FOG

I wish people would quit the "no one can love you if you don't love yourself" when facts are that we learn how to love ourselves through being loved by other people. Being loved is an integral part of loving yourself and there's nothing shameful about needing it.

anyway so i feel like the western obsession with romantic love is symptomatic of the absence of community we experience in our socially isolating society,

it’s the only type of love we’re really “allowed” to have and it’s really sad. i hope everyone realizes at some point that you don’t need to be dating someone to love them, and that you don’t need any romance just to be loved.

the thing is, also... every discussion about Whether The MCU Is Garbage or Is Disney Irredeemably Evil or Has Star Wars Gone On Too Long or Why Does It Feel Like There's Been Just Three Shows On American TV For The Past 3 Decades inevitably ends up at "hey but don't shame people for wanting to have fun and escape the continuous nightmare of late capitalism for 2 hours a night" and like. fair. being effortlessly entertained is a valid desire that deserves to be fulfilled. but the thing is. and I really don't wanna be That Guy but. if you're coming back home from your soul-crushing corporate job into your alienated nuclear household, tired from a busy day of doing some bullshit to make a living, and you feel dead inside, and your idea of escape is to tune into the next installment of something that's not really cinema as much as like, a long serialised commercial for the fast fashion items with the popular character of the month, then I'm sorry bro but you're not really going anywhere. you're not escaping, you're sinking deeper in. and look. it's your god given right to watch schlocky TV and then go read fanfic about it. but if you're wondering why all this dazzling entertainment still leaves you feeling so empty you just wanna scream and scream and scream, then you might actually have an acute case of going too long without consuming any media that has an intent beyond draining your money and time and a formula beyond regurgitating what sold best last year

People have argued this subject for as long as media has existed at all, and for most of my life I absolutely felt that it was just pretentious of people to complain about movies getting dumbed down or soulless...but they still had a point and it really has gone far enough in the last few years that there’s no denying it anymore, you can see how fast Disney is churning things out, how much they’ve streamlined it down to a reusable formula, how careful they are to appeal to as many demographics as possible and how they have all the merchandising ready to go from day one. So yes, every loud-mouthed movie critic was right, Hollywood mainstream cinema has steadily deteriorated into a mind-numbing cash grab and there’s finally little room to deny it or argue that it’s harmless, because it also means a whole lot of people overworked, underpaid, under-credited and artistically stifled at every level of production.

OP may sound harsh and all but they’re still quite clearly stating that there’s a problem with overly commercialized megaconglomerate filmmaking and they even explain that it’s fine to like whatever you want if you really like whatever. And yet the notes are still full of passionately angry responses like they actually just said to stop having fun or actually said anything passing any kind of judgment on any fandom. People really don’t take time to process the meaning of posts before getting riled up about them. If it HURTS just to see someone say “I wish these pieces of fiction were made with more loving care” your investment in that fiction might be going too far.