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mygif

“jump on it with hobnailed boots”

Was that a Mighty Mouse reference? 🙂

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Jim Caldwell said on December 27th, 2012 at 1:26 pm

“Even now, Heaven’s Gate has its defenders”?

I must be one of them. What’s actually wrong with Heaven’s Gate, other than most people grew up hearing how awful it was?

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William Kendall said on December 27th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

It would seem a spammer got through your filters… I think I’ve seen that nitwit “winter trend” in my own filters.

I’ve never actually seen Heaven’s Gate… I think it’s just because it under performed at the box office that it got a reputation as toxin.

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mygif

This is great, and helpful to me, since for a while now I’ve been trying to work out some kind of corollary that describes people’s tendency to intellectualize their dislike of a given thing in a way that implies that that thing is objectively bad.

It’s hazy, because it’s possible, at least in theory, to argue that pretty much anything is bad or good, and the trick is spotting the difference between someone who wants to have an honest conversation of the relative merits of a thing, and someone who wants to allay their own insecurities by giving you ten reasons why the thing you liked sucks and you’re a fool for liking it. Obviously this is a big problem in geek communities.

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highlyverbal said on December 27th, 2012 at 2:18 pm

@Kevin: “…the trick is spotting the difference between someone who wants to have an honest conversation of the relative merits of a thing, and someone who wants to allay their own insecurities…”

Post-modernism burn!

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mygif

Pretty much the only reason I watched atrocious classic movies I had no interest of seeing ever, was because MAD did a satire of them, and I wanted to understand the intent behind the jokes. That’s the ONLY defense I can give in this case.

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mygif

@highlyverbal Ha – you’re joking, but I do think that things like film criticism contribute to the problem. Which isn’t to refute film crit or academia or the great contributions they’ve made to legitimizing things like science fiction in the greater culture. But sadly, I think the takeaway for a lot of folks in fandom is to incorporate a weird sort of deconstructionist mentality into an already-existing, insecurity-driven, fuck-you-if-you-haven’t-seen-EvilDead-yet hipsterism.

I think most recently the acme of this was people’s reactions to Prometheus. I liked the movie just fine and thought it was a pretty good way to spend two hours of your life. But I could understand someone not liking it; it was far from amazing. What I was unprepared for was the crazy level of hostility people had for this movie, and the spate of reviewers complaining, sort of nebulously, of plot holes and Damon Lindelof. Everywhere I went, someone was explaining to me why Prometheus was the worst movie ever made, and giving what were honestly pretty weak reasons to support the claim: Those scientists were stupid for interacting with native wildlife. Charlize Theron shouldn’t have run in a straight line away from the falling ship. It was weird that the medical-machine-thing didn’t have any settings for working on women. Plot holes, plot holes, plot holes, they said, without ever really concretely identifying anything that actually counted as a plot hole.

It was weird: As though geeks everywhere had decided with one voice that they hated a movie (which is totally reasonable) and then intellectualizing why it was objectively terrible (which is, you know, less OK). I still don’t get it.

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mygif

Hey Daniel, I thought I was the only person to see movies because I read the Mad parody first! Woohoo!

But seriously, there is a difference between the people who actually have a compelling reason for their dislike or adoration and the ones who just like to start fights.

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mygif

I think both of these essays boil down to the fact that I’m entitled to my opinion and to use my time as I see fit, whether anyone agrees with me or not. But I should allow other people the same.

I appreciate the distinction between the two titles. Rights and responsibilities, indeed.

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mygif

Sitting in on a DC panel just so you can tell everyone that ‘Flashpoint’ was the last DC comic you’re ever reading…why bother? Clearly nobody there will agree with you,

You… haven’t been to a lot of DC panels, have you, John?

@Kevin-

It sounds like you’ve read a lot of shitty criticism of Prometheus, which is a shame because there are many perfectly good reasons why that movie was bad.

I’m curious why people would give the examples you gave as exampled of ‘plot holes.’ Those aren’t plot holes; those are examples of shitty writing.

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mygif

Regarding Prometheus I see the opposite with many “nerds” defending the movie and telling the detractors to “stop being HATERZ”. The movie was ok, better to look at though the story was at best meh.

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Sean D. Martin said on December 27th, 2012 at 9:27 pm

Clearly nobody there will agree with you, because they’re all there to hear about the new comics coming out of DC, so why do you want to start an argument?

Alas, trolls exist. (And not just on blogs.) And they have an irrational belief that being assholes somehow validates their existence.

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malakim2099 said on December 28th, 2012 at 8:58 am

@Will – Sounds like a lot of the backlash regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. I’ve lost track of the “stop being a hater” comments because I’ve said that the ending, well, sucks. And I did play through that stupid game.

Yeah, still bitter about wasting 100 hours on a Shepard only to have all those decisions literally not matter a damn bit. C’est la vie, I suppose.

