#it's not like the ENTIRE world hates them and obviously both of them are successful in their own right
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My perhaps controversial take on the HOTD characters, the GOT characters the writers are trying to mold them into, and the GOT characters they actually most resemble in the books (in my opinion - feel free to disagree).
Disclaimer: these are entirely disconnected series with unique characters, so it's impossible to do what the writers of HOTD seemed to be trying to do in season 1 i.e. mold the characters from Fire and Blood to fit the characters of GOT to try to recreate the success of the early seasons. Given this, I tried to choose one single character analogue from GOT that each HOTD/FB character is most like, but oftentimes the reality is that if any single character from Fire and Blood resembles a Game of Thrones character it is likely that they are a combination of more than one. All of this said, here is who I think the writers are trying to fit certain HOTD characters into vs the character they are actually most like (according to Fire and Blood):
Rhaenyra Targaryen: obviously the show wants her to be the new and improved Daenerys, a protagonist everyone can root for who wants to revolutionize the existing order. In reality, Rhaenyra is most like Cersei: a woman who seeks to use her three bastards to usurp thrones and gain even more power than she already has, all while committing incest with a family member and using her power to punish and silence her enemies. She uses the existing system to raise herself up and keep others below her. She does reach her goal of ultimate power but ultimately she is unable to hold it. In pursuit of holding onto power or gaining more of it, she watches as her children die early deaths. The smallfolk despise her for her methods of ruling. Eventually, she will cause her own downfall and die before her time.
Alicent Hightower: the show wants her to be Cersei, a mean-spirited, jealous woman protecting her problematic children and using her status as queen to put others in their place (they even used Cersei scenes as audition material for the role). In reality, I see Alicent as most like Catelyn - a flawed woman, mother to a king, seeking to further the rights of her son in the hopes of protecting her family from those who would harm them, guided by her own sense of justice, honor, and understanding of the laws of the land (and of course, hyper aware of the bastards in the room). All she wants is her and her children's safety, and she is willing to go to war for it. In the end, however, she watches as every last child is taken from her before she herself dies alone.
Viserys I Targaryen: the show wants us to see him as the ultimate father who loves his child unconditionally and always supports her, and that his view of right and wrong should be what guides the world. In reality, he is most like Robert Baratheon: a weak king unsuitable for rule whose mistakes and complacency lead to civil war after his death. His preoccupation with past events and people, and his role in a former love's demise, leads him to neglect his current wife and their children and make decisions that create long-term issues for his family and the realm.
Criston Cole: as soon as Criston turns away from Rhaenyra, the show wants you to view him as a Meryn Trant type of Kingsguard - a man unconcerned with honor and violently anti-women, more than willing to carry out terrible acts commanded of him. In reality, Criston is like more like Jaime: he seeks to make a name for himself as a knight, guided by his own sense of honor and justice, though he is judged by others as lacking such principles. His devotion to his position on the Kingsguard and his love for the royal family motivates him. Occasionally his self-confidence and delight in goading his enemies can make him appear callous and proud. Although he is not officially the royal children's "father," he has guided and protected them and their mother from early on in the absence of their official father.
Daemon Targaryen: the show wants you to both love and hate Daemon. It seems he should fill many roles that Jaime did - a sword fighter whose swagger and danger mix together, whose dishonorable acts follow him through the world. He acts primarily out of love or his pursuit of it, whether for his brother or his lover and her children. The viewer is supposed to see that deep down he is a good guy, no matter how many characters say that he's not. In reality, I see Daemon as a more capable Viserys III: a man adamant in his family's racial superiority, who believes he and his loved ones should have access to unchecked power because they're better than everyone else. A man who enjoys exercising his power over others and demanding obedience out of fear of his wrath. A man who uses his younger family member to further his own interests without much thought to her own wishes or agency and willing to hurt her if she doesn't act the way he wants her to.
Otto Hightower: the show wants you to view Otto as a new Littlefinger, someone sly about his intentions who uses spies, information, and unsavory methods to take advantage of the ruling family and further his own interests and increase his own power. I see him instead as more similar to Tywin: a Hand of the King seeking to put his family close to the throne in pursuit of legacy and advancing his family's station, a man who arranged for his daughter to marry the king so his blood would sit the Iron Throne and bring his family power for generations, a man acutely aware of the political world and how the game is played and willing to get his hands dirty to play it.
The Strong boys: the show wants you to root for Rhaenyra's perfect, good natured and pure intentioned sons as if they were the Stark boys (mixed with Jon Snow). Raised in a good family, these boys know right from wrong and love each other. Yet some people unfairly think less of them for their birth. In reality, the Strong boys are closest to Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella. Bastards set to inherit positions they have no claim to, they are coddled by their mother and protected from any consequences to their actions. When one attacks another child, their mother demands that the other child's family is punished for their actions (and doesn't even reprimand the child for his role in the conflict). The result is the child has no remorse for the harm done, and the other child's family festers resentment against the child. Some people uncover the truth of their birth and object to their place in the line of succession, and these people are killed for speaking the truth. Eventually, a war is fought to keep them and their mother away from the throne, resulting in all of them being killed.
Aegon II Targaryen: the show wants you to see him as Joffrey 2.0. A man interested in viewing sadistic acts for his own pleasure, who abuses women for his own enjoyment, and who is unfit to rule. In reality I see Aegon as closest to Robb: a first born son reluctant to rule as king once his father dies but who rises to the occasion to try to keep his remaining family safe. A king willing to fight his battles alongside his men, no matter the risk it might pose to him. A king who tries his best to rule but makes mistakes along the way that cost him dearly. In the end, he watches as he loses everything, and he dies young.
#admittedly I am#pro team green#in my take of the story and show#and I'm also#anti team black#so if this bothers you block the tag and dni#anyway just my take!#feel free to discuss or add more#these were just some of the obvious ones I came up with#hotd critical
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If there's one thing TGWDLM fans are gonna do, it's think about the implications. And the implications of the opening number are crazy.
So. We know that the show isn't completely chronological since the opening number takes place before the meteor hits. So that song is a sort of "flash forward" moment. But when you think about it, we don't really know how far in the future it takes place.
What we do know is that by the time it's happening, Emma is infected. She has a little solo in it singing about how Paul is pining over a barista
And we know that this is meant to be an infected Emma specifically. Lauren had other characters in the show, if they wanted to avoid the Emma implication they would've just dressed her as one of those.
So we know this is meant to be Emma.
And Emma isn't infected until the very end of the show. She's dragged off stage during the credits. So since she's infected in the opening number, we know the number takes place after the events of the show.
Another important detail is that Paul is infected before Emma. He's the one that passes it on to her.
So back to the opening number, Emma is infected. Which means by just following a simple timeline, Paul must also be infected. He should be singing and dancing, right?
But that's not what happens. Paul misses his entrance.
If Paul is infected, then there's no reason he should be missing his entrance. Furthermore, if he's a part of a hive mind, there's no reason other members of the same hive mind shouldn't know where he is. They are literally all connected by one brain, and yet both Mr. Davidson and Bill express they have no clue where he went.
What I'm saying is that Paul is not infected. He was infected (again, we know that because Emma is infected and he was infected before her) but now he's not anymore.
I'm saying there's a way out of the hive, and Paul found it. That's the only explanation that makes sense given the facts of the situation. Sometime after the events of tgwdlm, Paul is able not only to break out the hive mind, but to hide from it.
And if he broke out, others could do the same. Maybe even Emma.
Edit because a countertheory has emerged:
Yes it's possible that everyone is infected the entire time and the show itself is just Pokey replaying the events for the fun of it. But it seems unlikely to me.
First of all, each of the Lords in Black has a distinct personality. They all are evil, but within that they seems to fall somewhere on a spectrum of "silly billy" to "prick." For example, Tinky is more of a silly billy. He toys with humans without much of a motive and more for just shits and giggles. But in every instance, Pokey's more on the extreme side of prick.
He's one of the few with an actual motive behind what he does. In Yellowjacket, it's confirmed that Pokotho hates the sound of anyone's voice except for his own. The events of TGWDLM don't happen because Pokey is bored, they happen because he is executing a plan. So I don't think that he would just have them play out their little scenario just to entertain him, especially just one small island? I just feel like he'd be more focused on world domination.
If the theory is that all this is happening after Pokey's already taken over the whole world, no one was successful in stopping him, then yes it's plausible, but still weird. There are a strange amount of things in that show you just think an eldritch god wouldn't include.
Edit 2: New evidence has emerged???
The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is loosely based off of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Paul's last name is even a nod to the main character, Matthew. At the end of the film, Matthew survives, and continues living among the infected, pretending to be one of them. And wouldn't that be just such a fun little parallel...
Obviously it doesn't prove anything but the source material doesn't lie folks.
#the implications#starkid#hatchetfield universe#hatchetfield#paul matthews#emma perkins#tgwdlm#the guy who didn't like musicals#npmd#black friday musical#theory#fan theory#jon matteson#lauren lopez
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clipsverse SWAP AU! for fun! character elaboration under the cut because it gets kind of wordy:
selina's deal is pretty straightforward: she has the typical “saw parents die as a child" backstory, but she’s obviously not a millionare so she’s operating out of some kind of condemned underground parking lot... somewhere. authentic gotham grunge i guess. she’s a functioning alcoholic and i am obsessed with her. she's a hardboiled detective like batman, but tends to be a bit more cynical - sort of like if rorschach from watchmen was a normal person and also didn't hate sex. firefly is her "guy in the chair" similar to what alfred is to batman in canon, minus the surrogate parent part, obviously. public opinion is pretty split on if the bat is a man or a woman under there. i don't really have swap ideas for the robins ironed out, but i'm thinking that cass and stephanie are her robin and red hood equivalents (cass being dick, stephanie being jason). cass would have an allblack bird theme going on, so she might be "crow" or "blackbird" instead of robin. dunno what stephanie's red hood rendition is like. purple hood? i'll figure it out eventually.
bruce’s parents are alive, but he has a terrible relationship with them and with his own wealth so he mitigates the guilt complex by dressing up as a cat to steal and redistribute resources to people who actually need it. he could probably do that in daylight but there is something very wrong with him. i don't think his dumb slutty playboy persona is entirely genuine even without his parents' deaths, but he does lean into it more and incorporate parts of it into his vigilante persona over time. i think this version of bruce is just generally very lonely under the surface. he tries to be normal in his daytime life and he's very bad at it - theft aside, in a certain sense being the cat(man? woman?) is his own break for freedom; he felt a need to plunge himself far into the deep end of what normal society calls a 'freak'. ...writing it out like this, we're probably lucky he didn't start killing people. fortunately batman isn't really that kind of guy in any universe.
