#bad faith criticism

[hetheymerrill]

My most toxic opinion is that sometimes you can, and should actually, argue against a doylist analysis with a watsonian argument. It's occasionally genuinely necessary to do that.

[sapphiresaphics]

This has sadly been the norm for me since November.

This is going to sound so "oldie yells at cloud" of me but the radicalisation of the young into black and white, zero shades of grey thinking, both in the media they consume and in real life situations, is genuinely terrifying.

The world is complex. The world is grey. There is infinite nuance in everything. No amount of trying to shove it all into neatly labeled boxes is ever going to work.

[gameguy20100]

One argument I will always reject and consider people foolish for using is this. "It's not their fault, it's the writers! My blorpo is innocent!"

Like, do you not know how fiction works? Characters are nothing but what the writers put into them.

By that logic, you could claim no character gets blame or credit for anything.

Are you proud of Tony Stark for deciding to become Iron Man and fix his mistakes? Well, that wasn't him, the writers decided that.

Do you look up to Wonder Woman as a feminist Icon? Well you can't. She doesn't actually fight for women's rights and protect the innocent, she just does what the writers tell her to do.

Do you hate Gabriel for being a shitty, abusive, utter waste of a person? Hey, cut him some slack, it's not his fault. After all, the writers decided that.

See what I mean? By all means claim a character is boring, or poorly written, or wasted, or whatever.

But you can't claim that characters are blameless because they're fictional.

[sapphiresaphics]

One of the complaints against Caitlyn is that she doesn’t apologize for anything she’s done and doesn’t try to make up for it.

Yet she LITERALLY allows Jinx, the known terrorist who has killed half the Piltover counsel and the poster child for the Zaunite revolution, to go free back into Zaun.

That’s why Jinx rallying the Zaunites to help in the upcoming war WORKS when Jayce’s please for Zaun to fight DOESN’T. Because Caitlyn letting Jinx go is such a HUGE GESTURE OF GOOD FAITH TOWARDS ZAUN.

But nah, she never apologizes right? Her actions don’t speak louder than her words, right? Her letting her hatred of Jinx go and letting Jinx go back to Zaun has NO GOOD WILL attached to it, right?

Fuck you all.

[sapphiresaphics]

“Vi is in a vulnerable state where she never seeks any sort of apology for Caitlyn's actions despite her crimes against both her and Zaun.”

1. Yes she does. She specifically calls out Caitlyn for her actions with Ambessa and Caitlyn acknowledges what she did was wrong.

2. Both Vi and Caitlyn committed crimes against Zaun together. It’s really weird that you guys feel the desperate need for Caitlyn to apologize to Vi when Vi is the one who helped propose the strike force team in the first place.

3. Caitlyn DOES apologize. I’m so fucking SICK of you guys complaining that she doesn’t when she DOES. Just because she doesn’t do so verbally doesn’t mean she doesn’t apologize. This is a visual medium. Actions speak louder than words. Caitlyn’s ACTIONS of letting Vi free her sister proves to Vi that her love for Vi is more important than getting revenge on Jinx. It shows her she trusts Vi to make the right decision and cares about her wants and needs.

ADDITIONALLY, during their make-out session Caitlyn SPECIFICALLY stops to look at where she hurt Vi, tenderly puts a hand on the spot and looks sad and remorseful. That is Caitlyn preparing to apologize for what she did… when Vi CUTS HER OFF AND KISSES HER BECAUSE SHE ACCEPTS THE APOLOGY BEFORE CAITLYN CAN VOCALIZE IT.

When we say you guys have no media literacy it’s because of shit like this. The show gives you all the information you need to put these pieces together yourself, but you either ignore them, misrepresent them, or complain that characters need to express every facet of their being vocally.

I’m so incredibly exhausted that after 8 months people are STILL repeating the same nonsense talking points of “Caitlyn never apologizes and that’s why it’s a bad ship because there’s a power imbalance!” Fuck you. You’re offering nothing new to the conversation, you’re just keeping us in the same limbo mode of worthless complaints and arguments that have been debunked months ago.