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@Murc: Actually, that was a reference to something that happened to me. Went to a DC comics panel at CONvergence last year, and spent the whole time more or less sitting on my hands because I realized pretty early on that I had nothing to contribute beyond, “I’m just not interested in DC comics anymore.” I think that the experience made me a better person. 🙂

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@John-

Fair enough. I’ve been to a number of DC Comics panels (including one at NYCC) where a guy saying something like “Everyone involved in Flashpoint should be hurled into the Speed Force and then into the sun, including the layout artists and inkers” would have resulted in half the panel standing up and clapping.

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mygif

The medical machine didn’t have settings for women because it was only on the ship for the one person.

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mygif

I think there’s one angle that’s not being addressed here, which is that disappointment can come from genuine emotional investment in a product (or its predecessors, in the case of a series/franchise/whatever); and that those negative reactions need some kind of acknowledgement, and there’s a margin between “meek acceptance” and “now I’m going to troll you forever”.

So f’rinstance – to continue the Flashpoint line of discussion – when the New 52 came out I discovered that all these years I’d been the worst kind of continuity whore – once the continuity was stripped away, it turned out I no longer had any interest in the comics! But I didn’t complain about it on the Internet ’cause I didn’t have much of an emotional investment – the only point would be to troll people who were still reading DC.

On the other hand, Guild Wars was my favourite video game of all time, and I had a huge emotional investment in giving GW2 as much of a chance as possible. So when I ragequit in disgust a couple of months ago (when the first “free update” included gear treadmill elements they’d promised they’d never adopt) I experienced what felt like genuine emotional betrayal. Obviously I’m not calling for abusive online meltdowns (I managed to refrain from doing anything beyond posting a passive-agressive comment on the GW2 youtube channel 😛 ); but in some sense that emotional relationship needs to be addressed, and it’s just a question of figuring out how to do that (a)healthily and (b)in a non-jackass manner.

(It didn’t help that the link to the exit survey was broken, so I couldn’t tell them why I’d uninstalled. Every day for a month, I clicked that link… 🙁 )
(Also Prometheus was good, I never got the hate!)

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@flypaper

I am not shocked that NCsoft has no desire to hear any critical feedback. If that sounds nasty, its the remaining bile i feel towards NCsoft for killing City of Heroes.

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mygif

I think there is an exception, for people who are actively boycotting something and telling people why. I’m thinking of things like people who boycotted The Last Airbender due to the racebending in the casting decisions, or the people who are boycotting DC for some combination of the way they treat their writers, their characters, and their properties in general. I just think there should be an allowance for those who want to avoid the work and complain about it, provided there are actual serious issues of that kind in the production phases.

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mygif

on prometheus “plot holes.”

charlize theron running: action sequence, blind panic, unable to gauge gigantic falling thing’s trajectory when running for your life. Long story short, she pretty much served her purpose in the story, so whatevs.

medical Machine: it’s for the old guy, not infected lady. so there’s no need to waste resources programming it for her. Furthermore, there might have been a program, only this thing was about to burst of her chest just this moment.

scientists and alien: the only true weak part. because they were acting so smart earlier (hell no am I going down that dark cavern, etc.) but I’ll allow maybe excitement upon finding new life. That said, IT’S ACTING LIKE A COBRA.

all in all we’re flipping prometheus a lot of shit because lindelof because the lost ending. There’s just as many ‘plot holes’ in alien.

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highlyverbal said on December 29th, 2012 at 5:27 pm

@Kevin: I was only kinda joking, because I am an unreformed modernist and rarely pass up a chance to take a dig at pomo. It was a shoe fits kind of situation.

“…for a lot of folks in fandom is to incorporate a weird sort of deconstructionist mentality ”

Deconstructionist: when childish destruction loses its high and you need the extra kick from knowing you are destroying someone else’s efforts

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DensityDuck said on December 31st, 2012 at 9:36 pm

If you like something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be good, then you’re a bandwagon-jumper.

If you like something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be bad, you’re an idiot.

If you hate something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be good, nobody remembers.

If you hate something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be bad, then you were right all along.

Game theory shows us, therefore, that hating everything is the winner strategy. Because if you dump on it and it turns out to be good, then everyone’s so happy to get something good that they don’t care whether anyone dumped on it. And if you dump on it and it turns out to be bad, then you’re an amazingly prescient artistic genius who can totally spot the lame ideas and you’re ballsy enough to call them out on their lameness, unlike all the sheeple who uncomplainingly suck down the pap that Hollywood puts out these days.

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steve, from the internet said on January 2nd, 2013 at 5:57 am

So what you’re saying, basically, is that it’s OK to not like things but that one shouldn’t be a dick about it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI

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bad johnny got out said on January 11th, 2013 at 8:21 pm

Charlize Theron getting squashed could have worked, if they’d set up that she tends to panic in certain situations.

It could have worked as a macabre joke at least.

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bad johnny got out said on January 11th, 2013 at 8:29 pm

There are very few media products where it’s worth descending to the level of, “There’s something wrong with you as a person if you liked this.”

“Life is Beautiful” is an example.

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