#but pulls some real toothpaste-and-orange-juice shit when it combines that with the more serious/earnest elements | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

angorwhosebabyisthis · 1 year ago

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i'm having Many Thoughts this rewatch about the... words. narrative devices and framing and tone of sdmi, and how they bring out a lot of food for thought re: aspects of media analysis which are easy to lose track of in media that takes itself more or less seriously than sdmi does.

unfortunately my brain is kind of soup lately, and when i try to put this bit into words it becomes Massive Overwhelming Infodump before it's halfway to my stylus. i have few brain cells available at the moment and it burns through them fast. 😔 ah well, hopefully i'll get around to making an actual coherent post about it sooner or later

#whosebaby talks #SDMItag #something about abstraction vs literalism; shorthand you're supposed to fill in the gaps for vs Things You are Meant to Take at Face Value #and about what's meant to be a Thing specific to a particular character/place/social environment/dynamic/etc #compared to a show's stylistic weirdness filter you're having to compensate for to tell if this character is an Abstraction #in the same way squiggles on a book to indicate writing are an abstraction of actual writing; or if they Are Actually Like That #vs when they *aren't* meant to embody that any more than the other people present; but *the other people present are also Like That*#compared to baseline for that world; because there's a specific reason in-universe that people like them end up concentrated here #vs a world where the baseline *is* for everything to be Like That; not as an abstraction or weirdness filter #but because the squiggly lines on the book are just Actually Squiggly Lines in-universe #often intended for comedy but not always! or entirely!#and sdmi's tone--comedic and otherwise--means it bounces around a lot of these in some really interesting ways #which is uh further complicated by the fact that despite how much of the comedy is obviously meant to lampshade how fucked up their world i #a fuckton of it is just straightforwardly horribly misogynistic and racist and abuse apologist and what have you #and not only makes light of this stuff in some really fucking awful ways under the guise of always-sunny-style ~tee hee lampshading~#but pulls some real toothpaste-and-orange-juice shit when it combines that with the more serious/earnest elements #and then you add in things like examining the generally exaggeratedly corrupt justice system #partly for laughs/drama and partly because a realistic judiciary process wouldn't work with the format tone and narrative they're working i #it's a fairytale; monarchies don't choose a ruler by sending out three princes to find a magical chalice in the forest or whatever #.....but also there are some reeeaaal interesting; uncomfortable things to examine here when comparing the corrupt *human* justice system #to the corrupt one the horrifically oppressed talking animals in this universe are subjected to #especially when it's often not even clear *which animals are supposed to be sapient*#and some shit you cannot 'it's a fairytale' your way out of; like racism and ableism and misogyny and queerphobia and abuse #say what you want about whether it *should* be there; but if it is; it is #and if nothing else it is sure fucking worth discussing if a piece of media tries to claim a textual depiction of SA for example #is a squiggly line abstraction for consensual romance #anyway there's a lot to unpack here squirtle it's fascinating and i have Opinions about it

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