#Not everything has to be edgy grimdark and I would like to see an intelligently handled reboot of it one day

[faustiandevil]

So, there’s gonna be yet another edgy reboot only now with The Munsters. Sigh…

Thus I finally watched the movie Munsters, Go Home! which had the original cast minus Pat Priest, and Marilyn’s character was replaced yet again, but that’s not really important right now. I had some good laughs, I liked seeing the familiar faces and now the extended Munsters family in England and was hooting and hollering whenever Terry-Thomas was on screen. Only I felt that something was missing a bit from the movie.

While the Addams Family was about the family itself The Munsters always felt like a story about assimilation to me. The Munsters are clearly first generation immigrants in America, and because they come from “the old country” meaning something or another by Eastern Europe/Hungary/Romania/Erdély etc. And what are the things most associated with that region? Well due to the success of Universal horror films, monsters of course, like Dracula and the Wolf Man, so the Americans view them as such. Marilyn is the only one who is an exception, as she passes and is more the accepted American beauty with being a pretty blonde girl. I mean her actress is the one who was replaced the most yet no one really noticed or cared, because again, a pretty blonde, one of the dozen. Those who knew the Munsters already weren’t scared of them and treated them as anybody else, only those who were part of the white suburban rich/upper-middle class did look down upon them and distrust them. I also know it was a formulaic sitcom where everything that happens in the episode is retconned in the next, but I do wish that Marilyn would’ve got an actual boyfriend, and I did really like Dick Prince (yes, that was his name) from the episode The Sleeping Cutie, because he was just there to do his job and was very human with the Munsters (see what I did there).

So what I’m saying with all this is that I wish that a reboot would look into a bit more the struggles of trying to fit in instead of going down the edgy monsters who kill and scare, because that isn’t what The Munsters is about. They are just a bit different is all.

[pepperf]

Re. The 100, and what happened in that last episode... [vague spoilers ho]

On reflection, I think the thing that gets me most about it is that I’ve never had such a strong sense of contempt from a showrunner before, like he thinks that all the shippers or the fans of one particular character, or the fans who, you know, wanted a bit of consistent characterisation or at least a decent explanation of why they would have had such huge 180 degree changes of attitude - like all those fans are doing it wrong. Like he thinks we’re dumb children, and we have to be force-fed this grimdark crap until we submit and concede and wave a white flag and tell him his storytelling is revolutionary.

And that’s such bullshit, it really is. Fandom can be dumb, sure, on a massive scale, but it can also be amazingly insightful and intelligent and transformative, to a degree that network television rarely (if ever!) is. Sure, killing your characters used to be revolutionary, back when television shows were written to basically reset every week - but honestly, these days, is that really supposed to be gripping storytelling? The 100 has shown us time and again that no one is safe, we got that, it’s fine, we know... so is there a reason we should appreciate this character death, beyond the innate shock value? If there is, I’m not seeing it. It was tragic, boo-hoo, and shocking, but what else is it doing, exactly? It’s fiction; it doesn’t have to follow the arbitrary rules of real life. People die. Thanks for the memo. Give us a show with the balls to tell a story.

Moreover, I’m not convinced any of this was really about being edgy and new. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a show before that has such a spiteful, petty sense that doing anything “predictable” (read: things that had been foreshadowed, things that make sense for the character arc, things that are consistent with what has already been established) would be boring, and the second the fans guess at anything, that’s when the showrunner has to change it up. Or, possibly, to get back at the actors - also something that comes across quite strongly from The 100, and is why I won’t be supporting anything JRoth does in future. I do remember back when the Stargate showrunners were all, “Hey we’ve invented a new show and none of the old fans are invited bc they suck”, and how well that went down - but at least they were creating a new show to do that, and not fucking up the current one.

