#just need to develop it more

[grape-souffle]

I really do want to work more on this au like making more animations and comics etc, I just need to get better at both lol

[dog-prophet]

I GOT THE WORMS.İN MY BRAİN. THEYRE İNSİDE MY BRAİN.

[jjkyaoi]

by the way. people are allowed to complain about this season feeling rushed. i don’t know when it became a thing in this fandom to completely jump people who have valid complaints like YES arcane is a fantastically produced and beautifully animated show and nobody will be able to top it but they did start things with some characters only for it to never go anywhere so it can all be wrapped up in three episodes 😭

[emacrow]

John is salty as fuck.

How the fuck Red Robin got a Favor Ticket from the infinite realm?!?

He has been spending a 4 year and 8 months trying to figure the right ritual to summon that bastard right. All he gets is a dog sized looking green blob ball thing looking thing that take one look at him, say oooo and disappears on him, and yet the coffee obsessed robin figured it out in one shot to save batman?!?

Fuck this! He ignoring batman asking questions about the infinite realm, he need hardcover 99% alcohol liquor right the fuck now.

He sticks his middle finger as he leaves through the portal, closing it on his way out as he plop onto his bed in the house of mysteries, groaning out his frustration.

If John was paying attention, he wouldn't notice several dozen blob ghosts laying on his back, silently oooing on his slowly developing core.

Meanwhile

In crime city, Jason had given trying to removed this greenish lazarus pit cat sized goop off him for the last 6 hours. None of the robin seem to see it beside Cass, but the rage seem to be sipping away.

Part 2 here <-

[rika-mortis]

Headcanon: Deep down they both want to be their fairy godparent/godkid again after losing them, but don't believe they deserve each other and feel like they aren't worthy to be their companion anymore

They both need counseling and therapy as a whole package

[tommygotwrittenoff]

i literally do not care about big emergencies on abc's 911. i want to see my characters talk to each other and have stories that are parallels to small, everyday (everyday for first responders) emergencies

[the-barefoot-hatter]

Pyramid Steve's favourite treat is pre-1982 pennies

(Ford slooooowly starting to realize his muse of infinite knowledge might, in fact, be a dumbass.)

[its-anewdawn]

Arcane conclusion = no thoughts head empty just

[fire-on-fuel]

the most important distinction between boba fett and jango fett is that jango fett grew up on a farm and then in a traveling mandalorian merc clan and boba fett grew up in a city sized lab and then juvie and then every gutter in the galaxy from here to nar shaddaa

[limonjarritos]

[brbflyingtomars]

let annabeth have a crush on luke and let luke manipulate it and use it against her you COWARDS

i will not let you re-write history because it makes you uncomfortable ! it’s supposed to ! percy was very uncomfortable ! annabeth needs to be shown WHY it’s uncomfortable !

[chalkrub]

thank you for a great art fight! here's some of my final attacks. had a blast, already missing it - see you next year!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[kacievvbbbb]

This is so shanks coded to me. Like he just keeps losing people and he never learns how to deal with it. So much so that he becomes the abandoning parent. He literally knows nothing else all he has as a frame of reference is all the adult figures in his life leaving him and telling him it is for the best. So why exactly wouldn’t he believe that the best way to love someone is by letting go?

He does it to Luffy, he does it to Uta and in some ways he does it to Buggy and Mihawk too. Because he never just asks them to stay. He lets Buggy run out of his life even though it was pretty obvious that Buggy wanted Shanks to fight for this to take a stand a real one on a conviction for once and he…doesn’t, he just lets buggy leave.

And then he hitches his wagon to the most flighty (dude is literally a bird motif 😭) mother fucker he can find. he lets Mihawk wander in and out of his life as he pleases regardless of what is best for either of them. Because maybe Mihawk has nothing better to do 👀. Maybe he would say yes now if Shanks asks. but Shanks would rather die than ask, would cut off his other arm before he even attempted to “clip Mihawk’s wings”

And that’s like the truth of it. Shanks has been abandoned by every person that has ever loved him besides his crew and he knows they will never leave him. But Maybe he just wants someone to stay not because they call him captain.

[metanarrates]

Hello. Sorry if this a stupid question u can ignore if u want.

