a not-nearly-comprehensive guide to classical logical fallacies as employed in fandom

[pocochina]

I should probably preface this by saying I don't think I've seen more bad arguments than usual or worse arguments than usual lately. But I do feel like I've seen an uptick in people expressing a few specific frustrations across a surprising variety of fandoms? And so when a post earlier this week (locked and not mine, so I'll go no further, but if

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[cuddyclothes]

But I do think it would be gross of me to go around saying "House and Cuddy OBVIOUSLY would've made it work, because the parts of the show where House fucked it up were OBVIOUSLY OOC and don't count and if you don't see that then you're a HATER!" The first thing is an opinion. The second thing is telling people they didn't see what they saw.

There are still fans that cling to House/Cuddy and say they waited SIX YEARS FOR IT TO HAPPEN AND YOU TOOK IT AWAY WAAAH. No, it happened, House fucked it up and she wouldn't forgive him for slipping for the first time in years. In the season finale, he saw she had company (including a new man) in her living room--and crashed his car into it. David Shore et al. were "I'm shocked, SHOCKED that anybody would have a problem with that!" Lisa Edelstein quit the show after that, so they had to scramble to put together something credible for S8. In the series' final episode, House and Wilson rode off into the sunset on motorcycles. As a House/Wilson shipper I was very happy.

I don't think canon ended in S5. People say that? Really? I thought Season 6 dealt very well with Cas's dilemma and his behavior with Sam and Dean. His behavior was "off" but it was "off" for a reason.

Here's a question you could probably answer. It puzzled me slightly when Cas was talking to Dean about learning to feel sorry. But last season he said that he was afraid to go back to Heaven, because if he saw the havoc he wreaked, he might kill himself. Both are equally valid, but what is the difference? I'm serious, because if anyone can parse that out, you can.

[cuddyclothes]

Speaking of haters, did you see the explosion at my 9.10 review? When I dared criticize Dean?

[pocochina]

LMAO I DID, and bless you for providing me the entertainment. I didn't get into it because, you know, I've met me and I didn't think it would end well, lol.

[cuddyclothes]

(c) I don't have context for what he means by "clunker," but I did say up there that there's some margin for error, so he and I may not even be in disagreement.

He was talking in an interview at the impossibility of keeping each episode up to the same standards, that a few crappy episodes are inevitable. Has nothing to do with canon, per se.

[pocochina]

ha, I knew there was some mega-drama, I just didn't know what. WOW on Shore's cluelessness, though.

I don't think canon ended in S5. People say that? Really?

To be fair, people don't often say it so starkly. They'll just find their Kripke-orthodoxy when they're in a rhetorical corner. "I prefer my interpretation of S9 that Dean isn't gaslighting Sam because Carver sux the show should've ended at S5."

Here's a question you could probably answer. It puzzled me slightly when Cas was talking to Dean about learning to feel sorry. But last season he said that he was afraid to go back to Heaven, because if he saw the havoc he wreaked, he might kill himself. Both are equally valid, but what is the difference? I'm serious, because if anyone can parse that out, you can.

So...everybody lies, right? Or more to the point, because I do think Cas is generally sincere on the occasions when he does open up about his own mental and emotional state, everyone has a whole host of subjective factors pulling at their perception, interpretation, and description of events, experiences, and feelings. Narrators are presumptively unreliable, especially when they're talking about subjective things. I think Cas was truly sorry in S8, as sorry as he could be, but now he's had significant experiences (including, but not limited to, his stint as a human), he understands things with greater depth and nuance. So he's like, "I THOUGHT I was sorry before, but it's NOTHING like how I feel now." On top of which, he does have some motivation to consciously color what he's saying in the way he does, because he's trying to talk Sam off the ledge, right. I think those inconsistences are Cas being inconsistent in the way people are inconsistent, not THE SHOW being inconsistent on who Castiel is. I mean, even if the PTBs were for some reason forgetting that 8x11 happened, that interpretation makes sense.

[cuddyclothes]

I agree entirely with your interpretation. Yes, Cas is being inconsistent as we all are. As for the unreliable narrator, an example between show and real life: If I say, "that happened 25 years ago" and it was actually 20 years ago, it's a fuzzy memory and I'm making a ballpark guess. But if I was a character on a tv show, instead of allowing for the vagueness that colors our memory, it would be: "no, wait, I did the math back through three seasons and it was twenty years! That's OOC!"

[pocochina]

ahahahaha, yes. And continuity-lawyering kicks into high gear whenever something particularly "controversial" (read: makes the favored woobie look bad) happens. People don't want to accept a particular plot point -> people can't find holes in that particular plot point -> people go into opposition research mode and don't stop until they find some ~objective reason (lol) to discredit the episode, the writer of the episode, the showrunner du jour, and possibly the entire Western canon for allowing this ill-researched travesty which was at least three hours off on the fastest possible route from Indianapolis to San Francisco on a Wednesday evening when Uranus is in retrograde or what the fuck ever.