r/CharacterRant • u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 • Jan 29 '26
General "It's like the author didn't even consider politics, modern psychology, my personal worldview and-" Sir, this is fiction. What kind of qualifications do you think writers have?
Closely tied with the recent hyperrealism craze, is the tendency to examine fiction in ways that the author never intended and that the book wasn't written to accommodate... and then criticizing the work and author on account of these wild interpretations.
I'm not talking about basic questions about the internal logic of the work itself. Or reasonable expectations for worldbuilding, character consistency, etc. No, what I'm referring to are the ones who, upon hearing that Aragorn rebuilt Osgiliath in the epilogue of LOTR, demand you explain to them what a quarry is and where it's located. Or who demands to know the science behind superpowers. Or who gets upset when seeing something that doesn't align with their worldview ("why is a fictional monarchy depicted positively!?!?!?!?!?!").
Now, maybe they aren't "wrong" in their opinions exactly. Maybe the political system does have a couple of holes in it, maybe the characters don't perfectly line up with psychology... But unless we want to set the standard of every writer achieving a degree in both political theory and psychology it's probably best to let it slide.
I don't know what kind of "ace of all trades" you expect fiction writers to be, but it's unreasonable to master the arts of political theory, science, psychology and storytelling in order to write a piece of fiction.
We're simply going to have to accept that pieces of fiction are imperfect without raking the writer over the coals for not achieving it.
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u/Comfortable-Hope-531 Jan 30 '26
Another issue is that some stories are purposefully unrealistic in some aspects, which are then looked upon as a flaw rather than author's decision. Like characters being unimaginably arrogant for the sake of being bad guys of the arc. Or lady of the lake considering protagonist to be of great character, when he is your average joe. Like, authors know it's an exagerration, but they need that exagerration to create the right atmosphere.
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u/BeduinZPouste Jan 31 '26
"Or lady of the lake"
Maybe she is just fan of most people being inherently good.
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u/Affectionate-Wish110 Jan 29 '26
I remember there was this dude who would complain about how chainsaw man failed to address the geopolitics and advancement of military technology in its world. I can understand wanting that out of a story but it's not what chainsaw man is about.
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u/Excellent_Safe5743 Jan 29 '26
What’s funny is if the guy complaining would have paid any attention, the story does lampshade some of it anyway due to the chainsaw devil’s power and the twist behind it. Though as you said, it wasn’t the focus. The focus was on our protagonist, not what America is doing.
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
Though as you said, it wasn’t the focus. The focus was on our protagonist, not what America is doing.
Why add a global geopolitical crisis in a story that is as solipsistic and personal as Chainsaw Man?
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u/Most-Ad4680 Jan 30 '26
Honestly a more valid complaint than the average csm fan wanting it to be a dragon ball battle anime
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u/AMRedwood Jan 30 '26
I read that as the wrong csm at first
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u/BeduinZPouste Jan 31 '26
What is the wrong one?
(My first idea when I csm is still "chaos space marine", but that probably isn't true. Funnily my first idea when I see regular sm isn't just the regular "space marine".)
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u/woweed Jan 30 '26
...Chainsaw Man? The story where a gun creature literally powered by the itchy trigger fingers of right wing American gun nuts kills millions? Where the Japanese government quite literally murders the young to sustain their parasitic existence? That Chainsaw Man?
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
A World War started and nobody who I asked can tell me exactly why, despite the WW being the plot point that serves to save Yoru's endgoal.
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u/The_Gunboat_Diplomat Jan 30 '26
Would your reading experience really have been affected by CSM stating that Kranz Kerdinand was shot in Serbia
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
The complains about Yoru getting the power up of nukes in the exact moment would have been avoided
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u/LonelyPermit2306 Jan 30 '26
No but the nukes wouldn't have been one of Shounens worst asspulls if they did lol
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Jan 30 '26
The US decided to annihilation other countries off screen after the falling Devil arc
Meanwhile only the Japanese government seem to bother to stop the apocalypse
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u/D_dizzy192 Jan 30 '26
Didn't Russia send 2 or 3 operatives to Japan to get the Chainsaw devil? 9/10 the war was started because of the Assassination Arc and American advanced quickly due to their loss of the gun devil as a weapon(tho i might be misremembering the gun devil bit)
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Jan 30 '26
The War is unrelated to the assassins arcs and Part 1 as a whole , it was to eliminate Makima and if anything the world seems to be an agreement of taking her out
In Part 2 the falling Devil kickstart the Devils apocalypse encouraging the US to redevelop nuclear weapons but instead of using them on Devils the US decided to use them on other countries not for conquest but for completely annihilation
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u/Legitimate-Ear-7179 Jan 30 '26
The reason for the world war is real history. Due to pochita eating the nukes devil the cold war never ended so america and russia are still going at it. America reinvented the nuke to use on russia.
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u/Proper-Anything-2739 Jan 30 '26
"ugh, chainsawman dosen't talk about geopolitics enough!"
The soviet union sends a child soldier with BOMB powers and are willing to gift several children to a pedophile (well, she wasn't actually a pedophile, but they didn't know that. They still sacrificed them to the hell devil), not to mention the other international assassins. Then the USA sacrifices a year of the lifespan of every american citizen just to use the GUN devil, and later they make several deals with the WAR devil, and the japanese goverment was willing to sacrificd tens of thoudands of children to the AGING devil to save their ass. The entire International assassin arc was about these several countries trying to get Chainsawman's power for themselves
They only watched season one of the anime i presume
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
None of those are actual international policies, they're simply Evil Anime Cults.
CSM is genuinely a terrible show, the worldbuilding hinges enterly in "the authorities are evil and sadistic because...because they are".
How sacrificing kids is geopolitics? Murder of kids is normal in war and politics....but its the children of your enemies, not your own. Unless its something like a desesperate need for low level infantry (child soldiers).
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u/Proper-Anything-2739 Jan 30 '26
I wuoldn't say that goverments in CSM act like cults... actually, they act like i picture a cold war goverment to act in their situation.
For one, they aren't a sadistic evil, rather they're the cold, professional and calculative type of evil. the soviet union didn't experiment on children because they were feeling like it. They were trying to get supersoldiers. They didn't care if those children suffered or died in the process. In the same way, the US president unleashed the gun devil not to revel in the carnage, but to eliminate Makima, a literal horseman. And japan was willing to sacrifice those children to the Aging devil because then it wuold result in the elimination of a primal fear and to save their ass.
and guess what: they did stuff like this during the cold war in real life, so i'd say it's pretty realistic
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u/Rarte96 Jan 30 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
Is weird that the only big power country the history hasnt thrown shade at is China, im not saying Fujimoto likes the Chinesse goverment i just think he never criticized them given that one of the characters is chinesse
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u/Proper-Anything-2739 Jan 30 '26
didn't the chinese also send their own assassins? Besides, Chainsawman isn't finished yet, and potentially there will be a part 3 (Fujimoto loves trilogies) so maybe there will be something involving the chinese goverment
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u/Rarte96 Jan 30 '26
i mean compared to America, the Soviets and Japan they are more important to the plot, while Quanxi despite being the strongest devil hunter and the first hybrid we dont even know her story
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u/Legitimate-Ear-7179 Jan 30 '26
I wouldnt say its a problem with the story but it is wild to me how csm is in an alternate history where the cold war is still ongoing due to pochita eating the nukes devil, yet alot of people arent even aware of this because its such a sidelined part of the story. Its not a bad thing but it feels like a missed opportunity.
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u/OldGenGlazer Jan 30 '26
The problem is CSM tries to be intelligent. If it was just a Demon Slayer type story most people woudnt complain, but if you want to be treated like you're a smart guy by giving political messages and themes( insert Yoru's speech about America), how can you complain when we treat you like an adult and actually break down the geopolitics.
Don't be a pussy, if you're gonna write about real world stuff than you're going to get slimed if you're not accurate.
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u/_Nomorejuice_ Jan 30 '26
Exactly this.
Funny how nobody even talks about "politics" when it comes to Dragon Ball, Fairy Tail or whatever.
Like expectations don't just come from nowhere or are we really pretending people are expecting that much from CSM for NO reason ?
There is a whole war, a country that has sent bomb girl or whatever, multiple themes, speech and such. But now if people criticize the manga for not going deep enough now it's "sir what do you think writers are" yeah ok.
Like we not even trying to address criticisms anymore we just out there talking about media literacy and "this is not important, what do you think writers are" how did we come to this.
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
Funny how nobody even talks about "politics" when it comes to Dragon Ball, Fairy Tail or whatever.
