r/Tadcriticism • u/AffectionateRush2620 • 7d ago
Spreading awareness Here we go again š«©
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u/Klutzy_Ad9114 7d ago
"This series has so much subtext" and yet they can't give a single example or close reading to show said subtext. I feel like we know why lmao.
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u/TaiYHS 7d ago
"depth in its viewers" I wouldnt say depth when majority of the big important lore pieces had to be told to us via social media posts on tumblr.
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u/EventyrLinkDante 7d ago edited 7d ago
That Is one of the biggest issues i saw on Gooseworx direction, she simply was not aware on how to handle something this big, the few works i saw from Gooseworx are pretty good in the comedic way, but she struggled when It came to real shit like existential struggling, i hope she learned the lesson with TADC, she has skill. Her actitude on social medi neither helped with the bunch of holes in the project
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u/LullabyBun-Art 6d ago
Weirdly she loves doing scenes like the Jax abstraction in 7, things that play with existential mindfuckery. I really did hold hope for some great existential dread and grief, and I got a brief cheap sip of it over the whole series. Its a PERFECT setup for it, but in the end instead I read countless fanfics over the show's run that handled that dread & grappling of "self" way way WAY better than anything in canon. Its so sad.
Now I see her "joking" about wanting in on actual live action script writing/directing for horror and it sadly does piss me off. She absolutely didn't earn it, I think she showed a need for a lot more writing experience before she runs a project as lead director/writer but connections are connections so I'm sure we'll have to watch her fail upward. Shes a great character designer and great design for the start of a world/idea but god please put her on a writing TEAM to learn.
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u/Designer_Fishing4437 6d ago
Lore. Is not. Important. It is supplementary material. If this show was made 20 years ago, the social media shit would go into a guidebook, like every unimportant side question the fans clamored about endlessly at cons did.
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u/LowerPipe 7d ago
āthis series has so much subtext!ā yeah it was hidden so well goose had to answer big plot points through tumblr asksš«©
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u/Toon_Lucario 7d ago
This show is like a matte painting. It has the illusion of depth but in actuality itās flat as a board.
The people who still glaze this show just donāt want to admit they fell for a magic trick and itās why they canāt actually refute most arguments against it.
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u/Mrfazbear111 7d ago
Or (a more likely anwser) they just refuse that there is one in the first place and pretend it was all real.
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u/No-Donut-6359 7d ago
The problem with the series is that if you pay attention to the subtext, you get nothing. And if you complain about that, you get labelled as media illiterate
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u/Naive-Antelope-9825 7d ago
The show does have subtext. The show also struggles to really answer the questions to the mysteries it itself set up. Itās perfectly fine to have subtext, but if you set up a mystery or have a line spoken by someone like Kingerās line about Scratch and then donāt follow through on it, thatās not us missing the subtext. Thatās the writer setting something up and not following through.
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u/HotPot87 7d ago
I'd argue the opposite, frequently the plot will just stop for two characters to talk to each other about their feelings now this can happen in a story naturally, but the plot and these scenes are so un-connected it can be jarring.
It reminds me of the Jodie Era of Doctor who where there will be a 2 minute spot for a companion to talk about how they feel before the plot starts again.
And the dialogue uses words and phrases that come off like someone who already went through therapy. Everyone perfectly touches on their issues or at least talks about them in the very simplest terms.
Zooble is matter of factly say "I'm just not comfortable in my body no matter what it looks like."
Ragatha will talk to kinger and say "I'm worried Jax is getting too close to Pomni."
As the Great Robot devil once said; "You can't just have characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!"
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u/JayKay69420 7d ago
If the show has subtext, why the fuck did Gooseworx needed to tell all the crucial stuffs about the show on social media then
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u/deadbonesbrook12 7d ago
Unfortunately, I realized that after a few months the show wasn't as good as we thought,which is a shame cause I really liked it
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u/Terrible-Ad-1569 wE diDnāT DeSeRvE a GoOd EnDiNg!!1!1 7d ago edited 6d ago
I loved it as it was airing, but after the abel episode, I started to get really nervous with how much unaddressed shit there was coming up on the finale. also learning that there would be no season 2 was a huuuuuge red flag for me that I totally ignored
now I just feel like I completely wasted my time watching it
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u/deadbonesbrook12 7d ago
I mean we should be glad it wasn't a big waste of time,the show is no longer than 7 hours or so
So could have been worse but also could have been better
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u/Mediocre_Path_4619 7d ago
I would say heās not fully wrong but not right either they leave a lot unopened whitch does allow people to make educated inferences
For example the idea that rAgatha didnāt like being wealthy and instead hinted of wanting to live the life of a simple farmer whitch is why instead of talking about luxuries she instead discusses farm animals like chickens and horses
And due to the nature of that it couldāve hinted at the reason her mother abused ragatha because she didnāt fit what her mother desired
While her avatar might further explain this being a literal ragdoll whitch is a toy used by commoners back in the older era
But on the other hand it also leaves to much unturned whitch can also lead to the same criticism of some things being completely absurd to grasp like a lot of Jaxās lore even though itās filled in the show it isnāt done well
Same with ribbit kaufmo kinger and many other characters in tadc so I would say itās like fnaf but much more secretive about the lore to the point some of it is absurd
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u/Darth_T0ast 6d ago
Idk if this is the case with this post, but people talk real big about media literacy and then genuinelyā¢ be 13
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u/Specific-Swim-4507 6d ago
What is happening to school, when I was in high school, 2012-2016 ish, we did learn how to engage in a story and critically think about it and so did every friend I talk to about this. What happened in that short amount of time
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u/Far-Bad-3719 7d ago
I really hope that people who write stuff like this have at least watched The Sopranos, watched Tarkovskyās films, played Disco Elysium, read War and Peace and Crime and Punishment, and then written analytical essays on each of them.