meanwhile on the other side of the rails: ivy! her deal is slightly unformed right now due to the fact that the hatter and the joker also swap places in this au - so the hatter is a dangerous, evil mastermind intent on controlling gotham to suit their whims, and the joker is... just a harmless silly little guy. yeah. i don't have swap-hatter's exact personality ironed out yet, so detailing his and ivy's dynamic would be difficult, but i can say that while she is his loyal second-in-command at his table of advisors, she is also plotting against him. ivy is a consistent loner in both mainline cv and here, and while she doesn't have the same tumultuous, antagonistic, emotional relationship with him as harley does with the joker, she is also frankly not interested in being his number one until the end of time. she wants to do it herself and she wants to do it right. this is an ivy who, in lieu of her own world-altering gift, is scraping tooth and nail to successfully supersede the most powerful entity she can her her hands on. the hatter is blissfully unaware of this - we can't all be perfect.
harley, for her part, is very tame in comparison. she mirrors ivy's canonical backstory pretty closely: an esteemed scientist studying stem cell relations who was denied funding, mocked, and forced to experiment on herself to prove a point, unwittingly connecting herself to a worldwide hive-mind of plantlife. this version of harley, while still dressed as a scientist, is far more surface-level emotionally volatile than mainline ivy, more impulsive and irrational, and probably willing to lean much farther into the classic poison ivy reputation as a villainous seductress, to varying degrees of honesty and success. it takes ivy an incredible degree of patience and control to maintain the mental and physical balance she strikes with the green, and this version of harley has far less of both. she lets it use her body as a conduit of earthly rage and she lets the poison infect her skin and organs until mottled and decaying. she's not unhappy, but she's not exactly stable, either.
jonathan is a mysterious, faux-sleazy lounge singer who lost his left arm to a snake bite infection as a child and thereafter became obsessed with the symbolism of the balance of life via games, tricks and questions - winning and losing, birth and death, etc. the ouroboros is a common symbol in his theatrics. he possesses a certain degree of social confidence that the mainline jonathan has never quite been capable of - while he doesn't have the same fervent need for attention as edward, he takes a compulsory delight in the mental influence he achieves on small crowds and will employ many avenues to get ahold of it. he's certainly not outgoing: he keeps almost entirely to himself offstage, uninterested in fame outside of his show persona. unlike mainline jonathan who views the scarecrow as a genuine self-inflicted diety, this jon sees his persona as more of a mantle or responsibility that he must take on in order to discover new truths about the world. like his canon counterpart he is asexual and uninterested in sex, but i imagine that he has less qualms about leading people on as an act to get what he wants from them. he's not terribly famous in his singing career, but he's become a bit of an underground legend for his resolute 1920s-inspired style and occasional genuine debonair charm.
edward in comparison is not nearly as ritualistically compelled as mainline scarecrow, but he’s far less cagey about his own machinations and his mental relationship to them: he lives in a tricked-out barn somewhere on the far outskirts of gotham, and he spends his time as a propmaster creating elaborate saw-trap-esque haunted houses and escape rooms to invoke panic in his “guests”. he wanders the halls of his own houses along with the guests, repairing and tinkering, or just scaring the shit out of them. he also makes a genuine living by making and selling cosplay props and other related objects online; he's developed a bit of an internet presence through this channel, though he's not as fixated on it as the mainline riddler would be. he still craves spectacle and attention, but he's more of a "quality over quantity" guy according to his own standards and is rarely happy with the work he creates, hence the endless roundabout of creation and reinvention.
#that got long mamma mia#edit: fixed some typos. my personal hell#scribbles#clipsverse#swap au#batman rogues#batman#catwoman#poison ivy#harley quinn#jonathan crane#edward nygma#cvswap
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I was thinking about the themes of One Piece, and what differentiated out characters we see as good versus bad, especially in a work that takes a really accepting view of different moral standpoints and values (Coby and SWORDS's justice is very different from Sabo and the RA's justice but they are both presented as good guys we'd want to root for).
So like, why do we root for Luffy following his dream to be Pirate King, but not Teach?
What about hating Crocodile who wanted to create an ideal society free of the WG but not the RA who want something similar for whole the world?
Big Mom who wants to create a place where all sentient are equal and get along versus Koala and/or Otohime who dream of that same thing for humans and fishmen?
I mean the obvious answer is that protagonists and their allies tend to be likeable - they are usually drawn prettier, have less kick the dog moments, and we get more time with them as an audience. They have to be on some level, or no one would read the manga.
But from an in-story perspective, I think its a an under looked facet of Luffy's character, for him chasing his dream is more important than obtaining it. It's why he turns down Rayleigh straight up offering to tell him where Laugh Tale is, and what is on it. What is important to Luffy isn't so much becoming Pirate King, it is being free, having fun, sailing with his friends on the journey to be Pirate King.
It's why he helps Vivi in Alabasta, Cricket in Skypiea, Shirahoshi in Fishmen Island, and the Wano crew in uhh Wano (the journey wouldn't be fun if he'd abandoned his friends to do it)
It's why he takes dangerous detours to places like Little Garden or Sky Island or Punk Hazard(the journey wouldn't be fun if he didn't get to explore)
It's why he risks his life against Arlong for Nami and declares the entire world his enemy for Robin and literally threatens to starve to death to get Sanji back ( the journey wouldn't be fun if he can't do it with his crew by his side)
All of this is why, Luffy isn't afraid of dying either. He can die at any point on his journey to being Pirate King, and feel no regret because the journey itself was the important part.
Compare this to two other D.'s Law and Blackbeard.
Law's also relentlessly pursuing his dream when we meet him (stop Doflamingo to avenge Cora), and he is miserable.
Law in trying to achieve his dream whatever the cost keeps putting himself in situations he hates.
He leaves his beloved crew behind because the mission is basically a suicide run. He cozies up to the Government he hates and hands his heart over to a morally bankrupt mad scientist he's obviously disgusted by. He plans to get Doflamingo in trouble with Kaido, which mean 1) he likely won't get to punch out Mingo himself, 2) there is a high probability of civilians getting caught in the crossfire/dying horribly.
This journey sucks. If Law had died during any point of this he would have been the world's most pissed off ghost.
It's Luffy and the Strawhats busting in and transforming that journey that puts Law on the path to success with his dream and with not being so goddamn miserable.
Like screw Caesar, let;s have Luffy kick his ass and then you fix the children he was experimenting on. Screw playing nice with the government, do what you want and call us your allies instead. Screw Doflamingo, you and Luffy go beat him up and the rest of us will pull his government/crime family down around his ears.
And it works! Law's grumpy and annoyed and cursing Luffy out, but he tells Mingo he believes Luffy can pull out a miracle and looks more at peace watching Doflamingo and Luffy brawl - knowing that he'll die or succeed with his ally/friend - than he ever did with his fool-proof plan.
The journey before destination thing is also why Blackbeard feels like a special type of evil in OP despite there being technically worse/more evil villains, because Blackbeard always prioritizes his dream over how he gets it.
He'll stay in the shadows for 20 years to increase his chances of success (wouldn't it have been more fun to be a captain like he obviously wants?)
He'll kill his crewmate, turn his commander in for a reward, then kill his captain (wouldn't it have been more fun to stay friends, he never indicates he hates/dislikes them?)
He invites strong people - and strong seems to be the only criteria - to join his crew, though tbh their personalities often suck. I don't recall any panel of his crew just hanging out or joking around which even Baroque Works, Buggy's crew, and Kaido's Beast Pirates get (wouldn't it have been more fun to recruit people he can befriend, not just people he can use)
Like obviously Blackbeard feels like the antithesis of Luffy - even though they are both all about chasing their dreams. Luffy's all about the chasing, and Blackbeard only cares about the results.
#one piece meta#monkey d. luffy#marshall d. teach#trafalgar law#also another theme of the manga is romance (classical sense)#and the process of chasing your dream is so much more romantic#than the absolute ruthless prioritization of results
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Vivienne Medrano started her writing career on a comic by the name Zoophobia. A comic that lacked any sense of story whatsoever. While she would argue with comments about the lack of purpose by saying the story was Slice of Life, it was a forewarning of her future to come.
The story started with a concept of overcoming prejudice, but was quickly washed over with a bombardment of a large ensamble cast at the very start before introducing a whole separate but attached world that spun off into Hazbin Hotel. At no point actually finding a reason to care about the original premise of a prejudicial school counselor overcoming those qualities to help those around them that were substantially different from them.
Rather, Medrano has perpetuated the misnomer that Slice of Life is the same as storyless. And that's the greatest misunderstanding of a genre that can be achieved. Slice of Life being deemed meaningless time wasting as you look into the dull happenings of someone else's benign problems is a childish perspective.
Slice of life is the cornerstone of coming of age narratives like Grave of the Fireflies. For young adults, a slice of life mature story about what it means to grow up, or inner child healing, or how to move on would be a niche that could shape a generation for the better. Especially in our Era of the internet where most of us have spent more time learning socialization online.
Where people are stripped of their humanity and nuance, and tone is read into lettering on the cold blue light of a screen in the dark. Unless this little pixelated square and string of text makes me feel important by either agreeing with me and thus making me feel worth through their "support" for my beliefs or flatter me and validating my existence before disagreeing with my points, they are the villain of the second.
And especially being a show released at the height of a world trapped in quarantine, where all our sense of community and humanity came through a screen, Helluva Boss seemed to want to be a dark comedy that tackled the topics of damaged inner-children, relationship and abandonment trauma, self worth and moving on from past mistakes, and the complicated minefield of grey morality.
This is not mere conjecture either. Medrano has an outspoken love for shows like Bojack Horseman but lacks the understanding of why this absurd vision of slice of life was so emotionally and mentally profound to an entire generation of young adults. Medrano herself has liked sycophantic tweets comparing Helluva Boss to Bojack Horseman and subtly props herself on these pedestals alongside her idols despite not deserving of the comparison.
Blitz is the show titular Boss of the series and is very obviously a concept inspired by Bojack directly. Both Bojack and Blitz are performing artists, but while Bojack was immensely successful, Blitz was not.
