#he’s an asshole who’s not really even in the wrong but is still hateable and opposes the heroes in a real way

[shadow-and-purgatory]

The worst part abt being in a really small fandom is that if you dislike or disagree with the widespread interpretation of a character, it’s impossible to make a post about it because

1) nobody knows what you are talking about except for the people in the fandom, of which there are few

2) “widespread” means 5 very dedicated fic writers and a lot of discussion of headcanons in a discord server

3) everyone in the fandom knows one another. There’s no way that people you know won’t see the post because there are so few posts, everyone will know it is you, and it is difficult to phrase it in a way that doesn’t sound targeted or accusatory because there are so few people

[gnar-slabdash]

Leverage Mark Showdown -- Second Heat Contestants

Where the nominator left comments (or fun extra descriptors), I'm including their comments, cause those are way better than what I'd come up with. Where they didn't leave comments, you'll have to settle for mine :P

Jack Lattimer The Radio Job, The Last Dam Job (also sort of most of Season 4) Hes a background guy, just barley staying relevant but also managing to be a pain in the ass to Nate and the crew, but he's not as much of a threat as Damien Moreau, but still stays in the background disrupting htings and giving the crew a hard time purely beciase he wasts a few extra bucks. Hes a bad gys that feels realistic an investor who found a way to cheat the system to benefit himself.

Jimmaaay Jimmy Jimmy Ford The Three Card Monte Job go grandpa

Dr. Anne Hannity The Inside Job That cocky/confident shit is hot... Except for the part where she manufactures a famine. But every time she thought she had a trump card she was sexy af

Dalton Rand The Future Job he's the worst kind of loathsome esp bc he's the most directly confronted with the harm he's doing and is totally blase about it

Nicky & Heather Moscone The Wedding Job They're both great caricatures and I like that they double cross each other.

Alan Foss The Two-Horse Job He’s one of the most well-sold “cartoonishly evil immature dickbag“ characters  we encounter. I love his arrogance, his uber-hateable sexism, and the over the top reactions he makes are so much fun to watch him get angry about. Damien Moreau, "IF WE MUST" The Big Bang Job, The San Lorenzo Job - specifically for the bathrobe and flipflops and being carefully staged to not look like everyone around him is normal human size, bless him - silly charming terrifying bastard man. can't believe this hasn't been done yet.

Retzing & Sons The Snow Job Dysfunctional crime family getting synergistically worse the more they try to deal with each other. Also I get excited every time I see my boy Jonathan from Buffy

Meredith The Lonely Hearts Job Man, she actually almost did our heroes in, didn't she? I love her grudging respect for Sophie, like she is genuinely into the art of grifting and willing to acknowledge being bested

James Kanack The First Contact Job He could have just been another rich and successful asshole. But no, that wasn't enough for him. HE HAD TO TALK TO ALIENS.

Mitchell Kirkwood The Studio Job Dude was a charming psycho, I'd let him murder me for my songs 😍 Plus watching his face break was 😚 Divine 😚

Hugh Whitman The Gone Fishin' Job Yeah, you know, let's do some regular debt collection fraud and also fund an entire militia out in the woods behind the bank, that seems normal, right?

Larry Duberman The Reunion Job what if there was a nerd who had sometbing sooooooooo wrong with them. also his actor was in big eden i got really excited when i recognized him

Wendy Baran The Gimme a K Street Job - okay I cave, you got me with this one. You're gonna have to send some propaganda, cause the nominator didn't say anything and i literally remember nothing about this character except she thinks breaking teenage girls' necks is a fun way to make money - Update! The nominator says: - Okay I said Baran bc I hate her so very much -  And she’s a girlboss (derogatory)

Andrew Grant The Miracle Job Love the energy, love the way he threw a wrench in their plans by being even more of a sleazy money grubber than they expected (and more creative about it!), and yeah, he's another one that I actually feel kinda bad for cause playing on his anxiety was LOW.

Irina Larenko The Stork Job She was such a ditzy cunt, I hated her but I loved watching her on screen. Kinda cute in a way idk plus her main muscle was kinda unfff

[generallyunskilled]

Why I sympathize with or apologize for these Dream SMP characters

Since I’m very unwell and watch just about every perspective on the Dream SMP, I’m a sympathizer or apologist for just about every character. I figured I’d share my thoughts on that. This is probably gonna be long.

