site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   23726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A couple of small revelations on what the poor story construction in blockbuster movies reveals about the zeitgeist.

It seems to me that major movies released in recent decades have bifurcated in scope. At one end, you have character-driven drama set in a household or small town where the budget mostly goes to A-list actors looking to win awards. At the other, you have epic visual spectacles with tons of international locations or even extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional. This could be me finding patterns where none exists, but it seem rational for producers to pick a side: if you want to sell on the intricacies of human relationships, you can do that on a smaller budget; if you want to sell on big explosions and special effects, then you might as well make the story scope expansive and perhaps ridiculous anyway. Ergo, don't worry about realism, just put it in the trailer that if the heroes don't win, then humanity is doomed!

But when story premises grow too big, they necessarily rope in politics and geopolitics, except most movie writers really suck at writing either. I'm going to pick a low hanging fruit to make my point--take Captain America: Civil War, with $1B+ in the box office and great reviews. In it, Earth's superheroes split into two teams, with one wanting to be supervised by the UN and the other refusing the leash. I think it's a fun watch, but its expansive scope rests on a ridiculous understanding and/or portrait of how the world actually works. Without going too deep into it:

  1. If a suicide bomber's explosion is magically diverted and accidentally destroys a floor of a building, thus killing dozens of people but also saves the lives of dozens on the ground, no one is going to think the magician is the criminal. Well, the lizardman constant may apply, but certainly you won't have a plurality to call for her head.
  2. If the superheroes are primarily affiliated with the US, there is no universe where 2/3 of the Senate (let alone a bipartisan "98-1" supermajority per the Fandom wiki) would ratify a treaty that willingly surrenders oversight over to the UN or another international body. I would argue no administration would support that either, but that's less impossible than the Senate.
  3. Who gives a crap if "117 countries" sign onto the "accords"? The UN routinely has symbolic and ineffectual votes with 100+ countries voting in favor and the US vetoing. It's been calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza with 150+ countries since last December, and that practically means very little.
  4. The very notion that you can get 117 countries to agree on accords that appear to be 300 pages long within months is farcical. How would the panel be chosen? Who gets a veto? These aren't some silly climate change pledge that just means more free money for developing countries. You're talking about real weapons of war, and you'll never have the major powers lined up all on one side agreeing to a functional system.

Normally, we go into movies with a willing suspension of disbelief. But there is a difference between accepting that infinity stones exist and that half of the avengers are cast out as criminals by the UN. I think it's partly the uncanny valley--either you make the premise obviously fantasy, or you do a good job of making it seem realistic, and partly it's like Sanderson's laws of magic, which really is about having internal consistency--I can accept a fictional world where partisan politics and multipolarity do not exist, hence you get 98-1 Senate votes and 117 countries (presumably including every country that actually matters) coming to agreement, but then you can't also ask me to emotionally buy into the idea that in such a world, I should genuinely fear the secretive Nazi organizations and ultracorrupt politicians and amoral killer CEOs. I mean, is this a utopia or not?!

But evidently most people don't care about this. So maybe the writers simply are illiterate when it comes to politics and geopolitics, but more likely seems to be that they aren't incentivized to try very hard given the paying audience doesn't appear to mind. The third, slightly tin-foil-hat possibility is that it's a very intentional propaganda--to all the teenagers watching superhero movies, it's better if 117 countries vote for a UN panel to be in charge of real power.

Another thought: it's really rather lame that so many conflicts in movies come down to good and otherwise competent people acting excessively emotionally in pivotal moments. Once again in CA:CW, the climactic fight involves Cap fighting Iron Man because the latter learns that his parents were murdered by Cap's friend Bucky when he was under brainwash control. Set aside how ridiculous this convoluted plot was on the villain (how did he know Cap and Iron Man would both end up in the arctic facility together), if the good guys just paused for a min to talk it out, there would be no reason to fight, but then the writers would have to work harder to conjure up a reason for a civil war.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally. But this is politically and culturally impossible, because you'd have to believe that there are good people on both sides (TM). Instead, we end up with good people fighting not over actual reason, but over stupid miscommunications or stupid emotions, because "obviously" good people must agree that there is fundamentally only one righteous ideology, with a consensus so strong that there is no reason to debate over it.

I think it's a mistake to consider the MCU to be porting in the global political situation as it actually exists. They use the same vocabulary because it is efficient from a storytelling perspective, but I thought it was clear that the "UN" in that movie was a stand-in for "political oversight, not otherwise specified".