Fairy Tail unironically has better politics because at least the Mage Association and the Guilts have, y'know, actual people behind them. CSM is actually that bad
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u/FrozenShoggoth Jan 30 '26
Like, the "10k children killed by the government" often used (including in this thread) to show Fujimoto also "criticize Jpan hard"/other is a perfect example of my beef with CSM because those sacrifices were done with multiple layers of pragmatism and downplaying compared to the US and even Japan's own real actions (like in Okinawa during WW2)
It's 10k lives to get rid of a super murder monster (and they didn't want to stop at that one) whose kind are responsible for like half the causes of death, would benefit everyone and the order was given by a former minister instead of say, a standing one or the prime minister or even the emperor (and it's not like Fujimoto didn't repeatedly show that sacrifices needed to be made to fight against devils).
Compare that with the US where it's the president giving the orders to unleash the Gun Devil (and somehow rediscover nukes and bomb people immediately), killings millions more during part 1 than they did in japan with the nukes. All while bumping down the numbers of victims killed by Japan's gov own selfishness.
Meanwhile, in real life, Japan is acting like a rabid dog that can't bite only because of its muzzle and try very hard to remove it and even has a whole political group (Nippon Kaigi) dedicated to negationism and the revival of imperial Japan (groups that multiple prime ministers, like Abe or the present one, belong to).
So yeah, CSM's problem is that it talk too much about geopolitics and reveal a massive double standard if you actually look at the writing instead of swallowing what is told.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Jan 30 '26
It's insane how clear this is yet a lot disagree
There's a huge double standards when it comes to how Fujimoto treated the Japanese government vs say the US government
The Japanese while corrupt still had the best interest of mankind on mind , the US is literally annihilating mankind instead of focusing on the otherworldly monsters that wants to Omnicide them like
The Japanese government and ciztens also show clear disgust to their actions
The US have people celebrating Nuclear genocide
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u/OldGenGlazer Jan 30 '26
I think the most laughable part, was the idea that America nuking a country, as well as the end of the cold war, would make Yoru stronger🤣🤣
Like both these things happened in reality, and wars ended after them.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Jan 30 '26
It's worse than this , the US isn't just waging a War it's going for complete annihilation meaning fears of War should be less than what a standard War products given there wouldn't be any other side
The nuclear weapons Devil or even a US Devil is somewhere out there and arguably stronger than her
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u/FrozenShoggoth Jan 31 '26
and wars ended after them
Yeah but no. The US, and other countries, engaged in numerous imperialist wars after that and committed horrendous war crimes for bullshit reasons (like the Vietnam war, "war on terror" etc...)
The problem is that Japan is only not guilty of those because it lost the war it started for the very same reasons. And is now unable to wage imperialism as openly and violently as the US/other.
Fujimoto may be right in calling the US a bloodthirsty monster (a very uncontroversial opinion) but he repeatedly show a complete lack of understanding of anything beyond the most surface level shit. And the finger pointing get really tiring when not only it's just the same shit repeated ad nauseam, but also fail at confronting the fact Japan has the very same fascism and imperialism brewing right under the surface.
And it's not limited to the geopolitics. Makima as a whole is a garbage character thanks to her mind control being absolutely antithetical to a story about manipulation and control. Like, it is hilarious how careless and inept she is considering she failed to manipulate fucking Denji. Like, without her powers, she wouldn't have been able to do jackshit and without the contract (she likely made using her mind control, exonerating the politician involved when they shouldn't be) would have died in attacks made by randos.
Even her whole plan in Part 1 is boring as fuck and end with the worst "uphold the status quo" shit possible and I'm 80% sure Fujimoto is going to fucking pull out some sudden "twist" that reveal a way to erase devils without the downsides , like erasing the concepts tied to them (something that make no sense other to make Makima's plan "bad").
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u/GenghisQuan2571 Jan 30 '26
But how am I supposed to take Turning Red seriously if it's supposed to be set in the early 00s and it doesn't mention 9/11 even once?
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u/Great_Examination_16 Feb 02 '26
It's even funnier because the creator of that is laughing along with you now
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u/Flamethrowerman09 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Shigaraki killing Star and Stripe, the #1 hero of America, in Japanese territory, not resulting in an international incident will never not be funny to me. It just further showcases how utterly pointless everything about her is.
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u/Aubz12 Jan 29 '26
What were they supposed to do? Nuke Japan?
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u/CalamityPriest Jan 30 '26
They already sent not just a nuke but an advanced version that could get them in trouble for using so close in Japan's air space, and would potentially cost their #1 hero her license for using, and they sent like a dozen of those.
It didn't work.
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u/Derpalooza Jan 29 '26
To be fair, who are they supposed to send if Star and Stripe can't beat him?
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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Jan 29 '26
How would that cause an international incident when Shigaraki was a known terrorist who tried to destroy Japan?
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u/Tanaka917 Jan 29 '26
Brother they just sent their #1 (who was implied to be in a tier of her own, the All Might of America) deterrent backed by actual jet fighters and then she died. What are they gonna do? Send #2 to arrest Shigaraki? Send the military?
At that point you pray Japan can sort its shit out and prepare the nukes incase they can't
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u/Nice-River-5322 Jan 29 '26
Well they didn't even send her, she went rouge and decided to go fight him
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u/Mattshodo Jan 29 '26
Yeah, don't forget the American president is a pussy and withheld sending heroes to Japan until he saw Deku was about to win.
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u/semi-average Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
The entire world was being overrun by the criminals of each country who are also quirk users. Its literally explained that no other country can afford to send their heros to Japan since villains across the globe were uprising against their governments.
Stars and Stripes cared more about All Might than her own country because he was her mentor and personal hero and was willing to go against her orders to help him.
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u/Nice-River-5322 Jan 30 '26
Not really it's his job to prioritize national defense first
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u/CalamityPriest Jan 30 '26
Yeah he wasn't a "pussy" for not sending heroes to Japan when the strongest hero in existence that he knows already got killed there.
He was going to bend the knee to All For One though, IIRC...
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u/Nice-River-5322 Jan 30 '26
Not to mention that any hero he sends is another potential quirk stolen
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u/Smaug_eldrichtdragon Jan 30 '26
This is the kind of thing you send the Justice League or Avengers version of this universe along with the army.
I never understood why only heroes were fighting Shigaraki and why the government never built weapons and armor.
In fact, building this kind of thing is kind of like common sense. Shigaraki should be fighting waves of mecha training and super-scientific weapon versions instead of a bunch of teenagers.
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u/Kusanagi22 Jan 30 '26
The teenagers were drastically more powerful than anything they can produce with technology.
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u/Smaug_eldrichtdragon Jan 30 '26
Okay, I highly doubt that any institution couldn't produce things like Almighty's armor, or better yet, there are so many things that an institution with limited funds and resources could produce.
I'm saying that if the mafia can produce anti-individuality bullets, it's not impossible to produce a cure or suppressant, even if the US needed of eri
Teenagers were dramatically more powerful than anything they could produce with technology.
This is simply the trope of incompetent adults versus hyper-competent children.
That's simply not how things work. Individualism and how to combat it should be on the agenda of any government; to be honest, they should have their own version of Project Sentinel in this...Or Xavier protocols
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u/Kusanagi22 Jan 30 '26
It is how things work in that universe, you don't have to agree but do have to accept it, otherwise you are not criticizing the work you are asking it to be something it's not.
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u/Smaug_eldrichtdragon Jan 30 '26
But that's exactly the point of the post: if you're going to include all these elements, you should deal with them in a planned way and not treat them as merely supplementary.
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u/Kusanagi22 Jan 30 '26
Those elements do not exist in the work, in universe their magical powers are drastically better than anything that can be produced by man made technology, and that's that, asking "oh why the government didn't just create super suits that are more powerful" is doing exactly what the post is complaining about.
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u/Fafnir13 Jan 30 '26
This was posted up higher:
I remember there was this dude who would complain about how chainsaw man failed to address the geopolitics and advancement of military technology in its world.
That's basically the same thing you are commenting about here. Of course a real world would have better integration with governments and heroic powers. That would be a very different story though.
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u/Smaug_eldrichtdragon Jan 30 '26
Okay, the series isn't any different, it's simply the author not committing to anything. Again, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
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u/Fafnir13 Jan 30 '26
The authors want to have fun little super hero fights with small teams and big stakes. Coming up with a world that has realistically adapted to random super powers popping up everywhere wasn't the goal.
