#media analyses

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

The kind of Christ Figure the writers intended Jack to be: pure, glowing, wholesome, REALITY-BREAKINGLY POWERFUL DONT WORRY ABOUT IT, too-good-for-this-world White Bread Midwestern Evangelical Second Coming

The kind of Christ Figure Jack ACTUALLY became: everyone debating whether he IS God, or whether he and God are two aspects of the same being, if he counts as "Divine", is he a demigod etc etc etc

@jackgirlbluntrotation @very-offkey-kazoo @wrenchenthusiast

here. im not sorry

[flutishly]

At a family-adjacent event, someone from the other side of the family (who I know fairly well at this point) asked me "Have you ever read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?" She knows that I love reading and like talking about books, so it wasn't completely out of left field, but given how much I adore Wolf Hall, it caught me off guard for a moment. Yes, I replied, it's actually genuinely one of my favorite books.

She then started talking about the reasons she mostly hated it. And it wasn't from a perspective of dismissing my love or tearing it down. She talked about how much she admired the writing and about how much she disliked the characters. "He's such a difficult main character," she mused. Yes! I cried, he is!

The whole time, we had this conversation while explicitly coming from different places in terms of engaging with this piece of art, coming from different generations (classic Boomer versus Millennial), and seeking different satisfaction from the art itself. She had just finished the book and I read it years ago, when it came out. But even though we had fundamentally different experiences reading the book, we forged a fascinating conversation. We argued over the literary merits of having such a flawed, difficult protagonist, about what it means to like that (as I do), and more.

And it's these sorts of conversations that I think are sorely missing from fandom. This debate wasn't an argument and it wasn't passive acceptance of someone else's other opinion with no pushback. There were aspects that were obviously just down to taste, but other things were interpretative or contextual. When I compared Wolf Hall as a contrast to the film "A Man For All Seasons", she brought up "Anne of the Thousand Days". Our interpretations were different. Our experiences were different. But that didn't prevent us from finding the contact points.

I love being able to engage with art (as should be pretty obvious by this entire blog). I love watching or reading something and going "ah yes, here is something I liked" and then discussing it. I also often like saying "ah yes, here is something I deeply disliked". My dislike usually doesn't negate my like (if I have it) or even someone else's like (if I don't). Today, gifmakers will often bristle at the idea of tags that don't fully embrace the characters or scenes depicted in the gifs. But for me, part of sharing something is having that discussion. If I'm sharing a gifset, it's because I like it and I want to be able to address something particular in that gifset. Sometimes, I find a relationship compelling without necessarily shipping them; does that mean I can't/shouldn't share something that comes from a place of viewing them romantically, while elaborating on that thought? Maybe, maybe not.

"Make your own post" is the common refrain, but that's exactly what I find missing. Smaller fandoms sometimes manage to have these conversations, but there's a sense that it's always the exception. Fandom revolves around the love of a thing, often leaving little room for truly nuanced discussions of what does or doesn't work for others. Ultimately, I'm surprised and gratified to have found exactly what I was looking for at a child's birthday party, discussing a book I really loved between the salad and the cake. I just wish I could have it within my other fandom communities as well.

[threvlin]

List of media where two men broke up and made it everyone else's problem:

X-Men

Transformers

Arcane

Please add to the list.

[werewolfpurfect]

So yall I'm making a substack to write my thoughts on various media! I am really excited about this, as I always wanted a creative outlet for that kind of thing! First post will be on 2022's Poison Ivy comics and the way they portray humanity and inhumanity! https://substack.com/@errohle

[scatter-brain-at-work]

Fav Video Essays (Media edition)

making one big post because posting individually would be super annoying.

1.  Msscribe: The Harry Potter Fandom's Greatest Con-Artist - When Posting Goes Wrong  

In fact all the internet history videos by this creators are just so morbidly fascinating. These videos will be iconic in future like the records of past forgotten battles.

2.  Sherlock Is Garbage, And Here's Why

Absolute legend of a video. This video was when I started examining media I consume critically. 

3.  The Evolution of Destiel: A Video Essay

yeah, I watched a few (lot) of destiel and supernatural analysis videos in last few months. No reason why. The creator has a sequel to that video as well that i’m not adding separately. This creator I believe was the only creator whose video I watched who was still actively in the fandom till the end. So I value their opinion a little more than all the other videos I saw on the topic.

4.  The Supernatural Finale Aired, And Tumblr Exploded

I’m limiting myself to only two spn analysis videos. Although, Sarah Z has other bangers like her TJLC video, Dashcon video. She’s a great Tumblr Historian Video maker lmao.

5.   The Hobbit: The Desolation of Warners (Part 3/2)

You can never go wrong with Lindsey Ellis. She’s the OG. But her trilogy analyses of Hobbit trilogy just stuck with me. Particularly the third video that was sort of meta analysis of the real world impact Hobbit had. Super interesting.

6.  The Evolution Of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching

Surprisingly I haven’t watched that many videos of Rowan Ellis, but I loved the way she said ‘The Author is dead, babeyy!” She makes tons of lgbt focused media videos. I found this one to be particularly informative.

7.  Let's Get Sad - A Last of Us Video Essay

I legit clicked on this because I wanted to be sad about the last of us. I’ve watched as many videos of the creator as I could, i.e. all the videos of stuff I’ve watched. Her videos are like a friend rambling to you why they like that movie/show and I just love to listen. 

8.  Passengers, Rearranged

nerdwriter1. ‘Nuf said. No but seriously, this video just stuck with me and even though I had forgotten where I had watched it, every time Passenger played on tv, I talked about the rearranging thing. Haven’t watched much of his recent stuff. But all the videos in his most popular list, I’ve watched.

9.  The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory

Stopped watching TBBT because of this video. And before you come for me like ‘haw you liked TBBT before that?’, listen, I’m not the best at consuming media critically. Hence, so many video essays.

10.  The Karen Trope, Explained

The Take are really great at dissecting media, particularly from a female pov. I love their tropes videos, character videos n all. But this video in particular made me think a lot about the power dynamics and power politics among women. I never thought I would be, but i’m sympathetic to the Karen because of this (not that I excuse their actions). It just made me think a lot about the toxic mother in law trope in Indian cultures, idk. 

I think 10 is a good number to stop at. Wow, this just ended up mostly being media essays. I’ll do another one about all the philosophy and history stuff I watch.