Bojack's history is that of two abusive parents who had no love to spare for him. Instead, his only worth came in the form of performing. It was the only time he felt any ounce of love from his cruel mother, Beatrice, who used him as a means to elevate herself socially while simultaneously feeling any form of worth through the validation of strangers. Bojack is aware his mother was not a great parent, but he has a damaged inner child still desperate to get her approval and affection. Even though he genuinely hates her, he has a lingering empty maw within himself that begs for her love. Bojack suffers from a fear of loss.
When Sarah Lynn drinks his alcohol, he throws the hair dressed under the train to save himself. Despite his honesty having a high chance of being seen as the accident it was and excuses being made for him, Bojack was too insecure to recognize his protection through his popularity. He grew up with a mother who was the definition of conditional, and any small or large mistake could be the catalyst that took everything he had worked and waited for away.
Bojack's sabotaging of Todd also showsbthis fear of loss more blatantly. However, it lacks the understanding as to why Bojack would want to keep Todd near while also chronically putting him down. This is where the lack of understanding best shows between what Medrano thinks is happening and reality.
Blitz begins his story much the same way as Bojack. Instead of a slave driving mother profiting off her son, it's Cash Buckzo, Blitz's father and owner of a circus, who slave drives his children to perform. Blitz loves performing but is not deemed talented enough to be valuable. He has an implied sick, unseen mother who is treated as his motivation for complying with his father.
Medrano doesn't seem to realize that an external motivation lacks the emotional depth needed to have an audience empathize with the character. This is a repeated issue in every character.
Blitz isn't seeking a parent's approval but is instead held hostage by the desire to help someone else, and to do that must be submissive to an authority who has no care for him.
Stolas isn't at war with himself over cheating on his wife due to the fact that he is a gay man in an arranged straight relationship but instead is a victim in his own life. He is told what to do and how to do it by every other person in his life and doesn't have an internal sense of responsibility that he is contending with. He has no needs vs. wants. Instead, his wants are universal. To be loved is a base desire, and Medrano puts no effort into expanding on what that means for her character. Instead, utilizing the natural inclination in her audience to pretend there is depth in Stolas' conflict.
Loona is similarly a victim. She and Stolas are not fighting their own emotions, but the bullies contrived in the plot for them to confront. Her fault isn't her own insecurity that she must overcome. Rather, it is the fault of every other character for not coddling her insecurities due to her having a sad history. Actively fighting against the notion that people should ultimately be responsible for themselves.
This gives the impression of someone who believes a sympathetic past must justify one's behavior in the present. It's a blatant misreading of the idea that everyone has their own storm to navigate. The idea behind that saying is that you should be kind despite what you are going through because it is easy to believe you win the bad day Olympics when you're in the middle of it, not because someone else may be going or has gone through something worse.
Wrapping around, the Todd and Bojack relationship is a clear parallel to the Moxxie and Blitz relationship. But while Medrano uses the line "I'm hard on you because you can do better" as to why Blitz is a chronic asshole to his "friend", the writers of Bojack are not at all interested in justifying abuse. The reason Bojack ruined Todd's chance to leave can be seen as sympathetic because he is afraid of being alone and the loss that comes with that. But he isn't cruel or rude to Todd to make him better, rather it is the systematic disintegration of Todd's sense of ability and self worth to keep him codependent to Bojck and less likely to leave. It is only when Todd is away from Bojack that he actually comes into his true potential. The support of those around him telling him how badly Bojack treats him and instilling confidence in Todd to try things once again ultimately results in him escaping Bojack. It is a slow process for Todd to leave. He doesn't just walk away like it feels in the episode. Rather, he has spent seasons slowly becoming more and more distant from Bojack with new relationships and hobbies, even as Bojack tries to brow beat and insult him into complacency.
Instead, Medrano thinks things just happen from large, grand gestures and emotional beats. That a sad past is a free ticket to being an awful person who is accountable to no one. Much like the villain of Bojack Horseman.
#helluva boss critical#helluva boss criticism#helluva boss critique#vivienne medrano#vivziepop#helluva boss#spindlehorse criticism#spindlehorse critical#abuse survivor#narcissistic abuse#bojack horseman#vivziepop critical#vivziepop criticism#vivziepop critique#slice of life is not nothing#writing critique#writing criticism#characters need growth#these characters deserve better#zoophobia#bojack netflix#bojackthoughts#essay writing
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Not me being mad today about people over exaggerating the "do or do not there is no try" and hating on the Jedi for it as if it's not an idiom about always trying your best and giving it your all (and considering things when you do them) instead of literally saying don't try if you can't succeed. :/
I've always understood "do or do not, there is no try" as "ultimately, you will either have done or not done" - it seems like it's about focusing on the outcome instead of the process.
(As a recap of what exactly happens in ESB: Luke is doing a handstand trying to lift stones with Yoda perched on his leg when the ship suddenly sinks further into the water. It breaks Luke's concentration and his rocks fall, along with him, and Yoda. Luke laments they'll never get the ship back, Yoda laments that Luke always thinks things are too hard to be done, Luke says lifting stones is different, Yoda says it isn't, and Luke agrees to try, which is when Yoda has his iconic line.
And critically, after Luke does try and fail, Yoda gives him a great speech about the nature of the Force and how it binds everything together and Luke despondently says that it's just impossible. Upon which Yoda lifts the ship out of the water, of course, and Luke exclaims that he can't believe it, to which Yoda answers that that's why he's failing.)
Obviously you won't always get things right the first time, and that's precisely what Luke is frustrated about in the scene. And because he's disappointed that he's not getting things right, he doesn't even want to try anymore - his first instinct is to give up because he thinks the situation is beyond fixing.
So the critical point about the quote is that this Yoda shifting the focus: he tells Luke to stop thinking about what he's doing and concentrate on what he wants to do.
This is because of Luke's current state of mind, because Luke is currently associating his own efforts with failure, it's not just a random thing he's saying to make him feel bad.
Everything Star Wars tells us about the Force is that it's used through both intuition and confidence:
That's why the Jedi train so hard from such a young age - you can't doubt yourself or second-guess the Force, or you will get your ass kicked by both the universe and your potential opponents. You have to be able to trust your instincts because you have to rely on them - hence the need to either instill good Force-oriented instincts in kids, or in Luke's case relearn his own base sentient instincts. You can't learn to categorize the material world as 'too heavy,' 'too far,' 'not possible' - you have to focus on the Force, not the physical nature of the objects or your own limitations.
Luke thinks and feels the way a non Force-sensitive would: 'heavy things = can't be lifted.' He was doing okay lifting stones upside down, but he was using his muscles to stand upright, not the Force (hence why he was struggling to stay up and why he fell so easily). His concentration was clouded by material concerns (the loss of the ship and his own powerlessness) so he couldn't maintain it. He sees success as depending on his own conscious efforts but that's just not the way it works, he has to let go because his mind is just not wired right yet and so his efforts are necessarily counterproductive. It's that materialism that Yoda is responding to.
That's the point of Yoda's lesson imo - it's not so much about the technicalities of 'giving it everything you've got,' it's about something much deeper. He is trying to get Luke to radically change his mindset and entire worldview (the 'luminous beings, not this crude matter' quote is from this scene too), because Luke is never going to succeed if he thinks in terms of 'trying.'
If Luke could visualize the starship out of the bog and focus on that, the starship would be out of the bog. If he's focused on trying to lift it out of the bog, then he'll fail because everything in his mind tells him he can't.
Which is exactly what happens.
And the fact is, we know Yoda is 100% right with his advice and that everything he says and teaches in that moment is endorsed by the narrative - because he easily succeeds where Luke kept failing.
Story-wise, it couldn't be clearer that Yoda's advice is good, because it's immediately proven that not following it doesn't yield results, but that following it does.
Like most Jedi maxims, "Do, or do not. There is no try," is circumstantial advice and I'm pretty sure it doesn't show up again in Star Wars canon, be it the movies or TCW (until Rebels that is, when Kanan quotes it to Ezra like it's a rote thing that Yoda used to say all the time and it's kind of 'ah ah' moment because neither of them can figure out what it means). Which is why it kinda bugs me that it was elevated to a Yoda proverb like it's something he says constantly and not just something Luke needed to hear in that moment. It's a banger of a quote though.
#ask#luke skywalker#yoda#empire strikes back#jedi philosophy#esb#meta#anonymous#long post#jedi positivity#the force#my meta
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Deep diving into Alejandro's ethnicity and family because the show is vague with how both are portrayed, and I'm pedantic:
Off the bat, we know that he was born in 🇪🇸 Spain. Or at least, that's what his wiki page says, so I'm sure it's mentioned in some kind of canon content (the show, the character interviews, the creators' stating it, ect). He often times speaks en español, either by replacing words and phrases in otherwise English sentences or cussing out his team in an entirely spanish confession. His name is also rooted in Spanish origin; 'Alejandro' is the Spanish equivalent of Alexander, and his surname 'Burromuerto' literally translates to "Dead Donkey", likely a combination of the idioms "beating a dead horse" and "no ver tres en un burro", translation: can't see three on a donkey; akin to 'blind as a bat'.
I could go on about the symbolism of his name(s) and how it relates to his performance on Total Drama, but that's not essential to the topic at hand so I'll go over it later.*
With this in mind, the show really wants us to believe that he's Spanish, or at the very least Hispanic.
In Chinese Fake-Out, we learn that he won a gold medal at the South American Skate Olympics, so he presumably lived somewhere in South America in his childhood. On the wiki, it claims that he moved to Latin America soon after he was born. His comment in the same episode about eating barbequed guinea pigs where he grew up had a lot of people deducing that he lived in 🇵🇪 Peru since guinea pig is famously a delicacy there. The question begs, why would Alejandro and the rest of the Burromuertos move to Peru from Spain?
We know that Alejandro's father is a diplomat, so uprooting the family to a new country could be related to his work, but I doubt a diplomat would settle down and start a family just to go through the hassle of moving them halfway across the world to a random country, regardless of his salary.
What other reason would anyone have for dragging their brood across the sea? To see their extended family.
Family is a big character motivation for Alejandro: he has a lot of pride in being a Burromuerto and often times complains about disappointing his family or being susceptible to José's teasing when his plans don't work out. Pride is a staple of the Burromuertos; they even have a family code they abide by. That kind of mindset is usually generational, implying that his parents place the same emphasis on the presentation and opinions of their family.
