The Magical Girl that your mother warned you about

for every incel white man star wars dudebro there is a teenage lesbian with a slightly deeper and more obscure knowledge of star wars who will one day defeat him in battle

truly the idea of "this scene is (un-)necessary to the story" is such a fundamentally uncurious and anti-art way of engaging with fiction. the story itself is unnecessary, in the sense that all art is unnecessary, because art is not a fucking optimization problem. that's the beauty of it

i've been thinking a lot the last few days about how so many people, even when they think they're defending art, automatically adopt the position of the STORY being the most important part of all fiction. the plot, the character arc, the worldbuilding, but it's always about moving something forward and building a narrative idea. and like....yes, fine, but sometimes i read books because i like the way the author puts words together! sometimes i watch movies because the images and sounds give me an ineffable human experience! not all art can be experienced via synopsis!!!!!!!!!!!

"shipping and blorbofication are not inherently at odds with understanding a story's deep themes" and "some people can't grasp the themes of a story because they never learned how to engage with stories outside of the lens of shipping and blorbofication" are two statements that can coexist