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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Terrabrand said:
Not knowing isn't something to be sorry for, and my apologies if my post came across overly harsh- my point is simply 'yeah you're missing something kinda big' if you personally haven't even heard of what is arguably the single largest ship, ever.
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I'm gonna mangle it, but I've definitely seen a quote from a sociologist or whatever who summed up the origins of shipping as "You know that scene in Wrath of Khan where Spock is dying and Kirk is pressed up against the glass trying to reach him? Slash is when we take away the glass."
 
Personally, I don't really like Kirk/Spock, if only because it seems like a really bad idea for a captain to be in a relationship with their first officer. It's the same reason why I was happy that Janeway/Chakotay never actually happened. Hell, TNG did an entire episode about why a captain dating a member of the crew is an extremely bad idea.

With that all said, I wouldn't be opposed Spock/Bones, it is only logical.
 
Rhaegar I said:
if only because it seems like a really bad idea for a captain to be in a relationship with their first officer
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You're not wrong, but shipping's about interesting ideas much more often than good ideas and in the wide range of fantastical scenarios fiction offers you can have characters overcome a lot of major relationship obstacles by working together.

Also yeah, can confirm Jenny here, I've been seeing Spirk content out in the wild within the last week on Tumblr with no particular effort to seek it out.
 
I still favor them significantly above the punny stuff like RWBY has, those are impenetrable from an outsider perspective. X/Y or X x Y are the overall winner imo, there's some discourse I find tedious about who should be on the left or right and what the positions signify but that happens with portmanteaus too.

...in theory, at least. In practice, portmanteaus are fewer letters so guess which I default to.
 
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Jenny said:
Agreed, tbh, but I think that ship has sailed, so to speak.
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Half of them sound like something you'd regret stepping in.

And half of them sound like an unpleasant way to injure yourself.

"AUUUGH!"
"What happened?"
"I stepped in some spirk and spirked my back out!"

(So, if you've done the math, that leaves 25% that don't sound like either of the above; this group can be further divided into "finds unique ways to sound bad" and "just sounds generically bad"...)

DanZapman said:
I still favor them significantly above the punny stuff like RWBY has, those are impenetrable from an outsider perspective. X/Y or X x Y are the overall winner imo, there's some discourse I find tedious about who should be on the left or right and what the positions signify but that happens with portmanteaus too.
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Portmanteaus are pretty hit or miss on recognizability too, IMO. Yuunoha is pretty easy if you know what fandom you're looking at, but I'm not sure I'd have gotten 'spirk' if the thread hadn't already been talking about Kirk/Spock.

I was so annoyed back in the day by ordering debates that I decided I would always go by alphabetical order.

I admit that I'm not sure I'd give as much leeway to the punny names if Hazredous Interruptions hadn't done something hilarious with them.

-Morgan.
 
Morganite said:
Portmanteaus are pretty hit or miss on recognizability too, IMO. Yuunoha is pretty easy if you know what fandom you're looking at, but I'm not sure I'd have gotten 'spirk' if the thread hadn't already been talking about Kirk/Spock.

I was so annoyed back in the day by ordering debates that I decided I would always go by alphabetical order.
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That's true, but in my experience I don't recognize nearly any ship name unless I'm at least casually familiar with the fandom and the space where I'm familiar with the fandom but not with the characters has been pretty narrow for me at least. Alphabetical order's a solid default, the problem is as always convincing online randos to go along with it.
 
DanZapman said:
You're not wrong, but shipping's about interesting ideas much more often than good ideas and in the wide range of fantastical scenarios fiction offers you can have characters overcome a lot of major relationship obstacles by working together.
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And if you like reading ships involving a captain and the first officer, that's your business. But as far as I'm concerned, the only way to overcome that obstacle is for them to not be in the same chain of command, like one or both of them resigning. Otherwise, I'd only read such a story if it makes it abundantly clear why such a relationship is actually a really bad idea for them and the rest of the crew.
 
