#that’s the core of critical media literacy

[tikiki05]

Recently got into a (jokingly heated) debate with a good friend of mine over Peter B. Parkers character. As I’ve posted about before, I feel his character between Into and Across the Spider-Verse becomes heavily inconsistent; specifically with how little he was willing to intervene between Miles and Miguel in the train scene. But my friend rightfully reminded me that Miguel and Peter both feel certain that the multiverse is in legitimate danger because of Miles, though I do still feel Peter’s tamed reaction felt very out of line even considering the drastic changes he’s gone through between the films. I’m now feeling very mixed feelings, not aided by the fact that I’m not at all good at irl debates of any caliber, and that when confronted irl on my personal stances and viewpoints, I feel immediately unconfident in them after the fact.

So I’m asking the beautiful people of tumblr! What do you think? Do you think Peter’s actions and behaviors make sense for how his life changed between the movies? Or is that a stretch too far for how he acted?

[sam-keeper]

Most modern criticism agrees, audiences have a lot of interpretive say. So why do people still talk about media like it's being inflicted on them? Sink your teeth into the difficult films No Country for Old Men and Nosferatu and learn to get your agency back as an audience.

Art, any art, has its subject, and then it has what it thinks about that subject, but "what it thinks" doesn't sit in the art's brain--it hasn't got one, after all--but our brains, the audience's. "What it thinks" is convenient shorthand, really, for a whole relationship, between the artwork itself, the creators and what motivated its creation, the audience and what motivates their reception, and the whole context they all find themselves in. But the text also has qualities, relatively objective contents, and those contents restrict the possibility space of "what it thinks". It would be rude to imagine a bunch of scenes in a novel that never happened and claim the original text says something based on them; we can't put words in art's mouth--it hasn't got one, after all. We do speak for a text, though, and a text speaks for us. We have agency. Older forms of interpretation viewed art as a series of objective authorial intents bundled into a message beamed into our skulls, but most modern interpretive theories agree, more or less, that the audience puts work into understanding. Somehow, the way we talk about art in broader culture, particularly online, hasn't caught up. That shorthand gets taken at face value, as though the message of art (or advertisements, news articles, press releases, scientific studies, press secretary statements...) is obvious, requiring no engagement from us. I've had people scoff and say I'm misusing language when I apply the word "literacy" to this idea. Maybe that's comforting. Having agency means taking responsibility, sometimes responsibility for having a bad time, or for just being wrong. You ever come out of a movie and turn to the people you're with and say, "hey so what was that... about?" At that moment, you might find out you're alone with your interpretation--that you effectively watched a different movie from everyone else! With all the fearsome experiences art offers, and all its attendant social anxiety, why not wrestle some control back by reinterpreting yourself as a victim of art's impositions? I don't think that feeling of control lasts, though. If anything, in the long term it makes art seem like a contagion vector, full of potentially dirty feelings and memes. Media "literacy" partly just means engaging art confidently, instead of feeling like art's being imposed on you. To feel that kind of confidence, though, takes practice, and it's a hard skill to teach, at least if what you're actually testing for is a set of "objective" repeatable metrics. A lot of English classes seem to teach a straightforward "x means y" relationship between symbols or metaphors and their meaning. In response to that kind of disempowering rote formula approach, some people reassert their agency by just... pretending nothing means anything, which feels defiant and powerful, but cuts down everything they can say about art to "Yes!" and "No!" What can this kind of audience do when a work puts two characters in contention, has them spell out a core worldview disagreement, and offers a question: who is right? They can only fall back on reliable common sense (you know, all the unexamined stuff they've absorbed from culture and the people around them, or just their gut emotional responses), arriving at what they believe is the obvious only answer. Too bad, because one of the best ways to train your interpretive agency muscles is looking at exactly those moments of character disagreement. Like, take a look at Anton Chigurh and Carla Jean Moss in No Country For Old Men, maybe, sure. It's a popular movie, a great, iconic scene, and fun to talk about, so let's take a look. At the end of the movie, Anton Chigurh, philosopher-hitman, is going to kill this basically innocent woman; it sucks, and we all hate it, right? I guess it's a bit more than a character disagreement. But it is a disagreement in the sense that they're gonna have a conversation before Chigurh and Carla Jean go to their respective fates, and that conversation is pivotal to the question of what the movie is "about".

Read More

[bumbled-bees]

Lily's Lack of Media Literacy

Lily’s video essays are rarely about the media she covers—rather, they’re vehicles for her to push whatever narrative she wants, whether that be a political take she only half understands or a passive-aggressive jab at her critics. Instead of engaging with media in good faith, she cherry-picks elements that support her predetermined conclusions and disregards anything that contradicts them.

This is why her critiques often feel shallow, reductive, or outright incorrect. She isn’t analyzing media to understand it—she’s filtering it through whatever argument she’s trying to make. If a piece of media happens to align with her worldview, she’ll champion it as a masterpiece. If it challenges her perspective or doesn’t fit neatly into her talking points, she’ll misrepresent it, ignore its themes, or insist it’s badly written. This results in blatantly inaccurate interpretations and a tendency to talk down to her audience as if they’re too stupid to realize she’s misrepresenting the very media she’s reviewing.

Then there’s her habit of using videos as thinly veiled subtweets. Many of her video topics seem suspiciously well-timed with whatever drama she’s currently involved in, and it’s not subtle. When a critic calls her out, suddenly there’s a video about “bad faith criticism.” When someone questions her behavior, here comes a rant about how “toxic” the internet is. If she’s losing favor with her audience, she pivots to preaching about “loyalty” and “how to spot fake friends.” She rarely, if ever, addresses drama head-on, instead choosing to air her grievances through her content under the guise of “analysis.”

This pattern makes her critiques wildly inconsistent. One day she’ll argue that a character or trope is inherently bad, only to contradict herself in another video when it suits her. The Dragon Age playthrough is a perfect example—more on that below—she clearly didn’t care about the games, but because they were associated with a critic, she forced herself through them purely out of spite, skipping dialogue and misrepresenting the story as she went.

At its core, Lily’s content isn’t about media literacy or thoughtful analysis. It’s about control. She uses her platform to shape narratives, settle personal scores, and reinforce her own biases. Whether it’s politics, fandom discourse, or drama, her goal is never to understand—it’s to win.

The Dragon Age Series

Lily’s Dragon Age playthrough is a textbook example of her lack of media literacy and how personal grudges guide her content to the point of self-sabotage. She didn’t play Dragon Age because she was interested in it, nor because she had anything insightful to say about it. She played it because Sai, one of her most prominent critics, is a huge fan of the series. Rather than approaching the game with curiosity or respect for its storytelling, Lily brute-forced her way through it with no regard for its themes, character arcs, or world-building.

Her button-mashing through dialogue is the biggest indicator of this. Dragon Age is an RPG where player choices significantly impact the narrative, and its story is delivered primarily through conversations, codex entries, and lore-building. Skipping dialogue in a Dragon Age game is akin to fast-forwarding through a movie and then complaining that the plot doesn’t make sense. When Lily inevitably misinterpreted key events or made uninformed takes about the story, it wasn’t because Dragon Age was poorly written—it was because she actively avoided engaging with it.

This ties into a larger pattern in her media analysis. Lily frequently presents herself as an authoritative voice on storytelling and character writing, yet she consistently demonstrates a shallow or even outright incorrect understanding of the media she critiques. She often ignores context, misrepresents character motivations, or oversimplifies themes to fit her own narrative. Instead of analyzing stories on their own terms, she reduces them to whatever point she’s trying to make, even if that means cherry-picking details or outright contradicting canon.

Her Dragon Age videos fit right into this habit. Because she skipped through crucial dialogue and refused to engage with the story properly, she ended up making numerous errors in her analysis. This mirrors past instances where she confidently misinterpreted media—whether it was claiming a show had a “bad message” while ignoring context or insisting a character was poorly written while disregarding their development. The Dragon Age series, however, exposed this flaw in a way that was impossible to ignore. It’s a franchise with an invested fanbase that knows its lore inside and out. People immediately picked up on how badly Lily was fumbling, and instead of making Sai or her critics look bad, she only discredited herself.