A lot of the issues you are identifying are medium-specific. Cinema is very very effective at conveying emotional information about specific characters. It is less effective at communicating the intricacies of various philosophical viewpoints. Feature films have good guys and bad guys. That's the format that people expect to see when they pay money and walk into a theater.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally.

I thought Oppenheimer did a pretty good job of this, but at the end of the day, audiences demand cinematic cues who to root for. Some people think Kitty Oppenheimer getting absolutely roasted on cross examination is an epic girlboss moment. It has to be because the music indicates that it is a heroic moment.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally. But this is politically and culturally impossible, because you'd have to believe that there are good people on both sides (TM).

I hear really good things about Twelve Angry Men, though I haven't seen it yet. It's on my list.

You have been misinformed. The movie's climax sees the one juror insistent on a guilty verdict 'proven' wrong by... all the other jurors ostracizing and refusing to talk to him?

Tell me your movie was written by women without telling me it was written by women.

Also @Tenaz

Ah, guess I was wrong. I know a little bit about the movie, and I know that that final juror (number 3?) is an emotional holdout. But I thought the rest of the jurors were more rational in their turn to not guilty. I still want to watch it, I hear it's great.

FWIW, I don't think the description of the movie's climax being the one holdout being "proven" wrong is incorrect. The holdout was "proven" wrong throughout the course of the film during which the jurors discuss the case, go over the evidence, and even mime out scenarios of what might have happened, which all introduce reasonable doubt (what constitutes "reasonable" is obviously subjective, but the film presents the doubt as a reasonable conclusion that the other jurors reach based on the evidence). The climax involving the one holdout finally relenting actually alludes to that holdout being unreasonably emotional due to past personal experiences haunting him. By the time any sort of ostracization was happening, it was obvious to all 12 jurors, including the one holdout, that the evidence pointed to there being reasonable doubt, and it was his emotional, irrational insistence in sticking with the guilty verdict regardless that was causing the other jurors to treat him this way.

Jury nullification goes both ways. It's a good thing I wouldn't consider that peer pressure, since anybody in favor of a not guilty verdict for that defendant is not my peer.

Not to spoil too much, but Twelve Angry Men is pretty much the opposite of that.

I wrote an entire story based on a (well, not realistic) but more NrX/libertarian viewpoint on superheroes, right here.

https://fiction.live/stories/Molon-Labe/tykhbTXTZhJn3FHQ4/home

Thanks, I fapped.

But I enjoyed it in other ways too. Though I don't think you have a correct understanding of a flush in poker.

It wouldn't be a proper comic book story without a egregious, poorly-researched error.

As a long time Lurker, I recommend both Molon Labe and it's sequel, Ex Machina.

You're making me blush.

So is that like a Quest thread on spacebattles or something, audience voting on what comes next?

Yes (although it's long finished.) I feel a little embarassed to shill my own stuff, but I'm currently writing fun science fiction. Fun in that 'there are as many cute girls as I can feasibly fit into the suspension of disbelief.

Don't judge me.

Cute girls in libertarian sci-fi worked out for Devon Erikson, it could work for you too. I am also sad that 'methfueledinsaneloli' is not a widely used tag.

To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally.

This would be more satisfying, but it would make a totally crappy movie. We don't go to the talkies for reason, we go to have our adrenals stimulated.

But evidently most people don't care about this. So maybe the writers simply are illiterate when it comes to politics and geopolitics, but more likely seems to be that they aren't incentivized to try very hard given the paying audience doesn't appear to mind. The third, slightly tin-foil-hat possibility is that it's a very intentional propaganda--to all the teenagers watching superhero movies, it's better if 117 countries vote for a UN panel to be in charge of real power.

Yes, the audience doesn't care because the audience is no longer just American teenagers, it's people across the world .

There's a reason most of these movies don't even have a pretense of real politics like Civil War . Everyone can sympathize with people fighting nondescript aliens or scifi Nazis. Arabs, Germans, Chinese people all get it with minimal fuss.

Civil War has to be more political, but I hardly doubt it'd play well across the world to have the mostly American protagonists laugh off the UN like they're Dick Cheney. Marvel wants their money too and some people still feel sore about that sort of thing. Might as well let them feel like they participated via the UN. Let's not even get into "complex issues". Just having gay people in Eternals caused a minor controversy.

but then you can't also ask me to emotionally buy into the idea that in such a world, I should genuinely fear the secretive Nazi organizations and ultracorrupt politicians and amoral killer CEOs. I mean, is this a utopia or not?!

There's actually a reading that Nazis are why the world is so centralized, and not for any good reason. In Avengers the "World Council" could somehow order a nuclear strike on New York (they warned you early about the bad geopolitics). In Winter Soldier we found out that the Nazis/Hydra have been actively making the world more chaotic to centralize power in a few powerful organizations like SHIELD they could use to take over the world. In Agents of SHIELD the very person who ordered SHIELD to perform the nuclear strike is...a member of Hydra.

