Creative works you enjoyed until politics happened - "How politics made me hate Welcome to Nightvale and other things"

[admiral]

I used to be a big Marvel fan. I watched the movies, bought the comics. IMO, there was a big drop in consistency from around 2010, and right now I'd say that DC's comics are probably more worth reading if only because they seem hesitant to make any major changes to their primary characters (after all, that hasn't gone well for them in the past.) It's funny, because people used to say that Marvel heroes were more realistic because of their inclusion of topics such as alcoholism and homosexuality, but now it's gone so far that some characters have become cariacatures.

The last straw for me was Saldin Ahmed's doomed 'Quicksilver' run, which was so laughably bad in all respects (especially the 'white europeans bad' gypsy sperging, out of nowhere) that it seems to have killed the character altogether. To my knowledge Quicksilver's not been featured in any major lineups and is barely mentioned, which is honestly a shame. I still pick up Punisher if it looks good (or Ennis is writing), but I've pretty much jumped ship at this point.

I'm not opposed to political comics (Hard Travelin' Heroes is still a masterpiece) but no one needs to be smacked over the head with it. There are better ways to show your support for Gays or Immigrants or Trannies than by just saying 'This character is gay now' or replacing them with a new, unfamiliar character to prove a point. I particularly don't like how the writers leave nothing up to the reader. You're told what side you should be on, and if you don't agree straight off the bat you're aligned with the bad guy. Frankly, I think that introducing minority characters out of the blue is just a lazy way to make the bad guys seem more evil - 'Not only is Doom trying to destroy the world, he's also racist!' Worse still, that ghastly trope wherin a bad guy says something like 'I might be evil but i'm not sexist!' or 'I shall institute the new world order, and also Trans rights!' implying that people who don't agree with them (the writer) politically are worse than the comic's standin for Hitler.

At this point I buy a comic based on the writer (and artist), rather than the character. It's ridiculous because in the past you could usually count on a character being the same regardless of writer, but now it's entirely dependant on the personal politics of whichever balding hack snagged the contract.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I used to like Doctor Who. The new ones that is (2005 to present). I thought Russell T. Davies was a bit of a pseud but he could write when he set his mind to it and stopped trying to outdo everything else in scale. Once he brought back Davros with a plan to end all of reality, I thought that was a bit much. I didn't like the 2009 specials which were a sort of goodbye to David Tennant. They were all a bit smug.

Steven Moffat came in. I had high expectations as he did Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Empty Child, and several other really good episodes from those serieses. Series 5 (Matt Smith's first) was pretty tasty, and Series 6 was good as well although felt a bit muddled at times. Series 7 was okay but disjointed, and then Matt Smith buggered off and we ended up with Peter Capaldi.

Series 8, his first series, I thought was a bit shitty and inconsistent but Series 9 was really good, I thought. That's the one with Heaven Sent and where every episode was a multi-parter.

Series 10, it started to go off the rails as Moffat began to huff his own farts too much. It also started to be about "starting a conversation." That was the one where we had that episode where space miners had to pay for the air they breathed out of their wages (which is a fucking stupid idea) because Capitalism Bad. Then they brought in Bill Potts, a Queer Woman Of Colour (tm) whose introduction and entire character was basically, "have I mentioned I like girls today." She gets cybermen'd in the end though.

I thought it couldn't get worse. But I was wrong. Step forward Chris Chinballs and Jodie Whitaker, playing the First Female Doctor (tm).

The opening episode of Jodie Whitaker's first series had the Doctor acquire a "fam" consisting of an Asian girl, a black guy played by a plank of wood (Mickey Smith, where are you when we need you?) and some middle aged bloke who exists solely to be wrong because ok boomer. It was just so by the numbers "inclusive" and "representative" that I just knew it was going to annoy me. So I noped the fuck out of there. Also the insistence on being a "fam" and stupid TikTok style dance segments smacked of "how do you do, fellow kids."

And then I find out that they rewrote the entire origin story from 50+ years ago because they wanted to virtue signal. Well done, BBC. No wonder people aren't paying their loicence fees any more.

Next time I fancy watching a spot of Doctor Who, I'm gonna torrent something from when Tom Baker was doing it.

