I'm watching what now?

Because you're a tourist, CD. For example, you hate the fantasy genre but only love elves and Imoen. You hate Star Wars but only love the Sith. You hate Star Trek but only love Captain Janeway because of your school-kid crush on her, nothing else.

Ah Tourist. The No True Scotsman fallacy of a fanboy with fetal alcohol syndrome.

You hate the fantasy genre but only love elves and Imoen.

You made that up because you're mad. I talk positively about a lot of fantasy. I just don't mindlessly consume it like you do.

Criticism comes with being a fan.

You hate Star Wars but only love the Sith.

You made that up because you're mad. Again: Criticism is an inherent part of being a fan.

You hate Star Trek but only love Captain Janeway because of your school-kid crush on her, nothing else.

Pretty sure I've been talking TNG to death constantly. And find me a single actual Trekkie who doesn't hate NuTrek?

i just wanted you know that i’m quite thankful for the kind words for vendetta, because all i see is REALLY bad faith criticism regarding vendetta (which is rooted in misogyny tbh)

and sure, i DO believe that we could’ve gotten more from her foreshadowing-wise. there is so many heros that players have beef or glaze SO MUCH about, or just forget (salute to pharah. not to her voice actor tho)

but, HOLY MOLY do i see like, videos either calling ven a mary sue, or even worse, calling her racist.

but yeah, it's kinda what you have to deal with when you love a female character :P

I can sympathize with the Doomfist glazers, I really can. From a doylist perspective, he's been fucked over by Blizzard's terrible writing for ten whole years, hyped endlessly but never actually allowed to be the main villain of modern Overwatch's story. For him to then be suddenly "killed off" in a cinematic and then talked about as the thing that held Talon back? Yeah, if I was a Doomfist fan, I'd be a little sore about it.

But from a watsonian perspective?? I fucking LOVE that Doomfist fell victim to his own complacency! Delicious dramatic irony! His whole philosophy is "only through conflict do we evolve"- and that evolution is spurred by losing. Constantly winning, constantly sitting on your assets in anticipation of the next battle, that's what causes stagnation. Jumping back to metatextual themes real quick- Overwatch as a game fell victim to stagnation, so "killing" Doomfist off is a really powerful declaration that the current writers are willing to actually take risks and upset the status quo.

We know Doomfist isn't dead. You'd have to be downright delusional to believe that Doomfist is actually dead. For one, he's still in the game. Duh. But most of all? Dude fell off a ledge. In a universe where people get cybernetically dragged back from the dead, or survive explosions that level buildings. If anything, I'm thrilled to see how Doomfist's next evolution manifests- will he rise to his own challenge? I would even argue that this is Doomfist's chance to finally show what he's really all about rather than staying locked in the role he's been trapped in since old Overwatch.

Vendetta did Doomfist a favor. I even think he'd say that to her face. This is the guy who was delighted when he learned an 11 year old in Numbani was building a robot with the express goal to kill him. I hope he's allowed to welcome this challenge as well.

---

Diving into the more controversial meta stuff- people calling Vendetta racist is fucking insane because in the same breath those people will hypersexualize Mauga and Doomfist, ignore Baptiste, ignore Sierra, call Sojourn useless and boring, etc etc etc. not to mention their lack of awareness of Blizzard's habit of lightening character's skin tones (Symmetra, Cassidy, Emre. . .). Like Vendetta taking down Doomfist might be some poor writing but it's certainly not racist.

And Vendetta being a Mary Sue? As if we don't all stan one Emre Sarioglu, tortured tragic backstory man who's not like other girls because he's involved with the """real""" villain of the story, and who *gasp* isn't really at fault for his crimes, and who wields crazy powerful but dramatically uncontrollable powers, and every character remembers him so fondly or at least respects him even though he's hardly ever been mentioned before in the lore until now. . . Emre is 100% "Mary Sue" material and I'm not shy about admitting it! I love having fun! I love angst-ridden characters who are overly integral in shaping the plot! But if Emre had been a woman and Freja had been a man, can you imagine the backlash?? People would be calling it downright "woke", I bet.

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

The obsession with "filler."

People are obsessed with 'cutting out the filler' by getting rid of character focused episodes and fun divergences and getting right to the plot.

The problem is you're not cutting out "filler."

You're cutting out the meat and potatoes of the show.

Cutting filler episodes should be a good thing because it means that the industry isn't working people to unreasonable expectations but instead its people getting excited that the show doesnt have characters and instead it feels like every show is rushing to finish itself

Congratulations, you now understand why "Mary Sue" now just means "Any female protagonist" and why "Media Literacy" now means "Agreeing with me."

"Filler" is a term that sounds smart enough that people will use it on things that don't interest them. I saw it a lot in the brony fandom, where bronies wanted MLP to be a world-exploring action series, so every episode that wasn't worldbuilding or fighting a villain was "filler."

Which is to say 95% of the show, because it was a slice of life comedy.

Then, as serialization became this weird obsession for people, anything that felt like a "monster of the week" episode was "filler."

My favourite example of why this was so fucking dumb is this screenshot from a video essay on Star vs the Forces of Evil

This guy was trying to argue "a show should have a good balance between story and filler" so they didn't even mean it negatively, but that's the entire fucking show you are calling "Filler."

Even if you're trying to use the term in a neutral fashion, you're still calling it "Slop." But instead of finding a new way to articulate yourself, people would rather spend hours arguing "No no no! Calling this horrible nasty yucky wasteful garbage isn't an automatic negative, it's neutral!"

This fixation on "Filler" and separating it from "Plot" is why so much of animation critique was so terrible. It's why animation Youtubers suck so fucking much, because they try to create a hierarchy of tropes and tools where there shouldn't be one.

Like I said, this idea of a narrative-driven animated series that was basically "Western cartoon emulates some shitty shonen you watched when you were nine" but appealing to adults (somehow) is the holy grail of a lot of animation Youtubers, and they were pushing for it so hard they ruined the discourse around TV in general.

It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone.

You are aware the Jedi aren't actually trying to kill their opponents right? Of course they don't take opportunities for lethal hits. And they look like they're aiming for the weapons because that's what they're doing. Jedi fight by tiring out their enemy and then disabling them.

To make a point of it, this bit in Revenge of the Sith?

This is often mocked for being useless, where either of them could cut the other in half at any moment. But the thing "Swordfighting experts" often ignore is that these two are not trying to kill each other.

These aren't soldiers on opposite ends of a battlefield who have never met. These are best friends who don't actually want to fight each other but feel like they have to. This is what Jedi hesitating looks like.

For all the arguments of "In a real swordfight" people forget in a real swordfight you're fizzing on adrenaline, you're nervous, you're trying to both stop your enemy and not die in the process. So fighters are going to choke, they're going to hesitate, they're going to see and opening and judge it too risky. Especially if the enemy is swinging a supernova death laser around them in a protective arc with the speed of a saw blade.

Especially if they're fighting someone they love.

All the nitpicks about the Prequel trilogy lightsaber fights make the same mistake.

Talking about Lightsabers as if they are no different from a metal sword.

Examining a battle in hindsight from a third person perspective rather than considering actually being in it.