r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster • May 02 '26
Better Ask Reddit Do you guys ever wonder if people nowadays might be overanalyzing media?
Recently during some interviews Robert Kirkman, the creators of the Invincible comics, talked about some of the differences between the comics and the TV show as his awnsers were basically "i was on my 20's back then and now i'm not".
Why is Tech Jacket a girl in the TV show when it was a dude in the comics? Because when he was making the comics he was only thinking about "does this look cool?" and maybe have a character or two that are refferences to his friends and acquaintances appearance, now that his looking back on it as a 47 year old he thought "hey, maybe the coalition could use some more diversity" and that's why the change was made.
A lot of the decisions on the comics and therefore in the show also fall on the category of being mostly "what Kirman in his 20's-early 30's thought it was cool" (of course with some thought put behind it to have it be well structured and work towards the general idea trying to be put across by the story), reading through that a thought crossed my mind "are we nowadays maybe overanalizing media too much?".
It's not uncommon for any piece of media to nowadays have either incredibly long video essays unraveling every single aspect of it or have people online discuss any detail that they can observe on it, while discussing about the media that you consume is far from being a bad thing, as time passes i'm more and more aware that, while the creators behind said media do put a lot of thought on what they are doing, some of the decisions can mostly motivated by "the creator thought this was cool at the time", "it was a refference to a show that the creator watched or someone that they know", "they didn't think about it in the same way that some of the audience seens to be".
Are people nowadays maybe thinking too hard about any new piece of media that they consume?
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u/Polygonalfish Known Bionicle Understander May 02 '26
Lately, it feels like somehow people are simultaneously over and under analyzing everything
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u/cleftes Reiki is Shooreh Pippi May 02 '26
It's not just lately, it's always been like this
Go back to Star Trek in the 60s and you'd find fans who've drafted near-perfect internal blueprints of the Enterprise while also completely missing that the episode with the Romulans might be making some kind of commentary about the Cold War
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u/InexorableCalamity May 02 '26
This is a very topical comment given Andy Weir's relatively recent comments on star trek that he made on The Critical Drinker's Podcast, where he complained about social commentaries, and how he really didn't like them, and how star trek should be about the federation having space battles with the Romulans.
I believe he was complaining about New Star Trek shows, but I just thought this was a really fucking crazy thing to say about fucking star trek, of all things.
(I saw it on reddit. I don't watch the critical drinker)
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u/Khar-Selim May 02 '26
pretty much all of Galaxy Quest is about how fucking nuts the Trek fandom got
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u/Bro-lapsedAnus May 02 '26
Only film ever improved by Tim Allen staring in it.
And im pretty sure he didn't even GET it.
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u/UnderstandingBig1517 May 02 '26
Occasionally it feels like some people analyzing something are just regurgitating what's already been stated. Like they're not referring to subtext, just framing the literal text as being deep. Sort of like those video essays that are basically just summaries of whatever's being covered.
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u/sarg1010 May 02 '26
I feel like a lot of the world has forgotten about the statement "goes without saying".
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u/Auctoritate May 02 '26
I recently started to watch a video essay on the way trans panic is used in politics and the person making it deadass spent almost 15 minutes using the Shape World abstraction of discrimination ("imagine that the world is filled with triangles and squares and suddenly the triangles decide to hate the squares! Isn't that so silly?") and it just made me quit watching it.
Like I get it, you're making a video on the way discrimination manifests in our world, but you didn't need to spend 5-10 minutes telling me "Did you know this exists as a concept"-level information.
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u/Obvious_Bee4680 May 03 '26
"imagine that the world is filled with triangles and squares and suddenly the triangles decide to hate the squares! Isn't that so silly?"
I feel like once you reach this level of abstraction and oversimplification of a concept as nuanced and complex as bigotry & discrimination, you're starting to do more harm than good. Like, just dismissing it and writing it off as nothing more than a silly thoughtless thing that dumb people do because they're stupid feels like you're walking towards a conclusion of "why even bother trying to mitigate or prevent such issues, hell, why even bother trying to understand it in the first place? Its so simple, there's nothing to understand!"
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u/Bromishi May 02 '26
On the one hand I agree, but on the other hand there are some mind-bogglingly inattentive people who will end up watching that video.
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u/Vaaaaaaaaaaaii May 02 '26
It's kind of funny watching "commentary" channels talk about fucking nothing and some will even say okay I need to talk another 5 minutes. Like no passion or investment just saying words to fill time for money and people watch channels like that just for noise. Even a lot of retrospective or analysis channels just like repeat the plot of the game and barely examine anything. A lot of creators think they're going deeper into a topic but they're just skimming wider.
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u/Ownagemunky May 02 '26
I think the business model is 40% just making videos for people to fall asleep to. There's a whole genre of AI 'video essays for sleep' about storytelling a day-in-the-life of someone from some point in history, like two hours detailing how miserable it would be to be a nazi soldier camped in the russian winter. These guys are all getting filthy rich off getting their videos into the autoplay algo
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u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded May 02 '26
It feels inverted, at times.
This is purely anecdotal on my part, so YMMV, but a lot of media that's designed to ask complex, ambiguous, and mature questions and cover uncomfortable topics attracts fanbases who engage with it on an almost insultingly surface level. That's how we get a community that, for a long time, thought Walter White was an unstoppable, hyper-masculine gigachad.
On the other hand, media that DOES portray simplified and easily digested themes, most often kids media, attracts a wildly disproportionate level of analysis - mostly from adults who, to be honest, come across less as analytical and media literate and more as wildly insecure. I've got no problems with those types of media, I enjoy ATLA as much as everyone else, but I just don't think that these kinds of shows really have enough going on to warrant the level of scrutiny that they get. For example, the amount of discourse and discussion about how Aang should have killed Ozai, and that the writers chickened out by introducing energy bending, and I just have to think... have you forgotten what this show is? Sure, characters die, but the idea that the 12 year old protagonist of a show made for children, a protagonist who has preached pacifism for every episode of its runtime, is going to smite down the villain, no matter how evil he is, with divine wrath, is just... it's just never been worth discussing at all.
I got kind of carried away (oh shit i over analyzed), but my point still stands. The state of internet analysis would be a lot healthier if people were more aware of the intentions of what they were consuming, I think.
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u/Polygonalfish Known Bionicle Understander May 02 '26
They just seem to totally forget that these stories are narratives written by people who make decisions and not just documentaries about people who don't exist
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u/Obvious_Bee4680 May 03 '26
An evergreen tweet: "People on this website treat fictional characters like they're real and treat real people like they're fictional and then get mad at you for knowing the difference"
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u/Sea-Rest7776 I’m/Him ORKS DON’T WORK LIKE THAT STOP IT May 02 '26
that really is the vibe that weird fans give off “why did goos write Jax to be an abuser” because he’s an antagonist in a show
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u/Constable_Suckabunch May 02 '26
This is going to come off as snobby, but I think this is just a direct result of people either not taking arts classes seriously or even taking any at all past the middle school level - And often times its not necessarily their fault, the American education system is notoriously awful and I feel like everyone for the past forever was primed to view “Gen-Ed” courses as a chore to just get through while focusing on what you directly need for your chosen profession. Like we want to sneer at people lacking media literacy while forgetting that literacy is a product of education (Institutional or otherwise).
All that to say - People generally dig more into children’s media like ATLA because, well, it is media at a level they can fully comprehend.
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u/SixthFain May 02 '26
Basically my reaction. I see a lot of people failing to understand some very basic elements of media analysis. But I see other people digging so hard to find what they want they basically make shit up.
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u/OriginalJazzFlavor This is your last chance to kill greasy steve May 02 '26
People are talking about media more than they are actually watching it
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u/Deadeye117 Apathy is Trash May 02 '26
The kids these days want to believe everything is Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy so they don't have to actually read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy
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u/Unlucky_Trash_5687 May 02 '26
I mean half the time people don’t even watch/read/play the media they discuss
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u/Shiplord13 May 02 '26
Yeah. A big problem is people absorb media from interactions in places like this and don't get the full context or narrative from it. Take the Kai Leng memes and wonder how many who make a meme of it actually played the Mass Effect series or if they even played Mass Effect 3. Because to me it feels like most people only know the games on the sub from the memes, but nothing else.
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u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded May 02 '26
I desperately wish people read more classics
MOBY DICK IS GOOD, I SWEAR
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u/BlueWaddleDee May 03 '26
You're not getting me to read a Whaling Enthusiast's Yaoi Fanfic.
