#meta criticism

[yusuke-of-valla]

"People are allowed to change things in adaptations!" Is the "well it's not illegal" of adaptation defenses.

If your only defense of a change is that they can do it, and not how it helps the story, then that change is probably pointless and unmotivated. Or it sounds like it.

There are lots of reasons to make a change! Limitations of a new medium, wanting to expand on a certain character or idea, wanting to explore a theme from a new angle, changing with the times.

Moulin Rouge and Legally Blonde the Broadway musicals are both very different from the movies they're based on, and I really like them! I think they're interesting takes that stand on their own and embrace the new medium and I can point to every change and explain why I like them!

And obviously not everyone's going to like or agree with the reasoning you give, and they're allowed to say that's dumb or not worth it. But at least you're not grasping for the bare fucking minimum

[polarity-disturbed]

So I just finished watching Philosophy Tube’s latest video, “The Problem with Video Essays”, and as someone who consumes an embarrassing amount of video essays, I really appreciated how self-aware and thoughtful it was.

There are two quotes in particular that stuck with me:

“There is no lossless adaptation of reading to video.” – 25:56

This hit hard. Because yeah, video essays can be gorgeous, engaging, and emotionally resonant—but they’re not the same as actually reading, and they shouldn't try to be. There’s something uniquely valuable in the kind of slow, deliberate thinking that reading encourages. And no matter how well a video is written, something always gets reshaped in the translation. That’s not a flaw, necessarily, just… something to be mindful of. Form affects function.

“I think it’s a useful skill to be able to engage with a piece of media that doesn’t get everything right and find some value in it, because that’s how we sharpen our critical thinking skills.” – 26:42

This. This right here. I wish more people would sit with this idea. Not everything you engage with needs to be perfect to be worth your time. Learning how to find value in flawed media—without turning off your brain or glossing over its problems—is such an underrated skill. It’s how you grow as a viewer, a thinker, and a creator.

Anyway, if you’re into video essays, meta-criticism, or just want to hear someone smart reflect on the ethics and limitations of online media analysis, I’d definitely recommend giving it a watch.

Critical thinking is cool. Nuance is cool. We love a little epistemological humility in this house.

[jayblanc]

There's a Video Games Commentator that I'm not going to name, who made an infamous 7/10 review of Zelda BotW, and now doubled down with a 7/10 review of ToTK that uses the exact same reasons to dislike it as the first review.

I am reminded of Joe Queenan's review of Good Omens.

BotW and ToTK are games that are massive toolkits of ways to solve the problems it presents you with. Weapon degradation is one of those problems, you can solve it by not using combat as your only tool, or picking up one of the many many many weapons just laying around.

If you are instead going to insist the game aught to be suited to the way you want it to be, then yes, it's going to be a bad time. But it's not 'forcing' you to do anything. There are almost always multiple ways to tackle something…

As one of the screenshots in the review shows, the game will absolutely let you try to attack a Boss Moblin with it's infantry squad when you only have four hearts and starter gear. But maybe don't, because it'll be difficult, so do something else? There's a lot of something else

They went out of their way to let you tackle most problems without restriction. Build a wall around a boss, and throw stuff at them from outside! They let you. If the thing you're doing has stoped being fun, you can also just go tackle something else till you think of a fun way.

I'm trying very hard now not to say there's a "wrong way to play the game". But if you're stubbornly playing in exactly one way and only that way, despite the game begging you not to explicitly in it's save hints, maybe you are playing it wrong?

[petrenocka]

/rp; assume all names have 'c!' before them unless stated otherwise.

Am I the only one who thinks that Butcher Army came out of nowhere?

Like, we had this good guys™ defeat an evil tyrant and Techno being ominous about corrupting properties of power, foreshadowing their fall from grace. Than suddenly [snap.mp3]! All bad guys, with little to no build up.

It definitely wasn't cc!Techno's fault, but Butchers suddenly being a thing felt like a Marry Sue moment for Techno when reality and established characters bent around him in ormisder to present his enemies in a bad light. And it was a moment that was necessary for the story to move forward.

And not like there was no time and material for this build up. Quackity was Jschlatt's right (real) hand man, and L'manburg was a government, so corruption was possible, even likely, the problem is that it happened instantly instead of gradually. And there was definitely enough time too. Technoblade had his entire retirement ark (hot take: i think it was really good) between Nov 16 and Execution, but L'manburgians spent this time in El Rapids and other things I don't even know the name of.