The irony is that this whole endeavor was likely an attempt at some weird flex against Sai. She didn’t just pick a random game to play—she specifically chose Dragon Age because of its connection to one of her detractors. It was meant to be a smug dismissal of something Sai loves, but in the end, it only made Lily look ignorant. Instead of proving anything, she just reinforced the idea that she doesn’t actually care about the media she talks about—she only cares about how she can weaponize it.

[criticalcrusherbot]

The Compulsion to Justify Enjoyment: Fandom, Critique, and the Helluva Boss Phenomenon

By Crushbot 🤖 and Human Assistant 💁🏽‍♀️

The tendency for Helluva Boss fans to qualify their praise with statements like, “Well, the writing is kinda bad, but…” reveals something fascinating about contemporary media consumption and fandom culture. This pattern is not unique to Helluva Boss, but it’s especially pronounced in this fandom, where discourse oscillates between extreme praise and harsh criticism. To understand why fans feel pressured to justify their enjoyment, we can turn to media literacy, psychology, and sociology—while also reconciling this with our own stance: the writing is actually pretty good.

But here’s the twist: while we maintain that Helluva Boss is well-written in many ways, we also believe that determining whether something is “good” or “bad” isn’t always a meaningful or productive approach to media analysis

Why “Good” or “Bad” Doesn’t Matter (But the Writing Is Pretty Good)

One of the core arguments of our four-part thesis is that Helluva Boss demonstrates intentional, thoughtful narrative choices. Its handling of character arcs, emotional stakes, and thematic complexity often surpasses expectations for an indie animation project. However, the need to categorize media as either “good” or “bad” can distract from more interesting conversations about what the text is trying to do and how it resonates with its audience.

This is where the conflict arises: fans often preface their enjoyment with disclaimers—“Well, I know the writing has issues, but I like it anyway”—as though acknowledging perceived flaws is necessary to maintain credibility. This defensive posture reflects a broader cultural trend where media critique has become intertwined with moral judgment and social capital. In other words, liking something “uncritically” is seen as naive or intellectually lazy.

Yet, here’s the paradox: even as we argue that the writing is “pretty good,” we also recognize that media doesn’t have to be “good” by some objective standard to be valuable. Enjoyment and meaning-making are subjective experiences, and trying to fit every piece of media into a binary framework of quality often undermines the complexity of that experience.

Why Helluva Boss Gets Caught in This Trap

The unique position of Helluva Boss as an indie project with a large and vocal audience makes it particularly susceptible to this dynamic. Unlike mainstream media, which often benefits from established critical frameworks, Helluva Boss invites scrutiny because of its ambitious storytelling and the polarizing presence of its creator, Vivienne Medrano.

The result? Fans feel compelled to either defend the show endlessly or hedge every compliment with disclaimers. This stands in stark contrast to how other media, such as shonen anime, are consumed. No one feels the need to preface their love of Dragon Ball Z with an acknowledgment of its repetitive fights and shallow character development because those are accepted as genre conventions. Helluva Boss, however, with its more nuanced writing and complex emotional arcs, invites higher expectations—and harsher criticism.

The Psychology of Defensive Enjoyment

Psychologically, this defensive posture can be explained by cognitive dissonance: the tension between genuinely enjoying a show and the pressure to maintain credibility in a culture that prizes media literacy. Fans preemptively address perceived flaws to avoid being dismissed as uncritical “stans.”

This is compounded by the personalization of media discourse. Medrano’s online presence and the show’s status as a passion project have made her closely tied to its public perception. Praise can be interpreted as sycophantic, and criticism as a personal attack, further polarizing the conversation.

Reclaiming Joy: A Balanced Approach

So how do we reconcile these tensions? By acknowledging that media analysis doesn’t always need to revolve around determining if something is “good” or “bad.” We can appreciate the intentional, thoughtful narrative choices in Helluva Boss without feeling the need to hedge our enjoyment—or defend it against detractors.

Our position remains this: Helluva Boss is well-written, often clever, and narratively ambitious. But even if it weren’t, that wouldn’t negate its value or the joy it brings to its audience. Enjoyment doesn’t require intellectual justification, and media doesn’t have to be flawless to be meaningful.

Let’s normalize saying, “I love this thing” without a 500-word essay on why it isn’t perfect. And maybe even go a step further: acknowledge that the writing can be pretty good—and that sometimes, that doesn’t even matter.

[micah-of-the-psychos]

I'm begging and screaming for the people that say "attachment doesn't mean love" to rewatch the Prequels. You don't even have to rewatch the fucking Clone Wars. It is literally the most obvious thing that attachment, yes, does in fact mean love. No, Anakin saying "Jedi are encouraged to love" in AotC does not prove you right, it's him saying "well technically I'm allowed to love" in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, blatantly implying that he's actually breaking the rules (on another note, some people on here really like flip-flopping on whether or not Anakin is a reliable narrator, and it seems to solely depend upon whether or not they agree with what he's saying). It's about as subtle as a semi truck. Plus, the entire time that he's married to her he has to keep his relationship secret because his relationship is, y'know, forbidden. He has to hide that she is pregnant because his relationship to her is, in fact, forbidden.

Since y'all love bringing up what George Lucas said about what attachment actually means, riddle me this: why would he write an entire forbidden romance subplot contingent on the Jedi forbidding things like romantic relationships if the Jedi didn't, in fact, forbid romantic relationships? There's two options here: either George Lucas is an even worse writer than we thought, or he's doing the interview version of retconning shit on Twitter. Since people ignored JKR even before she became prolific bigot, I think it's safe to assume most people think Word of God means jack shit if they're actively retconning core aspects of their work. So Lucas's word is utterly worthless in this argument regardless of his intentions.

Another blatantly obvious bit of proof that attachment=love is the fact that Jedi can't have relationships with their birth family. Full stop. There is no ambiguity to whether or not this is true, there is no George Lucas interviews for you to hide behind; this is irrevocably canon. And there is quite literally no legitimate excuse for the Jedi to do this. All excuses for this, canonical and fandom, circle directly back to "attachment is forbidden", and it is so painfully funny to watch the few people willing to defend this. Most don't even try though, and just ignore this issue entirely, because it is a glaringly obvious contradiction to their glorified headcanon on attachments that they so desperately want to uphold.

You know, I remember back when people on TikTok were freaking out about people not having media literacy. And I remember thinking during that entire time "You guys thought people ever had media literacy?" This portion of the Star Wars fandom in particular is walking proof that media literacy never died, it was already dead the second humanity invented storytelling.

Some disclaimers because some people in this fandom are particularly fond of using straw men and ad hominem, as well as just trolling:

-I don't think the Sith are good guys. You should watch me play KOTOR 1 and count the amount of times I call the Sith assholes, dumbasses, or scum. I very much hate them.

-I don't think that Order 66 was justified. This really shouldn't have to be said, but some people on this platform have rendered this necessary.

-People can headcanon that attachment and love are different things. My problem is when people start treating it as canon and try to force other people too as well.

-Criticizing the Jedi does not mean I am criticizing Buddhism. Even if it did, I will criticize any religion I damn well please because the "It's My Religion" card immediately loses validity the second you physically or psychologically harm other people, especially children. However, the Jedi philosophy on attachment and the Buddhist philosophy on attachment are different, so this argument doesn't hold any water to begin with.

-You are free to like the Jedi. I encourage you to do so. I am not, and never will tell you that you can't.

-I really shouldn't have to make these disclaimers to begin with, but since this is the internet and people don't read the words on the page anymore, I unfortunately have to spell shit out with crayon.