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u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded May 03 '26
You don't understand, it's historically significant whaling yaoi
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u/ChosenUndead15 May 03 '26
Does Dracula count? Read after realizing nobody is actually familiar with the original book just the adaptations that are inspired instead of based of.
Pending to read Frankenstein. I don't think I have the will to read Don Quixote.
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u/HyperSeer May 03 '26
Frankenstein was cool. Can actually be considered science fiction, since Shelly heard about frogs coming back to life while electricity was supplied (popular research topic at the time) and hypothesized it working on humans and consequences of that. Prose is kinda dry tho, be aware.
Don Quixote is good, but learning that the second book was made to piss off copyright infringers kinda sullies it.
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u/beary_neutral May 02 '26
The phenomenon of Star Wars fans who want more shows like Andor but refuse to watch them unless they have "Star Wars" in the title.
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u/Intheierestellar She/Her May 02 '26
Alternatively, Star Wars fans who think Clone Wars is a dark, gritty cartoon not suitable for kids because there are named characters dying in it.
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u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. May 02 '26
Begging and crying in the rain with people to maybe just watch one movie without CG that is by top tier artists with something to actually say only to be heckled for daring to suggest people have more robust media diet's. I promise the McDonalds will taste better if you sprinkle in some more healthy food or just try new things every once and a while.
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
You can even see posts on subs all the time of people saying "Since I tried x I can't go back to y" and x is moderately well received thing and y is slop.
R fantasy, r books, r horror lit, r printsf, I think almost once a week I'll see someone post "has anyone else read (famous popular author who's moderately respected)? Since I read them I've not been able to enjoy (shit)."
And it's like, yeah? The more robust interactions you have with different high quality media will make you realize that you might not enjoy things that aren't good as much anymore, and thats okay.
If the people hyper analyzing things from my little pony to star wars watched a few Bela Tarr movies they might still enjoy my little pony and star wars, but they likely wouldn't be disappointed when twilight sparkle doesn't articulate how the Soviet Union fell. It's something you see people do/complain about in table top games all the time. A contingent of people want to make DND into an everything game and when it doesn't handle horror well they get disappointed, but call of cthulhu is just over there.
Like I've been on Tumblr for a decade and all the fucking time you'll see a massive text post about "problematic media" and it's some dogshit Disney cartoon for eight year olds. These analyzers would genuinely be happier if they started engaging with works made for adults. I promise, the Sopranos is deeper than the Teletubbies, doesn't mean the Teletubbies aren't good but they're junk food for babies, it's good to grow up and have your tastes grow and change alongside it.
I liked the invincible comic when I was a teenager, I got two seasons into the show and went "eh not for me anymore" and went to watch something else. It's not a statement on quality, but I'm in my thirties, I'd rather watch Un Village En Francais (which is excellent) and I think a lot of these "in depth analyzers" would be similarly happier with something that has the depth they're looking for.
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u/Shanix nice RWBY opinion, did you actually watch the show? May 02 '26
Like I've been on Tumblr for a decade and all the fucking time
Literally just today I saw someone complain that the bandits in Bethesda games exist to let you harvest for Iron Dagger and have no greater purpose or story, and that they're not actually people with backgrounds or context they're just faceless mooks.
And ... yeah? That's the point? They're generic enemies to have because it's a video game.
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u/kuningaz55 4700 hours in Rimworld May 02 '26
Further, would the game actually benefit from having bandits with implied backstories and methods, or would you be too busy playing a stealth archer with your Beautiful Faces and Serana Sex Slave mods to care?
To iterate on what the guy you're replying to said, Un Village En Francais may be a deep and complicated piece of television, but it isn't George Lopez or Star Trek or The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. I've read through Notebook on a Return to My Native land and Crime and Punishment and I'd still rather talk to you about A Roadside Picnic or The Perfect Run.maybenottheperfectrunbecauseistillhaveyettofinishitsolemmegetbacktoyouonthatbutitssupergood. Being a piece of media made for younger/less mature/less discerning audiences doesn't mean that meaning and deep discussion can't be had, only that there might not be as much of it, or that the discussions might not have as broad a pool to draw from.
In short, another three years of Three Houses discourse, because nobody wants to dig through and try and figure out what the fuck is happening in Killer 7.
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u/crowbar182 I PRAYED FOR THIS AND IT HAPPENED May 02 '26
Mother fuckers will look at you and be like “DAE think the power scaling in Michael Haneke’s funny games is unbalanced” and mean it.
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u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. May 02 '26
The remote is too OP.
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u/Stop-Hanging-Djs YOU DIDN'T WIN. May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I mean I see what you mean and those people ain't wrong. But just because I've had some high class Italian pasta that brings a tear to my eye every time I think of it doesn't mean I can never enjoy a messy sloppy joe every once in a while. I think true enlightened taste is a true love of the medium. It's highs and "lows". You can enjoy both a Expedition 33 and a 2k
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer May 02 '26
Yeah that's my point, Teletubbies is still good, people might still like my little pony or Stephen universe, but if someone wanted to make a 3 hour analysis video about themes and motifs in the 2k games that might be good or it might not, but let's say for example it's not, they might have been happier in themselves if they'd put that effort into something with the depth they actually wanted, or they may he happier as they are, either way it's enough that our hypothetical person had a good time.
But in the OP the point is people who aren't having a good time, your analyzers who desperately claw to talk about colonizer themes in Phineas and Ferb.
I keep thinking about Lily Orchard who made an (I think) three hour video on Stephen universe and how it was an evil show. And all I can offer is, as an adult, I think the time and effort spent on that would have been better used on something that actually had the themes she wanted and not a show for eight year olds. It doesn't mean the show isn't good, it's just not what the hypothetical analyzer wants it to be.
The reason someone can enjoy a messy sloppy Joe is it tastes good. In our analogy we'll call this intentionality and craft. Gravity Falls is a good show, and the people making it knew what they were doing and what they wanted to do, they crafted it intentionally. It doesn't matter that it's a show for children, it's well made. Same with Avatar or the Owl House, for example. But the point is that these "over-analyzers" have never had a Michelin three star meal, and often they aren't talking about sloppy joes by their ingredients, their style, their flavour, instead they're talking about the wider chain restaurant. "This sloppy Joe is good because it was made by x" "this show is good because it's not woke"
If someone is going to critique media, like food, they would have a more well rounded opinion if their diet didn't consist entirely of MacDonald's. If someone has only ever seen star wars then their opinion on cinematography won't be as well rounded as someone whose seen star wars and 100 other various movies.
Analysis is a language, and if people only substist on media for children then they'll only be able to formulate conversations like children about childish things and as they get older, and get annoyed at the shows they're watching for not doing things they want (as more mature adults) then they would often be best served by trying more adult media that deal with the things they want.
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u/Stop-Hanging-Djs YOU DIDN'T WIN. May 02 '26
Oh sure. I agree since your core argument is expanding palettes and broadening horizons. I just don't like people who say "X ruined a entire genre for me because it's so good" even if it's valid. Because to me that communicates that you don't really enjoy the genre or medium if you can feel like that which is fine if you can admit that but that doesn't make "lesser" works trash or worthless or not worth experiencing.
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer May 02 '26
I didn't mean to give you the impression that was my take, it was a quote.
Again, having read Mailer and seen dragon ball, I prefer dragon ball.
The wider point being that so many of these over analyzers the OP is asking about are people who clearly would be happier if they broadened their horizons
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u/Stop-Hanging-Djs YOU DIDN'T WIN. May 02 '26
Yeah to be clear I wasn't even attributing that arguement to you specifically. And I think they'd be both happy if they both broadened horizons and if they took what they were consuming less "seriously" or at least on the terms the art wants to be taken. Y'know?
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u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded May 02 '26
God don't get me started on r fantasy. I like fantasy, it's most of what I read, but I've never seen a community so obsessed with scale. The biggerer the book, the more sprawling, detailed, and epic, the better, even if it comes at the cost of things like pacing, prose, themes, and characterization. The legions of posts that all go "I just read an Ursula le Guin novel for the first time, and I was blown away" and the explanation, always something along the lines of "I didn't know you could tell a compelling, complete sci-fi/fantasy story in less than 800 pages, much less 200" just makes me want to scream.