My point is - Quackity’s villain monologue was cool and progressed the story, but is felt really forced. As if we were missing a huge chunk of the story.

Pacing and planning of that entire segment was horrific. And it suspiciously lines up with cc!Wilbur leaving his role as a main writer. I am not hating on him for that, just saying that it likely is a reason for why storylines are so chaotic.

[eggmacguffin]

One thing I really dislike about stranger things is the treatment of the character of Billy Hargrove (sp?) bc I dont like that, of the two prominent characters who explicitly have their childhood abuse shown in the series and are seemingly suffering from the effects of it:

One of them is Eleven, but in season 2 a lot of her symptoms of trauma from parental abuse (such as monosyllabic speaking) are written off as fun, silly quirks, or forgotten entirely

The other is Billy, who is a racist, misogynist, violent, abusive asshole, who definitely shows symptoms of his trauma. Because the narrative indicates that it MADE him that way. and he is an irredeemable villain. how were we, the audience intended to react to the scene with his father threatening him?

And all the fans excusing him, saying, "Oh, its okay that he acts this way, he was abused so he can't help it?" Fuck that shit so hard. I hate that so much.

Now Max, as a character living in the same household, could show some childhood trauma symptoms that aren't just saying that her brother is scary. but then she wouldn't be as "cool", I guess???

Like, the handling of Will's supernatural trauma is done really well.

This is probably a bunch of nonsense anyway, parental child abuse sets me off like nothing else and maybe I'm just dumb.

I just hate narratives using child abuse as a stepping stone to inherent and ready villainy.

I would rather the character just be cruel for no reason than be a victim of child abuse confirmed by the creators to be an irredeemable monster as a result of said child abuse.

I think that that is hurtful and irresponsible and it pisses me off.

[yusuke-of-valla]

My hot take is that I do think "every female character is attracted to the male protagonist with no regard for the context" should be considered playersexual, or like playersexual adjacent if we want to separate them out

Because like. The critique with playersexual writing is that it doesn't take into account the context of who the player character is and how that would affect the relationship, but the way that always gets expressed is "why are all these characters bisexual, it's unrealistic?" which as a Bi person I gotta say! Makes me feel like shit.

But that kind of "ignores the actual context" absolutely shows up in games with romances that are ONLY straight too! Like first off, how many groups of like 8 women genuinely end up with the same type and attracted to the same person?

Second, if you romance Kawakami in Persona 5, for example, it completely breaks her arc. It doesn't make sense that she would pursue a romantic relationship with a student, especially with Kamoshida as the opening act of the game, it makes her come across as a worse teacher, and generally it's kind of messed up! Literally the only way you can argue it works is if you assume it's for the player. Because adult fans might not want to pursue a romance with a teenage girl character but would with a teacher.

Like idk this isn't what LRP was talking about but I've seen enough of the criticsm boiled down to "why are all these characters bisexual" that I want to stress the actual problem is basically just saying "this romance should happen because player", regardless of the presence of an opposite-gendered PC

[yusuke-of-valla]

I've talked about this before but it drives me up the wall the way people just let the writers' and audiences biases off the hook by blaming the character.

"Kawakami is just as bad as Kamoshida because she has a romance option!" Ok so on the one hand we can argue about canonically and scale or whether this PNG woman is problematic OR

We can talk about the fact that the writers clearly do not believe women can actually be predatory or commit sexual assault, a belief that is widespread and effects real life because it is held by actual people and does not bother or click for a lot of audiences because, again, this is a widespread belief that people either actively or implicitly believe.

Characters suck because the writers have beliefs, and if those beliefs are harmful maybe the discussion should be about the writers instead of the fictional characters

[yusuke-of-valla]

the reason I consider it bad that Persona 5 tries to make Madarame sympathetic AND bad it fails to make Okumura sympathetic is not because I have a blanket opinion on how every case of abuse should be depicted for a story to be Moral(tm)

It's because the story they are trying to tell is harmed by trying to convince me Madarame cared about Yusuke in any way more complex than him being useful, and it is also harmed by me coming away from the Okumura arc thinking he definitely worked hundreds of workers to either death or the point of complete emotional breakdown and is willing to enable sexual predation of his own daughter because it wants me to think changing his heart was a mistake.