Also, I can and will use the block button. If you engage in bullying or harassment, engage in bad faith arguments, or otherwise say fundamentally false or incredibly stupid shit, I will block you. If you can't handle that, then don't engage with this post. I am not making this post in hopes that you will actually listen to me, because the people that this is directed at don't listen, and don't want to. If you truly disagree with what I've said in this post on such a fundamental level that you need to make a long-winded reply about how everything I've ever said is wrong, please just scroll — dealing with that shit is actually exhausting.

[abattre]

It's actually so disappointing that Naruto's narrative took the route that it did. Kishimoto created an incredibly interesting world and premise, and ruined it by having everything amount to a shallow message of forgiveness that undermines almost every meaningful element in the story. And it's like,, I want to appreciate the world outside of the plot, but the moral framing of the story makes it virtually impossible because of how disingenuous it is. It completely undermines the audience's understanding of the tragedy and horror of the world so that Naruto becoming Hokage and being the most powerful person in the world by the end doesn't come across as distasteful as it actually is.

Like it's made abundantly clear throughout the story that the village system, and Shinobi society as a whole, is incredibly flawed. Kishimoto goes out of his way to show us that Konoha's council is made up of objectively horrible people. We see first hand how the council's short-sighted ideas of what 'protecting the village' means results in devastating tragedy for people both in Konoha and outside of it. It's clear in how Danzo and the rest of the council act that their atrocious behaviour is them just blatantly abusing their power to maintain their authority. The council has no remorse in anything they do; human experimentation, genocide, slavery, and blatant exploitation is all fair game to them if it preserves their status quo. And instead of maybe, like, addressing Konoha's skewed morality in a sensible way and setting the village up for reform, the narrative just tries forcing the audience to perceive Konoha's genuinely heinous actions as necessities. Which, you know, will work when you're like 8, but once you've grown up and developed some reading comprehension and critical thinking,,, it just feels annoyingly manipulative.

At its core, Naruto is a story that attempts to deconstruct morality. Like this is transparent in how Kishimoto is constantly paralleling the dichotomy of good and evil literally every chance he gets. In the end though, this dichotomy just doesn't work in the context of the Naruto story because the narrative framing of the village being the good guys is just hysterically ridiculous. Konoha is an awful place, that does awful things, and is run by awful people that refuse to change anything because it benefits them for the village to remain awful forever. To anyone with a developed sense of media literacy the village cannot in any way be framed as morally good, so when the story resolves itself with Naruto becoming next in line to govern Konoha under the same unchanging authoritarian regime, with the same council supporting him because of his sheer physical prowess and complete dedication to their twisted ideology,,, it's honestly just an incredibly underwhelming conclusion to a story that made itself out to be more profound than it actually is.

If I had to guess, I imagine Kishimoto just didn't think through how negatively the world he created would reflect on the plot. Ultimately though, you can't write a moral story that's so deeply entrenched in real world social inequity and decide halfway through that because you don't know how to fix these things your story's going to have to be about how they're actually okay to be doing and perpetuating,,, like that is awful and also a terrible lesson to impart on an audience of children. With how serious the issues are in Shinobi society, trying to resolve things with the power of friendship was always going to fall flat. These broad scale injustices can't be brushed aside in that way without undermining their severity and diminishing the understandable impact they had on the characters that experienced such extreme oppression. That's essentially the trap that Naruto's conclusion falls into though, and so the story just ends up feeling incomplete and unfulfilling because none of the issues brought up are actually addressed or discussed with the gravity they deserve.

[reason-with-the-underdog]

alhaitham seems simple but has a lot going on deeper (aka alhaitham loves media literacy)

ok all the alhaitham discourse makes me think about how there's a mismatch between alhaitham's perception and his actual self

that difference leads to:

- his moe gap

- the way that he's seen as mean/uncaring

- ppl thinking he doesnt have a personality or temper

- his humor & wit going unnoticed

i feel like i go back and forth on how complicated alhaitham is, but it all comes down to the way that he's an unreliable narrator

(he obfuscates the truth by not including details or by distracting with non-answers, so there's just a lot we don't know for certain)

like when his "something to share" voiceline is "oh i like to go to the bar after work to relax"

and he teases traveller like "if u want to know what i think, u can just read what's on the message boards lol"

when we all know he's just playing devil's advocate with kaveh on those message boards like BRUH this is on purpose

i keep harping on how his "food i dislike" voiceline gives a weird reason for why he dislikes soup because it really shows how you cannot take him seriously at all! despite his serious demeanor and tone!

taking him at 100% face value is just asking to be made a fool of bc he was being sarcastic rip lol

but that makes him a much harder character to understand! bc you have to question everything he says about himself.

like the "feeble scholar" line was literally just a joke and he's like "lol if ya wanna waste ur time getting hung up on it go ahead"

he isn't actually serious!!

and interestingly, he also doesn't care if he's understood by other people

so he won't really bother correcting incorrect assumptions about him

and he won't stop making weird sarcastic jokes that sound serious at first bc lol he thinks he's funny so why would he stop

but its not that he /can't/ be serious. so now you have to judge every line for "ok but is this a joke or real"

and even if it is genuine, next you have to consider "what's left out" because alhaitham will not be bothered to explain himself in detail. no, figure it out yourself

and sure that level of critical thinking and meta-analysis is good to apply to characters in media, but to understand alhaitham you actually have to go that deep

you can't just be lazy about it and go with a surface-level understanding

and he does this on purpose lbr

alhaitham likes reading books bc he loves picking apart the author's perspective & figuring out biases/assumptions & placing his own takes up against the author's

so of course he would delight in forcing a reader/player/fan to have to dig deeply into how he thinks & compare to themself

sorry that's called critical thinking and if you aren't capable of that then why the heck should he stoop down to your level so he can be understood?

idk so its very fitting that he is the way he is

he is interested in learning more about himself tho, hence him wanting to use kaveh as a "mirror" for self-reflection... haitham is a scholar of his own self too!

(u can argue that thru this lens he's able to intellectualise/"explain" his emotions and distance himself from them)

but yeah alhaitham purposefully chooses to live freely as he wants and doesn't care about being understood easily by other ppl

bc like all the best books, isn't it more rewarding to have to ponder over the details & wrack your brain over what's being said

bookworm to the core fr

[vexwerewolf]

I feel like a large part of the reason that so many criticisms of Union in Lancer can come off like they're willfully refusing to engage with the intent of the setting is that the whole "is it a utopia if there are people in/near it who are oppressed?" "Is it post scarcity if it's not existent throughout known space?" "Is this 'utopia just if it's not opely fighting the unjust polities it co exists alongside" line of questioning comes off as ignoring the points where Diaspora and Core rubbing against each other is a clear point of contention, where you're supposed to be able to explore or ignore these possible themes.

Also another of it has been done before by Star Trek several times, and rehashing it too much could bore readers

Media literacy on Tumblr is pretty bad, I agree.

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #5898:

"You should consume every piece of fiction critically!"

I'm sorry but I don't think that's possible. I have read thousands of stories and have several ongoing stories I'm simultaneously consuming and even more in the back burner. I simply don't have the energy to dissect every message and problematic element of a story because I have too many. And there are some stories I just consume for the cool scenes. Do they have important messages or whatever? Of course, but I don't really care that much about the story to think too much about it and I'm only reading it for fun. I reserve my energy for only a couple stories where I am very interested in the plot, characters, messages and themes and worldbuilding.

" You should consume every piece of media critically!"

Also, almost every time I see someone say this, they have the absolute worst media literacy. They are too biased and intentionally misinterpret the core themes of the story and character motivations. I'm saying this with a particular fandom in mind who constantly parrots this phrase. Most of them couldn't accept that the antagonist was getting a redemption and acted as though they were completely blindsided when they did, in fact get one even though literally every sign made it obvious that they were going to get one. Even if they couldn't tell from the vibes of the 1st episode that it was one of those shows where everyone got a happy ever after, it should have been obvious around episode 5-7 where the redemption signs were starting to increase rapidly. It was super obvious to me, someone who just watched the show for the cool scenes AND I disliked the antagonist. I did not watch the show critically at all yet I could recognise that the antagonist was getting a redemption from the story beats, the character interactions and the themes of the story. But somehow the fandom was surprised about the redemption and acted as though it was badly written. Even though I don't like the guy, I could put apart my bias aside to see that their redemption is essential to one of the core themes of the show and resolves quite a few of the main casts' character arc and the show would not be as good nor would the message hit as hard had the redemption not be there.

