Facets of Faith: picking and choosing battles

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Hanl Brown

Staff reporter Faith Brocke expresses her emotions and experiences in her column, Facets of Faith.

Faith Brocke, Staff Reporter

In today’s day and age, it is nearly impossible to consume media without seeing an opinion on it that you don’t like—whether the owner of said opinion misinterpreted the work or just has the worst take possible, it can be extremely hard to hold your tongue in situations like these.

I can say this with shameful confidence: I do not hold my tongue. If you’re wrong, chances are you’ll be reading at least two hundred words about why you should be embarrassed.

Now, this isn’t a product of some kind of superiority complex. I’m sure there are people who disagree with my opinions all the time. Of course, this means that they’re wrong, but hey, freedom of self expression and whatnot.

The best way to effectively encapsulate how I feel towards not necessarily opposing opinions, but ones that ignore direct fact is a meme that reads ‘you may like {interest} but i enjoy it in a far more intellectual way,’ and honestly at times it feels true. Maybe I’m reading and watching with a fresh set of eyes that no one else is, but sometimes I genuinely grow itchy or nauseous at reading an opinion on something that is just so wrong.

One thing I enjoy doing are character studies, in which I take a character, consume all the media they’re from, analyze their personality and relationships, then write an essay on them. It’s nerdy, simply put, but it’s incredibly fun to develop a thesis or attack/defend a claim made towards a character and their behaviors. 

So if I spend three months researching and writing about a character, I think it’s safe to say I know my stuff about the character, or at the very least how they were intended to be written and portrayed in the media that they come from, right?

You would at least be under the assumption that I am fairly knowledgeable about it. And yet, I kid you not, last Wednesday I was told that ‘researching the character doesn’t mean you understand them.’

I don’t think I thought of a single thing aside from that for the rest of the night, because that is insane. That is exactly what it means. Especially when my personal findings align not only with that of the creator, but anyone who stared at the screen for more than six seconds before logging onto Twitter to complain about a character that they just met. 

And seeing as a week has passed, I think it’s evident that I struggle with when to let things go. This is still irking me, and it really shouldn’t be. Some people are not the brightest burning candles on the chandelier. Some people don’t know how character arcs work, and that is okay.

That doesn’t make it any less annoying, and I’m tempted to write another paper, or at the very least a bulleted list at this very moment.

Exercising self restraint and learning to concede despite being right isn’t really something I was raised with. I’m sure I was taught to be the bigger person, but I was also taught to be a winner and defend my cases. And in all fairness I’d rather be a winner than the bigger person. Not the best philosophy to have, but I’m only human.

It’s something I want to work on so that I don’t have the overwhelming urge to light something on fire every time someone misinterprets something I enjoy.

That being said, I’m gonna go start drafting a paper that no one is going to read so that I don’t get suspended on Twitter.