 All right, so I wanted to have my World Building Martial Arts video out by now, but something has just been nagging at me that I've been seeing a lot, and I feel like I've been seeing it more and more often lately, and I just... it's been bothering me. It's been bothering me a lot. I don't even have notes for this video, because this is just so obnoxious, and yet I need to talk about it, because... so there's an old Tumblr post, which I'll put up right here, that is talking about this phenomenon, and it's basically where people see something in a piece of media and immediately think that that is being endorsed not only by that piece of media, but by the people who created it, and that is very stupid in most cases. See, the example that that Tumblr post uses is Beauty and the Beast, and somebody was talking about how it promotes toxic masculinity because Gaston is toxic and masculine, and I mean, okay, Gaston is a good example of that, but he's also the villain. You know, he's meant to look like a fool. He's meant to look like a jerk. He's meant to look like a bad person, and the fact that he's a... is very toxic and masculine. I don't know how to use that as an adjective, sorry, but the fact that he's like that is meant to paint those qualities in a negative light. Like, Gaston isn't a bad guy because he's good at hunting or because he's really big and strong. In fact, those are arguably positive traits, which give him a little bit more dimension as a villain, but he's bad because he doesn't actually care what Belle wants. He just sees her as like a prize to be won, and because he immediately thinks when he sees the Beast like, okay, yeah, let's just go kill that thing. Like, no questions asked. But I see this all the time, and people do it in both positive and negative ways. Like, the Gaston one's another negative way. A lesser known example, which I've seen a lot, is from this. This is How Few Remain. It is the first book in the Southern Victory series by Harry Turtledove, and I've talked a little bit about this series in the past. It's pretty good. It goes on for quite a while. It's basically... it's an alternate history story about the Confederate states of America emerging victorious in the American Civil War, so they become an independent nation. And it basically just follows the world all the way up from then until the end of World War II. So because the Confederates were violently insane, slavery sticks around. And even once it is technically abolished, it's still basically there for black folks for a while. And then once you get into World War II, you get like this weird Holocaust analog between black folks and the CSA and Jewish people from Germany and all their occupied territories. Like, it's kind of weird when you stop to think about it, but you know, basically the point is things do not go super well for black people in the American South in this timeline. And I've seen people talk about this online, and there's people who very clearly haven't read it, or I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of them at least have not read it, who describe it as a white supremacist fantasy. And I genuinely have no idea how they could possibly come to that conclusion, because that is such a brain dead thing to say if you've actually read any of these books. Like, yes, there are characters in these books that are racist, and they do a lot of horribly racist things. Again, the Confederates were violently insane, and they become not exactly the Nazi Party, but they are an analog to the Nazi Party in this in this timeline. So they aren't the good guys. Again, the author Harry Turtle Love is Jewish. He actually lost family members in the Holocaust, I believe. So he's not painting those guys in a positive light. He's saying, these are bad people, they are doing bad things. And yet, somehow people just, again, I'm pretty sure most of them haven't read it. And like, I did have a brief conversation with this about someone a couple of months ago. And he said like, Oh, okay, they're just, they see racist characters in a racist time period. They see them dropping the end bomb a bunch, which does happen a lot. And they just assume that, okay, yeah, the series is racist. But again, I don't think most of these people have actually read it. I'm pretty sure they just hear the Confederate States win the American Civil War and instantly assume that that's going to be portrayed as a good thing. Because in their minds, whenever something appears in a piece of media, that's the creators uncritically endorsing it. Like, we saw the exact same thing a couple of years ago. There was supposed to be a show on HBO called Confederate. It was also about the CSA winning the American Civil War and emerging as an independent nation. And we just had many thousands of people throwing a fit for the exact same reason, because they instantly assumed that just because the CSA was going to be shown as victorious that they were going to be shown as the good guys, my dude, how have you made it through life? How have you made it to this point? To the point where you can