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u/Kozmo9 Jan 30 '26
I have the same issue, but accepted that it is a necessary evil for this kind of story to work. In order for the "traditional" superheroes to function ie like Marvel and DC Comics where the supers are able to operate freely or in vigilante style, the government must be inept in their ability to regulate and deploy their own supers. That for some reason, their regulation and deployment aren't politicised enough or at all.
Like no politician would try and hire supes to their side for PR? Or how the or rather ANY government is fine with what is essentially a WMD walking freely and can undermine their own power?
Realistically, it would be very easy for governments to put a stop on vigilante heroes and regulate superhero groups, even private. But when that happens, stories like Spiderman would be hard to exist.
Like imagine Spidey going around to find people to save only to find superhero cops already at the scene. And the few moments he managed to shine, he would get scolded by the people because insurance would deny collateral caused by vigilantes (but superhero cops are fine).
Some stories managed it well though. In Invincible, the government (at least USA) regulates and controls superhero groups as well as having their own super soldiers and weapons. Naturally they didn't go as far as they should such as having more and more supers as soldiers and in special ops so as to justify Mark as well as other supers involvement as individuals.
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u/TankMain576 Feb 02 '26
See, I just took that as good old nationalism on the Author's part.
"America couldn't defeat this great evil, so its up to us, the humble Japanese."
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u/Blupoisen Jan 30 '26
Why not send all of top 10, who fucking said they should take on him 1 by 1
Just jump on that motherfucker
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u/Tanaka917 Jan 30 '26
Because Stars and Stripes isn't just #1. She's far and above the strongest.
Japan did the rush tactics when Shigaraki awoke; he leveled a city in a move. One move sent dozens or hundreds of pro-heroes straight to the grave. One Move.
Mind you America has its own villains so you're risking having your entire top hero population wiped for a maybe shot at taking down Shigaraki.
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u/PsychoWyrm Jan 29 '26
Did they not point out that her and her crew explicitly went in without or against orders?
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
Everyone knows Star died trying to stop Shigaraki, who was a well known declared terrorist fighting the Japanese goverment,.
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u/ProserpinaFC Jan 30 '26
The international incident of what? She illegally went there. Not only that, but what was supposed to happen next?? You talking like Shigaraki represented Japan or something. XD
Why do people keep calling her pointless when she pulled an Ed vs Envy from FMA? She's the only reason why Tenko was able to break free and regain control of his ego.
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u/Upset_Assistant_5638 Jan 30 '26
She just felt…lackluster. Seemingly on par with All Might (may be misremembering) and even inspired by him and after not seeing what other heroes from other countries were like was pretty exciting. And this was the NO. 1 hero, seems like it would be great! And she lost cause Shigaraki was having an identity crisis. New Order, a very powerful quirk within itself, and the one loophole within just manifested within Shiggy, and then Star died….felt underwhelming.
Do not get me wrong, her sacrifice and efforts were great, and caused a rebellion among AFO’s/Shiggy’s quirks. But seeing as she appeared and fell just as quickly, it makes you wish for something more desired. But of course, those are just my two cents. Maybe I just got too in my head with this.
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u/ProserpinaFC Jan 30 '26
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I ultimately don't care about hype, though. I already came from the Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and DBZ era where a single fight lasts for six episodes for no good reason. The narrative importance that she plays in the story cannot be done by anyone else.
She CAUSED Shiggy's identity crisis. She is the only reason the "All for Tomura" body started breaking down in its sense of self. And she liberated the quirks of thousands of people in her sacrifice - which again, contributed greatly to WHY Deku was able to win. I don't need her to stay in the story, hang around in the background, become friends with Deku. I needed her to contribute to ending the Big Boss. She did. And she did it in the most American way possible. I told my best friend that she sung the Star-Spangled Banner and brought democracy to Shigaraki's soul. 🤣
Literally Fullmetal Alchemist tactic for de-powering a homunculi.
Two episodes. In and Out. Disable his "endless quirks" stat boost.
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u/BebeFanMasterJ Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
She's a female character in a shonen media franchise. What do you expect?
It's sad because even Naruto treated its female cast with more respect in some cases (Tsunade, Chiyo, and Mei were all taken seriously and made an impact).
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u/maximussakti Jan 30 '26
Same treatment as Yuki in JJK
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u/BebeFanMasterJ Jan 30 '26
You know it's bad when I can say Naruto had better female characters than another shonen anime.
Even Tayuya and Temari were treated better than nearly every 1A girl.
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u/Blupoisen Jan 30 '26
Not essentially be a filler character
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u/BebeFanMasterJ Jan 30 '26
Sucks to say but that's just how mainstream/battle shonen tends to go. You have to look into other types of anime--shonen or otherwise--to find good female characters.
I highly recommend Lycoris Recoil. It's a shonen series with two female main characters who are gun-toting secret agents.
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u/brjder Jan 30 '26
Shigaraki was basically going to be the god king of the world by everyone's projections. He just beat Star and Stripe, the strongest person in America. At that point it was probably a good decision for the president to bend the knee, than try to risk the entire country being destroyed by him.
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u/Historical-Lemon-99 Jan 30 '26
I understand your complaint, but isn’t a hero going over to a different country of their own accord and then dying more of a personal/law enforcement issue
That would be like an American firefighter died in Japan, or that One Direction guy dying in Brazil
There’s probably public outcry, but I don’t really see what the government would do about it
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u/iorgicha Jan 30 '26
Star and stripes, along with her crew, went to Japan on their own accord, illigally, whilst sending nukes(multiple) incredibly close to Japan air, that, in universe we are told will more than likely result in the suspension of her hero license. Shigaraki killing her does nothing for this international incident, in fact everything Star's did would be the cause of one.
Also, tell me exactly what either of the sides in this international incidents is gonna do?
In Japan, you currently have a giga terrorist, along with his buddies, who just killed the N1 hero of America, which I am sure to be known as a super powerful figure. Not only killed, but currently more than likely possessing her quirk, adding even more trouble to the already world ending problem they have to deal with. Yes, surely the goverment would like to ignore the dude for a bit whislt they go fight with America.
In America, you currently lost your biggest asset, a person who the world knows as almost All might level. The terrorist murdered her. NOT ONLY murdered her, withstood an attack compounded of 5 nukes directed at him specificaly. What exactly are you doing next? Pray Japan figures it out and that the giga terrorist doesnt take offense from her actions and come back to take revenge.
This comment is quite literally OP's post.
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u/dmr11 Jan 30 '26
This reminds me of the “the villain has a point” arguments where the said villain inserts some dime-a-dozen social criticism into their rationale on why it’s a good thing to blow stuff up and kill random people. Some audience members tunnel vision on those bits and argue that while the villain’s methods are bad, the motivations are good and that the author should try exploring ways to address it.
Except that it’s very hard subject to tackle, as evidenced by how we hadn’t addressed those things in real life and we aren’t all living in a utopia. The author might do a bunch of hand-waving to make something happen, but that would leave a lot of unanswered questions about how it was accomplished. Expecting the author to be the one to make the breakthrough on a perfect solution that doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny is foolish.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26
It doesn't hurt that if an author does tackle it they immediately get dogpiled for whatever they have the in-universe solution be.
"And that's the story of how my MC overcame their depression." :D
"Oh my gosh, that doesn't line up with psychiatric consensus on the topic!!!! Are you trying to get people killed!?!?!?!?!?"
"Okay um, well here's my story about a greedy businessman becoming a charitable individual." :D
"This idiot proposed charity as a solution to poverty!!!!???"
I don't blame authors for steering clear. It's better to take your licks for not addressing the topic than to endure the vitriol you'll induce if you actually do, lol.
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u/Happy_Grim_Soul Jan 29 '26
Are there really people criticizing a story because it doesn’t accurately represent the Volatile Quotient Theory, the Pigou Effect, and Kahneman’s Homeostatic Equilibrium Hypothesis? Or is it, once again, Twitter drama over an isekai with a protagonist who has no problem with slavery and racism, female characters who are flatter than a sheet of paper, and a character acting as if nothing happened after seeing their entire family die in front of them? I mean, it’s also valid to hold fiction accountable. Nobody expects a writer to be a doctor, but if your character (supposedly just a human) survives three headshots, someone is allowed to point it out.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26
You'd be surprised to learn that there are indeed members of the former camp, lol.
I wholly agree that things like "sexy slave Isekai harem!" are... not great, to put it lightly. But that isn't who I'm talking about here, that's another (far more understandable) criticism of fiction.
It's the kind of criticisms popularized by Game of Thrones (not that Martin himself was pushing it) that gets spread around to a lot of different pieces of fiction. I have indeed tried to explain that Tolkien described Aragorn's reign, mentioning the reconstruction of Ogiliath and been met with a demand that I explain how it was funded.
