLAYING FAVORITES! In “Playing Favorites,” I throw out a topic and ask YOU to give me categories to cover in an upcoming “Geek Punditry” column. For instance, when the topic was “Christmas,” I was asked for my favorite songs written for a Christmas movie. With the “Superhero” topic I was asked my favorite sidekicks. In the “Summer” topic I talked about my favorite beach movies, and so forth.

This time the topic is SCHOOL. I’m looking for categories that apply to the usual Geek Punditry quadrants: movies, TV, books and comics. As always, I’ll pick my favorite suggestions and give my picks. Let the nominations begin!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He really wants you to think about a creative parent having to explain to their kids why they have to get Rose Art crayons instead of Crayola the next time you download something. Jerk. 

Geek Punditry #47: The Gift of Physical

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Here we are, my friends, the most chaotic, volatile, and lucrative date on the American calendar: Black Friday. Of course, Black Friday isn’t quite what it was just a few years ago. In the not-too-distant past, it wasn’t unusual to watch footage of mobs at Target trying to murder each other with croquet mallets in the attempt to get a cheap widescreen television set. That was last month in San Francisco, of course, but that sort of behavior USED to be restricted to the day after Thanksgiving. These days, though, with people having less money to spend, prices rising, and online shopping becoming easier and more tempting than ever, it’s becoming far less likely to see someone get a shiv in the kitchen section of Home Goods. We’re still planning to shop, of course, we’re still all trying to find just the right gift for the people we care about, and as far as the geeks in your life are concerned, we’ve learned something important this year. When it comes to sharing your favorite movies, music, books, or games…the truth is, physical media needs to come back.

Because no matter how hard you try, you can’t club somebody over the head with Netflix.

A few days ago Christopher Nolan, discussing the Blu-Ray release of his movie Oppenheimer, encouraged people to purchase the disc “So no evil streaming service can come steal it from you.” The joke, of course, is that over the course of 2023 it has become horribly fashionable for streaming services to quietly (or sometimes not-so-quietly) remove content from their platforms in a cost-saving measure. There are various ways this can theoretically work – by writing it off as a loss on their taxes, by licensing it off to some other service and getting money from them, and so forth, but whatever the reason the end result is the same. It becomes difficult and confusing for fans to find what they want, and in the case of the writers, directors, performers, and other people who actually made the content in question, all their work is reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet, without giving anyone the opportunity to actually experience it in the way intended.

Warner Bros.’ Max service has become the most notorious for this practice, canning numerous films that were close to completion (including a Batgirl movie, a holiday-themed sequel to Scoob!, and most recently the John Cena/Wile E. Coyote legal drama Coyote Vs. Acme), but they are by no means the only culprit. After a few weeks on their streamer, Disney+ pulled the kids’ sci-fi film Crater, later putting it out for sale or rent on digital media, but it’s no longer available as part of the prepaid package that director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s mom can tell her friends to watch the next time they ask what her son is up to. But perhaps the strangest instance of this phenomenon came from Paramount+, the streaming service that built its audience as the online home of Star Trek, when they made the decision to not only cancel the nearly-finished second season of Star Trek: Prodigy, but to yank season one from the service as well. Since then, the show has been conspicuous by its absence. This summer they even launched a celebration of animated Star Trek to mark the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and while they spent a lot of time hyping that original series, Lower Decks, and the animated webseries Very Short Treks, they did the best they could to pretend that Prodigy didn’t exist. 

But come on, who could ever forget this face?

But the fans refused to play along. A strange thing happened when it became public that Prodigy was being taken down from Paramount+. Within a day or two, the Blu-Rays and DVDs for the first half of season one were completely sold out. (The second half had not been released yet.) You couldn’t find a copy in brick and mortar stores, and online retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart all cleared out their warehouses before you could blink. It was as if fandom all, simultaneously, realized that media that only exists on a streaming platform can be removed at any time, capriciously, and without warning, and that the only sure way to have access to the content you want is to actually own a physical copy.

What a concept.

I’m not here to decry streaming or to say I’m gonna cancel Netflix. For one thing, that would be REALLY dumb, since they’re the service that wound up saving Prodigy, and I ‘m greatly looking forward to season two. But streaming services are proving themselves to be increasingly problematic for the companies that own them. They’ve become such a huge part of our lives that it’s easy to forget they’re still a relatively new business model, and what we’ve learned this year is that even the big boys like Disney and Warner Bros. haven’t actually figured out how to make money off of them yet. And sure, some of you may be thinking, “Well Disney has enough money, why should I care if Disney+ isn’t turning a profit?” That’s very progressive of you, make sure you put that on a t-shirt. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Walt Disney Global Media Conglomerate and Shadow Government and Pottery Export Business is still, in fact, a business, and if they can’t make money off a project they’re not going to keep making it. 