I wish nothing but the best for the cast, I have genuinely loved some of their performances this season, particularly Murphy and Emori, and Indra, so I may end up watching the last three episodes. Maybe. But unless the next ep starts with a magic reset button, unless Clarke wakes up and Bellamy steps out of the shower to tell her the last three years were just a bad dream, then no, they’ve killed my interest. I don’t trust the show to wrap things up in a way that I care about, or that, frankly, makes any coherent sense, other than “everything is awful! everything is awful! let’s celebrate nihilism and grimdark and teenage angst!” And, look, 2020 hasn’t been a great year for most people, lbr, and I could personally do without a show that just wants to make me more miserable.

I had a pretty shitty start to the year, and I have been doing much better lately, but I will be honest, I went to bed feeling really upset last night. It wasn’t the show exactly, but it was the feeling of losing something forever, at short notice, in a harsh way... it pressed my buttons. I can’t imagine what it did to people who are in a worse place, mental health wise. All I can offer is ~hugs~ and my empathy, I too am pissed off and hurt about this whole flaming bag of poo we’ve been gifted. 

So, yeah, okay, JRoth, this is the episode that got everyone talking. Congrats. Mostly what they seem to be saying is that they’re not going to watch any more, so I guess you got your wish on that, too.

[tachiaku]

since i get my pillowfort key in two days and i don’t plan on ever using this website seriously again because of the ban, i’m going to go ahead and make this kamen rider gaim post i was saving to make into something long and more intelligent sounding in the future. i watched gaim as part of my neo-heisei run where i watched everything almost in order except i watched drive after ghost because i wanted to watch it with a friend.

so this is my biggest problem with kamen rider gaim’s theme and why everyone who says the theme of gaim is somehow good probably liked gaim way too much to admit to themself that the theme was shitty in a show for children.

the rest beneath the cut.

kamen rider gaim is easily one of the most loved of the kamen rider series especially in western fandom and most people assume this is because the series is quite grimdark in comparison to the other kamen rider series that came before it. i can only assume it must have been people getting fed up from the run of kamen rider decade to kamen rider wizard considering kiva, decade’s predecessor, was incredibly grimdark and full of blatant physical abuse and misogyny. or perhaps it was the fact that wizard was just very long and, in my honest opinion, a bit of a drag that kind of struggled to find a tone while having a very set theme.

but that is not a post i want to make. onto gaim.

kamen rider gaim is a show about destiny and fate, how both are already set and you cannot fight against them. i am serious, that is the theme of kamen rider gaim. right after the christmas episode, kouta talks about how their fate was already set in stone and there was nothing they could do to fight it. when mai later learns to use her goddess powers in order to try to change the events of gaim by trying to tell kouta, kaito, and micchi not to go through with their choices, this only reinforces their decisions. every time kouta tries to fix things, everything seems to spiral into a new level of trouble until he has only one choice left.

kouta must become an overlord, a god-like being, by consuming the helheim fruit and defeating kaito so he can free mai from the time warp she is trapped in. only someone with those powers can stop the encroach of helheim and maybe save the world that has been destroyed by the forests and the overlord.

there could be an entire other post about the fact that mai’s goddess-like powers do her absolutely no good, that she is objectified by the story in a literal sense by being turned into the golden fruit, but again, not this post.

kouta never had a choice in the matter. i have seen posts by people who genuinely think gaim is a good show that kouta sacrificed his humanity for the greater good, to save his planet and his friends. by this point in the series, it had been conveyed that becoming this godlike being would make it impossible for him to remain with his friends because the difference would be too great, that he would become too powerful and dangerous for them.

but let me be perfectly clear about this: kouta did not choose to become an overlord. kouta was crammed into a corner where not becoming a god would mean that mai was trapped forever, that kaito would take over the world and recreate it in his image, and that everything he fought for would be destroyed. kouta also was pushed into this decision early in the series when sagara, the figurative and literal snake in the garden, continuously gave him lockseed power-ups that hastened his growth into an overlord.