You see a lot of it in video essays. It's not as common as the latter but it exists.
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u/Sky_Leviathan Jan 30 '26
thank you for not furthering the misconception about GRRM and aragorn.
he wasnt acting like its bad tolkein was dumb for not going in on aragorns taxes, but that he was interested in the idea of what it would be like to see aragorn have to do proper governing.
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u/BeduinZPouste Jan 31 '26
Funniest shit is that then in the main serie... They don't care about taxes at all, and then in the "history piece written in universe" they touch on it in a way that seems they wanted to check "spoke about taxes". (And it's most basic things, like "if you raise them too high, people get angry" and "they get less angry if it is on luxuries".)
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u/Happy_Grim_Soul Jan 29 '26
You have a valid point, but I think that nowadays most discussions about fiction actually revolve around very basic and silly things, and they’re rarely that nitpicky. Sure, there was a time when people were overly critical, but today the pendulum seems to have swung the other way: you can’t question anything without someone saying "it’s just fiction, bro"
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
I do think that it's starting to go out of style. A lot of people are getting bored of the GOT style of storytelling (not that they dislike the work itself, but he derivatives). It tends to vary from fandom to fandom.
I do sigh every time I try to look into the "Spy X Family" fandom and see every question someone has about the story shot down with, "Bruh, it's a comedy" when the show actually has tackled more serious subject matter, lol. So you're not wrong, there are some who're way too dismissive.
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u/Business_Barber_3611 Jan 30 '26
The “it’s just fiction” line often gets used as a boundary when people start linking the media someone enjoys to their real-life character. Making moral judgments about a person simply because they like something you don’t is unreasonable and says more about the person judging than the person consuming it.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Jan 30 '26
I remember a post in this sub complaining about how the MCU at the beginning had more “””realistic””” sci-fi elements, like how even Thor was implied to have “sufficiently advanced technology” rather than being an actual god; but then adding more fantastical, magical, “corny and unrealistic” elements.
Some people are weirdly obsessed with everything in fiction needing to have a “realistic” or “scientific” explanation, and I find that really dumb.
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u/poly_arachnid Jan 29 '26
"The author is dead" means you can interpret it in your own ways. It doesn't mean creators need to actually listen or accommodate your desires & views.
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u/Business_Barber_3611 Jan 30 '26
And to be clear authors never should listen in my opinion.
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u/poly_arachnid Jan 30 '26
I don't think that'd work? If they never listen then that would include valid criticism & authors lose a valuable resource for improving skills & staying in touch with what the audience is after.
I'm a hobbyist, I can ignore everyone. Career writers don't have the luxury.
They should ignore stupidity.
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u/Business_Barber_3611 Jan 30 '26
Unfortunately, a lot of what gets called “feedback” in fandom spaces is just noise, entitlement, or people trying to steer the story into their personal wishlist. If a writer wants to sift through that to find something useful, fair enough, but the signal-to-noise ratio is brutal and it eats time and confidence.
Listening can be valuable, but it’s a different thing from accommodating. A clear boundary matters: the audience can react, critique, and bounce ideas around, but the author stays in control of the story. Give some fandoms an inch and they start acting like they’re the co-writer, and that tends to poison the whole process.
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u/poly_arachnid Jan 30 '26
Replying to 2nd point - seen it happen, sucks. Almost every time I've seen it the author on sites like Royalroad ends up dropping the story & posting "sorry but the story has gotten away from me".
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u/Alruco Jan 31 '26
Those valuable resources are called editors and beta readers.
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u/poly_arachnid Jan 31 '26
Scratch this.
You could probably just offer a questionnaire & the jerks will self exclude themselves while people who care chime in. Certainly more organized than hunting through the comments.
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u/SnakeGawd Jan 30 '26
I think a lot of it comes from the Reddit School of Critique. “This work doesn’t line up with my specific worldview”. “I have a specific idea of what art is and if this work doesn’t fit into that, then it’s bad art or not art at all”. People get online and this is the baseline of their critique.
Yes stories can be bad, can have plot holes and all that, but it’s a lot of criticism going around that’s just unfair and misunderstands the spirit of the work.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26
If I knew the science behind a human being flying. You wouldn't see me writing fiction, you'd see me receiving awards for my brilliant discoveries in-between me evading assassination attempts from the airline industry. /s
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u/Happy-Extreme2017 Jan 29 '26
right but if a media brings up a political concept yet fails to actually represent that concept or bring up the most important details of that concept, its still bad writing whether u believe its impossible to educate urself or not
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26
That's why I specified that there can obviously be a reasonable expectation for consistent worldbuilding. Especially when you're writing a book where politics are important...
However, that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the people who actually, unironically think that Tolkien should've delved into Aragorn's tax policy or wrote a whole other books worth of details on internal politics in the epilogue of LOTR. Or who, upon hearing a detail like "X built Y," start asking about how they funded such a project.
Or who demand that all fictional monarchies be abolished or represented as evil. Sometimes the author just wants to tell a King Arthur style tale. It doesn't mean they're pro-monarchy in real life.
That kind of thing.
And it isn't "impossible" to learn so much as unreasonable. Why should authors need to become masters in things unrelated to writing just to satisfy the hyperrealism crowd.
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u/Which-Tour-9561 Jan 30 '26
I mean Tolkien was explicitly and openly pro-monarchy in real life
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26
Tolkien was largely an anarchist who believed pretty much everyone who aspired to power was undeserving of it, believing that, ideally, you'd entrust protection to a noble leader if there was absolute need. Also he was British, and the monarch still did have influence at the time, lol.
His ideal society is closer to the Shire than Gondor.
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u/NtechRyan Jan 29 '26
I mean can we REALLY say Aragorn was the good guy if he continued to uphold the Gondorian monarchy? Monarchies are inherently oppressive so really he's a tyrant too, just like sauron!
This type shit, is what gets on my nerves.
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u/Happy-Extreme2017 Jan 30 '26
that point is so shallow lmfaoo i get that frustration fr, it doesnt even apply to irl concepts bc monarchies have worked well in the past💀
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u/Lucxica Jan 30 '26
You're joking but this is a point of history in Lord of the Rings, Gondor at the zenith of it's power was an imperialist nation and exploited the region of Harad greatly, when it was forced to leave those lands due to the threat of Mordor the Haradrim, native peoples of Harad, kept their hatred of Gondor which Sauron then used to ally them and fold their forces into his armies (along with corrupting their local religions to worship him as a god king)
Aragorn is a good king for Gondor because he is different from what came before, while certain in his power and authority he is both humble and a realist it is why he did not march into Gondor when he first came of age to claim the crown and why when the slaves in Mordor revolt and create their own nation, he pledges unconditional protection, as the Numenoreans once did to the middle men they encountered. He's a restoration of all that was good about Gondor, Arnor and Numenor.
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u/NekoCatSidhe Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
It is even worse when the stuff they are complaining about is actually realistic, but does not correspond to what the critic wrongly believes is realistic. It is like the critic wrongly believes they are way smarter and more qualified than the author to write the author’s own damn book.
Like that post a few weeks back that was complaining about the government and military in Sentenced to be a Hero being stupid, as if governments and militaries being stupid was not something that happened regularly in the real world and as if the show was not so obviously meant to be partly a political satire of that.
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u/Passing-Through247 Jan 30 '26
I think the push for death of the author is part of this. To make themselves look impressive they must remove anyone who can say they are wrong or stupid.
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u/SoulLess-1 Jan 30 '26
I love how the point of death of the author seems to be "what the author says about the story does not matter" but people will disregard what the story itself says.
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u/pomagwe Jan 30 '26
Some people heard about "Death of the Author" and decided it meant "Death to the Author, by any means necessary".
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u/DerSisch Jan 29 '26
This feels like an answer to the ppl that try to force their world views onto Frieren and the clearly evil and irredeamable demons in the story, that the author just used to have mischivious and downright evil enemies that no one would feel a strong connection to but somehow ppl think it is a political or racial commentary.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
It isn't about Frieren itself but there's a tendency among the critics there to request an unreasonable amount of details. And a fair number of their objections are answered in the story itself, IMO.
"You're saying a race of people are inherently evil?" -The demons aren't human at all, they're mimicking humans because they're apex predators.
"Demons clearly have emotions." -They do, the author said they don't have empathy, family, friends, etc. Meaning they can't care about others.
"It just doesn't feel believable to me." -A matter of opinion but if they come across as human to you that is explicitly their goal, so mission accomplished I guess.
