#basically humans are Considered to be brainless brutes

[starrspice]

So humans are considered unintelligent and semi-primitive by the other extra-terrestrials, but how technologically advanced are we actually? Is it more modern day-esque technology or have we invented, like, flying cars and the cure to cancer and all that?

It's pretty close to modern tech. Maybe a couple of decades more advanced but nothing quite like flying cars

Honestly it's pretty accurate to say humans are of average intelligence compared to most species out there and they're pretty well off technology wise given the resources available to them on Earth

The "humans are stupid" thing is really more of a prejudice and stereotype given to any species that's considered to not be ready for intergalactic induction

Humans are mostly barred off because they can't be trusted not to blast or dissect any extra terrestrial that arrives on earth

[threewaysdivided]

I appreciate the response. Yeah, among other adjustments, had the plot been handled a little differently, I feel like Sam’s relationship with her parents could have evolved into something like that of Danny and Jazz and their parents. And don’t get me wrong; I still like Sam, too.

(In reference to this post and follow-up ask.)

Good to hear from you again 😊

I think there were a lot of things across the board that could have been tweaked or edited to improve the integrity of the series.  If I had to boil down the problem with DP to a single point I’d probably say it’s that the most interesting parts of the show are the characters/world/implications but the writers (or some of them anyway - I suspect there might have been some conflict between Hartman, the lead writers and the execs’) wanted certain plots, aesops and gags, and chose to brute-force them in regardless of whether they actually worked with what was already there.  Basically, it lacks consistency and internal logic.

For Sam in particular I think there are a few things that could have been handled better:

First one’s more a general complaint at the show and might light a fire under my notes but heck lets go there anyway but the writing has kind of a sexist bent that really doesn’t fit the characters or need to be there. Considering how much Danny and Jack are shown to love and respect Maddie and Jazz there’s no way they’d call their involvement in Genius Magazine “the swimsuit edition”.  Paulina might be traditionally feminine but “She surrendered her individuality for a boy! I’m so proud of her!” is not a line that any human girl in the history of human girls would say unironically.  There’s also a few too many jokes that basically boil down to “male character is emasculated/ vulnerable/ likes feminine-coded things, hyuk hyuk hyuk”.

I’m bringing this up not just because they’re gross cheap gags but because for Sam specifically, this pervasive low-key contempt for women and femininity in the writing, especially the tendency to portray almost every non-sympathetic girl her age as one-note, brainless boy-crazy cliches that she can’t connect with, really does not help her character.  I would have loved to see more genuine interaction between Sam and the other girls, even if it most of it was Kim Possible-Bonnie Rockwaller style antagonistic rapport.  We could have seen her develop some kind of tenuous connection with one of the A-listers, or even just have a secondary-female-character to be cordial towards - kind of like Mikey is for Danny and Tucker.  Hold up, outside of Valerie, Star and Paulina are there any named secondary girls at Casper High?  Sam doesn’t seem to have a single female friend in the show and considering how vocally judgemental she is, it can almost read like she’s rejecting them outright for being girls, which really undercuts attempts to make her seem feminist. (I mentioned it in a past tag but this feels like an early-2000s-male-writer mistake of equating Female Empowerment™ with the ability to tear down other women and belittle traditional femininity - which isn’t so much Feminism as it is Internalised Misogyny.)  Even just mixing up the pairings to put her with Star instead of Kwan in Lucky in Love would have helped.

I’d have also liked to see more awareness of and consistency in the conflict between her activism and her wealth.  It kind of undercuts the significance of her activism when you realise that she’s wealthy enough to make these choices with little cost to herself; it’s much easier to go vegan or buy renewable/ recyclable /sustainable /fair-trade when price isn’t an issue, especially if you also have serving staff to offset the time cost.  Once you notice this it makes her activism feel more tokenistic, and also like she doesn’t really understand her own privilege when she tries to push her agendas onto the school/ her classmates without considering why they mightn’t be able to do so as easily.  It’s also weird because the source of her family’s wealth is a cellophane-toothpick-wrapper (i.e. something that basically produces litter) but she still seems very comfortable enjoying the material benefits despite her pro-eco anti-consumerism sentiments.  It’s bizarre that she’s more concerned with the social consequence of ‘fake friends’ than the ethics of capitalism.  It can come off a bit “do as I say, not as I do”. 

