OBD Convo #58: We are the Heroes of Justice

[NostalgiaFan]

An addendum:

However, I am of the mind that realism has no place in fiction. Which is part of the reason why I don't like it. The best part of fiction, that which makes it unique next to non-fiction, is the ability to put on paper the romanticized ideas of humanity. The ideals that are unachievable normally, because they set an example for us to aspire for.

Superman, most prominently, embodies this frame of thought underneath any writer who knows Superman.

The world is already miserable. Why not show us a way towards the sun, and not to subvert it by giving us wax wings that melt as we approach the divine, but by elevating us to something greater. By glorifying our imperfections into something more. That they may usurp the flawless (read: absolute certainty) through monstrous effort.

Yeah its why nihilism is one of my most hated things in fiction and why it only ever works in genres like Horror and even than it can get tedious in a way generic happy endings do not. I find the best balance in being "grounded" without sucking the life and joy out of a story is having bad things happen, and make them actually hurt both the characters and the audience, but still having the people you root for win. It can be a bitter sweet victory, but it is done to make you know it was not easy and the characters did indeed struggle, making it all the more worth it in the end that they triumphed.

 

[Lazywaka]

Realism can actually be very beneficial to a setting when well thought out. The problem is nowadays people just haphazardly throw in realism just for a sake of realism. Or worse, use the "realism" as a shield from genuine criticism or being hypocritical with said realism.

 

[grillmaster]

dont you know realism is when everything is grimy and dull and depressing and everyone is fucking terrible. good people and joy dont exist irl thats just a myth nobody has ever been happy

 

[Regular-Nothing Eric]

Realism can actually be very beneficial to a setting when well thought out. The problem is nowadays people just haphazardly throw in realism just for a sake of realism. Or worse, use the "realism" as a shield from genuine criticism or being hypocritical with said realism.

dont you know realism is when everything is grimy and dull and depressing and everyone is fucking terrible. good people and joy dont exist irl thats just a myth nobody has ever been happy

I wonder which media is more guilty of all this "muh realism" in shades:

Modern anime of the shonen or seinen variety.

or

Modern video games of the gritty or "dark and edgy" variety by Western devs.

 

[Xhominid The Apex]

I wonder which media is more guilty of all this "muh realism" in shades:

Modern anime of the shonen or seinen variety.

or

Modern video games of the gritty or "dark and edgy" variety by Western devs.

Anime has nothing to do with any of that, Anime at it's worst when trying to do "realism" just tends to be really cringe and stupid rather than actually provoke any sense of "realism"(See Attack on Titan).

It's not even Modern Video Games either, what actually caused it is Game of Thrones:
That singlehandedly caused the boom of "realism" that we see that tends to be disguised as nihilism and other ridiculously stupid shit that's meant to hide the massive shortcomings of hoer GRRM writes his shit and ends up crashing into a wall so hard, he never finished A Song of Ice and Fire which Game of Thrones is adapted from.

 

[ChaosTheory123]

Nobody matches up to 90% of fictional characters in real life.

I know, yet some are still brain dead enough have that underlying thought encroach that "I could do better"

Its motivated by the same shit that gave us that gloriously emotionally dead take with Solo Leveling apparently

It's like saying you can't criticize a writer, if you've never written a book before.

Not really the same. You can criticize the quality of something without any sort of inherent hypocrisy, where as this criticism often lands as tossing a stone into a glass house for those lobbing it

I can't take someone calling a character a bitch seriously, because the underlying unsaid is that they could do better themselves

Or more generously, they don't want to escapist into something that reminds them of where they're falling short.

It is retarded of them to use themselves as the metric, though. Like I said.

It is, still doesn't stop it from happening. Ergo my perspective shrugs

 

[ChaosTheory123]

An addendum:

However, I am of the mind that realism has no place in fiction. Which is part of the reason why I don't like it. The best part of fiction, that which makes it unique next to non-fiction, is the ability to put on paper the romanticized ideas of humanity. The ideals that are unachievable normally, because they set an example for us to aspire for.

Superman, most prominently, embodies this frame of thought underneath any writer who knows Superman.

The world is already miserable. Why not show us a way towards the sun, and not to subvert it by giving us wax wings that melt as we approach the divine, but by elevating us to something greater. By glorifying our imperfections into something more. That they may usurp the flawless (read: absolute certainty) through monstrous effort.

Not really getting a disagreement from me here

My favorite character archetype is the unyielding, determined, willful fucker that goes through hell and doesn't break. Injecting some kind of hope into the setting along the way.