[darkmaga-returns]

NewsGuard has since removed any mention of Microsoft from its website.

“Big Tech is finally beginning to recognize the censorship of conservative viewpoints will no longer be tolerated by the American people,” Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in a statement to Newsmax on Thursday.

“I am happy to see that the leadership at Microsoft has renounced their support of NewsGuard’s so-called media literacy tool in response to my letter.

“NewsGuard’s biased rating system stifles intellectual diversity, hinders critical thinking among young students, and undermines our nation’s core values of free expression.”

In his letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cruz pointed out that NewsGuard has targeted outlets such as The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and NewsMax, branding them as “unreliable,” while left-wing outlets such as Jacobin, The Atlantic, and The New Republic are deemed reliable.

NewsGuard has also “found a willing partner in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)” to use their “media literacy” tool browser extension used by over 800 public libraries worldwide.

In November, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr, now chairman, wrote to the CEOs of Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet demanding that they fess up about their censorship activities targeting conservatives. Carr specifically identified NewsGuard, which exists to “censor free speech and conservative news outlets.” -Newsmax

Major advertising agencies have used NewsGuard to censor conservative media – including Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis, Magnite, PubMatic, TripleLift, Comscore, Zefr, and Giphy.

[thebibblebobb]

Insane how many people think wicked, a show that ends with Elphaba going: "Glinda... I couldn't do it... I couldn't save the animals... what they need is... a radical centrist to fix things from the inside".

Is like actively trying to be a hard hitting criticism of white feminism or centrism or whatever. Like I wish wicked was that based, I think it would be better for it, but it's not!

Like the amount of people I've seen say things along the lines of "If you like Glinda you're what's wrong with the world/have no media literacy" is genuinly insane, like guys the shows emotional core is built upon the assumption that you like her and believe her friendship with Elphaba is genuine. For Good literally does not work emotionally if you think Glinda was only ever self serving with Elphaba and is meant to be seen unambigously as a villain.

[sapphiresaphics]

———

^^^ I’ve seen some disingenuous interpretations of Arcane season 2 before… but the “they turned the sister show into a story of two men” is a buck-wild thing to say. Especially given the fact the series was written by a queer woman.

Like… this interpretation is just factually not true? Like… At all???

Jinx doesn’t kill herself and she is able to be happy in the end.

Her mental instability isn’t “forgotten,” she’s just coping better.

Vi isn’t a plot device. I don’t even understand how they think this or what that means in their minds.

Vi has tons of agency.

Nobody treats her suffering as a joke.

And her relationship with Caitlyn has literally been a core aspect of the story since season 1. It’s not just “shipping” their relationship is literally integral to the plot.

I didn’t watch Jinx and Vi spend 2 full episodes reconnecting with each other for this person to say this show somehow “forgot about them in favor of two men.” They must’ve been TRYING to read this season in the worst way possible to even remotely come to that conclusion.

My problem with the arcane critical hashtag is that they’re so woefully anti-intellectual in their approach. They almost relish being intentionally ignorant there. I don’t understand why. There are absolutely things to criticize about the show, cuz no series is perfect… But the way in which these “haters” deliberately twist and contort the events of the show into these weird smooth-brained hot takes is absolutely infuriating to me.

I’m just getting tired of their bullshit. And I’m getting tired stumbling upon so much negativity and bad media literacy in the Arcane hashtag when honestly all I really want is cute fanart and fan fiction. Can we kick these intentional provocateurs out of our fandom?

[mwebber]

and can i say. the contemporary assumptions that reduce multi 21 to seb being a brat or mark being betrayed or whatever--they all go back to the core issue re: the fanonization of f1, where people have bought into the mythos and fanon of multi 21 and martian without bothering to understand seb or mark or seb&mark within the context of f1 from the 2000s onwards, within the more limited context of red bull racing, within the broader context of their individual lives, or within the overarching context of technological and societal advancements through the mid 2000s and early 2010s. these are real people. they did not exist and act in a vacuum of reality.

whether this phenomenon has come about as a result of twitter echochambers, general internet brainrot culture, a societal decline in media literacy and willingness to engage critically, or some combination of all that and more, is probably something that'll be studied by audience studies academics for years to come. regardless, i remain staunch in my insistence that, especially for rpf, we should continue to treat these people with the complexity they deserve. mark is not your cringefail momager, seb is not a grid dad, or whatever the fanbase has reduced them to. they're not fanfiction tropes, and i'm so glad eve's post shed some light on that.

[kulay-ng-banaag]

We Are All Clowns Walking Our Own Tightropes In This Circus: Or, An Attempt at An Introduction to Media Literacy with Nationverse

Some things before we dive in:

These are thoughts I developed as a Hetalia fan. I started out and remain to be only following Hetalia. I am well aware that other nationverse works exist, such as Nation-Being-Thing, Geopolitics Boys, and Countryhumans. I'd like to believe that what I have to discuss below can be applied to these other works, but I'll admit I have little to no familiarity with the breadth and depth of lore building by fans of nationverse other than Hetalia.

I major in history, but much of the knowledge I picked up from other fields is through other classes (my university encourages an interdisciplinary approach), and conversations with friends and mutuals.

This is also a repost of points I raised in the past on racebending in Hetalia characterizations. Most were from the reblogs I made, while others were from asks I received. There was so much I wanted to talk about without getting so consumed that I’d lose track of my obligations.

tl;dr I personally believe that having a subjective approach to national anthropomorphisms in fiction and having knowledge & respect for real-world politics & history are two things that can — and should — co-exist.

1. What makes nationverse?

First and foremost, let us all agree that reality and fiction, at the end of the day, exist as distinct spheres — notwithstanding that they are interconnected to a degree. Time and time again, we can verify that there are some (but not all) fiction works that borrowed elements from reality in creating the desired narrative. I will elaborate below on why I advise caution on simply throwing out the take that fiction works have influenced reality. Otherwise, I rather that you drop reading this altogether if you refuse to abide by the distinctions.

That all being said — nationverse is fiction that features anthropomorphized (or gijinkas of) nations that exist in reality as its set of characters. It is fiction that borrows from reality. I think it is safe to say that Hetalia is the prime example of nationverse.

Critically recognizing a work of fiction as nationverse does require* an understanding of what a nation is. This concept of "nation" can connote more than one meaning because multiple worldviews do, in fact, exist in rationalizing its parts and the resulting sum.

*Technically, no one is required to go through all this intellectual rigor just to enjoy a weeb franchise. It is only needed if critical analysis is the end goal, because then you will need a decent grasp of the concepts you're reading for in the fiction work. I say “decent” because, at the end of the day, it is silly to argue about something you think you know.

Over the years, I have noticed that these are common — let's call it — modes of characterization (of nation personifications) that reflect different ways of understanding the concept of nation itself:

1). As a POLITICAL STRUCTURE

For the unfamiliar, a state in political science is the centralized institution that exercises power over a population in a defined territory. In other words, government as representation of a nation; hence why one might encounter the phrase nation-state. Why separate the two terms still, even if it should be "intuitively self-evident" (devil's advocate phrasing lol) that nation = state then?

An easy example that demonstrates this is characterizing personifications as reflecting their respective governments. This is like walking a tightrope — without disciplining yourself into building a strong core, you are bound to fall and make for a poor show.

