Anti: I can enjoy devilman while being critical of its problematic elements
Me, who has been trying to explain this concept to antis who want fanworks with problematic elements to not exist at all and harass their creators instead of accepting that adults are able to consume problematic work critically:
It’s almost like antis claim a ship is problematic purely because they don’t like it cause it interferes with a ship they do like or they don’t like one or more of the characters involved
Since finishing up my undergraduate studies in June, one of the major things I’ve been doing with my free time is playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (please don’t @ me but I’ve already logged something like 400 hours). As much fun as the game is, one of the things that’s really stood out to me is how much AC:NH depends on and reifies colonial logics, and how important it is to unpack this in the context of the game’s popularity and the ongoing pandemic.
One of the first ways I want to address colonialism in AC:NH this is through the way I was first introduced to it, namely through its connection to my thesis and what I refer to as the “terraforming imaginary”. Before I started playing or had even decided to buy the game, I was working on my thesis “Constructing New Worlds: An Investigation of Climate Change and the Terraforming Imaginary” (which, shameless self plug but if you’re interested you can check out my 10 minute video presentation for symposium at Johns Hopkins University here). During this time I was talking about my thesis pretty non-stop with anyone who would listen and as a result probably about half of my friends independently sent me this meme
[ID: meme from @animalcrossingmemes which shows two children; the one on the left is smiling and looking off into the distance with the label “daydreaming about terraforming” while the child on the right looks stressed and upset with the label “actually terraforming”. Beneath this meme is text from @kaijuno which reads “I realize this is an animal crossing meme but as an astrophysicist I was really excited for a second that someone was finally seeing the light on how fricking difficult an a huge waste of time it would be to try to terraform Mars”. Beneath this text is another meme with four hands gripping each other’s wrists to make a circle. In the center is the initial animalcrossingmemes image and each arm is labeled, respectively, “Minecraft Players,” “Sims Players,” “Animal Crossing Players,” and “Astrophysicists apparently”]
Although my thesis addresses terraforming in the context of space exploration/colonization, AC:NH’s engagement with “terraforming” (alongside other aspects of colonial practices and desires) helps to expand on the stakes of this. The reason I put “terraforming” in scare-quotes is because…technically, there isn’t any terraforming in AC:NH, given that terraforming is “the operation consisting of rendering other stellar bodies—mainly planets and eventually asteroids—appropriate for human life” (Frédéric Neyrat, 46). While I’m all down for an interpretation of the Animal Crossing world as a non-Earth planet and the villagers as aliens, the island is already suitable for human life and the use of “terraforming” in the game is generally more readily identifiable as geoconstructivism: players redesign and restructure their islands, shaping waterways and topography to create idealistic spaces (as opposed to making the island literally livable). Either way, it speaks to the terraforming imaginary—the underlying set of logics and desires conducive to the imagining and desiring of “terraforming”, ie the logics and desires of colonization. Even though AC:NH’s terraforming isn’t technicallyterraforming, it is an embodiment of the terraforming imaginary, centering desires for the “civilizing”/“cultivating” of a space into an orderly, colonized ideal. On even a very surface level it is useful to think about this through the island rating system: islands are ranked out of five stars, with deductions made for things such as having “too many” weeds or not “cleaning up” by leaving items lying around rather than placed with intention.
Another, perhaps more obvious, way in which AC:NH embodies colonial logics is through the “Nook Miles Tickets”. Players trade in Nook Miles (an achievement based currency) for tickets which they can take to the airport and use to visit other, uninhabited islands which they can destroy to extract all of the resources slash-and-burn style. Players also have an increased likelihood of catching rare insects, fish, and sea animals to display to their own island museum or sell. As Wilbur, a dodo pilot, explains about this process: “we run the ‘finders keepers’ protocol here. Lumber, fruit, fish, whatever? Yours if you can carry it”, going on to emphasize the importance of not leaving anything behind as there will be no returning; they “burn the flight plans” after each flight.
Although the rampantly destructive extraction of resources is the most apparent embodiment of colonial logics, the centrality of the museum and the imperative to complete each wing by finding and identifying all of the bugs, fish/sea creatures, fossils, and artworks in the game is an equally significant connection to colonialism. Benedict Anderson argues in Imagined Communities that the museum, along with the census and the map, “shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion—the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry” (164). The specifics Anderson goes into differ of course, because he’s talking about actual colonial states while AC:NH has the fluidity of embodying the underpinning desires which colonialism as process requires to function, but what holds true is that these specific forms of producing, organizing, and displaying knowledge which produced “a totalizing classificatory grid, which could be applied with endless flexibility…to be able to say of anything that it was this, not that; it belonged here, not there” (Anderson 184). Essentially, in AC:NH part of a player’s ownership of the island occurs through a player’s ability to classify and collect artefacts for the museum. Furthermore, this imperative to collect and preserve fossils, art work, bugs, fish, and sea creatures is part of the way the player’s island is positioned as a place of value.
The museum also implicitly functions to reify positions of authority, legitimizing a kind of monopoly of knowledge. In AC:NH, this primarily means the positions of the museum curator (Blathers) and, to a degree, Tom Nook (who selected and invited Blathers) are secured as the authorities on knowledge. When Tom Nook tells the player that the island(s) are deserted, we must take this as truth…yet fishing both on the player’s island and the Nook Miles islands can turn up trash items like old tires, tin cans, and boots. Colonial logics depend on a management of who counts as “people” and what counts as “inhabited” and the myth of empty lands; Tom Nook’s instance that these islands are all deserted is haunted by these lingering traces of some other inhabitation prior to the game’s start.
Okay, so you might be asking what does this all mean and why should we care? Let’s talk about both the game’s popularity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which contextualized its release (and continues to shape daily life). Animal Crossing: New Horizons has not only received overwhelmingly positive critical reception, but is one of the best selling games both for the Switch console and the Animal Crossing series. According to freelance journalist Imad Khan’s New York Times article “Why Animal Crossing Is the Game for the Coronavirus Moment,” the game’s appeal centers in its function as an escape to an “island paradise where bags of money fall out of trees and a talking raccoon can approve you for a mortgage”. Khan quotes Dr. Ramzan (a professor of game narrative at Glasgow Caledonian University) who refers to it as “the universe you’ve always wanted, but can’t get.” Given the significantly decreased mobility and connection that has accompanied social distancing, as well as the increased stress and heightened inequality which have accompanied COVID-19, this probably isn’t particularly surprising. It makes sense that a cute, low-stress video game would be a valuable form of escapism.