Before I get started, here’s who I’m not a sympathizer or apologist for

c!Dream: fuck this guy. You’re not supposed to sympathize with him. He’s just all around evil, man. He’s an abuser, manipulator and he preys on those weaker than him. I still enjoy his character however, he’s just so delightfully hateable and I love when villains are hateable.

c!Sam: I get Sam. I really do. I understand where he’s coming from. But good god, it’s just not working! His little system keeps fucking up and he doesn’t really seem to get that it’s the system itself and not the people fucking it up. He’s too damn lawful for his own good. The prison is eating at him and you can see how he’s becoming more and more a bastardized version of the man he used to be. I want to be able to sympathize with him, and I’m not going to excuse the shitty things he’s done, but I understand him. As he is right now he’s gone off the deep end and doesn’t even know it yet. However I do think he can change. There’s still a chance for it.

Any other character not listed I simply just do not have an opinion on them. Maybe I don’t watch them often, there’s just not much to their character, or they simply haven’t done much for them to need apologists or sympathizers.

Now onto the list

c!Tommy: this kid has been through so much and received so little support. Like yeah, he’s done some wrong things, but he’s been so disproportionately punished for them. Like almost everyone else does the things he does without any repercussions. He’s also stopped doing most of the things people had issues with, or is at least trying. I feel like people don’t realize half the reason Tommy did any of his ‘bad’ things is he’s simply never been taught better. Everyone wants him to learn his lesson but never actually teach him anything but violence and pain. Also, half the things the fandom calls him an asshole for are literally mental illness symptoms. Stop that. Kids got some things messed up in his head. I’m not one to diagnose but he gets pretty damn close to the criteria for C-PTSD. You know, from the near constant trauma in his life. Kid needs a break. And a doctor.

c!Techno: I’m really flip floppy with him. His motives are understandable but his morals are wack as hell. I get wanting something against people who’ve wronged you. I get disliking government. What I don’t get, is the absolute disproportionate retribution he delivers. I also don’t get his moral high ground. He has his reasons for distrusting government. He has his reasons for disliking L’Manburg (o7). And I think it’s perfectly valid to want to air his grievances. He’s got a very admirable combination of “do unto others” and “an eye for an eye”. Mans just bungles the execution of these ideas. He’s got a lot of problems, but however, I feel like he’s got something coming to him. cc!Techno’s a better writer than this. And now with it seeming like a lot of miscommunication is getting cleared up, some of Technos past transgressions might come back to him. I think he’s headed in an interesting direction.

c!Phil: a lot of what I said for Techno applies to him as well. In addition, we know he also blames the government for his son’s spiral and death. It makes sense based on what he knows. I had something completely different here in the drafts but now we know that Wilbur didn’t tell him the truth about what happened in Manburg-Pogtopia era of the SMP. He’s been completely misinformed and you can TELL this has shaken his world up. He’s gaining a lot of new knowledge really fast. It’s becoming clear that maybe he’s beginning to regret some of what he’s done. But beyond the misinformation, he also just never got much time to actually grieve for his son and heal before the plot moved on. I feel like Phil is one of those guys who sorta just stuffs all his emotions away, but now it’s getting to be too much. He has a lot of hidden depth and I think he’s definitely on the way to a different role than what he’s played.

c!Wilbur: before his death, Wilbur needed help. No one realized anything was wrong until it was too late to pull him out of his spiral. We now know he started falling after Eret’s betrayal. He was paranoid and growing to hate what he had created. It seems like Eret was the catalyst, but the election was the straw that broke the camels back. Everyone just kind of sat around and hoped he’d change his mind. The only one willing to try was Tommy, and Tommy was just a kid. Something could have been done for him. He wasn’t a villain. He was just someone who went down a dark path that could have been pulled away if someone who wasn’t a 16 year old boy tried to reach out to him. Post-resurrection, he seems to be happy to be alive again. I’m not saying he’s completely out of the spiral but clearly something changed in limbo. And yeah him saying Dream is his hero is hella sketch but I mean, he doesn’t have the full story yet. I need to see more of revivedbur to make an opinion on him entirely.

c!Tubbo: this kid has had so little agency for so much of the plot. Most of the bad things he’s done were under duress or because he was practically being used. He really was a pawn in other peoples games, unfortunately. Any action of his that wasn’t like this was something he did out of pure reaction. He’s a very reactionary guy. He doesn’t start shit but he’ll try to finish it if he can. Tubbo is mostly just trying to get by. He’s been a soldier, a spy, a president and whatever else he needed to be or what others needed him to be. His time as president had him being pushed around and put under pressure he should never been put under. He was backed into corner after corner and expected to make the right decision with different people telling him what that was. Now he’s just trying to have some peace for himself and his family. He made the nukes for defense and defense only. It’s extreme but he’s been taught that extremism is the only thing that works.