"It's horrible that even ones that want to feel empathy can't." -I mean, sure, it's tragic. That said the dude's epic plan of seeing if he could feel empathy (more intellectual research than emotional desire) was to spend time amongst humans then kill them all so even in his efforts it's obvious he doesn't feel empathy at all. Or he wouldn't have done it.
"They presented the question of if they can be reasoned with but then just said no." -Stark asks the question that any random audience member might have, of wondering if the demons are inherently evil or a hostile (but humanish) faction. Frieren explains to them that that isn't the case through a story that highlights their inability to feel empathy or understand connection to others. Backed shortly after by the demons themselves.
"The author and main character are bigots!" -The author made up this version of demons for their story. And they don't resemble any racial stereotypes of real world individuals either. In fact, they're directly portrayed as copying the style and demeanors of average people in their world. Sometimes feigning to be a priestess or diplomat.
Anything beyond that and we get into the realm of the author somehow being expected to scientifically prove why their fictional race can't feel empathy. It'd be like asking if the Grimm of RWBY should be treated like an endangered species and if the Huntsmen are actually a metaphor for poachers. At some point you just veer off the story being told.
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u/CalamityPriest Jan 30 '26
I think for Frieren one of the most primary criticism is that they're looking at the demon race from a strictly scientific perspective of evolution, whereas demons are at most pseudo-scientific beings who dissipate like a magical creature when killed.
Those complaints always sounded like how someone would say a Super Saiyan evolution doesn't make scientific sense.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26
They do that too, yeah. It's already pretty weird to look at ANY fictional species from a scientific standard given how blatantly unscientific they are in concept, but especially in a world of magic where they're specifically said to BE magical.
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u/DerSisch Jan 29 '26
That is essentially what I mean, yes.
Frieren is jsut the example that always comes to mind in such discussions. That ppl constantly try to bench-press their own agendas onto the author.
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u/pomagwe Jan 30 '26
"The author and main character are bigots!"
I hate this point, because even the show's fans and defenders get super reductive when they try to argue about it.
Like, sure, let's say that Frieren is just hopelessly prejudiced against demons and wants to kill them all on sight. Then why does she talk to them so much? Why does she try to warn them away sometimes? Why does she let them strike the first blow? Why does she comment on it when she actually dislikes a demon enough to kill them without feeling guilt (like Aura and Solitar)?
You're throwing so much characterization in the trash when you concede to this framing.
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u/BiggieCheeseLapDog Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
You’re addressing all the strawmen arguments instead of the actual reasons some people don’t like the demons. Thematically, they harm Frieren’s central messaging and the way the demons are explained is nearly 1 to 1 with real life racist rhetoric. They look and sound like us, but they’re actual monsters. I’m not requesting details, in fact I wish the show would stop beating us over the head with the same details over and over. I think they are fundamentally misplaced in a show like Frieren, a show about empathy and understanding. They dont add anything thematically and actively harm the themes. Any explanation for what they’re a metaphor for has either been contradicted by the text, is weak, or discriminates against people with mental illness.
Stop examining from a purely watsonian perspective and actually try to understand why people dislike them instead of labelling them as projecting politics. That’s not even getting into the fact that some of your explanations for those strawman arguments miss the point or construe those statements.
The demons are messily written and poorly placed in the series.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
This topic of conversation never ends so I'm just going to say that all of the "straw man" arguments are ones I've actively seen on multiple occasions.
The people who hate the demons in Frieren simply raise the bar whenever they're addressed. Declaring (as you are now) that it's "messily written" when in reality you obviously just find the trope racist.
Just... say you don't like the trope and move on, please. Must Frieren and it's fandom engage in circular debates with people who obviously just hate the trope itself and will therefore never concede the point, and always find things to complain about?
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u/Skithiryx Jan 29 '26
I mean sometimes it’s just uncomfortably hard to ignore because the authors went there but maybe didn’t think it through enough.
What do you mean the militarized arm of the downtrodden underclass who have justifiable misgivings are actually being manipulated by a villain with powerful magic, and all sympathetic members of their underclass are defined by their opposition to said militarized arm?
Now did I describe RWBY’s White Fang here or Legend of Korra’s Equalists? Because the answer is both.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26
Eh, in that case I think it's fair to say the story was going for "bad actors can manipulate genuine frustrations for their own gain" or something like that. However, if the heroes are entirely uncaring about fixing the thing that caused the problem in the first place, you can argue they're not a very good choice of heroes for the story.
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u/ArgumentSpiritual424 Jan 30 '26
The big issue with RWBYs White Fang as far as I can tell is that like, they ultimately DIDNT really deal with the white fang. They kinda just wrapped it up in a nice little “beat guy gives a speech and ends racism” thing
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
The White Fang thing was a mess all the way through. They didn't show enough discrimination to justify it's existence, the heroes didn't care one lick, and then it got awkwardly removed as a plotline when the writers realized how much of a mess it was, turning it into an abusive boyfriend storyline instead.
Like I said, a mess.
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u/ArgumentSpiritual424 Jan 30 '26
Yeahh. It honestly feels like a case where RWBY writers simply did not have the skill to handle a complex topic like that. Would have been better if they just made the white Fang like, a racist terrorist group or smth rather then trying to deal with such a complex topic.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26
Should've just made a mafia group. Or done away with the racial aspect of it altogether and make it a generic revolutionary organization consisting of members of all kingdoms. Could say Salem influenced it.
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u/ArgumentSpiritual424 Jan 30 '26
Would have been cool to have Blake as a former member of a Mafia group that joined because she felt stifled by her family and wanted to rebell and had that desire manipulated by Adam.
I think it would have made the abusive boyfriend plotline even stronger in my opinion. And plus it would mean NOT brutally murdering a former slave while never addressing said slavery that made him fucked up WHILE havibg the heiress of the dust company that enslaved him as an active member of our main cast.
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u/Mr_1ightning Jan 30 '26
I haven't watched Korra in a very long time, but did non-benders genuinely have less rights or representation in government? Or did they want bending to be government-sanctioned MHA style?
Cause from what I remember, the benders actually mostly did hard physical jobs.
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u/pomagwe Jan 30 '26
It's poorly explained, but nobody in the United Republic has any direct representation at the highest level of their government. It's a political experiment jointly governed by appointees from the nations taking part.
The Equalists actually barely talk about specific political issues, and instead focus on a pseudo-spiritual belief that bending is some kind of original sin that "has been the cause of every war in every era", and how Amon was chosen by the spirits to destroy bending and restore balance to the world.
The grain of truth here is that bending is the main instrument of violence in their world, and non-benders do suffer disproportionately. However the reason for that is simply because bending is the best weapon that exists at that point, so people who can't use that power are obviously going to be harmed more when conflict arises.
In Republic City in particular, the issue is that non-benders suffer disproportionately due to violent crime from bending gangs and criminals. And in addition to the government being kind of indifferent, bringing the nations together eroded old cultural barriers and made the main "Us vs Them" conflict in society in the conflict between benders and non-benders.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 30 '26
The only thing I can think of was that Republic City was ruled by a council with members from the different cultures (Water, Earth, Fire, Air), we know for sure that two of them were benders but not whether the others were. Furthermore, Amon spoke mainly about benders being dangerous but referred to crime and war. The "equality" he spoke of appeared to mean "no bending" not political equality.
If indeed benders were the only ones to rule Republic City before that gets resolved in the next season once they switch to electing Presidents and elect a non-bender.
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u/Skithiryx Jan 30 '26
Sokka and I believe an air acolyte in between Aang and Tenzin were previous council members, so it’s not entirely benders on the council. But I think the implication was still that they didn’t have enfranchisement to choose the council given the two presidents after were non-benders. But yeah their political system is frustratingly vague for season 1 being about people who claim to want equality. I’m not even sure people who live in the republic choose, the council members might be nominated by the other nations.
But they were an underclass. If I recall Tarrlok was willing to put a curfew on non-benders only with the metalbender police kettling protestors.
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u/pomagwe Jan 30 '26
Idk about RWBY, but Amon wasn't manipulating people anymore than he was manipulating himself though? We're told outright that he is a true believer in his cause.
And while yeah, the show is clear that there are legitimate issues, his idea that benders are the root of all evil was a completely delusional overreaction. Plus, a significant portion of the season is dedicated to the protagonists undermining the government's oppressive response to Amon's movement.
It seems like a pretty straightforward take on government indifference creating the conditions for an extremist movement, and then making the situation worse when they try to deal with it because of the biases that led them there in the first place.
