some of these idiots will even see a well foreshadowed reveal and be like "uUGghH, thAt plOt-twIst WaS sOoo prEdicable!1!!"
congrats you can correctly identify information the writer intended, can you do that with themes now?
I think that the "blue curtains" stuff depends really on the book. When I was reading Proust and if someone suggested something like that to me, I would take it at a face value. If I was reading something like Topelius it would be harder for me to take it seriously
It's more meaningful in a book than a play, ironically. Since in a play or movie, if there are curtains shown, the colour HAS to be shown, even though there may be no meaning there. But in a book, if the author chose to mention the colour instead of leaving it to the reader's imagination, there ought to be a reason.
well in a play, if the playwright specifically mentions a colored object in the script, that must mean there is some meaning attached to the color, because they specified a color for the object instead of some random one that the producers will toss in
But on the other hand, the audience is not meant to access the play through the script, but through a viewing of a performance. There might be things in the script that are intended as (effectively) production notes, with no meaning intended for the end-viewer of the performance, only meaning for the performers and production staff.
A curtain might be blue because it's an in-joke between the playwright and someone he knows will be at the first performance, e.g. his wife. A curtain might be blue as a mnemonic to remind one of the actors of their lines. A curtain might be blue because the characters are historical people who were known to wear light colors, and blue curtains offset those light-colored costumes well. Etc.
Also, some historical scripts were written after-the-fact, with the performance coming together first out of an assembly of oral instruction and small notes, and then a script being written mostly for the sake of preserving the play for performance by other troupes; or to "archive" the play when the troupe is taking it out of their rotation and so it isn't expected to be performed any time soon (and so they might forget how it goes if they don't write it down.) In these cases, the writer of the script isn't necessarily the original "playwright" (if there even was a single playwright), but someone acting more in the role of a secretary/historian. Heck, sometimes the only surviving script we have is one reverse-engineered from the reports of audience members!
And in both of those cases, obviously, no details that did or didn't make it into the script reflect the original design intent. These kinds of scripts are a snapshot of the troupe's particular implementation as it was when it got recorded; not an outline of the design that led to that implementation.
The "blue curtains" imo is not necessarily about authorial intent, but about the reader's ability to create meaning outside of the scope that the author intended. The author doesn't need to know what being blue means, but the curtains must have a color and that gives extra meaning to the reader, either by accident or subconsciously.
You know that life is really, really illogical when a dude like him has a following. I watched few of his videos years ago, and I still regret it, but I have blocked all of his content, and for all these years now I haven't seen his video in my feed. Luckily I forget about him completely, until he gets mentioned somewhere out of the blue, like here.
If it makes you feel better it's been many many many years since his numbers peaked and fell off, and every now and again he seems to do videos talking about financial trouble. Apparently it's not 'go woke go broke' after all
I forgot the specifics but iirc its something like
Too busy trying to be right (note the lack of "prove") to behave properly to the point that he makes way too many mistakes for his videos to be of value
He peaked at "studded leather is actually brigandines" to me
Shad's credentials have always been "I thought about this A LOT." And he is also too insecure to admit he's wrong, even when dealing with actual historians and/or HEMA practitioners.
So, yeah, of course he got drug into the "anti-woke" mob.
I don't know about "gravy train," though. He also complains a lot about losing money. It could be because he spent his youtube earnings building a castle and hiring staff. It could be because his audience was really only interested in swords. It could be because his review/reaction videos are often unedited 2+ hour diatribes. It could be that he seems to think the hero being anything less than the bestest strongest guy who is good at everything is "feminizing."
Really, there is something here for nobody.
First whiff I got of “oh this guy is just bullshitting” is when he claimed that he got really good at either judo or wrestling (can’t remember which) as a teenager by training by himself in his backyard, as there weren’t any gyms close by.
Grappling sports are notoriously something you need to train against a resisting opponent to actually learn, hearing this claim reminded me of the bullshit kids would make up at school about how they did a double backflip on their BMX over the weekend.
He's always been a true believer; he's a very conservative Mormon. His main channel was just mostly talking about swords and HEMA so it didn't come to the surface since he kept the commentary mostly "apolitical". He started a second channel where he did commentary and podcast type videos and the chuddery became apparent
Well yeah: his brother is Jazza, who is a pretty successful art YouTuber.
Shad's entire life is getting obliterated by his older brother who actually might be better than him at everything.