c!Ranboo: dude literally doesn’t know what, when, or how he did any of the bad things he did. He’s not himself for most of the wrongdoings he’s done. Hell, we don’t even know if he actually did do some of the things or if it’s Dream manipulating him. Dream is literally taking advantage of Ranboo having the Enderwalk state. This makes him one of the most dangerous people on the server as Dream puppet, but also one of the most victimized. Now this doesn’t absolve him completely because harm was still done but it’s a reasonable cause behind his actions. Like I mentioned he’s also a victim of Dream in this way. Even he’s scared of what could happen and the possibility that he could be a danger to the people he loves. Granted his moral code used to be pretty wack but he’s getting better at that. I really like his “choose people” stance bc at first it was just him making his own side but now he’s genuinely picking and choosing people and being with them because he likes them as people rather than their stance on things. He and Tubbo were already friends before they got married, he’s not an official part of Snowchester though, iirc, and the only reason he joined The Syndicate was to make sure they don’t go after Tubbo.

c!Fundy, c!Niki, and c!Jack all go in the “seek some healthy coping mechanisms for the love of god” pile. Niki has already started on this as she’s baking again. c!Fundy honestly hasn’t done much wrong afaik, but he still needs to go to therapy that poor fox boy has so much daddy issues and sadness. c!Jack literally just needs to work through his issues with Tommy bc dude only knows murder as an answer to his problems. There’s other ones and he should learn them. These three are just traumatized and don’t know what to do with themselves.

[tumblunni]

I hate that oddly specific feeling of like you wanna complain about a transphobic bad thing but then it's like hard to do it without sounding like you're defending a genuinely reprehensible character?

It's just that..like...

Excellus is a BAD PERSON

But the game does not want you to hate them because they're a BAD PERSON

It wants you to hate them because they're a trans woman/gay man/non-binary person/ambigiuos melting pot of every single queer stereotype simultaneously somehow

The game is constantly fuckin going on and onnnnn about how repulsive and ugly and Not Gender Correct this person is, and somehow this is a more important factor in wanting to stab them than the fact they killed a main character's brother

Also the whole fact that they have such a horrid personality with NO humanity or even a MOTIVE for what they're doing = kinda also part of the trans stereotype. This character only exists to be a lazy shorthand for "instantly hateable", you're meant to just accept all this bullshit simply because they're "hideous and wrong"

Also seriously I can't believe the dub made it EVEN WORSE! Cos Excellus (Excelli in Japanese) originally just speaks with a feminine speech pattern and adds lil hearts and ~ symbols in their speech boxes and stuff to indicate "hey I am a stereotype of someone DMAB who is somewhere on the queer spectrum and this is supposed to be bad". Similar to the (ugh) creepy incest gay brothers in that one sidequest. But in the dub they kinda added a goddamn flourish of this character talking like a friggin sex criminal! And even MORE mentions of "hey he is totally a man and can never be anything but a man, let's all talk way too much about how repugnant it is to be non gender conforming". While also friggin attempting to canonize that this character actually IS a cis straight man and (some fucking how) only acts trans because he's a eunuch????? Getting genital surgery changes your fuckin personality now????? Also seriously why did you have to have an invasive conversation about a dead person's testicles and why was it played as somehow a funny joke.

None of that was in Japanese but honestly with the rest of Japanese Excellus's general portrayal it seems INCREDIBLY likely that she was intended to be a trans woman. I kinda laughed at how the Tokyo Mirage Sessions version of Excellus straight up has giant plastic robot boobies yet the dub is still like We Will Just Say Man And Deny All Trans, While Also Simultaneously Saying Trans Is Bad, Somehow.

So yeah all of that just makes me hate Aversa even more for saying that shit, cos if that line actually existed in the Japanese version the context would seem more like.. well, trans woman who had the closest medieval equivelant of transition surgery and is being mocked for it. At least the knowledge that the Single Worst Moment Of The Whole Thing wasn't canon to the original makes me hate her a little less. Though I still hate her because she acts EXACTLY AS FLIRTY AS EXCELLUS and commits EVEN MORE CRIMES, yet she doesnt get nearly as much hate and even gets a redemption just because she acts like a sex criminal while being cis and conventionally attractive...

