I even got betrayed by a novel which was doing so well until it did the swerve, felt so betrayed, yet I must continue to consume slop
I recommend watching something really dumb. Get some McGuyver going, hit up some Quantum Leap. Watch the A Team. Episodic tv shows whwre something happens each episode and they had to write and produce like 30 per season with 4 month breaks between seasons. When you’re on the same page as the writers in thinking it’s some silly dogshit you reach a certain nirvana, these are all people at work who are putting on a little show for a paycheck. Sometimes that’s more fun
Whenever I’m in a creative slump this is my go-to. Watching the later seasons of a long running show where they ran out of ideas after 2-3 seasons is always really fun seeing the nonsense they put in, you can tell when they’re really stretching a premise of an episode to fit the run time.
This is me with capeshit stories because society would develop to be materially different with capeshit heros and villains and not just a lazy carbon copy of our world just with super powered demigods causing untold levels of destruction every other week.
I think its why the “evil/tyrant superman” trope became so popular since its the material conclusion of capeshit, of course its still capeshit and so its never written as a good thing.
But I do enjoy the DC Absolute universe comic run since all the villains are billionaires/cops with working class or social outcast heroes and it isn’t a thinly veiled soap opera between Olympian gods.
You can consider yourself doomed or you can change your perspective and embrace enlightenment. Abandon fiction and embrace reading only history. Can’t call the First Crusade “contrived and unrealistic” because it actually happened.
I have a similar problem. A lot of media falls apart for me because of the lack of cohesive politics driving the antagonists, or the lack of materialism. I have recently been longing for stories written by authors who understand how material reality drives everything. Perhaps we should start a recommendations thread for things we have enjoyed?
Look at what is also going right in the media as well.
I did a podcast (yes I know ha. ha.) About finding the hegemony in our favorite media. and now my wife makes fun of me for yelling at people on the TV like a cis man yells at football.
How I’ve gotten around this is look for the good things and find the media that has more good then bad or that you can twist to your ideals.
Exp Early Bob’s Burgers is rough. But there is a decent amount of cop and power criticisms for big adult ananimated show. The Winthrop Manor and the Business Monster episodes are very good in this regard. There is also a episode thats pretty ACAB in season 2 I think.
You just got to find your diomands in the roughs.
Nothing is ever going to be perfect. But hey the critcisms give us something to talk about
you can move your attention to other stuff: can you guess what are they doing in a next scene, or why the worldbuilding was done this way? sometimes passable movies become 30-60 percent predictable (i mean literally guessing contours of next conflict/dialogue based on establishing shots, music and previous scenes, not guessing conclusion of the overall arch), and it is very entertaining self-dejavuing yourself. direct critical gaze to other parts of form is what i’m saying, worldbuilding is one part of the media.
slop novels also are, in a way, mechanical, but you can try to see the gears of character traits that author tries to establish (instead of world building)
I often do both (where a lot of my criticism comes from) because in some way you begin to understand what makes the author tick, maybe this is why I should public my critiques, they’re very meta and materialist oriented, yet still focused on how it could be done that still has depth without abandoning the original intentions and genre
can you give some semi popular example? i think i can usually abstract away into how did they do it if i’m bored out of mind, but maybe i have not worked the slop mines enough.
The people telling you to “just switch your brain off and enjoy it” are doing themselves a disservice, not you. You wouldn’t get that with anything else. People wouldn’t be like “Don’t complain about this food being awful, just hold your nose and shovel it in your gob.”
You can still enjoy something while also seeing it as flawed, much like how diamat lets us see a clearer picture of material reality, media analysis lets you see both the positive and negative aspects of media you watch. Sometimes it can even be more enjoyable this way, you can see when the author of a work started having dangerous thoughts and their western education programming kicked in and they made sure to correct it, like with The Swerve.
Could also be fun for you to practice writing yourself, express yourself creatively that way. Not with a goal of being a novelist or anything, just for fun, you might really enjoy it.
it’s not equivalent to hold your nose and shovel, it’s more like not putting the food in the mass spectrometer
People wouldn’t be like “Don’t complain about this food being awful, just hold your nose and shovel it in your gob.”
You haven’t met my mother. “You sit at the table until you eat everything on your plate!” and 10 year old me stares at the steamed broccoli for hours.
Honestly, do you publish these writings? If you’re willing, I honestly think we need more critics of media from comrades, there’s way to many lib media analysis out there.
You could also try writing the type of story you would want to see.
I probably should publish the critique you’re right, but where? In slop? Don’t wanna spam Hexbear with shit no one has ever heard of lol
there’s a whole genre of youtube channels like this
Isn’t critiquing it part of the enjoyment? Why else would you even do it?
Someone once told me to just get baked and then watch movies, because I was doing something similar. I’d find one or two things in a movie and it would break my suspension of disbelief in such a way that I wouldn’t enjoy other aspects of it.
Unfortunately, being baked makes it worse 99% of the time. The only time it doesn’t make me pull the movie apart is for The Lord of the Rings, and when movies are legitimately done well. There is significant crossover there.
I love the process of how movies are made, from framing a shot to practical effects, to screenwriting. If I can spot the flaws as a fan rather than as a professional, the movie probably wasn’t made well.