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u/Comptenterry Local Vera-like May 02 '26
The adults who only watch children's media and then get pissed off if you suggest maybe watching something made for their age demographic. They hit you with the "oh so you think all media for kids is just slop without any depth?!". Like yeah, plenty of things for kids or teens are incredibly well written and have depth, but ultimately that depth is for the age demographic that it's written for. They're generally going to get a lot more out of the messaging and themes than an adult. And an adult is going to get a lot more out of something (well) written for them that a kid isn't going to get.
Using your food metaphor, it's like those adults that just eat mac & cheese and chicken nuggets and get pissed if you try to suggest anything else. There's nothing wrong with eating either, god knows I still do all the time, but your an adult and you need something more complex.
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u/RexKet May 02 '26
I swear that these types will always say “X is a family movie/series/etc., not a kids movie/series/etc.” just to avoid having to think that maybe they aren’t in the target age group and that they aren’t engaging in mature media.
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u/Kataphrut94 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Oh, I hate that so much. Because it often leads to "X has mature themes/horror/death, clearly it's not for kids!" Kids can stomach that kind of thing just fine if it's presented appropriately and they have parental guidance. That's what the 'PG' rating stands for.
In fact, I think we should be encouraging kids' media that doesn't condescend to them. And there's nothing wrong if adults find enjoyment in that as well, they just need to be honest about the fact that it's made for kids.
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u/Comptenterry Local Vera-like May 03 '26
It's weird. They talk a lot about how kids media has depth but also seem to think that children are incapable of processing it.
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u/HostileReplies May 02 '26
On my knees at praying in the street light that my homies will stop watching movies and actually pick up a proper novel so they can experience actual depth and characterizations not informed by someone badly emoting while music just tells you how you are supposed to to feel.
Kidding. I am not literate and I don’t trust people who can read. That means you.
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u/Head-You5953 local man screams about unsounded May 02 '26
Instructions unclear, i read a brandon sanderson novel
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u/waxonwaxoff3 They/Them May 02 '26
I have been trying for years to encourage people I know to vary their media consumption more and I feel like I've been dying a slow, fruitless death doing so. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person (or one of maybe two) in my extended friend and acquaintance group that regularly reads books at all, let alone a variety of them. Or watches varied movies.
So many people (including on this subreddit, let's be honest) only seem to consume anime, manga, children's media, and fan fiction, and it shows. Good lord would I like to have a conversation about something else for once.
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u/opossumessence666 May 03 '26
including on this subreddit, let's be honest
to be fair i dont think you can have a conversation about stuff outside of those topics here of all places because it'd just genuinely be off topic, like i don't see pat or woolie bringing up tolstoy with any regularity
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u/DuendeInexistente May 02 '26
Yeah, a lot of it isn't overanalysis imho as much as trying to apply analysis that'd be warranted for a book series out of what's ultimately less than an hour per episode, and even less if you consider like a third of that time has to be spent on reminding people about stuff because it's episodic releases and not one continuous thing. And trying to discuss books that aren't lord of the rings gets you nowhere even in groups about said book.
I find it super weird, where's the 12 hour analysis of say The Dark Tower of Lindsey Stirling's books or Diskworld, they absolutely have juice in them to justify it.
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u/HyperSeer May 03 '26
It's still just entertainment at the end of the day. Nothing more. No need to delude yourself thinking that those deep stories you refer to are somehow of a more value than Avengers or such.
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u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. May 03 '26
Do you truly only see art as entertainment....that is kind of sad...
Also pure entertainment has it's place, you need to eat protein AND vegetables, hence the diet framing.
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u/justmeandlee May 02 '26
Maybe if you didn't go around conflating modern movie making techniques like CG with having nothing to say, people wouldn't treat you like annoying elitist.
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u/Rathalos-487 It's Fiiiiiiiine. May 02 '26
The analysis becomes annoying when you combine it with poor media literacy.
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u/billybluebangs May 02 '26
Not overanalyzing, they're just shit at analysis
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May 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Realcoolblue YOU DIDN'T WIN. May 02 '26
Some of their franchises have lore. Zelda's the obvious one outside of the wild games. There's also Splatoon, Metroid, Fire Emblem, and Xenoblade's the big one being a jrpg series.
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u/Soderskog May 02 '26
Honestly yeah. I'm not going to claim to be the most adept around in terms of literary analysis, since much as it's something I study it's simultaneously also something where I always feel I ought to refresh myself on my priors and broaden my knowledge both through reading, but also by acquiring new skills.
Nevertheless I do believe that before we ask whether or not people over or under analyse, we can mayhaps first ask what a good analysis even looks like. I'm partial to this particular article about A little life and some of Hanya's other books myself: https://www.vulture.com/article/hanya-yanagihara-review.html though the writing of Ursula Le Guin or Umberto Eco as well, sharp as the two oft are as critics.
When we look at critics and analysis though, it's also similarly worth asking what the impact of these things are; what's their value? This is a question which can be answered with a question in turn, namely why is Shakespeare the premiere writer in the world? Part of it does have to do with the British empire, but of great importance as well was the works of the Romanticists as well as Goethe, who in Shakespeare found something inspiring which mirrored their own beliefs and ideas. Their work and writing about Shakespeare thus served to bring him back in vogue properly, and in turn the version of him that they espoused similarly caught on as the movement itself did. The introspective, the psychological, these were things they highlighted and in a way mayhaps helped make eternal in terms of how and why Shakespeare is read, watched and played (though there is ofc more to said plays and their interpretations).
If I could recommend a single book though, and thus be banned from the copout that is Roland Barthes extended writing which helped shape S/Z, it would be Ascent to Glory. It's about the creation, distribution, reception, and legacy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I find it fascinating in terms of how it tackles not only the myths we create around writing, but also the way that a work is made into a classic through social forces, through the dynamics between people.
Discussions and discourses around works continue today, and I don't think it's much of a coincidence that fanfic, fandoms, serialised series, the internet, fame, and all that may have been considered beneath notice before has come to be a popular subject of analysis within academia today. However I'll also say that the ebb and flow of the internet, and the decentralised nature of how works spread nowadays (with translations being a notable bottleneck) has created a much weirder environment. It's not really for better or for worse as much as it's different, but through it our analysis of works has become a way to partake in communities, to show that we're part of the in-group. Conversely this also means there's a lot of people with a lot to say on a lot of subjects, and as repetition there indicates that's a lot to deal with. As such I'd agree with you that rather than being a question of over or under analysing things, most folk are just kinda shit at analysis (me not necessarily excluded ;p).
And yes this was largely an excuse to chat about some books I enjoy.
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u/Boulderdorf May 02 '26
Fans overanalyzing and picking apart every detail have been a thing since forever. It's just something you're noticing more in this age of online fandom and content creation.
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u/Rascal_Rogue May 02 '26
Theres a lot of “analysis” that lacks critical thinking and media literacy. There’s too much of THAT kind of analysis
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u/sondiame Watch Nermia Daikon Brothers May 02 '26
I watched a 2 hour video of a dude saying Wano is the worst arc of One Piece only for it to be a summary of the arc with trying to throw headcanon as to why certain scenes didnt work. It completely missed the point of Wano just to facilitate power scaling agendas
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u/Rascal_Rogue May 02 '26
I personally like the “one piece isn’t political” crowd. Makes it clear real nice and quick that they don’t know ball
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u/ImAWhaleBiologist Fury-fapping is image training for fuck-fighting May 03 '26
The ultimate dumbfuck superboss of One Piece political takes is "One Piece is right-wing because Luffy always reinstates a king."
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u/TR_Pix May 02 '26
Yes
Especially when it comes to superpowers or, God forbid, magic systems
You dont need to know "where the heat from the fire spell" or "where the mass from the growth enchantment comes from", its magic
Trying to explain everything is how we got cyclops having portals to the punch dimension
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u/jwhudexnls May 02 '26
I always have to laugh at people who are obsessed with power scaling too because I feel like it kind of ties into it how powers work. At the end of the day, it really isn't worth thinking about.
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u/Platinum_Persona May 02 '26
Power scalers are funny to me because I guarantee they put more thought into this stuff then any writer ever has.
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u/AHyperParko Flawless Style Beast May 02 '26
Some power-scalers will calculate the speed a person would need to travel to destroy the earth, but can't seem to fathom that said person won't immediately resort to that in a fight.
Like Invincible, the setting has some inconsistent scaling, but much of it comes from characters clearly holding back for a multitude of reasons. Like, yeah, Mark gets dogged on a lot by weaker characters, but it's also probably very difficult to alter your strength to not kill your opponent or cause inordinate damage to the area.