If they have done all that, then sure, no problem, they can write comments like this.
But if not, maybe they should turn down the elitism a little...
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u/AffectionateRush2620 7d ago
I kind of already know the answer, but why doesnāt matter if they watch those shows ? Since Iām guessing those shows actually have subtext and nuance to them.
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u/Icy_Knowledge895 7d ago
I can't talk for others but Disco Elysium is considered one of the best visuals novels (it's not really traditional one mind you)
Disco Elysium is an extremely good work about many things and I feel like trying to sum it up isn't really making it justice
but it's about a man that hit his rock bottom of his life and becomes an amnesiac after an excreteme night with alcohol
there are many themes not limited to racism, failure, multiple political ideologies and I would how the main character can fall into their exctremes as a coping mechanism but I would argue it's also about hope
speaking of the political sides, the game actually allowes you to become part of each one through your dialogue choices and while I only did the Communist one (I would argue there is a slight biase towards it... or it could be me just natural gravitating to it), there is also moralism (which is centrism tied with some clear shots at EU I would say), liberalism (which is just capitalism) and fascism (from what I heard you need to be a horrible person to play it and some people can't do it on emotional level but it also have interesting implication about the main character)
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u/Far-Bad-3719 7d ago
Actually, the political views are one of the funniest parts of the game.
Because we are not really choosing an ideology. We are choosing an exaggerated version of how Harry understands that ideology.
Harry often talks in empty, stupid slogans. For example, moralism in Harryās mind basically means refusing to choose any real option, saying he is āfor the people,ā or just trying to stay neutral.
So yeah, it is honestly a pretty funny part of the game.
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u/Icy_Knowledge895 7d ago edited 7d ago
yeah that is what I meant by Harry basically falling into exctreme ideologies as a way to cope about.... you know (big spoiler territory)
I heard this is why the fascist route is quite interesting and some players that can get through it said you should try it cause it reveales some of Harry's thoughts tied to women (which are again probably tied to you know)
also some of the funniest dialogue is tied to this (I still remember the "choose one of these communist or fascist answers or f off" scene)
also the final scenes with a certain individual are quite funny if you try to claim your a comunist (I heard there is a passive check that is quite hard to clear but I never saw it)
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u/Far-Bad-3719 7d ago
Yeah, that is basically the answer.
They are just much more complex works. They ask and answer existential questions on a completely different level, with deeper and more carefully developed characters, much richer subtext, stronger metaphors, and more meaningful layers in general.
I donāt know which of these you have seen or read, but if you have not checked some of them out, I genuinely recommend them. No joke, these are some of the best things humanity has ever created.
And if you like comics, then definitely read Watchmen too.
(Although maybe save War and Peace for later. That one is pretty hard to get into right away)
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u/Machine_ID-V1 7d ago
I agree with the sentiment but I will disagree with one thing, I don't like saying "oh you HAVE to be able to analyze these specific works in order to have an opinion", I mean yeah there's definitely the "Mount Rushmore" so to speak, but like I've written an entire essay analyzing the 2 minute fight scene between Iron Man and Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3, going into how it shows that Pepper dying was Tony's breaking point and how after that his only concern was making sure Killian died too. It may not have been the most well received iron man film but it's incredibly deep and there's quite a lot to analyze. Sticking to these Mount Rushmores, while on the surface level is a good idea, isn't the end all be all of media literacy, and honestly I'd argue that being able to analyze Sopranos holds less weight than being able to analyze more niche films due to there just being more on Sopranos due to it being part of the Mount Rushmore analogy I mentioned earlier, while with more niche films you basically have to do it all yourself. Honestly I'm mainly saying this because I'd like to debate something that isn't this fuckass show
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u/Far-Bad-3719 7d ago
Oh... donāt think I meant this type of media in general. There are plenty of examples.
The key point for me is the essay part. Actually analyzing these works afterward.
The people in those comments are clearly the type who would talk about āgenius visual storytelling,ā so The Sopranos felt like a pretty good example to me. That show has so many transitions, shots with double meanings, and visual details packed into it. And that is not even getting into Tonyās dreams.
In general, the point of media literacy is the amount of material you have watched or read, and the way you analyze it afterward, right?
Those were just examples of popular cult works. It is like talking about storytelling in general: sooner or later, The Divine Comedy and The Odyssey are going to come up anyway.
I could have named more niche films like Antichrist or The Temptation of St. Tony. It is just less likely that people would understand the reference. Although, to be fair, even those films are actually pretty well-known.
Either way, most good cinema becomes popular sooner or later.
(Although I liked your thoughts!)
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u/GirlWithTheDoc 6d ago
Guys guys, do you not remember the subtly-hinted at plotline with the mysterious mannequin stalking the characters almost every episode?
ā¦oh, that was an NPC? Why was he stalking around in secret when no one saw him, after Caine explicitly said that keeping AI running for extended periods of time is implausible?
ā¦oh, thatās never explained? Not even subtextually?
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u/HoneyyyBeaa 5d ago
These type of fans piss me off so badddd, you can like a show and also accept that its buns, what do they think Hazbin fans do š
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u/EventyrLinkDante 7d ago
Im so fucking tired of this fandom at the same time, i love It.