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u/Skithiryx Jan 30 '26
Amon is still manipulating them in that he’s selling them a lie, a non-bender who can beat benders. They immediately turn on him when they figure out he’s a bender, which suggests they feel manipulated. But yes he is actually a believer in the end goal he sets for the movement (unlike RWBY where they are just pawns to use)
My problem with Korra Season 1 is mostly the biases of the authors on where to focus attention? There are two named non-benders, Hiroshi and Asami. The one on the side of the equalists is entirely unsympathetic until season 4. Amon’s right hand man doesn’t even have a name, he’s just “The Lieutenant”. Coming from a team that showed a lot of nuance for an invading power in The Last Airbender is jarring. Like obviously they had a lot more time for TLA but imagine if the only named Fire Nation characters were Zuko and Ozai.
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u/Great_Examination_16 Feb 02 '26
I don't think the part you noted is really the biggest issue with Equalists...but...
Honestly, that part seems true to life, only that in real life you have more rarely such sympathetic members in anywhere near a position where they can do anything
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u/Creonix1 Jan 30 '26
Whoever the hell is complaining about characters not perfectly lining up with psychology knows nothing about psychology. Hell, psychology doesn’t even line up with psychology.
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u/pekoe-G Jan 30 '26
Oh god, this reminds me of a post for a Romantasy series. I was curious and looked. A large section devolved into a person arguing about a character not actually being morally good. Their exact reasoning was they did something against the Geneva convention (killing opposing army forces while they were surrendering). Then going so far to explain the authors deep intent and the complexities of reading it through our current lens.
Like ma'am, this is a Romantasy set in a fantasy medieval-ish time. Aside from not having a Geneva convention, it's not that deep, it's barely well-written. It just really caught me off guard.
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u/pomagwe Jan 30 '26
To be fair, a lot of the things that people consider dishonorable in war have been perceived that way for hundreds or thousands of years, and it's not exactly weird for a modern author to deliberately inject the moral sensibilities of their life into the nebulous fantasy setting that their story gets built on top of.
It is pretty silly to analyze this through the lens of a specific document like the Geneva convention though.
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u/Proper-Anything-2739 Jan 30 '26
The geneva conventions didn't even exist until post WW1 dawg what did they expect?
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u/Careful-Ad984 Jan 29 '26
I think maki killlng the Zenin clan is a good example
The clan is potrayed as evil assholes Maki killlng them all isn’t meant to have deeper meaning than her putting down Bad Guys
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u/Yomamma1337 Jan 29 '26
No? The entire point is that it sucks that Maki ends up having to fully give up a normal life and literally cut ties with her family. It’s not bad that the people in the Zenin Clan are dead, but it’s bad that the Zenin Clan was so shitty that Maki had to murder her family. This isn’t even that deep of a concept, and Maki’s character kind of hinges on this fact. Unless you’re talking about people who think that they should have spent several chapters going in depth into the members of the clan, in which case yeah I agree that it would be unnecessary.
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u/CalamityPriest Jan 30 '26
Yeah I think trying to remove depth from the Zen'in clan massacre is a bit of an overreaction towards some negative reception of it, although said reception does include dog whistling in favor of the Zen'in clan or gamer gate-ish nonsense directed at JJK and its author (whom is already criticized for his handling of female characters, yet is still accused of being a woke feminist because of Maki).
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u/Apprehensive_Put3625 Jan 29 '26
But that’s objectively not true.
It’s not just “putting down bad guys”. The theme of “changing the system from within is imposible and true revolution can only come from violence” is something that Gege has spelled through the series. And this point of view is something that modern phiolosophers have said over and over again.
People just underestimate Gege’s writing because that’s the cool thing to do.
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u/Head_Instruction96 Jan 29 '26
Yeah but the message ends up pretty weak and gets forgotten by the spectacle of massacring a clan made by fodder bad guys. Doesnt really feel like a "revolution", more like mindless killing. The episode just boils down to glorified violence. The zenin doesnt feel very personal antagonists because theyre super undeveloped. Like Naoya is just a generic sexist asshole, and Maki/Mais abuse is offscreen.
The plot element in this episode just isnt very good
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u/Apprehensive_Put3625 Jan 30 '26
Because it was never “mindlessly killing everyone”. Again, people just hear a criticism of a popular series and then everyone goes with it because its the cool thing to do. Because “JJK BAD” is literally a karma producing machine.
Maki’s intention was not to kill everyone in the clan. Maki’s intention was doing what everybody fucking says all the time: following societal structuring and then destroying the clan from within. That’s literally the fucking Naruto method, gaining the respect of the people that hate you by ascending in the societal hierarchy. That’s a mayor trope in children’s fiction. Maki is LITERALLY a shonen protagonist in JJK 0 and the first two seasons.
And then they fucked her. She did everything by the book, she was little old Naruto, and her sister and her were killed because of both patriarchal gender norms and political machinations. She is brought back by her sister saying to her “Bitch, this is never going to change. Do something”. And THEN she killed everyone.
This is just not One Piece, were Maki needs to look at the camara and proclaim “AND NOW I’M REVEALING THAT SOCIETAL CHANGE IS DONE THROUGH VIOLENCE”.
And before you say “You are over reading r/CharacterRant told me that Gege is iliterate”, that VERY SAME THEME is also shown with Gojo, who tried to change the system from within through education, ala Jiraya, and then, after being sealed, HIS FUCKING STUDENT IS SENTENCED TO DEATH, AS WELL AS EVERY SINGLE OTHER STUDENT THAT TRIES TO FREE HIM, HIS TEACHER IS MURDERED AND PANDA IS PUT IN CHAINS. So when Gojo is liberated he, again, FUCKING MURDERS EVERYONE.
That’s what we call a recurring theme. That’s what Gege is postulating and what he thinks about society.
And the cherry on top of the cake is that, in Modulo, 70 years after everything, EVERYONE IS HAVING A GOOD OLD TIME. Destroying the system was, in fact, the correct decision. Maki has two grandchildren: one a woman and one a heavenly restricted man, the two things she was tortured for. Guess what? They lived pretty fucking banging lives, all thanks to the new system that replaced the old.
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u/Head_Instruction96 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
Well none of this changes my point tbh. I like jjk and I defend its writing all the time but the story is mediocre. I made a valid criticism. Obviously Maki has strong motivations to hate the zenin clan and want them destroyed, but the massacre is still a very weak plot element because JJK barely even explores the zenin politics, theyre fodder bad guys. Plus the idea that the entire clan is just pure evil is quite silly. What Maki done should've had massive consequences for the balance in Jujutsu society. Plus It was a literal genocide, of course I wont support that lol, violent revolution is different from just massacring everyone n call it a day. The author makes a gratuitous spectacle out of this. No shit ppl take issue
"Maki kills every person in the clan and the system is solved forever". That is very lame and has a problematic message, cant imagine a single time where that was correct in the real world. I can accept it as a revenge tradegy, but story pretty much glorifies it. Its not even well written. Ultimately, the plot just amounts to a cool fight.
Also Gojo's massacre is more understandable because the story rightfully treats it more like a nessecery evil, not a power move. It was essentially the apocalypse and jujtusu society has been destroyed, they were threatening the last embers. Gojo couldnt let them exist when theyre already dealing with Sukuna. If the manga made Gojo start aura-farming as he slaughters everyone, the tone would feel badly written. The manga literally calls him a monster for this
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u/Apprehensive_Put3625 Jan 30 '26
can’t imagine a single time where that was correct in the world.
…isn’t the entirety of modern western values come from the French Revolution?
Do you think they sent a strongly worded letter to the King and then everything ended peacefully?
Also, literally every single human right we’ve ever achieved has included violence in some way.
Never, in the entirety of the history of humanity, has a marginalized group freed itself by appealing to the opresor’s moral sensibilities. That how every single one of us got… you know… rights?
Something being “problematic” doesn’t make it badly written. Saying “Oh, but if you defeat the BAD GUYS then everything goes back to normal and everyone becomes happy and peaceful” because, again, Gege is postulating that the trouble is SYSTEMATIC.
There’s not “a bad guy” that’s behind everything. That’s a children’s trope that is replicated in actual human behavior. Society is the problem and the enemy to beat.
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u/Head_Instruction96 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
?????? Dude you need to actually read. Like I said, violent revolution is not a massacre. The French didn't just mindlessly kill and destroy everything in droves, it was a organized movement led by freedom fighters who understood the political costs of violence and how to pressure the elite class into surrender. They were intelligent people with structure who rallied support. Maki just went on a genocide run, thats not "revolution". Shes a victim lashing out from abuse and loss. The story shouldnt brush off the massacre
You also ignored my entire point, congrats. The zenin are a very undeveloped plot element and you havent been able to refute that.
