• faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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    17 hours ago

    I propose it’s not the fiction that’s posing unrealistic standards, but the people who can’t tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction, is by definition, unrealistic.

    • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 hours ago

      Fiction can easily be realistic- You’re thinking of fantasy which is unrealistic. Fiction means it’s not a true story, not that it can’t be realistic

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        30 minutes ago

        “can be” ⇏ “has to be”

        And it’s not fiction that sets high standards, but the people watching it, that are doing so.

        Now you may say that the people are setting those standards only because they are watching said stuff.
        But that is just rephrasing, “the people watching fiction are incapable of having their own imagination”.

        Back in school, I had a classmate that had a much greater height than others, due to steroid usage.
        Now if you say that his parents did that because they watched “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, I’ll say it was not released yet and I have no reason to believe that they bought comic strips from another country and went ahead and made a ‘gag’ piece a basis for their standards.

      • TomAwsm@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        If you swap the words “fiction” and “fantasy” in your post, it makes the same amount of sense.

        • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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          4 hours ago

          Have you ever read historical fiction? Stories like jane eyre are not real but they’re sensible. A story can be fiction and realistic. You can write a short story based on stuff you’ve researched and seen and it’s still fiction.

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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        5 hours ago

        Nah, fiction needs unrealistic elements. You can have realism in fiction, but fiction is defined by its deviance from fact. If a movie were completely realistic, itd be a documentary.

        • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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          4 hours ago

          It is possible to have a realistic story in fiction. For example, Mad Men is a tv series that’s pretty grounded in history but the characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research. It’s not a documentary, it’s fiction, but quite realistic.

          • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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            2 hours ago

            I envision ‘realistic’ as a spectrum. If it is 100% realistic, it’s a documentary, if it’s 100% unrealistic, it’s probably a fantasy movie or something, and most works of fiction fall somewhere between.

            characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research

            Like, you understand this is my point, right? The plot is not real, and that’s what makes it fictional?

            • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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              2 hours ago

              What you’re saying is sound and I agree the plot not being real is fiction; the only problem is you said fiction required unrealistic elements and most people see “unrealistic” as basically fantasy

              • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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                2 hours ago

                See, I hear ‘fantasy’ and think of orks and fairies and shit, but I can think of many non-fantasy movies that have incredibly unrealistic aspects.

                Like, idk, James Bond’s gizmos are completely unrealistic and break the laws of physics, but it’s not fantasy to me.

                • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  2 hours ago

                  I’d argue James bond as a franchise is basically a hypermasculine fantasy and the gadgets are pretty much a tech fantasy within it. Breaking laws of physics is completely unrealistic, but the point I was making was that you don’t need to do any of these things- you could write a story about how you went to the gym and broke a treadmill (even though you didn’t) and it would be fiction. The bar to fiction is not that high.

                  • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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                    2 hours ago

                    Yes, it’s not a high bar at all. It just requires slight divergence with reality. Some degree of unreality, if you will.

            • Soupbreaker@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              Well, it’s inaccurate. Fiction does not require unrealistic elements. There’s just scads of fiction out there—across multiple genres—that’s set in a real time and place, and doesn’t involve anything fantastical.

              • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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                2 hours ago

                Fiction does not require unrealistic elements.

                If it is entirely realistic it is no longer fiction. Ergo, fiction needs some degree of unreality. I don’t see how that’s controversial, haha.

    • LettyWhiterock@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      The issue is the many people who complain when a game or other media have women that look like actual women. Calling them men because they don’t look like the perfectly sexualized women in media that they’re used to.

      Yes they can’t tell the difference, but they’re still doing real harm.

      Banning sexualization is not the solution, but the prevalence of it in media to the point it is expected and people get angry when it’s gone is a problem as well.

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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        7 hours ago

        Yeah, I really think it’s a type of media illiteracy, and it’s much larger than just sexualization.

        Like, I grew up in the church, and remember when they adopted the Left Behind novels into church canon as prophecy. It’s the same kind of not being able to tell fact from fiction, and my parent’s church encouraged it because they were a bunch of con artists.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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          25 minutes ago

          Yea that’s all churches. Even the good ones with preachers/etc that try to help. They could have the community without the brainwashing, but then there wouldn’t be devout fools opening their wallets every week!

    • Jakule17@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      You said sexualised movies, I thought you meant movies in which human actors are jacked, sometimes to an unhealthy extent. That’s also the problem with a lot of actresses and also influencers, who are after plastic surgeries, in the perfect light, with a lot of makeup on, posing unrealistic standards for impressionable kids

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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        7 hours ago

        Somebody else said that, not me. But regardless, it’s still a problem with people not being able to recognize fact from fiction. Makeup is not the problem, the problem are people who expect you to to look like that without makeup. Boob jobs are not the problem, the problem are people who think there’s something wrong with you if you’ve not had one.

        If they replaced everything with mocap tomorrow so actors didn’t have to look the part any more, the problem would still be that people look at Marvel and think it’s an accurate depiction of reality.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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            13 minutes ago

            I’d say a touch of bigotry, too. Some people genuinely do not like ugly people to the point of it being a freaking mental disorder…

          • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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            2 hours ago

            Like I said in another comment

            Yeah, I really think it’s a type of media illiteracy, and it’s much larger than just sexualization.