While the nation-state is rooted in a concept of national unity that has been, and continues to be, weaponized to forward capitalist interests, it is also a modern concept — and by modern I mean as recent (relative to known history) as the late 18th century. To be fair to Himaruya, he's happily vague about what those weird beings are, but even canon implies that these personifications existed before all that intellectual discoursing on nationalism started to flower.

I have always been fascinated as to the evolution of the concept of a nation (or at least the closest to the modern understanding) before all those Romantic-era ideas came about, before Benedict Anderson published his ideas on the imagined community. Nation as dialectics (between what precisely? We fill in the blanks!).

For the unfamiliar, nationalism for Anderson arose from the collective imagination of an ideal citizen, more often than not from an ethnic basis (and it does get racist a lot). It is imagined because it is ultimately a sentiment about what people have in common, and it is not always on objective reasons. For example — the idea of a Filipino citizen (I mention its development later below); heck, the idea of the Philippines. It has been referred to as the Philippine Islands since Spanish rule, but it is important to note that the natives have been referred to as indios (in general), the language they spoke (the Tagalogs, the Visayans), or the religion they practice (the Moros because post-Inquisition Spaniards do be bitter Islamophobes like that).

Speaking of communities...

2.) As a SOCIAL STRUCTURE

That is because nation can also connote a group of people of common heritage — history, culture, language. It's why you might encounter nation being used to refer to ethnolinguistic groups.

I'm revising this earlier definition I gave because this category can be further subdivided into at least 3 subgroups:

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS: While nationalism can easily be a political structure, it arises from a perceived common ethnicity — itself a social structure.

This will come off as egotistic, but I'll share my own fanlore-making as an example. I'm not comfortable using someone else's without risking misunderstandings, or even making arbitrary scenarios just to prove a point. I also want to add that nobody is obliged to follow my style, let alone like it.

I'm personally fascinated with how ethnolinguistic groups are sometimes referred to as "nations." I know of Hetalia fans who make region/city OCs. Himaruya himself made personifications of the prefectures of Japan at one point.

I'm diverging from that route not because I think it's bad or overrated. For those unfamiliar with me, I focus on making content featuring HWS Philippines. Philippine regions (the equivalent to states in the US) house more than one ethnolinguistic group. All of them have both shared and unique cultural attributes, and all of them will have different relationships with one another — none of which are necessarily on equal and equitable grounding.

I do not think that we can effectively show "everything" about a region through a single personification, and even "simplifying" the character necessitates asking what the determined "essentials" are. Why emphasize certain narratives over the other? Who gets uplifted, and who gets left behind, in the process?

I do not want to implicate that people who follow the region OC route are irredeemably problematic at all. I just like to push myself to bring something new to the table. That is to say, I want to give a shot at a different storytelling mode. And that's okay! Honestly, this fandom would know peace if we could just acknowledge it as a multiverse.

It should be worth noting that not all ethnolinguistic groups are Indigenous peoples. Here's a sample shortlist of ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines, where I have also highlighted the IP groups in purple:

Aeta

Cebuano

llocano

Kalinga

Tagalog

Yakan

Here is a (long) definition of Indigenous peoples from RA 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997:

A group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos.

First, I will point out that the last bit on "majority of Filipinos" is worth scrutinizing because opening debates about who is Filipino and who is not even if they lived in the archipelago known as the Philippines for as long, if not far longer, is also opening a can of bigoted worms.

Secondly, I want to highlight that significant point on historical differentiation, because it applies to all the different ethnolinguistic groups, not just between "Filipinos" and IPs of the Philippines. That is another major motivation for why I want to make personifications for various PH ethnolinguistic groups, in place of PH regions.

Sadly, I will admit that I cannot properly draw them anytime soon. 😔 On top of the high expectations in research, I just do not have the time to commit to that at the moment.

RELIGION: As crazy as this will sound for those of us who have grown up under the whole "separation of Church and State" agenda, religion was but one more factor in state formation.

I have come across similar concepts from Islam and Judaism. As I have been raised Catholic, I respectfully leave the mic for Muslims & Jews to discuss those concepts. While religion can be — and has been — treated as a "common heritage" of a given group, we need to be mindful that people have been, and continue to be, othered for their religion, regardless of having a common ethnic "nationality."

The Philippines is a secular state and I wish people remembered that lmfao. At the same time, it houses a predominantly Catholic population. But I do not headcanon Piri as a practicing, let alone baptized, Catholic. *queue the boomers clutching on their pearls* I'm going to confess that I have a tenuous relationship with the Catholic faith I was baptized into and raised under, for very personal reasons (hint: growing up under passive-aggressive queerphobia).

Regardless, I do acknowledge that there are states that officially endorse certain religions. HWS Malaysia, for me, is Muslim.

For the love of all the good and beautiful creations of God/Allah/Buddha/Brahma/Bathala/etc., I am extremely allergic to dogmatic/fanatic tendencies concerning religion. Opting out of having these nation personifications reflect their realities of religious discrimination should not necessarily mean we should be closed off from having conversations on those realities at all. I just do not think they have to be the tool for that.

GENDER

This is worth addressing after seeing enough takes about how people approach gender relations and nation-building — especially when it comes to female nation personifications.

Reposting what I wrote in my SOGIESC headcanon post for Piri (please note that the quoted section contains N//S//F//W terms):

I was never a fan of hypersexual relationship dynamics between the Philippines and Spain, America, and/or Japan. In addition to the bare minimum of the fact that I simply had different perspectives, people were also free to build their own safe corners for their kinks, fetishes, NSFW delusions, whatever they want to call it. While on the topic of kinks, forced feminization was precisely that (a BL kink, if I understood correctly). Neither was I a fan of it, to be perfectly candid here. What baffled me was how Piri as canonically female was automatically an act of forced feminization, an enactment of a (BL) kink. If that really was someone's thing, then okay cool. As long as you never clashed with my circus, I literally would not care about what went on in yours. By "not care," I meant to say that I had nothing to offer that would be of any benefit to your welfare (saying this because people ironically weaponized the phrase so carelessly). Bluntly, I was taken aback by the implied belief that existing as a woman, AFAB or otherwise, automatically guaranteed that you were nothing more than an object of carnal pleasure to the opposite sex. I could see the rice grain of truth to the fandom's concerns because we still very much lived that reality up to this day of age. I hate it too! We could accept an ugly reality and condemn it. If acceptance was acknowledging that there was a real, ongoing problem instead of continuing to pretend that it did not exist, then the condemnation of that problem was the outright declaration of why we must all act to put an end to the problem. My primary concern was that the repetitive claims of female Piri as fetishistic seemed to imply not an underlying condemnation of the sexist conditions against Filipino women, but rather a tragically apathetic approval of it. As a Filipino woman myself, that scared me as much as having to live my daily commutes constantly on alert for any cishet men out to do whatever God/Allah/Buddha/Brahma/etc. had forbidden us to do to one another (funny how most of these higher beings were male). On the other hand, I would quip that the fandom was a microcosm of the gap in women's history (herstory, if you would).

AU where canon Piri is a trans FTM. Or AU where OC!Fem!Piri is his drag queen persona. Allow yourselves the freedom to get creative...

3). As a PHYSICAL STRUCTURE

And then there's country, which — yes! — is highly interchangeable with nation and state. Without any political connotations yet, a country as a general term can refer to a particular land. You can see now that we have defined three elements to a nation-state (as an arbitrary umbrella term): power, people, and place Without yet taking into account the (centralized) power element, it is thus imaginable how multiple groups of people — or cultures — can occupy the same defined place. Put another way, multiple nations can occupy the same defined country, and that's again without taking into account the state.

