Actually I do have a Harry Potter view. Everyone who likes slitheren must be an asshole. That house has no redeeming story arc at all. They are just “the bad guys” if you relate to that house the most you must be a crappy person.
The fact that certain characters are inherently just evil underlines how childish the books were. The author wrote these stereotypical villains as coded as marginalized groups (fat, racialized or queer) and a generation enthusiastically nodded along. Don’t push against the natural order because slaves enjoy being slaves. The heroes are always heroes because even if they do the literal same exact actions as the villains, they aren’t overweight so it’s for hypocritically described as heroic.
Here you are citing this bigoted text to claim others are categorically crappy people, which only demonstrates your uncritical acceptance of those biases as “fact” and anyone who disagrees with you as inherently a lesser form of person.
My controversial take is Potterheads will ignore the real life explicit bigotry of the author so they can continue to cite her bigoted fiction as bigoted fact. You’re all far too old to be talking this childishly.
A character is simply defined as evil and a person wants to be that. Thats problematic to me. Nothing childish about it. The books aren’t a grand timeless masterpiece. You let a children’s book author live rent free in your head. You’re barking up the wrong tree with me buddy. I also like the works of lovecraft. Was he a cool dude? No. Was he a great writer? No, he sucked at writing. The stories are intriguing. I have the ability to judge a work separately from the source. You scolding people for enjoying a book as children. Grow up.
I also like the works of lovecraft. Was he a cool dude? No. Was he a great writer? No, he sucked at writing.
Leaving out the most important factor. Lovecraft is long since dead, unlike Rowling who is alive and is devoting her considerable financial and social resources to explicit bigotry.
Not a great example.
You scolding people for enjoying a book as children. Grow up.
Nope, I read the books as a kid too. There is nothing wrong with a child not understanding the nuance of what their reading. I’m scolding an adult who is old enough to know better yet is citing the books as a indicator of morality.
I think you’re overthinking it. I didn’t take away a hatred of Jews just because goblins were just stereotypes. It’s not that easy to sway a child. I wasn’t imagining them as Jews. It’s fine.
So you didn’t come away with a hatred of Goblins as a Jewish stereotype you just think someone is a crappy person if they relate to the characters? Interesting.
Come to think of it I read the books in the library and pirated the movies. I didn’t even financially contribute to her.
Back before I stopped everything with that entirely, me and twin would take those “which house are you” quizzes and twin always got slytherin. It upset twin a lot! We decided it helped for twin to think they had to protect my hufflepuff ass.
Not sure if this counts but I like clowns. Not party clowns. Professional cirque de solie kind of clowns.
The controversial view: only crappy clowns talk. Real clowns don’t talk. No that doesn’t make them a mime. Clowns can have sound elements in their routine just no voice. I will die on this hill!
“Punk”. Steam, cyber, diesel. Any and all… Star Wars is cyberpunk.
I like this take :-)
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I just realized I have a sleep token song in my regular rotation because someone recommended it to me, but I know literally nothing about the musicians.
Robotech / Macross
Both the original Japanese edition and the American adaptation are equally good.
Constructed languages. I rarely see this sentiment expressed even though it was voiced by the very guy who popularized it as a pastime. It’s such a lonely and melancholy hobby. The whole point of a language is to communicate, but we spend our time making languages that will never be used to communicate.
And it’s not like art or music or cooking, where it produces a product that people who aren’t artists or musicians or chefs can enjoy. You pretty much have to know linguistics to appreciate anything other than how the language sounds (phonology and phonetactics) or how it’s written, assuming the creator bothered to make a writing system, which many don’t. So my siblings who were into Irish dancing or marching band got all the attention because people “got” what they were doing and could enjoy it without devoting considerable time to understanding the underlying mechanics of it all, while I toiled away in obscurity digging up scholarly articles on proto indo-european verb conjugations and Austronesian morphosyntactic alignment.
“But early_riser,” I hear you cry, “Lots of people want to learn Klingon or Na’vi or Sindarin. You just have to write stories about your languages and their world that people can enjoy.” But I suck at writing, and it’s not as fun as making languages.
I’m a Star wars fan and I’ve enjoyed most of the stuff released in the last few years. The only thing I can safely say I didn’t like was Kenobi and even that had a great fight scene at the end.
Ehhhh, idk, I’m not formally part of any fandom, I just yap about it online when the opportunity arises, but I’d probably say Dune? And this is not very controversial amongst book readers (most of the current fandom came from Denis’ movies) but the recent movies both left many important book passages/scenes out (the dinner party, for example) and also unnecessarily and to the movies’ detriment changed some characters in very fundamental ways. And I’m not even talking about sex/gender cause sometimes that doesn’t change much of the narrative, but other stuff like Chani being just a sassy New Yorker instead of an extremely mature 15 yo with big responsibilities in her tribe, or the superficial “religious schism” subplot in the second movie, which is certainly relatable/acceptable to the average Western 20 something but is incompatible with Fremen society as Herbert wrote it.
Instead, Denis made a very pretty movie with long, silent shots… but Dune is anything but silent, it’s heavy in dialogue and internal monologues like Legend of the Galactic Heroes. A bit of a disappointment but, hey, the first movie pushed me to get a COVID vaccine shot quickly so I guess something good came out of it? 😅
Not really a “fandom”, but Science Fiction. My two most controversial takes:
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In Alien 3, Hicks and Newt had to die in order to thematically be an Alien film. Alien (the original trilogy) was always Ripley’s story; a woman who has had everything taken away from her and ends up an outsider where the only real touchstone left to her is the very xenomorph that she battles. In Alien, she’s an outcast among the crew. In Aliens, she’s a civilian amongst a bunch of mega-macho mercenaries. In Alien 3, she’s a female among male prisoners. Thematically, Ripley simply can’t have an ensemble cast around her at the beginning or the end of each film. Fincher understood that.
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In Blade Runner (before future movies retconned it), not only is Deckard a replicant, he’s a very specific replicant. Gaff was the original Blade Runner on the case, and he got wounded in the leg during the escaped Replicant’s first attempt at getting into the Tyrell Corporation. Supposedly one of them got fried going through an electric fence, but in reality, that replicant was captured and reprogrammed with Gaff’s life; Gaff’s memories in order to continue the investigation. Meanwhile, Gaff himself is forced to babysit this “replacement” that everyone else thinks can do just a good a job as he can, and so he’s bitter about it through the whole film and taunts the replicant with cryptic hints about his memories.
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Fun story; I wrote one about Ace Attorney, in relation to its premise of “If there’s a mystery with a big reveal, we build it up and resolve it in one game before the credits roll.” Instead, it made me realize I had a lot to say about Half-Life.
The series has built up a following around mysterious figures and theories. While the games themselves are fantastic, I should’ve had the confidence as a writer years ago to say no one, even at Valve, has any idea what’s going on in their stories. They very likely have no specific, well-formed plans about answering “who is the G-man”, and a certain dramatic event late in Episode 2 was very lazily shoe-horned to try to manufacture stakes, as made evident…
Half-Life: Alyx (VR game)
…from them using time travel to retcon that event
It’s tricky because I still love HL2 for its good, snappy character writing, use of advanced facial tech, the way it never removes the player’s presence for the sake of cutscenes, etc. But they likely shouldn’t be used as reference for overall story direction.
LARP. Heavier fighting gear makes a more interesting and enjoyable combat metagame.
Homestuck. 'Nuff said.
Stargate Atlantis.
They never got Carson back; he is just a clone like the others.
When Carson came back they clearly establish he is a clone.
IMHO, Disintregration is not the best Cure album, as much as I love it.
40k I approve of female Space Marines.
