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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1064 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Wow, The Hobbit really is good for kids, huh? I think the main problem with Lord of the Rings proper is that it's really boring a lot of the time, perhaps too boring and slow-moving and overall wordy and complex for a kid. The content itself is morally fine for them, not traumatizing or anything, but all those other things make it hard to start so early.

Turning this back to Culture War material, you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you? There's something profound to me that we used to be so sure of ourselves that we were constantly churning out works that everyone could enjoy, and even now, everyone can still retroactively enjoy them, but at some point, the cultures diverged enough that nothing can be trusted anymore, writers cannot go with the old frameworks respected older works once used, and classic themes might appear corny and simple by now.

you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you?

Kids media (books, movies, games) have, as a general rule, always been complete shit.

This is mostly because the stereotypical kid media isn't actually made for children- they're made for adults who think that's what children like (and they kind of have to be, considering that's who's buying the tickets).

Meanwhile, consider this kids' toy and the fact that the movie it's based on is in a rating category such that theaters would refuse to let the person who would [want to] own that see.

Now, consider that scene where Robocop shoots that guy's dick off. That's going to trigger alarm bells in the adults who see it, but not the children; for the adults, it's "yeah, they're trying to rape the woman", for the children, they're probably not going to get the full implications of "hair down there" (or kinda just roll their eyes a bit)... but "he got shot in the dick lol" still has universal appeal. That's true for most of the superfluous sex scenes in other movies, for that matter- the main downside is not that they'll get it and enjoy it a little too much, but that it degrades the movie to pander to an audience that isn't them. They see sex scenes [and sexuality] the way everyone else sees wokeshit; and ironically the only movies to point this out are themselves 'kids movies'. [Shrek is another one, but is far more explicit about shitting on it, a lot more literally, in the first scene of the movie.]

At best, it's integrated organically into the story- hard to take the sex scene out of Terminator because the entire story is built around it- but if you show a kid that movie I guarantee you he's mainly going to be stomping around the house making robot sounds and saying "I'll be back" way too much, not trying to act out movie sex.

Anyway, so Tolkien is like that. The "wokeshit"/moralizing that is there (which is... mainly bog-standard Christianity in a way that isn't quite as blatant as Lewis' is) isn't all that jarring, as there's a reason for it to be there and it's generally intended positively rather than "Remember Kids, Leave Room For Jesus"-style messaging (like "see, the race of rock people are all gay, remember that being gay is OK" in the middle of a mediocre-to-bad superhero movie).

It's not all that accurate to group "elements of media that adults like" as "adult" to then exclude "not adults" from it. It's OK for most things to be universal.

you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you?

Yeah, that's been a problem. I'm actually working on a draft of an effort post about that. I'm gonna try really hard on it, and probably eat a month long ban for something I never saw coming if past is prologue.

Christian kid's books are still being produced, and generally not full of woke shit. They are mediocre, but kids eat that stuff up. Feed volume and keep room for the classics.

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