 

[Inlé]

Tolerance for satire, for a more personal example: the Ghost Stories official english dub. For those who don't know, the anime Ghost Stories (Gakkou no Kaidan - 2000) didn't do very well in Japan, so when it was time to dub it in english the people responsible got permission to do ANYTHING they wanted. They went absolutely off the rails with jokes about jews, muslims and black people just to name a few, it's hysterical and I love it. Last month I invited my friends for a movie night online and it didn't go very well, unfortunately people can't take any jokes anymore, lost a couple of friends there.
And yes, they're all white kids.

 

[Cheerlead-in-Chief]

Persona 5

 

[FluffyTehFennekin]

Persona 5

Please explain why, were the fans mad there wasn’t enough LGBT representation or something?

 

[Grim_Autismo]

Years back I made some friends in the nightvale fandom, most I don't speak with anymore.

I forgot why until I was talking on Facebook about Altered Carbon and one of them appeared out of the ether letting me know I wasn't allowed to enjoy Altered Carbon anymore because the author was transphobic. "Even if he didn't work on it, we can't ingest transphobic media because that legitimizes transphobia."

I told them I didn't care about the books and just the show, which turned into a cascade of reeing about trans-rights and WWG1WGA-gender studies type bullshit. Totally insufferable.

 

[Cheerlead-in-Chief]

Please explain why, were the fans mad there wasn’t enough LGBT representation or something?

Worse: batshit fans want the Phantom Thieves to riot for BLM. I'm not joking.
They also want Persona 6 announced NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW and all Persona games onto Nintendo Switch.

 

[Panama]

I had to abandon most of the podcasts I listened to. Nightvale, Last Podcast on The Left, Sawbones, and The Flophouse come to mind. 2016 just broke some people.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Tolerance for satire, for a more personal example: the Ghost Stories official english dub. For those who don't know, the anime Ghost Stories (Gakkou no Kaidan - 2000) didn't do very well in Japan, so when it was time to dub it in english the people responsible got permission to do ANYTHING they wanted. They went absolutely off the rails with jokes about jews, muslims and black people just to name a few, it's hysterical and I love it. Last month I invited my friends for a movie night online and it didn't go very well, unfortunately people can't take any jokes anymore, lost a couple of friends there.
And yes, they're all white kids.

That show was hilarious. They shit on everyone. Like, yeah, they have black jokes, but the person making the comment is a crazy bitch who resurrected the rabbit she was fucking.

 

[Jar-Jar Fanboy]

I used to be a big Marvel fan. I watched the movies, bought the comics. IMO, there was a big drop in consistency from around 2010, and right now I'd say that DC's comics are probably more worth reading if only because they seem hesitant to make any major changes to their primary characters (after all, that hasn't gone well for them in the past.) It's funny, because people used to say that Marvel heroes were more realistic because of their inclusion of topics such as alcoholism and homosexuality, but now it's gone so far that some characters have become cariacatures.

At this point I buy a comic based on the writer (and artist), rather than the character. It's ridiculous because in the past you could usually count on a character being the same regardless of writer, but now it's entirely dependant on the personal politics of whichever balding hack snagged the contract.

I'm in the exact same boat. The last Marvel series I can recall reading was Cage!, a Luke Cage miniseries done by Genndy Tartakovsky. Everything else just got way too preachy for me. I just wanted to read about people in spandex beating the shit out of each other, not how white/men/straights/the Right is bad and evil

 

[Raging Capybara]

Nintendo.

I still like Animal Crossing though. But the fact that our characters are genderless freaks still annoys me. But I think it's a localization thing.

I don't think I'm going to play the sequel. Seriously, treehouse is just too much.

 

[Red Hood]

I'm not opposed to political comics (Hard Travelin' Heroes is still a masterpiece) but no one needs to be smacked over the head

Part of the reason this worked so well, at least in my opinion, is that there was give and take. Hal was allowed to be right sometimes, and Ollie often comes off as a self-righteous prick even when he is right-particularly in the Speedy is a junkie arc, where his first response is to smack his sidekick and tell him to get out while Green Lantern tries to get him help. There's nuance, and there's the sense that even though the heroes have different viewpoints, they respect the other enough to hear them out and ultimately want a positive outcome. Both characters experience growth through the O'Neill/Adams run.