Auuugh I don't wanna hate the redeemed lady and be sympathetic to the asshole! But just the context of the game's writing and attitudes surrounding them really taints the characters...

Also I'm sad that there was brief hope that Loki in Heroes might actually be a respectful portrayal of a trans or genderfluid character, but nah it's just one of those boring overly-cisnormative-ideas-of-gender type "genderflip" things for mythological characters. Which is depressing cos mythological Loki literally ACTUALLY WAS a genderfluid pansexual shapeshifter who could be both god and goddess. Something that's so often censored in modern adaptations, and god it's so weird to have that happen again even though this adaptation is literally using the female Loki?? Just wiping off the whole "and also this character can be a man too" aspect... Nah just incredibly lazy fanservice cis woman time, I guess...

I mean cmon man, Fates made tiny tiny baby steps towards more LGBT representation, can we please step it up a little... Awakening already started with being behind the times, and all they changed was literally adding ONE gay character per game so you had to buy a certain version to date a gay man or lesbian woman...and it STILL contained homophobia at the same time... God just fuckin...TRY A LITTLE, PLEASE...

So uhh yeah that's what all the new news about the Three Houses game made me remember, and I'm trying to not get my hopes up. If it does have a big change to more inclusive writing then I'd be pleasantly surprised! But honestly I'm not gonna buy it unless I'm 100% sure I'm not gonna trip and fall into an eternal quicksand of self hate again

Tfw I literally look like Excellus in real life... (minus the comically overdetailed caricature face, of course...well, at least I hope so...)

Also can I just give another shout-out to Tabitha from Pokémon ORAS, a game I played in the same year that rekindled my faith in people like me being actually non hideous and genuinely liked by the fanbase. Srsly him and Excellus are just the same character drawn in bigoted and non bigoted art styles, I swear!

All of that heck happened back when I was first coming to terms with my gender identity so I'm glad that bloody fire emblem didn't kick me down back into the closet

[linds889]

my messy ass feelings

Why do i can so much about people who don't care about me

Like all the things we did were meaningless like actually

How does he expect me not to still have feeling for him after a year like i care so much about him and im just some fuck toy.

You know how bad that is for a girl's mental health and self esteem.

Its always your pretty enough to fuck but never to date.

Yes i understand i am still pretty young in the dating game

But it feels like you are rushed to do everything.

Like texting older guys at a young age for validation.

I can barely cry anymore because im so use to the pain

I can only if I'm typing or with someone.

God you should have heard my scream when he called everything we did meaningless.

Like yes we did curse each other out a lot after

What do you expect? We never really learned how to love.

We both grew up with parents fighting.

Your parents separated and mine stayed.

I deal with a drunk father who always works.

And a mother who is always mad at my father.

Not to mention my graduation he was there then back to work.

I feel that one one is ever consiste in my life.

Only the anti depressants and the weed.

Well vaping too.

It's gotten bad that I developed a small addiction.

Which we all know leads to a bigger one.

But the cards are right, it's a cycle we go through.

We hate each other, we do our thing, and I end up always hurt.

I wish that I had an off switch whenever shit goes wrong.

It's not a good thing but it's better than other opinions.

God, I haven't thought about that in a long time.

Its a good thing but i’m still very much fucked up.

But isn't everyone.

Ok but back to the reason i am sad.

Gabe.

GOD. I hate the motherfucker.

Hate? You may ask. Yes, I hate him.

But for some reason in my heart I still care about him.

Why? Idk I want to know. Well I do know.

My parents but that's another time.

Ok so ever since i met that hateable loveable asshole

I felt safe. He was funny and caring.

I got to know the side that he didn't want people to know about.

I welcomed him into my home. My safe place. Because he didn't want to go home,

Oh ik that feeling 1000%.

Just sitting at the doctor's office by our house just hugging and kissing.

I felt love for the first time in a long time.

Like even now when I was with him.

I felt it again.

that once of happiness is a drug.

You want to keep feeling it over and over again.

[vertyblog]

Idle thoughts about villain characters.

I’ve noticed this trend recently of newer villains cropping up who have some major emotional flaw that fuels most of their villainy but also makes a chunk of the audience that I don’t agree with get extremely disappointed. The strongest example I can think of; people got real upset that Kylo Ren wasn’t as cool as his deliberately-built image (ignoring The Last Jedi because I haven’t seen it yet idfk what kylo does in that movie dont mention it) and everyone has something bad to say about Sonic Forces’ own Infinite.