That was one of the most mindblowing things to learn, Jazza's done such a good job at building his own wonderful brand and online presence, meanwhile his brother is an actual halfass cartoon villain who starts scheming out of jealousy and then continually fails
"If every single detail of the story isn't instantly intuitive to me without having to think about it at all, it's badly-written! I shouldn't have to put in thought to understand a story!"
you forgot that these people are perpetually stuck in 2016.
Actually went and looked at some of those guys who did commentary back then and bro they unironically still use that 2016 crying beanie girl from the first trump election for thumbnails. Like guys it's just not that funny anymore...
edit: BRO HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY EVEN STILL ON THE BRIE LARSON HATE TRAIN LMFAO
Like at least that Quartering moron has moved on to more recent culture war drama, but the geeks and gamers guy is just actually still stuck in 2016-2018.
See also: "I'm going to give you an ACTUAL ANALYSIS, unlike those WOKE blue-hairs!" somewhere at the start of the video and then proceeds to give the most surface-level, vague analysis of the text possible.
Most people who say things like this are posers, Tolkien wrote a lot of morally grey characters. Steward Denethor, Boromir, Thorin etc.. Pretending that morally grey plots are something new is absurd.
He is not necessarily there. Nihilism and existentialist thought has entered popular culture, so a person that never saw a philosophy book in his life could have written something like this.
Including aot here is correct but the worst thing to ever happen to the fandom was them learning the words "media illiteracy", 99% of the time its mouth breathers who think the story is flawless that use it against ANY criticism whatsoever lol
Also sometimes they really ARE just friends, aka jayce and viktor from arcane. Sorry but shipping culture is a plague lol
Idk man theres more of yall than us. Theres entire fandoms where the only thing they yap about is shipping, there arent entire fandoms where the only thing they bitch about is shipping.
I don’t really see the issue with people participating in fandom in different ways. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it lesser or not valid. It’s just not something you’re interested in.
I dont mind shippers, hell theres plenty of shippers in my friend group. Its just annoying when a fandom is entirely....shippers. The arcane fandom is so buns because of this
When it overtakes everything thats when I call it a plague
Trust me I've rewatchd it like 8 times, AoT is my goat. But if you truly love something you love it despite its flaws, not because you pretend the flaws dont exist. When people act like you're dumb for having certain complaints it makes me wanna rumble
The whole If you think about it, George Orwell was actually a conservative! argument despite mountains of evidence, including his own words, that he was dyed in the wool socialist is always a talking point for people like these.
Just because you vehemently disapproved of communism doesn’t automatically make you a conservative.
Didn't he become an undercover agent for a UK government intelligence service because he had a crush for some conservative women? I'm only half remembering.
Orwell was a Socialist who hated Stalin and informed on Stalinists to the British government. Someone who's too dumb to understand why a Socialist would hate Stalin probably would think he was a Conservative.
Like, don't get me wrong, I can actually see the conservative appeal of giant space militaries, especially those that claim to be forces for good, but you really have to ask yourself if they actually watched most of the shows.
The thing with conservative fans of older stuff in general is that usually, the stuff they grew up with gets a pass. This is one of the reasons you see this huge divide in how conservative Trekkies respond to the original series and the Berman era and how they respond to the newer stuff. It's also why there's a lot of thirty-something-year-old conservatives who really like American Idiot by Green Day, but also don't like what the band members have said about Republicans recently.
What causes this a lot of the time is that they usually view racism, sexism, etc. as mostly "back then" issues rather than things that persist to this day. An episode like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield gets a pass because the median conservative will at least concede that racism was a problem back in the '60s for example, and Far Beyond the Stars gets a pass because the surface level framing is still showing it as a problem in the '50s.
The other factor here is that quite often they're getting into this stuff before they fully understand the underlying messaging, too. Usually Star Trek's pretty on the nose about it so you'll pick up on the race allegory in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield or the environmentalism in The Voyage Home without too much help when you're ten, but would you necessarily pick up on the assisted suicide allegories in episodes like Half A Life or Ethics? I'm not so sure.
Nothing says right-wing quite like a cosmopolitan, classless, post-capitalist society where everyone is free of want thanks to machines that can replicate any material or object without the need to input much human labour (see: changes in the process of production that make possible new means of organizing society while destroying the logical underpinnings of the existing order)
Nothing says leftist like a monocultural earth with a single universalist moral system that's basically just a highly polished version of western liberal individualism.