A lot of comics today have the issue of being written with all the elegance of a drunken sailor vomiting into a chum bucket. The hypocrisy also bugs me; a lot of comics writers want to write things that express their Current Year views, but Frank Miller or Chuck Dixon write something that's not woke? Well, we can't have that.

 

[admiral]

Part of the reason this worked so well, at least in my opinion, is that there was give and take. Hal was allowed to be right sometimes, and Ollie often comes off as a self-righteous prick even when he is right-particularly in the Speedy is a junkie arc, where his first response is to smack his sidekick and tell him to get out while Green Lantern tries to get him help. There's nuance, and there's the sense that even though the heroes have different viewpoints, they respect the other enough to hear them out and ultimately want a positive outcome. Both characters experience growth through the O'Neill/Adams run.

A lot of comics today have the issue of being written with all the elegance of a drunken sailor vomiting into a chum bucket. The hypocrisy also bugs me; a lot of comics writers want to write things that express their Current Year views, but Frank Miller or Chuck Dixon write something that's not woke? Well, we can't have that.

I completely agree. The level of nuance and a dilema between lawful good and moral good is I think a hallmark of Green Lantern which is especially prevelant in the current Morrison run. I know Emerald Twilight was controversial, but I think that it was the epitome of what GL is and the Johns retcon actively spoiled this by deflecting the 'blame' for Parallax onto this weird cosmic alien monstrosity. I get why they did it of course - they needed to bring Hal back and having him be responsible for attempted genocide might turn people off him- but it still spoils the narrative. It raises the question of which is more important, the sales of a character and their popularity, or the integrity of the art, and obviously the company would prefer the former. After all, you can't but a genocidal maniac on a Lunchbox.

Elegance is a lost art in modern comic storytelling. The closest you get to a moral grey-zone in the mainstream is Batman, who is frankly very tame these days if you remove all the edgy window dressing. Even Deadpool's been softened since he became popular. The only outlier is the Punisher, but I wouldn't really describe him as A-list in terms of popularity. It's this inhuman black and white outlook that so many people have these days - you must be completely virtuous (but not for religious reasons) and without fault or you're trash. You see it in regards to anyone in a position of power or influence, and it's completely unrealistic.

 

[Banditotron]

That show was hilarious. They shit on everyone. Like, yeah, they have black jokes, but the person making the comment is a crazy bitch who resurrected the rabbit she was fucking.

Holy fuck I need to watch that. That's hilarious. How did they get away with shitposting that hard!?

 

[Rafal Gan Ganowicz]

The music of Steve Earle

 

[TitanWest]

The vast majority of Western media after 2011. There were always subtle narratives injected from around the 1950's onward, but it gradually became more common and in-your-face until it reached critical mass after 2011. Now it's always so obvious. "White men bad, Black characters good, Women strong, Men dumb". The only normal and functional white men in media who're portrayed as good are the gay characters.

 

[Doctor Placebo]

Holy fuck I need to watch that. That's hilarious. How did they get away with shitposting that hard!?

Most people were fine with this sort of thing back then, and if you weren't you were seen as some kind of moral puritan, generally of the Christian fundamentalist variety. It just goes to show how short a time ago it was that this bullshit cultural shift happened and how big it was.

 

[Hunter D]

Worse: batshit fans want the Phantom Thieves to riot for BLM. I'm not joking.
They also want Persona 6 announced NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW and all Persona games onto Nintendo Switch.

Bosozoku on YT makes some chuckleworthy videos highlighting some of this insane larping.

The utter incapability of people nowadays to have a healthy disconnect from the media they consume is fucking infuriating.

 

[Leaf-eon]

Nintendo.

I still like Animal Crossing though. But the fact that our characters are genderless freaks still annoys me. But I think it's a localization thing.

I don't think I'm going to play the sequel. Seriously, treehouse is just too much.

So that's why Animal Crossing New Horizons is attracting a lot of crazies and weirdos.
Still like the game but treeshouse definitely need a bit of tard wrangleing form Nintendo.

 

[Dark Emporer Dood]

I tend to have bigger problems with things when their internal politics become insufferable, like youtube creators, the anime dubbing industry, the videogame industry, cartoons...its just what happens when way too much money gets wrapped up in what should be simple jobs and hobbys.

Elegance is a lost art in modern storytelling.

Fixed it.