And additionally, because I’m so tired of this too, I hate how you idiots think Arcane was about revolution and complain that the series “ignores its politics.” It didn’t ignore SHIT. The point of the series is the cycle of violence that Piltover and Zaun are. Regardless of who’s actually in the wrong (Piltover obviously) the point of the show is how this cycle will CONTINUE. The show was never going to end with the liberation of Zaun. It’s using the conflict between the two cities to show how the cycle works, how it hurts people on both sides, how you can get blinded by “othering” each other, how you can overcome it, and how you can break free of it. They do this so that when the show ends with Piltover STILL in a position of power and Zaun only starting to get a tiny bit of recognition you’re supposed to be smart enough to grasp that the cycle of violence is going to happen again. Caitlyn’s voice over LITERALLY spells this out for you in case you missed it. That’s not “abandoning its politics” at all, it’s literally broadcasting its political message in bright fucking neon lights at you.

Can you guys PLEASE learn what themes are??? This is not a show where it thinks Piltover did no wrong and wants you to side with them. That ending is a CONDEMNATION of Piltover for not growing and learning the lesson the show has been trying to teach the entire time. It’s a sad ending because Piltover has an opportunity to do better… and they CHOOSE not to. The cycle will continue. For fuck’s sake, the show is LITERALLY a tragedy. Do you guys not understand w tragedies work?

I need people to understand that liking a ship doesn't always mean that there is agreement with how it was played out. IMO Arcane is one of those shows that has infinite amounts of potential but was sadly squandered and the writers never even realized a fraction of that with the way they handled resolving the story and characters. For instance, CaitVi as it ended in S2 left things between them with a massive, unhealthy power imbalance (Vi having literally nothing and no one else except Ekko with whom for some reason the writers never mention their relationship again?? Meanwhile Caitlyn still has all her wealth and her father at least), and Vi is in a vulnerable state where she never seeks any sort of apology for Caitlyn's actions despite her crimes against both her and Zaun.

That said, it's abundantly clear that the writers' intentions were to end with showing CaitVi as a relationship between two people who have overcome adversity and healed from trauma together (despite their god-awful failed attempts at demonstrating that by just... never addressing Vi's trauma with Enforcers or Caitlyn's police brutality again so that everything "conveniently" ends up okay), which is what a lot of people choose to interpret the relationship as, and I think that's okay because frankly it's not their fault that the writing became so messed up that CaitVi actually turned from an incredibly popular ship into a controversial one through tone-deaf character arc "development" and how there was absolutely no conviction whatsoever behind the politics that Arcane loves to show off for aesthetics but never actually follow through on with ANY of the characters you know... actively engaging in revolution or political change (and if they DO *cough cough Ekko* *cough cough MEL* then they're whisked away to isekai timeout while the rest of the characters get oh-so-cleverly manipulated by the Big Bad Ambessa, an outside threat there to conveniently unify Zaun and Piltover together without any sort of internal revolution or ANY of the issues with how Piltover treated Zaun addressed at all!!!).

Anyways, I think CaitVi as it stands still had the potential to be one of the best sapphic ships in media, it's just sad that it was never fully realized due to shitty writing.

But that's what fanfiction and headcanons are for, amirite?

[asm5129]

"The writers have talked about how important it is not to be an asshole when you're criticizing something, which i think is something most people agree with"--Hbomberguy, in his RWBY video.

Lets determine whether he counts himself among those "most".

No pressure to watch this one. I know the discourse around this sucks

[theadhddimsenion]

Debunking the "protagonist centered morality" "argument" on i.m.p.

One of the truly worst takes on helluva boss is the nonsensical claim that i.m.p are some how worse than the villains of the story! So I am going to systematically debunk all of the so called "evidence" for this "argument" one by one.

"I.m.p are murderers and therefore worse than all of villains!" Bullshit. I've said it before and I will say it again i.m.p killing humans is not meant to be taken seriously and your inability to enjoy dark humor is not a fault in the series writing!! Now sense you all seem to be unable to grasp basic literary conventions let me break it down for you in the most basic of terms. I.m.p do not kill humans for the heck of it. They kill humans because it was the only thing that would A. Put food on the table. B allow them to have independence from the higher-ups of hell and C give them an edge over all the other dime a dozen assassin's and mercenaries in hell!