The most glaring example of this mindset is the hate fuelled rivalry between Alejandro and José, which was sparked by their desperate need to be the "better son". The main goal of the Burromuerto brothers is familial recognition. Understandable, when your parents are too successful to raise you themselves, any kid would be desperate for their attention. Since their competition was allowed to escalate to the point of mutual loathing, their parents probably encouraged their behaviour; when you value familial reputation over everything of course you want your children to continuously prove themselves. (Poor Al is just full of complex familial trauma, from his parents' neglect to his brothers' bullying to the incredible pressure he's put under to succeed. No wonder he's like that.)
After seeing how the brothers are willing to go to extremes for the sake of family, it's reasonable that parents sharing that mindset would move across an ocean just to see their relatives (and likely compete with them, after all even a younger Alejandro was showing up everyone in South America's skateboarding scene).
Suggesting that either one or both of his parents, or grandparents, are Latin American. For simplicities sake, we'll say that Alejandro's dad is Spanish (as he carries the surname), and his mother is Peruvian (since Peru is the assumed country they moved to).
That means that the brothers qualify as both Hispanic and Latino. Alejandro's latin blood really is canon, and the stereotypical 'Latin Lover' archetype he fills (alongside the "Archvillain" he's titled as) is all the more accurate. He's evidently very proud of both heritages.
To clarify, the Burromuertos moved to Peru when Alejandro was young to be with his Mother's side of the family.
If we want to really wade into the theoretical waters, I'd like to suggest that Alejandro's father left Spain because he disgraced himself/his family in some way, and that's why he's so insistent on his sons restoring the family pride and prestige.
So, I've established Alejandro's ethnicity and touched on the bare-bones basics of his home life. But what about his other brother, or his uncle? You know, the characters that were mentioned once and never expanded upon. Don't worry, I've got notes on them too.
Carlos: The eldest child and a professional soccer player. Alejandro doesn't mention anything about a rivalry with Carlos. Instead, he suggests the two share a healthier bond as Carlos taught him soccer skills. 'Carlos' the name is a Spanish variant of Charles, meaning "free man". Fitting, since it's widely assumed that Carlos escaped from the Burromuerto home's harmful environment at his first opportunity and 'freed himself' from their high expectations/standards, hence why he doesn't engage in the family-typical hypercompetitive bullying. A somewhat common fandom troupe I've seen is Carlos being disowned by the Burromuertos, and post-World Tour/All-Stars Alejandro reconnecting with him after he too is disowned.
Uncle Julio: The hypnotist. All we really know about Julio is his name and occupation, but it's enough to pin him down as Alejandro's maternal uncle. Alejandro states that he learned hypnosis from Julio in The EX-Files; as he grew up in Peru, the only family he reasonably could have interacted with outside of the nuclear unit would be his mother's relatives. His comment "manipulation runs in the family" is never ascribed to the Burromuertos by name, which adds to the implication that Julio isn't his father's brother, as any skill as useful as hypnosis would definitely be branded under his surname otherwise. Additionally, 'Julio' as a name is derivative of the Latin Julius or Julianus (meaning "Devoted to Jove/Jupiter", the Roman incarnation of Zeus, though I can't find any meaning in this applicable to his character), and not a strictly Spanish name like those of Alejandro and his brothers. Instead, it's common in most Hispanic and Latin American countries.
José: The middle child and Alejandro's source of his lingering childhood trauma, if the aversion to the nickname "Al" is anything to go by, I've already written about their relationship. The name 'José' is a Spanish variant of Joseph, which means "to add/give" in it's simplest interpretation. He sure does give Alejandro a tonne of issues, so I suppose it tracks.
*And finally, analysing the symbolism of Alejandro's name.
Alejandro, derived from Alexander, meaning "warrior" and "man's defender". Though in Al's case, it's likely a reference to Alexander the Great as opposed to the name's literal meaning/origins- Alejandro conquered the competition like Alexander conquered his empire.
Burromuerto's double idioms combine "beating a dead horse donkey" with "blind as a bat", likely as a convoluted way to say he's blinding the dead donkey; in this case, the beaten dead horse donkey is the OG cast of Total Drama who have already been milked for two seasons of content and have little left to offer (therefore, the third season is the beating of the dead horse, as its' an attempt to force content out of a resource with nothing left to give. that's why they added two more competitors, if that makes any sense? I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well enough,) and Alejandro is deceiving or 'blinding' them through his manipulations.
Obviously, this is all speculation written by someone with too much free time and no expertise. All of my knowledge/facts come from google searches and connecting dots that likely have no real links to each other. I'm not an authority on any subject. Keep that in mind, please.
Feel free to add your own opinions/thoughts! Or correct things that are be wrong!
#long post#total drama#td alejandro#td josé#the burromuertos#character analysis#silly headcanons#thoughtless posting#ophe rambling#ah yes. the deaddonkey brothers. charles jospeh and alexander. /lh
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Hello! I'm a big fan of your network and I find your advice very soothing after a long day of studying. I was wondering if you can help ease some worries I have about a future career?
I'm from the states, and I'm entering into my final year of college. I'm planning on becoming a teacher for middle school (unfortunately I'm unsure of what you call it overseas where you are? I want to teach the age range of around 12-13 year olds. My apologies). I've really enjoyed the program so far! I've made quite a few creature friends entering into the career as well, both in and out of my genus.
Unfortunately, there's some harmful fear-mongering and stereotypes surrounding my genus, specifically with regards to kids? And they're just the most ridiculous, too? Like, these people think I'm gonna kidnap their kid and pull them to the nearest lake and drown them! Seriously.
Regardless, I'm rather worried about how they could affect me in my future career. I'm not very good at ignoring how people perceive me. While I was working as a lifeguard over the summer, I felt very on-edge and hyper aware of every sapio who looked at me funny. Even though many of these stereotypes are easily disputable, I've still seen quite a few articles spreading this misinformation alongside a wider surge of similar misinformation regarding other genuses. I guess my question is, how do I cope with this?
I'm sorry you're having to cope with this kind of prejudice, reader. Liminal culture in the United States is not – obviously – my area of expertise. That said, we certainly have our fair share of bigotry and anti-creature sentiment here in the UK, so I have high hopes I'll be able to help, at least a little.
The first thing I would stress to you is that it is far easier to be vocal in the name of hate than acceptance, and that venom and vitriol will sell more newspapers (or garner more clicks, as the case may be) than open-mindedness and a live-and-let-live attitude.
Do not mistake the loudest voices for the largest population. Very often, they have been artificially amplified by a media industry that knows the selling power of outrage.
Besides which, people are not generally speaking inclined to march in the streets and wave home-made placards at news cameras for the sake of telling the world, “This is an issue I have no strong feelings about.”
I don't think you should be trying to ignore this issue. But you need to be able to see it for what it is – a loud, vocal minority whose success is due more to the passive silence of the majority than any truth or charisma on their part.
After all, their beliefs are patently absurd! The world is full of aquatic creatures who manage to go their entire lives without drowning anyone – or at least, nobody who didn't deserve it.
Rather than ignoring these people, I think it would be healthier and more fulfilling for you to actively seek out ways to counter their ridiculous narrative.
Look into opportunities to get involved with cross-community education projects. Make your classroom an explicitly creature-friendly space. Support the children you teach and their families to learn more about liminal folk.
In short, let your own liminal life stand as example of the good that can come from mixed genus communities.
There will always be people out there determined to believe the worst of anyone they consider to be the “other”.
But with time, energy, and kindness, we can build a world where they are seen and understood for what they are – small-minded bigots more interested in making themselves feel important than in building any kind of lasting, healthy community.
And if they really get up your nose, remember: you can always drown them.
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Monica I'm really scared. It's ep 11 next week. We haven't got Mork crying. (Sam mentioned to me that we haven't even gotten the day bawling scene from the trailer?) This eye donation thing seems a little bit too happy and hopeful for an ep 11.
I know this sounds bad but I really hope day doesn't regain his sight. Because everything the series built up about how blind people also are able to experience this world will all go down the drain. And some part of me knows p'aof will not do that. But then. It's so cruel. To give Day the eyes, the hope of vision just to yank it back so heartlessly. It's so mean. I am scared for next Friday monica.
i feel like i should probably wait to answer you because rn the episode is still too fresh in my mind and i don't have the emotional detachment necessary to be, if not positive, at least not utterly and embarrassingly overdramatic about this but. my mood really flipped a whole 180 degrees because of that ending and ngl. im not doing too well ;;;;;;;
FAIR AMOUNT OF NEGATIVITY UNDER THE CUT I ALREADY APOLOGIZE FOR IT
the thing is. i don't think the surgery next episode is gonna be successful, but i still so deeply dislike this eye donation plotline regardless of how it's gonna end because what's the point of it? if the surgery is successful and day gets his sight back, then it's gonna defeat the entire message of the show. if the surgery fails and day remains blind, then it just feels completely purposeless since he didn't need this to accept his disability and learn that he can still have a fulfilling life: he had already accepted this at songkhla, and it was perfect. honestly the only reason i can think of for them to go down this road is to have the surgery be unsuccessful now, only to end the series with day getting it again after some years and this time working out to show that 'you should never give up hope'. and i can't even begin to explain just how much that wouldn't sit right with me. and i mean i don't have a disability so i obviously don't have any right to say this, but still
not to mention that i actually still feel like those two moments with day and mork crying that we have yet to see are both related to the two of them breaking up because mork doesn't feel like he can take care of day, so they're gonna make him leave until he can prove to day's mom that he can provide for day. which is another thing i would hate
i just don't understand why would they choose all of this when, instead, p'aof could have had mork and day figuring out their future TOGETHER and BOTH trying to prove to day's mom that they can take care of EACH OTHER. like the show made such a point of making day become more independent and empowered but now they're not allowing him to be. i wanna see him walking outside alone with a cane, i wanna see him go back to school and finish his studies, i wanna see him open up his little bookstore while mork works as a cook. it can still happen, i guess, but i still wish it would have been given more focus
im also the kind of dramatic person who can't be like 'at least we have the first 9 episodes, they were perfect and nothing can ruin them'. unfortunately that's not enough for me. unfortunately i need them to stick the landing or it WOULD ruin the entire show for me. and not being able to get back to it and find comfort in morkday would honestly be heartbreaking for me. and you know, obviously the message and the representation of the show is the most important part in this, but also i would be lying if i said i didn't want to have a damn DVD box set of a jimmysea series to actually hold and enjoy since we won't ever have one for vice versa, but what would be the point of buying the last twilight one if i dislike the ending
ANYWAY. im really sorry ismay, i ended up ranting because i needed to vent but im afraid im only making you feel worse with this ;;;;;;; maybe after i sleep on it i will be a bit more optimistic about this but. im really scared too ;;;;;;; for what is worth im holding your hand and im here for you whatever is gonna happen
#none of this is gonna change my love for jimmysea but it still making me feel like such a bad nomnom#sorry again for the negativity i guess i should probably leave for a while ;;;;;;#ismay 🤍#m: ask
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i find reading 4chan posts absolutely fascinating in a like anthropological study way. everyone on that site has something horrifically wrong with them but there's a clear dividing line between people who are managing their lives but hang out on there because they are also unbelievably racist vs people who know theres something wrong with them and with the world but cant cope with it and get encouraged by the site to sink deeper into their own misery. i think there was a point in time when there were people on 4chan who werent reprehensible human beings but we're long past that point and now its just purely egregiously awful.