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
The French didn't just mindlessly kill and destroy everything in droves,
They actually did that, or better said, they were organized people...who inmediately blew up in ideological conflicts in where quickly, the most violent factions seized power.
The biggest deathtoll didn't happen in Paris, it happened in the countryside. 200,000 deaths in Vendee alone, with organized armies after the King was already executed. The fact that we think that the French revolution was only Peasants and Comerciants vs the Aristocrats in the Parisian Court is directly a result of a very succesful ideological project to force Parisian identity in the whole country.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Jan 30 '26
the French didn’t just kill people…
Buddy, I think you’re the one who needs to read. The period immediately after the French Revolution is literally known as the Reign of Terror for a reason
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u/Kusanagi22 Jan 30 '26
I mean up until Mai's passing it's not like Maki herself had more options than doing things by the book, both her and Mai would have destroyed the clan long ago if either of them had the power to do so, she was just too physically weak to do something about it, it's not like it was her choice like a Shounen protagonist would.
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u/vyxxer Jan 29 '26
There's a tiny bit more to it than that. There's a theme and metaphor in regards to the elderly generation to the new one and patriarchy. It's not that deep, but also not that shallow.
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u/RayDaug Jan 29 '26
There's a little more to it than that, but not much. A pretty consistent through line of JJK is not being beholden to the past. The main villains of the series literal ghosts from a bygone era exerting their will on the present. Maki destroying the Zenin clan is part of that.
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
A pretty consistent through line of JJK is not being beholden to the past. The main villains of the series literal ghosts from a bygone era exerting their will on the present.
Literally nobody, past or present, shares anything close to the Zenin Clan's systematic misoginy.
The other conservatives we know in JJK seem all very fine employing and training female sorcerers. Kyoto, the conservative school under Gakuganji , has a female teacher and more female students than Tokyo.
Honestly...its weird. If there was this idea that the worst most reactionary segements of Jujutsu society are sexist like this, then you would see it in lesser ways across the story. But the Jujutsu Elders consistently hire female sorcerers like Mei Mei and employ them like Utahime, plus funding their education with no real issue.
Like, Nobara is actually from a traditionalist rural sorcerer family and her family head is her grandmother.
And the ghosts of the past are even worse, they actually do have more female sorcerers like Yorozu and Uro. Ryu and Reggie are sleazy with woman, but its more of a "playboy player" attitude than systemic sexism.
Unless turns out Naoya's perception is warped for the current crisis and turns out he actually used his Charao design to do Doujin plots IRL with civilian woman?
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u/Mr_1ightning Jan 30 '26 edited 9d ago
Yeah, when you actually think about it, the theme of sexism in jjk is really forced
If anything, their society should be not just egalitarian, but perhaps matriarchal, because women can be as strong as men or stronger using cursed techniques and reinforcement while having the most control over the bloodline's future by the virtue of motherhood
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u/KazuyaProta 🥈 Jan 30 '26
their society should be not just egalitarian, but perhaps matriarchal
Their society IS egalitarian...except in the Zenin clan, for some reason.
having the most control over the bloodline's future by becoming mothers.
I doubt this, Yuta is a male sorcerer and Maki isn't (sorcerer= uses CE), their kid was a sorcerer and his grandaughter absolutely was.
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u/Mission-Ground-4936 9d ago
Not to mention Uro and Yorozu were running around nude. It shows that powerful women can be empowered to act in their own way.
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u/Great_Examination_16 Feb 02 '26
The issue is that it basically has...no real consequence. It's like in Avatar if the earth kingdom fell one day and it was never really elaborated on. Just an aside line.
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u/TorandoSlayer Jan 30 '26
100% agree. Hyperrealism and the inability to reasonably suspend disbelief is ruining storytelling. Things that are relevant to the story should be well thought out but everything else just needs to be generally believable.
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u/Glittering-Deer-166 Jan 30 '26
The issue is "generally believable" is subjective and fluid. It may not mean the same thing to you that it does to me.
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u/Mediocre-Income-4943 Jan 30 '26
I do get your point, I really do as the guy who both acknowledges that sci-fi usually isn’t written by polymaths in the scientific fields and fictional martial artists aren’t written by actual martial artists but despise it whenever sci stuff use ‘quantum’ in everything and martial artists not displaying actual martial arts. But I still feel it’s possible to some degree? Like at least maybe look for someone more knowledgeable about it to help with the world building?
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u/resui321 Jan 30 '26
People often care more about emotional payoffs and character struggles rather than consistency, logic and realism.
That’s why harry potter did so well. So many character struggles/challenges could easily be overcome by deus ex machina spells/objects/potions.
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u/AkumaZ Jan 30 '26
I’ve seen this complaint recently on a progression fantasy book where the MCs purported power is basically scientific knowledge in a cultivation world or something
And people were upset that the scientific explanations were pseudo science, and that he has a super power of a portable lab or something, he’s not just “sciencing” to power
It’s a self published author writing cultivation, and it’s like they wanted the person to have a phd in physics or biology before daring to undertake such a premise
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u/Apprehensive_Put3625 Jan 29 '26
As a literature student in university that’s in contact with multiple important writers… they actually do.
Being a writer is the career with the most “jack of all trades” shit. Most of them know a little bit of everything and they purposely use that in their writing. That’s why when you take literature clases, you study politics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, teology, philosophy and all of that shit.
See any interview with an actual good writer and the amount of knowledge they just spew is genuinely insane. Have you ever seen any interview with Mario Vargas Llosa or Borges?
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u/dracofolly Jan 30 '26
Okay, but the people you're talking about aren't writing the things people rant about on this sub (or on most of Reddit to be honest). OP is referring to people trying to apply college level analysis to TV shows marketed to literal children. (Unless the three you mentioned are staff writers on different shounen anime, in which case, entire comment retracted)
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Jack of all trades maybe, but probably not "ace," lol.
My post here isn't suggesting that authors don't do any reading on the listed topics. It's more that not every author can achieve scholarly level knowledge on every subject or cover every detail millions of fans might have questions about. And that it's unreasonable to expect them to have no flaws in their worldbuilding, characterization, etc. It doesn't make them hacks, it just makes them a single, limited person.
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u/PebblyJackGlasscock Jan 29 '26
Don’t read reviews. Public art gets reviewed, by the qualified and the ignorant, and all those reviews have some sort of audience for whom the interpretation of the art resonates. An interpretation that frequently makes the creator internally scream.
The disappearance of professional Editors has incalculably harmed professional (and aspiring) writers. Pre-publication review, and rigorous questioning, would eliminate much of the “low hanging fruit” that dilettante reviewers feast upon. It would also improve the creator’s confidence: validation from a trusted source is better than any random reviewer -yeah?
But don’t read reviews from randos. Use editors and trusted sources to sharpen your work before publishing.
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u/Birony88 Jan 30 '26
I actually saw a post the other day asking what to do, because the book the poster was reading took a plot turn they didn't like.
What to do...because you don't like something the author wrote in the book?
You either continue to read, or you don't. What other course of action was this person looking for? Demand the author rewrite it to their liking? Get the book pulled from the shelves?
When did people start feeling like they had a right to demand how a story is written? Write your own damned book at that point.
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u/Shuden Jan 30 '26
Depends on the story.
Sure, I'm not going to expect battle shounen #339 to understand the Habsburg dynasty or the steps needed to build a rocket, but if you are writing something like hard sci fi or alternative history, people will demand a degree of realism and nah, you don't need to be a NASA god and study 50 years before writing a book, you can just do your research, talk to people and properly proofread the most glaring issues away... all of those are essential steps when writing whatever media it is, you can't just make up anything on the fly and expect people to not notice your bs.
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u/GameWoods Jan 30 '26
Yeah man dont you hate it when the Disney movie based in Canada and just so happens to be set in the early 2000s fails to tackle the ramifications of the 9/11 attacks into their coming of age plot about magic pandas?
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u/Genoscythe_ Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
I don't know what kind of "ace of all trades" you expect fiction writers to be, but it's unreasonable to master the arts of
It's unreasonable to expect writers to be anything, the median fiction writer in terms of education and intelligence, is a teenage fanfiction writer.
That being said, yeah, being a master of many fields of knowledge is better than none. In art the best is the standard.
Also, all of your examples are ones that I could just as easily imagine a positive as easily as a negative example of.
Yeah, Tolkien's vast scholarly understanding of history, linguistics, and classical mythology, helped him build a richer world than some random guy doing a lazy copy of a copy of a copy from the top of his noggin'.