It could be Pokémon shipping, which gets rather absurd. Or at least, it was absurd when I looked into it several years ago. Honestly have no idea if they're using the same ship name scheme.
 
Bea said:
Agreed, really. Like it's honestly really frustrating to me that it feels like "CLOSE FRIENDSHIPS EXIST YOU KNOW" gets used as a talking point against same-gender relationships all the time, but when it comes to heterosexual relationships, I feel like I largely, though not entirely, hear crickets?
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I've been fairly consistently asking for "close friendships, not romance" for relationships of any gender combination, yes. I also admit it sometimes feels like I'm the only person who thinks this way.

I do acknowledge it was this thread (I think it might have been you?) who taught me why I get different amounts of pushback when I apply the "close friendships please" to homosexual pairings than when I apply it to heterosexual pairings: to the latter, it's just one potential dish taken away from a feast, but to the former, it might be the only food they have.

Tangentially I've also complained about how it seems like every instance of romance inevitably includes sex, or at least the promise of potential sex, and it weirds me out considerably, but I haven't received much feedback on that opinion yet.
 
Adloquium said:
Is this based on considering the games as a whole, or is it "Oblivion is a better product as a game than Skyrim"?

Because I personally much prefer Skyrim's gameplay, but I acknowledge this is my own subjective opinion. I didn't like Oblivion's levelling (and loot) system at all.
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The story, quests, setting, and world are better. Skyrim's mechanics are better but that's all it has.
Fey'lya said:
TBH I agree with this one at least about the plot - I really enjoyed playing "Standard Fantasy Story but you're not the protagonist, you're the wizard advisor". Martin Septim is the chosen one, you're there to sidequest and help him figure out WTF. It was fun!

Leveling system was janky as fuck though.
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Yeah! It's a lot of fun! You can even do it in a spooky evil outfit branded with the sign of a dark deity!
 
Personally speaking, I prefer Nuts and Dolts over Ruby/Penny or, even worse, Penby. Yes, it's harder for newcomers to get but it's far more amusing than just X/Y and far better looking than a mashup of their names.
 
WestOrEast said:
Personally speaking, I prefer Nuts and Dolts over Ruby/Penny or, even worse, Penby. Yes, it's harder for newcomers to get but it's far more amusing than just X/Y and far better looking than a mashup of their names.
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There's actual dozens of characters in RWBY, I'm not memorizing every individualized ship name even if they weren't longer to type. That ship gets to be Runny during the vanishingly rare occasions I talk about it.
 
ApocalypticFish said:
It could be Pokémon shipping, which gets rather absurd. Or at least, it was absurd when I looked into it several years ago. Honestly have no idea if they're using the same ship name scheme.
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There was a time, long ago in ages past, when I was a kid with too much free time and not enough to do beside read every article on Bulbapedia that I knew all the pokemon ship names. They're stupidly impenetrable.

It looks like most of them have been consolidated into a single article on "List of major animated series ships" but there used to be dozens of separate articles with bespoke ship names documenting all the "evidence" for any obscure pairing you could think of.
 
Jensaarai said:
... 'Kock' (Kirk/Spock) isn't much better :V
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If you are trying to convince me not to break from using / notation only for everything* in the name of a cheap laugh, you have failed.

*Except Lyrical Nanoha/RWBY crossovers.

Adloquium said:
I do acknowledge it was this thread (I think it might have been you?) who taught me why I get different amounts of pushback when I apply the "close friendships please" to homosexual pairings than when I apply it to heterosexual pairings: to the latter, it's just one potential dish taken away from a feast, but to the former, it might be the only food they have.
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Is it too much to ask for both?

Which I suppose can be read in two ways. With fanfic, it's possible to have the friendship fics and the romance fics. But on the other hand, no matter the genders involved, I much prefer romantic relationships that start as friendships. I sometimes (read: whenever reminded of it) find it disturbing how much of the romance novel section has plots that go like "They hate each other, then they bang."