How can someone get better at media analysis? Besides obviously reading a lot.

Im asking this bc im in a point where im aware of my own lack of tools to analyze stories, but i don't know where to get them or how to get better in general. How did you learn to analyze media? There's any specific book, essay, author, etc that you recommend? Somewhere to start?

I'm asking you because you are genuinely the person who has the best takes on this site. Thank you for you work!

it sounds like a cop-out answer but it's always felt like a skill I acquired mostly thru reading a ton, and by paying a lot of attention in high school literature classes. because of that I can't promise that I'm necessarily equipped to be a good teacher or that i know good resources. HOWEVER! let me run some potential advice to you based on the shit i get a lot of mileage out of

first off, a lot of literary analysis is about pattern recognition! not just pattern recognition in-text, but out-of-text as well. how does this work relate to its genre? real-world history? does it have parallels between real-life situations? that kind of thing.

which is a big concept to just describe off the bat, so let me break it down further!

in literature, there is the concept of something called literary devices - they are some of the basic building blocks in how a story is delivered mechanically and via subtext. have you ever heard of a motif? that is a literary device. it's a pattern established in the text in order to further the storytelling! and here is a list of a ton of common literary devices - I'd recommend reading the article. it breaks down a lot of commonly used ones in prose and poetry and explains their usage.

personally, I don't find all the literary devices I've learned about in school to be the most useful to my analytical hobbies online. motifs, themes, and metaphors are useful and dissecting them can bring a lot to the table, but a lot of other devices are mostly like fun bonus trivia for me to notice when reading. however, memorizing those terms and trying to notice them in the things you read does have a distinct benefit - it encourages you to start noticing patterns, and to start thinking of the mechanical way a story is built. sure, thinking about how the prose is constructed might not help you understand the story much more, but it does make you start thinking about how things like prose contribute to the greater feeling of a piece, or how the formatting of a piece contributes to its overall narrative. you'll start developing this habit of picking out little things about a text, which is useful.

other forms of in-text pattern recognition can be about things like characterization! how does a character react to a certain situation? is it consistent with how they usually behave? what might that tell you about how they think? do they have tells that show when they're not being trustworthy? does their viewpoint always match what is happening on screen? what ideas do they have about how the world works? how are they influenced by other people in their lives? by social contexts that might exist? by situations that have affected them? (on that note, how do situations affect other situations?)

another one is just straight-up noticing themes in a work. is there a certain idea that keeps getting brought up? what is the work trying to say about that idea? if it's being brought up often, it's probably worth paying attention to!

that goes for any pattern, actually. if you notice something, it's worth thinking about why it might be there. try considering things like potential subtext, or what a technique might be trying to convey to a reader. even if you can't explain why every element of a text is there, you'll often gain something by trying to think about why something exists in a story.

^ sometimes the answer to that question is not always "because it's intentional" or even "because it was a good choice for the storytelling." authors frequently make choices that suck shit (I am a known complainer about choices that suck shit.) that's also worth thinking about. english classes won't encourage this line of thinking, because they're trying to get you to approach texts with intentional thought instead of writing them off. I appreciate that goal, genuinely, but I do think it hampers people's enthusiasm for analysis if they're not also being encouraged to analyze why they think something doesn't work well in a story. sometimes something sucks and it makes new students mad if they're not allowed to talk about it sucking! I'll get into that later - knowing how and why something doesn't work is also a valuable skill. being an informed and analytical hater will get you far in life.

so that's in-work literary analysis. id also recommend annotating your pages/pdfs or keeping a notebook if you want to close-read a work. keeping track of your thoughts while reading even if they're not "clever" or whatever encourages you to pay attention to a text and to draw patterns. it's very useful!

now, for out-of-work literary analysis! it's worth synthesizing something within its context. what social settings did this work come from? was it commenting on something in real life? is it responding to some aspects of history or current events? how does it relate to its genre? does it deviate from genre trends, commentate on them, or overall conform to its genre? where did the literary techniques it's using come from - does it have any big stylistic influences? is it referencing any other texts?