My problem with Civil War was that it wasn't a Captain America movie, it was an Avengers movie. I didn't even feel like Captain America was the main character, he just felt like one out of a cast of characters.

I'm sure this just comes from the comics, every time I speak up about my criticisms of the MCU I get told it's because they adapted something straight from the comics.

I had the exact opposite problem as you, but in a similar vain. I thought that because of how limited the MCU cast was at the time, there weren't actually enough characters to fully encapsulate how wide-reaching the storyline was. In the comics, Civil War was a massive event, spanning dozens of characters, including the Avengers, X-Men, The New Warriors, The Fan4stic, etc. And instead of the Airport fight scene, which was pretty cool, the fighting and devastation was much more wide-spread. The storyline also had some pretty hefty short to medium term implications, including playing into the Secret Invasion storyline.

The dumbest thing for me about Civil War started in the beginning: where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords because the mother of someone killed in the battle blames him. The Avengers were literally saving the world from a genocidal robot, and unfortunately, there were civilian casualties. Stark and the other Avengers had been around long enough that "Oh no, an innocent person died and his mom blames us!" was the sort of black and white comic book morality you saw in the Silver Age, not in the supposedly more "gritty" and realistic MCU era.

where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords

Also, Tony should have known better than to trust Accord oversight, considering the first thing they tried to do is nuke Metropolis [or wherever that was] to contain the Chitauri invasion. He ended up directly having to clean up that mess.

I get that Tony Stark very quickly became "Bay Area thought as a superhero", but that was not good judgment. Then again, because Tony really doesn't have good judgment, he'd naturally support the Accords, so maybe I'm more annoyed about it than I should be.

The dumbest thing for me about Civil War started in the beginning: where Tony Stark is guilted into supporting the Sokovia Accords because the mother of someone killed in the battle blames him. The Avengers were literally saving the world from a genocidal robot, and unfortunately, there were civilian casualties.

I don't think that's dumb. If there's anyone to blame, it's Stark. It was his idea to build the robot. I do think it's stupid for the rest of the avengers to feel guilty, but Stark should totally feel guilty.

I'm pretty sure the guilt was supposed to be because Tony in his hubris made Ultron.

I think the tendency to insert politics in this way is a more recent trend. Maybe Superman or Duke Nukem always had to save the president, because he's the president, that's the most important guy. But nobody cared about Senators and Generals, which I can recall showing up in X-Men, BvS, Marvel, etc.

I think as Superhero content has left comics and become mainstream, there's been a perceived need to dress it up as "more" than just comic books. Superhero movies aren't just fun anymore, they're social commentary, they're serious endeavors, they're real cinema, dad. Notably, comic books themselves went through a similar arc.

Personally I agree that all this semi-authentic political back-drama is silly, and I would prefer my schlock to not have to put on airs.

It might be stronger in recent years, where pushing "the message" became much more of a thing in entertainment, but the anti-mutant Senator Kelly was created in 1980 and appeared in the 1990s X-Men animated series. (Because you've listed X-Men alongside BvS, Marvel, etc., I'm guessing you're thinking more of the 2000s Fox movies, or possibly the recent X-Men '97.)

If a suicide bomber's explosion is magically diverted and accidentally destroys a floor of a building, thus killing dozens of people but also saves the lives of dozens on the ground, no one is going to think the magician is the criminal. Well, the lizardman constant may apply, but certainly you won't have a plurality to call for her head.

They had to keep it simple, but you don't need to change things too much to make it realistic. There would need to be a strong existing political movement demanding superhuman registration that's popular with DC types. The terrorists would need to be from a State Department backed group. Slightly muddle what happens.

In that situation the press would aggressively spin the things to get their preferred policy and protect their friends in DC.

Not to burst your bubble, but the problem with Civil War actually originates with the source material. One might watch Civil War and ask why Tony Stark, aka Iron Man is on the side of the government despite being a tech entrepreneur who refused to share his suit tech with the government for years and Captain America, an FDR Democrat (aka the closest thing we have had to a dictator since George Washington) is on the side of the libertarians. The answer is the original writer wrote it that way for nonsensical reasons.

As a result, the whole story is nonsensical, and the movie reflects that because it is based on an idiotic comic book that shares its incoherence.

One might watch Civil War and ask why Tony Stark, aka Iron Man is on the side of the government despite being a tech entrepreneur who refused to share his suit tech with the government for years

Because he built an AI that killed people and almost destroyed the world.

and Captain America, an FDR Democrat (aka the closest thing we have had to a dictator since George Washington) is on the side of the libertarians.