Mobility is a particularly fraught discourse in this context: on the one hand, concerns surrounding containment/immobility are heightened in the context of neoliberalism and within colonial societies, which depend upon discourses of individualism and independence to demarcate the “freedom” which comes from capitalist economies. At the same time, the desire for things like connection/community, movement, and spatial autonomy/sovereignty are not inherently colonial, even as colonialist logics frequently position colonial/capitalist/neoliberal expansion as the solution. Animal Crossing is heavily situated within this entanglement, simultaneously offering a very real form of connection (and even protest) for many people while also implicitly speaking to latent beliefs that colonization is a legitimate form of mobility and escapism. To say that AC:NH is the universe we’ve always wanted but can’t get is to refuse to engage with the inherent contradictions of neoliberalism and reafirm the notion that colonial capitalist worlds are worth wanting; that the fantasy of individual wealth and success through destructive extraction and market freedom, when obtainable, is good.
None of this is to say that playing AC:NH is the same as colonization, because of course it isn’t. However, the colonial undertones of the game reflect the pervasiveness of colonial logics and desires in our daily lives, subsequently further normalizing them. Journalist Kazuma Hashimoto, for example, emphasizes the importance of contextualizing AC:NH’s colonial undertones within Japanese Colonialism in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Japanese Colonialism”. As Hashimoto argues, “I am only asking that people familiarize themselves with Japanese colonialism and why something as innocuous as discovering a deserted island can be read as colonialism — especially within the context of a Japanese game”.
Inattentiveness to the more subdued, invisibilized manifestations of violence facilitates their internalization and acceptance; educating ourselves and paying attention to and challenging places where we feel comfortable with these kinds of escapist fantasies is an important exercise in critical thinking which can help us to continue to refuse their real life manifestations.
okay but do you understand that liz wallace made the bechdel-WALLACE test because she was a dyke who wanted to go to movies and pretend the characters were dykes and her friend alison bechdel happened to put her silly little litmus assessment into a comic strip and then the rest of everyone else decided it was a bona fide way of means testing media for Feminist Content? do you know that? it doesn’t sound like you know that
i have no problem with this stuff being spelled out in an article bc it’s important history people esp north americans should be aware of but like how did u not think about this until now. how did u think stede bonnet a white man got so rich in the fucking caribbean. how do u think anyone in history got rich. how are u only just realizing this
anyway the whole fucking story is fictional for fucks sake. they took his namesake and that’s it. even if they didn’t and it was some random made-up white rich man from barbados he would’ve made his wealth the same exact way as stede bonnet. this show never claimed historical accuracy and if u saw blackbeard being played by a māori dude in full leather with a motley crew of genial characters and assumed it was all true to history then i’m sorry but that’s on u.
pirates were horrible horrible people who were extremely implicit in the atlantic slave trade. as were the characters in bridgerton and jane austen novels and most historical fiction that depicts the lives of rich people. stede bonnet and edward teach are burning in hell and i enjoy seeing entirely fictional versions of them kiss on my tv. those two things can coexist and while im not here to police anyones reaction to that i feel like if i as a black person from the caribbean, directly descended from slaves, can be cool with that then white people shouldn’t have to thoughtlessly guilt-trip themselves into hating the show
i think if they had let dean and cas simply fuck it out in s4 or 5 when the emotional core of the show was still sam and dean spn still could have gone down in tv history as a show about family and monster hunting like if anything the angelic gay sex would have added to edgy amorality of the show. but nooo they had to forcibly separate and reunite them over and over again for ten years until they ended up with a narrative that wasn’t just horny but deeply romantic and now the only legacy supernatural will ever have is destiel. eric you CHOSE to do that
Anyway if you all are sick of watching White Lady (and White Dude) Leftist content talking about popular fandoms and internet culture, check out some of these creators on Youtube. Not an exhaustive list, feel free to add your own. I tried to stick to a similar theme, but there is some variation.
Harriyanna Hook, who focuses on nostalgic properties through the lense of a black woman.
Jacob Geller, a Jewish man who does deep dives into various media. Mostly horror and sci-fi.
Kennie JD, a black woman that does this excellent series called bad movies and a beat every week on Saturday. A series where she reviews bad movies (often terrible romantic comedies and bad horror movies) while putting on her makeup.
D'Angello Wallace, a black man that focuses on internet culture, media, and people of interest. Sometimes shorter videos, sometimes deep dives. He used to be an art channel but now focuses more on culture than art.
Xiran Jay Zhao, a Chinese woman in who looks at media and focuses on the tokenism and appropriation of Asian culture.
T1J, who talks about culture, media, and social issues through the lens of a black man. He also has big Dad Energy.
Lady Knight The Brave, a Jewish woman who does deep dives into various media, often ones that have big fandoms attached.
Ada on Demand. A black woman that talks about social issues and culture, with a focus on pop culture.
Reignbot, a Filipino non-binary person that focuses their content on horror and ARGs and true crime.
Tee Noir, who focuses on various media, culture, and social platforms through the lens of a black queer woman.
AlsoKhadija Mbowe! They are black queer creator who makes long video essays (not only about media but mainly)
check out Intelexual Media as well! she’s black, beautiful, and so incredibly smart. i adore her. her historical cultural analyses are top notch and she deserves more love.
I haven’t thoroughly reviewed all of these myself yet but they were recommended by friends and I’m putting them here for both my future reference and just to share.
I heard that not everyone who liked Yudkowsky’s short stories had seen this one. (This is a repost of his post on r/HFY, to focus on the story content more.)
i left this open in a tab for like a month but i finally read it a few days ago and it was very good and gave me Feels. strongly recommended if you’re not the sort of person for whom “eliezer yudkowsky wrote this” is an automatic disrecommendation.
I also really loved this, but it’s interesting to me that most people weren’t as impressed.
