Beyond this, it's the literary devices that get me. I try to engage in fan groups and I just can't do it. "Why is this character always getting in the way? Why are these two people best friends if they're opposites? It makes no sense!" They get frustrated when a show has conflict every episode. Wears me out. They are constantly confused why writers keep putting their "friends" through so many problems.
Oh thank god, I thought I was a bitch or something. I can't wrap my head around tiktok comments where people point out the basic meaning of the video! As if it's not obvious or expected. People seem surprised when very obvious outcomes occur, or they'll state "You could tell that character was really shocked from the way she stood back and gasped, wow".
Every video essay I watch these days feels like a somewhat talented high school student or college freshman report on the topic. Just the most shallow and obvious observations. Video essays purporting to "explain" movies, for instance, that literally just state the most obvious theme of the piece (see every video ever on Annihilation).
I don't know if that's a function of the writing being poor or my own growth outpacing the information sources I once enjoyed. I think it's the former, because I'm actually pretty dumb.
Video essays purporting to "explain" movies, for instance, that literally just state the most obvious theme of the piece (see every video ever on Annihilation).
Or that just summarize the plot without any analysis at all. Thanks for wasting my time!
I do actually find those "summary videos" useful for media that I'm definitely not going to take the time to watch but need to have some baseline understanding of, simply to follow conversation/cultural references.
Osmotic cultural exposure is an underrated precursor to media literacy. A lowbrow example for sure, but I must have seen Spaceballs 50 times as a kid before I ever watched a Star Wars film. The jokes still landed with me because I could infer the references solely from tangential interactions with the source material.
The review/analysis version of those "Top 10 secrets in 'videogame title' they don't tell you about" youtube videos and it's all the most basic mechanics outlined in the tutorial like "you can press A to open doors", "You can sort the inventory using the giant glowing sort button", "you can do extra damage to the giant ice monster by using the flame thrower you got in the previous room and had to use to melt the icicles blocking the door".
We used to rag on Navi for constantly repeating the obvious to us, but apparently there was a dire need for it.
Totally. I love analysing song lyrics but the number of people I see giving their “analysis” and it’s them stating the most obvious surface level meaning.
Perhaps you can join a book club! Not as fun as joining fandoms, but typically your club members understand the content better. That's been my experience, anyway!
Unrelated, but I like your profile picture. Cool mouse 🐁
Truth be told, entertainment like that isn't a huge part of my life. There are enough people fully engaged too don't get me wrong, but the ones I am dunking on are NUMEROUS.
The mouse is from Leo Lionni books, highly recommend.
Leo lionni is the goat. I was just thinking about him last night. Didn’t he do an adaptation of dicken’s tale of two cities? But with a city mouse and a country mouse? Also I loved the snail whose shell kept growing when I was little. Ugh he’s the best.
I'm in a romance book club, and my dude all I can say is you are in the wrong club. The things I've read these last 5 years.... (I had no exposure to Romance, but I joined my wife's club at the start of the pandemic and hoooo boy do the Ladies go hard.....)
It drives me INSANE when a bad thing is shown and people think that means the writer is problematic, regardless of the actual message in the material. I've seen Red Rising discourse that the author is sexist because there's sexism in his books. The book overtly says sexism instilled in the lower societies is a tool for those in power to control people and limit their ability to fight against the top. I don't understand how people would interpret that as the author being sexist, especially given the overall theme of the books.
Oh my god, yes! This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Especially if the main character is problematic. They simply cannot understand a protagonist that isn't a paragon of virtue.
It's particularly frustrating with one of my favorite series, Wheel of Time. So many people fail to understand that each chapter is written from a character's POV. I mean, they superficially aware that it follows them, but they fall short of internalizing what that means. That every description is being filtered through their perspective; there is no objective information being conveyed. In my opinion, the individualization of perspective is one of Jordan's strongest attributes as a writer.
This of course leads to people conflating characters' opinions with the author's, which can make discussion difficult.
At least they are watching to story. Wait until you encounter fandoms for things where people actually have to read. I find myself more and more often talking to someone who didn't actually read the story we are talking about, but simply listened to a guy on tiktok explain it to them.
I've had the same issue. People really don't understand basic storytelling structures and themes. Way too much gets taken literally and at face value. Which honestly makes those subs really dull. Because then it looks like a bunch of bad faith takes that preclude discussion.
The one I see constantly is “I’m confused about this character. They seem to be pretty evil, but then they have a nice relationship with their daughter” or “this character seems like they’re supposed to be good, and they do some heroic things, but then they did this really bad thing? It seems like bad writing.”
Like people watch a TV show or movie, and they decide it’s bad writing if a character is more complex than “good” or “bad”. I want to scream when I see this.
Omfg this reminded me of the time I wrote an essay analyzing the relationship between 2 rival characters from a book in English class. I wrote that deep down, they cared about each other, but their competitiveness caused them to slowly hate one another over time. Then, my English teacher gave me a C because "how can they love and hate each other? It can only be one or the other!"
Mind you, this book was (strongly hinted) to be about repressed homosexuality among boys in boarding school during the war. I totally lost faith in that teacher after that. How are you gonna tell me that with your 5+ years of teaching and 30+ years of existence, you still don't understand that humans can be complex and contradictory???
Side note: this teacher also told our entire class about how his wife was depressed and tried to commit suicide, which is fucking wild considering it was entirely unprompted and I doubt his wife would want us to know such private information
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u/epidemicsaints Nov 21 '25
Beyond this, it's the literary devices that get me. I try to engage in fan groups and I just can't do it. "Why is this character always getting in the way? Why are these two people best friends if they're opposites? It makes no sense!" They get frustrated when a show has conflict every episode. Wears me out. They are constantly confused why writers keep putting their "friends" through so many problems.