adam_y
@adam_y@lemmy.world
- Comment on Gaming has a polarization problem 3 weeks ago:
The only part that’s unique to gaming is that gamers are the most toxic community in the internet.
I wish this wasn’t as true as it is.
- Comment on Gaming has a polarization problem 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think k this is a gaming problem.
It is a discourse problem.
People engage in absolutes. They either love a thing or hate a thing. There’s no nuance.
And it must be made to cater for them, there’s no expectation that it will contain choices they don’t approve of.
And this stance, this modern relationship with the world permeates everything, especially forms of media.
You see it in films and books… Fans and stans and folk trying to take it down. There is no nuance or middle ground.
People don’t accept that, perhaps, something isn’t just “not for them”. That’s why you get grown men complaining about the direction of children’s shows they used to watch.
And this is compounded with social media where polarisation, blunt takes and contradiction are the primary drivers of engagement.
Audience error.
- Comment on Mutant Reviewers article: Six of the worst cult sequels out of the ’90s 4 weeks ago:
Thanks, that guy.
- Comment on Mutant Reviewers article: Six of the worst cult sequels out of the ’90s 4 weeks ago:
Nice listicle, but would have been better to write something inciteful as to why all these sequels failed so hard.
It wasn’t just the cash grab, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the previous film great.
Kids loved watching the original RoboCop because it was R rated. It was a comic book film with gore and guns. It was illicit.
Then they turned him into a cartoon character for kids.
Police academy became a paradox of itself. You could argue that the public perception of the police had changed significantly between the original and Mission to Moscow too. It was no longer funny to be entertained by the thought of inept police.
Anyway, that’s just off the top of my head.
- Comment on SNP MP calls for Trump state visit to be scrapped 4 weeks ago:
Nah, let him come here and make sure his motorcade gets stopped on the streets.
- Comment on 'Jupiter Ascending' came out 10 years ago, and we're still not sure how The Matrix creators' space opera went so wrong 5 weeks ago:
You’re hired.
- Comment on Current chain of command 5 weeks ago:
Going to guess you aren’t European and you aren’t aware of what Putin did to our gas prices at the start of the Ukrain invasion.
You’re out by a million miles (sarcasm, not exact figure).
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Yes, I totally agree and I think you’ve hit on something subtle but really important…
The difference between starting to make a work (of art, if we are lucky) with an intent for it to be about something and telling people a work is about something.
I think the intent is important. Marvel’s latest round of press includes them telling us how the new Captain America is about modern politics but the plot really doesn’t hold that up beyond some fairly blunt motifs. Ultimately, it feels as if it about a struggling studio, if that is a theme.
I guess the context is really important… And it highlights the slippery thing between thematics and meaning. Take a film like Stalker where the plot is arguably slightly, but the characterisation and the context give rise to meaning through the themes… It would be a different film if Tarkovsky had tried to market it as being about politics and Chernobyl.
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Hang on, are we arguing for the same thing? That story, and more importantly, compelling story, is what is needed?
I was just using king as an example of someone who crafts stories… Whether they are page-turners or not, that compel audiences.
My problem with Marvel films is that they are stale, narratively, and as such the only thing that can fix them is decent writing that isn’t in the service of “franchise”.
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Yeah, if we weren’t talking about Marvel films you’d have a point.
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Which is to say that absolutely, you are right that theme is important because ultimately theme is context.
I do wonder how much of this belongs, not to the creator, but to the viewer/reader.
There’s that great example with Ray Bradbury telling people that Fahrenheit 451 was not about fascism until someone pointed out to him how it absolutely was.
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
I think the slightly casual, almost throwaway comment that I started this with was more about the fact that, specifically Marvel, films have become all theme and no story.
The standard superhero narrative of “Bad guy gets weapon, or does something bad and Superhero A must stop them” doesn’t sustaing multiple franchises.
Couple that with the classic trauma genesis story which forms the obligatory introduction arc.