The place he originally posted it to (/r/HFY – "Humanity Fuck Yeah") didn’t rate it very highly, and the stories they do rate highly all seemed noticeably worse (“cringier” – like several of the top stories, on the subreddit wiki’s list of classics, with 10x as many upvotes, could be summarized “aliens thought their number was big enough to fuck over humanity, but humanity had an even bigger number!”).
I don’t think I have unusual tastes here… but what else could be going on here?
It strikes me as plausible that you need to have read the Value Theory Sequence and its prerequisites, or gotten equivalent background from elsewhere (it’s not in the broader nerd/SF culture), to really understand why the thing that happens in that story is a big deal. Most r/HFY readers presumably won’t have.
Interest has been shown and the thought won’t leave my brain so I’m putting this on the table for discussion.
First let me be transparent: if allowed I will talk for ages about how people aren’t taught critical thinking and media analysis and if they are that they aren’t applying those tools where it counts. It’s something I see so frequently and I’ll get so driven up the wall about and I’ll lament for ages the way that educational systems have failed to teach these tools or how little push there actually is on a widespread scale to learn and implement them.
But over the last 24 hours with instances on several fronts and in several fandoms, an additional thought has repeatedly been popping up that I think needs to coexist with this discussion.
And that is that there is a human being behind every take you disagree with.
It’s easy to focus on the frustration and the issue and wanting to push for ways to improve the situation to the point I think sometimes it’s easy to forget the individual people.
While I don’t intend to point fingers to any one example (because again, I’ve been seeing this sort of issue in multiple fandom spaces on multiple platforms over the past day,) I feel like it’s still something to bring up. Just hear me out on this. Fandom isn’t necessarily a space where the intent is to always analyze and think critically about what we consume, but utilizing those tools can provide a more enriching experience with the source material, open up new discussions with other fans, and allow for a greater understanding of the source material and its creators and its impact(s).
But just as much as that, fandom isn’t necessarily intended for that level of engagement, at least not as a mandatory requirement. Many fans don’t consume a thing they enjoy for the sake of deeper thought and analysis, and this means that many times their opinions, headcanons, elements they enjoy, and understanding of the source material is going to differ drastically from that of a person who does those deeper dives.
And that’s fine.*
There is a caveat there and I’ll get to it, but I really would like to see this point as the main one for consideration in this discussion. Not everyone consumes movies, shows, books, podcasts, games, etc. with an automatic need or desire to analyze the media on a deeper level. Heck, even people who DO have that tendency are going to encounter things that they just engage with on a level of trying to simply enjoy it.
And that’s okay. Not everyone has had the opportunity to learn those things. Not everyone wants to always dissect everything they engage with, and trying to do that anyway is exhausting. (And if you’re trying to do that with the intent of seeking media purity, it’s doubly exhausting because you’re chasing something that cannot exist, and I would like to suggest that you reevaluate this because it WILL rob you of your ability to enjoy ANYTHING.)
And I think it’s important to remember that when we hit that point. That there’s another person. That no matter how much it may cause us frustration when we encounter people who show signs of not knowing or understanding the same things we do about something we’ve taken the time to really break down and understand, there’s still another person and we don’t know the circumstances behind why their experience is different nor are we entitled to know. I mean, YEAH, it’s frustrating when prevailing ideas about the source material within a fandom become commonplace and are either blatantly wrong/ignorant or don’t show enough analysis. But I feel like we also need to remember to be mindful of individual people even when expressing our frustrations and dislikes of ideas or attitudes that lack understanding.
Now. Here’s that *caveat.
When someone’s lack of understanding, lack of thinking, lack of being willing to go beyond the surface and understand the impacts of themes and ideas in media, lead to that someone causing harm to themselves and others, then there is a greater issue that I think should be addressed.
I’m not talking about “this person has a headcanon about this character that is ignorant of character history and I don’t like it so I’m going to get on their case about it”. I’m talking about, someone isn’t taking the time to listen and think about and do some sleuthing on any media that they’re engaging with that has real life negative consequences and impacts on other people, and they’re unlikely to stop and reevaluate their engagement and behavior unless someone who does have a better understanding of those issues says something. Additionally, do they have individual opinions of their own in their lack of understanding that they’re causing harm with, whether intentionally or unintentionally? Because I see that happen too, where something gets misconstrued or misunderstood in a harmful way and the person with that misunderstanding can go on to harm others with it.
For many, a positive change can be made by asking the question(s) “are you aware that this thing contains harmful ideas that have real-world impacts?” “Are you aware that your engagement with this material supports a creator(s) who is weaponizing their platform?” “These harmful opinions and thought processes are baked into the source of the media you’re consuming and they have real life impacts; have you been taking the time to see if it is also working its way into your opinions and treatment of others?”
When those questions get asked, it can lead to changes that are positive or it can lead to an understanding that that individual may willfully choose not to reevaluate how they may be causing harm because they won’t let go of whatever caused those harmful ideas to take root in them. And that is a different discussion entirely, but it’s important to remember that this is a caveat to consider.
But ultimately, TL;DR— I think the complaint of “none of these people are using critical thinking or analyzing media is frustrating and it needs to change” can and does need to begin coexisting with the idea “an individual person may not know how or choose to engage critically with the media they consume some or all of the time and that’s okay and I can respect and consider them even if I disagree with their takes on it.”
Someone’s always gonna have a different opinion and you can’t FORCE anyone to have the same take as you. They have a different background and different life experiences shaping the way they relate to these characters. Someone shipping a pairing you don’t like or thinks some character didn’t deserve their redemption arc are not worth picking fights over because those are harmless. Save your breath for conversations that matter. Save your breath for helping someone understand the implications and real-world consequences of irresponsible media creation. Or to help people understand what responsibly-created media is trying to open them to, the worldviews they hadn’t considered before and the issues they didn’t realize were not just fiction.
I’d also like to add a point for the people who do think critically about the content they consume and engage with their favorite stories this way, that you’re allowed to have fun, and that interacting with others—including the people you’re trying to educate—should be because you love the material itself. When someone is clearly passionate about something it makes people willing to listen (as opposed to someone coming at them with negative or even aggressive energy). Give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re not being willfully malicious. Pairing your love with something while acknowledging it’s flaws just makes your delivery more accessible.
