#but time isn't real and comics time doubly so

[roipecheur]

Babygirl, there are so many things wrong with you ♥

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

'You're reading too much into ATSV.'

[aka meta analysis is good for the soul]

I often get told on this blog that I'm reading too much into plots or scenes or things in general.

And honestly, fair point. I do the most.

And as a writer, I will say that I do it out of pure respect.

[actual photo of me reading the script and going for my 'reading too hard at ATSV notebook']

Movies take years to write.

People spend months of their lives genuinely toiling over these characters, often times creating more work than what can ever be reasonably used. Months of revisions and scraping work.

For weeks, about a dozen people probably went to sleep dreaming or thinking up what Hobie would wear, what Gwen would say, what emotional cues Jess will have.

A lot of people dedicated years of their lives and creative labor into that story.

To me, it isn't at all bizarre to take an hour out of my day to sit and consider the story they spend a lot of time trying to tell.

Compared to the labor they have given me, multiple 40+ hour work weeks for years - an hour or two is literally nothing lol

It's literally the least I can do.

As a writer, I feel like its only right to sit back and look deeper into a story.

To analyze the writer's intentions, or examine their storytelling tactics and abilities.

We are taught to consume media so quickly and rapidly that to offer time to critically analyze a piece of work is considered bizarre, too much work, or pointless.

As if there's nothing to read into. Or as if speculation and meta analysis is helpful to no one.

If someone spends five hours drawing fanart that is accepted. If someone spends two hours writing fanfic, this is expectable behavior.

But I spend the same amount of time to look deeper into the work of the writers, and often times I'm met with surprise or treated as if I'm overly uptight.

It's like snickering at a person who asked there was deeper meaning behind a painting. While standing in an art gallery.

When streaming shows drop all in one day, it becomes about the Easter eggs and watching it as fast as possible as not to be spoiled.

Then at the end of it, you wash your hands of it and wait for the next big release.

People spend years, decades of their writing career trying to write realistic characters with layered motives. Or stories with complex themes.

Comic Book and Screenwriters included.

I myself try very very hard to do so - to provide foreshadowing, and emotional insight into the characters, their motives, their faults.

If I heard someone say that the piece is not worth looking that far into, all the work I've done as a writer gets overlooked.

Writers cannot grow if people are consuming their media without caring enough to look critically at it as the work of a storyteller.

So yes, I'm looking too far into it. Cause writers can write that far into it. And that deserves to be examined, acknowledged, and praised.

To assume less is too assume lesser of the writers who put everything into the media you enjoy.

This year of all years, we should be appreciating the work Screenwriters put in.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - I'm not being an asshole (well, not trying to be).

I'm looking at writers as vital parts of a movies production. Because they are.

We look deeply at the art style, or the animation, or the music. Writers are not shadow figures. They're people with careers. And them and their work deserve to be spoken about and acknowledged as a work of effort just the same as CGI artists or editors, or directors.

I implore you - Read more into it.

If you're a writer yourself, doubly so.

Read FAR into it. Build your analyzation skills, come to your own conclusions. Break the story down every which way and look at the characters from every angle.

It's fun, it's free, it makes the characters so much more real.

So many people on this website hope to one day become published writers. One thing they do to help you achieve that in college, is by racing things like scripts, and looking critically.

Meta analysis is good for you as much as it is the writers.

If you don't think you're cut out for it, or would have nothing to add, still try. Not for the brownie points, but to feel closer to the characters and the story.

If you've seen ATSV (or any Fandom media) and haven't ever really sat and thought about it - everyone's moral stances, why they want what they want, why they've made the mistakes they've had, where you stand on it all - I highly recommend it.

You might come away with some surprising conclusions about characters or even yourself.

Think about your favorite characters, and what might happen to them in the next movie.

There's really nothing wrong with reading that far into it.

Fifteen minutes of thinking, or an hour of writing is nothing compared to the months of work that went into this absolute masterpiece.

Trust me, the first time you catch some shit that makes you go

ITS LIKE A HIGH I TELL YOU.

Touch grass? Nah bro, touch your local library card. Go there right now. Take out this book.

