i'm kind of torn on this. because, if the dice are the be-all-end-all, why have a GM at the table? i'd wager the vast majority of GMs tune difficulty and pacing on the fly without realizing it, even if it's just "i'm gonna skip this last encounter because we're already a half hour over and i have work tomorrow" or even just "wow everyone is bored as shit right now, we outta pick up the pace" but on the other hand, I have seen a fee bad rolls in a low-stakes encounter spiral into a character dying, and it was cool as shit. that's part of the magic of rpgs- no do-overs or back to the title screen, instead the rest of the party (or the whole party if the player rolls a new character) needs to contend and deal with being down a person. in our case we had to drag a corpse across a continent to get to a cleric powerful enough to bring him back, and in doing so accidentally let the big bad into the otherwise secure city limits. we would have completely missed out on all of that if those dice were fudged. i guess it all down to context- fudging to prevent the GM railroad from being derailed robs you of experiences, but we also have GMs at the table for a reason, and i'm ok with them using fudging when they feel it's warranted so long as they're not abusing it to the point where there's no risk to anything. at the end of the day, if we're all having fun, i trust the GM with whatever they're doing, and if we're not, fudging is probably a symptom of whatever actually is the issue
there's a good joke in here somewhere about Babylon 5's canonically lesbian XO throwing a fit when the station got a gift shop. "we're not some deep space franchise, this station is about something!"
Tales of the Jedi did a really good job fleshing Dooku out. many star wars villains are unambigiously evil- that's what happens when dark wizardry is very real and a viable career path i guess- but Dooku really thought he was doing the right thing at first, like a more selfless Anakin. a lot of Star Wars media does a great job illustrating that the Republic and the Jedi were deeply flawed, but don't make the jump to saying that many if not most planets joined the CIS in good faith for that reason- i guess because the new non-droids we see in the CIS are all asshats or aforementioned evil wizards, but still! the fight against the republic and the rebellion against the empire were essentially the same conflict from a certain point of view...
if i had a nickel for every time Spock faced off against a unique species of cat-like predator from Vulcan, i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice
i mean these days you don't really need to buy the books to play- you can learn how to play from an Actual Play, reference the rules in a VTT, and have your DM learn from a youtuber. that really leaves WotC either in the business of making solid modules and supplements, or just making knick knacks- and they've clearly chosen the latter, at least until they can force whatever subscription model they can on the exclusive VTT they'll have for 6e
many retro systems have implementations of a language called BASIC, which is about as easy as it sounds. it has some quirks that aren't transferable to newer languages and you won't be able to make anything nearly as sophisticated as retail games for the same hardware but if you find modern engines intimidating, it can be a good place to start
that said, +1 for godot if you want to learn a more modern tool. it's way simpler than it may seem at first and there is a huge wealth of beginner-friendly tutorials available online
assuming reasonable definitions of "new" and "old," i'd wager there's been more good old music than good new music for most of human history. it all comes down to numbers- there's simply more old music than new music! there are factors that i do genuinely think make pop music not as good today as it could be (see: streaming companies), but that's a rounding error compared to the sheer scale of music history, plus all the bedroom artists making up for anything lacking in today's pop music.
that said, if you spend any time focused on a specific period or specific periods, it will not take long to find stinkers, if only because everyone has different taste and you're bound to find something you just don't jive with eventually. i've been in spaces where people who love classic rock for example review classic rock albums and their analyses are sometimes so brutal you wonder if there's anything they DO like
i never got where people thinking burnham is a mary sue comes from. the whole concept of her character is that she's a cowboy loose cannon without the competence to back it up. it's specifically a subversion of every time our hero breaks the rules and steals The Ship and it ends up being ok because they saved the day or stopped the big war or whatever. the series starts with her trying to do just that, bringing about what she wanted to prevent, and getting arrested for it!
that's just me playing Zork