It would have been nice for the show to give more screen time to reinforcing that Sam is aware of that conflict and is making an active effort to hold to her principles even at the cost of personal comfort; maybe showing some unease at the source of her wealth, trying to live below her means and only spend up on ethical/ eco-friendly/ sustainable products, op-shopping or hand-making her goth accessories, going out of her way to re-use or re-purpose things even if buying a new one would be ‘better’, actually showing or referencing her doing substantial hands-on activities (e.g. going off-screen or taking the boys to do tree-planting, litter pickups, soup kitchens, animal-shelter work etc).  Just something to help make it clearer that she genuinely cares and isn’t just doing the low-mess lip-service activities because she enjoys indulging in the image of Wokeness™.

These things would have helped regardless of how her family was written but let’s hop back on topic and talk about them.  I don’t have any prescriptive preference but let’s spitball a few different options and how they could have played:

#1 Sam’s parents don’t respect her interests and want her to fit a mold

In this case I’d make it that they don’t really pay attention or show much caring for who Sam really is as a person; their image of and interactions with her are more of a fantasised version of the ‘perfect’ daughter they want, they make very little effort to encourage her actual interests and are perhaps restrictive about what they let her do in the few moments when they do bother paying close attention (you might compare to some versions of Tim Drake’s Parents from DC Comics).  Classist, overly image-conscious, snobby and superficial.  

This would be the most sympathetic portrayal of her character without changing it very far from how it is in DP canon - helping contextualise why Sam is so fiercely defensive of her autonomy, why she pushes so hard when trying to get her opinions across and why she’s so judgemental of rich people and disdainful towards classic femininity - even possibly explaining her more hypocritical/ manipulative/ entitled traits as learned behaviours.  It would also give her more legitimate reason to be less empathetic towards others - after all even if they have struggles and family troubles it’s still better than what she’s dealing with (Danny’s parents may not be attentive but hey, at least they love him for himself, right?)

For this version I’d probably put her arc around growing past the “suffering olympics” model of viewing other people’s pain, but also in her finding family in Danny/Tucker/her Grandmother’s circle of connections, learning how to have healthy power-balance and communication in her relationships with others (aka: getting over her hypocrisy and realising that assertiveness is about communicating that “I matter, and so do you”) and pulling away from her parents’ influence - maybe even living with Ida a lot of the time.

#2 Sam’s parents are well-intentioned but overbearing

For this one, Sam’s parents would genuinely want the best for her… only they have an overly old-fashioned and restrictive view of what “the best” is and are a bit set-in-their-ways.  They’d probably view “hippies” and “goth” stuff as “dangerously rebellious hooligan-activities” and likely to be somewhat patronising about Sam’s passion for it being “just a phase”.   They’d be worried about her hanging around “the Fenton Kid” and “the Foley Kid” both because Danny’s parents are kind of irresponsible screwballs about safety but also because they put a lot of value in image due to their belief in social connections being the way to get ahead.  Them pushing Sam towards classic femininity and specific activities would be less about disrespecting her identity and more about their overly narrow view of “success” and worrying that she’s going to end up losing valuable opportunities and “wasting her life” if she keeps on down her current path.

This would still give Sam more sympathetic context for her views on femininity and pushiness about self-expression. 

Personally I think the arc I’d like to see here is one themed around responsible/considerate assertiveness and valuing alternative perspectives.  Sam coming to realise her own hypocrisy - that she can’t push her views onto others while complaining about her parents doing the same - developing more sympathy for Danny as she realises that he’s in a similar position with Jack’s insistence that he’ll inherent Fentonworks and his parents’ narrow-mindedness about ghosts, interacting with other girls and seeing their perspective, learning how to assert her opinion while making allowances for others’ (maybe an alternative version where she connects with Star in Lucky in Love and, after Aragon’s defeat in Beauty Marked, Sam still says she personally thinks it’s dumb but then steps down and lets Star win because she understands that Star values it), and getting her Grandma’s help in convincing her parents to widen their perspective while still responding to their concerns.

(This one has the overall kindest message and I think I like it best).