Because the government agency he worked for turned out to be a front for a bunch of evildoers.

I've never even seen Civil War but if there's something stupid about it conceptually it's that Cap didn't say "Hey doctor Frankenstein I agree someone should be in charge of making sure you don't blow up the world again but I just club people over the head with a shield so maybe get outta my ass."

Like Superman, Captain America's political affiliation has (intentionally) never been specified. He's supposed to represent America, and being partisan would destroy his entire mythos. (There have been various stories in which both political parties try to get Cap, and Superman, to join their ticket, and they always refuse.)

Obviously, over the years some writers have put their own political sentiments in the mouths of the heroes they're writing, but generally it's understood that flagship characters are not supposed to be Republican or Democrat.

I don't think there was ever anything in the comics at the time, i.e. the 1940s, indicating how Captain America voted? He's always been a character deliberately open to interpretation - he stands for the best vision of what America can be, but he shifts over time and is often strategically vague so that readers can project their idea of what that means on to him.

That wasn't the only problem with the comic book version. The other problem with the comic book version is that the writers didn't agree on what was in the registration act. It could be anything from just registration to conscription, and it could or could not apply to borderline cases (like unpowered fighters). Needless to say, if you're going to have political stories, stuff like that will make a big difference, and that part was completely incoherent too.

Having so many different writers work on big projects is my least favorite parts of western comics, and that's stiff competition against all the other stuff they do wrong.

I read all the early Judge Dredd comics once, and important details got changed every single issue on the whim of some writer who couldn't even be bothered to coordinate with his coworkers.
Is the megacity super wealthy with interstellar colonies and is technological unemployment only a problem because people go crazy from idleness? Or is it a decaying hive full of poor starving people commiting crimes out of desperation? It's a coin flip every issue!

Why is Cap on the side of the libertarians? Because you'd expect Cap to be on the "trust the government" side so we have to invert that to make it more "interesting". It's just expectation subversion, Rian-style, with no thought about whether it's consistent for the characters.

AIUI, the Civil War comics came out years before the current zeitgeist was born. Bizarre that they chose to adapt the story for the MCU, given that I was always under the impression that Civil War was one of the weakest storylines to come out of 21st-century Marvel.

Making heroes fight each other for questionable reasons with no lasting consequences is a proud comics tradition. Seeing them fight each other is fun, and that's what Marvel wanted on screen.

I'd indeed agree that poor political framing is deliberate because it minimizes people getting their feelings hurt and maximizes profits and audience (most of the time; you still have things like "Don't Look Up"). Imagine if Captain America Civil War actually included a more potent anti-UN arguments. You'd get a lot of negative news coverage, distracting from "Spiderman shows up and fights . Is this corporate greed and cowardice, or is it something more particular to the screenwriters and directors? Probably both, but I actually think the people themselves (whether you think this is corporate capture or not is a separate question) are choosing to enforce these hedges. Like many movies with fantastical/superpower/supernatural/advanced sci-fi elements, it's a work of fiction and escapism and spectacle, and the hard part is finding the right balance between these things. Which is actually hard. For example a too-grounded superhero film can exist (Logan maybe?) but requires much more character work, and risks boredom if it fails. A too-much-CGI film can flop, even if the CGI is good, because on some level it strays too far. Oh, but wait, if it's sci-fi, you can get weird again, but wait, you still have to anthropomorphize things to a certain extent, and you still can't get too weird or it sounds like bad writing even if there is an interesting deeper meaning. Hard to pull off. At some point "vibe" starts to matter which goes beyond just the script itself. District 9 is perhaps one of the few, very few, sci-fi films that successfully marries weirdness with actual groundedness.

I actually think the middle fight scene in Civil War at the airport is a great case in point. We go into Civil War excited for some Captain America as a character, and we know he will work at solving some mostly-solvable problem. We go in excited to see Spider-Man and Cap fight it out. We go in curious what might happen with conflict between "good guys". Fans might be wondering about the aftermath of the whole Hydra thing from Winter Soldier and other plot points. We get this! In the airport scene, we also clearly get the violence pulled back. Anytime it gets too real especially in the side cast, we get a joke, but one that's usually topical enough it doesn't feel like a total distraction (though it actually is). It is entertaining, and it mostly works. We already have accepted that kids are a prime audience for the movie. In fact, making things kid-friendly is probably part of it. Nothing exactly forbids a kids movie from discussing real-life, difficult questions, but it's harder to pull off, harder to market, and if we're being honest kids don't generally want too-hard questions in their movies. That's an adult thing. So an R-rating is an crude and easy proxy for adults to pay attention, even if it isn't strictly necessary.