Marvel films have become about themes almost entirely to the point where characters and story are interchangable. Take the latest captain America… Almost any other Marvel character could have played the same role in that film… The narrative is so weak that it doesn’t matter. The themes are grand and perhaps even important (a bright red tyrannical monster rampaging in the whitehouse) but the story is what let’s it down.
These stories are weak and we’ve seen them multiple times now. It doesn’t matter how often we change the themes, whether the film is about fascism in America, finding friendship and family, or the perils of unchecked science… These themes ultimately fall flat when the underlying structure, the story, used to convey them is weak.
Sure, all art is usually about something, and those themes can be important, but I stand by what I said… If you want Superhero films to see any good they need to shrug off the notion of being entirely about symbology and theme and maybe have some gripping story.
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Sure mate, Stephen King says this:
. . . starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story”
But what does he know?
- Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes 1 month ago:
Or, you know, actually stories rather than themes and characters.
- Comment on George Carlin spent nearly his entire life trying to warn us of what is happening 1 month ago:
Only if you think it is mud. I’m kinda proud of the guy for being so succinct and bang on whilst enjoying the powder.
- Comment on George Carlin spent nearly his entire life trying to warn us of what is happening 1 month ago:
Did you down vote that because:
- You think it isn’t true.
- You don’t like that it is true.
You sort of moralising cowards are the sort of folk he took the piss out of.
- Comment on George Carlin spent nearly his entire life trying to warn us of what is happening 1 month ago:
Whilst hooning a ton of coke.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
- Comment on Are mods usually confusing as hell or am I just an idiot? 1 month ago:
"If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a shortcut, it’d just be the way. "
Modding varies from game to game, but having been doing it for nearly 40 years now, I can say it has generally become easier in the titles that want you to and harder in the ones that don’t.
- Comment on What is something that keeps you up at night? 2 months ago:
Being old.
I used to be able to sleep endlessly.
Now I find myself awake early in the morning, despite having gone to bed rather late. And I’d like to go back to sleep but I can’t.
I miss it.
And this isn’t even about needing to get up to pee. That’s apparently something I still have to look forward to.
- Comment on Not enough teachers, children turned away: Schools 'can't cope' with population boom 2 months ago:
We are currently witnessing falling numbers in the primary phase
So there’s no population boom.
Most of this article is talking about a speculative boom that might happen and what that could mean.
Meanwhile all of the current problems are attributed to not enough staff and chronic underfunding.
What an awful shitty article posing as journalism.
- Comment on If I'm not ready, I won't be ready! 2 months ago:
- for context…
I’m neuro divergent, I guess, but not ADHD. If anything I’m the opposite. I can focus of things incredibly well. I can prioritise and actuator tasks rather well.
However, you give me a dentist appointment at 2pm and I’m up at 7.30 with my coat on by 8, sat at my kitchen table until mid-day when I walk to the dentists and awkwardly stand outside for nearly an hour because that’s what I’m doing.
- Comment on If I'm not ready, I won't be ready! 2 months ago:
Hang on… Is this an ADHD thing? Damn.
- Comment on Nintendo omits original Donkey Kong Country Returns team from the remaster’s credits 2 months ago:
Here’s that vague statement in full:
“We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game’s creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process,”
- Comment on My hearing is already fucked. Mwap 2 months ago:
Dums and Boses
- Comment on oopsie 2 months ago:
No you don’t.
- Comment on oopsie 2 months ago:
I think the default comment, even here, is “I disagree”.
Folk have mistaken contraryism for discourse and argument for engagement.
- Comment on Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2 are getting movies plus a Ghost of Tsushima anime is coming 2 months ago:
Starship troopers > hell divers > hell divers movie > hell divers movie the video game > hell divers movie the video game extended universe books
Can’t wait for the franchise to get massive, overblown, ubiquitous and then die off in subsequent TV spin-offs.
The Marvel Way.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
“I’m a little bit upset with the person of low IQ that lives down the road. He’s always fussing around his car as if it is more impressive than it is. He is certainly full of underserved confidence”.
Also, Scots is a distinct language. Not an accent.
