hmmm the mileage and expectations vary depending on the creator of the media, how much control any one voice has over it, production woes, and how much I went in knowing I have varying beliefs or like, fundamental differences with the creative voice. Or how much I went in knowing it was going to be a product first.

Let's look at FMA-- I knoooow I fundamentally don't agree with Arakawa on like a lot of philosophical things, so when things in it fall flat in the end, it has no real effect on me... in this situation I don't feel a need to distance from the thing or characters... I already know I am going in with my tinker tools in hand. At the same time its not like I'm kin with anything from there... the level of investment kinda matches the media. The disappointment is already managed. I don't need to pack my things and go home.

For something like ... OK KO, I went into it knowing I had that kind of a discrepancy, so I had a liiittle bit of "meh" armor, but.... in the end I felt Dumb for letting myself give it an inch. In this sort of instance I'm mostly mad at myself for not listening to my instincts when this happens-- like sometimes you walk into a room like, 'well I can manage expectations', but as I go through life I'm like 'you know what... I'm not going to walk into rooms like this anymore' fdlghfk... I had this experience with typical Shounens a few times, too. I'd say completely distancing myself from characters in that instance is like, "fuck me for ever being here" more than "fuck this piece of media" ig. Like it's my job to not eat food I am allergic to. What I think is 'right' is literally not the MO of the media. I'll never be 'right' and it will never be 'right'... you know.

Osomatsu-san is totally also a worst case scenario, a "I should not have walked into this room" DESPITE THAT IT DID GIVE ME MY BEAUTIFUL BIRD, for the mostpart it really didn't deserve my time or attention, or the sincerity with which I expressed things upon it ... I was too good for tit. it was always going to be a moneymaking franchise with no soul, the literal pilot made fun of people like me, it was never going to remotely take any of its own development even 2% serious and would just have fun yanking around its surprising fujo fanbase for money. Like the ship crumbs were always going to be meaningless and arbitrary in this kind of environment, thrown out condescendingly or resentfully. Inevitably the extent of this carelessness became clear (it should ought have always been). I'm actually wrong and stupid to feel anything is 'right' or 'disappointing' like, I'm wanting a McDonalds apple pie to provide me the nutrients of a home cooked chicken. I'm delusionally turning it into a succulent chicken...

For something like Adventure Time, I can and will always love the early seasons, and I don't feel newer editions retconning or screwing up things I love has to effect the original appreciation & eternal fondness, because at the end of the day, the entire team has now changed; so it's logical the voice of the series has changed into one I don't vibe. I WOULDN'T have walked into a Fionna & Cake or Distant Lands... and I didn't. I walked into Pendleton's funny little cartoon. This is another aspect of a 'franchise' I guess, or just anything that changes hands (like Little Nightmares!).... the integrity of the original thing I liked is preserved within my heart, so I can't be disappointed by new material in a way that makes me feel stupid for my investment or ashamed to have been there. I know why I was there & I still am.

I GUESS RICK & MORTY IS AN EXAMPLE??? I was actually writing fic for the earliest stuff, and I just kinda watched it get annoying to me and tedious in real-time. In that case distancing myself was like "uhhh nevermind, maybe I don't have much in common with these voices". But I went into it with no real background knowledge of the voices making it, so that's fine... I don't have such attachment. I don't have any reason to have fondness or go back though, or even mention it typically... such an arbitrary thing.

Maybe a more incensed case was Gravity Falls...? But I think I was just dumber back then & didn't have such a grasp as I do now on, who is making what and how or why that is important. I kind of don't give myself to Disney products anymore on the whole... what I wanted out of GF, it just wasn't ever going to be, which was a slow sorry disappointment as it aired, until it finally perpetuated lessons about uhhh gender essentialism or whatever that I found like, abhorrent enough to finally throw it in the garbage. Bird and I both still have some odd attachment to what the Pines twins Were to us at one younger, innocent point in time ... but I think I have more armor against getting that kind of attachment now. Rick & Morty and Gravity Falls actually have such a commonality of "ouhhhgh goddd the people writing this find things So Super Cool which I find BORING AND BASIC!!!!!!!" im gonna be subjected to some blockbuster action movie Badass moment with an old man or something.... GET ME OUTTA HEEEEERE!!!! Both GF & R&M are like, "well I couldn't have known"... I didn't go in knowing who Hirsch was, you know. Now-a-days I'd like, be able to read his twitter and go , no thank you LOL.

So I guess "what makes you distance yourself from characters" is typically a kind of self-awareness of the greater voice of the media being Bad For Me, allergy. It's often more like... "oh, this was made soullessly actually" or "oh, this was made with hate" or "oh, this is a money machine" or "ahhhh the creator is annoying". Often the situation of "its not right" is, as I said... my stupid ass was here for the wrong reason, with the wrong expectation. And the concept of the thing I liked simply doesn't actually exist anywhere but my own head ... a delusion... which means I should leave. It is acting according to its nature and it is I who did not properly read its body language. Or EVEN who ignored it.