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Is anyone else unable to handle stories and media? Everytime I consume some narrative work such as a book or movie or some video games I end up spiraling into an even deeper than usual depression. I wind up comparing my life directly to that of the fictional character and wind up feeling like soykaf. I try to change myself to model that character I enjoyed the most. I mentally torture myself at every shortcoming I have in that I am not that character. I feel helpless and demoralized in my own life after seeing how eventful the narrative was. I think this kind of thing is normal for a child or a teenager but I am well into adulthood and it still seriously bothers me every time. At this point I try to avoid all narratives and media just for my own sake. It's not so bad but it makes it very hard to relate to people as the lives of nearly everyone else exclusively revolves around media. I've limited myself to essays and non fiction accounts if I want to read something. Most of the time it's okay because the author has a detached explanatory prose and the events are more down to earth. I'm curious if anyone else feels similarly and how they deal with never feeling good enough after a narrative. I wonder if this phenomenon has been studied. I probably explained it poorly and sound insane. I let the stupidest soykaf get to me.

>>66045 Sounds like you have deeper issues and not being able to handle media is just the symptom. However, I can relate that every media I watch kinda "feeds" into myself, as in, my personality is shaped by the characters that I enjoy. I don't know if this will end up being damaging at some point in my life but I've been doing just fine. I'm also explaining it poorly but I'm sure a lot of people here can relate to you in some level. It's not a totally unique experience. Maybe not to such an extreme level as you though.

What you describe has been described in literature as the common cause why social media causes depression - people on fb watch the fabricated amazing lives others post on media where everything good is exaggerated and everything bad omitted and compare it with their honest own so they always lose the comparison.

Personally I don't feel this way, but I can understand why a person would. But the way I see it, my life is boring and tragic and so it helps me to maintain a positive attitude if I watch and listen to light-hearted, upbeat things. But I was watching some random slice-of-life anime with a friend recently, and it ended up making him really sad for this reason.

>>66049 I don't really experience this from that funny enough. I don't use social media but the stuff other people do in real life has never bothered me. >>66048 >>66050 Yeah I've never really felt happy about any story. I just get worse the more things happen. If the characters are younger than me then I beat myself up twice. Once for not measuring up and again for my younger self that is their age not measuring up.

>>66045 >I'm curious if anyone else feels similarly and how they deal with never feeling good enough after a narrative. I have the same problem, OP. Seeing violence, or seeing the suffering of others on TV makes me really upset, too. Star Trek: The Original Series, The X-Files (first six seasons), and Family Guy (S2 & S3) were the only shows I've enjoyed, because no-one suffered, there was no sadistic humour, and I didn't envy anyone. I have so many memories of being a kid, and seeing suffering of others on TV and movies, like the fight scene from They Live, and being super upset about it.

>>66045 Same here OP! Been that way since childhood. I love certain fictional universes, but watching them makes me feel empty inside and really sad for a couple days. I find it really hard to watch any media because It looks like they need to put in some physical or emotional suffering for the characters in every fictional media because it would be "boring" otherwise. I sometimes dream of a movie, a book or a tv show where nothing bad happens. I just don't understand humanity as a whole but I'm glad there is a couple other people in this situation to talk to.

>>66051 >I don't really experience this from that funny enough. I don't use social media but the stuff other people do in real life has never bothered me. My suggestion was you do the same thing with fiction as they do with social media. Since social media addiction is more popular nowadays its easier to find the phenomenon as a present topic. Also i just remembered "the sorrows of the young werther" was a book that caused youth suicides at its release in 17th century. The theme is of unrequited love where the girl is already promised to marry another man so they mingle in a love triangle til marriage hits and third wheel suicides because he cant control himself but also doesn't want to ruin her. In other words boys saw themselves more or less in this and mirrored it. So here you have a real known old example of a book influencing people drastically.

Comparison is always a losing game, especially with fictional characters.