-Morgan.
 
as a very aromantic person who is usually quite grumpy about the prevalence of shipping and romance in Everything Ever, I try to advocate for more important platonic relationships without undermining the general scarcity of queer ships. this can be tricky in bigger fandom spaces, but even when it feels like there is a big m/m ship just filling all the space... fandoms are really just sets of nested bubbles, and stepping outside of them really makes it clear how little of an impact most have

I have a lot of friends who write rarepairs and specific kinds of dynamics, and I will say those and slowburn stuff tend to feel much more plausible and engaging overall. the majority of het romance that's aimed at a broad general audience leans on lots of lazy, "everyone will know this" tropes, like the Constant Arguments That's Actually Flirting. sometimes queerer stuff falls into this too (there's this particular m/m archetype that feels roughly as shallow, and can be easily welded into basically anything ever) but I think any portrayal is aware it has to provide a bit more basis for its audience

I guess I should come up with an unpopular opinion... well, aside from my extremely subjective personal feelings, I think the idea of "found family" has been flattened and smoothed out into a bland husk in more recent fandom attitudes. I can only dig into it with fellow weirdos nowadays
 
Adloquium said:
Tangentially I've also complained about how it seems like every instance of romance inevitably includes sex, or at least the promise of potential sex, and it weirds me out considerably, but I haven't received much feedback on that opinion yet.
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Well, as in most things, I can only give you my personal opinion - of course someone who is asexual but not aro would agree vehemently. But, in my personal conception, what love or romance IS, is deep friendship plus physical desire. It is exactly that physical desire that puts it from the friendship category into the love or romance category. So then it's just "by definition" issue.

Now this is not to devalue romance, mind. Rather, I guess one could see it as valuing friendships - that the step that goes beyond "just" friendship is in fact merely sexuality.

(And as a result I absolutely agree with you that, for me, romances should start with friendship or at least understanding and I am not a fan at all of 'enemies to lovers')
 
To refer to the prior discussion, it's undeniable that there is a massive scarcity of same sex relationships in modern media and the progress that has been made is still enormously limited.

However, let's be real. The existence of buddy cop movies does not mean that strong degrees of male intimacy are remotely mainstream. Male intimacy is enormously marginalized. Not as much as a same sex relationships but come on, there's a reason we use "bromance" to refer to any kind of noticeably intimate male relationships while no one would seriously use "girlmance" for women. Men are assumed by default (in western anglophone culture- I don't want to speak too broadly) to be more restrained in their relationships and in some cases the concept of intimacy is often outright derided. Bromance usually isn't (usually) used derogatorily but there are so many other less flattering terms that can and are applied to men who are 'too' intimate in their platonic relationships. And while I have no trouble acknowledging that a large amount of shaming (but not all) is done by men themselves, that doesn't make it less real. Media is a reflection of society and many works are very careful in how they depict male intimacy and that's a shame.

The desire for male platonic relationships can be weaponized against gay relationships but that doesn't mean that the desire itself is bad. Progress has been made but it's still a major and endemic problem in our society. Some people take this issue and abuse it but that doesn't mean it's not real, it just means we should push back against bad actors.

TLDR: Male friendships are good and I'm happy that Cap and Bucky are just friends (though I could do with less obligatory heterosexuality, Cap didn't need a random relationship with some woman to have completed arc). I would also be happy with more gay relationships between men, the two desires are not mutually exclusive.
 
DanZapman said:
That's true, but in my experience I don't recognize nearly any ship name unless I'm at least casually familiar with the fandom and the space where I'm familiar with the fandom but not with the characters has been pretty narrow for me at least. Alphabetical order's a solid default, the problem is as always convincing online randos to go along with it.
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A/B you can try to google the two names and have some chance of finding out what it's talking about from general sources. Other patterns...you'd probably have to find someone using the same terminology to talk about the same ship and then figure out from the context of that what they're actually talking about.
 
As much as it was entertaining... I think the last two episodes of Adi's Devil May Cry anime kinda ruins it... Just... Sorta baffling choices made at the very end when it was going so well beforehand (I'll probably go into detail a bit later once my thoughts digest a bit)

Edit: do I still recommend it... Yes but tepidly... Be warned that message wise the final two episodes go off the rails in a bad way



Okay let me talk about the problems with the ending
I was floored when episode 7 seemingly made a anti-migrant and dare I fucking say Anti-Palistinian message and are heroes agree with it (with our villain "The White Rabbit" arguing against that... Who is the heroes again???)

Dante basically said (and I'm paraphrasing a bit here) "It Sucks that you Makai'ens are oppressed and genocided... But you'll do the same to us if we let you into our world" this came out of nowhere, Rabbit doesn't argue that it's a hostile takeover, just that he needs to save his oppressed people (he admits The Demon Mundus will probably notice and start trying to do raids and stuff on earth which MIGHT cause human casualties but the refugees really need to escape Mundu's Evil Empire and Dante basically said "Sucks to be you"

Lady upon being confronted with the fact she killed Rabbits family (Which included small children and babies) blames Rabbit for bringing them into our world because "They Were Just Demons" (She learned they are not all evil monsters in fucking episode 5... But she just forgot I guess)

Action and budget also took a nose dive in my opinion (zero impact sword strikes on CG Angelo... Guys at least make the sparks a bit bigger and choose a better strike sound then "CLINK")
So yep I was floored but maybe it's my fault for tying political messages into something that Adi Shankar tied a political message to... Unfortunately it's a right wing message it feels like


Budget kinda goes up just a bit which is nice, my expectations was subverted in a good way when Rabbit mutated into a hulking monstrosity... And didn't lose his mind and become feral (I will miss him looking like a stylish Rabbit man tho)

Enzo dies in a nice call back "I'll take a blade for ya kid" he even went out bravely trying to save Dante


Dante gets a fight which I realize is really rare in his own series, but I won't knock it since it's hard to get stakes for a fight when the protagonist is effectively invincible besides a few occasions and times when he starts running out of Stamina (I.E he stops regening... Which I assume means he's closer to actual death)

The DevilTrigger looks like it's finished compared to when we first saw it so that's really great...

But I still gotta talk about the bad parts namely, LADY DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING AND TURNED ON DANTE RIGHT AT THE END. By this point Baines is opening a portal to Hell for his own wicked ambition and Lady still sides with him (Note he just killed the last and most sympathetic member of DARKCOM Which Lady was the leader of because he outlived his usefulness (She doesn't question what happened to that guy when she gets back to Baines?))

Nelo Angelo apears... And it's Vergil... Now this might sound like a strange complaint because Vergil was trapped in Nelo Angelo in the first game but I mean HES LITERALLY NELO ANGELO, he's not trapped and is willingly serving Mundus... That made me unreasonably frustrated with the episode ending (Note all the really bad things that happened to Vergil had Mundu:s hands in it... He literally murdered Eva who's Vergil's Mom, but oddly enough Mundus comes off as Weirdly less Evil then Baines as most of the things Mundus does (Like kidnapping and mind controlling a orphan and killing his own soldiers for outliving their usefulness) is given to Baines for some reason I guess

Also the final song should have been Holiday... Not American Idiot

Also the creator Adi Shankar is a actually horrible person politically I.E he supports Fascism (Trump, Modi and other Fascist's) which again is real odd considering before the final two episodes it felt strongly left leaning before pivoting towards the right

(Who knows maybe he's a nice guy in real life but politically he supports Fascism despite being Indian... Like Im shocked that he likes Modi but Supporting Trump feels like he's setting himself up for bad things considering how Racist the Trump Administration is towards Foreigners)





So yep Devil May Cry The New Anime left me Flabbergasted yet entertained despite the complaints

Also Rabbit is a actually great villain and he (Mostly) Did nothing wrong (Id argue he'd make a better hero than the actual heroes)
 
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