#3 Sam’s parents are trying and Sam’s actually the problem 

This one is the one that’s the least sympathetic to Sam.  Her parents still don’t get the Goth/Activist thing and they have some concerns about safety but they understand that it makes her happy and they’re okay with it so long as she’s not getting into trouble or mixing up with anyone that could hurt her.  Them pushing her towards more feminine/optimistic things is less pushing and more trying to encourage some hobbies that offer a bit more common ground.  They might have reservations, and they might not always have time, but they would like to be part of their daughter’s life… except for the problem that Sam has wrapped herself up in a teen-drama persecution complex and got it into her head that they “won’t accept her” are “pushing her to be someone else” and “don’t understand” so there’s no point even trying to explain or connect.  In this one Ida isn’t taking sides on purpose but she ends up accidentally enabling Sam a little because Sam reminds her of her younger days and she likes spoiling her granddaughter (and doesn’t much care for her daughter-in-law).

In this case Sam’s flaws would be framed much more as flaws born of her making superficial snap judgements, thinking she knows better and being too proud to admit she’s wrong.  There would definitely be moments of her coming across as an entitled, privileged holier-than-thou brat who invents problems because she likes feeling sorry for herself, especially early in her arc.

This version of the story would go the hardest on Sam with the general lesson being “you need to respect that other people are people who have their own problems, feelings and needs that are as real and valid as yours”.  She’d still have good qualities and Danny and Tucker would still obviously like and value her but there’d also be times of strain where they don’t want to hurt her feelings but are clearly getting worn out with the nonsense.  At its worst, maybe a “you’re like mustard. Great in small quantities, but a lot of you is…a lot” type confrontation.

I’d also give the secondary cast the most fleshing out, agency and sympathetic-ness here, and have beats where Sam has to realise that they’re lot more complex than her 2D stereotyped view of them and are dealing with actual serious problems to which hers are largely non-issues by comparison.  I’d probably play Dash and Paulina similar to in the fic Alibi (go read it, it’s good) - Dash being gay and performing aggression because toxic masculinity, insecurity, and being terrified of anyone outside the A-listers finding out (still not okay that he’s a bully but at least more understandable), while Paulina is hiding high emotional perceptiveness behind her pretty face and deliberately bearding for him to keep bigoted parents/ teachers off his back.  I’d also probably have a subplot in an alternate Life Lessons where Sam follows Valerie around because jealous/possessive and, like Danny, ends up realising that she’s working two jobs to help her Dad with their financial problems.  Basically she’d be getting hit with the Reality Stick a lot.

There’d also be more instances of Sam getting directly called out by the other girls. Fleshing them out as people and showing that their dislike is less superficiality and more because she unfairly judges and antagonises them all the time.  Giving them more agency in Beauty Marked and have them be direct about “we know you’re just here to be smug about how much ‘Better’ you are but have you considered that we’re doing this for ourselves and actually enjoy it?”.  Having Paulina be less “tee hee I am indeed a Witch” in Parental Bonding and more “Ugh fine, fine, I don’t really like him that much but you were being so obviously Jealous and Judge-y and I figured if I played a little you might actually step up.  But fine, if you’re sure.  Here’s your necklace back, I’ll let your dorky ‘friend’ down tomorrow.  But pro-tip?  You like someone you gotta go for it - otherwise don’t complain when your boy-toy gets taken by someone who actually means it.”  (Still petty, but emotionally intelligent pettiness, which… not really much better, but at least more interesting.)  A lot more of Sam realising that she’s not a particularly good feminist and that she’s no more entitled to Danny’s affections than anyone else.

To be honest, while I could say the most about this version and there’s a lot of potential drama there it’s the one I like the least because it means canonising my least favourite proto-abusive bad-faith narcissistic reading of Sam, casting her as an almost-villain and essentially punishing her over and over until she character develops into a decent human being.  Sure it’s an important message about how you treat others but it’s not a very nice or kind story and while there might be the odd fic that makes it cathartic I can’t say I’m a huge fan.

Again, if I had to pick, I’d probably go with something like #2. 

But there we go.  Another thrilling instalment in the “overly long posts about Sam Manson” saga.  

Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for stopping by!