Completely completely relate to this. I wish I could use fictional media as a form of escapism, but I get neurotic and it really stresses me out. The less depressed I am, the more easy it is for me to enjoy fictional media. But when I’m in full NEET rotting mode I can’t stomach anything but infinite scrolling. Which is awful, because reading a really great story (like LoTR) gets my imagination active, I feel more creative, and my life just gets better. It definitely feels connected to general AvPD-esque habits. Lame advice but what works sometimes is watching a show super far removed from you that has no aspirational characters. Like, I recently watched Girls (femcel moment) and it may have been a waste of time but I think I was better off than doom scrolling for 30 hours. This obviously doesn’t address the issues of low self esteem and envy but I have other cardinal sins to worry about. Nonetheless I completely sympathize OP

>>66045 I have the exact opposite problem. I'll try to become the character and then get myself into trouble. I always wanted to be like Tyler Durden from Fight Club and it probably won't surprise you that I have been arrested by the police twice already.

>>66066 This. Once I realized this it became a lot easier to live my life.

Escapism is rough, you forget about your boring life for a bit but once it's over you come back and you're like, is this it? An entire universe of unfathomable scale and complexity, yet my life is this mediocre in a world that seems just as bland, and this is more or less all we'll ever get?

>>66045 A good story should make you feel sad and should make you feel mad. That is kind of the purpose of art in a way. To wake you up from your day to day life.... but if that normal life isn't very good then the fictional might not fix it. Have you watched Serial Experiments Lain? I have cried and such at the end, I was both sad and very happy at the same time. I felt something I have never felt before. I do also sometimes get spooked out by media such including time travel for example. Just seeing time pass that fast and boom. Scary soykaf.... but it does also help me understand that I do still have time and that I should make the best out of it. Which you luck at overcoming that fear lainon :D

I've always seen the point of media and stories as being to explore novel situations and experiences. Comparing yourself directly to the characters and events that happen is definitely not the intended purpose (at least, not a healthy one), and if you do so, you're probably approaching media from a wrong perspective. But have a look at any internet community and you will see dozens of these people, all the same as the other, obsessing over characters from shows or movies or games, basing their entire personalities around the media they consume, chasing to replicate what these figures represent. They treat media as little more than orders to be followed, something to project yourself on, or rather, to let it project itself into you. Nothing of value is learned that way, but the opposite, personal growth is only stunted by chasing unreachable ideals. They see media, perhaps, as 'extensions of the world', of which they treat with the same level of importance as real-life itself. This is alarming, dehumanizing behaviour, that seems to be the norm which has particularly taken root with people on the internet in specific. Perhaps this is caused as the boundary between fiction and the real-world becomes less well-defined, as technology provides increasingly interactive experiences with fictional, idealized things. If that is the case, then this derealization obsession pandemic is bound to only get worse. This is a short digression that does not seem to concern OP though. I suppose I strongly disagree with the notion that 'escapist fantasies' are nothing more than empty souless soykaf, to keep you bound to mediocrity in the real world.

If a book is very good, I get very absorbed in its story to the point where when I finish it I feel as if I have lost a part of my life. For the next few days everything has this unreality to it. I think most recently this happened with the book Going Postal.

My problem with media is that it's become so much more boring than reality. We live in this post-everything cyberpunk future and yet the books, TV shows, anime etc pretend that it's still the 90s or the early aughts and the information technology hasn't completely altered our culture and the way of living. It's like a large chunk of popular culture has lost the ability to engage with the real and the contemporary. I can't handle it because it's aggressively boring.

>>66045 Yep, in a way. I used to merge with all the characters and see them as parts of myself interacting within a greater mind, or I'd compare myself to them like you;'re describing and try to break the conept of them down to its underlying parts and repurpose them as possible within myself. I would draw strength and meaning at the struggle and pain in the narrative, and I just passive accepted what was being done to me as the way... at least something, was. These days, it's different. Hard to describe. Rewatching Evangelion after 10 years, while the characters are all tragically relateable in one way or another, the only character I can directly insert as was actually Maya... the one character I thought was completely stupid, weak, and pathetic. I just want to look away and have it all stop. Asuka waking up at the bottom of the lake in the fetal position after the inner city of Nerv was blown open and exposed. She fights to the death against the world of course. The ritual concludes with the thing she always feared and expected, being helpless as the vultures, death always circling above, descend to rip her to pieces. Then the psychological rape and ego permeabalization of Shinji, back in the Sandbox building the pyramid. Forced regression to infancy. It's all sad. I realize I was never actually a child, there was no "mommy look". All of these stories and allegories people construct, I don't know, as I came to be able to feel actual compassion for my own character, then became able to feel for other people more directly. It's all unbearably sad. The beauty is gone, there is none at all.

