i went on a big tirade abt this with trevor the other day but like. ive become super frustrated with the yt media critic community's reliance on 'explaining' things, bc it often causes huge problems when they discuss media that doesnt want or need to be explained (1/?)

dan olson's video on annihilation covers most of this pretty well, where he talks about viewers trying to explain the plot through action when they should be explaining the story through metaphor, but i actually think it can go even farther than that. what if thats not the (2/?)

point of the story either? what if the story is all mood, or all visuals? what if the story exists Only to elicit emotion, with no actual plotline? my brain goes immediately to julio cortázar's 'axolotl' --how would a yt 'logical explanation' thinker read that story? (3/?)

would they be able to read it at all? would they get caught up in how the world of the story fails to explain the rules of how consciousness is exchanged? the axolotl isnt a metaphor for something else, not 1-1, but its not literal either. its something else in a way (4/?)

to me this is WHY magical realism/new-weird/cosmic horror are so fascinating and so wonderful to discuss and create, they REFUSE to be explained. they refuse to end cleanly or tell their story outright, they rely on emotions and mood almost completely, making a story (5/?)

that leaves you with more than just the knowledge of how it ends. you leave with a feeling, an image burned into your brain, a new question to ask the world or a new lens with which to view it. not to say other genres dont do this too!!! a good mystery can be broken down (6/?)

and explained in EXCRUCIATING detail while still leaving a satisfying impact on the audience. but the fact that you cant do that with some works make them so interesting to me. something like wtnv has plotlines yea, but the core of the story is more. mood than anything else (7/?)

and the plotlines as they appear arent that complicated really? theres a threat, the threat is contained. the really important part is How its told. there arent Rules in wtnv, theres not a lorebook with weaknesses and motives for all the beings, they just. Are. (8/?)

wtnv shouldnt need to be "explained," at least in the way we're used to seeing it. even just summarizing the plot misses so much of what makes it so good! you know what my Favorite episode of wtnv is? 'A Story About Them.' a plot summary or story explanation wouldnt touch (9/?)

that episode, bc it doesnt play in to the smiling god or the dog park or the old doors its just. there. as a really excellent and fantastic piece of atmospheric horror that still sticks with me 5yrs after hearing it. its not 'plot relevant' but its still important (10/?)

i cant remember where this quote is from but a youtuber once talked about a scene "having nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with the theme" of a work and i think that plays in here really well. wtnv wouldnt BE wtnv if you just wrote the plot down in order (11/?)

what makes works like this great is in the weirdness, in the detail, in the nuance of the writing and the Feeling they give you. you cant, as dan olson said, "decode the plot like a goddamn puzzle box" because the story they wrote was never that kind of puzzle(12/?)

focusing on only the parts of a story that you can physically solve misses the whole point of why the story is written and told, where usually the most impactful parts of the story are in the pieces of the puzzle they Dont give you. (13/?)

im having trouble even working w/ this puzzle metaphor bc it doesnt capture the scope of what im trying to say! its not pieces missing from your jigsaw puzzle, theres a whole story there but some of them are blocks or dice or playing cards and even THIS doesnt seem right (14/15)

i dont know, i guess just. let stories be unexplained. not un-talked about though! let stories be analyzed, let them be dissected, discussed, and critiqued through different lenses. but please, especially in genres like these, let them be unexplained (15/15)