There's gonna be a discussion tomorrow in class.

If you read this far heyhello I think you're rad as hell.

Here's a Hobie for the road because he's a great companion.

Bye.

[winterbirb]

our brains are not built for withstanding the intricacies of every opinion/politics/world events tossed at us at lightling speed. and we are not prepared for it unless we revert to using small internet communities one at a time. or you can be a scholar i guess, but at what cost?

this feels like facing an eldrich monster of information that drives everyone to madness unless you are prepared for it and take it down chunk by chunk.

wish people would stop spreading horrifically simplified information too, e.g. "IT'S A MONSTER!"

Anon you're sooooo right it IS an eldritch monster. And God, at what cost? At what cost indeed? I'm haunted. But at least I managed to shut down a potential Certified Thanksgiving Event (my nana saying the US shouldn't have pressured Israel to do a ceasefire) in a new and interesting way (explaining why Blinken should be given a medal of honor for not throttling him)

And there isn't even any material benefit. None. You can live your whole life without knowing about this stuff. I don't earn any money for it. I'm probably Tony Blinken's saddest loudest fanboy and I'm not even earning psyop money. What's even the reward in knowing? Peeping the horrors? Getting into arguments online trying to get other people to peep the horrors for some reason?

I'm not even a proper scholar! I'm a fraud! I use 1986-1987 Foreign Affairs publications from the dusty shelves of the IR office to make sure my fanfiction is accurate! And then I don't even write the fanfiction, but I keep the information with me, and I open one too many books and suddenly I know that Soviet diplomats were expelled from the UN in 1986. And all this other information from memoirs and biographies that nobody else has any reason to know. Because I'm at heart a comic fan who hunts down issues to study a character except there's no such thing as plot holes in real life, only unknown pieces of the puzzle.

And there's always more connections to learn about so I've done this for the past few years and how can I sum up years of peeping the horror into simple descriptions? I can't! Yet when someone's like "IT'S A MONSTER!" I don't take the Normal Person Route but I try to condense everything and it really doesn't work bc it's like trying to squish a 3d object onto a 2d plane. Not even in an engineering draft way, just a direct squish.

Anyway I'll say it again : u are so right <3

Also it's 2:15 am so I'm doubly incoherent 😔🙏 but your message is already so well written, it explains everything by itself 😹

[blackautmedia]

For any fandom of your choice: 7.what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

13.worst blorboficiation

16you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Oooh, these are good ones!

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

Purah from Legend of Zelda, 100%. "Hate" is a strong word, so more I'm very strongly indifferent to her. Really, I just get weirded out by the near constant hypersexualization with her, especially coming off of BotW making her a small child. Between her and Riju, it's really uncomfortable.

worst blorboficiation

Uncle Iroh. I'm tired of any old animated character of being compared to him for showing kids any degree of decency. Setting aside him being a war criminal and servant of imperial powers for years himself, there's the way they decide who is and isn't deserving of sympathy in who gets written off as "crazy."

I've seen some people point out how the comics try to address this with how he treats Azula, but I've never read them and can't comment on them.

We have no shortage of old animated dudes being loving, supportive people to kids without the same baggage.

Avatar is another one of those shows that falls into "has a lot of great things going for it, but is mired by an unwillingness to have a genuine understanding and dialogue about Orientalism and Imperialism."

you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

I've been watching a lot of people play Persona 3 Reload lately and I don't know if this is really a "trope" per se but I feel people can be really insistent on stories constantly comforting and kissing up to the player character in games?

The number of people who frame this scene as Yukari "Trauma dumping" instead of "Yukari sharing this information because she was uncomfortable with how you were lied to, spied on, and had your personal information shared with others without your consent" comes to mind.

There are a lot of moments where characters are extremely emotional and blow up at you because they're going through a lot and they usually even apologize to you once they calm down.

There's a point where one of your teammates snaps at you saying "you think you know me!?" Mind you, this is minutes after they watched a video of their father being violently killed and they even explicitly apologize and remark on how overwhelmed and scared they feel.