>>66183 It's a pulse. This is what people who complained about the quotes and "name dropping" in GITS 2 being "pretentious" didn't understand. They are an old post-everything society searching for meaning, it actually fits perfectly. It's like a pulse. We are post everything, everything is cynically self aware dark sarcasm, and the new baseline something has yet to form. Humans see themselves as children and adolescents, in reality, and in many ways, the human concept is actually quite old and worn out.

>>66183 SEL is the only media that made the life of an internet-addicted shutin interesting. What, are you gonna watch a half naked guy tap away at a keyboard, writing a bunch of inane nonsense that doesn't matter? (me currently). No, you want to watch people have real conversations that mean something. IMO almost all of that still happens face to face, or at least on a phone voice call. Maybe it's just because I've been a social medialess unperson for so long, or because I live far away from the major population centers of the US, or because I've aged a bit, but a few years ago I noticed that people stopped acting like it was weird that I don't have any social media. Nobody even asks for it, not even people I just met. When I was 18 it seemed like everyone wanted my snapchat. For a while I didn't have a cell phone and it didn't change my life much, it was just a little inconvenient.

>>66184 I rewatched Evangelion after 20 years around the time the last movie came out and I was bored out of my mind. I feel like it's a product of it's time in the worst way possible. 90s end of history lost decade era Japan brain vomit. The character/mecha design is still excellent though, it's why the franchise is so popular in the first place I think.

>>66189 The worst part of Evangelion is that at its core it's timeless. The "end of history" computers and internet stuff were a layer built on top of of millennia of "completion" doctrines in various religions.

>>66183 Different people experience the world differently. For how much has changed in the last 30 years, much has also stayed the same. The hyperconnectivity of the modern world doesn't apply everywhere and some cultures and communities have been left behind. Yet, as far as media goes, I agree; the vast majority of shows and movies are a slight evolution of works from decades ago, aided only by advances in production technology (cameras, vfx, etc). Even if the filmmaking institutions are slow to adapt and steeped in tradition, the people themselves and writers certainly experience the current reality. I would love see a mainstream film with the creativity of the 18th and early 19th century science fiction authors. Recently I've come to appreciate the work of Ryuichi Sakamoto, he's released what is likely his final work today, worth a listen.

>>66189 I think it's a competent coming of age story with good pacing, good progression from beginning to end, and great atmosphere.

>>66220 I love the.... stability in this response. Made me chuckle for some reason. lol. And agreed. But it's actually much deeper than that. It's not a coming of age story at all. Aging is forced on you from the outside. Your body changes, your brain changes, society's expectations change. You come of age. That's not what Eva is about, it's about separation-individuation and facing the self. Some people are in their 50's and have never been truly forced to look in the mirror and look within themselves, for one reason or another. There's a lot that can go wrong and eithe distract, divert, or otherwise suppress a person's development. It took me until ~30 (known as the saturn return at 27). And I was a doll golem that was being physically tortured and clearly wasn't able to make it as an imitation of a real person to begin with, found whatever remained of the self and tried to find freedom and relief by destroying it completely. Forced regression, return to the start. It all returns to nothing, oceanic state, pre-object permanence, merging back into the Anima little different than a child tries to function through and as an extension of their parents and seeks protection. The theological context and comparison between early childhood development, creation of the other via creation of the self, and so on, is no accident. It's the most suited framework. The Evangelion allegory is apt and brutal. The end of the original series, and EoE, are an attempt at hypnotic (subconscious) regression to early childhood. All of it is a symbolic space (like sand tray therapy) where you're supposed to create and map inner entities onto what's happening. Asuka's mind rape in episode 24 (?) by the Angel is a foreshadowing of what's to come and was is intended for the viewer. Evangelion is definitely something special. The only thing that compares is Texhnolyze and Ergo Proxy, but neither were quite so forceful in their intent.

