Comradeship // Freechat

I'm not gonna lie I feel like a lot of people who say they "get" some piece of art actually don't and are just saying that to fit in. And like I don't think haikus are some sort of genius format, in fact they are very easy to make (even more so in English). The simplicity is part of the beauty because it forces you to talk about simple things and be evocative, but it's not some exercise in genius.

And some people are on a whole other level from you or I, absolutely. Personally I kinda experience art the same way you do. My brain is too analytical to get lost in the experience. And a lot of art is made to be consumed. I was reading the Count of Monte Cristo and it doesn't have any pretense that it's trying to be transformative or revolutionary; back in those days (same with Les Mis), writers were published in newspapers one chapter at a time, so they had an incentive to write long stories and popular stories, i.e. stories that the people would read as they would drive newspaper sales. Monte Cristo is good and I really should get back into it, but I was actually surprised at how easy it was to follow. It doesn't try to win any points for style, it just tells a story. You could absolutely transpose it to another media form, it doesn't "have" to be a novel.

But I don't think the way you experience art is wrong per se or needs fixing. It's an elitist point of view to say "well this went over your head, but not mine!" like some people do (whether they say it flat out or not). I've always had trouble connecting with the deeper themes of a story exactly because for the life of me I can't really connect deeper than what the novel/game/etc. is showing me. One game that kinda broke that away from me was Paranormasight, it's mostly a VN but it's on the shorter side, I binged it over 3 days after having it sitting on my computer for over a year, it was that good. After that I downloaded a bunch of classics (the When they Cry series, Raging Loop, The House at Fata Morgana if you want the recs). My next read is probably going to be Romance of the Three Kingdoms after I (surprise surprise) played the new Dynasty Warriors; the dialogue is basically lifted from the novel.

Also some stuff truly is just slop that gets passed for some sort of genius because it's big in scale. Like Skyrim's story is nothing to write home about. I remember getting to the Forlorn in whatever city they're in, and they're a popular Indigenous resistance movement to the Nords, which they consider to be invaders in their land. Lots of parallels, lots of interesting things to explore. But then the game explores none of that, and you kinda have to make up your own headcannon for what you want the Forlorn to be. It's good that they included this faction but that's about it. There's nothing special about it and it's okay to say so and not fawn over a piece of media just because it's a big name.

I think maybe we need the right piece of art to connect with to start exploring that side of ourselves. Ultimately for me what's interesting is the process of getting there, it makes me think about how the author/s must have gone about it. RoTK has genius writing because of the stakes at play. You follow the best commanders of the time and get a glimpse into their actual stratagems, way of thinking, etc. And of course there's a ton of characters in that book. Everyone in that book is a strong character and a genius in their own way, and they are pitted against each other, each standing on their own, and I'm just here thinking... how did the author even go about writing that? Like damn. Compare the strategy writing to Romancing Saga 2 (a mission I played recently lol the strategy made no sense and it was hailed by the characters as being a genius thing), or the Napoleon movie from not long ago - I remember critics didn't really like that Napoleon was just talking about strategy but you didn't actually see any of it on screen.

But I digress lol.

But as with everything, you must struggle with it if you want to deeply understand it, and you'll understand it in your own way. The story in Paranormasight stayed with me past playing the game and I started thinking about how they integrated video game mechanics into a VN, the themes that the game explored, etc. It led me to a discussion and I realized that good horror is centered around family drama, and beyond the "oooh scary monster" it tells a story of family drama. With that, I deepened my understanding of horror a little bit more, and it was the perfect story to get me thinking about the deeper themes of their story.

With all of that said, I have been exploring my artistic side more recently. I think a lot of it is simply age. With age, I started understanding some art better. As a kid I didn't like poetry at all, and now I might enjoy a verse or so if I come across it. But again there's a lot of slop out there too!

PS: a haiku I wrote a long time ago :)

Snow-capped firs at night
    Grandfather in the cabin.
Inside, crackling heat.

My point there wasn't that modern art is bad. Just a side note about what contributed to it being pushed as much as it was at the time. Which apparently was the wrong tack anyway, since I guess you are not talking about popularity but something else.

Is it possible you are on the autism spectrum? I mean nothing bad by that, to be clear. It's just a kind of neurodivergence to me. But I ask because if I understand right, some people on the autism spectrum have this thing of taking things very literally. So I wonder because you mention picking up on literal things. The other thing I wonder is, is English your first language? That might contribute to English feeling clunky, if it isn't your native tongue.

As for enjoying poetry, I'm not sure what to say about that because I can write poetry myself and enjoy it to a point, but some of it feels very nonsense to me, like it's hiding behind a lack of meaning with flowery prose. Lemme see if I can do an example:

Leaves crunching send signals into the air,

Of autumn's arrival,

Carried on an eagle's cry,

While blackened hearts live free or die.

^ I don't know what this is supposed to mean. I strung together some stuff that sounds vaguely metaphorical and like it might have a deeper meaning.

Or sometimes poetry can feel up its own ass with acting like it's deeper than it is. But I do think it has a purpose, which is expressing things that can be hard to express otherwise:

Emotions blend together like red and blue,

But don't make purple.

Disparate and disconnected,

Unable to find sequence,

They show the DNA of traumatic suffering.

Here I'm trying to express something about how confusing emotions can be sometimes and how they may be harmed at times by trauma.

I don't know if I'm making myself clear or better understanding your meaning at all, but there's an attempt.