but there is something so interesting about it as a like hive of human suffering. no one on there is like actually happy with their lives. sometimes you get those posts like the turtle one i just reblogged that are kind of beautiful in their earnest appreciation for life and that we can all empathise with but there's no doubt in my mind that every single other post that user has made is like talking about the pussy phrenology of different anime girls.
you have this very specific type of person who is completely disaffected by society and is deeply isolated, either has no real friends or no one he feels close with enough to be actually honest with, understands that the system we live in is broken and that he himself is a broken person, but has chosen to concentrate all that anger and misery into becoming the most hateful version of themselves possible. probably doesn't even see it as a choice because he doesn't see immediate reward for making the most minute amount of effort to improve his life, so assumes that it's totally helpless. and that's not to say they don't live in circumstances that do make profound change incredibly difficult because i have seen that some of them do, but there's also a refusal to stop being in online spaces that are actively encouraging you to destroy yourself.
there's this very specific type of person you get, which is someone whose rage and misery comes from their own narcissism. they are convinced they are smarter, better, more worthwhile than everyone around them, that everyone they know is a moron and a worthless person. but they themselves see no success and no happiness in their own life, despite the fact they feel they deserve better. and because they know they're the best person alive but they're also a failure by their own metric, they become hateful both internally and externally. obviously to some extent we all feel something like this, we all at one point or another get stuck in a shitty job or shitty class or shitty family that is holding you back and you're with genuinely bad people. but with this case, with this kind of real internalised hatred, your anger escalates outside of just immediate irritating coworkers, there's this genuine pure and unbridled hatred and rage for everyone around you for experiencing any kind of earnest and genuine emotion in the face of your own misery.
and that kind of mindset is an epidemic on 4chan, that each of them deserves more and that they despise anyone who feels anything earnestly. they're not really capable of escaping their own cynical hatred. unsurprisingly you see this a lot with white supremacists and misogynists, since most if not all 4chan users are also white supremacists and misogynists, where their whiteness and maleness should automatically make them the superior but they aren't successful and therefore there must be some other reason, some kind of conspiracy against them. there's this constant awareness on 4chan that the system is fucked but they're also unable to put the pieces together because of their own bigotry and their own refusal to see that they might be wrong.
it's interesting to me because on one level there's things I understand; i have been profoundly lonely and isolated almost my entire life, i feel disenfranchised by the terrible system we live in, i love the movie Drive. i can also sometimes understand the desire to make yourself as reprehensible to outsiders as possible, to become some kind of truly vile thing to make everyone who doesn't understand feel ill and uncomfortable and awful. but i also can never understand everything else, the deep-seated true venomous hatred for all humanity, the bigotry, the total close-minded determination to be miserable. it's like looking through some kind of hideous black mirror of what life could be like if i didn't grow up being taught feminist theory and anti-racism. because i don't think there's any single innate trait that proves you can or can't be one of these people, it takes effort. you have to work to expand your knowledge, to open your mind, to keep trying. you have to be able to accept when you're wrong. you have to choose to care about people.
but like i said i do read a lot of these posts and it is always fascinating to me how much these people try to escape their humanity but are so human in doing so. there's something kind of Sisyphean about it.
there was a trend back in the 2012s on here to talk about 4chan like it was full of leet dark hackers and at some points in time there have definitely been people on there who know how cybersecurity works and how to get around it, but as of this present year in the 2020s, the userbase seems to be almost entirely just the most pathetic, saddest part of humanity imaginable. i assume that has a lot to do with the shifting userbase, the website changing hosts and domains and owners, etc, and the different face of the internet now. mostly now i think they're just profoundly sad.
and its like. I do find these people fascinating. but they are also so fucking unbelievably mind-numbingly boring. they will never produce anything true or beautiful because they are so fucking scared of feeling and of people. they will just sit alone for their entire lives believing that if it's going to get better it will only be because of someone finally recognising their genius.
i don't know if you can or can't help them. I don't really see it as our duty to do so. if someone is a nazi for their entire young adult life i don't think any of us should have to fix that for them. I think if the system we live in is changed it will also make life better for them, because it will make life better for everyone, but i don't particularly want to assign the duty of "we NEED to help these poor racist white men" to anyone. i understand how people get in these positions but it's the same issue again and again. a total refusal to take any action out of a sense you should not be inconvenienced, people should hand stuff to you.
i have no real deeper conclusion here. i just find something really strange and interesting about looking at a post about seeing a beautiful spark of hope for humanity and knowing that that same person, the day before, wrote about how he intentionally shit himself in public to try and make a woman on the bus uncomfortable.
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Hey just want to firstly say that I'm sorry of you're getting any hate you don't deserve that over expressing an opinion, secondly I would just like to give me perspective of someone who from a former colonised country as the ending to the hunger games has some interesting parallels to my country's history post independence firstly even tho we got independence our country was destroyed we had our language our culture our social structure everything almost completely eradicated under colonialism for centuries and then a war of independence that killed and destroyed even more, the colonisers when they left obviously did everything in their power to make it as hard as possible for us to form a new country and people were so traumatised and left with nothing that it was immediately followed by a civil war over how to rule the country/how to get revenge on what had been done to us with family members and friends fighting turning on each other this obviously devastated the country even more so when the violence finally ended we ended up with a power hungry leader similar to our colonisers leaders which lead to several more decades of suffering that we are only starting to more away from so for me the ending demonstrated how difficult it is to rebuild after something as devastating as colonialism, oppression and war and how there will always be some power hungry asshole ready to exploit the situation which for me is important to acknowledge as formerly colonised countries often get called backwards or seen as lesser for having poverty civil wars corrupt leaders gang violence etc but its because of how hard it is to rebuild (again just my perspective not trying to take away from yours just wanted to share)
Thank you for a thoughtful ask. This one is prettly lengthy and messy, but I wanted to submit a response as soon as I could.
I am not trying to undermine what has happened in your country, but dictatorships enstated after armed conflicts vary from case to case depending on historical circumstance. The situation in my country is very different, as a country that has both been colonized and a country that has acted as a force of heinous crimes against humanity un the Yugoslav war on the other hand. The current president of my country has ruled here for more than 30 years, due to the backing from the West, as they benefit from Montenegro being a powerful drug cartel and a human trafficking hotspot. The thing is, the referendum for my country's independence from Serbia was led by Milo Đukanović, a man who is one of the leading people responsible for several crimes against humanity in the Yugoslav war. Europe has no qualms with him, or with Montenegro getting away without soiling its reputation in the world for its misdeeds, because the EU leaders and Đukanović are business partners.
The thing is, these faux-revolutionaries have one thing in common, and that is that they are capitalists, backed by other, more powerful capitalists. That is why Coin was not the right character to get this point across-she is not their equivalent, yet we are meant to read her as such. Coin and District 13 aren't just opportunists who used the situation, they organised the revolution. Without them, nothing happens. They played a huge part of the revolution's success. This does not mean that Coin is a good person in my book or has clean motives (she doesn't; and I don't think it really matters as I'll elaborate on further) but rather that she is an incongruent character created through a lack of understanding of how people she is supposed to mirror come to be and what their actions mean. Which is a shame, because I do believe that Collins is a competent writer, and President Coin is the only character that I can name off the top of my head whose characterization was weirdly contextualised for the readers to be coddled. This is where most of the people who replied to my post missed entirely what I was trying to say- Coin is a symptom of a writer from a certain background. There are other elements that are evidence of Collins' rather western perspective on revolution and rebellion, such as the sheer amount of people from Capitol aiding the revolution (which is not very realistic). Coin is a bad person who does morally dubious things, but that is entirely irrelevant- she is someone who challenges the western reader and their comfort. She is a force to be reckoned with, and someone who does not shy away from gruesome violence to return to the citizens of Capitol, to make an example out of them the same way they tried to do with her people. She is brutal and will stop at nothing to achieve her ambitions; this challenges the Western reader to question their fate-to ask themselves whether they deserve such a fate because of what they turned a blind eye on for decades, centuries. Narratives are meant to challenge and not coddle, and Katniss killing Coin is exactly that- coddling, reassuring the Western reader that of course they don't deserve any such thing to happen to them, regardless of how much harm they do and contribute to actively every single day. I am saddened by the fact that an incredibly interesting character concept is turned into a moralizing device that ultimately cheapens her characterization in order to follow a very hollow, stale red-scare narrative pattern. Instead of being an exploration of such circumstances, Suzanne opted for simply making her a "power hungry" propaganda character.