>>66221 Also Asuka admitting she doesn't want to die is probably the most important part of her developmental arc. "If it gets too bad, I can always kill myself" is the final bastion of a person clinging to some sense of control. After this is lost, the individual, assuming they aren't effectively a dead person to begin with, is inverted inverted and begins to feed on the death drive. The walking corpse tells itself I am strong because I'm not afraid to die, in fact I might even welcome death, what a relief. I am safe, free. I am INVULNERBALE, I have ABSOLUTE CONTROL, and I EXEMPT from the natural order! I am everything, I am nothing, I AM GOD. Asuka admitting that she doesn't want to die was her accepting her own humanity and limitation. She wasn't running away anymore. And it all happens submerged in water in the fetal position. Walking corpse, reborn.

>>66190 I lived through the 90s so I'm incapable of not recognizing the cultural markings of that era in Evangelion. They're not universal. Evangelion is like X-files or Xena the Warrior Princess or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a product of its time and its cultural zeitgeist. Are those shows timeless? Kinda, but mostly not. Side note, Buffy is an interesting case because it's a 90s show up until the 9/11 when it mutates into an 00 show, the tone, themes, look etc immediately shift to fit into a new cultural paradigm. If you weren't alive during that era and you want to see just how hard the attacks brain-broke Americans just watch Buffy. It's fascinating. Anyway, the robots in Evangelion run on batteries. Misato's car runs on batteries as well, right? Do you know why? Because back in the 90s we were afraid that the oil would just run out. Before the fracking and deep wells and whatnot it was an actual reason to worry. It's so ridiculous now. Or Rei clones! Clones were in like every single sci-fi thing in the 90s, mostly because of Jurassic Park and successful cloning attempts. It was a big moral debate as well. Nobody cares about clones or cloning now but it was a big deal in the 90s. Or the second impact. It's just repackaged y2k end of the world nonsense. It was a thing in the 90s too, some losers even gassed a metro station in Japan because of it. My point is that Evangelion is intertwined with the cultural zeitgeist of the 90s so tightly that it barely works when you take it out of it. It's a story that could've only been conceived during that specific time. You throw in phones and social media and the entire thing falls apart because Shinji is suddenly a cute boy with a cello and 50 thousand subscribers and post of the year on raised by narcissists. And we can just pretend that every teenager isn't on the internet and that the contemporary didn't happen and hide our heads in the sand and consume cute retro throwbacks like Evangelion Rebirth but that's not how culture is supposed to work. Culture is supposed portray the reality. There's a v-tuber shaking her ass in vrchat while cackling maniacally. There's a woman older than personal computers buying potatoes at a farmer's market with her phone. There's an artist training AI on her own work to make and sell porn faster. The genie's out of the bottle while Hollywood is still pulling the old no cell reception trick and they're surprised that people would rather watch other people play video games and dancing teenage girls.

>>66232 >Culture is supposed portray the reality. There's a v-tuber shaking her ass in vrchat while cackling maniacally. There's a woman older than personal computers buying potatoes at a farmer's market with her phone. There's an artist training AI on her own work to make and sell porn faster. The genie's out of the bottle while Hollywood is still pulling the old no cell reception trick and they're surprised that people would rather watch other people play video games and dancing teenage girls. Is it even possible to portray the reality with traditional media? Does life submerged in the internet fit into the same sort of narratives or structured media? What would that look like? I think there is a problem in that we are living within abstractions that are worn thin enough that their reflections are no longer coherent. I see meaningful, interesting narratives within my own life, but if I wanted to translate those into fiction I can't imagine how that would even work when almost none of it is in context of the "real" world.

>>66221 >>66222 I apologize for phoneposting; I stopped before the movie after the show's time, even with the vague total humanity reclamation thing as dessert. I feel that bitterness can be matched in Clarice Starling's loss of character by the third Hannibal book. From the get-go, Shinji betrays his character, and even the masks that he assumes through the interpretation of others are betrayed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. My interpretation of the show's end is Shinji's wearing a tragic mask means the change must be related to the audience. A bitter ending where an understanding is destroyed betrays the audience's understanding of Shinji's true motivation, which is left up in the air...