And to me it's just kind of disheartening how I've seen four or five different instances now of people stopping the moment someone snaps at them in the heat of the moment in a game for them to go on a long tangent about how they hate this character now that they had a moment of being emotional.

I don't think it necessarily translates to how people treat their actual friends, but at the same time it's still a real problem for them when someone creates even the slightest bit of discomfort to me. Like do we not ever have friends that have breakdowns or rough moments or even moments of exhaustion where you can let them just do that without labeling them trauma dumpers or whatever?

I've had former friends who would actually do these kinds of things, so I'm always gonna side-eye it when I see it.

I'm not saying to put up with abuse from people, but I also find that stories that brush at even the slightest bit of emotional discomfort get met with so much pushback.

Persona games in general already written with a major power fantasy element in mind, so it's not like the game is ever short on imagining the player character as the bestest, most popular, most athletic, most amazing person ever.

Even several of reload's new scenes feel like they're trying to almost do damage control for characters at times, as if we needed an additional moment to help better "soften" the player to their actions as if what they did was so evil. It also gets doubly weird when you factor in gender and how these things get ten times worse when women are labeled horrible people for acting emotional in emotionally charged situations but nobody has that same heat for men doing the same thing.

Like I remember back when Skyward Sword was new how many people were so heated at Impa for her berating you…once? The game even gives you a moment to rub it back in her face when she's been grounded, but the trope of games constantly need to make sure nobody is ever mean to the player and if they are they're constantly berated by the story for it, much like Revali.

[southslates]

god that zk / d*rkalina post reminds me of why i left that fandom, i really hate how you can’t simply say you don’t like something without a bunch of people jumping on your back accusing you of ‘policing’ them or smth like how is me personally thinking something is gross affecting you? idk. esp since i’m black and they go doubly hard after me if i so much as imply that i don’t like something specifically because of racism / misogynoir.

it’s like when some atla fans get pissed off that not everyone likes aang. like he was never my favorite. after b3 / comics i actively dislike him. but every time i say i don’t like him i’m a monster who bullies 12 y/o and hates ‘non dramatic’ ships. like no, i… simply just do not like him. i never came for you. i just said i don’t like him and his (lack of) character development imo.

sorry for ranting in your inbox i am just sick of being demonized for not liking things by the so called ‘you do you’ crowd. ironically i feel like those white ‘fandom old’ types target people just as much as those they say they despise sometimes :/

right and the most annoying thing is that they claim they're all for you do you, but there's a difference between acknowledging something is unhealthy BUT fictional and romanticizing something that is unhealthy? some people don't seem to draw the line...and like i guess it's "you do you" and that's their business, but if we're going to state our opinions and accept that everyone's opinion is valid as long as they don't infringe upon other's opinions, then like....you can still be criticized

sorry you've dealt with misogynoir and racism in fandom, it really is sad how such a safe place ends up being a microcosm of the world that sometimes even amplifies its worst aspects in very insidious ways, because you leave your guard down when you're in fandom, you assume it's a safe space, and then...

i've always said i never dislike ships because of ships, but because of shippers. i loved darklina and i thought the dynamic was so cool to explore (as i said i've written several fics, like the first was when i was thirteen) but then the way i was harassed on twitter for disliking how people compared it to kanej in some form...ruined the ship for me. like, i never said don't ship it? i basically always said that darklina has a cool dynamic to explore but that i didn't want it to be canon because that is the normalization of abuse in its canonical interpretation. maybe there is a world where it could have been done and it being canon would not have been a bad impression on thirteen year old girls like me, the first time i read the grisha trilogy. but well, it isn't this one. i was there and i wish malina was better in the books lol so i would have found darklina less appealing.

but yes with the aang thing, too! i think the "you do you" anti harassment crowd has its extremes, especially when they defend racist and problematic behavior towards real life individuals in fandom as on the same tier of fictional interaction, especially because this defined "harassment" is not people venting on their accounts without instigating discourse. people will always have their opinions.

zk fandom has had a lot of issues with big name white fans conflating real problematic behavior within the fandom with general proship harassment. it's what drove me out of the fandom last year and i pray it will not happen again because it really really bothered me at the time

but anon i do empathize so so much with you <3 sucks that a supposed safe space like fandom still has so many complications--i just want to do my own thing, and that includes hating on things, in peace ✌️