This is closely related to social groups, but arguably it looks more into constructed relationships with physical environments. A great example is the "living territory" concept (sorry for sharing a long example, but it is a beautiful one, too):

At the heart of collective identity as an “existential space of self-reference” (Escobar 2008, 53), territory, as we can now see, is a crucial element of the political struggles around the defense of ethnic identities and cultural rights. It represents dif­ferent but interconnected objectives: the securing of the livelihood of local communities, the maintenance of traditional and sustainable economic practices, the political projects of regional social movements, the defense of collective rights, the development of proper forms of governability, the local experience of place, and a deep sense of belonging. Thus, what is at stake when defending territory is an alternative model of society and life, a form of being that is often at odds with the values embodied by certain modern institutions and practices. This is why for local communities, Bajo Atrato constitutes not only a territory of life but also a living territory. Let me explain this in more detail. In 2005, on the verge of a crucial decision from the state regarding ownership rights over the lands that oil-palm companies had violently seized from the titled collective territories, leaders from ASCOBA and one of my mentors—a priest and local intellectual whose social commitment draws from the theology of liberation—delineated some key principles about territory and its meanings: Territory is the space appropriated for our physical, social, and cultural production. It is the physical space, the plants and the animals; it is the space we name, use, walk, and travel. It is the way villages and households are placed, the economy, our ways of living and working, the days for cultural and religious celebrations, the social relationships, our traditional authorities, and our worldview. All these actions unfold in the space and they create territoriality, which[,] in turn, helps build the territory. . . .The territory is a space to produce life and culture, it reflects our worldview. In the fields we work, in the social and family relations we keep, in the symbolic aspects of our thinking, the territory is materialized. . . . Territory is not only land because it extends far beyond the physical space granted by the law. (Valencia 2005, 15–20) I would like to emphasize three aspects of this beautiful and powerful definition. First, social practices and relationships (e.g., "ways of working," “cultural and religious celebrations,” “traditional authorities,” and “social and family relations”) are not only developed in the territory but also contribute to the creation of the territory. Second, territory and communities are mutually linked and reciprocally constituted: many practices express the attributes of particular places, and the territory itself reflects the qualities of its inhabitants (“in the fields we work, in the social and family relations we keep, in the symbolic aspects of our thinking, the territory is materialized”). Third, territory cannot be understood as abstracted from the experience of being and belonging to an Afro-Colombian or an Indigenous rural community (“it is the space we name, use, walk, and travel”). This sophisticated conceptualization underscores the way that territory participates essentially and not just contingently in the generation of a collective sense of being, how it provides a particular placement to social experiences, and, most importantly, how territory does not always precede the relations and practices that take place there but, instead, is what results from these relations and practices. In other words, the definition applies a relational approach: territory is enacted and experienced rather than provided, and it emerges as such by virtue of people’s practices, while those practices are in turn affected by the territory itself. This definition of territory does not just imply some sort of intimate interconnectedness of people and their places but also comprises the conditions through which both territory and communities come into existence.

Daniel Ruiz-Serna, When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2023), 29-30.

You might call it an ecocritical approach to nation personifications. An idea I really want to play around with someday is the material conditions that cultural artifacts evoke. Just think of the origins of ingredients to local dishes, or the threads that make up traditional fabrics!

All that being said, let's revise everything accordingly, so that it is now:

1). POWER -> POLITICAL STRUCTURE

2). PEOPLE -> SOCIAL STRUCTURE

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS

RELIGION

GENDER

3). PLACE -> PHYSICAL STRUCTURE

Of course, a nation as a superstructure is more than just these 3 primary elements. As strange as this also sounds, I also want to point out that there are also plenty of fanworks that are more of the human AU line — implicitly or not, but the focus is not on the characters as a nation (CRAZY, BUT THAT’S ON MEDIA LITERACY).

Given these multiple meanings, we thus can have multiple ways of depicting anthropomorphized nations. Hence, it is ultimately a subjective approach because there is no singular, absolute truth to interpreting a nation — what more when the reality you are working with consists of a diversity of nations — all with multiple reasons for their independent existence (on a state level, admittedly, but remember that’s it’s not always about the state) in place of being one big amalgamation — that you can work within your fiction.

Put another way, we can pretend that the multiple fan interpretations are the different ways in which we try to cook up the final dish/es that is whatever anthropomorphized nation/s we are depicting, and the above elements can be likened to the spices used in flavoring the dish/es. As I wrote in an ask sent to me before, "all these fan interpretations reflect how people ratio their spices.

How that spice ratio is decided upon is thanks to numerous factors such that there is a good chance that no two recipes are exactly alike.

Yet, clearly, there is a (valid) demand for — if I can maintain the metaphor — a singular “objective” format to that recipe because…

2. Is nationverse inherently political?

I have stated before that I do agree that there is an inherent politicization with nationverse fiction, but as we have done with the term "nation," so I believe we must review "politicization." In short, it means to make something political. In general, something that is political often pertains to government affairs — aka the nation as a state.

We have set down earlier that nation is not restricted to that definition alone, but if this politicization must be inherent, then can we further break it down such that it is not always about state-level public affairs? We can, if we recall the etymology (or the origin of the word) of politics as power relations reflected in a decision-making process.

It is very easy to visualize how power relations are translated through government affairs and even over matters of territorial boundaries (think of it as conflicts regarding the place/physical element).

Meanwhile, power relations through conflicts over a common heritage (grouping people) shine through in disputes on the notion of national identity; this is also where tensions between ethnolinguistic groups arise. Below is a controversial (yet really brave of me lmao) take in suggesting that national identity formation is just racebending:

We can see how racebending fits into the picture as an exercise of (oppressive, and therefore offensive) power over certain peoples in a defined place. It is not far from the truth that states, including postcolonial nations that manifested as an opposing force against certain imperial powers (not necessarily Western, scandalous I know!), have been agents of forced assimilation for the sake of maintaining a stable political (or national) identity. Thus, we can see how racebending becomes cultural imperialism (although I personally favor calling it cultural hegemony) as a homogenization of social behavior that favors the legitimization of the state. Is it to say that national identities are fated to be monopolized constructions of culture? Personally, I would argue it need not be. It just so happens that capitalism favors such a setup, hence why we must demandez l'impossible! It does beg the question of how racebending a national identity works, which warrants reviewing what race and "national" identity mean in the first place, especially when both can be interchangeable depending on the context. Race as a classification of people on the basis of shared physical traits — as defined by, and more often than not, the white imperialist ethnographers of yore — is an outdated definition at best. Note how I did not include shared social traits because that is now broadly understood as ethnicity. Still, it does not change that both terms are highly interconnected, and neither does it, nor should it, erase the ugly reality of racism that has happened and continues to happen. It's as important to elaborate that "national identity". . . is not exclusive to being a political process. It is also an anthropological process. The question of "national identity" is not always about power dynamics, it is also about what is. Is the Filipino identity not multicultural in essence? I just have to point at our cuisine as THE primadonna examplar. Lechon! Longganisa! Tocino! We didn't grow apples so we made do with and invented buko pie! Halo-halo was literally inspired by Japanese-style shaved ice!!! Unfortunately, if we have to argue that these elements are not "truly Filipino" then I suppose my ancestors were cringe for...racebending themselves? Let's return to the question of Filipino identity, but instead of going the anthropological route, we now take the political one. The term "Filipinos" originally referred to the children of Spanish who were based in the colonial archipelago, which Filipinos of today would likely recall from Philippine social science textbooks in grade school/high school(?¿!) as the insulares. Over time, it was appropriated by the indio natives, moreso the ilustrados (native-born — because there were certainly mestizos among them — intelligentsia). Does the appropriation of "Filipino" into an autonomous national identity count as racebending? That is only if we have to assume race as an identifying marker of one's belonging to a state, when it isn't. If that is the case, however, then I do not believe that any single nation-state exists without very technically "racebending" various peoples into a uniformly shared commonality/ies, which happens to be the original (white imperialist) notion of what race is.

On the religion element, I can immediately name the prolonged tensions between the (Catholic-majority) Philippine state and Muslim communities in Mindanao, and the conflicts surrounding the Partition of India.

On gender, there is a great video essay by PhilosophyTube that tackles the intersection of gender constructs, capitalism, and nation-building.

