A
Anonymous10/18/25, 14:35No.283112744Hegelian Dialectic in /a/ - Effortposting thread of the month
Definition: Being able to maintain two opposing traits together.
e.g. In harem stories, I simultaneously want the MC to be happy and have a lot of loving sex with his harem, while also placing myself in the world fucking the girls. These are two incompatible realities that I can hold at the same time without my enjoyment of the story diminishing.
What are some fun examples of Hegelian Dialectic you've found in anime, manga, etc.?
Whether it's your own as the reader, or found in the work.
36
Replies
A
Anon10/18/25, 15:01No.283113175
A
Anon10/18/25, 15:21No.283113523
In Madoka Magica, I simultaneously want Homura to get with Madoka and for me to have baby making sex with Homura. These are two incompatible realities that I can hold at the same time without my enjoyment of the story diminishing.
A
Anon10/18/25, 15:31No.283113731
You think Nue's Exorcist does that?
A
Anon10/18/25, 15:47No.283114014
The "first character to explain their strategy loses" problem.For a tense battle, audiences need the outcome of the fight to be unclear and unexpected in order for there to be stakes. Yet at the same time they usually need some degree of grounding and explanation to the players' strategies, mindsets and techniques to better understand those stakes and get invested. A climactic fight being resolved by some never-before explained factor is often disappointing.This generally results in writers, intentionally or otherwise, often defaulting to the infamous "first to explain loses" approach. The value of characters shifts towards "how much can they still surprise the audience?" when determining which stick around and which get sidelined. You see this most often in tournaments and death games, where the people who stick around are usually the ones that have the least revealed about them, or have powersets that lend themselves to this.However, due to how common this approach is, audiences become quickly savvy to the old "death by flashback". So there's now incentive for writers to subvert expectations and keep tensions high by knocking out characters whose arcs haven't been completed yet. In tournament arcs especially, the skill of a writer lies in how good they are at balancing these various contradictory but necessary aspects of how much to reveal, how much to conceal and how much to subvert.--Am I doing this right?
A
Anon10/18/25, 16:38No.283115023
think anons think!
A
Anon10/18/25, 17:14No.283115860
bump
A
Anon10/18/25, 17:20No.283116000
I wanted gally to have a peaceful ordinary life with Figure like at the end of the original manga. But i also like her development pushing her beyond what's 'ordinary' and becoming an agent of humanity and doing mars Chronicle.
A
Anon10/18/25, 18:00No.283116945
bump
A
Anon10/18/25, 19:41No.283119876
>I simultaneously want the MC to be happy and have a lot of loving sex with his harem, while also placing myself in the world fucking the girls.
>These are two incompatible realities
A
Anon10/18/25, 20:33No.283121222
Bump
A
Anon10/18/25, 21:11No.283121981
Anyone who read german philosophers is a midwit without exception
A
Anon10/18/25, 21:50No.283122747
That is just a contradiction. It is not a dialectic unless you use the contradiction between the two to refine your definition of either situation until you form a new understanding, hence the synthesis part. If you maintain two opposing traits/ideas/realities then it is inherently not a dialectic. It is the process by which you resolve the opposition.
For example:
>I simultaneously want the MC to be happy and have a lot of loving sex with his harem, while also placing myself in the world fucking the girls. These are two incompatible realities.
>However, if I self insert as the main character, these are no longer two opposing realities but the synthesis of both into one consistent reality.
Congrats. Your opposing ideas were a catalyst for new insights, which allow you to discover the profound truth at the heart of all things. That's dialectics.
A
Anon10/18/25, 23:18No.283124789
Bamp
A
Anon10/19/25, 03:29No.283129733
I just figured out that Suo-senpai is actually based on Asa-senpai from Shuffle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFX_YTqnXZI
A
Anon10/19/25, 06:13No.283131985
bump!