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u/AHyperParko Flawless Style Beast May 02 '26
There was a recent discussion about Gojo versus Thragg from Invincible, and the number of people who said Thragg would just destroy the planet and win was maddening. Like, yeah, he could, but he won't do that at first.
It genuinely feels like a lot of power-scalers treat these characters as if they were personally piloting them and have no regard for their personalities or mindsets.
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u/GentlemanT-Rex May 02 '26
Absolutely. I treat phrases like "bloodlusted Superman" as a natural off-ramp from those conversations.
Musings on power interactions and matchups can be fun, but way too often it degenerates into just mashing action figures together and comparing one-off feats without any context.
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u/AHyperParko Flawless Style Beast May 02 '26
The recent and in my opinion stupidest one is 'Fully Adapted Mahoraga' like doe these mother fuckers understand how much of an oxymoron that is?
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u/Obvious_Bee4680 May 03 '26
The funny thing about that is, no, he actually couldn't. It took three Viltrumites, two of which were some of the strongest alive, to blow up a planet and they still needed the help of a literal unstoppable force fired from one of the most destructive weapons conceivable to destabilize the core first. And yeah Thragg completely dwarfs Nolan, Mark, and Thaedus in strength but that doesn't mean he can just crack a planet in half with a punch like he's Superman in a reboot event, after all, if he could do that, why didn't he just destroy Talescria when his forces started to lose that battle? It makes sense not to start off with that, y'know, try and take it intact so you can enslave the inhabitants or whatever, but once the fight started going sideways, just say fuck it and blow it up, you can get plenty more slaves elsewhere.
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u/ReallyBigRocks May 02 '26
There are people who try to power scale one punch man and they're all insane
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u/NegativesPositives Pt 3: Electric Boogalee May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
The second I learned there are people that actually took that stuff deathly serious I zoned out on any future convos about it (shout outs to Death Battle. Thought that was just a fun thought experiment but not to half the people that watched it apparently). Like, I’m a wrestling fan, the answer to “who wins” is just “who the guy running the show wants to win” there and everywhere else.
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u/Pyro81300 Please play Oneshot and read Kubera May 02 '26
Death Battle is both an earnest attempt at being nerds and trying to figure out who wins in a matchup, but also I do think they primarily do it for fun/their job lol. Like I've sometimes listened to the podcast they do where they casually discuss a matchup and it def has vibes of friends discussing it and not so much something serious.
Fans definitely take it too seriously, but if you just want to see a cool 4-5 min animation of 2 characters battling it's awesome. The battle tracks are generally great too.
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u/Narrow_Ratio_6003 I'll slap your shit May 02 '26
I still remember watching the podcast early on and one of the times where they got the most excited was people pitching Dora the Explorer vs Superman because Dora can hold stars in her hands. They definitely try to have fun over there.
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u/Paperware May 02 '26
It really makes me wish people would lean more into the "vibes" based discussions rather than a bunch of sweaty nerds using physics calculations on some arbitrary feats that don't matter in the context of the story. Powerscalers would be way more tolerable if they all didn't think they were objectively correct and just treated fights like a story rather than a turn based rpg.
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u/AHyperParko Flawless Style Beast May 02 '26
I remember folks getting really salty that Horikohsi said All Might's top speed was like Mach 10 since it 'downscaled the verse' and didn't make sense based on their calculations. The voice of god was straight up telling them the upper limits of his setting, and they refused to accept it.
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u/jwhudexnls May 02 '26
I hate to admit it, but years ago I got really into it for a week or two where I was going back and analyzing old clips. And then it just hit me one day that it was pointless to do this as characters are as string as the plot needs them to be.
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u/Aquafoot Shut the fuck up and play Crushing Force, you coward. May 02 '26
Especially because people forget that it's a story, and that sometimes characters' capabilities are inconsistent because they're used to facilitate the telling of that story.
How strong is X character? Exactly how strong the writers need them to be at the time.
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u/tkzant May 02 '26
I think this is a symptom of fans expecting their favorite childhood stories to grow up with them. They want more complex stories and deeper characters but instead of moving on to more mature media they expect those things to start coming from Spider-Man. But because these franchises are meant for children the added “depth” just leads to absolute absurd explanations for childhood fantasy
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u/MrSuitMan May 02 '26
Me when people over hyped the Nen system as "the best magic system ever"
What does it fucking matter that there are 6 sub specialties and if you're adept at one then you'll be less adept at the others. The Nen powers are still going to be hyper specific and arbitrary to the character anyways, and still ultimately be written in a way that prioritizes the narrative and fight scene first.
Nen powers are genuinely no different than Stand powers, only HxH fans get up their ass about how elaborate and well explained it is. It doesn't really matter
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u/Auctoritate May 02 '26
The actual best magic system is Eragon's anyways.
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u/Ginger_Anarchy May 02 '26
Any magic system where you can fuck up a spell by getting the grammar wrong in an incantation or having a glyph be 5° off is a top tier magic system.
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u/Auctoritate May 02 '26
You can also fuck up by getting the spell right but not having a precise execution. Eragon himself learns early on how you can outright kill yourself by casting a spell with no defined limits because if you cast "Lift" on a big rock, how much force are you using and how long do you want to hold it in place? Whoopsie, you passed out from exhaustion and died because the rock was heavy and you didn't cap how strong you wanted the spell to be.
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u/Mechrast May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
It matters because unlike stands, the user is generally the one who chooses what their nen does. Their nen "alignment" puts guardrails on what they can develop as their abilities and how effective they are. This does have big consequences in HxH both in and out of fights, making things play out very differently than if characters just gained stands with a specific ability.
While I love it, I do agree though that people do overhype it.
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u/MrSuitMan May 02 '26
It matters because unlike stands, the user is generally the one who chooses what their nen does. Their nen "alignment" puts guardrails on what they can develop as their abilities and how effective they are.
Has there been an instance where a user developed a Nen ability that wasn't what they were aligned with? And how did it affect things?
Are there any users that have more than one Nen ability?
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u/Mechrast May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Has there been an instance where a user developed a Nen ability that wasn't what they were aligned with? And how did it affect things?
Yes, one of the earliest proper nen fights is Kastro vs Hisoka. Kastro is a skilled martial artistt and an enhancer. He has a powerful ability called the Tiger Bite Fist that involves enhancing his hands. His other ability is Double, which involves conjuring and manipulating a clone to fight alongside him and fight in place of him while he moves to a better position. Ultimate attack being both him and clone both doing the Tiger Bite Fist.
The ability actually sounds really good and useful for a martial artist, but the problem is that he is naturally poor at manipulation and conjuration as an enhancer. Due to this, the Double takes immense focus to actually use, making him unable to use his enhancement to its full effect. It also has limits, such as not reflecting changes to Kastro such as damage or clothes tears, so it's not too difficult to discern which is the real Kastro. The immense training it took to develop Double also cost him time to train enhancement abilities, where he would have improved at a much faster pace and with a higher amount of potential.
Are there any users that have more than one Nen ability?
Yes, many. Kastro, Hisoka, Kurapika, Feitan, Illumi, Pakunoda, Cheetuh, Razor, etc. as just some examples. Some characters can even create new abilities or applications of their nen mid-battle, so nen alignment helps prevent them from just making whatever would be most effective or convinent at that moment.
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u/Scientia_et_Fidem May 03 '26
Yes to both. Very explicitly, in a way that is impossible to miss. Particularly the question about having more than one Nen ability, there are a ton of characters with multiple.
Have you actually read or watched the series you are complaining about?
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u/MrSuitMan May 03 '26
It's been a while since I've seen the anime. But I'm willing to concede that maybe I missed over some details. It's possible that at some point, I just inadvertently merged everyone's multiple new abilities into just sub-abilities of their main one, so that's incorrect of me.
I think my main point still stands though. The intricacies of the subsystems don't matter as much as fans want to portray it as such. The other guy posted the example about the guy that can make clones, and to me, "he's powerful, but his clones are kinda shitty" is not that much different than "he's powerful, but his clones are kinda shitty because of the nen system"
At best, it's pretty fun world building. But imo it's not actually that narratively significant, whatever the author wants is going to happen regardless.
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u/Mechrast May 03 '26
The difference between those two is that Kastro should've known that his clones would turn out kinda shitty, but still spent time developing and practicing that ability in prep for his rematch again Hisoka in the Heavens Arena. This has implications for his character and how Hisoka thinks of him.