"They got cherub kicked out of heaven for no reason!!" No deerie got the cherubs kicked out of heaven for no reason! Like for fuck sake do you honestly believe that they were dedicated to helping people who actually deserved an angels grace? The fact they were trying to get lipton past the pearly gates despite him being clearly an awful person says otherwise not mention the fact they were clearly seen scaming people with false good deeds to pickpocket them. Moreover i.m.p played by the heavenly jackasses rules and got upset and tried to murder their opponents when they lost and as much as I love collin he is still complicit with the cruelty of his cohorts so he is still sadly still just as responsible for what happened as his "friends" and like I said i.m.p aren't responsible for deeries action nor cherub screwing up so badly that her actions were carried out. You can't blame the imps for what their manager did to them and if you think otherwise then I can't help you.

"Satan was just upholding demon law which i.m.p willingly broke!!" You are literally saying that trying to rise above systematic oppression is a bad thing. I'm not even going to bother trying to explain why that's a terrible argument.

"They destroyed via's home and peace!!" Look I'm not going to say that via doesn't have a right to be upset about this whole situation far from it! She has every right to be upset about this whole situation and be as angry as she wants but your acting like stolas living for her sake is the solution for that problem rather than the very thing that caused it in the first place!! I don't blame stolas for not telling via the truth about he and her mothers relationship having to explain to your kid that their parents never loved each other and that her mother is a abusive monster is a awful thing to have to do but it's still something he should have done. Sadly stolas wasn't granted the "luxury" of a non abusive relationship outside of via for the majority of his life so it's no surprise he failed in this one regard. My point being that as painful as it would have been stolas should have told his daughter that he wasn't happy with her mother. It would have hurt but via would still trust him. Instead while his choice to hide the truth from her was noble it was still lying and no matter how good your intentions are lying to people especially people you care about will result in them not trusting you. In conclusion i.m.p didn't destroy via's home and peace because her home and peace where based upon the noble lie her father told her and as such was never real. You can't destroy something that never really existed and stolas's only mistake was trying to protect his daughter from reality.

"Blitz is a theif!! Reeeeee!!!" This is literally proven wrong by both mastermind and the circus.

"But striker is a assassin too!!" As I explained above i.m.p kill because they want to rise above the oppression of their people and survive striker just kills because he wants power to compastate for whatever happened to him in the past and takes it out on whoever he can find.

"But all stella,mammon,cash, etc etc did was be mean never kill anyone!" I told you before that i.m.p kill because they need to stay in the black and don't want to be pawns for the powerfull like most of their kind are meanwhile all those mentioned above are those who actively gain their power off the exploitation of others. That's like saying that if Val didn't kill anyone he would have the moral high ground over charile because she killed exorcists. And while I'm on this point no stolas did not exploit i.m.p any more than blitz did which is none at all he could have literally demanded anything and everything but he didn't and i thank him for that and we are moving on.

In conclusion no the i.m.p family are worse than the villains of the series and if you still think that it's a case of "protagonist centered morality" then my friend you have no media literacy whatsoever and I will kindly ask you to find a different show to watch.

[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.

[shyjusticewarrior]

"Earlier seasons SpongeBob would hate later seasons SpongeBob!" Y'all get on this internet and tell lies.

[spiderandmosquito]

Can drama affect critisism (RWBY) by Compare and Contrast

This is a video I posted before, but am doing again in the hopes it gets spread further. Compare and Contrast is a small youtube channel yet has presented a very smart, calm, and articulate examination of the consequences of hatedoms on our ability to fairly judge fiction on its own terms as well as how good-faith critical analysis which inevitably becomes drowned out or appropriated by the mob. It is a pattern I wish to end, not just for my preferred works of entertainment, and know it likely will not. I do not seek to change anyone's minds, you're always allowed and entitled to your opinions, but I do seek for one to think about the intentions behind the voices they've heard and to risk exposing oneself to the subject of ridicule to have your own informed opinions. It is always possible that you're being lied to, and a lie as seemingly useless as whether or not you might like RWBY or not can hurt you in ways you won't expect.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[sapphiresaphics]

Alright let’s do this.

1. That “feeling Zaunite family” are Silco’s goons. They are literally the same goons that attacked Vi. They aren’t some random family Caitlyn is gassing and they’re running away in terror, they are literally Silco’s goons that she swore she’d get.