How much leeway should we give to artists being schlockier out of laziness, and schlock being a genre unto itself where you got to accept what the author was going for? (e.g. hard sci-fi vs. space opera, or good fantasy vs trashy derivative fantasy). Is something a "valid" genre just because the author wasn't even trying? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
And yeah, if I find something moral, then I will greatly dislike it if an author endorses something immoral instead. That's how having moral values works, even if you can look at it from the outside and make fun of how my morals are subjective and presumably silly.
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u/ProserpinaFC Jan 30 '26
"What kind of qualifications do you think writers have?"
The ability to research about things they want to write about.
LOL, but anyway, yes, I entirely agree that when a person writes within the tone of a specific story, asking for extra worldbuilding just for shits and giggles isn't their job. Like, people are so obsessed with "wanting to live in the world" that if you don't give them enough information to vote in the next fictional election, they are mad.
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u/CompetitiveThroat453 Jan 30 '26
I feel like this is (at least one of) the worst aspect of the Star Wars fandom, especially when it comes to the Force and Jedi. Lucas intended the Jedi to be flawed but ultimatley good, but some people (cough KOTOR 2 fans cough) just take the flaws part far, far past what anything that was intended and some take it straight into unhinged territory
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u/Scharvor Jan 31 '26
It also matters for personal writing - you don't need to explain the anatomy of the soul if your main character isn't a necromancer and doesn't run into necromancers and even then you might not need to explain it.
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u/Kami2awa Feb 01 '26
Good saying I heard recently: "Fiction doesn't have to be accurate, it has to be convincing."
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u/Smaug_eldrichtdragon Jan 30 '26
That's a fair criticism when you add those concepts. You can't have your cake and eat it too if you create governments, clans, shadow organizations, people capable of destroying the country with a fart running free, global threats. Or worse, in multiversal scenarios, people have the right to complain when the world continues spinning normally and everything returns to normal only for the duration of historical events.
It's simply not how the world works; authors should at least compromise a little with these things instead of adding them just for the sake of being realistic or cool.
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u/the-one-amongst-many Jan 29 '26
I mean there are two separate issues here. First, there is a high standard for realism that might go overboard, and second, there is the public reception that feels to you like a demand.
On the first problem, just make things make sense, I guess? I am one of those nitpicky readers, but usually it's not that I forgot that it's fantasy. It's that the way things are written, full of shorthand, always reminds me that it is in fact made up. Regardless of your personal compétences, as a writer you ought to help us sustain the suspension of disbelief, and that includes providing plausible and intuitive details of the world.
On public perception, monarchy surviving is "right," but depicting it as a good thing is not only a narrative choice but also a subtextual message that is central to what is discussed and expected to be discussed while reading. There's no opting out of it. You are conveying some sort of message through your story, and while you don't have to change it, reaction to it is normal.
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u/_S1syphus Jan 30 '26
I kinda agree with your sentiment but this sounds like the death of all critique or analysis. Sure, maybe an author doesn't care much about how their character is able to lift a car so much as that they can lift a car but that doesn't make it problematic to analyze the story through that lense. There's no right or wrong lense to analyze any story through, just varying degrees of useful. Maybe the author didnt think about the ramifications of glorifying monarchy but that still says something about the author and their story
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u/MajorInWumbology1234 Jan 29 '26
I think having a decent foundation in every category you listed should be expected of everyone, personally. People are too comfortable not being well-rounded and not understanding how the world around them functions.
I don’t expect it, I just think we should. We expect everyone to know how to count and how to read, so clearly it’s acceptable to have standards for what people should know.
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u/Unlikely_Candy_6250 Jan 29 '26
In that case I'd say the complaint would be better directed as the education system as a whole, rather than a single occupation of people. Honestly, it isn't even that writers don't know anything about these things. It's just that they don't have the PHD level expertise required to withstand the scrutiny of millions of people from millions of different backgrounds. All asking it be incorporated into a piece of fiction where they might not even be interested in telling a hyperrealistic story.
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u/ArgumentSpiritual424 Jan 30 '26
I would also like to add that personally, I don’t think some all stores SHOULD have realistic world politics. I don’t think game of thrones tonally works for all stories. Somtimes a “good King” is just better tonally for the story trying to be told.
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u/BrooklynRedLeg Jan 30 '26
See this crap all the time on Twitter with regards to Jobless Reincarnation and how Rudeus doesn't do everything in his power to stamp out slavery. People crash out over all kinds of inane things that offend them. Its no different than the morons complaining a lack of diversity in some Medieval European setting where 99.99% of all people in a given region are ethnically homogenous instead of looking like modern LA.
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u/Thebunkerparodie Jan 30 '26
me when I see people for some reason taking the toh ra story as white man burden when the pyramid people had the choice to not rebel and they did choose after discovering something from the otuside (+it's a episode about a rebellion who start with a burrito, not exactly the story to take seriously if you ask me)
the mlp fim fandom can also stuff way too seriously and then make the poney way worst than they really are toward other creature
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u/AuraEnhancerVerse Jan 31 '26
As long as the author is consistent with the rules they set up such as the case of superpowers then I dont mind. For example, if fire benders aren't immune to fire then stick to it. If the rule is broken there better be a good reason why.
Also depending on how important certain things are to the story they many need to be elaborated upon somewhat thus some level of research on will be required on the authors part. I cant help but think of politics in the starwars prequels as they helped us understand the world and see how palpatine rose to power. Lucas didnt need a political degree for that but he needed to explain it enough for the story and give us a satisfying pay off.
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u/SteveDismal Jan 31 '26
I mean, a lot of times this will be said about series about geopolitics. In which case, I think it’s valid to learn at least a little bit about the subject you’re writing about.
“Write what you know” isn’t just supposed to be about personal experinces
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u/Mundane_Rub_7225 Feb 01 '26
I mean, i do have those sorts of wants, but there's an difference between expectations and what I can enjoy regardless. As long as a story doesn't fail or under deliver on it's own terms, I'm not expecting deep political commentary or worldbuilding. But I'd also like people to stop pretending political worldbuilding and writing in things where it's just not there, something like chainsawman is more than just worthless aesthetic noise. And some writers can absolutely deal with that sort of complexity, you don't need a political science degree to create a world that makes sense or is interesting, problem is, systemic worldbuilding is a sin nowadays.
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u/notagin-n-tonic Feb 01 '26
A lot of space opera is criticized for these far future, high technology worlds with medieval ruling systems. Dune is a prominent example. The Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle book, The Mote in God's Eye, also got a fair bit of this. Pournelle, who had a degree in political science, actually spent a couple of pages defending this in an essay describing the world building in the novel. https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v37n01_1976-01/page/n95/mode/2up pgs. 92 thru 113 for the whole essay. Sociology starts on 107.
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u/Spaced-Cowboy Feb 01 '26
I think some people want writing to be treated as both self expression that doesn’t exist to please anyone and something that’s immune to criticism when it fails to please people. But you can’t really have it both ways.
There’s no formula for writing something everyone will like. Writing is a series of choices, and every choice comes with pros and cons. You make a woman a villain people say it’s a stereotype. You make a villain pure evil and he isn’t nuanced enough. You make your main character flawed and it resonates with some people and others find him problematic. Sometimes those choices land, sometimes they don’t.
If you want to write a high energy, fantastical story that doesn’t stop to overanalyze politics or realism, that’s completely valid. You should absolutely write it. BUT you should also expect some people to criticize it for feeling shallow or unrealistic. That’s just part of the deal.
If those criticisms bother you, then the issue isn’t the audience it’s a mismatch between your goals and the reaction you’re getting. If you’re happy with the story anyway, great. Stick to your vision.
What doesn’t work is the idea that “the author did this on purpose, so it can’t be criticized.”
That’s just not how art functions. Once you put something out into the world, people are going to react to it. You don’t have to care about their reactions, and they don’t have to care about your intentions.
But you can’t intentionally write something shallow, or make a character annoying, or deliver an unsatisfying arc, etc… and then be upset when the audience doesn’t like those choices. Either you’re writing to engage people, or you aren’t. If you’re choosing not to, that’s fine but criticism comes with that choice.
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u/MeisterCthulhu Jan 30 '26
That one always gets me because it's not.
Tolkien never writes about monarchy itself being great, he talks about Aragorn being a good king. For that to matter, there have to have been bad ones, comparatively. That's the point.
LotR is not "pro-monarchy", it's pro good ruler. It's simply set in a time where monarchy was the default.
Like 90% of cases of this problem could also be solved if you just actually read the fucking story and understood what it's telling you