I swear to god every time I get a Stelena/Stefan Stan arguing with me or worshipping Stefan it all comes down to them not knowing the difference between facts and emotional opinions. Please society, learn media literacy and humanities. Realize that morality and ethics are based on opinions and evolve over time. Admit that the way we view art is based on interpretation, and depends on our own emotional bias.

eight-episode seasons becoming the norm, shows being cancelled after their first or second season altogether, corporations not spending a single dollar to promote their renewed shows, corporations deciding to renew based on how many people binge it over and over and over again... this is the slow, choking death of media literacy. 

honestly i hate how that “maybe the curtains are just blue” post has become shorthand for anti-intellectualism and shit bc as someone who has an utter passion for media analysis now, I WAS THAT PERSON IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASS.

english class never taught me how to analyze stories, it taught me how to remember what things the teacher said were “symbolism” and how to take quizzes where we had to match a quote to the character who said it. i didn’t give a shit about any of it, bc literally why should i. it was bullshit.

there’s this idea online that people are forgetting or rejecting what they learned in english class when they’re bad at media analysis, and maybe that’s a little bit true, but i think the much bigger problem is they never learned it in the first place. cinemasins & “maybe the curtains are just blue” aren’t convincing people to abandon an intellectualism they already had, they’re filling a void.

when all you learn in high school is to write on the test “blue = depression”, why is it surprising that so many people don’t give a shit about the curtains.

say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.

i just finally started watching LOK and i know that one of Korra’s biggest offenses, in a lot of peoples minds, is that she “allowed” her connection to the past avatars to be erased and ended the cycle, etc. etc. after watching how it all plays out, though, I really do think it makes the most sense for that to have happened. I don’t think it’s Korra’s fault that the avatar cycle has restarted at all.

Wan was alive at the end of the last 10,000 year spirit cycle, the last time spirits and humans coexisted, and he ultimately fused with raava and closed the spirit portals during harmonic convergence to keep vaatu at bay and keep the balance between the spirit world and natural world the best way he knew how, to keep them separate. the humans weren’t, at the time, able to advance, let alone coexist between lion turtle tribes, with the constant threat of the spirits. even after closing the portals, Wan spent the rest of his life trying to keep the physical world from falling apart. and it’s been the avatars duty to do that from then on, Wan’s bravery and raava’s spirit lives in every avatar that exists from then on. there are roughly ~100 generations of people (or 81 avatars) between wan and korra, and the world shifted and changed over and over. even in the 60 or so years between ATLA and LOK, the avatar universe completely transformed from what we saw in ATLA. and aang himself was shocked by how different the world looked after 100 years of being away at the time of his series.

i think 10,000 years is a complete avatar cycle. regardless of wether wan had fused with raava in the last dark/light struggle, raava and vaatu were going to battle again. the planets were going to align, harmonic convergence was going to happen again. it’s spirit world fate combined with natural world fate. the balance of the world goes far beyond any political struggle of the physical world, or any light/dark battle in the spiritual one. it’s not korra’s fault the cycle ended, the spirit world and physical world were just shifting again.

the past avatar advice was crucial for aang’s journey to to bring balance to the physical world. there were certainly spiritual avatars, but it’s assumed the majority of them dealt with political material world conflicts. and again, the world changes fast. you don’t even see aang talk to any of his past lives before kuruk. just 4 avatars ago, and that’s already ~400 years before aang was alive (though that’s kiyoshis fault for living so long) yes it’s upsetting for 10,000 years of connection and lived avatar wisdom to be severed, but that advice is no use to a new 10,000 year age that looks nothing like the previous.

it’s always been the avatar’s duty to keep balance between the physical and spirit worlds, korra’s choice to not close the spirit portals makes complete sense. it had been 10,000 years since it had been closed during the harmonic convergence that Wan saw. 10,000 years of avatars to, as it seems for the most part, assist the physical world and their governments to be able to coexist peacefully as a modern society. and aang finally achieved that by ending the 100 year war and uniting the nations. now it’s korra’s duty to start a new 10,000 year avatar cycle and begin the coexistence of the spirit and physical world. it would have happened if korra or eska or even oogi became the next avatar.

At the end of the day it's just me and that one piece of media that changed me as a person vs the world

"We don't know Via and Stella's canon relationship yet because we haven't seen them interact."

Okay, so you were absent from writing class the day they taught about inferences and context clues...

okay there's just SO many video essays about "the death of media literacy". how dead can it be when all of you are so good at it. has media literacy gotten provably worse or do we just have the internet now. when was the golden age of media literacy

I'm all "I dont care enough to talk about this take I saw that I disagree with" until "take I saw that I disagree with is now on its way to becoming accepted fanon" 🙄 typical me....

