#missing the point

[dougielombax]

Greg Bear: The Forerunner Trilogy is a story about an inevitable tragedy borne of hubris and a failure to listen or learn. It was always going to end this way. It is a story about the dangers of societal stagnation and absolute power. It is also a story of rebirth and rebuilding. A story of hope and perseverance. But it is also a story about the violation inherent in divine destiny. It is a story about the power of ideas and the dangers of blind obedience. It is a story of arrogance and fallibility. A story of the dangers of fanaticism, a story of stewardship, the nature of civilisations, of legacies, and the distortion of history. Above all else it is a story of how we must learn from the mistakes of the past so we can avoid repeating them again.

Gamer Bros With Zero Media Literacy: BRÜH HUMANITY IS TOTALLY WORTHY OF THE MANTLE OF RESPONSIBILITY!!!! OUR SACRED BIRTHRIGHT!!!! GIMME THAT SHIT!!!!!!

Many such cases.

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Screenshot because I’m not reblogging this:

I just had to share the reblogs on this post. So much handwringing. So many absurdly bad takes.

[indecisiveavocado]

if you don't want to admit that you are wrong you can always try this

I carefully explained why the Amsterdam pogrom, sorry, not at all antisemitic event was, in fact, a pogrom and mentioned that it was weird they didn't just assume Jews probably know more about antisemitism and antisemitic dogwhistles than them. (this on my post 'so, about goysplaining')

Truly a well-reasoned examplar of people who don't like Jews sorry ISRAEL.

(also, the irony. evasivemanuver, if you're reading this, you are the point of the post.)

[iamamactualcorpse]

The Killing Joke and Media Illiteracy

Alright, let’s get this straight: if you read The Killing Joke and think it’s just about how one bad day can turn anyone into a psychopath, then you’re seriously misreading the entire story.

The Joker argues that everyone is one bad day away from snapping. He tortures Commissioner Gordon to prove his point, paralyzing Barbara, and dragging Gordon through psychological hell. But guess fucking what? Gordon doesn’t break. Despite the worst trauma imaginable, Gordon holds onto his morals, his sense of justice. His response proves that pain doesn’t have to define you. Trauma doesn’t make you a monster unless you let it.

Now, let's take a look at Batman. The Joker thinks trauma makes you lose it, but Batman’s entire existence disproves that. His parents were murdered in front of him, a trauma that could’ve shattered him. But Batman chooses to use that pain for good. He channels his suffering into fighting for justice. Batman proves that you’re not defined by what happens to you; you’re defined by how you choose to respond.

The Joker’s whole point crumbles with Gordon and Batman. The Killing Joke isn’t about fragility; it’s about choice. Both Gordon and Batman show that you don’t have to embrace madness. You can choose to rise above it. So, if you think this story is about how one bad day can turn anyone into a villain, you’re missing the real message. It’s about how pain and trauma don't define you, it's what you choose to do afterward that does.

[impossibletragedykitten]

Imagine doing a whole series with marvel superheroes and fundamentally misunderstanding two of the most popular characters this badly while trying desperately to sound like you're making some kind of profound statement.

This is the kind of depth I would expect from a puddle in June.

[troythecatfish]

[llycaons]

also I don't think anyone on that website understands what abuse is

[abuddyforeveryseason]

I finished reading a book!

Ella Minnow Pea, a novel by Mark Dunn. It's about the title character, a young lady living in an island country. The crazies who rule over the island start banning the use of certain letters in writing and speech, one at a time - the first letter to go is Z, so Ella can no longer use words containing Z in her letters to her cousin. That's not so bad, but, as more letters are banned, it gets harder and harder to write and talk. When they ban D, for instance, the characters have trouble using the past tense, except for a handful of irregular verbs.

It was an interesting read, pretty short.

But, you know... the point of the story was pretty obvious - censorship is bad. Making it hard for people to use words is a way to make them easier to control. And I don't disagree. Still, it's a book with an interesting gimmick, and the fun of it is the later parts of the story, where you have to work hard to figure out what the characters mean through the convoluted words.

So it kind of defeats the point. There's a meme about Gundam, a show about robots.

I've never seen it so I can't speak to how accurate it is, but I kind of feel like the guy who missed the point of the show in the meme. A lot of people are that way. They see a story, like a movie, where the point is something pretty obvious like "war is bad" or "censorship is bad", but just think it's a cool story.

So, someone made an answer to the meme:

And yeah, that's a pretty fair criticism. If you don't want people to think something's super cool, maybe don't make it look super cool. Cause, you know, it's easy to profit off of that. And, you know, that's what attracts people to the story.

I think that, when so many people miss the point of a story, after a while, the creator is partly to blame. Maybe it's not a matter of intent, but of competence, in that way. And they make money when people consume the story regardless of whether they understand it or not.

Now, a really gruesome story is harder to sell. Showing how horrible war and censorship really are make for a really depressing story - one that comes with its own pitfalls about being misunderstood.

