#and while mlp is faaaar from perfect it did what wednesday so far has not

[always-a-joyful-note]

Okay I forgot I posted this and died of laughter when I went back on my blog and found this. And since I actually kinda sorta remember what I was thinking, I'm gonna expound on this because I can rather than erasing just cause it's funny.

Warning, though, I actually am not all that familiar with the original Addams Family characters. My criticism of Wednesday is just purely thematic and based on story reasons so...

First thing's first. One of the themes that I found Wednesday the netflix show was trying to portray was that even amongst the outcasts, there existed outliers that were ostracised. Kinda like how a lot of communities have people excluded for "not being *insert thing* enough" even though they, too, are excluded from the "normal" people.

So basically, it was a neat theme they were trying to explore. The outcasts among the outcasts and the normal people who weren't all that normal and the breaking of stereotypes for what their kind actually was (normie or outcast), etc.

So it was immensely funny to me that they made the main antagonists (spoilers) a Puritan ghost, a weird plant lady, and a Hyde.

The weird plant lady was actually not that bad a call....some rich kid with a rich background appropriating a community to destroy them, etc. A bit dramatic but it's a dramatic show. And I apologise because I love her but I could not focus on whether she was well written or no.

I can't say much about the Puritan ghost except that it felt a lot more like your typical villainisation of Christianity - the whole all puritans were evil thing - rather than a commentary on the hypocrisy of early settlers/a commentary on the cycle of discrimination they continued to spread (weren't they supposed to flee religious discrimination I mean? Idk...). A caricature, I guess, in a show that seemed to say there's more to everyone? But I'm not familiar with the history of that time period or the discourse surrounding it, so I'll shut up now.

But whatever was wrong or right about the above two, they didn't bother me as much as what the show did with the Hyde dude (I'm so sorry, I forgot your name...).

Ah, the Hyde.....

This show was all about breaking stereotypes, and to have the antagonist be part of a race stereotyped as evil and demonic...and have all his complexity stripped away by saying "that's just what being a Hyde is, I guess" is just a tad bit questionable, thematically. Maybe they'll fix it in season 2, but there was something deeply discordant on having the main characters be these kids that break the stereotypes of their groups, being outcasts among outcasts, and one of the main evils be an outcast amongst outcasts who reinforces the stereotypes of his race. If I got what a Hyde was correctly, then it's not something he developed due to Being Evil (like LotR orcs, which are basically elves who chose to be corrupted) but something he was born with. And to villify that in a story that was all about accepting differences...?

I mean....at least they could have made a character who...broke the Hyde stereotypes?

I don't know if I even explained myself okay but the short of it is that the Hyde as the antagonist was a strange thematic choice in a show that seemed to try to celebrate differences and the way you were born.

As for why MLP did a better job in portraying this theme of outcasts among outcasts and breaking stereotypes?

The changelings. Creatures who NEED to eat love to sate their hunger.

Like, MLP would have been completely justified in saying "that's just how the race is. Evil love eaters. But yay friendship won again and the bad guys were defeated!" It's a kid's show, after all. They could have gone the this group is evil-coded because reasons route and left it at that. Like Wednesday did with Hydes.

But no. They created a character who sought a way to resist the inclinations they were told were natural. And what do you know? He realised that instead of eating love, he could SHARE it and be transformed.

And he did that without invalidating their natural-born hunger for love. That still needed to be fed... He - that is, Thorax - found another way to sate that hunger. Not by stealing love but sharing it.

So you have Wednesday's Hydes, who are born with pretty dark inclinations and the characters portrayed falling easily into those and using it for evil. And then you have MLP's changeling, who are born with pretty dark inclinations and the characters portrayed falling easily into it because that's all they've been taught by their awful leader...and someone realising those "dark inclinations" don't have to be dark if you reframe the solution for it. It's not bad to hunger for love if you fill it by sharing it, right?

I'll cut it off here cause this turned long and I don't have anything else much to say. Just a disclaimer that I actually did very much enjoy Wednesday somewhat (the YA nature of it all combined with the theatre kid emo drama was...funny enough that I HAD to unironically enjoy it). Just that I think that if MLP could show how stereotypically "bad" wants could be both validated but reframed to do something good, Wednesday could DEFINITELY have done that with their poor Hydes. (And yes, I do in fact know the Jekyll and Hyde story but the og tale was more like LOTR orcs than whatever Wednesday repurposed them as)

My controversial fandom opinion is that My Little Pony did what Wednesday tried to do but much better and somehow with more nuance