Here’s the thing though. Villains are liars by nature. All of them. Even if a villain has a strict code of honesty or something- they’re still a liar. Whether they’re lying to themselves about their capabilities, their emotional investment, or how justified their actions are, every villain fundamentally believes something about the world, or themselves, or both, that is not true. That’s what makes them villains and what makes their actions not justified. And at the end of it, every villain also fundamentally underestimates the hero and overestimates themselves, and that’s the only reason they’re able to be defeated at all. If the villain didn’t expect to be overcome they wouldn’t try the plan that gets overcome, after all.

Unless it’s a story where the badguy wins I guess but that feels like a whole other thing to talk about.

To put it another way- every villain is pathetic. You shouldn’t buy into their own hype because every badguy deep down is exactly like Kylo Ren when you really break them down to who they are underneath all the cool red glowy stuff. Whether driven by selfish reasons; an inherently pathetic way of viewing the world, or whether they believe they’re the heroes; something inherently pathetic in how wrong it always is, how pitiable they are that they believe this cruelty is the only way to fix the world, either way, almost every villain written is pathetic, because the notion of villainy itself is pathetic.

I mean, look at Kylo’s inspiration. It’s easy to forget that under the mask, the cape, and the deep voice, that Vader’s primary motivation as a villain, even ignoring the prequels, is that he hates himself for being a villain. How ridiculous is that! Redemption dangles on a stick in front of him every moment, but he never reaches for it until the last possible second because of his own inability to believe he deserves it. He commits such acts of galactic cruelty all because he’s angry at himself for being able to do it.

If anything I find badguys who are more visibly pathetic incredibly compelling! Being constantly bested by a superior foe until you finally overcome them is one kind of story, and there’s nothing wrong with that story either, but so much can be done in a story where the hero wins temporarily, and the villain is driven by that pain and humiliation to strike back with fifteen times the ferocity.

Plus, a villain with an extremely pathetic motivation is so much more hateable and so much more fun to hate! Hold on, you killed so many people because you’ve got daddy issues!? Wait, the reason you did all that was because you’re jealous that you don’t love anyone!? The spark that ignited your whole lawful-evil vigilante agenda was being mugged and feeling weak!? Wow, what a huge asshole!

Characters like that can be vulnerable in a way that other villains haven’t always been, and, it doesn’t even have to make them literally vulnerable. If anything, it can make them even more dangerous than someone who manages to maintain their composure. A vicious predator is one thing, but a cornered animal is another kind of threat entirely, and it’s all the more terrifying when they’re the same animal.

[mst3kproject]

519: Outlaw

I don't want to talk about the Gor books.  I don't think I need to talk about them – there's plenty to mock in Outlaw without going into its source material.  Anyway, if I were going to talk about them I'd have to read them, and everything I've ever heard about them tells me that I definitely don't want to do that.  They sound like a Fifty Shades of Grey for basement-dwelling misogynist nerd stereotypes.

A couple of assholes named Watney (no relation to the guy who got left behind on Mars) and Cabot (no relation to the author of The Princess Diaries) are on their way to a bar when they are forced to make a detour into another dimension.  Fortunately, this is a sequel: Cabot has been here before and so rather than dying of thirst in the desert, they find their way to the cardboard city of Coroba. There, the two become embroiled in a plot by Queen Lara to murder her husband and seize power.  She imprisons Watney and the rightful heir, Princess Talena, and sends a bounty hunter to capture the escaped Cabot.  After much pointless wandering around, the conspiracy is revealed.  The bounty hunter kills Lara, Cabot marries Talena and becomes king, Watney is sent back to Earth, and Zeno the High Priest does basically nothing despite being played by the only cast member anybody in the audience has ever heard of.

Quick Note: the 'desert snake' that appears in one shot appears to be a Burmese python, a semi-aquatic species that lives in the rainforests of southeast Asia.  They could not have gotten that more wrong if they'd tried.

Besides that stunning failure of herpetology, the thing about this movie that most sticks in my mind is the kissing.  Cabot and Talena share several kisses.  They're supposed to be epic and passionate, but there's something weirdly mechanical about them, like we're watching exaggerated stop-motion animation of a kiss. It's as if neither Urbano Barberini nor Rebecca Feratti have any actual experience of kissing, and are trying to kiss based on having read an anatomical study of the muscles involved.  Gross.