Not all revolutionary leaders are going to be positive for sure, but media like The Hunger Games, AtLA, Naruto, etc. (and I am a fan of Naruto, and also someone who greatly enjoyed The Hunger Games series, and I liked AtLA) created in first world countries perpetuate this standard of goodness for a "proper revolution" that is incredibly difficult to achieve, in turn creating anti-revolution propaganda. It is not a coincidence that up until recently the label "terrorist" stood next to the names Che Guevara and Gavrilo Princip on their Wikipedia pages- regardless of why you portray your antagonist revolutionary character to be bad, ALL revolutionists will be judged by this standard, as these narratives are part of a very old and ingrained propaganda machine. Real life revolutions are never perfect, they're messy and complicated, and a lot of the times revolutionists do morally dubious things out of justified anger; but fiction like this helps perpetuate this idea that revolutions have to be morally perfect in every regard to be valid, and the standard for said validity is set by the most immoral, selfish people who ignore their complicity in horrid systems that are worse than anything Suzanne Collins wrote about in The Hunger Games. It is almost impossible to pass this test of goodness, made by western suburbanite consumerist assholes who are also complicit in the crimes against humanity their countries commit every fucking day. It is hypocrisy at its finest. This discourse around Coin and Gale remind me a lot of the discourse around Sasuke Uchiha, a boy constantly judged for his moral "misdeeds" of... going against a fascist system and seeking justice for the genocide of his people? And he is consrantly being judged for stabbing Karin, trying to kidnap Killer B(who many forget is also a part if a fascist system and a war criminal) as if it compares to anything the Konoha adjacent characters have done at any point of the story. It is as silly as it is repulsive.
While I think The Hunger Games is a good introduction to leftist media, more people should advance from it. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it is scary to me that a lot of ignorant people reared their heads at a half-baked post where i didn't go in depth into any of these issues. I don't know where they got their education from, that they cannot understand the simple concept of red-scare narrative. I hope that this will be one of the last responses I make on this.
P.S. Tublr is a hellsite. Lots of people attacked my integrity and called me unintelligent over a couple of posts they didn't even bother to read carefully. Great stuff. Glad that the neolibs exposed themselves though
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you talking about fo4 reminded me how i really really wish we had gotten a gen 1 railroad synth companion in 4 (nick doesn't count) glory mentions wanting to free those g1/g2 synths too, so i feel like its possible for them to be like... "people" in the same way as other robots.
they could be a foil to deacon in a way; both are railroad agents wanting to free synths, but their methods would vary. deacon is all about stealth and avoiding conflict, while the synth would be combat focused, and more vengeful towards the institute. also you could make a terminator reference really easily.
also the fight with kellogg should have been optional through dialogue and he should have been a possible companion.
think about it, when you confront him he realizes that the institute set him up to be killed by you, a loose end tied up, so of course he'd want revenge. he'd be probably the most violent companion in the game, even more than dance or strong. he'd shake things up and make it difficult to work with the institute (he'd hate you helping them), or the railroad (was on their hitlist for obvious reasons). he'd make shit interesting. hell, if you recruit him you could skip the entire quest where you rummage through his mind to try and locate the institute, cuz he'd just tell you about vergil.
I actually was talking with my girlfriend the other day about the concept of Kellogg as a companion bc i think it would’ve been excellent. he was just simply for hire after all and while he killed your spouse and kidnapped your baby, that would’ve been something that made the dynamic with him even more interesting. mutual respect between two incredibly capable individuals, despite a completely irreconcilable event linking the two of you.
i was also thinking about how Kellogg’s memories very directly run parallel to the player’s experiences. Kellogg presumably grew up in California, during a time of major political upheaval as the NCR was being founded. Not the same thing obviously, but a pretty similar inversion of the player experiencing their normal world becoming a wasteland, whereas he experienced the wasteland becoming a “normal” world. As Kellogg progresses through his life, he grows and in every new memory, he’s got more armor and better weapons, modding them over time, reflecting the player character as they level up. The most direct parallel is Kellogg’s memory in that hallway, there to get revenge for his family as he’s being taunted over the intercom on his approach. When Kellogg talks to you in Fort Hagen and tells you that you can turn around and leave and that “not many get that chance” he isn’t threatening you. He’s just been through it before and understands where you’re coming from. it all makes for a really neat narrative if he were to become an ally.
My idea for a Kellogg companion was actually very different though. In my idea you still kill Kellogg and do the events of Dangerous Minds, which ends with Nick taking Kellogg’s cybernetics into his brain. This would lead to a potential alternate route for Nick’s character, that begins with successive dialogues (triggered by certain quests and locations) from Kellogg, speaking through Nick, giving information and being helpful, eventually leading to a choice where the player has the option of allowing Kellogg to fully take over Nick’s body, a choice that would grant you a highly skilled and lethal companion, at the cost of effectively killing Nick. Alternatively, you could find a medium between both (achieving neither of their full strengths, but also not killing anyone) or working to fully remove Kellogg from Nick and just continuing as normal for him
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Finishing--The Fiction Part
“Fuck.” Dr. Tyler Bagby hung his head after making momentary eye contact his colleague, Dr. Aza Wekeza. She was the finest nephrologist Ty and his wife knew, and they had requested her specifically to examine Amy’s dad. Dr. Wekeza didn’t have to verbalize what the test results said; Ty could read the bad news he expected on her face.
“I’m sorry, Ty. I...I don’t know what else to say...” She swallowed hard and stared at the tablet in her hands again, wishing the numbers would magically change. She’d run the test twice, hoping for a faulty set of results the first time. It was never easy giving a patient or their family a projected poor outcome, but it was even harder to deliver to a fellow physician about a family member of theirs. “I wish I had something different to tell you. I know you already suspected that...otherwise why would you have even brought him in to…” She sighed heavily. “I know Amy’s gonna take it hard. Probably harder than Mr. Evers will himself. You want me to page her?”
“No. Fuck. I’m gonna head to the gallery. Her surgery should be winding down and...fuck. What time’s his appointment this afternoon again?” Ty closed his eyes, pushed his glasses to the top of his head, and ran his open hands roughly over his entire face a few times. He took a deep breath to steel himself for Amy. He had a maximum of an hour before she entirely fell apart in front of him. Just as he foresaw ‘kidney failure’ for his father-in-law four weeks ago, when Alan had begun feeling run down enough for it to be noticeable to people other than Jessica, Ty couldn’t see a different, more positive outcome for Amy’s reaction to that confirmation, either.
“It’s at three. Is...everyone coming?”
“Not everyone, but obviously Mom. And us and Amy's brothers. Maybe Matt's wife, but Wes’s wife is working today. No grandkids. They’re all away at school, and Tommy and Shep live...I mean...fuck. I’m sorry, Aza. I keep saying ‘fuck,’” he apologized.
“I get it. I hear a lotta fucks. It’s...I’m sorry, Ty.”
“I’m on your end of this shit all the time. I’m sorry too. It sucks on both ends.”
“I’m here. I know the Evers are gonna be alright and all. But I’m here. I’m just saying for you, Ty. I’m here. OK? Don’t try to hold all of it for Amy and your kids. You don’t have to carry it all by yourself. That’s a family you can count on. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ty thought back to when his grandfather passed, and when his brother-in-law did, so young, and that crushing Alzheimer’s diagnosis for his uncle. The Evers were all there for him, surprisingly, at least to Ty, especially his father-in-law. Alan sounded then a lot like Aza sounded talking him down now. ‘Don’t catastrophize this now. Doesn’t mean your mom’s gonna get it too; or your sister; or you. Definitely doesn’t mean you’re a failure because you couldn’t stop it by yourself in time for no one else to get it. You are an undeniable success. Just means...you know...shit happens. It’s not all on you, Kid.’ Alan had been the father Ty needed in his life; filled that void not long after he met Amy that his grandfather had essentially left for him in middle school when his mind had gone. “I know it’s not all on me to get through...all of it. But it’s all me when she comes outta surgery. I can do it. I just...fuck, I really hate seeing her cry, especially when I can’t fix it. And I don’t like being the heavy in a medical argument either, and Ames is...probably smarter than me, but when it comes to people she loves, she’s...blinded by irrational optimism.” Then Ty thought about his mother-in-law. Jessie thought she and Amy were radically different people, but they were dead alike in that regard. Usually, Ty looked on that trait with charm and infatuation, but when things like this happened, it could make hard times harder on them; his wife and her mother. He knew Amy would immediately go to some rose colored dream world where her dad would get better and maybe younger and live forever once she heard any harsh reality.
“I would do all the extreme measures if...” Aza fruitlessly began.
“I know you would. But even if it was plausible and practical and...hell, sane at all to do any of it, you know he wouldn't let you go there. Not now. Not where he’s at now. Ames knows that too. But she’ll still say...and I’ll still have to contradict her out loud because...fuck.”
“One more fuck for the road. I’m sorry, Ty.”
“One more ‘I’m Sorry Ty’ for the road. See you at three with Amy and Mom and Dad and all. Thank you, Aza. Truly.”
“Wish you were thanking me for...not this.”
“Me too. But thank you for this. Anyway.”
***
“Hey, Cowboy,” Amy brazenly flirted when she saw her husband down the surgery wing hallway. She adored how much he still adored her, still often waiting for her to exit the scrub out room after almost thirty years together; more than twenty of them married. His face didn’t lift and his eyes didn’t light up with that sexy, commanding fire the way they usually did when she teased him with that facetious term of endearment. “Oh no,” she murmured with panic, registering that Ty must have met with Dr. Wekeza that morning about her dad before his upcoming afternoon appointment. Her dad’s kidneys must really be failing. “We’ll get him on a list,” she recklessly spouted. “He can start dialysis and then...”
“Ames. Dad’s 88 years old. And even if he wasn’t, and UNOS would put him on a list...”
“I’LL give him a kidney...”
“Ames. C’mon. If he was 38, he wouldn’t let YOU do it. Or Matt or Wes or any of the kids or Mom or Min or Grace or even me. He’s not going to take a dialysis spot or a transplant from anybody. He’s...you know your dad better than I do, and I know he wouldn’t take a spot from somebody else, even if he wasn’t 88. Just for a second, look at this medically like he’s not your dad.” Amy crumpled into his arms, sobbing at her sharp confrontation with unpalatable truth. “I know.” He held her tightly; held her up on her feet, but cried with her.
They’d been to so many funerals for their ‘elders’ in the past six years: both of Matt’s in-laws, whom Amy still referred to as Uncle Josh and Aunt Ang; friends of the family since Amy’s childhood, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, Mr. Herzog, whom she still counted as uncles and an aunt as well. All but the one decidedly youngest set of her actual, biological uncles and aunts. Ty’s uncle was still alive but not lucid at all anymore. His brother-in-law had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away before his forty-fifth birthday and his sister and nieces were crushed. He was grateful to still have his mother, and Amy’s; that his father-in-law had lived this long. In Amy’s dad’s darker moments over the past few years losing a lot of loved ones, he’d shared that he probably should have been dead back in 2004, but somehow he’d so fortunately been given a life better than the one he dreamed of having when he was a kid, and now he’d outlived all of his younger brothers and his best friend. ‘Life without them’s pretty hard sometimes, but I can do it. I don’t wanna see what it would be like to live without my wife or my kids,’ he’d say, sentimental but still very stern, as though he was making a request to Ty that Ty had the ability to grant; as though he was asking Ty to bring him a Cherry Coke from the basement refrigerator. Ty had begun to think Something Out There listened to his father-in-law’s prayers and answered them, even if he couldn’t. At least kidney failure was a relatively peaceful way to go. He’d never have to live without his wife or kids. And he’d never forget anybody.