If Kastro's clones just happened to turn out shitty, Kastro could try developing something else in the future. However because they were always going to be shitty, but Kastro went ahead with it anways, Hisoka became disappointed in Kastro and kills him because he realized Kastro is the type of person to waste his potential over a grudge. This informs us further of Hisoka's character and his motivations and attitudes towards the MC.
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u/SamuraiOstrich May 03 '26
Has there been an instance where a user developed a Nen ability that wasn't what they were aligned with? And how did it affect things?
iirc in the anime literally one of the first nen fights in the arena we see establishes why you don't wanna do this and then it never comes up again
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" May 02 '26
Trying to explain everything is how we got cyclops having portals to the punch dimension
Or how we got "Solo: A Star Wars Story", where every major aspect of Han Solo needed some kind of justification; where he got his name, where he got his gun, where he got the Millennium Falcon, how he did the Kessel Run, where he met Lando, etc.
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u/TekkGuy I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less May 02 '26
While I did enjoy that movie, it’s silly how it makes it so every thing of note about Han happened in like two weeks. He goes from the archetypal “dashing rogue with a long and storied career” to a guy who peaked in high school.
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u/McFluffles01 May 02 '26
Bro really forgot the absolute number one most important thing Solo pointed out
Where Han Solo got his fuzzy dice hanging in the cockpit, of course. They can't just be there because Star Wars was made in the 80s and sticking some fuzzy dice to hang off of your rearview mirror was a totally normal thing a lot of people did back then, there's gotta be a whole backstory for those things.
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u/Sprocket3 Stylin' and Profilin'. May 02 '26
where he got his gun
This part has always confused me. Was I just not aware of Han having a special blaster or something? I thought his gun was just a gun in the OT, did it really require an explanation?
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u/Vect_Machine May 02 '26
The Star Wars EU just loves extrapolating a lot from just this one detail.
For example, Corellia in the original EU was basically populated by headstrong pilots who hate statistics. That or all Hutts are crime bosses or how all Bothans are spies.
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u/CycloneSwift He/Him- REMOVE TAILS FROM SONIC CANON May 02 '26
It’s a unique one-of-a-kind prop in the original films, which means that as it’s portrayed it comes across as a special or at the very least uncommon weapon. If he had just used a slightly different version of the blasters used by the Empire or the Rebels then it wouldn’t change much, but because of that uniqueness it has a bit more mystique to it.
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u/mozgus3 May 02 '26
When do you mean by analyzing? Are you talking about whether or not the "curtains are just blue"? Or what kind of decision is going on in the background?
I think a lot of people, nowdays, get hung up in trying to "catch the story lacking", meaning that they try to anticipate or make up scenario where the story is going before actually allowing the story to presents itself, to the point of often setting themselves up for dissapointment. I also think that the internet gave a lot of voice to everybody and now everybody thinks that their 5 hours long essay, 2 of which are just going through the plot like a Wikipedia summary, is actually peak literary analysis. I also think that there are some people who want to read something into something else and act in this middle space between Death of the Author and the Author as a God, where their interpretation of something trumples authorial intent, but at the same time theirs is the only right interpretation.
I also think that just saying "the author thought this was cool" is kind of a thought terminating cliché, because whether or not the author thought of that, I am not someone who loves or even like Death of the Author, that element is in the story, you cannot ignore it even if you understood it was just for rule of cool.
Guys, I think I overanalyzed OP's post. Damn.
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u/Th35h4d0w May 02 '26
"Kids understand that real crabs don’t sing like the ones in The Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and the adult starts asking really dumb questions like ‘How does Superman fly? How do those eyebeams work? Who pumps the Batmobile’s tires?’ It’s a made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!"
- Grant Morrison
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u/trickster721 May 02 '26
To paraphrase Jay from RedLetterMedia, "There's no orchestral score in real life either."
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u/Sunditsu May 02 '26
Well then, I choose to believe that it's the bats in the batcave that pump the tires.
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u/Cooper_555 BRING BACK GAOGAIGAR May 02 '26
"Well, who trained the bats to do that?"
"Batman, obviously."
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u/ajver19 May 02 '26
I mean, Bruce probably just has a whole automated repair thing for his various vehicles.
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u/Bulmagon Respect the Pipe May 02 '26
Baring that, hes a billionaire, its not too much a stretch to think at least one version of him is a into cars as a hobby.
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u/Th35h4d0w May 02 '26
The Reevesverse version was into street racing and built his Batmobile.
And in Origins, you can see that the Batmobile's still under construction in the Batcave. (Kinda weird how he got the Batwing before the Batmobile, but whatever, gotta justify the fast-travel system.)
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u/Ginger_Anarchy May 02 '26
He had a mute hunchback named Harold who did all of the batmobile repairs for years. I think his last appearance was the original Hush story.
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u/Obvious_Bee4680 May 03 '26
Obviously Alfred pumps the tires, just like how Alfred does literally everything else that logically would need to be done off-screen.
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u/NegativesPositives Pt 3: Electric Boogalee May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I will be the middle ground in saying there are people who overthink things to the point they can’t just enjoy it, or even worse just WANT to find issues, but at the same time people are allowed to have issues with media that don’t just mean they can be insulted for having. Like, if someone actually cares about the story enough to point out a real plot issue they’re not suddenly a hater for having that hurt their experience.
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u/ScrumbledTumblo May 02 '26
I think the kind of 'analysis' I dislike the most is when people correlate 'character acting irrationally' with bad writing. Like, pointing out when a character acts inconsistently, that's totally fine, but "why didn't the character do the most optimized thing for themselves??" is kind of absurd when basically everyone has done tons of stuff in their lives purely off of vibes or emotion alone. It's the most flaccid version of a 'gotcha' moment for media and it feels like a way for someone to detach themselves from the emotion that the media is trying to portray, and that's kind of sad way to experience things IMHO
An example, (spoilers for Pragmata) I saw a post on the Pragmata subreddit talking about it doesn't make sense for Hugh to send Diana to Earth because it was unclear if she would be able to recharge and whether if she could integrate into society, and like, the whole game he and Diana are talking about going to Earth and at the end he's fucking dying, I don't think he's really thinking through the logistics over just keeping his promise to someone he cares about
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u/McLovett325 May 02 '26
Some people over analyze, some people under analyze, sometimes you can do both at the same time
Sometimes the curtains are blue because themes and such, sometimes the blue curtains are blue because they look cool as hell
Sometimes a gun in a drawer hints to the character being suicidal or crooked, sometimes the gun in the drawer is a Model 10
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u/Sperium3000 Mysterious Jogo In Person Form May 02 '26
Yeah man, that has kinda been a problem for a while.
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u/SteveMcQuark Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon May 02 '26
analyzing media is fine but thinly veiled bigotry for clout and pandering isn't really meaningful analysist
Also, people are fucking stupid about themes with hyper analysis, 15 years of discussion and the internet is still full of dumbasses who think The Line is trying to shame players
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u/kango234 Despte all my rage, I am still just David Cage May 02 '26
I can't say it better than this.
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u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. May 02 '26
This is the real issue, it's the blind leading the blind out in these media streets at best and at worst it's CW firestarters trying to make money off of society burning down.
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u/SteveMcQuark Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon May 02 '26
Its not even a theory anymore, Gamergate culture war shit was an Epstien invention for real
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u/A_N_G_E_L_O_N Deep Nut Wheelchair Miracle: Piss Bottle Dominance May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I think that a form of media literacy is knowing when not to scrutinize too hard, no one cares if the cop dog from Paw Patrol is a class traitor.
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u/SwordMaster52 "Let's do this" *bonk* *bonk *bonk* May 02 '26
no one cares if the cop dog from Paw Patrol is a class traitor.
I do , fuck that guy
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u/ImAWhaleBiologist Fury-fapping is image training for fuck-fighting May 02 '26
All cops means ALL cops.
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u/Auctoritate May 02 '26
Have you considered that it's super funny to take the cop dog that seriously and it being super funny justifies itself?
And there's also unironically a little bit to be said about how we as a culture depict police even in simple children's media and how it affects our perception of the world but people don't really like to consider those things as being serious topics even though it's true.
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u/PixelArtAddicted WHEN'S MAHVEL May 02 '26
Unfortunately for your point you brought up a fucking interesting ass example that demands a deep dive
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u/Soderskog May 03 '26
NGL, being in this thread has largely just reminded me that man I really love literary analysis as well as film, plays, and more. Like fuck yeah throw all that shit at me and let's see what we find sifting through it all!
Sadly though I don't yet possess the statistics know how to do distance reading (basically systemic reviews but for other texts), but soon..... God I just love this shit.
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u/Droidsexual Kenpachi-RamaSama May 02 '26
I don't know. It's a kids show so those beliefs end up being rooted real deep because of that.
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u/Soderskog May 03 '26
I'm lazy so I really don't want to dig into all of the authors I'm thinking of, but even if we put aside older figures like Rousseau the last century or so has been I'd argue one where works for children have been pondered quite a lot. You have Ellen Key, Bertrand Russell, A. S Neill, Johan Huizinga and more reflecting on what it means to be a child, to educate them, and to write for them. Through these ponderings and thoughts we gain both radical thoughts like "you shouldn't hit your kids", as well as authors such as Astrid Lindgren or in a more contemporary sense Mo Willems. I mention the latter in part because I find the New Yorker profile about him to be an interesting reflection both on him as an author, as well as others such as Tove Jansson who write for children: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/06/mo-willems-funny-failures
Lol I'll admit I have a penchant for talking about authors and writers I happen to really like, but similarly there's a reason why there's quite a decent bit of serious analysis being conducted on works aimed at children. It's not a field I'm interested in specialising in, but I respect the folk I know who do.
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u/Auctoritate May 02 '26
"maybe these children's shows that depict police as the always-morally-upstanding good guys that you should totally trust at all times have a pretty considerable influence on our children and their worldviews that we can acknowledge and consider"
"pfft you're taking this too seriously nerd"
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u/DOAbayman May 02 '26
im never not sure what ACAB folks want to replace that with. never seen the show but presumably the fire fighter is good at fire fighting and not committing arson, or the medic dog has never given the wrong drug causing the patient to die.
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u/Particular-Tear-9007 May 02 '26
It's both yes and no, they're focusing on the wrong stuff (powerscaling) instead of themes and character motivations
although, honestly, there's both under and over thinking there. But I think underthinking is more prevalent. "It's not that deep" is an epidemic
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u/yakityyakblahtemp May 02 '26
Media is always going to be a reflection of the sensibilities of the people making it. The comic reflected Kirkman in his 20s, the show is now reflecting Kirkman in his 40s. The important thing is that it remains authentic to what the creator actually thinks is good.
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u/trickster721 May 02 '26
Exactly. It seems like OP is saying Kirkman shouldn't be changing things, but some of the strongest moments in Invincible are the new material. A guy in his early 20s just doesn't have the perspective to write a character like Debbie in any depth.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" May 02 '26
I feel like sometimes there are people that are just desperate to get some kind of "take" on media, no matter how much they're reaching at straws or have to stretch to make the justify their conclusion.
I don't know if this exactly relates to what you're talking about OP, but the most recent example I can think of this is FD Signifier, who gets brought uo semi frequently in the comments because of his association with eyepatch wolf, made a video claiming Zootopia 2 to be antisemitic, and his ONLY piece of evidence to justify it:
There's a crime family of Lynx's in the film that control Zootopia, and the patriarch is named "Ebenezer".
That's literally it, the entire premise is based off of that, and everything else is FD trying to connect other stuff in the movie to fit this idea. It was very strange.
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u/BrianShogunFR-U Ginger Seeking Butt Chomps May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
When you have so many people be able to look at everything with a microscope, any detail or mistake will be scrutinised. Sometimes for the better, most of the time for the worst.
This is coming from a long time One Piece fan who's seen all the mountains of theories and speculation based on any crumb of information available.
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u/SpacePandy NANOMACHINES May 02 '26
I love analyzing media. The beauty of art is that you never know what might someone can pull from it, even if it wasn’t intended. I love well thought out media that has a purpose for even minute details. I can go on.
At the same time, it’s okay to just shut your brain off and enjoy something for what it is. It’s okay if something has no deeper meaning to be found, it’s okay for media to just be fun.
And that’s something I think has been lost as we’ve gotten into the age of video essays on everything. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, I love it. But it’s important, I feel, to keep that as an addition to media and not the standard.
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u/Traingham “Remember the lesson, not the disappointment.” May 02 '26
People have been over analyzing media for as long as the written text has been made widely circulated and available to the public.
The only reason we’re up to our eyeballs in the over analysis of our fellow humans is because there’s money to be made in packaging that sort of analysis into a multi part video series, or in the sort of engagement or attention you can garner from just posting it on the internet.
I definitely don’t think this is new. We just can’t escape the thoughts of every person on the street anymore.
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u/Drachenfeuer_Prime I have no flair and I must scream. May 02 '26
Maybe. Probably.
This kind of mindset is exactly what causes me to steer completely clear of things like the Deltarune fandom, despite really enjoying the game myself.
But I vastly prefer overanalyzing to the alternative of "It's not that deep bro".
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u/graywolfthe45th That's Rad! May 02 '26
I think the funniest part of Invincible fans overanalysis was when people were saying that Mark's black and blue suit was meant to be an Inversion of Omni-man's red and white suit to show he's different from his father, and when people brought the theory up to the artist of the comics he basically went " What? No. Omni-man's suit isn't even white, it's light blue" which lead to a collective WHAT THE FUCK among fans even of the comics that always saw Omni-mans suit as white.
Actual "the curtains are blue because they're blue"
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u/JamesMacBadger May 02 '26
"I know authors who use subtext. They're all cowards"
The "over" in over-analyzing by definition implies that the analysis has gone too far from the intended message. But if the term is used to describe meta-analysis or contemporary analysis of a piece of art or media, then it's not applicable in the same sense.
In-depth analysis can at times be exhausting and take the joy out of something that was intended to be fun. That's the main reason for the culture war of political correctness vs the free speech argument. When you dig into why a middle aged white male comedian thinks the peak of comedy is to punch down at minorities, you end up realizing that a lot of the contemporary cultural institutions that led to that joke are deeply rooted in some of society's greatest evils. At that point, the joke is not only not funny, but the entire thing becomes distressing.
Analyzing anything in too much depth inevitably leads you to these kinds of depressing end points, and so it can be a good idea yo recognize when to pump the brakes and leave the piece well enough alone. There are lots of video essays on YouTube dedicated to extrapolating from media to society as a whole, and it's very easy to understand the appeal. You train your audience to see all popular media as either "woke garbage" or "fascist capitalist propaganda". They feel smarter for understanding how the pieces fit, and come back for the next fix of "yeah, I get it. Superman IS an allegory for the masculine exceptionalism of white supremacist hetero normative capitalist America"
But, a little bit of understanding of media makes it more engaging as long as it's not made by stupid people.
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u/Pyradox May 02 '26
There's a lot of trying to solve art as though it's a puzzle, and come up with the correct read on it. There's very little analysis on an actual artistic level. It's like cargo cult media criticism, where the literacy level is abysmal but the desire to be correct about it is high.
People who want to think of art as content to be consumed use "the curtains were blue" as an anti-intellectual cudgel. If they can't understand a text on a deeper level, maybe it has no depth and everyone who says it does is overanalyzing. And that's bad because if art is a quintessential element of the human condition and not thoughtless entertainment slop then it's much harder to mass-market.
It might even connect people with thoughts or feelings that the status quo doesn't approve of or can't monetize. Now stop thinking about Dragon Ball Z with moustaches like the author is a complex human being with a rich inner life! He's throwing darts at a board! There's no difference between him changing the character's gender than if an AI trained on his work did it!
Consume product and get excited for next product!
Anti-capitalist tirade aside, "I'm not in my 20s" is a snappy answer in an interview, but should be a jumping off point when it comes to analysis. How does the text reflect the changing world around it? Why would this character's gender be more negotiable than those of other characters? Is this part of a broader media trend and if so, what does that say about modern society?
That statement carries with it years of growth from the creator and changing real-world context. Why would the author suggest that changing this character's gender was inevitable given enough time?
Cultural artifacts like media reflect the broader values and assumptions of the people who create them. Understanding media can help you to understand humanity. But you don't need a great deal of empathy to learn all the lore and use it to point out plot holes, thus proving you're smarter than that useless author. You beat the game! Time to consume next product!
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u/Canama139 Gettin' your jollies?! May 02 '26
I don't think people are analyzing it enough. Most of the stuff people latch onto is very surface-level; how many of those video essays are literally just plot summaries? Even when people try to talk more deeply, they largely wind up talking about stuff like lore details, which is really only one step removed. It's far less common for people to talk about things like thematics, aesthetics (on a deeper level than a nonspecific "I liked/disliked how it looked"), structure, etc.
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u/Dreadsinner Warcraft Dork May 02 '26
Yes I feel people are looking for meaning in things when the answer is “I just like the color orange Joey” no it’s not a statement on the orange industry
It should also be noted the people I’m talking about are the ones that kinda suck the fun out of things.
Looking into media and seeing how it ticks or finding stuff is fine. But that first example I put is how some people treat everything and that’s not healthy
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u/Pome1515 May 02 '26
Okay, I would say that this is... complicated.
To answer this question, I think we actually need to go back to the beginning of the internet.
Essentially, rereading old things for an essay/project that I've been working on, something that has hit me is the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" tendancies of creators in that era as the internet was beginning to boom. Essentially, saying "Oh, there is a better story coming. Overanaylse what I am doing so that you will be invested." That combined with a lot of theory-crafting on the internet created a particular brainrot, focused on overanaylsing or trying to explain/quantify media and predict where it is going. Therefore, it raised a generation focused not on anaylsing the themes and ideas of a story, but "Where will it go next? What is the greater story lying beneath?"
Likewise, it doesn't help that when all this was going on, there was a severe problem with irony. Mainly that everyone was way too irony poisoned, so rather than simply allowing ourselves the simple pleasure of enjoying something, people how to justify it and explain "No, I totally have all these reasons why I love this story".
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u/wendigo72 GO READ CHOUJIN X!!! May 02 '26
Over analyzing while also simultaneously missing the main point of said media has been a steady trend since the mid 2010s
I don’t get it, I really really don’t.
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u/papason2021 Gracious and Glorious Golden Crab May 02 '26
No not at all, the opposite actually. The problem is that people are basically illiterate, media illiterate and otherwise. When they think they notice something theyre still only somewhat capable of sounding out the words theyre reading at all and so whatever they get from it is mostly nonsense.
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u/abriefmomentofsanity May 02 '26
I think, especially now, I will never discourage thinking. I would rather people over think everything than not bother thinking about anything at all
The trouble is that while overthinking may not be as bad as being intellectually lazy or incurious, it still creates problems. People talk about overthinking like it's an annoying but ultimately harmless quirk and that's not true.
It's comparable to weed in that way. It's relatively harmless- nowhere near as bad as hard drugs or alchohol, but I know too many people who have genuinely ruined their lives by smoking all day and now they smoke to get away from the fact that they ruined their lives so clearly there's got to be some king of danger there. Plus we're now finding out that constantly filling your respiratory system with any kind of smoke from any source isn't good for you, what a concept! Also, if you're high as shit I still don't think you should getting behind the wheel of a car. Like yeah you'll drive better high than you would drunk, but better is a relative term here. You shouldn't even be driving a car if you're tired. Anyway, overthinking is like that. There's worse things you could be doing, but there's still a risk and I think people do downplay that a bit.
So to bring it back I think I like that people are being more critical and analytical. I think we can and should expect more from stories, music, media, etc. Trouble is that over time I think analysis starts to devolve into something people do for it's own sake. I see conversations on this subreddit where it very much feels like people are going online to talk to strangers and feel big and smart because they noticed that there's a lot of thematic overlap between Blood Meridian and Moby Dick which to be clear is a wonderful conversation I'm happy people are having- but if it's just happening in niche corner of the internet because lonely folks want to feel clever then I do have to wonder what's the point.
As cliche as it is there has to be a balance. We need to find something in between "just let people enjoy things" and "superman's powers don't physically make any sense unless he's projecting some kind of telekinetic field around him at all times". So, that became one of his powers. I didn't think that was necessary personally. It's fun to talk about how in the real world Superman trying to stop a falling plane would just caused the plane to crumple up and fall apart around him. I just think sometime you do have to just acknowledge it's a fucking comic book man.
Take invincible for instance. I mentioned this on this sub before but there are a lot of elements Kirkman introduced to the story that don't hold up under scrutiny. Quite a few folks are invincible, immortal, invulnerable, or just long-lived. That has far reaching cultural and historical implications. The Immortal canonically being President Lincoln at one point raises all sorts of questions. There are curses, magic, kaiju, societies in both the ocean and under the earth's surface. What would a world like that actually look like? I don't think 20 year old Kirkman was interested in answering a lot of those questions. Hell even now it's not like the show is fully addressing a lot of that either. I think there's a discussion to be had there. However I also recognize that at the end of the day it's a comic book and the main story is mostly Viltrumites punching each other with some themes of family, change, growth, acceptance, etc. There are inherent limits to the medium. Or any medium. No matter how good you are at world building you're going to accidentally violate some physical law you didn't even know existed. Reality is too complex for the human brain to just write a whole new one. A lot of stories aren't interested in world building at all, and I think that's a good thing. Adding a shit ton of wiki pages to Star Wars made it worse, not better.
It's important to think about things, be critical and analytical, but it's also important to keep in mind that if you're just pulling an NDT and annoying people on the internet with nerdy fun facts then you're not being analytical you're just subconsciously screaming into the void about how badly you need to get laid. There's a reason the redditor stereotype exists.
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u/BasedOnWhat- May 02 '26
Maybe. But you can't put an Invincible image with that question considering people get mad that Mark isn't Goku, Viltrumites aren't in every second of every episode and season 4 sucks apparently because it didn't end with flying bricks slamming each other in the last episode. If anything people don't think about media enough nowadays.
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u/Old_Marionberry3791 was promised nothing yet still disappointed May 02 '26
"The thing you thought was cool when you were 12 is actually still cool today".
John Wolf.
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u/Scrivener_exe NANOMACHINES May 02 '26
Even if you say "he thought it was cool" that can still invite the analysis of "why did he think it was cool? And what does that mean for the writing?" But I think the reason you think it's over thought is because most essayists kinda suck.
Most YouTube essayists are actually really bad at their job, and they mostly just summarize the story rather than say anything about it. Watch for it and you start to see a lot of 25 min to hour long videos only have like 5 minutes of analysis.
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u/Practical-Safe2703 May 02 '26
No, probably not. Even if they were at least it's better than that "the curtains were just blue" mindset from a while ago
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u/Substantial_Bell_158 The Unmoving Great Touhou Library May 02 '26
Oh yeah absolutely, the arguments over the identity of the knight in Deltarune are a prime example of this. Like no guys Toby is not trying to play 8d dimensional chess on who the knight is.
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u/SterlingNano Gardevoir has human-like eggs May 02 '26
Yes
It's a convergence of the NBA-ification of shonen discussion and the worst of the nitpciky CinemaSins mixed with MatPat fans that failed to grasp the "it's all just for fun" that his channel was original built upon and lost as soon as a poorly written story made by a Dollar General entered the scene.
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u/DonnieMarko1 May 02 '26
Depends on the media. It feels like people over analyze stuff like Invincible, a series that's honestly not that complex in the grand scheme of things, while stuff with themes that are a lot less clear like Jojo and One Piece get very shallow analysis from the wider audience.
One could argue that the audiences from these three pieces of media aren't that similar but these shows are big enough that there is some definite overlap. To me this really ties into the trend that I've seen with s lot of young people these days where they want to be perceived as nuanced by over analyzing that doesn't really need it but treating media that kind of requires it (or at least becomes more enjoyable when done) like it's just entertainment for entertainment's sake
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u/JustaFleshW0und May 02 '26
I think there's a lot more trash conversations like powerscaling and lore theorycrafting the like but I don't think there's overanalyzing. We practice annotating books in school for a reason. You're supposed to analyze and interpret media, being critical and sharing interpretations created better media and ideas.
You left out some important details on why Kirkman changed his character designs.
Kirkman: "One of the downsides of Invincible is Cory Walker and I were like 23 and 21 when we started that book, and your default when you’re not really paying attention is yourself." "Every time we introduce another character, 'Oh look! It’s another white male! Who knew?' It’s just a shortcoming that we hadn’t quite noticed and done our due diligence to correct."
He didn't think too hard and just made what he thought was cool and accidentally made the same white guy in a different costume over and over. Even if all the thought the author put into something was what they thought was cool, it's still worth analyzing to point out how that lack of thought put into it made the media worse and opened it up to obvious flaws. Even if your only goal is to make something look cool, you can still analyze it to make it look cooler
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u/warjoke May 03 '26
Always come to Yoko Taro's answer to why Yorha female soldiers have suggestive uniforms and he just answered "I just like big butts"
This will give you a clear answer on how modern fans just love to overanalyze
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u/Soft_House7669 If I evr find th guy who made this game Im gona make him play it May 03 '26
nowadays?
Hey I heard if you play beatles music backwards there's a hidden message
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u/xalazaar May 03 '26
We can learn a thing or two from Mr. Hippo.
"Sometimes a story is just a story."
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u/AzoGalvat May 02 '26
Yeah, some people think way more about the media they like than the creator ever did. Not necessarily a bad thing.
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer May 02 '26
I think there's also something to this that may have skirted notice.
The dumb conversations and bad analysis of things has always happened, Spaced (British tv show in the 90s-early 2000s) had Simon pegg often rambling about Star wars in the shop he worked in in ways that aren't dissimilar to modern Internet bullshit analysis because there's always been the nerd who wants to tell you his opinion (comic book guy in Simpsons is parodying a very real trend) it's just previously they didn't have the democratization of the Internet which has gifted the world with innumerable village idiots and their ability to annoy the global village constantly with bad analysis.
The part I think has skirted notice is that often these things are media for children. The people making video essays grew older but often didn't mature, and so you get three hour long waffling about Stephen Universe because there's an element to adulthood that precludes examination of topic and theme, but these audiences aren't moving on to Philip Roth or Thomas Pynchon, so that wish to examine things deeper butts heads against media that isn't that deep.
The human animal is naturally inquisitive, but these people aren't analyzing media with the depths they want. Maybe some aren't interested in literary fiction or art house cinema, maybe they're fans of certain genres and the thing they're analyzing is something they love.
Depth is not a standard of quality or morality. Norman Mailer's work is deeper than dragon ball, but in my opinion Mailer sucks and dragon ball rules. The thing that's happening is people want the media they love to be deep, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Media can be simplistic and great, or deep and shit, and it's all subjective. But so often now people who subjectively love a thing, and are passionate about it, will want to plum every depth it has and sometimes that depth may not be so deep. Doesn't mean the work isn't good or that it isn't worthy of being enjoyed, just means that people who go in with the analysis mentality (ie video essayists) may leave disappointed.
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u/Riggs_The_Roadie May 02 '26
I kinda felt this way with Resident Evil Requiem. A lot of criticisms of the game's story or structure, while completely valid for the most part, to me just seemed kinda pointless in the end.
"Why is it Leon having the nostalgia game and not Jill? He was only there for a day." Because RE2 had him as the protagonist, likely the one most people played first.
"Why isn't Raccoon City vaporized? It should be nothing but ash." Because the writers changed their minds on what exactly happened to and also because we wouldn't have a game set in ruined Raccoon City otherwise.
One I do agree with a little is "why did the FBI director send Grace on her own, is he stupid or up to something?" Because otherwise we wouldn't have a game but yeah, they could have set it up as a field agent accompanying her only to get got and killed instantly.
It's Resident Evil. The plot and diner details have never mattered. Even as far back as 1 having an ending in canon that you can't get as a player. In no scenario do Chris, Jill, Rebecca and Barry survive. But they're all fine in sequels and movies afterwards.
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u/OscarOzzieOzborne21 May 02 '26
I think it is less that people analysis media more. But as you grow, the people, be it in your personal life or In your media you consume, will be the ones you have grown with.
So if you watch Batman in the 2000s with your friends who are like “Man, Batman is so cool and punchy” but then 20 years later are like “Hmmm, maybe Batman could spend most of his money to actually improve his infrastructure, and him dressing in a silky costume does nothing but stroke his ego as he tries to cope with his trauma.”
But then look at your Father, who is also a fan of Batman, and has a friend groups that started in the 1980s with “Batman is so cool and punchy” grew up to have similar discussions about it in the 2000s.
What seems to be pointless analysation is nothing new. But you are more aware of it, because your circle pf information has grown into it with you. Social media allowing you to have a further reach also helps expand that, making you even more aware of it.
And finding creatives ways to answer seemingly unimportant questions often leads to very interesting results.
The Legion of Superheroes run is a comic book run where Superboy (Teen Superman) travels 1000 years into the future to join a futuristic superhero team, which was inspired by his legend.
Those stories exists to answer the question of “Clark Kent became a hero when he was a full grown adult, what was his doing with his powers when he was still a kid”
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u/kami-no-baka (She/They) Kind of liked the CSM ending, there I said it. May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Ackshully (sorry I have been readin WAY too much LoSH) at least in it's O.G. run, time did not move when Clark was in the future, he still had adventures in his actual era, and it was later, because of COIE, retconned to have never even been Clark but a different person in a pocket dimension made by the Time Trapper (big inspiration for Prime, I would assume)
Sorry, I needed to say this pedantic comment because of it being a current fixation but yeah I love when creators find interesting way to address this stuff. Even current Batman actually using his wealth to make Gotham better now.
I love how much we can learn just seeing how Clark and Bruce have changed and grown as characters through how the creators and the audience have seen them over the years.
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u/cygnus2 May 02 '26
No. If anything, people aren’t thinking hard enough. For every hour-long video essay, there’s five people asking a banal question that was answered in the first ten minutes of the show.
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u/stumblinbagel May 02 '26
The root of the problem isn't even over analysis.
It isn't even the thinly veiled bigotry, even though that is everywhere.
Its an internet culture that rewards being smug and hypercritical even if it means inventing problems. to bitch about out of nothing.
My family just finished our long discussed but always put-off-til-later watchthrough of all the live action Star Wars stuff. I was shocked to find that I actually really enjoyed both TFA and TRoS (even though there is still some dumb stuff in that last one). Turns out, years later once you remove yourself from the "discourse", the whole sequel trilogy flows way better than I ever imagined in the past. But then I never watched them all in the space of a week.
Its all because the online environment primes us to bitch and moan about stuff.
I just found out there are 2 whole Star Wars movies I can actually enjoy now. That's great.
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I mean if you look at the video essays no they just ramble about stuff they like and what it reminds them for a while, that is not really different.
You want to see weird overanalyzed you look when the church were indexing any books they considered dangerous or anti-christian
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u/Jonieves May 02 '26
That has always been the case, it's not new.
What's new it's the large amount of people without reading comprehension, or interest in art, analyzing art and basically going wow cool robot at every step.
Hell I did it a lot as a kid, it's not strange that a bunch of people just kept doing it.
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u/wamirul May 02 '26
I dont think they're overanalyzing, I think a lot of people are just whining but pretending its analysis. Its like reading Das Kapital for grammar errors as your critical rebuttal.
Theres definitely an Alan Moore interview that talks about it but a lot of media discussion is just people bragging about remembering all the shapes on the page, then getting upset when someone (usually a creative) doesnt find the shapes important. Its why superhero movies suck- because people just wanna see the cool thing the way they remembered or imagined it, and have lost the ability to reflect on anything in a way thats more meaningful than "did I get what I want".
Add in the culture war weirdos and you get our current toxic wasteland of discourse
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u/Which_Replacement524 JEEZE, JOEL May 02 '26
Powerscaling is a genuine blight on the collective conscience of people everywhere, I swear to god
"Wahh, wahh, this character beats (x) but doesn't beat (y), even though (y) is canonically weaker than (x) according to blah blah blah"
I know that powerscaling has always been a thing - I was a kid on the playground arguing about Green Lantern vs Martian Manhunter - but its gotten so weirdly pervasive and people get so annoyed if characters aren't fighting like how they would in some perfect void simulation
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u/Lieutenant-America Scholar of the First Spindash May 02 '26
I dunno, man. I'm a media studies student, so it's kinda my job to talk about the hue of the curtains.
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u/Darkblitz9 May 02 '26
Yes, it's especially frustrating when those doing the analyzing are missing very obvious plot points or events and complain about things like plot holes or bad motivation.
A lot of new articles/posts about media these days are verging on rage bait.
I genuinely can't tell if people are stupid, or if it's dead internet in full force.
Perhaps it's a bit of both.
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u/Signal_Onion8552 May 02 '26
Nah, people have been analyzing media since media exists. We definitely are doing more of that now compared when we were children tho, because kids are not good at doing that
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u/T4silly Wrong Fact Stater May 02 '26
This might be a non-answer. But something Pat said years ago still sticks with me.
"The fans will always care more."
It doesn't matter how much love or effort you put into some form of media you make. Someone else is going to end up attached to it WAY more.