actually read and write and have some understanding of the world around you without understanding that sometimes stories have villains. Sometimes bad things happen in fiction. And that doesn't mean that the author wants those bad things to happen or that the author is happy about those bad things happening. Now, that show wound up never getting made. Like, it was in pre-production for a while, but partially due to the backlash and partially due to just, you know, regular business stuff, it wound up being canned. Like, we're never going to see Confederate. At least, we're probably never going to see Confederate. It's never going to happen. But I'm still just left baffled. Like, how in God's name is that the conclusion you reach? Like, how do you see that? Like, especially because you haven't seen the final product. So you really can't judge it properly without having actually watched it. But I think part of the reason people are so eager to jump to conclusions like this is because so many of them barely even watch or play or read anything anymore, they just have it relayed to them via YouTube videos and podcasts and other shit like that. So they just, like, hear the highlights in a YouTube video going, this is stupid or this is awesome or this is really funny and bad or this is problematic or whatever else. And like, that's their only exposure to that media. And so they feel okay judging it. And I'm like, okay, it's one thing judging it when you've gotten some information, even if that is only partial and it is filtered through the lens of somebody else telling you about it. Sure. Like, you can make something of a judgment on that. But I feel like some people have taken that and then jumped an extra step further with it so that they can say, okay, yes, I can judge the entirety of this thing, which doesn't even exist yet, based on no information. Yeah, like just jumping to wild conclusions and assuming that everyone who disagrees with your wild conclusions is just a bad person. The phrase, don't judge a book by its cover, exists for good reason, guys. We had something similar happen with Attack on Titan, and if you haven't finished it, I guess spoilers for the ending, so skip to the next bit if you want to avoid that. But basically in Attack on Titan, the villains are fascists. Like, the heroes fight against them at the end. The heroes that basically there's two different groups of fascists that are each trying to commit a genocide of the other and the reasonable people on both sides come together and put a stop to it. And some people have taken that to go, oh, well Attack on Titan is a fascist series then, like, what? Like, okay, some people really when they get backed into a corner and when you point out that, hey, the heroes specifically say, this is bad and we shouldn't commit genocide and it's not right to treat people this way because of their race. And then when you back them into a corner and point out that that is explicitly stated in the text of the series, they go, oh, well, actually, the author created a world where fascism is correct. So you know that really the author and the series is fascist. And he very explicitly did not once again, because again, the fascists are defeated at the end. Like, the series is showing, hey, fascism isn't going to work in the long run. Like, it is still alive at the end of the series, unfortunately, because again, like that, that's a long and complex topic that a lot of people have gone over. But basically, fascism is still alive, the fascist movements are still there, but they have been defeated, at least temporarily. And the heroes are still going, hey, this is wrong, we shouldn't genocide people and we shouldn't discriminate based on race. Like, how much more blatant can you be? Like, he didn't create a fascist world, he created a world where fascists exist, and where a lot of them are powerful, and where their ideals might make some sense on a base emotional level, like that that is one good thing Attack on Titan does is that it shows you how people can get locked into that mindset. But if you're a person who reads that and then says, yeah, the author just created a world where fascism is correct, then all that tells me is that you are locked into that mindset and you don't have the self-awareness to realize what's going on and then step back and reexamine your own beliefs. Like, I'm not doing that as like a roast or to own you or anything. I'm saying like, hey, seriously, man. Like, the story is specifically trying to get you to feel these emotions and then it's pointing out to you why it's wrong and why you shouldn't feel that way. Like, that's what's going on here. But then you also have people kind of doing it in the opposite direction. And maybe I don't even know if that's the right way of putting it. But a couple of years ago, I put out a video about how fantasy is weirdly pro-monarchy and how that's kind of odd. And what I meant in that video, you can go watch it. And what I again explicitly said and what I meant in that video is that a lot of fantasy series doesn't just have monarchies in