Hellion
For those who missed it...
by , 17th July 2012 at 05:46 PM (1373 Views)
...this was my response to this blog post, where the hatred against users who criticize Iris was on display.
I think the point I'm making still stands: if you disagree with someone, you disagree with their ideas, with their opinions. Portray their point fairly, explain how you disagree (or agree but reach a different conclusion) with the contents of their posts and that way you can actually have a discussion. If you can't do that, then don't subject yourselves to these posts, put those users on your ignore list and be done with them.
Not everybody's going to agree, think the same, like the same things, want the same things in a show and that's okay. Acting like there's only one way to think and that everyone who doesn't share in that is crazy, irrational and provocative is straight up bullshit and contributes to the problem rather than help reach a solution.
See, I don't mind people criticizing the Iris critics, but if you're gonna do that, actually have the intellectual honesty to portray their arguments fairly. BW's pacing is actually one of the thing that has been received the best across the board throughout the series. People have praised the rhythm, have liked not having to wait forever between gyms and tournaments, etc. I haven't seen one person complaining that there aren't endless training episodes and fillers.people who can't get over the fact that the writers aren't devoting fifty bajillion episode to "character development"
I think if you asked Iris critics, myself included, most of them would actually agree with you that oodles of on-screen training isn't essential to good storytelling and "character development". I'll take an example from a show that is the pinnacle of good writing: Xena: Warrior Princess. :P More specifically the character of Gabrielle. She starts out with no fighting skills whatsoever and ends up pretty much matching Xena in skills by the show's end. They showed her getting some basic staff training briefly in an episode, showed Xena teaching her things in passing here and there, but there was never a "Gabrielle spends the day training" episode cause that would have been crap. But it still felt very believable because there was a gradual progression throughout the show, among other developments with her character. Because that's what makes things believable: a sense of progression, showing the character getting better gradually over time. Most of the training criticisms were centered around Kibago, because that's the thing, you never got the sense that Kibago progressed throughout the show. It's consistently portrayed as being a totally inept crybaby who can't battle when put into a real battle, but gets random powerups when its convenient to and discarded afterwards. There's no sense of progress, of growth or anything, both on-screen and off-screen. That's what the criticism is for most Iris critics that I read in the Animé section, not the pacing or lack of episodes dedicated to training.
Again, let's make blanket statements about Iris critics, a statement not actually backed by anything and that only serves to demean and discard everything they're saying as irrational and worthless instead of actually trying to understand and discuss the criticism. What you're trying to pull is a logical fallacy, attacking the character of a person making an argument to discredit the argument. There's a latin expression for that.Iris' main crime in the eyes of the complainers is not being Misty/May/Dawn (whichever of the girls the complainer most favors).
I liked Haruka and Hikari a lot. I think neither was perfect, I think each lacked what the other had in spades. Haruka was entertaining, Hikari was compelling and when both their sagas were over, I was actually glad to see them leave the show before they became stale and I got bored with them. I, and a lot of the Iris critics I've talked to, welcomed the idea of a female character that was different, that wasn't going to be Haruka 2.0 or Hikari 2.0 or Kasumi 2.0, and totally accepted that Iris' story was going to unfold differently, wasn't going to get as much focus, etc. The problem I see raised in posts criticizing Iris is how well that story is executed within those parameters, are the things unique to Iris working well for her character and the overall story, not about the lack of elements from past characters.
Originally Posted by Gliscor'd
:P
I don't even know what that's about. I see people who actually really like when Satoshi and other characters have evolved and powerful pokémon, because they usually capture them when they're small, battle with them, work with them, grow with them (which is the whole theme of the show) so that at the end of the day, a powerful trainer with a powerful pokémon is great because there's a sense that they worked and achieved this level as opposed to just have it be handed as a freebie at the most convenient time.were being a powerful trainer with powerful pokémon was somehow bad.
That's yet another logical fallacy. You're completely evacuating the context, trying to portray the Iris critics as wanting to establish a universal rule that will be true in every case, when that's again not the argument they're putting forward at all. Nobody ever said, "Pokémon should never ever learn a move mid-battle." People said, "That was cheap in this situation and only this situation because of the unique set of circumstance of what came before, how it unfolded, what it means for the character as a whole, etc."Oh no! Kibago learned a new move without training! Um, what? So Pokemon can only learn moves when it's not some real battle?
The writers could show us signs that it's happening off-screen with a general sense of progress in the characters. There's not, therefore I don't see why I should assume there's off-screen training from Iris.Just accept that it happens off screen.
And we saw a slow and steady progression that was very believable. That's not the case here. That's what the criticism is, not that there isn't a lot of training episodes.That's where Musashi clearly did her Contest training in DP.
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By the way, I think there's some valid criticism to be made about how myself and other Iris critics sometimes act. I think we sometimes, in preview threads, and that's something I've been guilty of, put too much emphasis on how crap Iris' storyline is, which it is, but sometimes to the detriment of the episode itself. Like in the BW092 thread, yes it's cheap, yes Iris never should have made it past the first round, yeah the writers can't seem to actually have a sense of accountability for the character, and yes it's going to be awful if Iris wins and just add to the bullshit that is her character but in all of that, we barely discussed the actual battle, what strategies could be used, how it'll look, what other matchups we might see in the episode, how would the other characters fare, etc.
That being said, one criticism you can't make about Iris critics is accuse them of hating fellow users. Personally, I find it boring when there's too much agreement. I like the debate, I like the argument and I treat other's arguments and responses with respect and humour, as do a lot of Iris critics. But when I see personal attacks being thrown around in reaction to opinions about a fictional character in a children's show, when I see fans of a character having a deep seething hatred for other users just because they respectfully express a negative opinion about the character completely within the rules, when I see blogs like this that just fuel the feud and enable users hating on other users, I think that tops everything in terms of ridiculousness. One thing that I am sick of seeing is everyone (both sides of the issue) playing the martyr card. The thing that I find the most ridiculous is seeing users who hate people who criticize their pet character, yet insist on subjecting themselves to these opinions just so they can complain about other users and how they're sick of their posts. If you don't want to read someone's posts or feel hurt, attack, angry, then there's a tool, it's called the ignore list, use it.
Simple as that.
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