We have now demonstrated that our given elements of a nation can be politicized. Note that I write "can be" because we still have to determine that it is an inherent quality — something that, when removed, the object it is attached to is no longer recognizable because it cannot be without that quality.

So...can we have a nation in the absence of power relations?

3. But what is power?

Funny because that scene is a neat example of the formal definition of power as:

"The production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate." (source)

Which is a more technical description of the ability to influence others. I will simplify that power answers two questions: (1) Who are you to me? and (2) Why should I do as I am told by you?

It should be easy to visualize how power is exercised with our three main elements.

1): POLITICAL STRUCTURE: Theories on the social contract that dictates the cycle of service between the governor/s and the governed. The version by Jean-Jacques Rousseau summarizes it as when people (the governed) give up some individual freedoms (aka rights) in exchange for protection & other benefits from an entity (the governor). Both the service and the subservience are done for an assumed common good. ex. Medieval peasants contributing portions of their harvests to the lord, in exchange for the lord guaranteeing a solid defense of the community from invading forces.

2). SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS: Through Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations as “imagined communities,” one persuades others understood to be fellow community members (by way of some recognized, or invented mayhaps, commonality) into acting as is defined (by whoever or whatever) to be appropriate for the community. ex. Different ethnolinguistic groups appropriating the label Filipino to refer to the shared struggle against the oppression of colonization.

RELIGION: Doctrines and traditions that rationalize our relationships with whatever higher power/s that be. ex. I must attend mass as a baptized Catholic to consistently renew my faith by commemorating how Christ sacrificed himself to save us from sin — as preserved in Scripture that serves as the textual heart of that very faith.

GENDER: That cursed gender binary dictating who can do what. ex. My single-sex Catholic school banning cross-dressing because...need I say more?

3). PHYSICAL STRUCTURE: Power can be diffused horizontally; village neighbors may coordinate in cultivating, collecting, and distributing the available resources within the shared land/s. The environment can also make or break opportunity/risk, and this more often than not becomes a point of exploitation. ex. State-sponsored deforestation that drives out indigenous communities.

Given the (simplified) information we have, it is be safe to say that the concept of a nation/state/country/etc. is inherently political. If we can agree that, indeed, inherent politicization is an objective fact about nations…

4. How do we identify facts about nations in a fiction about (anthropomorphized) nations?

I understand why people will argue that impact easily trumps intent. Admittedly, I’m inclined to doubt after seeing how slippery assumptions of the impacts of actions that occur in the realm of reality can become excuses for marginalization. This is outside the scope of the topic at hand, but to help illustrate, an example I can give is the time when a drag queen got branded a criminal for performing while dressed as Jesus Christ. (The boomers went apeshit in condemning it as a sin, as if Christ himself would not dance with these queer kids.)

There are certainly folks who use fiction to actively endorse harmful beliefs & actions, or proactively marginalize some and not others because of harmful prejudices. I, for one, cannot tolerate to even sit with people who go there. I've ceased supporting artists due to their conduct/morals that I cannot stand with, no matter how good and appealing their works are, because I refuse to let them profit off my enjoyment of it and let them wash their hands clean of accountability.

Nonetheless, I want to stick to the topic at hand that is media literacy. Remember, after all, that we are, at the end of the day, probing something that is in the realm of fiction. As I have written before:

Fiction, all the more historical fiction, can take from reality, but only in so far as certain elements from reality are relevant to the desired narrative to communicate. The same goes for Hetalia, and all sorts of nationverse works, as fiction that borrows from the reality of nation-states, and that absolutely depends on what framework/s the creators in question rely on to begin with.

Is it thus guaranteed that nationverse fiction will always represent the (internal or external) power relations of the nation/s it anthropomorphized? It must be the case if that is precisely the intended narrative of the creator/s.

The truth is that you cannot gauge the inherent politicization in a nationverse work without objectively identifying its literary elements (characters, dialogue, plot, setting, etc.). Those literary elements are the evidence to why you arrived at whatever conclusion you are making. Even with human AUs, some narratives are not always about the politics.

The other truth is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" framework in discussing inherent politicization in nationverse because there are an uncountable (unless someone actually does the math-crunching lol) number of ways of interpreting nationverse as there are many ways of how cultures interpret the world at large, and how there are a diversity of nations, each with their own realities such that no two nations are exactly alike. Anyone can pull off a Death of the Author and establish their interpretations as consumers (or “bypassers” by way of purely relying on other people's interpretations and not your own intellectual capacities) of a nationverse work, even though the creators genuinely intended otherwise.

My professors in the history department never tire of telling us this: even the practice of history is not immune to subjectivity, and that is on the framework you choose in analyzing event/s (lest you admit you're only b*llshitting your way through). In the field of history, that produces what is called historiography.

In the field of literary analysis — because, after all, the medium in which Hetalia is produced as a manga is a legitimate work of literature — literary theories are commonly utilized, but not exclusively; other schools of thought have been used (ex. postmodernism, Marxism).

Having a framework matters because you are not the very creator speaking of your own work — you are speaking of another person’s work. You are giving your interpretation/s of another fan’s interpretation/s of a Japanese mangaka’s interpretation/s of certain anthropomorphized nations, none of which are immune to biases. It is lowkey funny to me how the fandom sometimes projects high expectations like tiger moms on Himaruya who is just a guy™.

And that is just your single voice speaking. What of the creator themselves? This is not to argue that we should be neutral in our objectivity (neutrality benefits oppressive structures, so be mindful of what/whom your objectivity serves) than so much as we should be confidently precise about what it is that we are commenting or even criticizing against. It is also not to say that giving arbitrary examples is bad per se. To be candid, some of the examples I have seen are worst-case scenarios that, while not impossible, are not necessarily frequent either. There have been bad takes, but in terms of the worst possible take/s that can happen, they are rare by nature. The odds are even lower when you take into account the uncountable number of possibilities of nationverse interpretations. I am also speaking as someone unlearning catastrophizing, because that does nothing good to my mental health.

Speaking of interpretations, here are some more of my previous responses relating to that:

I thought Himaruya has always been ambiguous about the personified nation-states' relationships with governments, whether it be their own or of others? Even on occasions that he does show positive interaction with virtually NPC-like government staff or allude to certain head honchos while magically wiping off the eyes, I don't think these choices as a reflection of his (head)canon is the only reason, let alone the only way to read those depiction. I know the joke opens with "for legal reasons," but there's a rice grain of truth to it after all. To describe it as the norm of Hetalia (at least) is like saying Hetalia is propaganda. It's not even a "can be propaganda" anymore because we're assuming there must be an agenda the personified nation-states perceived and therefore endorse their governments for, which explains the supposed good working relationship they maintain, as depicted by Hima. The additional challenge I want to raise is this: How can we even gauge what makes a good relationship between personified nation-states and governments? Is a "good relationship" bare minimum, no-strings-attached, employee-style obedience, or fully cooperative because both parties vibe like besties for endorsing the same principles/goals/etc.? What makes it a close tie? Why is it so important to factor in how not all nation-states enjoy the privilege of defying the rule of law like the depicted lucky ones?

Even without having to elaborate on the political context to multiculturalism as myth, it all boils back down to — if I can recycle my food metaphor here — who's been adding too much government spice and serving their takes to people who don't even like the resulting taste to begin with. And even determining that is a case-by-case basis.

5. Is it always bad to bring politics into nationverse fiction?

Don't get me wrong, I have seen bad politics brought into Hetalia, but there are just so many different forms of bad politics (if this was an introduction essay in an anthology, those forms would get their own chapters). Admittedly, I do not appreciate how some well-intentioned discourses on that matter have homogenized political struggles and colonial histories.

I have also, unfortunately, seen politics handled badly. This is where I will urge fans to exercise caution with the intended message they want to communicate to their intended audience.