I’d love to see a study done on the rise of demanding and expecting morality in the fiction we consume, to the point where liking, consuming, or creating anything “gross” or “illegal” or “immoral” reveals a desire to want and enjoy it outside of fiction, from kink to dead dove to even just sex outside of a narrative context in some extreme corners of fandom online. where is it coming from? why is fandom today more lenient with physical violence than sexual deviancy? why is fandom becoming more sex negative than ever, and why is fiction being used as a reflection of someone’s wants outside of it?

I don’t have the initiative to do a full fledged research project on this, but someone else should.

kaneshiro really wants the readers to understand how madly in love with each other nagi and reo are and its honestly suicide inducing im being completely serious. IF THEY WOULD JUST TALK!!!! (i know they eventually did but at what cost).....

also, we finally know what reo wanted to say but didnt (bc he thought nagi wouldnt come back to him) when nagi declared he was going ahead on his own and its the most romantic, yet encouraging thing ever nobody touch me

Well the comics did a good job squandering any sympathy and shiz for dicklander, and the show too. I only feel bad for his child self. His grown ass can get attacked by rabid kryptonian dogs for all I care.

i disagree.

and look, i ain't gonna tell you how to feel boo, i can't obviously. i can only spew out nonsense and hope i might reach you or someone else who comes along to read my long winded bullshit.

but while both renditions are pieces of shit, i feel so much for comics homie too if not more. he's even more whoobie than show homie but gets dismissed but i digress.

throughout the story, we're made to feel *suspicious* about the claims on homelander or that his story may have more than meets the eye. ennis presents it point blank. he doesn't tell the reader how to feel about homelander, or anything, or anyone. he makes it clear how billy feels, how other characters feel, but he also certainly makes it show that things aren't quite adding up about him and billy's claim. he presents the story and lets *you* the reader feel (which is what real *good* writing does)

BUT it's framed out in a way to make the reader realize he *wasn't* this big bad awful guy he was made out to be, a piece of shit sure, but and not the real monster they were after, that billy was fuckin' wrong (like his dumb ass always is), that his end and final point in the story was manipulated, coerced by outside force, and not truly justified as a result.

leik, this guy got his WHOLE LIFE fucking RUINED, his whole self image, gaslit into fucking oblivion to *believe* he was a bad guy until he *became* a bad guy, after literally never once getting a *choice* for anything, ever, at all, at any point in his whole gotdamn life.

this boi never had a chance... and even after ALL that. people STILL want to control or punish him when he lacks one major vital thing that would warrant him *actually* deserving that.

AGENCY. fucking agency, the answer is agency, homelander has none of it, never has, and still does not have it. (he pretends to but it's not quite the same, the lack of it is what makes him a ticking time bomb)

you seem like someone to really value your own agency so idk, i feel like you should get that??

BUT GOTDAMN LET THE BOI JUST FUCKING BREATHE AT LEAST ONCE PLEASE????

UGH

just try to imagine if every single choice in your life was made *for you* by *someone else*, and that's homelander. and it doesn't stop into adulthood, it just turns into a fucking fucked up conservatorship beside someone who wants to kill you, oh yeah, and stunted growth so you never get a chance to really grow up and feel like or be your own person either.

like i'm not kidding, he might as well be a child STILL in that regard and it is super fucked up how often people exploit and groom him that way. i don't care if he's fucking 16, 40, or in his 70s, the man *ain't* grown like he should be and *needs* the space to actually *grow* before we decide to fucking judge him, else we're no better than his abusers.

and when a kid commits a crime, it's the parents/guardians that are brought up on charges/trial. there is a *reason* for that.

homelander's very clear lack of sanity/mental capacity and vought being his 'guardian'/conservator?? (if he even is a real legal person...) would put him under this spectrum of bullshit, and baby i don't want to say it's ableist not to acknowledge this, but...

i mean if i'm being real, it kinda sorta is...?? wait... HOLD THE--- FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!! OH MY FUCKING SATAN--it IS!! and I JUST GOT WHIPLASH FROM WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE BOYS FANDOM WHEN IT COMES TO HOMELANDER.

this motherfucker is *CRIMINALLY INSANE*, emphasis on that last fucking part, in every sense of the word *CLINICALLY*. and when that happens, even the fucking laws in the fucked ol' U.S. of A. DO NOT 'punish' a mofo by regular 'incarceration', they still order institutionalization but with a HOSPITAL for TREATMENT. (granted there are a whole mess of other problems in this country that still do not handle this properly jesus fucking christ--)

ABLEISM! it's fucking ableism that doesn't let fandom recognize this!! EVEN some of the people who claim to love him!!