>>66262 there's no need to be rude. I can't keep track of directions. I can't take a walk outside my house without getting lost. Every job I've ever gotten has told you to go online or requires a phone.

>>66055 >I sometimes dream of a movie, a book or a tv show where nothing bad happens. Wait till you find about slice of life anime/manga

>>66339 I wish I knew anything about myself. I don't think I have any qualities at all to be honest. I don't recognize myself in the mirror. And the few hobbies I do have feel strained. I'm not sure I enjoy them anymore and am just engaging with them because I'm desperate to feel a throughline commonality with my former self. It would be too sad to admit that old me is totally dead. Im the only friend I ever had

Yeah, I generally don't like fiction because of this. In the past it used to be different though, I could easily self-insert as characters I liked, but this kind of escapism doesn't work anymore for me. The only fiction I don't have this problem with is stuff like anime/video games, because it's very unrealistic, so no one expects you to be like the characters, but I don't consume it because it's trash. Another thing I don't like about fiction is seeing characters I relate to having similar bad experiences I did, because it hits too close to home.

>>66045 I have this so I cannot consume fiction. Even Disney movies are stressful for me to watch.

>>66416 Lol.... basically identical. Tell me more about your early childhood. I want to see if I can add to the weight on the constellations by which we were manufactured.

>>66416 any advice for someone who's just starting to be an adult? i always feel like i will eventually become the same... like a self fulfilling prophecy.

>>66424 >university is your second chance to make friends personally i've decided to go to a community college and transfer to a 4-year university. the problem with this is that i dont live on campus and half of the classes are online so its really hard to meet people. there aren't even really any active clubs. i've resorted to having to use dating apps to talk to people and try to make friends, it is like kicking dead whales down the beach. growing up, making friends is just something that... happened. i never actively tried to make friends, but i still ended up backflipping into it somehow. i think it's all just serendipity, like something that can't be forced. as long as you put yourself out there, the universe will, eventually, in one way or another, provide you with friends. this was easy when we were kids and surrounded by hundreds of our peers every day, but i'm not sure what to do now that i'm an adult. obviously i won't make any real-world friends sitting in my bedroom, so where can i go in the real world to meet people like me, especially since people like me don't really get out much? anyway, i have no advice for anyone, i just wanted to ramble. the only thing i want out of life is connection, and its not clear how im supposed to find it.

>>66427 I can relate to this. i don't know if it is the norm for americans but most countries have universities with no campus at all. I also live far from the city and although the classes are not online it's still difficult to make friends. The popular "kids" at uni are coincidentally the very wealthy (the family) that can go to private campus, or people that got lucky and already lived in the city. But many of us are commuters and it's so hard to have friends this way. >>66428 I am just like this lain. Every time i watch something i unconsciously begin to imitate, i also did this with kids i liked when i was little. I thought that maybe it's a schizoid thing as I have many other symptoms although I am not diagnosed

>>66419 Don't hold yourself back. If you see an opportunity to meet someone, make a friend, go on a date, seize it! Don't fall into the trap of self-inflicted negativity where you believe the world 'out there' is populated by retarded "n0rmies" who are always gonna be hostile and negative to you either way. The fear of ordinary people is really a wound you inflict on yourself and it will hold you back. If you get stuck into this loner hikki identity (or anything roughly similar) it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not saying assimilate into mainstream society, just don't wall yourself off from others. And don't be afraid of fuarrrking up, everyone fuarrrks up at some point and it's the only way you learn anything. Failure is a good thing and you need to accept that your going to fuarrrk up from time to time (sometimes badly), but you need to learn to take it on the chin and not give up. That's key, just keep pushing through it and never give up, no matter what life throws your way. >the universe will, eventually, in one way or another, provide you with friends. this was easy when we were kids and surrounded by hundreds of our peers every day, but i'm not sure what to do now that i'm an adult. obviously i won't make any real-world friends sitting in my bedroom, so where can i go in the real world to meet people like me, especially since people like me don't really get out much? It's hard as an adult because most adults (especially in cities) live within their own tight knit bubble between work-home-friends and just ignore everything else happening outside them, of course social media makes things even worse these days. I feel a little weird suggesting this, since it's a problem I'm having too, but what I'm thinking is just find local events (even if your not interested in them), like dance classes or cooking class, the gym, sign up for a marathon, attend a rave etc. and just attend them and make it your mission to talk to at least one person. Start with small basics like 'Hi, how's it going?' etc etc. Don't be afraid that you might as well not bother because you'll always come off as awkward and off-putting.