If you’re trying to get someone to understand a book/movie/show/etc that you don’t like because of how dangerously flawed it is, you need to be passionate about the cause you’re advocating for. I aggressively abhor movies like Split that vilify DID and I tell people not to watch it. I myself do not have DID but I do have one of the other scary/evil/ugly mental illnesses, and what harms one of us harms all of us. It’s important to me that we challenge toxic representation of debilitating mental illness, and people listen to me when I talk about this because I approach them with the assumption that they barely understand what DID is or why movies like this have real-world consequences.
YES, OH MY GOD THANK YOU SPOOKY, YOU GET IT
An IRL friend I usually have these discussions with also wanted me to throw out there that there’s a level of weaponized incompetence and willful ignorance that does occur within fandom and is its own problem, and that that can often jade people who care about engaging in critical thinking and analysis to the notion that we need to be mindful about the other person we choose to speak with.
And I think they’re absolutely right, and that is most certainly an issue as well; but between their suggestion that there needs to be more gentle encouragement for the parties in a discussion in a fandom to be up front about their level of understanding (ex: two people may love Teen Titans but one may only have watched the 2003 cartoon while the other may have watched the cartoon and also read comics and articles and history wikis and videos on it) and especially your reminder that the more passionate and excited and willing to share that a fan is with someone who may not be as critically engaged can open doors and grab people’s attention…? I think that can play such a huge hugedifference in helping to open people up to the idea of further discussion and thought, especially if they can be shown that that canbe a rewarding way of engaging with the media!
Of course, there’s always going to be people who don’t want to or won’t put in that same level of effort with the same piece of media you may have in common, and that’s okay too. I won’t say that sometimes it might not be disappointing, but I think it’s okay if now and then someone has a boundary of “i just want to enjoy this and not think too hard about it”. Everything I’ve seen lately has been a good reminder that it’s okay for people to set that boundary sometimes, and it’s good for others to respect that. (Again, the previous caveat I brought up still applies, but you get my drift. As you said, give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re not being willfully malicious)
And please remember everyone, as Spooky said, critical thinking and deeper analysis of the media you engage with doesn’t mean tearing it down and finding everything wrong with it. Let it be something enriching and fulfilling because you love it. It really does have the power to change minds and open doors for discussion better than outright attacking someone or giving them the third degree for something they may not know.
Interest has been shown and the thought won’t leave my brain so I’m putting this on the table for discussion.
First let me be transparent: if allowed I will talk for ages about how people aren’t taught critical thinking and media analysis and if they are that they aren’t applying those tools where it counts. It’s something I see so frequently and I’ll get so driven up the wall about and I’ll lament for ages the way that educational systems have failed to teach these tools or how little push there actually is on a widespread scale to learn and implement them.
But over the last 24 hours with instances on several fronts and in several fandoms, an additional thought has repeatedly been popping up that I think needs to coexist with this discussion.
And that is that there is a human being behind every take you disagree with.
It’s easy to focus on the frustration and the issue and wanting to push for ways to improve the situation to the point I think sometimes it’s easy to forget the individual people.
While I don’t intend to point fingers to any one example (because again, I’ve been seeing this sort of issue in multiple fandom spaces on multiple platforms over the past day,) I feel like it’s still something to bring up. Just hear me out on this. Fandom isn’t necessarily a space where the intent is to always analyze and think critically about what we consume, but utilizing those tools can provide a more enriching experience with the source material, open up new discussions with other fans, and allow for a greater understanding of the source material and its creators and its impact(s).
But just as much as that, fandom isn’t necessarily intended for that level of engagement, at least not as a mandatory requirement. Many fans don’t consume a thing they enjoy for the sake of deeper thought and analysis, and this means that many times their opinions, headcanons, elements they enjoy, and understanding of the source material is going to differ drastically from that of a person who does those deeper dives.
And that’s fine.*
There is a caveat there and I’ll get to it, but I really would like to see this point as the main one for consideration in this discussion. Not everyone consumes movies, shows, books, podcasts, games, etc. with an automatic need or desire to analyze the media on a deeper level. Heck, even people who DO have that tendency are going to encounter things that they just engage with on a level of trying to simply enjoy it.
And that’s okay. Not everyone has had the opportunity to learn those things. Not everyone wants to always dissect everything they engage with, and trying to do that anyway is exhausting. (And if you’re trying to do that with the intent of seeking media purity, it’s doubly exhausting because you’re chasing something that cannot exist, and I would like to suggest that you reevaluate this because it WILL rob you of your ability to enjoy ANYTHING.)
And I think it’s important to remember that when we hit that point. That there’s another person. That no matter how much it may cause us frustration when we encounter people who show signs of not knowing or understanding the same things we do about something we’ve taken the time to really break down and understand, there’s still another person and we don’t know the circumstances behind why their experience is different nor are we entitled to know. I mean, YEAH, it’s frustrating when prevailing ideas about the source material within a fandom become commonplace and are either blatantly wrong/ignorant or don’t show enough analysis. But I feel like we also need to remember to be mindful of individual people even when expressing our frustrations and dislikes of ideas or attitudes that lack understanding.
Now. Here’s that *caveat.
When someone’s lack of understanding, lack of thinking, lack of being willing to go beyond the surface and understand the impacts of themes and ideas in media, lead to that someone causing harm to themselves and others, then there is a greater issue that I think should be addressed.
I’m not talking about “this person has a headcanon about this character that is ignorant of character history and I don’t like it so I’m going to get on their case about it”. I’m talking about, someone isn’t taking the time to listen and think about and do some sleuthing on any media that they’re engaging with that has real life negative consequences and impacts on other people, and they’re unlikely to stop and reevaluate their engagement and behavior unless someone who does have a better understanding of those issues says something. Additionally, do they have individual opinions of their own in their lack of understanding that they’re causing harm with, whether intentionally or unintentionally? Because I see that happen too, where something gets misconstrued or misunderstood in a harmful way and the person with that misunderstanding can go on to harm others with it.
For many, a positive change can be made by asking the question(s) “are you aware that this thing contains harmful ideas that have real-world impacts?” “Are you aware that your engagement with this material supports a creator(s) who is weaponizing their platform?” “These harmful opinions and thought processes are baked into the source of the media you’re consuming and they have real life impacts; have you been taking the time to see if it is also working its way into your opinions and treatment of others?”