sagara himself is a being that is forcing evolution on humanity. despite the fact evolution is something that is meant to occur naturally, taking place over a series of time (short-term called microevolution or adaptation and long-term being called macroevolution) and in answer to changes in environment. darwin’s finches are a good example. but sagara, for all of his talk of influencing evolution, quite literally forces it. he raises the stakes several times and plays every side of the field in order to get the answer he wants. he chose kouta to become his godlike being, and no amount of post-show explanation can change the fact that this is true.

despite the fact that the beginning of the film implies that takatora, micchi, and kaito are also possible combatants in this battle, and mai talking to kaito and micchi in her goddess form would imply this might be true, it was only ever going to be between kouta and kaito. only kouta was given any favoritism by sagara. he broke him out of a cell in yggdrasil headquarter, gave him lockseed power-ups, and pushed him to new levels. he chose kouta on purpose and groomed him into becoming what he wanted him to be.

kouta never had a choice in becoming an overlord. kouta would have never chosen that for himself, as his humanity was very important to him, as were his friends. as if to further push this awful idea, kouta and mai leave with no goodbyes and they leave the destruction of the world around them in place even though, at this point, the least they could have done was clean up the infrastructure that was destroyed by helheim. all kouta does is take the forest and leave everyone behind, which is so completely ooc that it starts to feel like the story was always meant to end up here, but the story was not really going in this direction so it was forced at the very end.

gaim’s story is that there is no choice, no way to deny fate and destiny. nothing you do to fix things will actually work, because this is how things are meant to be. chosen by destiny or by a higher power (sagara), things will play out as they were “meant” to play out and nothing you do can change that. that is the message of gaim, something that is beaten over the head of the viewer so often that it makes the show difficult to enjoy for anyone who was able to pick up on this storyline and realized it was a troubling message to send to children.

you know. the Actual target demographic of kamen rider. children. not adults, not western adults certainly. children.

you could argue that a lot of the troubling content of the show itself is not in and of itself all that different for a kamen rider series. micchi’s desire to possess mai and control her is not all that different than, say, kusaka from faiz or much of kiva which contained a lot of men abusing women in various ways. kaito’s edgy personality is not all that removed from the hoppers of kabuto. even the vast character death is not all that different than kamen rider ryuki, which gaim claims to have taken several of its themes from (this isn’t true). the content itself is problematic, but not wholly gaim’s problem in and of itself. this is not something that can be blamed on gen urobuchi but rather toei’s trademark in terms of kamen rider.

but the theme is where everything crashes and burns. no kamen rider series quite ends the way that kamen rider gaim does, with series main rider kouta thanking sagara for his assistance. this goes against every theme of kamen rider that has ever existed and against the core of the series, which is very anti-fascist in nature. sagara can easily be seen as a fascist figure, pushing “evolution” to churn out his ultimate and perfect ideal of a godlike being who will change the world in his image. this is why sagara would specifically be giving kouta one-ups, trying to mold kouta into what he wants him to be or otherwise believing kouta is already worthy of that power, which is why he blatantly hands it to him in the form of the kiwami lockseed, the ultimate power-up.

kamen rider gaim is wildly popular for probably all of the wrong reasons. i won’t bother to list series that people should watch as everyone has their own tastes and not everything is going to appeal to everyone else. wizard did nothing for me, but a lot of people love it. in contrast, i enjoyed drive, and a lot of people didn’t. what i would suggest in place of that is this: if you’re going to talk about the themes of a show, then ignoring the very broad and over-arching sum total theme in order to talk about smaller themes will make you ultimately sound ignorant. you cannot talk about kouta’s sacrifice without admitting that everything was built specifically so that he would have no other choice. you cannot talk about kouta’s sacrifice without discussing that fate and destiny forced him into this role rather than being his own personal choice, and that in the end it’s his friend that lies dead on the ground and not the actual Big Bad.

like i said, i’m not much for using this website anymore so i’m not going to be revisiting this post. you can leave responses, but i really will not be able to view them, so if you’re working on an essay length’s argument to counter mine, just keep in mind that i am probably not going to see it.