>>66045 Not sure how old you are OP. This is something that helped me. Search for famous actors/musicians/etc. before they were big, before anybody knew who they were, and you will notice a common thread, most of them were normal people just like you and me. Some of them even looked really dorky like George Clooney when he was a kid. Now everybody loves him. You can also Google "list of late bloomers" and find some genuinely inspirational stories about people like Susan Boyle who didn't start until much later in life. I can't say I get as emotional about fictional stories, but perhaps it will help. Also remember that the people making these stories also often came from average or below average backgrounds. Just read up on the lives of some of your favorite authors or illustrators, many of them started out just like us.

>>66427 >online-classes yeah this wrecks the old style of just go to uni and meet people. That said in my freshman we had introductory courses and people went to pubs together to get to know each other as a student run event in first week. The guys into training went together to uni gym later after classes. Then there's project groups - made friends with people i worked with and joined one dude in rock climbing. Got me later an offer to join startup he was already in. Also you don't need to have your home on campus to hang around, you should have pc rooms, library, ... where people will stay. So you can run into classmates outside classes doing what you need to do at university rather than sitting at home. I spend often ~12h a day at uni like that only driving back at 8-9pm.

>>66045 The cult of self improvement can make you sick. Considering things too deeply can drive you to see patters where there are none. > “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” Read things for fun and take a break from the seriousness of life once in a while. Don't self insert as characters so much, you aren't them. The same goes for other people, don't try to be "like" them, see what they do good and what they do bad and decide what you want to do accordingly. The lives of others are not your life. >>66189 NGE is one of my favorites, It took me a while to understand the latest movies, and I really didn't like them at first, but I have come to appreciate the artistic and symbolic merit that they have. As for western media, it's all visual stimuli, violence and sex. Some international media goes the opposite and its all psychological and emotional stimuli, which can turn into 2edgy5u memes or make you depressed. The ending of NGE 3+1 was wonderful, shinji grows up, falls in love with a nice girl who actually cares about him, and they put their trauma behind them optimistically, having come to terms with all the bad soykaf they had to go through, and the people they loved and lost along the way as precious memories they can appreciate >>66443 The entire dynamic of campus interaction is different. I used to just approach random people and say hello, but now people only associate with groups they meet on social media. Clubs organize on facebook, snapchat, insta or whatsapp, so you can sometimes not even participate in club activities without social media. Most people don't go to pubs as class groups either. Being in class does not mean you have things in common with others like it used too, where 90% of the socializing you did was with classmates. Social media has replaced social interaction. At least it isn't hard to find professional hobbies and clubs outside of school.

>>66472 >The ending of NGE 3+1 was wonderful, shinji grows up, falls in love with a nice girl who actually cares about him, and they put their trauma behind them optimistically, having come to terms with all the bad soykaf they had to go through, and the people they loved and lost along the way as precious memories they can appreciate I did not like the ending in the least. From the start, the "girl who cares about him" was always the "girl with the big boobs". That is to say that it was never about anything intimate, just a base sexual attraction. Mari actually removed his shock collar so he can go to school for the day. With generic pop music and surprise cameos, it didn't seem like anything genuine but I guess that's what differentiates eva rebuild from the original series. >I used to just approach random people and say hello, but now people only associate with groups they meet on social media. It seems hard for even normal people to make friends.