[shitstrawhatssay]

The reason I think Zoro is abusive to Sanji is because he treats him like he isn't even a human. It's gone BEYOND bickering. I get that friends argue, but friends don't treat friends as if they mean nothing. Zoro reminds me so much of so many of my childhood bullies; the things he does, says, and just the way he hold himself. They do have normal arguments, but they usually start or end with Zoro saying something awful. FRIENDS DON'T TREAT FRIENDS LIKE THEY'RE WORTHLESS

Also, I noticed that in the tags to that post you said that you weren’t sure if you had changed my mind or just spit in my face; do you really think THAT changed my mind? Maybe you would have, if you hadn’t been so mean and aggressive about it. I’m always open to changing my opinion if there is proper information to support it, but because you decided that my question warranted aggression I probably won’t. Personally I would have answered any ask more politely but that might just be me. 

First up, I would like to acknowledge two things: I was passive aggressive.  I was very frustrated at the time because I like to talk. I like to express myself in the written form and that frustration bled into my language. I apologise if my words read hatefully towards you. I also should have been conscious that I had no idea what sort of context you were speaking from but I would like to state given the information on you I had available at the time, I wrongfully assumed you were going to be speaking from sort of puritanical, anti-problematic anything stance. If that is not the case, I doubly apologise and I hope you feel as though this is coming from the bottom of my heart because I am genuinely apologising.

Secondly, I would like to acknowledge that I am definitely projecting onto canon for where i’m going to pull my interpretations on hence, why I included that reply - not because I think the person who left said reply is the same person has asked for an explanation as to how I perceive the canon dynamics and relationships of Sanji between the two Strawhats in question.

I one hundred percent wholly believe in the True Companions and Found Family tropes the Strawhats are built on. Are made of. I realise there is a lot of bias because I have an embarassingly deep desire to have a friendship group that emulates the Strawhats due to my own experiences in real life friendships. Perhaps I’ve been socialised to accept what goes beyond the boundaries of “normal friendships” and this is completely screwed bias talking but….

I refuse to let anyone slander their canon relationships of friendships, of nakama, of familial bonds.

Sanji and Zoro are built on the comical trope of bickering. One Piece is a comedy. Their friction is played for laughs because it is shown time and time again that when the going gets tough, well they stick it out together. That is the formula their platonic relationship works on. 

However, fanon is a completely different issue. Seeing your childhood bullies in Zoro is fanon. Seeing romantic relationships between most of the characters is fanon. Seeing abusive or hateful relationships between the Strawhats is most definitely fanon since time and time again, the Strawhats have proven they would go through Hell for each other. Each and everyone one of them would. Every single combination of them would because they love each other: they’re what I could consider platonic soul mates. Including Sanji and Zoro.

Unfortunately Anon, the best advice I can give to you to this ridiculous discourse to an end is that you have to learn to cherry pick your fanon better. Blacklist characters you don’t like. Blacklist ships and buzz words you hate. Avoid the stripes of artists and writers who don’t cut it for you. That’s okay. 

Everyone brings their personal context to a piece of media first and foremost and that affects how they will react and interpret. 

My next piece of advice is that if you think you’ll dislike something, don’t bother asking those who like it why they like it. Even if you have the intention of wanting to be open minded and wanting to change your own mind, it never ends well.

You’re allowed to have the most popular ships in fandom as your NOTPs and you’re allowed to say that. I have. On this very blog. I have mentioned time and time again that I dislike LawLu/most Luffy ships in general. So, I just avoid and blacklist whilst maintaining a belief of “ship and let ship” because I accept and acknowledge people will have differing perceptions of media. I love the diversity. Sometimes, it leads to conflict but sometimes, it can lead to something beautiful.

TLDR: blacklist, unfollow, block and avoid because we all have different experiences and those experiences will affect perceptions of media and surround yourself with fanon you agree with.

And please don’t try and find my main. I don’t want this there either.

So, to conclude: have a nice day, Anon.

- Mod Strawhat