I have a real pet peeve regarding that type of stuff. A guy (you know who I'm talking about) makes a movie about the edgy badass that's not supposed to be idolized. But when someone complains that the badass is being idolized, people will rush to defend the movie - "no, you're missing the point, it was a criticism, not and endorsement, of that kind of behavior".

Nah, I'm not missing the point. I'm just saying the director did a bad job. Or, you know, considering how much money he made, had some ulterior motive.

P.S. - There's nothing in the book that actually says Ella wasn't white. I just assumed so since the island nation is on the southeastern coast of the US.

[dopplerdora]

People are talking about Heaven's Feel again.

Don't get me wrong, I likes the movies but... they could have been so much more.

Part of the problem is that as a story Heaven's Feel is ment to come after you do Fate and Bladeworks. The prior routes frame Heaven's Feel in a way that show the "point".

By the climax of Heaven's Feel Shirou's "team" has more power than in either other Route. Shirou has Archer Arm, Rin has the Jewel Sword and hasn't needed to use her Chrest to make a Pass for Shirou, Rider isn't Saber but she has Infinite Energy from Sakura, they even have Illya on their side. All this power, power and knowledge that could shake the world of Magi like never before honestly. All that power... and it doesn't mean a damn thing.

Because Power can't help Sakura, no amount of Power can help the one person they want to help. This isn't Fate; Shirou can't just project Caliburn, make a promise, and go be a hero. This isn't Bladeworks; Shirou can't just keep moving with his ideal, show his resolve through combat, and learn how to move forward. Rin can't just Blast the threat away with raw power. This is Heaven's Feel; Shirou's idea is worse than nothing because the "enemy" is his Family. Rin has the ultimate weapon for blasting away her problems... but the problem is her little sister. The world will end, to end thing Somebody Has To Die. Gilgamesh dies but that makes things worse, Zouken dies but that doesn't fix anything, and deleting Saber doesn't actually fix the problem. Because ether problem is years of torture and abuse, you can't fix something like that by punching the monster after the fact.

Heaven's Feel isn't about power, this is problematic because the movie didn't get that memo when animating it. The fights are beautiful, this doesn't in any way help the story telling outside of Rin's fight with Sakura which is more about Rin's internal conflict anyway. It hurts the story because the fighting takes up so much time that some of the characters don't get to show their parts properly... Also its way more Shirou than anybody else, this is a problem because Heaven's Feel has somewhere between Three and Five protagonists and Shirou is only one of them. That said if I go into how sombody in charge seems to hate woman as characters and seems to... think badly of sexual abuse survivors I would probably be here all day and also fail because it would start going into misogyny in Japanese culture and a bunch of other things.

To digress Heaven's Feel is a beautiful, painful, amazing story. The Heaven's Feel movie isn't bad but I feel like is didn't really read the assignment and tried to make an action flick.

[bubblegumpopdefiance]

I wish Elon Musk didn’t take cyberpunk as a blueprint for how society should be.

[dougielombax]

No, Billy!

Humanity is NOT ready to hold the Mantle of Responsibility! And it never will be!

Miss me with that god complex bullshit!

It’s tyranny! Or at least an excuse for it!

You’re going to die!!!!!

[autistic-katara]

u ever see a post where op made some pretty good points but then people got mad about it (like people do) and then everyone started being racist to eachother while accusing eachother of being racist and fundamentally misunderstanding eachother’s points but u don’t wanna say anything cause ur a white european kid so u just kinda sit there like🧍

[the-chemist-1138]

Honestly, I am disturbed by the amount of people who read "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Anderson, and thought that Kay didn't deserve to be saved... "Because he was mean to Gerda".

For crying out loud, he was infected by a magical item made by The Devil Himself, and he is just a kid! Sure it isn't a good thing to be unpleasant to loved ones, but that doesn't mean he should have been left to die! It was literally an outright stated plot point that demonic magic was making him not himself.

I am glad that the retelling, "Shards Of Glass" addressed that, and Gerda got to see what Kay saw through his eyes. Not to mention forgiveness from both sides.

I also get disturbed by retelling that make him unpleasant on his own volition, completely missing the point of the original tale. Why do people have an axe to grind against a kid with what was basically Clinical Depression? I have clinical depression and that fairy tale helped me realize that.

[celtadri]

I have a comic up at The New Yorker! It's all totally normal!!

[songbird-swordlily-blog]

Some of the fucking responses to this post indicate to me, as ever, that some people simply cannot go without "winning" every goddamn interaction they have. Grow up, lmao.

[dougielombax]

What’s that?

YOU think that humanity is worthy and deserving of and ready to assume the Mantle of Responsibility?!

Really!

Ok.

Here’s an idea.

Play the games and read the books again.

The Mantle is bullshit!

At best it’s just guidelines.

At worst, an idea and nothing more.

A test that everyone fails!

Even the Forerunners realised this, albeit far too late.

It’s literally the entire premise of the Forerunner Trilogy! More or less.

Epitaph even said it outright!