Alan Evers had survived so much trauma; war, life threatening injury, dozens of surgeries including the hip replacement seven years ago, a lifelong level of some disability, on top of the grief and emotional pain life inflicts on everyone, and he handled all of it with seemingly effortless strength and grace. Ty almost understood why Amy was a bit delusional about her father’s indestructibility.
***
“Mr. Evers, Ty and Amy asked me to look over your records and tests and you know we ran those couple over again as a check on your GP’s conclusions, and...” Dr. Wekeza began. Alan interrupted her; not to be rude, but to spare her the difficulty of finishing the sentence. He had always been either blessed or cursed with advanced self-awareness.
“And my GP was right. Kidneys are busted. That’s why I’m slowing down so much lately. And it won’t get better; only worse,” he said, doing a decent job of paraphrasing the medical jargon she’d prepared to say. And she was grateful he didn’t wait for her to say it.
“Yes, Sir,” Aza said. Amy and Grace both sniffed back wet inhales. Ty and Matt hugged their wives. Ty cried too. Matt closed his eyes, forcing some acceptance that his dad would be gone sooner rather than later, and they’d have to get through yet another funeral. He was heartbroken, of course, but also knew this is what his dad wanted. Alan had made it clear for years that he wanted to go first; prayed to go first. Matt understood him. He gathered Grace closer to him; as close as he could get her, and took a long drag of the air they shared. ‘I hope I go first too. I don’t wanna live without her. I’m not even sure if I can...’ It was probably the most selfish thought of Matt’s life. He opened his eyes and looked around the room, dutifully and nearly involuntarily checking on everyone else. Wes somberly nodded, looking toward the ground to process what had been said. Wes wouldn’t question anything; he seemed to understand how short life was virtually since he was born. His wife, Min, had studied grief extensively, and basically did this for a living, with kids. Not that they wouldn’t be sad; they obviously were all already beginning to grieve, but Matt knew his brother and sister would be alright in their own families, losing their dad. He knew Grace and his own sons would make it too. It was so much grief back to back the past few years, but they all had each other. They’d get through it. His dad actually had taught them all that. Matt was most concerned about his mother. He was taken aback to see how composed she remained.
Alan took Jessica’s hand in his and looked at her. She reached up to stroke his face with her free fingers and smiled. He returned her grin; the grandiose one she’d fallen in love with nearly sixty years before. “How much time do you think I have left, Doc?” he asked Aza.
“Could be as long as six months,” she said.
“Really. Be straight with us. Everybody here can take it,” he insisted.
“Probably three; at least two good ones. Could be good right up to...” Aza sighed, choking up a bit herself and not wanting to say ‘the end.’
“That’s good to hear,” Alan said, sincerely. “How’s my wife?” he asked Jessica, who’d sat silently for the past twenty minutes in the private doctor’s meeting her children had arranged.
“G2G, Captain.”
“That’s even better to hear. Dr. Wekeza, thank you. For taking the time to...for my family. Thank you. I hope you understand that I’m a bit eager to leave here though. I got two to maybe six months to...”
“Yes, Sir. I wish I had something better to...”
“It’s not bad,” Alan broke into another sentence she didn’t really want to finish. “It’s not. It’s life. Life’s good.” He stood with the cane he’d begun using a little more than a year ago. Jessica stood with him, holding onto his left shoulder, and they shuffled out of the office to the elevator doors ahead of their children. “I love you,” he murmured into Jessica’s ear.
“I love you more,” she said, her eyes tearing up, but she still wasn’t crying.
“That’s impossible.”
***
“Sweets?” Alan wheezed.
“Yes Sir?” Jessica answered, scooting her chair closer to Alan’s side of the fold out bed in their den. They’d been living on the first floor of their home for the past three and a half months, because life was too short to go up the stairs.
“It’s probably pretty soon. A day or two maybe,” he informed her, lowly, but without strain that time. The first three months after his diagnosis confirmation, Alan had done well. Sometimes Amy and Jessica and even a couple of times, Wes, thought he was improving. Min and Ty reminded them that people often rallied at the end of their lives. He’d even demanded to walk with the Herzogs in Rosie’s Buddy Walk (Alan still called her Little Rosie even though she was nearing thirty years old). ‘For Sam,’ he said. No one was willing to press an argument with him about it. He’d spent most of the past week struggling to get up out of bed to go to the bathroom, though. He was just so tired.
“Jo just asked her girlfriend to marry her a few weeks ago and Shep and Audrey’s baby is only another month away,” Jessie said, nearly pleading for him to hang on just that much longer. They’d been to a hundred weddings together it seemed, and Tommy and his wife had already made them great-grandparents twice, but Jessie still wanted more. She’d always wanted more with Alan. More time; more closeness; more knowledge; more love; more laughter; more. No matter how much she got; she could never seem to get enough.
“Jo’s wedding is probably a year out. We knew that wasn’t gonna be reachable. Little Jalen and Angelica won’t remember me anyway, and I don’t think I’m gonna make it to see Shep and Audrey’s baby, Sweets. I can feel that it’s soon. I...I can’t get you sixty,” he said, truly saddened for the first time at his looming mortality. He didn’t want to fail her. She’d told him she wanted sixty...she wanted seventy...
“F-fifty-s-seven and a few months is c-close enough,” she consoled him. She began to quietly cry. “Y-you did take me to bed upstairs again, though. F-for almost six years,” she half-heartedly teased, remembering the rest of her list addendum.
“You know I don’t wanna go, right? I never wanna go. I never have wanted to leave you. I never wanted to walk away from you for one step.” She nodded, tears now streaking down her sunken cheeks.
“Are you h-hurting?” she sniffled. The worst pain Jessie ever felt in her life was watching and knowing that Alan hurt.
“No. I don’t hurt when you’re next to me; when I look at you.”
“Do y-you want me to call Matty and Gracie t-to g-go to the h-hospital?” Their oldest had relocated back to the area when Grace's parents, Jessica's best friend and his wife, began struggling with their health a couple of years ago. Their first grandchild now lived with his wife and children in the house in Louisville.
“Not today. Maybe we’ll go tomorrow. It won’t be today. I promise. Just soon. I don’t wanna be apart from you today. Hospitals always separate us a bit, even when we're there for good things. Can I hold you, Jess?”
“Of course you can, Captain.” She was crying her hardest now, but she gingerly crawled into bed next to him and snuggled into his chest. He curled his arm around her and kissed her forehead. She gasped another stifled sob and asked, “Will you sing to me? P-please?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He cleared his throat and softly sang her some James Taylor.
Oh, the sun is surely sinking down
But the moon is slowly rising
So this old world must still be spinning round
And I still love you
So close your eyes
You can close your eyes, it's alright
I don't know no love songs
I can't sing the blues anymore
Oh but I can sing this song
You can sing this song when I'm gone
It won't be long before another day
We gonna have a good time
And no one's gonna take that time away
You can stay as long as you like
Only close your eyes
You can close your eyes
It's alright
Oh, I don't know no love songs
I can't sing the blues anymore
Sure but I can sing this song
Yes and you can sing this song when I'm gone
They both did close their eyes, and they both thought or dreamed or drifted off into another place where they relived when they first met…
***
“Can I get you some more water or a Coke or…?” Jessica asked as the last out of the baseball game replayed on her apartment television. She stood to make a nervous and tentative move toward her kitchenette and Alan looked up at her from her arm chair and smiled.
“I’m good. I actually...I mean it’s almost four in the morning. We’ve...we’ve both been up for two straight days here at this point...” he reluctantly answered, edging toward a parting he felt was necessary but definitely was undesired.
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I kept you...here...and now it’s...you’ve gotta be exhausted and...” she stammered, staring down at her feet in abject terror at how horribly she’d definitively messed up the best first date of her life. It was no contest; not only was it basically the only good date she’d ever been on; it was amazing; he was amazing; and now she’d usurped his entire Saturday into Sunday morning.
“Hey. I coulda left any time I wanted to. I just didn’t want to. But we both do need to actually sleep soon. That’s a bona fide torture technique; sleep deprivation. So I’m gonna go and hope you get some sleep. You gotta be tired now. Right?” She sheepishly shrugged, and he chuckled, utterly charmed. She blushed and smiled at him again.
“I guess I’m...I mean you’re right. I should sleep a while before work tomorrow and everything.” He stood and took steps toward the door but didn’t open it yet. “I had a really good time. With you,” she spouted, sounding almost as if she’d begin to cry from pent up new emotion. She was full of nerves and embarrassed she'd said it, but felt like she'd burst if she didn't say it. She needed him to hear it; know it. She was so afraid this would be it; it so often was an ending right after the beginning of connection for her.
“Me too. A really good time. I’d...I’d like to take you out again. Soon. Would that...I mean...would you like that?”
“Yeah!” she gasped with obvious excitement. He smirked and shook his head at her, flustered a bit by her frankness and sincerity. He’d fallen for her clarity already. He loved that he didn’t have to guess.
“I’ll give you a call. Soon, but not...I mean...I really hope you get some sleep today.”
“Yeah, you too. I didn’t think we'd...I mean I didn't intend to...it didn’t feel like we were up for so long. I’m sorry again for...”
“Don’t be sorry. It didn’t feel like two days to me either. I wanted to watch the whole game replay with you and...I’ll talk to you...see you again soon. Goodbye, Jessie.” He swallowed hard after his last sentence, the words sticking in his throat and creating an uncomfortable catch in his chest. He didn’t like the feel or the sound of ‘goodbye’ before saying her name. He turned the knob and said, “Make sure to lock up now; be safe.”