When those questions get asked, it can lead to changes that are positive or it can lead to an understanding that that individual may willfully choose not to reevaluate how they may be causing harm because they won’t let go of whatever caused those harmful ideas to take root in them. And that is a different discussion entirely, but it’s important to remember that this is a caveat to consider.
But ultimately, TL;DR— I think the complaint of “none of these people are using critical thinking or analyzing media is frustrating and it needs to change” can and does need to begin coexisting with the idea “an individual person may not know how or choose to engage critically with the media they consume some or all of the time and that’s okay and I can respect and consider them even if I disagree with their takes on it.”
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: it’s more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It’s performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.
This is ultimately why propaganda is going to work on you. Because you never learned how to think for yourself and the actual ideology behind things. You simply rely on group think and the bare minimum explanations to tell you what’s good and bad.
Sawthis article linked on twitter yesterday and…. yeah. YEAH.
Image ID: text with the middle half yellow highlighted, highlighting noted between [ and ].
The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. [A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader.
This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings.
“[You might tweet], "Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad! Or, ‘They didn’t’ - in this case - 'discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad. That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything.] Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes - like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good - you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”
Sherlock Holmes has Anti-Social Personality Disorder: an essay
disclaimers: im not professionally diagnosed with aspd, but have a high chance of having it, and have talked to people who are diagnosed. also, this is a headcanon, not saying that holmes has aspd canonically
what is aspd?: anti-social personality disorder, or aspd, is a personality disorder defined by impulsiveness, apathy, aversionto social norms and a cynical view of the world. symptoms and their severity vary greatly from person to person, however
1)Holmes’ chronic boredom:
people with aspd are very often extremely bored, and have to seek ways to stimulate their brain, often in a way that’s unhealthy.
when Holmes isn’t working on a case, he has no idea on what to do, and ends up either doing science experiments, which he usually involves himself in, or resorts to the use of substances.
not only is this a symptom of aspd, but the way he deals with it is also how most people with the disorder act.
2)Holmes’ self-esteem is in his work:
a common trait of aspd is that your self-esteem is maintained almost solely by your goals, power or achievements, and you often define yourself by these things. Holmes’ self worth is entirely based on how well he can solve a case, or if he can solve it at all.
when he fails even slightly, he begins to doubt his abilities and slips into a nearly depressive state. this also explains why he’s as bored as he is when he isn’t working; not only is it his stimulus, it’s where he gets his self-esteem from.
when a character,Dr. Mortimer,says he’s the second best in his field of work in one case, Sherlock seems immediately upset, which also tracks. when you have aspd, you’re constantly trying to be the best, as to feel worthy, so having your skills be questioned or dismissed even slightly is very damaging.
this happens, also, in red headed league, in which he gets upset and angry when a client says his methods seem simple when he explains how he deducted something.
3)Holmes is an impulsive mess:
impulsiveness, lack of regard for safety, inconsequential behaviour. this describes both Holmes and some of the main symptoms of aspd.
he immediately jumps to action, even though we’re told he thinks carefully before doing so, and is quick to accept cases or go investigate, even when it’s one tied to dangerous individuals. he could really care less about who he’s dealing with, most of the time.
he seems to only care for the safety of his clients and Watson. he even jumps in a room full and dangerous chemicals tp save a client, but, even so, there are many moments where the danger he puts himself in could very well hurt one or both of them.
Holmes would risk all sorts of injuries or harm if it’s to get to the bottom of a case or get some thrill from it, which ties in to the boredom aspect as well.
4)Watson is the exception:
people with aspd can have what’s called an “exception”, someone who they feel some empathy for or that their brain registers as a person, as someonethey can care about. most often, people with aspd will see others as below them in some way, like as pets, or an object of study, while exceptions will be, well, the exception. they may also socialize easier with these people and mask less. this doesn’t mean they dislike those who aren’t exceptions, but they are very different dynamics.
that being said, Watson is clearly Holmes’ exception. not only is he the one person he seems to have a genuine close relationship with, Holmes threatens anyone who harms him, even risking his life to protect him, without much reason other than their relationship. though he also risks himself for his clients, you could argue it’s due to them being part of his work. as mentioned previously on how people with aspd tend to view other people, Holmes might see the clients as a piece of the puzzle, while he sees Watson as a partner in his duties.
he also seems to listen more to Watson’s advice, even though he tends to disregard them at times, specially when concerning physical well-being.
5)Holmes lies, a lot:
you can say it’s part of his job, but Holmes lies. and a lot. he also tends to manipulate situations in his favour, which is also common in aspd.
in the hound of the baskervilles, Watson spends most of his time with Henry Baskerville believing that Holmes is back home, when in reality, he’s following them, and only reveals the truth by the end of the story, as they’re about to confront Stapleton. he also disguises himself after coming back from the “hiatus”, before, once again, revealing the truth, and there are other instances where a similar thing happens. you can argue that lying was necessary in these situations, but Holmes went a bit too far with that, in my opinion.
still, there’s more. he’s manipulated Watson after he tells him to clean his room, which is a mess, in order for him to forget about it. his intentions with his manipulations aren’t malicious, but it’s clear he does them to get away with something or benefit himself otherwise. also, I’d say it’s more realistic for him to do these small lies and manipulations rather than be a big, dishonest, evil mastermind, in a way.