After that, the second thing I remember about the movie is how incredibly fake everything in it looks.  Cabot's flashback tells us that Gor is a harsh world, and it breeds harsh people – this is supposed to be a gritty, raw, half-savage place, where the aristocracy wallow in decadence while the common folk toil in the mud, and where death is always a just a hair away.  The sets and costumes are admittedly elaborate, and there is at least some unity of design (unlike, say, Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, where they just used whatever they could find in the prop warehouse), but everything looks like it was made in a high school art class.  King Marlenus' crowns appear to be made of cardboard and hot glue, spray-painted gold.  Talena and the 'Leather Women' look like they're wearing bondage gear from Spencer's Gifts, while the dancers are in 'sexy genie' Hallowe'en costumes.  The entire city of Coroba is built out of plywood, except for the parts that are built from styrofoam (hence why the slaves are being worked to death in the styrofoam mines).  That stupid 'lizard woman' face painted on the wall looks like the work of a twelve-year-old who has just learned how to grid out facial proportions.

The biggest problem with Outlaw, however, is one that only becomes obvious after a little thought.  Having pondered the film's story for a while, trying to figure out why it seems so pointless, I eventually realized – it's because Cabot, our ostensible hero, never does anything.

Well, that's not quite true.  He does a couple of things, but nothing he does ever matters.  He beats up some sand Nazis when they first arrive on Gor, but that has absolutely no connection with the rest of the plot.  He gets himself and Watney to Coroba, where he is conveniently present to be framed when Lara murders her husband.  Afterwards he flees into the desert where he and his sidekick Hup get lost and wander in circles for a while.  They find a group of slavers chasing people in the middle of nowhere for some reason, and stage a jailbreak which frees exactly one slave.  Then they're caught by the bounty hunter and taken back to Coroba, where both Lara and Zeno try to bargain for Cabot's loyalty and fail.  The villains lose not because of him, but because they turn on each other.  The whole movie could have happened just fine even if Cabot never bothered to show up.

It's not like there weren't opportunities for him to do something.  Cabot could have gotten the slaves in the desert camp to rise up against their captors, and then rallied them into an army to storm Coroba.  He didn't do that.  He could have snuck back into the city to free Talena and get the support of the people to put her on the throne.  He didn't do that either.  He could have pretended to join forces with Zeno against Lara, or Lara against Zeno, or just killed Lara when she tried to seduce him.  Didn't do that.  He could have led a revolt in the styrofoam mines after the cave-in sowed discontent with the regime.  Didn't do that either. Cabot seems to spend the whole movie waiting around for a chance to do something heroic, but every time one arrives he lets it pass by.

What about any of the other 'good' characters?  An old wizard called the Elder was the one who brought Cabot and Watney to Gor, in the hopes that they would accomplish something.  He gets stabbed by Lara before he can tell them what.  Talena spends most of the movie in a dungeon.  She maims a couple of dominatrices but that's about it for her.  Hup follows Cabot around, complaining about how hot, hungry, and lost they are.  Watney, too, rots in jail, out of sight and out of mind, for ninety percent of the film – then at the final showdown, he announces to the public that Lara murdered King Marlenus.  This is what brings about the end of the movie, as the bounty hunter kills her with a spear and Cabot and Talena are able to become King and Queen.  That's right, folks – the only ‘hero’ character in the movie who does anything directly to overthrow Lara is fucking Watney.

Watney deserves some kind of award for being probably the most hateable single character ever to appear on MST3K – and that's saying something.  His competition includes such nails-on-chalkboard specimens as various Gamera kids, the peeping soldiers from Attack of the The Eye Creatures, and Mitchell, but Watney blows them all away.  He's a sexist pig, a whiny asshole, and a fucking idiot combined.  Lara promises to make him a king and he seriously expects her to follow through on it, even still shouting threats at the guards who drag him away.  Yet at the end, when he, Cabot, Hup, and Talena are all about the be executed, he's the only person who responds proactively.  The movie would have ended the same way without Cabot, but not without Watney.  I guess that makes him the hero.  What a horrible thought.