“I will. Goodbye, Alan,” she said, barely above a whisper. ‘Please don’t let this be a permanent goodbye,’ she thought. She swallowed hard herself as she locked the door after him. She flattened her hand against the door and gently leaned her forehead to it, inwardly chastising herself for so desperately wanting him to stay. She’d essentially known him for two days, which she knew would worry everyone else who cared about her except for maybe Sam and Tina. She did want him to stay...badly...it was an aching ‘want’ for him to stay...but she knew the right thing was for him to go; it was her letting him go. The thoughts she’d had at the end of every other first date of her life began playing on a maddening loop in her mind, but eventually changed to irregular hope. ‘He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t even try. Ugh, I’m gonna get ‘friends.’ With this man. Who’s just...awesome. I already love him. It’s not dumb optimistic hope this time, because I feel it more after he left than I did before I saw him. I love him. I know...I KNOW. Just like Josh said I would. I totally thought he was full of it for years, but now I DO know. I love this man. He can’t give me ‘just friends.’ This can’t be the same. Not this time. He’s different. Maybe he’s the one Kurtis and Heather have been promising was around for so long. Maybe. Maybe this time. Please, this time. I love him...’
He hung his head momentarily in her hallway, passively wishing he could be a man who didn’t care about doing the right thing. He wanted to stay. He even got an impression that she wanted him to stay, but he was afraid. He’d rushed in before, and it never worked out, and now, he had the added concern of how she’d really react if he touched her. He hadn’t touched her at all except for that handshake, and even that was like being struck by lightning for him. It was jarring, but also contained such bone-deep pleasure and satisfaction, he could already feel the potential for addiction, and she wasn’t a woman he could or should binge, even if the extra insecurity about his arm didn’t exist. He hated the almost literal weight he felt on his shoulders, leaving her, even after all the time they’d spent together, even after all the other women he’d seen and confidently walked away from in his casual, restless past. But then he smiled to himself, closing his eyes in a slow, dreamy blink, when he heard those locks turn and engage, not even a full step away from her closed door. ‘She’s the one. I love her. That must be what this is. I love her. That’s why it’s so hard to leave. It’s never been hard to leave before, but damn it’s almost impossible to leave her. She locked up though. The second the door closed. Like I said. She’s... It’s everything I have not to turn around and knock on that door again right now. I can’t wait to see her again. I wonder if she’d go out on a Monday night...’
#original fiction#the very end of a very long love story#I hope no one hates it#maybe these characters will stop talking to me now; they've been loud and persistent the last few days#my writing
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No, I do not think that liking a problematic or even evil character means you're a bad person.
I'm not condoning the character's actions—often not even in the context of the show. And certainly, I'm not approving those actions in the real world.
But it's a story. The world won't end if someone likes a character. Sometimes they are just well-written characters (obviously not all are well-written, but that's not the point of this mini-essay). Even if they are pure evil, if that is the purpose, then good! Achieved! (i.e. Lion King's Scar, Fullmetal Alchemist's King Bradley, Buffy's Glory, Avatar's Ozai, and many more) (then some characters who are not pure evil, but treated as irredeemable or just scum, i.e. She-Ra's Catra, Princess Mononoke's Eboshi, Buffy's Faith Lehane, etc.)
I can appreciate them for what they are while still not touching them with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole if they were real.
This goes double for characters that could reasonably have redemption arcs (or who have redemption [with varying degrees of success], but for half the fans it isn't ever good enough [sometimes even for me, I admit]—because apparently bad actions make a bad, unchangeable person, forever. But that's another post).
Evil exists in every world. Only shaming it when it's convenient (such as attacking fans of a thing), does very little to help any real victims.
Instead of screaming about an evil character, consider putting that energy into helping real people, real victims, and trying to stop problems (i.e. assault, genocide, misogyny, war, official/unofficial slave labor, hate groups, etc.) in whatever little ways you can. Find a good charity and donate. Give food and money to shelters and victims. Listen to their stories. Some of them might even tell you that the fiction you are so opposed to actually helped them feel less alone. Or any number of things that might have made the story cathartic for them, making it so they like the bad guy as a bad guy. Or, hey, just ignore the people who are bugging you and enjoy whatever media you want. Put your energy there instead unless the truth isn't that you don't care about victims, and you're just virtue-signalling.
*This is not about actual victims who are being upset or triggered. The only thing I have to say there is that you can go to a different media. Be safe, but don't tell OTHER POSSIBLE VICTIMS that the way they cope is inherently bad.
**ABSOLUTELY you can dislike characters or whatever. You can entirely judge them as evil and immoral. I am not saying you have to go along with every single thing. ABSOLUTELY you should not have to engage with things that you hate or make you uncomfortable or even triggered! None of this was meant to undermine any of that. I mostly just mean that everyone has their own experience AND fiction follows different rules, usually for the sake of telling a story. You do NOT have to engage or fake being comfortable. You CAN say you have issues with something. You should say! But your experience is not EVERYONE'S experience, so everyone—on both sides of this—needs to be more mindful of that.
***writing essays about the evils of characters and even how they may reflect or affect the real world is totally a different thing than screaming endlessly about it online. No problem there.
#evil characters#evil in media#I like never make posts like this but I've seen too much discourse lately and no matter how much I hate a certain character I'm not going#to say anyone liking them is an apologist w/o knowing their feelings or how they lived. I might be annoyed & then forget about it usually#purity police#purity politics#anti purity police#writing#characterization#discourse#don't just assume things about someone based on fictional tastes#think what you want I guess but maybe don't publicly attack people without the context?#there are bad people out there even just in the fandom sphere (PewDiePie being JUST ONE famous example of many)#but don't lump in someone who likes Uncle Iroh with war criminal apologists#or people who like cannibalistic characters with actual cannibalism or supporting it#you don't know them#maybe they have reasons the character matters to them#but even if that reason is just that it's fun or they're hot then so what?#as long as the fan isn't eating people or slaughtering others then let them enjoy fiction even in cases where you think the fiction sucks#also you can criticize the work or character without making it about how the fans must be bad too#just saw someone say ~Catra Cult~ not welcome#and like sure curate your experience here but calling it a CULT? You're the one who looks bad at that point#a wild Kyouchan appeared#and again#a wild Kyouchan appeared in the tags#I had much to say and even more but I'm sure I'll lose followers and make people mad just with this so for now I leave it here#virtue signaling
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'Female-led movies are often subject to review bombing, where angry manbabies flood film review sites with negative reviews in an effort to tank a film’s success. This phenomenon especially targets comic book movies and science fiction/fantasy, genres that are (incorrectly) assumed to be male-driven. It happened to Birds of Prey, it happened to Captain Marvel (which went on to gross $1 billion dollars LOL), it happened to She-Hulk, and Ms. Marvel. Now another Margot Robbie-led flick is getting that treatment: Barbie.
If I have to read one more think piece on how Barbie is “anti-men,” I’m going to throw my laptop out the window. For whatever reason (Republicans/the patriarchy/media illiteracy), people (men) have seen Barbie and decided to pay attention to half the movie, ignoring the message of the film’s third act. When Barbie (Robbie) fixes Barbieland with the help of President Barbie (Issa Rae), we see all the Barbies realize that a Barb-triarchy isn’t fair to the Kens. A new day dawns that will acknowledge both Barbies and Kens.
In “unverified” reviews on websites like Rotten Tomatoes, you can see myriad “anti-men” comments and one-star reviews from people (mostly men). They are furiously angry that Barbie dared to call out the patriarchy and its effect on not only women but everyone. All of this for a movie that they don’t even like? It’s not going to stop Barbie from getting that billion dollars, guys. All it is doing is making you seem like whiny man-babies because a movie dared to say that the patriarchy is bad for everyone, actually.
Time to break them from the patriarchy
This concerted effort to “review bomb” anything seen as “anti-men” is itself a symptom of the patriarchy. Point blank. Men online (most recently a NASCAR driver) have decided that, for whatever reason, this movie is attacking them personally. These men are now making their hatred of the film their entire personality. But if the pink movie hurt you, then maybe you’re missing the point. Maybe we need the male equivalent of Gloria’s (America Ferrera) speech to knock these guys out of the hypnotic hold that the patriarchy has on them.
At this point, the need to bash anything they deem “bad” because it’s too feminine is just pathetic. They’re not angry at anything Barbie actually says. They’re angry at the fact that it doesn’t cater to them because everything else does. That’s a symptom of the patriarchy!
What’s hilarious is that both Barbie and Oppenheimer address the destructive nature of the patriarchy in their own ways. Barbie is more on the nose (obviously), but Oppenheimer also explores how the folly of men will destroy the world. I’ve seen multiple men complain about the “anti-men” narrative of Barbie while praising Oppenheimer, so here’s my consensus. Men who spend their time review-bombing Barbie simply have no brain cells and should not watch movies. Hope that helps.'
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tbh now that I'm not, like, 14. I have really mixed feelings about "stage gay" bc on one hand it's funny and relatable but on the other hand it's kinda weird that straight guys have been praised for kissing other straight guys on stage, meanwhile gay guys are crucified for it. And it's not really "fighting homophobia" if all you're doing is profiting off the attention that homophobes give you. If anything, riling up homophobes by disgusting them and making them more excited to attack actual gay people is not very funny.
I think Gerard and Ray's kiss tonight was the exception, in fact I think all of My Chem's interactions on stage lately are exceptions. Because they're showing genuine affection for each other because they love each other! And it's not just meant to be shocking and disgust homophobes.
It's different from the shit they did in the 2000s. Like how they would make jokes about sucking guys off and everyone would laugh, then groan, because the 'joke' is that gayness itself is funny and gross? I don't think I'm overthinking this bc we all know that's exactly what the 2000s were like, even with gay allies.
#for example look at the way Adam Lambert and Lil Nas X have been treated for being gay#it's not like the ENTIRE world hates them and obviously both of them are successful in their own right#but they both faced a lot of setbacks being in an industry that still doesn't really like gay people!#adam back in the 00s was made to change his lyrics and was censored and removed from tv appearances for kissing a man on stage#Nas obviously has faced a lot as a gay black man in the industry as well like how he didn't come out until after getting a deal#and this can be said for so many older gay artists as well#there are so many of them that didn't come out until after their careers were over bc they knew they'd lose everything!#so yes I do believe it's kind of fucked up for straight guys to treat gayness like a costume they can cast aside#someone's gonna inevitably misunderstand this and think I'm condemning mcr or something and I'm not. I still love em and all their faggotry#I'm just saying we're allowed to have nuanced thought and conversation and not just praise them for everything without any consideration#long post
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