#media comprehension? zero

[tiredmoonslut]

Trying to participate in The Boys fandom is like the cursed evil sibling of participating in a fandom where everyone is younger than you. You're all of similar ages, but everybody is suffering from a brain-eating amoeba that robs them of any and all ability to critically consume media or comprehend multifaceted characterization

[stedesparasol]

do you ever read a take so bad you can't even be mad about it you're just like... ohhhhhh they must be stupid </3 so sad for them

[bluebobatea]

if sasuke was the main character then he probably would've been a LOT more sympathised with than he is now (which is to say rarely). like the narrative wouldn't even need to change to show his pains or 'his side of the story', bc it does that plenty. it's just that he is not the main character. and idk what it is about our human minds but we tend to sympathise with main characters automatically (unless ofc you go off the rockers insane and do something like obliterate almost everyone from the planet *cough* eren yeager *cough*)

an instance that comes to my mind where this does happen is with lelouch from code geass. while i don't agree with his character motivations, people generally do sympathise with him as he is the mc and as viewers we know he isn't inherently evil. sasuke's goal towards the end is slightly similar but ofc people love to hate him so they don't even try to understand where he is coming from.

my point is, most people while engaging with the naruto story don't read between the lines and so don't see how traumatised and in pain sasuke is and hence don't understand his character motivations. heck, they don't understand a single bit about him and so they automatically hate him, as he is supposedly going against the main character's goals.

which is really sad given all that he has been through.

[evilkaeya]

I highly doubt Mori ever hurt a single hair on Dazai or Chuuya’s heads, or had them really hurt or punished. That wouldn’t benefit him in any way, and seems out of character regarding two characters he wanted to keep close and loyal. He didn’t push Dazai away until Oda, and even then it wasn’t just for the sake of hurting Dazai, it was for the permit. And I refuse to believe Chuuya would’ve stuck around if he was being mistreated to that extent, loyalty or blackmail be damned. They’re both powerful assets that Mori wouldn’t have wanted to give incentive to leave, because if they decided to leave, who could stop either of them? It just doesn’t seem in character for Mori from what we’ve seen of him to me. Neither would a bunch of other stuff I see in fanon, like him forcing Chuuya to use Corruption at all, much less to the extent of permanent damage (I usually see this when the author wants Chuuya to join the ADA I think) Chuuya is pretty much a weapon of mass destruction, even without using Corruption! And he’s a model employee! That’s not something Mori would just throw out the window! Sorry for the rant in your inbox, this is just something that annoys me and I could talk forever about mischaracterizations and fanons, feel free to ignore!

I agree with everything you said fr fr like I understand that a lot of people despise mori (me included but I find his character highly interesting. I wanna study him under a microscope like a bug) and want to use him as the plot device in angst fics but mischaracterizing the character and his dynamic with others is not it yk. The amount of fics featuring mori abusing skk makes me think half of the fandom didn't read the same bsd as I did.

Mori is clever but that doesn't make him flawless. I know for a fact that most of this mischaracterization come from Yosano arc (and holy fuck I hate him for what he did to Yosano) but I think people forget that he was younger than. Not a boss, but a military general, and he has come a long way since then. Not to mention it's evident in fifteen and stormbringer that he's more cool headed and silly than he was before, seeing how unafraid both Dazai and Chuuya were of him. There is no canon evidence of him torturing Dazai (why would he even touch him like he knows dazai can nullify his ability and possibly kill him) or Chuuya (if he tortured Chuuya why would he be so loyal to him now? Make it make sense).

And the thing about fanon too. Like I said, to create angst, you need a solid plot device that can convince the readers that it's the source of all evil, and Mori is a good candidate for it. He has the aura, he is an antagonist, and he has a dark past. It's easier to villanize him even more. But yeah, forcing Chuuya to use corruption doesn't make any sense because like? He'll die if Dazai is absent?? Why would he kill off one of his executives? Yokohama’s strongest ability user who's so loyal to him?? 😭

Anyways yeah this fandom loves mischaracterizing characters lol it's truly annoying

[professorjirt]

it makes me SO sad that it’s hard to go through Samwise’s tags or find people for whom he is their favorite that don’t put down Frodo. I’m thankful that the number of those who truly understand him and love both him and who he struggles for is greater than it could be and has been in the past, but it’s still so heartbreaking to see, because I love Sam so dearly, and he’d never want this. It’s such a disrespect of Sam’s character to think that the only way to praise him is to undermine or insult Frodo. And it’s a disrespect to the narrative of Lord of the Rings as well. People constantly reference a cherry picked and out of context piece of a letter Tolkien wrote, desperately trying to claim that Sam is The Singular Hero of the story, when that wasn’t even remotely the context of the letter, yet its been used for years to undermine all the other characters of the series and erase the well rounded character Sam is to shave him into some one dimensional He-Man. Sam is undoubtedly one of the chief characters of the story, THE chief character of the story alongside Frodo. Without Sam the quest would not have been fulfilled. Yet Tolkien makes it clear that Sam could not have done Frodo’s job— especially not on his own. Just as the Ring broke down Frodo, it would have done for Sam— especially by the point of Mordor. That isn’t where Sam’s strength and value lies. It doesn’t lie in being the sacrifice. It lies in being the hope, the support, the utterly maddened loyalty and stubbornness and love that overcomes and strengthens. As I have come to say, Frodo carried the world, and Sam carried Frodo. People seem to think that as lesser, and I find that insulting. Would you find a friend that supported you in dark times lesser? Are they not your world in those moments? Do they not hold up the world for you yourself, as you struggle to carry the weight of it, and remind you that whatever suffering, you will never be abandoned or alone, even if both of you endure the fires of hell and no brightness shines through. It will not be alone. That is the beauty of Sam, and the people that treat that role as though it was not enough or that he should have had more on his plate show their lack of understanding of the very character they claim to praise.