I agree that personally, I find conflicts in fiction without clear good-bad divides and more than 2 factions incredibly enjoyable on average. I do wish there were a bit more of it. But also ask yourself, have you ever shied away from watching a movie because it was too explicitly political? Even if it didn't line up exactly with current attitudes or parties? I think that experience is more common than many movie-goers would let on.

I do circle back to District 9, actually, as an example of what I assume you want more of. Have you seen it? How did you feel about it? Can you think of similar others? The only ones that spring to mind are maybe things like Minority Report, Children of Men, V for Vendetta, maaaybe Dune 2.

I definitely agree with this. Especially for franchise films, they want a simple non controversial film that nobody in the audience can find a reason to dislike. It’s one reason I’m mostly over big franchise movies and TV — they’re so busy protecting their brand that they’re mostly bland and boring with very few things that are difficult to understand or too political. Making people think often means some in the audience might get confused (even more likely with the international audience) and if you say something political (outside of DEI inclusion) you run the risk that someone in the audience might disagree which would mean that person will not be there for Big Franchise: Subtitle. Most of them have become so overtaken by corporate that they’re paint by numbers, cohesive stories, good actors, or realistic fights be damned. They’re McDonald’s or Burger King at this point, and you won’t find anything that has a strong taste because there’s a chance someone might dislike the taste.

outside of DEI inclusion

This is a huge parenthetical. They're definitely alienating people with the way they're doing this, consciously. And it's not just about the inclusion, it's about the very intense way in which they're doing that inclusion and how communicating the right message flows through everything that gets made.

I think there's a lot of paint-by-numbers going on, but I'd remind you that the most controversial movie of the past decade was almost certainly The Last Jedi, which famously had an auteur who deliberately made unexpected, confusing, and ✨subversive✨ choices that alienated people and damaged the brand. There's a lot of both going on; the only constant is DEI.

I think some of it is true belief, but some of it is also artsy people(the sorts who direct movies) having different tastes than the general public(source: visit an art museum), and DEI is a convenient way for those people to shield themselves from criticism.

When I was a youth the 'in' thing for artsy types was to look down their noses at Michael Bay movies, which nevertheless sold like hotcakes. The 'designated cool grownup' teacher when I was in high school explained to a group of these kids like thus- "I know, when I go to a Michael Bay movie, that I'm going to be entertained. It's going to have action, the plot might not be great but it'll be passable and at least a little bit compelling, there's going to be a lead who actually does something, etc. I'm a teacher trying to support a family and have to choose which movies I pay to go see and I don't know that Oscar-bait is going to entertain me, but a Michael Bay action movie will. Therefore, like many others facing that decision, I see Michael Bay movies." I'm paraphrasing a bit, but the truth is that the general public and art people have different preferences. And artsy types generally resent being expected to earn a return on investment for their employers, and employers famously at least claim to put DEI before profits, so telling an artsy story about black lesbians is a way for artsy types to make their movies art and not business.

At this point, subversive isn’t even really subversive because it’s almost a trope. If there’s a single set of heroes or archetypes that haven’t been “subverted” by now I’m not really aware. The subversive thing for the modern deconstructed media landscape is actually playing it straight, having a hero who’s actually a decent guy and a villain who’s actually bad and actually doesn’t have a point to make, and a plot that actually makes sense.

Watch some anime.

A recent example I'm thinking of is Frieren, where - minor spoilers - it turned out that the demons actually were bad. That is, the story didn't follow the "what if the bad guys were actually good and the good guys were actually bad" subversion seen in, for example, every single webcomic that ever included an orc and/or goblin: instead of being different-looking people wrongly oppressed for looking different by the retrograde powers-that-be, they are actually inhuman predators who exploit the former mode of thinking.

On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.

I think that betrayed a weakness of faith in anti-racism on the part of the people who said that. Frieren demons are clearly unlike any real-world humans, and thus their example should be a positive thought-experiment for coexistence in our world. One thing I like about fantasy and science fiction and so forth is its utility as a lens upon our own world: it lets us consider what things would be like if something we believe is true were different. What would things look like then? If they're necessarily obviously different, then perhaps your beliefs have stood the test. If the result seems more like reality than your understanding of the real world does - then perhaps you've learned something, too.

Arguably sociopaths. My understanding of demons in Frieren is they evolved to lack empathy. They understand that humans will lower their guard if you tell them your parents or your children died, but they don't fully understand why because they can't feel familial love or sadness. There's even a demon who is portrayed slightly sympathetically as he alternates between helping and torturing humans because he's trying to see if he can experience emotions.