except THEN make it WORSE on top of everything *because* of the stunted growth and vought AND limited personal agency and... fuck me... UGGGGGGHHHHHHH--

but THAT is homelander. and uh... yeah. yeah, you'd probably lose your gotdamn mind too, i don't think ANYONE could walk out sane, realistically speaking. pain is easy to say we'd walk out clean from, and then we all turn into pussies the *second* it's our turn to deal.

and the whole point of the twist is to rob you of any satisfaction of his death and make you angry at his circumstances rather than at him. again, ennis doesn't explicitly *tell* readers how to feel because it's more of a graphic novel but...

i personally think the show is aiming to recreate this effect because if they can pull it off (and manage to make an entire population feel like utter ableist shitheads for wanting him dead), then they'll be pulling off some kinda magical MAJOR amazing heist of the feels for the ages that will *hopefuly* be enough to push society in some better directions than its current state (man, we really could not have asked for a better time for this series... holy shit--)

as much as it pains me, *this* was why he was killed in the comics. not just for... ugh, sadness, realism... but because it was *part* of the lesson in exemplifying what was actually wrong.

man i am just way too fucking hyper analytical with this shit and also sometimes SO SLOW i--

“one day im going to have to make like a three hour long video essay that's just called In Defense of Helluva Boss” Please do. I see more anti videos than I do with defense ones. Like the ones that say season 2 is terrible even though it’s barely completed and the ones that say Stolitz is a bad despite them barely having a relationship.

no literally i am sick of seeing more anti content than actual appreciation videos but the anti talking point i see most that drives me up the fucking walls is that it's "bAd RePrEsEnTaTiOn," as if that is all that queer people are allowed to have; just the vague nebulous concept of "Rep(TM)." the fact that if a straight character is a bad person then it's just that This Character is a bad person, but if a queer character is a bad person then This Is Bad Representation Of The Community And Is Homophobic. can we not just HAVE characters?? vehicles to tell a story??? tools to craft a compelling narrative??? this is part of why Helluva/Hazbin being adult shows is such a THING because i see this get shut down a lot under the guise of "uhh well just because it's an adult show doesn't mean that it can handle whatever topic it wants however it wants" and like. yeah buddy! that's true! and that's not what this is fucking about!! when people say "it's an adult show" what they mean is that it's made to be engaged with under the assumption that you would know better than to take information to shape your worldview and perception of other real life people from a fucking cartoon! the show doesn't NEED to tell you that Um Hey Guys Just So You Know This Isn't Actually Meant To Reflect How All Real Life Gay Relationships Are because you are an adult who should already be able to discern this.

"bad rep" doesn't mean "characters that are nuanced, morally gray, or just bad people." "bad rep" would be if helluva boss was a show that said "the REASON these characters are in toxic relationships / are bad people is BECAUSE they are queer, or at least directly correlated to that fact." which is. you know. very fucking different than "these characters are in toxic relationships / are bad people because they 1) live in a classist society that actively encourages them to be their worst selves and 2) are extremely traumatized."

seeing a nuanced, complex, well-written female character and deciding that the narrative "encourages" people to be misogynistic toward her has got to stop. we're actually reaching the point where it almost feels like a mass excuse for terrible reading comprehension/general media literacy because instead of accepting that there are huge swaths of people who refuse to examine their own biases and engage critically with a work, we just shift the blame to the all-encompassing "Narrative", as though misogynists would just stop doing all that if the author held their hand and explained what a Good Woman this character really is

Listen. Listen to me

Do you know how much I LOVE that comic? IT'S SO GOOD SO SO SO GOOD

We get to see a glimpse of Click's inner workings! How his mind operates!! His complicated relationship with himself and the other pinks and what it is to BE a pink!!!! Is he just like them? Are they all the same?? Is HE the horrible one??? Is he not horrible ENOUGH???? WHO KNOWS!!! And the 'I miss my department' like MANS DOESN'T WANNA BE THERE!!! HE DOESN'T WANNA THINK ABOUT IT!!!! HE HATES IT HERE CAUSE INTERACTING WITH THESE GUYS MAKES HIM THINK TOO MUCH💕💖💕💖

Like, what if they're all the same? Then Click isn't special and he's just another darkner abiding by the rules of his code.

What if the others laced the candy platter and he didn't? Then Click is too soft, they'll eat him alive out there! How is he going to survive!!

What if he's projecting and nobody else even thought of lacing the candy? Does that mean he's just a horrible person in general? Is it not just a pink thing and more a HIM thing?

And then the visuals, the zooming in into the one piece of candy among all the others in the candy platter as he does Thoughts™

O U G H OVJJSBBCKROLNXNFODOF

DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I LOVE HIM DO YOU GET WHY I WANT TO INJECT HIM DIRECTLY INTO MY BLOODSTREAM THIS IS WHY HE'S MY FAVORITE ADDISON HIS WRITING IS IMMACULATE