[author-by-night]

I’m watching Terminator Zero, and it’s a great example of how the corporate media scene’s approach to IPs is a disease.

I have a lot of issues with the show on its own merits. The pacing is awkward, the only real twist I’ve seen was poorly foreshadowed in narrative but painfully predictable from metatext, and the pseudo-philosophy is framed as profound while being beyond basic when it isn’t totally incoherent.

But much greater than that, the show just can’t seem to escape the gravity well of the installments of Terminator that came before. Four episodes in, I’ve watched the show rip off a string of the more popular elements from Terminator 1 and 2. The police station shootout. Miles Dyson’s lab and character beats. Kyle Reese’s costume. The motorcycle cop disguise of the T-1000. The No Fate dream, done about half a dozen times over by now. It’s a new installment by way of meme culture, endless self reference…

…only without any understanding of what made those memes work in the first place, and that’s the fatal flaw.

As an example, why was the T-1000 disguised as a cop in Terminator 2? It was because that made it a better predator. James Cameron understood that the core fear the terminator invokes is of an unstoppable, implacable predator, and that framing it as a cop added a layer of unquestionable authority for this predator to abuse and immunity to the red tape of society. But is any of that theming or nuance actually involved in Terminator Zero when the terminator disguises itself as a cop? No. It shows up where its targets are and starts a slaughter, it just used the costume because the T-1000 did so many movies ago. So the reference feels cheap, and pointless.

This kind of thing happens time and again. In the MCU, in modern Star Wars, Star Trek, adaptations of Batman, Jurassic World, Ghostbusters, both live action AtLA remakes… I could go on. While I think the most common reason is that corporations focus on entertainment as a business rather than an art and capitalism gives them the real control over it, I don’t think that’s the only reason.

I think fandom does this too. A fan of a certain thing will get the chance to make their spin on it, whether “officially” or otherwise, and they know they like the thing but haven’t really thought critically about why. So we get nods to the original which feel totally out of place because they are narrative devices lifted out of their context and recycled into a less fitting beat.

So yeah, TL,DR: capitalism works against the creation of art and good derivative media takes solid media literacy and comprehension skills to create.

[letoscrawls]

If you hated Yord and Jecki you will die and go to hell

[aimbutmiss]

Some people don't deserve rights... Y'all got me so frustrated I literally can't come up with words

[juminies]

I don't know if this is a controversial take but I... don't want new mysme content...

[spider-man-2o99]

Just wanted to say that I have been thinking of you and pre-emptively empathizing with the nonsense you are no doubt being flooded with and the psychic damage it must be causing. Keep stanning the king ignore the weirdos <3

thankg u.,, i feel like ive been trapped in a fuckign . Torture Labyrinth these past coupl days . but. wwe will. We Will Yet Persist onwards w/ our hand on the left wall till we;re either out or at the center i swear 2 fucking GOD,

[merrysithmas]

are ppl... really... saying Din isnt the main character of the Mandalorian...?

lol.

he is absolutely the main character.

he and grogu.

[zukkaoru]

i'm going to be so insufferable once i finish beast. i still have one volume left but i've already decided that no one else in this fandom has any correct opinions about it

[bluejayblueskies]

me every time i see another 'what if john is slowly stealing arthur's humanity?' theory

[ID: A cropped version of the meme where Ben Affleck is standing outside with a cigarette in hand and a pained, exhausted expression on his face. /End ID]

[miraofhearts2point0]

try and tell me that Heiya is a bad person. i fucking dare you.

[subternia]

I try not to engage in sawnik discourse but like sometimes I'm trying to prevent myself from thinking that pushing for sega to make one of the most popular straight ships canon isn't the most lame ass shit ever.

For a more nuanced explanation It'd be far better for him to accept her feelings and still choose to reject her, bc he just doesn't feel that type of way w her. Sonic as a character is akin to a force of nature. While he does accept the importance and value of friendship, he still chooses freedom above all else. I also don't really trust sega ( on the en side of things from what I've seen ) to develop their relationship in any meaningful way, as most of sonic's character has been altered or rewritten for the past 30 years now to varying degrees of success. Sonic's character doesn't and hasn't worked best when he's written in proximity towards a love interest because you'd have to delve pretty out of character for it to substantially work. I think if they were to work on sonic and amy's dynamic it'd be in the context of their friendship, because that's where all the interesting bits lie. Also if I'm being real here, having the most culturally unchallenged type of relationship ( that being heterosexual ) getting confirmed by a videogame company would barely if ever spark an insane meltdown within the larger fanbase like be fucking fr.

TL;DR I hate love sorry. ( slash jay )

[pissfizz]

Fans have been slowly making me hate project sekai