One thing I like about fantasy and science fiction and so forth is its utility as a lens upon our own world: it lets us consider what things would be like if something we believe is true were different.

A lot of people are unable to consume media in this way. If a piece of media says something is true in this fictional hypothetical that wildly diverges from out world, they are trying to say it is also true in our world. So, Starship Troopers a story about a united humanity fighting against literal bugs is really promoting racism and white supremacy in our world, despite it's protagonist being Filipino.

It's similar to people who argue against the hypothetical in thought experiments. They seem to believe worlds in which their current politics fail just can't exist and anyone who would think up such a world only does so to push evil beliefs in the here and now.

In the defense of midwits, people who argue against the hypothetical intuitively sense that the other party is trying to convince them of something, and that is always unambiguously suspect, so it's better not to give the other party an inch.

On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.

I'm reminded of the thread spawned by this Tumblr post, which begins:

Fantasy races are an uncomfortable concept, because they present a world that literally works the way racists think that it works. The attempts to mitigate this problem often fail to address the core concern, merely making the idea more palatable.

It also addresses sci-fi — specifically Mass Effect — as also problematic for having different alien races be, well, different:

This is something that puts me on edge in Mass Effect, otherwise one of my favorite games. True, the game ultimately lands on condemning the genophage, and it’s not subtle about that. I mean just look at the name… But it’s still considered debatable, morally grey, and Mordin Solus remains one of the most charming and enduring heroes of the series. The setting has bent over backwards to make every racist stereotype and talking point as legitimate as possible. In this setting, it is objectively true, scientifically proven that it is in the DNA of Krogans to naturally be violent, warmongering killing machines whose explosively rapid breeding poses an existential threat to the galaxy. That in turn is meant to make us think that maybe forced sterilization is something worth considering. It’s hard to ignore the parallels to real life racist propaganda. I don’t think it’s malicious, just ungrounded and thoughtless; the result of creators to whom these ideals are abstract thought experiments, rather than reflections of real history.

In short, treating differences between thinking beings as anything other than purely cultural is Problematic.

I don’t know how else you’d handle magic creatures or aliens. They’re not the same species. Orcs are specifically not humans, and neither are elves. Klingons aren’t humans. And as such saying that an Orc or a Klingon doesn’t act like a Southern California PMC half wit isn’t quite the same as being a racist.

The things that make me uncomfortable in those settings is less that Orcs act differently than humans, it’s that all orcs have the exact same culture and belief system and nobody rejects it or questions it. Humans are certainly one species, but we are different and have different opinions and cultures and religions. Or maybe I just wonder what a hippy orc would be like.

More comments

The female Ghostbusters was within the last decade.

I don't know, wouldn't the Cathedral want control over superhumans? Wouldn't they make a power-grab to centralize control over these dangerous rogue elements lest they overthrow the empire of finance and paperwork with personal power? Wouldn't they want to divide and undermine any would-be Caesars? We saw in another universe the superhumans are in complete control, the 'Illuminati' rule.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

DC did better I thought, Superman takes on seriously powerful beings who are fast and strong enough to overmatch human forces. He does tank nukes. It makes sense for people to fear him. But DC also had a lot of ridiculous plot decisions and some silly character interaction (your mother's name was Martha too, I guess we're best friends!)

You could have an interesting movie about the struggle for political, economic and military power between capes and mortal men. But scriptwriters aren't smart enough to write that or don't want to. It's as if they're taught in movie school 'who cares about having a plot that makes sense, we need to affirm these saccharine character moments where the power of love, cameraderie and family triumphs over all odds'. I think only the 5% of the population in the INTJ/INTP area really cares about having plots that make sense.

But scriptwriters aren't smart enough to write that or don't want to.

I could be wrong, but I believe that scriptwriters at the level of actually writing scripts are professionals who produce the script they're being told to produce by the person paying them to do it. The plot, characters, etc. are decided on by directors and producers.

Yes. Whedon said the list of required character vs character fights or interactions was so large it took up all of the run time for The Avengers. To the point where he had no time to conclude the story and simply decided that all the aliens would fall over dead at the end to instantly wrap things up. Which he thinks is a bad ending, but he had no choice given the constraints.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

Good luck making a show about tactics like the survability onion the thing is that modern tactics make terrible movies. You can't talk to the villan when all your weapons move at mach 2 and a lot of defensive tactics are based around stealth, evasion and recon. The staple trope of superhero movies of the villan/hero discussing the villan's plan doesn't work at all when the entire conflict strategy is to not be seen heard or detected and the fighters can't even see each other.