So much for the good guys.  How about the villains?  Zeno mixes potions and has passive-aggressive arguments with Lara, but she gets fed up and kills him before he can really take any action against her.  Lara herself is a cartoon character – she's evil, and that's one hundred percent of her personality and motivation.  There is exactly one line in the movie that hints at a backstory for her. She claims that she had to learn the hard way that power is all that matters.  This suggests that she may have been a slave herself before rising to her current position, and if it had been explored a little this could have made something interesting out of her.  Historical parrallels could be drawn to Anne Boleyn or Irene Sarantapechaina, a former concubine using royal authority to punish those she feels have abused her.

But nobody else in this movie has more than one dimension, so why should she?  She seems interested in nothing but power for its own sake.  The reponsibilities that come with wielding it are entirely immaterial to her – she just wants to tell people what to do and then watch as they are forced to do it regardless of whether it actually makes any sense.  In fact, a number of the things she does, such as ordering the slaves to be locked in during the cave-in at the styrofoam mine, seem to have no purpose beyond exercising this total authority.  It's as if she wants to be surrounded by people who despise her, while she enjoys the fact that they can't do anything about her.  Imagine if she had a twitter account.

Then there's the most nonsensical character of all, the bounty hunter.  I think his name is Horst.  Lara hires him to bring Cabot and Hup back, he does so, she pays him, and he leaves.  It seems like his role in the story is done, but then he turns up again at the finale to kill Lara for no reason other than Watney said so.  I was sure this scene had to be otherwise motivated.  MST3K must've cut the bit where we find out she cheated him out of money or something – but no, apparently he just decided that it was time for the movie to end.  Maybe he's the hero.

The movie, however, treats Cabot as the hero throughout, so I suppose Cabot is the person it wants us to emulate.  What does that mean?  I guess it means that when evil appears to have triumphed, all we need to do is keep our heads down and wait it out.  We can put up with other people doing terrible things as long as we don't explicitly support them, and occasionally make some small show of loyalty to good, and sooner or later somebody else will topple the evil for you.  White-Liberal-est movie ever.

See what I meant?  There's heaps to complain about in Outlaw, and I didn't have to mention the books once.

[gncrevan]

i have a lot of thoughts and disappointments about season 2 of jessica jones, but i'm too sick and out of it to articulate them well at this point, so for now let me just get these things out in whatever way i can say them right now:

alisa was a bad person who repeatedly proved she cared more about karl than about her own daughter and all the brain damage in the world doesn't redeem her for that.

karl was a creep and i am not gonna believe they truly loved each other or whatever when she was clearly experiencing some kind of stockholm syndrome and he was taking advantage of his patient whom he held prisoner.

i'm disgusted by so many things that trish did and even more disgusted tbh that this show gave me a character who survived child abuse and child sexual abuse and then proceeded to make her just as manipulative and controlling as the people who abused her.

i am sick of the way jessica treats people, especially malcom, and it would be one thing if she genuinely was that way with everyone, but she's not, she has a double standard since she forgives her mother for literally going on a murderous rampage and choosing karl over her, but not malcom for trusting trish and going behind her back, or trish for relapsing and behaving like an idiot; and all that feels just very wrong considering all the shit she pulled herself and i guess yeah maybe she was pushing them away to self harm but then i don't understand why she didn't go back to apologize at the end since she is obviously trying to be with oscar, which means she wants people in her life.

both jessica and trish treat malcom like shit and use him and are so ungrateful to him and i am glad he finally stood up to them, but also he just deserves better and i want them to treat him right and apologize and appreciate him for all that he does!

jeri's story line broke my heart in many ways, but the show is really determined to make her hateable and irredeemable i guess, which is such a step back after the progress she made and just.... ugh.

i don't know why the show tries so hard to tell me things like it's okay that dorothy pimped out her teenage daughter to a pedo cause she took her to rehab so she's still kind of a good person or whatever???

why should i forgive and feel sorry for simpson for protecting trish when he was a murderous, rapey, abusive shit to her before???

and i am not supposed to care that alisa killed two of the very few black women with speaking roles, one of whom (marilyn) was also just extremely nice to her and concerned for her??? like, you want me to just forget that stuff and say "oh yeah this character is definitely redeemable and deserves to be cared for by their daughter"?

idk, there were things that spoke to me, especially before the "mother" reveal; like the trish/max thing was painful but also vindicating, and i liked some of the new characters (though i hated griffin; and while i agree with all the criticisms about how jessica treated cheng, he was still written as an asshole unfortunately so i didn't like him either), and malcom was great, the depth given to his character and the way they showed how hard overcoming his addiction is/was were great, and he and jessica made progress on their friendship which is what he deserves, and the anger management stuff was good cause jessica talking openly about her trauma was good. i also genuinely appreciated the kilgrave delusion episode because it felt weird that the season largely ignored how much that must still haunt her, and i think the show is by far at its best when it depicts the fallout of trauma and abuse.

