#fandom critical

[slightlycomicobsessed]

post: man i love it when female characters are cool & awesome

me: oh boy i can't wait to see all the cool & awesome female characters people tagged-

tags:

#this but with [male character]

#this is sooo [male character] coded

#lol i know this says women but honestly lowkey [male character] IS so woman-coded so he counts

me:

[pandaofsecrets]

Adding another one I just saw in the wild: "You know you can openly love it and think it's good?" Yeah, that's just the thing. I don't think it's good.

"How fandom react to criticism" wheel

[mofsblog]

"This is some gay shit" Good. Silly. Fair enough. Doesn't inherently invalidate other interpretations of the relationship. Honestly yeah, it is kind of gay regardless of their canonical relationship status

"There's literally no platonic explanation for th-" WRONG!! KILLING YOU WITH AMATANORMATIVITY KILLING LOBSTERS 🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞

[thinkingofausername]

i really wish simple things weren't so complicated within fandoms. a character can be problematic but interesting. a character can make a mistake but not be evil. a character can hold a position of authority and still be a victim. a character doesn't have to be perfect and pure and innocent to be a victim. a character doesn't have to be perfectly pure for you to like them. liking a character who's fucked up doesn't mean you support their every action. why is this so complicated

[sunsetsmakemesad]

Not gonna lie I kinda hate the compulsion in fandom to shove every relationship into rigid definition boxes. Every relationship is either parent-child, siblings or romantic. Come on. Relationships are so much more complex than that. Do you at least have friends.

[hyperions-light]

Re: last rb

I put it in the tags but

The post that OP linked and is critiquing is the EXACT thing I was talking about when I said bigots are using VG crit to recruit and radicalize

They are trying to hide blatantly transphobic talking points behind sophisticated rhetoric and academic language.

You will notice that they deliberately grouped Mae with men in order to make a point about the Archon quest. (They do this again with Taash when they want to talk about their arc, by placing a general statement about women in VG right after a comment about Taash’s quest.) If you were someone who did not like the archon quest, you might be inclined to agree with them. But if you reblogged the post for that reason you would be spreading TERF talking points. There are multiple other rhetorical devices being used to engage the expected audience and get ppl to overlook the bigoted talking points in that post, but I think Idontevenlikedragonage already did a pretty thorough analysis/refutation.

I don’t give a fuck if you liked the game or not. It’s a video game. But this person is either actually a TERF trying to recruit or so out of control of their own rhetoric it doesn’t matter.

Once again, please read carefully and be selective about your VG crit takes.

(And don’t go harass that person— they want attention. Block them. Give them none.)

[faderifter]

for your story to have themes of empowerment and anti-bigotry it has to contain bigotry, btw. feminist and anti-racist themes can’t exist without misogyny and racism, explicit or metaphorical. your desire to scrub depictions of prejudice from fiction is regressive.

[shitpostingsapphic]

*sigh* this is the last time I will say this.

Depiction is not romanticization. Yes, Caitlyn does bad things. But because of the way they're depicted, they aren't copaganda, because you aren't meant to cosign her actions. Simply understand as to how she came about doing them. Same with Silco. Same with Jinx. When we sympathize with Jinx and Silco, it doesn't mean we think everything they do is justified. We simply understand how they came to be. The same goes for Caitlyn. And the fact we feel sympathy doesn't fucking make it copaganda.

And if I come off condescending, maybe it's because I'm tired of reiterating this same fucking point to you children who can't grasp the concept.

A reminder to the arcane critical people that in order for a show to be copaganda, you have to come out of it thinking "wow, the cops are the good guys, they're the heroes"

At no point does the show even remotely give you that feeling about the enforcers.

You root for Caitlyn not because she's an enforcer, but because she tries to make up for the sins that enforcers have committed, including herself.

The final battle, you don't think of the enforcers as saving the city. You see Zaunites fleeing the city, rejecting the plea for help, and think "well, Piltover had that coming". You think of the battle as a natural consequence of allying with Ambessa and Noxus. That final battle is Caitlyn's and Jayce's consequence, for their mistakes made thus far.

You don't root for the enforcers. You root for the people who are trying to be better than what the enforcers have been.

If you can't understand that nuance, that's on you.

[c1trvswurld]

Arcane fans who are convinced or have convinced themselves that silco is a completely righteous girl dad who'd loves and protects all children like he protects powder are so funny. As if he didn't threaten to take renni's(?) Child out for disobedience and, in that same scene, mocks her by saying jayce already did that for her. Not to mention the whole thing with Marcus' child. Stg all those adopting everyone girldad interpretations are removing the wonderful sauce and cheese of the very tasty complex morally Grey leaning black silco pizza

[solavelyan]

What's more likely: the Veilguard dev team woke up one day with all of their writing skills and good intentions having fallen out of their brains and set out to make a bad game that hates all the characters because they're actually mean sociopaths who want you personally to be miserable, OR did the team fight an uphill battle to make the best thing they could while being hamstrung and meddled with at every turn?

