#bad faith criticism

[sapphiresaphics]

The theme never left. You’re just really unobservant.

I miss my wife her name is the themes of political oppression and class divide in arcane season one has anyone seen her

[sapphiresaphics]

I am SO FUCKING SICK of this being used as an excuse. There’s this NASTY pervasive policing in media by some “fans” who believe that you can’t like or enjoy a character unless they’re completely morally PURE. They believe that any negative thing a character does MUST be met with equal retribution and/or punishment, or else that means the media in question is CONDONING or SUPPORTING the actions of said character.

Caitlyn, along with every other character in Arcane, is a morally grey character. Meaning they do good things and they do bad things and you’re supposed to have the capacity not to forgive the bad but to be able to understand the reasons behind their actions and see things from a perspective that is not purely black and white. Understanding Caitlyn’s actions doesn’t mean you condone/forgive them, but it also doesn’t mean you condemn her for them either.

Caitlyn does some bad things in her position of power, but she’s not a fascist. Fascism is a far right-wing authoritarian belief. But Caitlyn never show signs of being right-wing. She doesn’t believe in the ideology of fascism and she actively works against the system she’s been put in charge of when she can. She doesn’t use the deep dark prisons in Stillwater where Vi was held, she refuses to lock people up without cause, and she has no interest in amassing power. She has one goal: Get Jinx. That’s it. And she uses the power that was GIVEN TO HER BY THE GOVERNMENT to try and enact that goal. And importantly when that goal is met/exhausted, she RETURNS POWER BACK TO THE GOVERNMENT. Which is what a military leader IS SUPPOSED TO DO under Martial Law.

But these moral police “fans” just see that she did bad things and therefore she is bad too. Simple as that. And anyone who tries to bring CONTEXT and NUANCE into a show that heavily relies on CONTEXT and NUANCE gets blamed for approving of “war crimes” and defending “classism.” And no… that’s not how media literacy WORKS you pompous asshole!

It’s extraordinarily frustrating that fascism as a term has no clear definition, because that allows these moral police assholes to label anything they don’t like under the fascism umbrella. It makes trying to discuss Caitlyn and her arc really difficult because they just shut down all discussion with “she committed war crimes” and they never even bother to try and look into the story beyond that extremely surface level reading.

[wolf-tail]

Steven Universe has received so much bad faith criticism from media illiterate clowns who called it's queer Jewish creator a Nazi sympathizer for *checks notes* acknowledging that Hey, Killing People Is Wrong Perhaps and Punishment Is Not Equivalent To Justice, Maybe in a CHILDREN'S SHOW that I get automatically suspicious of people who vocally dislike it. Like, you don't have to like it, everyone has their reasons, but I worry sometimes what those reasons are

[hyperlexichypatia]

Not pictured: Orange, upon being challenged for this deeply unserious take, pretends they are saying the same thing as Purple.

"No, actually, it is not inherently 'fascist' to believe in a human soul" is not the kind of thing I thought I would need to argue, and yet.

[sapphiresaphics]

It’s so fucking WEIRD how you associate liking a character with endorsing their actions. Enjoying any kind of media must be a real struggle for you.

can someone tell me when the c*itlyn/c*itvi stans realize that being a lesbian, a woman, and/or experiencing grief doesn’t justify c*itlyn’s actions? like, at all?

[spiderandmosquito]

Can drama affect critisism (RWBY)

[coldgoldlazarus]

One of the arguments about any sort of long-running media franchises/series, that almost always instantly raises my guard and calls into suspicion anything else the person making that argument has to say, is "the older stuff was better and everything after X point has been worthless dogshit with no redeeming value."

It's not like this is an alien perspective to me, either. I've been there, I get it. Where My Little Pony is concerned, I think I will always be at least a little bit of a seasonwunner, despite my best efforts. But this is a mindset that must be actively fought back against, and even if I can't really bring myself to watch the last few seasons, I recognize it's not that the show got worse, it just had different priorities there than what appealed to me about it originally.

And sure, sometimes stuff does just objectively shit the bed after a certain point. But honestly, I think that happens most when a series stops trying to explore new ideas, and falls back on shallow pandering fanservice about the earlier beloved entries. Looking at you, Rise Of Skywalker.

So point is, I do get where the mindset comes from, but it's still an extremely toxic impulse that I think needs to be confronted and dismantled with maturity and perspective. And talking with people who have failed to do that, and don't seem remotely interested in trying, is my personal hell.