I prefer the example to follow rather than what can be found day to day, as much as I want to help and care for people I'm also left perpetually frustrated with them in reality too

 

[Flowering Knight]

I actually really love "nihilistic" and grim/edgy stories if only because they make the more uplifting stories feel that much better. One of my own stories that I'm writing is basically as grim and depressing of a setting as you can get, where bad things happen for the sake of them happening, where the hero goes through hell and back as part of their journey. Where the moment things start to get better, they end up getting worse, and the worse ends up devolving into hell. Of course, this only serves to make the lighter moments shine that much brighter, and it's all the more satisfying when the hero manages to unfuck the world by the end.

 

[NostalgiaFan]

Realism can actually be very beneficial to a setting when well thought out. The problem is nowadays people just haphazardly throw in realism just for a sake of realism. Or worse, use the "realism" as a shield from genuine criticism or being hypocritical with said realism.

A lot of times, they only call it "realism" when it's just as unreal as anything else in fiction, simply making it dark and hopeless as possible because the writer or whoever is in charge has way too much of a pessimistic or disturbed view of the world.

 

[ChaosTheory123]

Realism to me is feeling like the characters are 3 dimensional, like they have enough depth to pop off the page and actually feel like a person

People experience all emotions, leaning in any one direction too many isn't realism. Pessimism isn't realism, especially when its unaccompanied by something lighter as well.

Even as bleak as something like Berserk is, that's not all there is to it, no? The characters feel like people, because they respond with a full spectrum of fleshed out emotions.

I say as Guts is in the middle of mentally shutting down, but I digress as there's no way he's staying that way

 

[NostalgiaFan]

Realism to me is feeling like the characters are 3 dimensional, like they have enough depth to pop off the page and actually feel like a person

People experience all emotions, leaning in any one direction too many isn't realism. Pessimism isn't realism, especially when its unaccompanied by something lighter as well.

Even as bleak as something like Berserk is, that's not all there is to it, no? The characters feel like people, because they respond with a full spectrum of fleshed out emotions.

I say as Guts is in the middle of mentally shutting down, but I digress as there's no way he's staying that way

While I agree in some parts, people like some gang members or cartels don't really feel like they need to be 3 dimensional since they are pretty shallow evil bastards in real life. I get making some of them a bit more complicated can make them intriguing, but it really does not feel realistic to make every character a complex character, especially when it runs the risk of making them appear way more sympathetic in the story than they ever would in real life, real life evil scum bags being given "complex and deep characterization" that tries to make them sympathetic is where this really goes too far.

 

[ChaosTheory123]

While I agree in some parts, people like some gang members or cartels don't really feel like they need to be 3 dimensional since they are pretty shallow evil bastards in real life. I get making some of them a bit more complicated can make them intriguing, but it really does not feel realistic to make every character a complex character, especially when it runs the risk of making them appear way more sympathetic in the story than they ever would in real life, real life evil scum bags being given "complex and deep characterization" that tries to make them sympathetic is where this really goes too far.

Oddly enough, kind of feel like Demon Slayer handled this one pretty well

The demons were right bastards, we got to see what made them who they were in the present day, didn't change the fact they committed atrocities and were put down for it. Tanjirou empathizing with with their journey didn't involve him ignoring they reached that destination.

Hell, Muzan was that same kind of shallow schmuck you're talking about. Just a narcissist scared of his own mortality. Pure scum fuck from start to finish where his outside reflected his inside as he died looking like a literal giant baby

All that to say, just giving that depth and understanding of how we got here doesn't necessarily make their decisions after the fact sympathetic

 

[NostalgiaFan]

Oddly enough, kind of feel like Demon Slayer handled this one pretty well

The demons were right bastards, we got to see what made them who they were in the present day, didn't change the fact they committed atrocities and were put down for it. Tanjirou empathizing with with their journey didn't involve him ignoring they reached that destination.

Hell, Muzan was that same kind of shallow schmuck you're talking about. Just a narcissist scared of his own mortality. Pure scum fuck from start to finish where his outside reflected his inside as he died looking like a literal giant baby

All that to say, just giving that depth and understanding of how we got here doesn't necessarily make their decisions after the fact sympathetic

I am speaking more on cases where they adapt actual historical events and characters like with that show Narcos, which I heard added "sympathetic" traits or reasons to characters who did not have any or at the least did not have them when doing the things they did. It's also something you see all the time when they take many historical characters then make them the MC or at least have an important role, they proceed to add sympathetic sides to them that historical records of any kind do not mention in order to make the audience like them better.

TBF the opposite is just as true as you have plenty of historical characters who were more complex and greyer than you thought, only for films to completely remove those traits and turn them full on cartoon villain. I guess I am trying to say in the case of gang members, terrorists, or serial rapists and killers, they don't always need more than two dimensions because many of them in real life are as basic and simple as you would find with some fictional interpretations of them.

 

[Stocking Anarchy]

I've not been following the conversation fully, but I remember losers on Twitter dissing on Gurren Lagann fans because it inspired people to have hope and believe in themselves and striving towards the future, and they were sick of people being so optimistic (like they should be miserable instead). It seems some people just want to be as miserable and hopeless as possible, and drag everyone else down with them.