What actions do you want Caitlyn to do to redeem herself? Hmm? Because clearly fighting for Zaun in the end of the show doesn’t count. Tearing down the walls after admitting you were wrong and breaking from the ACTUAL fascist Ambessa isn’t trying to redeem herself?

You guys love to bring up Vi’s trauma of the Enforcers in season 2 when season 1 was LITERALLY about Vi falling in love with one. LOL

2. VI’s reason for joining the enforcers is because if she doesn’t help with a small strike team then Zaun was going to be invaded with a full scale ARMY. Vi was being the pragmatist she is. She was trying to stave off more deaths and killing by taking out the people she already has tried to do in Season 1.

Also love the bringing up the “they only made her parents die to create tension” like yeah… that’s how WRITING WORKS. Congrats, you’ve learned that writing involves intentionally creating scenarios for your characters to overcome!

3. Given that Jinx is the literal poster child of the resistance in Season 2, having Caitlyn (a Piltover general) release her with no expectations or punishment… yeah… THATS A FUCKING HUGE GESTURE. And yeah…. They DO appreciate it because Jinx literally rallies the Zaunites together to fight against Ambessa when Piltover’s efforts to get them to help FAILED.

wtf kind of weird complaint is that? This is just the show AGAIN doing “show don’t tell” and you’re bitching about it because you missed the point.

4. You clearly don’t know how themes work. VI’s theme was never about retaliating against Piltover. Ekko’s was never about retaliating against Piltover. Both of them were focused on retaliating against SILCO. But that’s also not a theme. Those are actions. Theme is what does Vi want and what does she get? Vi wants a safe life for her family. She gets a new family in a safer place than she grew up. Ekko wants to divorce himself from the conflict between the cities. Ekko learns he can’t. Those are themes.

And that video you posted is absolutes GARBAGE. I did a post where I tried to go through and point out all the ways it was wrong and I couldn’t even get through 10 minutes of it because it’s filled to the BRIM with misconstrued lies and fabricated information. That’s a BAD video by a BAD creator and you shouldn’t use it as “proof” of your shitty opinion.

I responded because your post is bad faith and awful and you deserve to be called out for the media illiteracy you promote.

I need people to understand that liking a ship doesn't always mean that there is agreement with how it was played out. IMO Arcane is one of those shows that has infinite amounts of potential but was sadly squandered and the writers never even realized a fraction of that with the way they handled resolving the story and characters. For instance, CaitVi as it ended in S2 left things between them with a massive, unhealthy power imbalance (Vi having literally nothing and no one else except Ekko with whom for some reason the writers never mention their relationship again?? Meanwhile Caitlyn still has all her wealth and her father at least), and Vi is in a vulnerable state where she never seeks any sort of apology for Caitlyn's actions despite her crimes against both her and Zaun.

That said, it's abundantly clear that the writers' intentions were to end with showing CaitVi as a relationship between two people who have overcome adversity and healed from trauma together (despite their god-awful failed attempts at demonstrating that by just... never addressing Vi's trauma with Enforcers or Caitlyn's police brutality again so that everything "conveniently" ends up okay), which is what a lot of people choose to interpret the relationship as, and I think that's okay because frankly it's not their fault that the writing became so messed up that CaitVi actually turned from an incredibly popular ship into a controversial one through tone-deaf character arc "development" and how there was absolutely no conviction whatsoever behind the politics that Arcane loves to show off for aesthetics but never actually follow through on with ANY of the characters you know... actively engaging in revolution or political change (and if they DO *cough cough Ekko* *cough cough MEL* then they're whisked away to isekai timeout while the rest of the characters get oh-so-cleverly manipulated by the Big Bad Ambessa, an outside threat there to conveniently unify Zaun and Piltover together without any sort of internal revolution or ANY of the issues with how Piltover treated Zaun addressed at all!!!).

Anyways, I think CaitVi as it stands still had the potential to be one of the best sapphic ships in media, it's just sad that it was never fully realized due to shitty writing.

But that's what fanfiction and headcanons are for, amirite?

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

The books wouldve been better if there had been research on the way birds of pray hunt, because the description isnt right at all.

[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