6)Holmes’ relationships:
aside from Watson, Holmes isn’t close to that many people.
he seems to be somewhat close to Mycroft, Lestrade, and Hopkins, but it seems that it’s only because either he has an upper hand, in a way, in this relationship, as seen with the Scotland Yard men, or because it’s his brother, in Mycroft’s case. even so, he doesn’t seem to ever visit them if not for work reasons, or spend time with them in general, for that matter. he’s more playful with them, often reminding them of his superior skills in the detective field, and doesn’t seem as annoyed by their presence as with other people, however, they appear to be the only ones.
he’s also neutral towards Mrs. Hudson in the canon. he clearly doesn’t hate her or find her a nuisance, but i wouldn’t say he considers her anything more than a part of living in the house. he’s nice to her, though, but they clearly aren’t friends.
if you have aspd, it’s hard to form close bonds with other people, or even make relationships at all, due to many things; apathy makes socialising much harder, the hatred or cynical view of society or people, the need to feel superior at times and a sense that the world is in a strict hierarchy all affect this. it’s no wonder that, if Holmes has aspd, he’d have very few friends.
this need to feel superior is present in his relationships, too. with aspd, you tend to try and be better than others in relationships, in multiple ways, which appears in Holmes’ contacts as well. everyone, except his brother, that he’s close to or acquainted with seems to be below him in some way, or at least, he feels that he’s superior to them. he doesn’t mistreat people due to this, however, and is actually kind to those who are curious of his methods and whose company he enjoys.
7)Holmes is easily angered:
be it because Watson has been injured, something has gone wrong or he just doesn’t have a case, Sherlock gets angry a lot, and easily, another symptom of aspd.
Mrs. Hudson and Watson both describe his mlst frequent mood as “don’t disturb him, he’s angry”. when a man injures Watson, Holmes immediately pulls a gun on him, without second thought, and says that if he had injured him more severely, he would have done worse on him. these are just a few examples of his short temper in the books.
8)Holmes fails to conform to social norms:
this is also quite obvious, and an often overlooked trait of aspd. social norms vary with time period, region and culture, however, so this is a tricky subject to discuss.
Sherlock often doesn’t react negatively to his cases, even when it involves murder. he finds joy in examining a crime scene, performing a necropsy or speaking of related subjects, while other people seem amused at such reaction. this is a way of not following whats expected by society.
he’s often regarded by people as an odd or eccentric man because of this, we’re even told this from the start, before we even meet him. Stamford tells Watson that he’s an odd man, difficult to deal with, which could be either because of his symptoms, which neurotypical people often consider “difficult”, or because of his mannerisms and personality.
9)Holmes is apathetic:
it’s almost a fact, at this point, that Sherlock struggles with empathy and emotions, a symptom of aspd as well. with aspd, not only is it likely that you have apathy or hypoempathy, but it’s hard to understand how your words or actions may affect others. both are things our friend Holmes shows.
he talks about Watson’s brother until he gets mad and lashes out at him, as he doesn’t see how the topic could make him have such a reaction. he also fails to notice a client’s loss is still a sensitive subject to her, he only sees the evidence he needs to solve the case.
Sherlock also tends to look at emotion and motivations in a more logical way, as if he understands their existence, but can’t relate to it. this is specially true when he talks with clients or discusses a criminal’s motive. once again, this isn’t a lack of care, rather, just how his mind functions in his day-to-day life. Sherlock is still a very compassionate man, and does seem to care for his clients and acquaintances, as discussed before.
as said before as well, he doesn’t seem to react negatively to situations that are generally considered horrific or bad, which could mean he’s somewhat out of touch with his own emotions, which is also apathy.
Conclusions:
there’s much more to say here, but I’ll wrap it up here, as aome of the canon proof is scarce and this is already a very big post.
Sherlock Holmes having aspd would be an incredibly interesting thing to explore, specially since he’s a man who works to bring justice to people, and has great love for those he manages to get close too. More adaptions would benefit from exploring this in a respectful manner, perhaps letting people with aspd write him as well.
I’m making this post not only to share this headcanon, but hoping that this brings more awareness to this disorder, which is already so stigmatised in media and real life.
What begins with a journey and ends with a charge?
For those who haven’t seen it: The Batman portrays the Riddler as a heavily-alt-right-coded creep. He’s Angry About the Injustices of the System, Man, and he’s got a small legion of (apparently all-white-and-male) social-media followers who are really into guns and other tacticool military gear, and he plots with them to Take Action in a way that feels very QAnon / Jan. 6 / The Storm / whatever-you-want-to-call-that-thing.
My feelings about this are twofold:
1) My inner fanboy is mad, because that’s missing the point of the Riddler, 100%.
…I mean, this is a matter of personal preference. Like every goddamn Batman character, the Riddler has been a whole lot of not-very-similar things over the years.
But the best portrayals of the Riddler, in my opinion, are the ones where he’s an absolutely archetypical Batman baddie – which is to say, completelydriven by his own neuroses and foibles. He doesn’t care about politics, he doesn’t care about the wider world at all, he doesn’t even care about being effective, he cares only about showing off how smart he is and having high-stakes puzzle-hunt fun. Making him an avatar of a topical cause celebre feels like a tremendous insult, even more than it would be for any other Batman villain (except Scarecrow, I guess).
These days, of course, lots of people channel their neuroses and foibles into political movements. So yeah, I get it, there’s something there. But I feel strongly that the Riddler shouldbe a throwback to a better world, a more individualistic world where you channel your neuroses and foibles into wearing a ridiculous outfit and writing cryptic crosswords, where the crime is just a PR stunt for the overwhelming essential force of your personality.
I am also a big fan of that Neil Gaiman comic with the Riddler giving a TV interview – the one where he laments contemporary comic grittiness, and yearns for the days when supervillainy was gentlemanly and corny and fun and ultimately kind of softball. So seeing a Riddler who revels in carnage and destruction and death, for the sake of Making a Change, is also unpleasant on that front.
2) So the really weird thing here is that there’s nothing explicitlyalt-right, or right-wing at all, about The Batman’s Riddler. He doesn’t talk about race or gender; he doesn’t talk about wokeness; he doesn’t talk about Things Having Been Better Back Before; he doesn’t even have a demonized outgroup, apart from the Rich and Powerful. His political speeches, which are pretty vague in their content, could come straight from the mouth of a Marxist. He wants justice for the little guy, and he’s willing to do violence to get it, blah blah blah. All the right-wing coding is done with cultural cues: the white-male-ness of his following (and his own self), the love of tacticool shit, the vaguely-Kantbot-like discursive affect.
(In fairness…he apparently doesn’t believe that Gotham’s new black lady mayor will be any less corrupt than Gotham’s old white guy mayor. But no one in his position would have any reason at all to think that, except for someone terminally poisoned by the modern leftist flavor of demographic thinking.)