and i mean, like some other people i feel genuinely somewhat protective of the show for making me realize some things about my own trauma and maladaptive coping strategies and romanticization of my abuse/the idea of further abuse. i just really appreciate that it made me think about that.

but this season was still largely really messy and i am not happy about it

[tumblunni]

Huh, I learned a fact! Apparantly the japanese actually have a word for a particular relateable childhood thing. “Chuunibyou” or “eighth grade syndrome”, for the type of kid/young teen who makes up clearly false lies to sound cooler, and/or gets really into cartoons and games and stuff and pretends to be a superhero. But it could also just apply to any sort of ‘I have a secret, I’m only pretending to be socially awkward cos I’m a secret spy staying undercover!’ type of thing. The definition I was reading mentioned how the ‘i’m totally a gangster, i could totally kick your ass’ and ‘my uncle works at nintendo’ and ‘i’m totally rich and know all these models and have a girlfriend that’s just working abroad’ type stuff from later years of high school can also count. And honestly I think the more uniquely american ‘I buy so many guns and I’m sure that some day some sort of crazy liberal will attack me and i’ll totally save everyone from them and prove my guns were totally necessary’ type forty year old should count.

Anyway, I can relate to the cutesy eighth grade version, I used to pretend I was ‘a monster’ as a kid cos like.. that was the only way i could understand my undiagnosed autism. I must be some sort of changeling child or evil invader from space, that’s why i don’t act human enough. Like.. everyone was right to hate me, and the only consolation was a stupid made up hope that the magic aliens would come for me and take me back to my real family. But I never actually believed it, i just thought it was a fun story to doodle stuff for, and to distract myself from the fact that I didn’t have a real answer to any of these questions. And like lol sometimes it helped me make friends if I found people who were interested in the stupid story, and also it kinda helped weed out the assholes who’d make fun of me for like.. being a kid, playing games like a kid. Dude stop acting like you’re so mature, we’re both twelve! But then I remember how I kinda WISHED I could believe in it, or believe in anything, honestly. My parents’s religion didn’t help me feel better, just told me to be more ashamed of all the inhuman parts of my brain that I was scared about. So I guess crossing my fingers every night and hoping for some sort of stupid tv show thing to happen- ANY stupid tv show thing to happen!- was the only coping method I had. And I used to count numbers of bricks in walls or on barcodes or try and find trees that looked like faces or LITERALLY ANY OTHER SIGN THAT COULD MEAN ANYTHING EVER, and be like ‘maybe this is gonna tell me how long I have to wait til the magic thing happens’ And its funny cos I thought that some reality-shattering impossible thing would have to happen to let me be free from my abusive parents, and find out what’s wrong with my brain and somehow deal with it. But really I should have just been counting down to age 18 when i could just legally leave and enter a homeless shelter and have my own power over what doctor i see and stuff. And it happened and everything exploded and my life was better in a far more ordinary way! *shrug*

So yeah I think that’s when my stories first started becoming Actually Reasonably Decent, cos they weren’t just constant self insert crossovers with everything and super depressing stories of Everyone The Me and The Reason Why I Am Hateable, dressed up in a million sneaky spy hats. Like man i still remember I had some story idea about a kid who got murdered for being mentally ill and then strung up in a field as a scarecrow and then he came back as a scarecrow zombie and then... he just found a new loving family and had Completely Normal Life Adventures. lol so many of my wish fullfillment stories weren’t even anything exciting but just I Am An Evil Monster And I Get A Hug From Someone, Possibly So I mean my life isn’t perfect or anything but I’ve kinda been devoid of dreams for the last seven years. I had very little other aspirations beyond escaping the dad, and finding out why I was weird and different. I guess that’s why I’m happy with a life most people would consider shitty and ordrinary, but personally I find it a good policy to forever be wowed by the beauty in all normal things! I mean I was so constantly panicked its like i never really looked at anything until I was free! Also, it is more fun to write stories about literally anything else, and work on developing characters with their own individual personalities and stuff. It’s a good side effect that I’ve still remained very interested in writing, even after I don’t need to make up my own happy ending anymore!