continuing off my frustration with the way some people talk about ff16 from last night: i feel like i am constantly exposed to takes from people who are maybe a few years younger than me and who like the same series as me, except they like them in an extremely meathead shounen fan powerscaling kind of way. where they'll be like "yoooo this is PEAK FICTION" about the Badass Moments where a character shows off how cool and strong they are. like, clive punching god in ff16, or shadow the hedgehog using a gun, or optimus prime ripping someone to shreds in the michael bay movies, that sort of thing
and it's like, yeah, i love really hype action scenes as much as the next person. i also watch shounen anime. but like... these works of fiction are not just these isolated Badass Moments. there are some really cool boss fights in ff16, but to get there to have to slog through dozens of hours of godawful storytelling about wizard slavery and repetitive side quests. yeah, the opening cinematic of shadow the hedgehog is fun, but then you actually have to play the rest of the game past I Am All of Me, or think for even five seconds about how stupid the story and the idea of giving shadow realistic firearms are. yeah, some of the fights in the bayformers movies can be kinda cool if, y'know, you can actually make out what's happening on screen, and also you ignore the hours of juvenile humor and the fact that it's a bastardization of optimus's character to just turn him into the awesome murder guy
this is often just the result of nostalgia, but the ff16 revisionism a mere nine months later shows that this isn't just a matter of people being defensive over stuff they grew up with. it feels like people really want to divorce these gifable moments from the context of the works they come from so they can call them peak fiction. but this type of shit hits so much harder if they're in support of a larger story where the WHOLE THING is good! this shouldn't be complicated! a Badass Moment isn't going to hit the same in a thing where i hate the characters and/or the story that built up to that climax! there's better stuff out there!!!