It’s jarring, when you stop to think about it, in this particular cultural moment. Because, as far as I can tell, the onlything that makes him a villain rather than a hero – according to the prevailing social script, I mean – is the cultural coding. If he were black instead of white, if he were pushing his followers to use baseball bats and bricks instead of rifles, he could be someone from one of the fringier parts of Black Lives Matter…and then everyone would be talking about how He Sure Has a Point Even If He Goes Too Far, just like they did with Killmonger from Black Panther.
Have we lost the ability even to pretendthat it’s something other than “Who? Whom?”
Litform theater LARP is, pound-for-pound, an incrediblypowerful artistic medium. It’s got an unbelievable ability to evoke investmentand engagementin the player – it makes you care, it makes you obsess, and it has a really high “those four hours made me change the way I think about things forever” quotient. It’s really very common for people to stumble out of their first LARPs going, “oh my god, I have to do that a lot more.” Even people who don’t really seem like they’d be into it; even people who have to be dragged into those games kicking and screaming.
There’s a lot of value to be gained from having litform LARP explode in the way that various other hobbies and art forms have exploded recently.
…unfortunately, structural factors make litform LARP incrediblyhard to monetize. I know several people who’ve tried, using a wide range of business models, and they’ve all faceplanted hard.
Issues include:
* Each litform LARP is a highly-spoilable one-and-done event. It’s very difficult to put the product in front of potential customers without them being already committed.
* A litform LARP is an event that requires a bunch of people to be together in realtime. At best, this gets you the “wrangling everyone’s schedule to assemble your weekly D&D group” problem…except that you can’t make it a regular thing (because each LARP is a one-and-done), and more importantly, most of the big splashy attention-grabby games are much bigger than a tabletop group. There are2-to-5-player litform LARPs out there, I’ve written quite a few, but – for good reason – they tend to be kind of artsy, and to rely on a high degree of roleplaying excellence from the players. The immersive spectacle games…the ones that seem like they should sell like hotcakes…require 10 players, or 15, or 30. However you slice it, getting that kind of group together for a few hours is hard, and getting players/customers to do the organization themselves is even harder.
* Litform LARP demands commitment from its players. Playing is less like being in the audience of a play and more like being in the cast:if you don’t show, a lot of people are very screwed over, because their stories relied on your character. Hobbyist LARPers understand that commitment, it’s part of the hobby’s culture (even if LARPers are often very flaky). Getting MOPs to understand that commitment is veryhard.
* Litform LARP gives you homework before you can play. You have to digest a substantial character sheet in order to understand your character and how to play him; that’s kind of the whole point of the litform thing. Plus there are rules and lore documents etc. It can add up to a lot of reading, and you actually have to do it, there’s no equivalent of just having your friend hold your hand through D&D chargen.
* Acting-in-public, and being un-self-conscious enough to fucking portray a character rather than being a wooden statue / giggling and making OOC jokes, is difficult and scary for many. Most people are better at it than they expect, once they jump the first psychological hurdle, but…they have to do that.
* LARPing often benefits a lot from good production values – sets, costumes, that sort of thing. Good production values are expensive, and require a kind of expertise that’s pretty different from the expertise involved in the rest of the stuff.
* Litform LARPing has an even worse version of the Infinitely Glutted TTRPG Market problem. The hobbyist core does not provide a huge base of consumers eager to exchange money for product. They’re used to getting their games for free (or at-cost), and a staggering proportion of them are LARP authors themselves, or want to be. Which is great for having an engaged and participatory community, but not great in terms of monetization.
* Big Nerd Stigma, etc. This is much less a big deal than it was even a decade ago, for all the obvious reasons, but it’s still a thing.
Trying to run games for the public runs into a bunch of these problems. Trying to sell game materials, so that people can run their own games, runs into a slightly different set. Trying to do a Patreon-style my-local-fanbase-supports-me deal is mostly rendered impossible by the Infinitely Glutted Market thing.
————————————-
All this is leading up to –
– the Disney Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser experience thing.
It’s being helmed by someone who knows litform LARP. (A friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, as it turns out.) In many ways, it’s very likea litform LARP. As far as I can tell, it’s the newest iteration of Trying to Sell LARPing to the Public, and it’s probably got a better shot than any of the previous ones. It’s using Disney brand recognition, and jaw-dropping Disney-level production values, to bulldoze through a lot of the difficulties.
It’snotlitform, of course, even if it’s plausibly a LARP of some other kind, even if it’s using a lot of litform techniques for keeping players engaged. That’s the other way that it’s dealing with that list of difficulties. You don’t get a character; you don’t have to absorb any content pre-game, because there’s nothing to absorb. You don’t have to act. You don’t have a specific role in the world of the game, so no one else is depending on you – it’s just you and a bunch of NPCs/staff who are catering to your private story. Certainly there’s nothing literaryabout it.
And so, uh, I hope it’s successful, but mostly I hope that other better game products find a way to bounce off that success.
Rarely is there such a painful gap, between “the thing that a character is conceptually meant to be” and “the thing that the character actually is in the text,” as there is with Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends With You.
I saw Gods of Egypt when it came out in 2016. I remember having a very strong reaction of: Wow, huh, that was bad. That was bad in the specific way that fantasy movies always used to be bad, and mostly aren’t any more. This is a throwback to a darker age of genre-fiction cinema.
WatchingMorbiustoday gave me a very similar feeling. It’s like a superhero movie from the late ‘90s.
The plot is perfectly comprehensible – it’s too simple to be anything butcomprehensible – but there’s something very off about the pacing. It feels stutter-stop, like the transitions between acts aren’t quitejustified by the events or the dialogue. We’re in Origin Story Mode, and then suddenly we’re doing vampire horror, and then suddenly we’re Stopping the Bad Guy; and each time it feels like someone’s yanking on your arm, like the authors just threw up their hands and said “c'mon, you all know how this plot goes, right?”
Jared Leto is doing his best, but this version of Dr. Michael Morbius is not an entertaining character. His wisecracks fall flat, his emo brooding doesn’t feel rooted, and he skips between principled do-gooder and hardboiled badass too cavalierly for either one to have any impact. Matt Smith is having a grand old time hamming it up as the villain, and watching him is indeed a delight, but…“the best thing about this movie is watching a too-good-for-this-movie actor ham it up as the villain” is definitelysomething that I associate with genre fiction movies of the bad old days.