Also if you think that John Epler hates Dragon Age, Solas, or you personally, you are choosing to be stupid. I'm not saying you're stupid generally, I'm saying you're being willfully fucking stupid in your search for a person to blame to explain why, for some reason, Veilguard doesn't feel like your memories of playing other DA games 10+ years ago, when the world was extremely different and DA4 lived entirely in your head as a "hopefully someday" kind of thing.

Also also, frankly, if you took Epler's comments about Solas's development as him hating the character and spitefully ruining him or something, than you must not be very good at writing complicated antagonists yourself if you think any of that DIDN'T come from a place of creative investment and affection. Epler himself has said that Solas is the central figure of Trespasser and Veilguard BECAUSE he loves this character.

I'm absolutely baffled that "Epler hates Solas and also you" has overtaken "Gaider flattened all four of my tires and unwatered my crops" around here. Y'all are the reason we can't have nice things in fandom.

[glitter-stained]

Nah cause I fully believe people are allowed to have different opinions and evaluations of the UTH confrontation, like that's why it's a trolley problem, it's supposed to be a dilemma, I can totally understand people disagreeing with me about what would be the correct decision- what I find annoying is that take I keep seeing that Jason fans are "falling for their empathy bias" and letting it distract them from the fact that killing is wrong. Talk about patronising - the idea that the only reason someone could disagree with you is because they're letting their emotions overwhelm their judgement... Like I can respect that you hold philosophical beliefs and a reasoning I don't have access to that make you hold this position, please don't disrespect me by assuming you understand my reasoning and the reasoning of the people who agree with me. I don't even pretend to assume the people who agree with me share my reasoning as to why they agree. Do not assume that i am not falling for my empathy bias I am jumping into it. Like, that's the point. Empathy bias my beloved I will defend your ethical validity I'm sorry popular culture has made you into a villain. Maybe I should feel more annoyed at the lack of perspective taking and respect for my intelligence as a whole, but mostly it's the presumption that I'm leaning into my empathy accidentally rather than voluntarily.

Genuinely though, joke aside: I know you may have a clear, clean-cut stance on the topic, but the question of the ethicality of murder in trolley problems has been going on for centuries. Claiming that it's a simple question and that anyone who disagrees is simply "too emotional" is not only wrong, it's either arrogant, ignorant, or both.

[officeobject]

I've read so many Hellaverse critical post, that I thought this was a Hellaverse critical post, and referred to Alastor.

I think I've realized my problem with shipping is less with the shipping itself and more with the hypocrisy that comes with it.

It's perfectly okay to ship a bold stripe aroace, but putting a gay man in a straight relationship is bad.

Pick one, are we respecting sexualities or not? Why does being aroace matter less than being gay? Why do you care enough about gays to say that's wrong, but you actively argue that you should be allowed to disrespect bold stripe aroace characters?

I'm more bothered by the obvious double standard than I am about the shipping itself.

[sweet-sammy-kisses]

Buck was not selfish, and Eddie was not abusive. We all grieve in our own way, especially when it comes to someone as deeply loved as Bobby, and that is all I am saying on the matter.

[shyjusticewarrior]

Y'all do realize Bruce is already established as being willing to use guns without shooting people. And he didn't shoot Jason he shot his helmet.

[aviaryartist1800]

Before anyone accuses me of thinking that Homura is an evil person and how she deserves to die:

I do not think she is evil

She is a very flawed person, i see her as morally grey

I feel bad for her, she doesn't deserve all of the bad things that happened to her

But, all i want is for her to get better, to get the help she needs BEFORE she gets to be with Madoka

I am not saying she is evil, all i am saying is that she shouldn't be coddled and woobified

She needs a therapist in my opinion, she is someone who needs help

I just don't like how the fandom often babies her

[sweetmage]

I swear I cannot look at many posts or threads about Clair Obscur (or at least not the comments) because so many people are arguing over which is the "good" ending and which is the "bad" ending and which ending is more "ethical and moral" and which isn't and I am just like... my beloveds, not everything is completely black and white and can be easily categorized into these simple all-encompassing labels. I for one find the so-called "good and moral" ending to be absolutely horrifying and hit really close to home in a bad way while I find the "bad, unethical ending" to be also horrifying but in a way that I find interesting and tolerable. Yet, still, I very much see why different people with different life experiences and perspectives appreciate the other one more. That's nuance, babe! Which I think is the whole thing. If you are expecting a game full of unreliable narrators, deeply flawed characters, opposing yet understandable perspectives, and conflicting narratives to suddenly wrap up into very binary and objective "Good" and "Bad" endings then I am afraid you have greatly misunderstood both the game and the endings as well as the general intent of the story.

Both of the endings are as good or as awful as you make them out to be. Someone always wins and someone always loses and whichever one you find more palatable is entirely up to your own observations through the lens of your personal experiences. I don't get these arguments and shaming because there is IS no objective "correct" answer and to say otherwise is missing the point big time.