and if you don't know the answer to a bunch of these questions and want to know, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! look up historical events and social movements if you're reading a work from a place or time you're not familiar with. if you don't know much about a genre, look into what are considered common genre elements! see if you can find anyone talking about artistic movements, or read the texts that a work might be referencing! all of these things will give you a far more holistic view of a work.

as for your own personal reaction to & understanding of a work... so I've given the advice before that it's good to think about your own personal reactions to a story, and what you enjoy or dislike about it. while this is true that a lot of this is a baseline jumping-off point on how I personally conduct analysis, it's incomplete advice. you should not just be thinking about what you enjoy or dislike - you should also be thinking about why it works or doesn't work for you. if you've gotten a better grasp on story mechanics by practicing the types of pattern recognition i recognized above, you can start digging into how those storytelling techniques have affected you. did you enjoy this part of a story? what made it work well? what techniques built tension, or delivered well on conflict? what about if you thought it sucked? what aspects of storytelling might have failed?

sometimes the answer to this is highly subjective and personal. I'm slightly romance-averse because I am aromantic, so a lot of romance plots will simply bore me or actively annoy me. I try not to let that personal taste factor too much into serious critiques, though of course I will talk about why I find something boring and lament it wasn't done better lol. we're only human. just be aware of those personal taste quirks and factor them into analysis because it will help you be a bit more objective lol

but if it's not fully influenced by personal taste, you should get in the habit of building little theses about why a story affected you in a certain way. for example, "I felt bored and tired at this point in a plot, which may be due to poor pacing & handling of conflict." or "I felt excited at this point in the plot, because established tensions continued to get more complex and captured my interest." or "I liked this plot point because it iterated on an established theme in a way that brought interesting angles to how the story handled the theme." again, it's just a good way to think about how and why storytelling functions.

uh let's see what else. analysis is a collaborative activity! you can learn a lot from seeing how other people analyze! if you enjoy something a lot, try looking into scholarly articles on it, or youtube videos, or essays online! develop opinions also about how THOSE articles and essays etc conduct analysis, and why you might think those analyses are correct or incorrect! sometimes analyses suck shit and developing a counterargument will help you think harder about the topic in question! think about audience reactions and how those are created by the text! talk to friends! send asks to meta blogs you really like maybe sometimes

find angles of analysis that interest and excite you! if you're interested in feminist lenses on a work, or racial lenses, or philosophical lenses, look into how people conduct those sort of analyses on other works. (eg. search feminist analysis of hamlet, or something similar so you can learn how that style of analysis generally functions) and then try applying those lenses to the story you're looking at. a lot of analysts have a toolkit of lenses they tend to cycle through when approaching a new text - it might not be a bad idea to acquire a few favored lenses of your own.

also, most of my advice is literary advice, since you can broadly apply many skills you learn in literary analysis to any other form of storytelling, but if you're looking at another medium, like a game or cartoon, maybe look up some stuff about things like ludonarrative storytelling or visual storytelling! familiarizing yourself with the specific techniques common to a certain medium will only help you get better at understanding what you're seeing.

above all else, approach everything with intellectual curiosity and sincerity. even if you're sincerely curious about why something sucks, letting yourself gain information and potentially learning something new or being humbled in the process will help you grow. it's okay to not have all the answers, or to just be flat-out wrong sometimes. continuing to practice is a valuable intellectual pursuit even if it can mean feeling a tad stupid sometimes. don't be scared to ask questions. get comfortable sometimes with the fact that the answer you'll arrive at after a lot of thought and effort will be "I don't fully know." sometimes you don't know and that can be valuable in its own right!

thank you for the ask, and I hope you find this helpful!

[asmeninas]

I just think before doing "Aspect of Culture is Deteriorating" posts you should just really try looking into the history of what you're talking about. Certain phrases are always popping up in posts like that here while often the issue they're talking about is not new, this is just a new manifestation of it and it's the one the poster knows because the poster is 21. “We are being pushed shallow bestsellers that are churned out yearly by the same group of writers, and this is because of booktok” is something that you can easily avoid saying by just, I don't know, looking at older NYT bestselling lists and then looking up what was said about the top sellers in fiction at the time of their release, for example. Then you might also notice that the panic about what bad books are teaching our women goes as far back as the novel does and take the "it's dangerous for girls" bits out of your posts.