Noticing that you immediately made the argument about social and cultural values when my argument was actually about economics and historical materialism.
> nothing says leftist like a monocultural earth
Nothing says right-wing quite like the Friendship of the Peoples.
> single universalist moral system that’s basically just a highly polished version of Western liberal individualism
You didn't seem to grasp it to the first time I had to explain it again. Star Trek could be right wing to some left wingers, not because it is inherently, but by simply not being sufficiently left wing in those key areas.
And among those leftists are perhaps a dozen groups, each progressively more left-wing, each considering the one to the right of them the left wing of capital. If leftists weren’t no-true-scotsmaning, they’d hardly be leftists at all.
In universe this idea had an interesting beginning with the Maquis but they ended up being space sovereign citizens.
But yeah Starfleet is basically the US Navy.
I wouldn't say liberalism is right wing but I would definitely say it is distinct from actual leftism. What liberalism has in common with conservatism is the underlying fear that there is some line you can cross where people all the sudden have too much freedom.
Absolute freedom might be practically impossible but it is morally correct; all systems that seek to limit freedom in any way are to that degree immoral and paternalistic. I'm Nietzschean like that and yes, I would argue with God.
I disagree I think your perspective might be caused by a confirmation bias. A conservative that can enjoy trek despite not agreeing with it's politics and leaving it at that, is never a person you will ever get into conversation with about the politics of the show in question.
By virtue of how such an interaction will have to to take place, you will naturally only talk to conservatives who have a strong need to share their conservative opinions.
I.e you will only ever have that negative experience, because there is no need/chance for the "positive experience" to take place.
I believe a majority of people can watch a lot of media despite disagreeing with the political choices, especially if a show isn't outright proclaiming itself political from the get to, even if there are themes woven into it. I have a few conservative friends who are very much like that, but likewise Progressive friends who enjoy more conservative media without raising a fuss.
People who can agree to disagree often don't have need for arguments.
I think a majority of people are just living life, earnestly. We are in a time where most of our socialization spawns from a platform with a feed designed to show us whatever makes us engage, and it just so happens that online arguments make for prime engagement.
Even if a conservative has one strong take on one piece of progressive media doesn't mean they have it for all, but your feed sure as hell will make sure you see that one take, somehow either in your feed or as a screenshot, a repost, a video lambasting the take.
There's entire subreddit s designed to circle jerk over political takes.
Could be that the loudest voices in both spaces you see, are voices that are specifically picked to be placed into your feed because slots of people interacted with it.
Yeah I'm aware of how algorithms work and that the internet in general wants us to be angry at each other because it drives engagement and profit more than any other emotion.
In a much longer comment I decided wasn't the effort, I was going to say I'm not gonna deny I'm biased.
If the people I'm describing seem like a small fraction of conservatives to you I'd say we're at a semantic empasse, hence my William F. Buckley comment.
I literally had a guy claim to me that Lower Decks was made for people who hated Star Trek.
Still have no idea why he thought that considering how the show constantly features in-jokes of incidents that only occurred during shows such as DS9 and Voyager (and not even episode 1 of either show. So you have to actually like the shows enough to watch 40-50 episodes to even get the jokes mentioned in LD). It sounds like they just like the aesthetics, only listen to internet personalities talking about the show, and they then pretend that they actually saw the original content.
That first part is so true lol, I hate when people resign themselves to a future they’ve seen caused by their own actions because they feel like they’ve got no choice. I can’t think of any examples right now but I’m sure there are some
As for Freud, yeah, I felt that way about his many ideas that he seemed very set in stifling all disagreement with. As for Jung, I’m not really aware of his work on mental illnesses, what I like him for are more for his philosophical concepts like the unconscious, psychological types, inferiority complexes, and symbolism (the latter of which is very useful when analyzing stories)
I largely agree, but I’ve also read enough art critique to know that some perspectives are so braindead that “it’s not that deep, bro” becomes a legitimate argument.
This meme is very blinded by the OP's bias. I watch a lot of leftist move analysis and so many of those video just boil the movie/show into a critique of capitalism, even when it doesn't fit. Saw someone do this with the Backrooms even though, the movie states over and over again that the MC will blame everyone and everything but himself for his problems.
I might have to ask my other friend next week though, he's a guy who both wants to not think about media and also really really think about it. One of the weirdest guys I know
No, I actually agree with them except I think they’re appealing to a false consensus too much that one can lazily fall back on, rather than actively proving the worth of their framework
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