>>66473 Well, mr. itty bitty titty committy, despite Mari being a big titty genetically engineered cat girl, she made a commitment to always be there for him and she stayed true to the end, which could not be said of Rei or Asuka. Yes the ending was upbeat and maybe generic, but it gave the sense that the nightmare was over and there are infinite possibilities to be happy by your own decision, a final resolution to a decades long depression fest (congratulations was also a good ending from an intellectual standpoint) Media can invoke feeling that are hard to explain, and empathizing with the characters is important to understanding plot and their situations. Although you might see parallels to your life, you shouldn't try to self insert. Maybe looking at how a character solved a problem is practical, or a specific quote can resonate with you, but one should always remember anime and vidya is not real.

>>66045 Actually, yes. I suffer from this very same issue, OP. I particularly have an issue with animes where the main character is in a highschool setting. I hate this because I can not relate to it even a smidge because I was a friendless hikkikomori growing up. For some reason, every time I watch shows like these it creates a twinge of pain in my heart. Afterwards, I feel really upset and in a bad mood. I also dislike the show of love and relationships in movies/television because I can not relate to it. For this reason, I do not really watch much anime or TV shows anymore unless it has no mention of these sorts of things. Primarily all of the stuff I watch is documentary-related nowadays.

>>66506 Wrong. They were manufactured in a way that amplified or polarized their existing base temperment. Some people are made in a way that they become great, some crumble and fail to adapt to how damaged they are.

>>66511 Cool then, interesting. I feel like your depression at your comparitive inadequacy implied some desire to be cool, some spark of ambition. If not, then why this thread, why do you care, why not just go back to, idk whatever it is that you do ? Maybe you feel like this 'spark' is important but just don't have it, don't get it ? Like an illiterate living in a world of writting thats always unavailable to you but central to the lives of many, and this alienation is what depresses you ? legtimately curious don't want to offend

>>66506 >Most of them were child prodigies or showcased their talents and passions from an early age If their talents and passions were clear from an early age they wouldn't be late bloomers, you dummy.

>>66519 But they weren't late bloomers

>>66511 We are what we make of ourselves, day to day. I would implore you to look into metacognition, memetics, and understanding its nature as relates to being a conscious, self-aware being, and to use whatever tools you can to learn how to control and shape your own thoughts and 'self'. Having this kind of defeatist, "I'm at the mercy of myself" attitude is just ridiculous. We aren't blessed with autonomy, free will and the ability to think about thinking itself just to wallow in our own piss.

>>66526 I don't think I'll ever be self aware or autonomous

I'm an extremely suggestible and easy to indoctrinate person. I have no standing in anything. I desperately want to remove my memories. Get a different personality. I would take losing 20 iq and the ability to feel emotions if it meant my memory was gone and I could start over. I hate myself so much. I always have since i was a kid. I'm not equipped to have thoughts or be a person. I've adopted and dropped several radical fringe ideologies. I'm just disgusted with myself. I don't know who i am and never did and can't find out. I'm not young. These aren't the adled ramblings of a fresh adult. I just can't enjoy anything in this life anymore. Nothing is just media. It becomes more than part of me. It becomes something to supplant whoever I currently was. And i can't stop it. Everytime I engage in any media my person is being rewritten. Im going insane. I can't do it anymore. Maybe I should just stop typical fiction stories. Because this is torturous. I'm not sure what id do instead. I wish i was something else. I shouldn't exist.

>>67370 I think you're sort of right, psychology is mostly bullshit, and telling someone to do therapy as a dismissive demand is dehumanizing and soykafty. But it's pretty important to genuinely consider ideas that make you uncomfortable, that's how you grow as a person and become stronger. >>66490 This is why I liked Watamote so much. Way more like the desperate friendless cringepocalypse highschool experience I remember.

>>67380 You just entirely projected onto this person with many untrue statements. You just have an ego problem

I see where you're coming from. There's a lot of media about childhood and adolescence that I just can't handle watching because there'll always be something that reminds me of how much I missed out on in childhood. Sometimes it's because the protag has a loving family. Or they have friends who care about them and do stuff together with them. Or there's a part where they get to experience that awkward, innocent first love. The only time I can stomach media about youth is if the protag is going through something that I did growing up, but I rarely see that. After all, most people have healthy childhoods...