 

[Xhominid The Apex]

Realism to me is feeling like the characters are 3 dimensional, like they have enough depth to pop off the page and actually feel like a person

People experience all emotions, leaning in any one direction too many isn't realism. Pessimism isn't realism, especially when its unaccompanied by something lighter as well.

Even as bleak as something like Berserk is, that's not all there is to it, no? The characters feel like people, because they respond with a full spectrum of fleshed out emotions.

I say as Guts is in the middle of mentally shutting down, but I digress as there's no way he's staying that way

Oddly enough, kind of feel like Demon Slayer handled this one pretty well

The demons were right bastards, we got to see what made them who they were in the present day, didn't change the fact they committed atrocities and were put down for it. Tanjirou empathizing with with their journey didn't involve him ignoring they reached that destination.

Hell, Muzan was that same kind of shallow schmuck you're talking about. Just a narcissist scared of his own mortality. Pure scum fuck from start to finish where his outside reflected his inside as he died looking like a literal giant baby

All that to say, just giving that depth and understanding of how we got here doesn't necessarily make their decisions after the fact sympathetic

This is honestly how I feel about the entire ordeal with how people completely confuse 3D Characters with "Realism" and why I tend to point out how Game of Thrones gave people the absolute worst impressions on how see "Realism" in their shows and act like how things should be more "adult" because of the "realism".
A character being 3 Dimensional isn't them basically dying out of nowhere or doing horrific things for virtually no reason like Eren Jeager or practically every other character in Game of Thrones after Season 6. A character being 3 Dimensional is primarily being lead by the characteristics they have just like any real life person. A character who is highly emotional and does things on the heat of the moment should follow through on that but still show they have layers despite that fact as the same for a person who is consistently stoic can in fact be pretty talkative if they have a hobby they enjoy but then stay stoic when it's not their hobby.
It's things like these that are missed in modern day writing because most writers are god awful in terms of actually writing characters that aren't them directing characters to do something.

Not all villains need to be sympathetic but there's nothing wrong either in showing them having some reason to fuel their actions, same with not all heroes need terrible backstories for the sake of it to be heroes. Not everyone needs to die to show the threat of the villain(something so many people miss as David Xanatos of Gargoyles fame is infamous for simply always getting the upper hand simply by adding layers to his plans that he will always benefit even if his primary plan fails... but that requires writers to know how to actually be smart and not just lie through their teeth and make shit up) and you can still have stakes that isn't just "Multiversal collapse".

I've not been following the conversation fully, but I remember losers on Twitter dissing on Gurren Lagann fans because it inspired people to have hope and believe in themselves and striving towards the future, and they were sick of people being so optimistic (like they should be miserable instead). It seems some people just want to be as miserable and hopeless as possible, and drag everyone else down with them.

This is also part of it and real shit? I'm just fucking tired of doomers, blackpillers and otherwise. If these dudes find no value in their life whatsoever, then they can just stew in their own perceived worthlessness and leave everyone else the fuck alone. Like it's not even that hard to understand the entire message of Gurren Lagann and dudes shitting on the ending despite the message is hilariously clear for what it is.

 

[Paxton]

 

[Paxton]

 

[Stocking Anarchy]

 

[Adamant soul]

Jaida fucked around and found out you don't fuck with the Juggernaut...bitch.

Fatal Influence couldn't even win after Vacquer already had a title match and a 3v1 beatdown, despite them all being at ringside. Like I hope Shawn realizes it'll now be impossible to take any of these three even a little seriously now?

DAMN though, it shows how high on Stephanie the WWE is that they have her successfully defend two different titles in one night (something apparently NO ONE has ever done before, at least not in recent memory). Which just reinforces the fact that Stephanie made the right choice. If she'd signed with AEW, the best she could hope for was getting fed to Toni Storm who'd give her a good programme before Khan would promptly put her on Collision and keep her there so people don't realize she's better than Mercedes.

Though I give it a month, maybe two before Tony Khan has Mercedes either do this herself or one-up it by doing three title matches in one night or some stupid shit, just to feed the women's already overly inflated ego and bury more of his women's division.

 

[Nevermind]

No they can't, Cap 4 just bombed and Star Wars has been irrelevant for years. ROS disappointed and may have not even made its money back, hence why there has been no new SW for years and the only one coming out finally is just the Mandalorian film, which will likely do nothing to revitalize it. Outside of Deadpool and Wolverine, Spiderman No Way Home, none of MCU's films have been profitable compared to their budgets.

The movies haven't been doing it for them, but this isn't as devastating as it would have been in prior years because they can make the same mediocre content for Disney+ and keep their paid subscribers and watch hours of people watching what they know. The industry isn't as reliant on box office hits anymore.