But probably the most baffling instances of this mindset are when someone is like "everything before this point was good and everything after this point is bad!!!" but the actual argument makes no sense. Everything you say you hate didn't start after this arbitrary point, it started with the ones you uphold as the best in the series. If instance Y and Z are apparently utterly dogshit writing, why are you giving it a pass with instances W and X? It isn't even the repetition or differences in execution that seems to be the problem, it's just that it was good because it was before this arbitrary cutoff point, but bad because it was after it! (One especially galling example of this hypocricy was where the cutoff point between the 'last good' entry and 'first bad' one was between two releases... that came out simultaneously. Make it make sense.) Or else just pretending that this thing you dislike started later than it did and outright ignoring its presence in those earlier entries.

Like yeah, you are entitled to your feelings, at the end of the day; like I said, I get it to some extent at least. But if you're going to try to argue your feelings as some sort of objective fact about the quality of the series, at least put together a coherent and internally consistent argument. Or else, really reexamine if the reasons you're giving are the actual reasons, and it's not just nostalgia talking. Maybe the older entries don't hold up to your particular sensibilities as much as you think. Or maybe, you're refusing to give the newer ones a fair shake and reading them in bad faith.

[justplainsimon]

Apparently the person who made "steven universe is terrible and heres why" Also did a video about dungeon meshi... and yeah, they hate it/don't get it too

(and boy howdy were her thoughts on laios sure ableist)

and because there were so many dislikes, she took the thing down

[matt0044]

We need to reclaim The Legend of Korra from Lorch like we did Steven Universe.

Namely a lot of us have to respond to her two vidoes after revisiting the show proper. We can get bent out of shape over our pet peeves over LoK but Lorch's views are very much a part of the hatedom the show's accurred. The more it festers, the more it will promote poor faith criticism that more often than not comes from people who never saw the show for themselves.

Because her videos often got by on people who didn't know about the subject and took her word for it. We can take back this power by re-engaging with The Legend of Korra and seeing not for what it wasn't but for what it was and trying to be.

It's right there on Netflix, people.

[sjbattleangel]

Edited from Hiding In Private's fantastic video which you can watch here.

Hiding In Public: "It's unreasonable to attack Rebecca's character as if the most malicious interpretation of everything in the show was their personal idea. The writing and storyboarding team of Steven Universe is one of the most diverse in cartoon history. On a show that pushed diversity and inclusion, a lot of this criticism starts to stink of right-wing co-opting of progressive language, without understanding context and sentiment, in order to have a "gotcha" moment. Considering a lot of videos pushing this also include racist and homophobic jokes (as I've covered in my own series).  Even then, the argument that you're trying to make is that there was a malicious characterization of minorities made by those same minorities...so the next question I guess is: Why Steven Universe? A show about pushing diversity, inclusion and acceptance was being specifically targeted by countless takedown videos (and posts) on this specific thing. It seems to me-at least-that even if someone were to concede all the bad things being said, that it would make more sense to target-more loudly-the shows (and other media) that do the same thing more often with less tact and who are also not led by minority communities rather than one of the only shows intentionally trying to support these communities. Especially when most the people making the criticism, show by virtue of their own comments, are neither coming from these communities or are at worst actively vilifying them with homophobic and racist comments. Say there are two shops: One that sells apples and the other that sells grapes. The apple owner overhears a customer complaining about the grapes not tasting good. Does the Apple owner then run a campaign pretending to be a grape fan in order to make grapes better? Or is it more likely that they stoked a flame to ensure that their business had less competition?"

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

"I watched x so you don't have to" "I listened to y so you don't have to" "I read z so you don't have to" I cannot tell you enough how you also didn't have to. you didn't have to do that babe. you could have just not done that and spared the internet of yet another bad faith criticism of a piece of media that wasn't made for you

[kellodrawsalot]

I'm curious. A mutual of mine had a bad altercation with a user named Aquíllis. I digged and found out this person has a history of being toxic, and found a comment from your part commenting on her behavior. Did you know this person?

Sorry for the late reply because I first had no idea who you meant.

I remember now, it was some time ago. I think it was on my blog where I posted how I couldn't find good Sonic idw critical post because it was full of bad faith criticism. I mention no usernames, no vague posting but this person got offended by it and acted as if I made that post directed towards them, which is honestly telling on their part. They also tagged someone else who had nothing to do with it and they just ignored it. (lol) Your friend should just block them and not interact.

[sapphiresaphics]

The council decides to invade all of Zaun to get Jinx.

Caitlyn: “innocent people will get caught in the crossfire!”

The council doesn’t care. They’re planning to invade anyway.

Then the attack on the memorial happens.

Caitlyn: “We aren’t prepared for a full scale attack, the attack on the memorial proved that. So I’m planning to lead a small elite strike force into Zaun with 3 objectives. Dismantle shimmer. Arrest anyone associated with Silco. And get Jinx.”