Things get resolved with (essentially) a deus ex machina rather than a big thematic moment or even a clever reuse of something already-established.
(This is not even getting into theme and story-construction stuff, like “the love interest is definitely a Superhero Love Interest Girl of the old school, in a way that is very surprising to see in this day and age.”)
Mostly I’m sitting here thinking…huh. This is a fucking Marvel movie that’s completely lost its handle on all the polish-and-engagement technology that the superhero genre has developed over the last two decades. That sure is an interesting sign. I wonder what it portends.
Unfortunately, I am sick once again so I’ve been absent for a while. I logged back in to address a really odd take I’ve seen circulating Twitter lately. I’m not going to link to any of the tweets because I’m not looking to dogpile, but they’re saying stuff like:
“Wholesome stories are fine but why are we in an era where wholesome queer content is seen as morally superior? There’s nothing gross about queer sexual desire or displaying that sexual desire[…] Ofc I’m aware that sexy/horny queer storytelling exists, I just find it interesting that these pieces of media are never the ones that ‘break out’ and become incredibly popular. Just stuff to think about!”
I chose this particular tweet because it outlined their viewpoint so succinctly. I don’t agree with it. This is a really weird, myopic take on queer media lately.
I assume this is in response to stuff like Heartstopper,Stephen Universe,The Owl House, and Love, Simon.Setting aside the fact that these were marketed toactual kids, they are by no means the most popular queer films and TV shows to come out in the last five years.
That’s off the top of the freaking head. I’m not even including all the very sexy media that includes queer characters, but not as leads, nor the TV shows that aren’t mega-popular (e.g. shows found on Netflix like Bonding,Trinkets,Russian Doll,I Am Not Okay with This,Young Royals, ect).
Anyway, my only point is:
Not every piece of queer media is for every queer person.
I think that’s a good thing!
Diversity isn’t just important for race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, physical and mental health. It’s also important in things like class, region of the country/world, and (yes) age. I’ve got kids that are, in my opinion, too young to watch EuphoriaandSex Education, but too old for TheOwl House.Stuff like Heartstopper,Love, Simon, and The Half of It fills a very necessary gap.
Anyway, back to sleep for me.
Keep yourselves so safe for me. Always.
XOXO, Earnest
Worth mentioning, too, that Heartstopperis actually a very “sexy” show, within the context of a younger audience. It has a lot of passionate kissing between both the mlm and wlw characters, much of it overflowingwith sexual tension. My kids were twitterpated throughout!
Unfortunately, I am sick once again so I’ve been absent for a while. I logged back in to address a really odd take I’ve seen circulating Twitter lately. I’m not going to link to any of the tweets because I’m not looking to dogpile, but they’re saying stuff like:
“Wholesome stories are fine but why are we in an era where wholesome queer content is seen as morally superior? There’s nothing gross about queer sexual desire or displaying that sexual desire[…] Ofc I’m aware that sexy/horny queer storytelling exists, I just find it interesting that these pieces of media are never the ones that ‘break out’ and become incredibly popular. Just stuff to think about!”
I chose this particular tweet because it outlined their viewpoint so succinctly. I don’t agree with it. This is a really weird, myopic take on queer media lately.
I assume this is in response to stuff like Heartstopper,Stephen Universe,The Owl House, and Love, Simon.Setting aside the fact that these were marketed toactual kids, they are by no means the most popular queer films and TV shows to come out in the last five years.
That’s off the top of the freaking head. I’m not even including all the very sexy media that includes queer characters, but not as leads, nor the TV shows that aren’t mega-popular (e.g. shows found on Netflix like Bonding,Trinkets,Russian Doll,I Am Not Okay with This,Young Royals, ect).
Anyway, my only point is:
Not every piece of queer media is for every queer person.
I think that’s a good thing!
Diversity isn’t just important for race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, physical and mental health. It’s also important in things like class, region of the country/world, and (yes) age. I’ve got kids that are, in my opinion, too young to watch EuphoriaandSex Education, but too old for TheOwl House.Stuff like Heartstopper,Love, Simon, and The Half of It fills a very necessary gap.
I think that loving someone and being loved back is one of the deepest and most valuable feelings. Regardless of what kind of love it is, that’s not important because love encompasses so many things, and it develops in so many different ways that to think of them all would be impossible.
Sometimes I feel that the Holmes/Watson relationship makes me so happy because they really represent the concept of love in a different way than the conventional one. You can think of them as friends or lovers, or both. But you will always know that they adore each other with the utmost love and care, that through the years they built a relationship based on respect and patience, and that you can always find genuine comfort in them, if you need it.
And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.
not what i expected from a post that began with “speaking of pronouns,” but an a++ show of the versatility and surprise daily available on tumblr dot com
I think one of the most important parts about film and tv analysis is never forgetting that no matter the genre or setting, the story is probably being filtered through the perspective of a person who lives in California
Like if you’re watching a tv show and you’re starting to feel alienated by some of the motivations and worldviews the characters all seem to share, consider that you aren’t the weirdo, they are, because they’re being written by people who are at any given moment no more than five minutes removed from a kale smoothie
I live in California, and the threat of a kale smoothie is always lurking nearby. The stress, it wears on you and makes your brain go weird.
“stories dont need conflict” girl anything can be a conflict if ur story is about chickens going on adventures the conflict is the fucking fence they gotta hop over. if ur story is about making a lovely cup of tea the conflict can be turning on the stove. like u literally cannot write a story without conflict
ALSO i hate mfers who say this shit and then go “thats why i like ghibli movies cuz theyve got no conflict” OH YOU MEAN HOWLS MOVING CASTLE, NAUSICAA, PRINCESS MONONOKEY CASTLE IN THE SKY ETC THAT ARE ALL ABOUT THE HORRORS OF WAR
even the ones that arent about the horrors of war. in kiki’s delivery service kiki growing up and learning to trust people and accept help is the central conflict of the story!! my neighbour totoro’s central conflict is how the girls are dealing with their mom being sick and the responsibility they feel this puts on them!! i could go on!!