Unless you're one of the weird nerds who wants their shows to seem "real" it's typically accepted to do completely irrational actions so that the movie can actually be good. (Otherwise you get the Saga of Tanya the Evil where the magical characters actually do use rational tactics but the show has little character)

If you were a skilled artist, surely you could make such a film entertaining. Imagine a band of heroic scouts discovering some deception operation, that the enemy was trying to outflank them or that a seemingly huge army was actually just balloons and dummies. What about a duel between cyberpunk drone operators, scrabbling around a ruined megacity as their drones hunt eachother's weak flesh and blood body? That's just extending what we see in Ukraine a few steps.

What about using clever tactics to get around superior firepower by fighting in close quarters? Or basic things like fire and manoeuvre, characters working together?

Tanya the Evil was well-liked IIRC.

You could, but then it would be a War Movie, not a Summer Blockbuster, and would appeal to fewer potential audience members.

I can imagine certain types of shows working with those sorts of premises, but the key there is there would be no dialog between our pro/antagonists except before and after action sequences. So our cyberpunk drone operator sequence would be cool but it would have to be a thing where all the talking happens by characters that aren't our drone operators, maybe observers in a meeting room or something.Can't have them communicate via comms since that would cause them to get caught by the other operator.

The only other example I know of is The fan animation astartes which you know isn't even a real show. Reading /r/combatfootage sort of shows just how hard it is to even come close to making modern weapons interesting storytelling, you walk around in a trench and then boom an artillery round killed you. No drama between you and the antagonist, just nothing nothing nothing dead.

As for the saga of Tanya the Evil, it's a decently popular show, but definitely not some major franchise like the MCU or something. The author of the novels is clearly some guy who played a lot of Hearts of Iron 4 and also clearly read a lot of World war history novels before making the original books. Unlike live action, the animation actually can make explosions ect that "look" real because in spite of the cartoons not being real this means the stupid cartoon can have the bullet actually go through the persons head. According to imdb it's probably about in the top 15% of shows ratings wise. Now I will admit the show really does use rational tactics for the mages, having them provide cover fire, spot for artillery and engage in aerial bombardments, even though it's a show about magical girls. (heck one of the main villains is called Mary Sue :D) But it's a major exception, and one I'm a big fan of.

Reading /r/combatfootage sort of shows just how hard it is to even come close to making modern weapons interesting storytelling, you walk around in a trench and then boom an artillery round killed you. No drama between you and the antagonist, just nothing nothing nothing dead.

Tolstoy did a good job of it where Prince Andrei was just walking around, pacing somewhere, and then boom, a cannon ball, then, because it's Tolstoy, FEELINGS, Universal Love, loss of consciousness. But that has probably never translated well to screen. Also the scene where (someone who's name I've forgotten) is in the middle of a battle, and it suddenly occurs to him that the other fellows are actually trying to kill him -- whom everybody loves! But it's really difficult to pull off inner monologues in movies. But, also, Tolstoy makes it pretty clear they weren't using much in the way of tactics, just throwing men at the problem, so it might not count. A relative has been watching drone footage from Ukraine, and it really just sounds depressing.

Oh War and Peace is great but was a terrible movie precisely because so much of the book does not translate to the big screen.

I watched some drone footage of Russians fighting drones and it's a really depressing scene, lots of footage of drones flying not seeing anything then transmission ends via shotgun blast. (you often see the shotgun shells just before impact).

I can imagine at some point a video game where you are using drones shotguns and artillery to fight your opponent with drones shotguns and artillery in a trench, maybe even some Rifles and machine guns placed in for more trench warfare. Clearly you being the player would have to control drones, but small drones dropping mortar round after mortar round would be a fun game maybe idk.

Astartes was universally beloved though, it's the platinum standard for 40K fanworks. The guy who made it was clearly super talented but it proves that it can be done. 'Show don't tell' is great!

I think you could have a film with a nailbiting, dialogue-free action finale between drone operators. Or maybe they do psy-ops to taunt eachother with pre-recorded messages on their drones? If you can send a signal from your person to the drone, you could send a message too. Occasionally there are these scenes where soldiers bait drones to attack and then dodge. Or that Bradley-BTR duel from the other day, these crazy moments are rare but do happen.

Tanya the evil novels were fun, I liked all the autistic stuff they put in about how Russian air defences were so shit a random Finn landed a light aircraft in Moscow, so they could do a deep strike there and get away with it.

Ahhh I see you're like "the few examples of actually good uses of military action are incredible and I want more of it."