Caitlyn looks into her Kiramman archive to figure out a way to do this without hurting a large number of people. Discovers the Grey vent system and puts into motion a plan to use the Grey to clear the streets using it like tear gas and attacking only facilities associated with Silco and his fellow Chem-baron goons as a way to prevent unwanted civilian casualties.

The show literally shows Caitlyn and her team using the vents themselves to enter and exit areas and attacking ONLY the chem Barrons and their goons.

Fandom: “OH MUY GAWD! CAITLYN IS LITERALLY HITLER GASSING THE ENTIRE CITY IF ZAUN! THE GAS IS CANCEROUS AND KILLS ON IMPACT! SHE’S SUCH A HORRIBLE PERSON! SO MANY INNOCENT CIVILIAN LIVES LOST! I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE HURT INNOCENT CIVLIANS! DRUG LORDS ARE STILL CITIZENS AND DESERVE HUMAN RIGHTS! ACAB! ZAUN IS A GAZA PARALLEL! DICTATOR! DICTATOR! DICTATOR! KKKIRAMMAN”

Me: Jesus fucking Christ almighty….im so fucking tired…

[iamafanofcartoons]

Vexed Viewer just hit a new low. He made a video insulting Kiersi Burkhart (one of RWBY’s writers) for saying in a twitter AMA that Cinder experienced (clearly negative, as per her own admission of “for better or for worse”) growth and change as a character. In addition to making a mean-spirited gotcha towards her, he didn’t ask her for permission to share her twitter information in the video. You can get sued for that. I really hope someone tells her about this, and that she decides to press charges on that asshole, or at the very least report his twitter account and/or YouTube channel.

Do people STILL think Vexed Viewer is not a misogynist?

Over 50% of his channel is dedicated to insulting women.

His most popular videos and tweets are about hating fictional women.

And he's transphobic.

Then again? He IS a hardcore blacksun shipper and adam taurus lover, so it makes sense that misogynistic men and women love him.

In the meantime, use this.

It will allow you to block his channel, and give yourself peace of mind.

[spacefrog1984]

This is it, this is the post that just got me blocked again by @curly-b-blog - for someone trying to be so flippant with their criticism of @celestialalpacaron and @saiscribbles, Curly really can't take a joke, can she?

[canary0]

So.

My Friendly Neighborhood.

Good aspects: Interesting inventory management, tense moments and atmosphere, good voice work (kudos to the voice director Brendan Blaber/JelloApocalypse), interesting premise, having the puppets just be unexplained and part of the world feels fresh.

Bad aspects: Fake loading screens are weird and distracting, highlighting can be a little subtle.

Aspects up to personal taste, but I hated: The not-especially-subtle implication that the in-story show was meant to instill Christian values in kids, and the game's overall implication that this is an unambiguously good thing, and the loss of it will cause societal downfall because no one can be trusted to make their own moral decisions. The bad faith criticism of children's television.

That last bit, but extended (break if you don't want to read the extended rant, 'cause that's basically what it is):

The marketing niche for Sesame Street and the marketing niche for something called "Dinosaur Mayhem" would be two completely different age ranges and developmental stages. The game kind of implies stuff like Sesame Street was replaced with things like, say, Transformers or generally unnamed violent kids' cartoons, but that's not true at all.

First, Sesame Street is still running. It's had the occasional threat over the years, but people still see the value of it. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, the other implied reference, ran practically forever. These days, kids also have things like Paw Patrol, Dora the Explorer, Doc McStuffins, Bluey, and in general a whole lot of perfectly wholesome childrens' programming. There is no lack of love and cooperation in it.

Kids grow into shows with higher stakes and more conflict as they get older and are more ready for that kind of content. They're not going to keep watching shows for 2-6 year olds forever. That's not a failure of media - it's just kids entering a different developmental stage. Not everything is going to be appropriate for the very youngest, and that's actually a good thing.

Diversity of media and media that expands subjects people are exposed to as they get older and can handle it is good. It creates room for creative, interesting shows. It respects the developmental changes kids go through. Gravity Falls, to give an example, is not out-competing Sesame Street.

What gets me also is that there's a bunch of manipulation and negging and you get attacked and defend yourself and the game treats you like a monster for it, and the people who are mistreating the main character as correct. Lil' hinky, I think.

It was just frustrating, so I wanted to rant about it. The game was good and then fumbled the landing.

This is all purely my personal opinion, and you're free to disagree. Any interpretation of a given piece of media is valid, and mine is not correct any more than anyone else. Please don't take this as me claiming the final word. This is just what I personally took away from it.