Grant Morrison’s take on how adults struggle with fiction as opposed to children who simply accept the rules of a created world because it’s not real is too damn true. The original point is about suspension of disbelief, but you can extend it further than that.

When reaching a pivotal moment in a story, there’s only one MAJOR thing I take into account if the author has displayed the bare minimum of having it make logical sense: does it amplify the theme? I can reject the theme outright, but I first have to at least ACKNOWLEDGE it.

This is why reacting to plot points with the belief the extenuating circumstances around them should change is normally nonsense. Think about what the author’s saying. Assess the message by its own merit rather than construct your own extension to their work and label it better.

That’s incredibly lazy and a blatant refusal to engage with the work, even on a basic level. Unless it’s, say, Rise of Skywalker which makes next to NO logical sense. Then yeah, there are some deep problems that need correcting since it’s barely legible as a story.

This is something a lot of adults try and fail to do. They turn around these stories in their heads over and over confounded why authors do something they weren’t expecting. Claim the work as their own, introducing ideas incongruous with it BECAUSE they don’t understand it.

Let’s take Attack on Titan for instance. Thousands have espoused the belief it’s anti-semitic, sometimes without even consuming the series. Rather than see the WWII allusions as simply amplifying a more general message about power dichotomy relating to race, war and oppression.

There’s no scene in AOT where violence is portrayed as glorious or morally just. Even the lighter moments still place some sort of weight on the characters. That carries over to the Holocaust allusions. The message is simply that humans are comprised of equal parts good and evil.

You’d understand this if you paid attention to the writing. But there’s the rub: how can you characterize a message as bad in the first place without properly assessing it? Or judge a plot point as not fitting in because it takes the story in a direction you don’t expect?

Respect the message as it’s own thing. Respect the art as it’s own thing. There are exceptions like anything else. The message can be truly vile and best left ignored. But by and large, fiction is about ideas. Absorb a decent amount before thinking how YOU could do it better.

I would also like to add an amendment: maybe it would be best to extend the “adult” classification to teenagers as well lmao