Sadly I just agree, The Saga of Tanya the evil was the best war show of all time in spite of it involving fucking magical girls. The levels of thinking in those books/shows was just off the charts. I get a lot of the same vibes as when I hear Skullagrim review mary the virgin witch somehow by having higher variance the animated shows can have some of the best depictions of conflict.

I really liked the Saga of Tanya the evil and am looking forward to season 2, Season 1 was so good and while the books are ok, the animated version really sells you on the "this is what war is like" doctrine (except for mary sue fuck mary sue)

/r/PoliticalCompassMemes of all places tipped me off about an entertaining animated short movie depicting two mercenary groups in realistic urban combat: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OTLGWNruuOE

Very inferior in quality to Astartes, but still quite nailbiting while dialogue-free.

That was a cool video, liked the fire-and-manoeuvre plus hand signals.

However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.

The superheroes are weak, which is actually a double penalty because the armies/countries have to be weak for them to matter. So Asgard's army has to be useless outside of flashbacks, and let's not even get started on any battle in Wakanda. And the bad guys basically have to be incompetent hordes literal children can fight.

Say what you want about Snyder but you actually get why people with modern armies would actually keep his superheroes around.

Well, Watchmen kinda exists. And so does The Boys. The TV show Watchmen does too, though it goes in a crazy different direction which I can't help but wonder how this forum would feel about it. It takes place in some alternate reality where they pass massive reparations for Black Americans and the show is set in Tulsa (deliberate echoes of the Tulsa race massacre) and there's a neighboring white slum/trailer park trash place locals call Nixonville. A white supremacist group starts targeting police officers and so cops start to wear masks to protect their identities -- in a country where masks and vigilante superheroes are explicitly illegal, and hunted down. The main character is a cop but also a closet superhero, and also tortures people, and it turns out at least one other cop is a closet KKK member. And then there's other wild Watchmen stuff that happens. Not exactly what you're describing, but it was interesting.

I think only the 5% of the population in the INTJ/INTP area really cares about having plots that make sense.

I regularly get told to stop thinking so much when I point out plot holes in movies. I'm probably not the only one here.

I run into this issue with plot holes, where I can see them if the show/movie is "thinky" or is trying to make you think, but when the show is just trying to be fun you can easily ignore the plot holes because the show isn't trying to do this. Books are typically the domain where you can have stories that have thinking and work well. Stuff like to Kill a mockingbird works because it's in book form. The television show Attack on Titan was like this, the first few seasons were a pure spectacle, there was no real deep plot going on and no need for one, but once they started having a major plot in the last 26 episodes+2 1.25 hour long television specials, the holes in the story started to show.

I don't know what to call this it isn't "suspension of disbelief" it's more like "suspension of thinking rationally about the plot". Like the issue is that these stories have 1 writer only and you have to write both a plot and the characters. Most people actually care more about #2 than the plot and most plots kinda blow. The spectacle of most shows is more important than the actual story for good reasons, (Books typically are a much better medium for pure storytelling, but a lot of the best books tend to fall in the "books you read in high school" category, which if you really pay attention the grand narrative of them is mostly trash). The only exception was this tiny weird niche space opera called Legend of the Galatic heroes which I swear is like if star wars was written by a Neoreactionary. Breaking bad is also good but it is more of a "character driven narrative". I should watch house of cards someday

LotGH is far above the average for stories when it comes to caring about the plot and world making sense, but even then it has a few things that seem poorly explained/motivated. Off the top of my head:

Everyone's insistence of following Commodore Fork's invasion plan regardless of how retarded it was

Trunicht's motivation for letting the child emperor live in alliance territory and form a government in exile

Almost everything surrounding the Reuental Revolt, though I feel like the author was starting to run out of steam at that point

The novels behind LoGH were quite good too. I think the English translations were released a few years ago.

Translations of the first two books were ok (not amazing). They changed translators for book 3 onwards and they were pretty awful, it would have been almost impossible for me to follow if I hadn't already seen the anime.

Blah. Thanks for the correction. I stopped at two when grad school got really busy, planned to get back to it... guess that's out.

I think this forum is about 60-70% INTJ or INTP. But in broader society the ratio is much lower.

INTJ is just Myers-Briggs for autist, I guess.

But seriously, another INTJ reporting in. If I recall correctly, it’s among the rarer MBTI types. I wonder if you’re right about your assessment of this place as having massive overrepresentation.

Have we ever done surveys or tried to get a handle on the demographics here? Given the amount of wrong think/number of witches, it might be interesting. Or people might not want to participate and we’d see skew as a result.

I wrote a fucking book because I'm tired of plot holes and shoddy world building, it grates like diamond dust beneath my eyelids.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats