I'm at a point where I usually have an easy time picking up subtext in media, or general context if I've missed previous material. whenever I hear someone say "I have no idea what's going on" with regards to themes-heavy works, I don't understand why they're not picking up what the author is putting down
I remember when dan olson tried streaming kingdom hearts 3 without having played past games, and he got a lot of comments like "oh man you're gonna be so confused." but as soon as he watched the intro, he said "nah I can get the broad strokes of what's going on here" and his preliminary guess of the material was almost entirely correct. maybe some people have an easier time filling in those gaps
(the tradeoff for me is likely that trying to visualize anything in a book is extremely difficult)
