The important thing to remember is that, when Shrek came out in 2001, its subversive, ironical tone was groundbreaking because it was up against a Disney machine that played everything completely straight (notwithstanding “Emperor’s New Groove”, which came out a few months earlier). Then Disney itself bought into that tone and hegemonized it, and now, movies that actually take their own fucking characters and premises seriously feel like a breath of fresh air.
@mage8 This is why I don’t actually think it’s always useful to say that art is good or bad; sometimes a work of art is just out of phase with the cultural ecosystem.
One thing about Shrek versus its commodification is, like most such appropriations, it was done without an understanding of why the ironic tone worked. The people who drive commodification only know how to look for the “trick” and in Shrek they saw this as “characters have modern awareness and make jokes about stupid things in fairy tales,” but what they overlooked is that the ironic tone was a veneer to add something fun and interesting to an otherwise sincere movie. All the silly fairy tale jokes were a means to an end for a solid, kind story. But of course you can’t package and sell the latter, so they took the superficial irony and made it the product.
I think the best way to fight this AI shit is just to support actual creators. The cat’s out of the bag with AI; our data’s going to be taken and used without our consent whether we like it or not, so maybe we should put efforts into holding up those who create their own stuff. Comment/interact on people’s writings and art. Make it worth them posting; make it clear that what the people are interested in isn’t generated stuff, but things that people have actually done themselves. It’s a drop in the ocean, but showing creators that it’s them that deserve the support at least serves to cut off a tiny bit of oxygen to these AI hogs - and make a difference to creatives who are trying against hope to share with a community.
playing through farewell to get 1 line of optional dialog for a video essay and every time strategywiki says ‘choose the wrong option here for a minimal penalty and some fucking insane banter’ i cannot fucking resist
I said this at the tail end of a rant but I think it’s really good so it’s getting its own post. Way too many fucking people seem to think TERFs exist because they feminism’d too hard and accidentally started hating trannies. In reality, transmisogyny is a foundational part of colonial and christian society, and TERFs are just people who shaped their feminism around it.
in such a beautiful and diverse world i’m so glad to see that one thing stands true across all cultures no matter the time period: getting really fucking worked up about sports
miki - 25 - she/her 💕
im joining the war on autism on the side of autism
ALT
