#bad faith criticism

[sapphiresaphics]

It will never not be depressingly hilarious to me that people got upset and offended that the VIDEO GAME TV SHOW didn’t solve classism and ended with a big robot army battle.

Like, my dudes, I know you liked the political commentary and all that.. but at the end of the day this is a world where portable time travel devices can be built with zoetropes, giant fish men serve sushi while wearing cutting boards on their shoulders, gremlin looking women run brothels, drinking a single DROP from a potion cures STAB WOUNDS, hoverboards exist, the fucking MULTIVERSE exists, and huffing colorful chemicals makes you stronger like the Hulk.

If you didn’t think that the TV show with the magical hammer and Thanos gauntlets wasn’t going to end with a big epic battle in some fashion, you were deluding yourself.

[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]

Weird that your only issue with that framing and her story is that she eventually becomes an Enforcer herself in season 2… but NOT that she actively works with and cares for an Enforcer all through season 1.

If your issue is that this framing doesn’t make sense for her arc in season 2, why does it make sense for her arc in season 1 when she LITERALLY FALLS IN LOVE with an Enforcer? Why is THAT acceptable but not what leads up to her becoming an enforcer in season 2? Also, what part of her joining the enforcers made you think she agrees with them? Doesn’t her looking absolutely MISERABLE in that outfit indicate that she never wanted to Don it in the first place? Isn’t that consistent with her character?

Guess Jinx’s last line in season 1 was just a throwaway line nobody should pay attention to if they wanna hate on season 2 eh?

Why would you use this sequence of shots

As your opening scene

And then just never properly tackle Vi's feelings towards becoming an Enforcer? Let's say I was convinced enough that she'd join up for the Jinx hunt—my sister's gone I need to lay this ghost to rest—where was the guilt that should have been eating her alive afterwards?? And the working through of that guilt?

I don't know if I dislike this writing choice more, or the deluge of fans nodding along to the tune of "love and understanding can fix all of it"

[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

[sapphiresaphics]

Oh, so that’s why your opinions are so bad. You’re literally listening to YouTube grifters.

Good to know…

Super recommend you guys to watch these Arcane season 2 reviews. I think it talks about my problems with season 2 pretty well.

@mvmnbnv

[spiderandmosquito]

Can drama affect critisism (RWBY)

[tomboymikayla]

The worst fucking time to be a Sonic Fan:

[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

[sapphiresaphics]

People scream “show don’t tell!” all the damn time, but the second a show actually DOES just show you stuff and make you use your brain to piece things together you scream “bad writing! Bad writing!”

Fuck you. You don’t want a story to “show don’t tell,” you’re literally angry they won’t just spoon feed you the answers on a silver platter.

[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.

[gameguy20100]

You know what I keep noticing in when I encounter salters/critical type people. They tend to either stan the problematic characters and get upset when their fave does a problematic thing and act like it's bad writing.

I.e Chloe, Stella from HB, and one TFA one I recently blocked is a fan of Sentinel Prime

Hu

Now that I think about it. You're right.

It's like Harry Potter haters who stan draco. Or people who hate ATLA and stan Azula.

My mind is blown.