it, it explicitly shows that having a monarchy is great. And if you put the right person on there, then everything will be awesome forever. And it's only going to fail if you put the wrong person on there. So it's like, very explicitly pro-divine right of kings and very explicitly pro-monarchy. But the comments to this day are still full of, um, yeah, of course there's monarchies there. God, it's a myth that's set in ancient or medieval societies. That's what monarchies were like. And once again, they're assuming that endorsing something and portraying something are exactly the same. And they're not. Like, I was criticizing the genre because in many cases it does straight up endorse this. And I'm saying, like, why is that? Like, you can show a monarchy existing and being the way the world is run without showing it to be great. You know, Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones, whichever you want to call it, does a pretty good job of that. You know, like, there are a lot of monarchies that are shown and lords and aristocrats and stuff, but they aren't shown to be great people for the most part. In fact, I would say the vast majority of the ones shown are shown to be very, very terrible people. And even if they're not straight up evil, they're just bad at their jobs. And a lot of people were mad at the ending of the show because it didn't just have Daenerys take over and be good and everything is awesome after that. You can try and lie all you want. I remember being there and viewing comments, looking at forums and everything during the last season. That is exactly why you were upset. Don't lie to me. But again, it's just, it's such a strange thing to me that people don't seem to understand that sometimes bad things happen in stories. Sometimes there are villains and we are meant to view the villains as bad people. And sometimes we're also meant to view the heroes as bad people. You know, again, breaking bad for whatever reason. People just think Walter White's a hero. He's not. There were a lot, a weird number of people who thought Homelander was a hero in The Boys. Again, he's not. I don't know how they get to that. But like all of this stems from the same place. And that is, if it's being shown on screen or being shown on page or whatever else, then that instantly means that it's supposed to be good. And I just, I don't know how people get to that point and I don't know how to help them out of it other than to tell them, hey man, once again, just think about shit, okay? Just because it's there doesn't mean the author or creator, I should say, thinks it's good or bad. It just means the creator is trying to get a specific emotion out of you. Like again, that is the point of media is to make you feel things. Like when they tell a joke, it's supposed to make you laugh. When a sad scene happens, it's supposed to make you sad. When an awesome action sequence happens, it's supposed to make you go whoa, that's cool. Usually. Again, like, maybe this is just me. Maybe I'm just the type of person who is way more analytical than everyone else. But I just, I don't know. I don't understand this phenomenon. And it only seems to be getting worse. So yeah, once again, just think about stuff that you consume. Try not to jump to conclusions if you haven't actually read it. Like again, if you've heard some things about it, then you can say like, okay, that just doesn't interest me. It sounds kind of bad. And again, if you've watched, again, a YouTube video or something, summarizing it and going into some detail about an analysis and everything, then that gives you some information, but it's never giving you all the information. And you should keep that in mind. And I guess just if I have to end this on a stronger note, just media consumption isn't a virtue. You know, just because something has like problematic elements or it's cringe, woke nonsense or whatever the fuck, enjoying it doesn't make you a bad person and it doesn't make anybody else a bad person. That's all like you can like stuff while acknowledging that some of the elements in there are unsavory, or you can hate something while also thinking that it's pushing a good message. You know, those are all possible. Anyways, like I said, this is even more untethered, I guess, than my normal stuff is, but I've just been seeing this even more lately than I used to and it annoys me. So stop doing it. Hello, everyone. You're still watching? Well, that's pretty cool. You see all these names here? These are my patrons. They're the people that send me money once a month over on Patreon. My $10 and up patrons are Appo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotes, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Chib Zahoy, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Dio, Echo, Flax, James M, Carcat Kitsune, Lexi DeLorm, Liza Ruda Coba, Lord Tiebreaker, Microphone, Mistboy, Mitsimona, Peep the Toad, Robi Reviews, Sad Martigan, Psyche XS, Celine, Celia the Vixen, Stone Stairs, Tesla Shark, Vaivictus, Vimec Zoll, and Wesley. 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