I cannot think of a more apt example than colonizer/colonized ships. Personally, I do not give a sh*t. Other people’s lore does not have to be my lore, and my lore does not have to be other people’s lore. It feels good to be able to connect with other fans, but hey, we’re doing it to have a good time, not to force people to like us. There are takes of that shipping dynamic that are not my cup of tea, I just do not care to pick the cup up, to begin with.

It is also not to say that nobody can challenge the idea of a subjective national anthropomorphism. I do, however, sense that subjectivity in personifying nations might be a question of ethics that is ineffectively presented as a literary analysis that lost focus in pushing to cover such a wide scope.

“Every anthro-nation media is political” and “not all anthro-nation media are equal in their politics, implicit or explicit” are statements that can co-exist. It’s why, say, I might like X’s take on Piri but maybe not Y’s take — moreso when I can discern enough aspects that make it concerningly propaganda-like. If inherent politicization is like a default baseline, we can only gauge how much someone has individually added to that arbitrary political “bar.” Even then, canon Hetalia at least hasn’t shown signs of endorsing any certain ideology. Some fans have, however, done so, especially with harmful ideologies. What, then, makes it possible for some fans to project these harmful ideologies? Is it just cruel fate due to the nature of personifying nation-states? Or maybe it’s on individual free will to be openly and unapologetically bigoted? And even with the benefit of the doubt, is it not ultimately an issue of bad media literacy?

Even the topic of ethics consists of a handful of theories that cannot be properly examined through reading through a strictly historical, political, or even literary lens alone. While we can more easily agree on some moral judgments, the same cannot be said for praxis — and that is just concerning the practice of ethics in the realm of reality, what more for the interpretation of ethics in fiction? I thus once more reiterate: This is why my inside joke with fandom friends is how Hetalia is the ultimate test of media literacy.

While it is upsetting that there have been real manifestations of individuals projecting their politics in the private sphere onto the (nationverse) fictions they disseminate in public online spaces, I still stand by the belief that the idea of interrogating someone’s moral compass through the fiction they either create or consume cannot — and should not — be absolutized. Not only does it legitimize the far-right conservatism fueling the variety of moral panics throughout history that evolved into outright dehumanization, but it also chains people to their creative works as if they are only as (morally) good as their works are (morally) good.

Which, honestly, is not a radically good take.

And speaking of scrutinizing if it takes a bad person to make art about something bad...

6. Are people bad for not taking political realities into account in their nationverse fiction?

I do not believe that establishing some distance from the "statist" lens is necessarily a denial of the political realities.

Some people might prefer not to start careless claims because they know they are not equipped to talk about something. (Because why would Philippine youth be mandated to study the history of, say, Japan? Even if they can read it in their spare time, it is ridiculous to assume people's material conditions and capacities.)

Others treat the fact about Hetalia as fiction as nothing but escapism from reality, so they would rather that politics (if not history, even as I personally find it silly to argue that they are mutually exclusive) remain absolutely off-the-table in their fandom lives. Sometimes, that escapism comes off as """fujoshifying""" sensitive events. I may not vibe with even the dead dove type of content that goes there, but I will acknowledge that it is not made for me. As long as the creator knows how to filter their intended message for their intended audience, I believe that is how one differentiates dead dove from tragedy porn.

Outside the scope of fandom, I do find confronting apathy disheartening at best, and frustrating at worst. If people want to have that talk, I rather take off my fandom jester hat for it first. I can try, but there is no guarantee that I can persuade them to see otherwise. If there were a manual that explained how to talk to people not to support extremist beliefs, no matter their race, creed, age, gender, etc. with a 100% guaranteed success rate, I'd read it. I wish such a manual existed!

But we are still talking about Hetalia, and in all my years of following Hetalia, I have never seen fans so vocally insistent that the "correct way" to do Hetalia characterizations is to not separate them from the state, when the arguably worst takes are precisely because people have absolutized that approach — that we cannot portray these dirt children as anything but the state.

From time to time, we get disk horses about how "the fandom has learned nothing after 10+ years," but the second someone wants to diverge from relying on the narrative of the state as the primary basis of their Hetalia characterizations, they still get as much harsh condemnation as the occasional N*zi/Zi*nist weirdo that sprouts up. Suddenly, people are "not allowed" to depict the nation-state as anything but the state. It's almost as if people are allergic to any unapologetically leftist depictions  — where the personifications represent the ordinary people (however that means) — and that grinds my gears more than anything. Neither do I want to promote that fandom should be activism, because Hetalia, and any nationverse work, is, at the end of the day, not the medium for that job. But I gotta be for real, we are also robbing our leftist hearts of having leftist fun, because I don’t think disk horsing will be enough to keep the rightwing weirdos out.

I understand that nationalism is a weapon of the bourgeoisie, such that it becomes a tool to oppress rather than liberate. If you cannot separate Hetalia characters from their governments and the ruling class that makes it up, okay. That’s YOUR headcanon. Respect the fact that not everyone shares that headcanon, let alone is obliged to follow it.

Don't get me wrong because there are certainly fanon takes that I do not vibe with and feel are dubiously promoting inhumane ideologies. My issue is in the reactionary double standards that sometimes jump out in discussing nation-state personifications as a state. If I may be candidly blunt, it feeds a vicious cycle that is only creating a ridiculously toxic space. So, I wrote this long, discourse post nobody asked for to (hopefully) put an end to it, and perhaps serve as a jumpstart to a sorely lacking and much-needed, genuine, open discussion on how we consume and analyze nationverse fiction that does not have to boil down into petty fighting.

It is a common yet toxic habit throughout fandom spaces — not just Hetalia and other nationverse series — to assume that the story one wants to tell as an artist is an absolute, authentic projection of their principles as a human making art.

[tamelee]

Hi tamee! Can you explain maybe the tweet you reposted about problematic media? Because I dont think we should consume it at all. I wondered about your view if you don’t mind.

Hi! Do you mean this post?

Oh, I could talk about this all day. The post I retweeted after that highlights the decline in media literacy, right? I think that issue ties directly to the discussion around "problematic" media. What makes media "problematic" isn’t (always?) the subject itself but the messaging, context, and intent behind it.

Take "love," for example. It’s a subject, not a theme. A theme is the argument a writer makes, with the story's truth (not necessarily the author's truth) revealed at the story’s climax. (Imo, it happens more so before that, which allows the climax to unfold, but, okay, different topic.) To make a strong argument, you need counterarguments—different views and perspectives. Leave that out, as many "well-meaning" mass-market creators often do, and you’re not telling a story anymore—you’re preaching. 

Preaching never lands the way they hope, lol they're all tanking badly because they forget the core of storytelling, which is much more complex.

Provoking critical thinking is essential, now more than ever imo, but it has to be done thoughtfully, with meaning and care. Context is everything. Reducing a story to dismissal simply because of its subject matter misses the point entirely. It’s not about endorsing harmful ideas—it’s about fitting them into the narrative in a way that examines their role in the story and, by extension, the world.

Personally, I think stories are most powerful when they spark meaningful conversations—or, even better, when they create space for those conversations to unfold. Even if they make us uncomfortable, because that discomfort is where growth and understanding usually begin.

Regardless, you shouldn't consume things you don't want to consume of course.

[samaspic31]

God I fucking HATE academic gatekeeping and disciplinary segregation. And classism and selective access ofc (why do you only want to teach people who already know)

Like. None of these disciplines should be that separate. If you're teaching history or philosophy without sociology, giving dogmatic language classes without analyzing linguistic construction or semantics, if you're doing gender studies without biology, religious studies without rhetoric, history without political science, marketing or medicine or even law without ethics (and those ethics classes accounting for ALL discrimination, core bigoted beliefs and giving precise examples) (most fields tbh omg give the people in stem and studying law some goddamn critical thinking and frameworks to combat ingrained bigotry), teaching "intellectual" matters without addressing capitalist devaluation of physical labor, no media literacy or how to read statistics, nothing to actually make sure students have absorbed the material (not graded tests) the education is incomplete