>>67442 I recently started rewatching Evangelion, and I think that's part of it. When I was 17, 22, 25, even 27, I was very cold, driven, and detached. Much better emotion management and stronger than I am now. Between what you described, perhaps the development of honesty (no double think choose my reality selectively manage my memory and meaning as desired) and awareness + retrospect, I find it all unbearably sad and also meaningless. I'm not sure if it's that it's over, I've suffered some catastrophic inner collapse or decay and can no longer control myself and my emotions, or insulate, or whatever. All the characters are too relateable. The whole allegory, the parents, the cold, alone, alone, alone. However there's also contrast, because they're not entirely alone and they don't 100% keep people at arm's length, they're like me had I been a real person. Or the truth of me as a child, I don't even know that much. Is there even a truth? And what good is it? So I've become simultaneously weaker than those characters, and far weaker than past me. Totally useless. I never really watched slice of life or any of those genres. They don't really have any effect on me. The sensation of wrongness and loss is at a much deeper level, overshadowing my numerous later mistakes. Not sure how to optimally reap what I have sown, and rebuild. The ability to transmute pain and deprivation into strength is also gone. It's all very odd.

>>67444 >neurosuggesting NGE isn't a slice of life The emotion that the story conveys is probably one of the best I have ever seen in media. The story is absurd, but the characters are so real, down to earth, and they have layers. The problem with most media is the characters are so shallow. There is rarely good and evil in real life, complexity comes from people who aren't wrong trying to be the most right in their beliefs. At its most basic level, NGE isn't a story about good vs evil, or even right vs wrong. Its about shinji growing up to be someone he is willing to live as.

>>67451 >the characters are so real, down to earth, and they have layers. No. I mean, compared to a generic shonen anime, sure, but that's not exactly a high bar, right? Compared to movies, prestige TV or literature? No way. And please don't go all insecure anime fan on me, don't be that cliche.

>>67444 >>67451 >>67457 Not exactly about what you guys are talking about, but this video pretty much sums up what i personally dislike about NGE, which is more than just the characters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnihGeRjG3U

>>67458 The title actually says it all. You don't understand it, and instead of considering there are things you're not capable of seeing, you just blame it on everyone else and assert that there's nothing there. Whatever that means. Not going to bother to watch the video. They are of a type.

>>67468 >Some of its fanboys are so annoying it almost makes me want to watch it So all of that, but you haven't watched it? Am I understanding you correctly? Starting there might help you with this: >What 'things' are you talking about?

>>67471 Yes, never actually watched it.

>>67472 Don't let what other people say inform your opinions on it, in either direction, before actually watching it. After watching of course you can contrast and take in what you saw and what others saw. I actually think there are 4 aspects to any work. 1) What you see. 2) What the various sorts of other people saw. 3a) What the creators' conscious mind outwardly says it is. 3b) What their conscious mind actually thinks, but won't say. 3c) What their subconscious thinks it's doing. 4) The absolute, what it actually is. Its core. Either way, you can't truly know without knowing, see without seeing, and so on. So you'd just have to watch it yourself. I strongly recommend the original Japanese with subs though, the english dub is even worse than dubs usually are. I guess the US BDs are the best versions though (visual quality wise), slightly better than the original Japanese BD release.

>>67480 Interesting stuff. I'd noticed some of this. I actually went through the original R2 DVDs of EoE with Yatta, frame by frame, IVTC'ing and trying to correct some other issues way back. I don't agree with people saying the BD releases as they stand are outright terrible. I'm checking these out though.

>>67485 Not that it matters, but sorry for the confusion, in that last paragraph I meant to address the popular conception of the characters and their issues by the people I've talked to about it, not my own iterations since I haven't actually watched the series. Regardless, all of it still boils down to a broader theme which is independent of any particular pieces of a particular media.

I'm the most suggestible person in the fuarrrking world you don't even have to hypnotize me to get me to do stupid soykaf I wish I had a ground in something

I watch a (good) movie and the characters seem more real and full of life than anyone I have ever met. People say that is just fantasy and its unrealistic. But what the hell is reality? Everyone just has their brains turned off 24/7. Everyone is so emotionally dead inside and they zone out with drugs and even more "unrealistic" media. I don't know anyone. How can you? Nobody can even be known

im not sure ill ever be mature enough to handle media