The “Plus” stands for “Plus all of your money.”

In the early days of broadcast TV, the burden of monetization was put on sponsors. Phillip Morris Cigarettes gave Desilu money to make I Love Lucy in exchange for the show promoting their product, everybody was happy, and lots of people got lung cancer.

Okay, maybe I was wrong — smoking DOES make you look cool.

Then came cable, and the model changed somewhat. While sponsors still existed, cable channels made the bulk of their money by selling their content to a cable provider like Cox or DirecTV, which made ITS money by charging consumers for packages of channels from those various sources. These days media companies are attempting to cut out the middleman with their own streaming services, making the content AND controlling the distribution themselves…only to discover that the middleman actually turned out to be kind of necessary in this particular equation. And since they haven’t yet worked out the new equation, they’re starting to cut corners – raising rates for the service, putting ads on streamers that didn’t have ads in the past, and of course, chopping content that they think they can make more money with some other way.

Physical media protects you from losing content, but it’s also becoming a way to show your support for a project. With streaming numbers being a closely-held secret, it can be almost impossible to tell how successful any series is. Fans were blindsided this week, for instance, when Disney+ announced that they won’t be doing a second season of the beloved Muppets Mayhem. (This has been a BAD year for shows that I loved enough to devote an entire Geek Punditry column to.) It was acclaimed by fans, but there was no physical release for us to attach our support to. I can’t say fit certain that it would have made a difference, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt, because those numbers DO matter. When Star Trek: Picard wrapped up its third and final season, fans asked showrunner Terry Matalas what they could do to encourage Paramount to support his proposed Star Trek: Legacy spinoff series. His answer was telling: keep steaming Picard, yes, but also buy the Blu-Ray of Season Three so Paramount knows you will support it.

I’m not saying you need to rush out and buy everything that’s made, but if you want to send a message about what shows and movies you enjoy, buying the physical media helps accomplish that, and that will give support to similar projects in the future. Sure, I watched Fuller House on Netflix, but I don’t feel any particular need to get it on disc. But when Stranger Things drops its final season next year, you can bet I’ll be first in line for that complete series boxed set.

Available on twelve discs or 97 VHS tapes.

After Nolan made his comments, Guillermo del Toro added his own two cents to the discussion, saying, “Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility.” In other words, you’re not just clinging to that DVD set of the complete series of Mama’s Family for kicks, it is your civic duty. These things aren’t being preserved anymore, not by the people who actually own and control the IP, so it’s becoming incumbent upon the fans to do it themselves. This is especially true in a world where retailers like Best Buy have announced that they’re abandoning physical media sales entirely. Back before I had a kid and there was such a thing as free time, I could spent hours wandering around the Best Buy DVD section. Over the years I got sadder every time I stepped into the store, watching my favorite section get smaller and smaller. As of now, I honestly don’t remember the last time I walked into a Best Buy store, and that’s on them.

Movies and TV are not, of course, the only kinds of content affected by streaming. Music was hit a long time ago, and eBooks have been around for quite some time. In both of those arenas, though, something odd has happened. The importance of the physical media has grown in the digital age. Despite the obvious convenience of eBooks, a survey showed that in 2022 print books outsold them nearly four-to-one. And in the area of music, while lots of people use Spotify or Amazon Music to get their pop fix, die-hard fans have actually gone back in time and resurrected the vinyl album as their physical format of choice. Spotify is fine for a casual listener, but the hardcore fans want something they can see, touch, hold, display, and screech in terror when their kids hit the arm on the record player and scratch it up. I think, in the next few years, movie and TV fans will experience a similar renaissance. Casual fans will settle for Netflix and Hulu, but the collectors (a faction that will increase in both number and intensity) will thirst for that physical release with pristine picture and sound and loaded with extra features. 

So be a Chris Nolan, guys. Get your Barbenheimer fix on a disc. And try not to beat anybody up in the electronics aisle. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He hopes you all have a great Christmas season, and he promises loads of holiday content right here, because that’s the kind of nerd he is.

BONUS ANNOUNCEMENT!

In October I introduced a new feature to Geek Punditry, Playing Favorites, in which I give you a topic and ask you for suggestions of categories to share some of my favorite things. For example, the category for Halloween was “Horror Movies,” and suggestions included things like sci-fi/horror movies, comedy/horror hybrids, horror movie performances that I felt deserved Oscar recognition, and lots of other cool choices. It wound up filling up two full columns! (Part One, Part Two)

Well, never let it be said that I don’t know how to milk an idea to death use a good idea when it’s available. With Christmas coming up, I’m announcing the next round of Playing Favorites, in which I’m asking you guys for categories of Christmas content! Movies, books, TV shows, comics – what are the categories I can play favorites with this time? Give me your suggestions in the comments below or on whatever social media you used to find this link!