#how do you think Frank would react to popculture?

[edourado]

Together, ch viii

This is probably the silliest thing I have ever written for these two. 

Please don’t abandon me.

Much love. 

----

“Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande are leading the charts”, Karen said one morning, while they both lounged in bed, after he decided - well, she persuaded him - to skip his jog just once. 

“Hmm”, was his reply, eyes closed. “And they are...”

Karen chuckled, and he suspected she had already told him about those two people. 

“Singers. Extremely famous.”

“Oh.”

It had become a running joke. She would read him pop culture news once and awhile, claiming he knew far too little about what went on outside his own life and general politics. 

David was actually the cause for that. He had called one day, to give them updates on the puppies - now named Blake, the girl that belonged to Leo, and Iron, the boy that was Zach’s - and said something about someone called Black Pink, which turned out to be several someones. 

“It’s this Kpop band, Leo plays their stuff non stop”, he told Frank, when he looked confused. And then, immediately, “Do you know what Kpop is?”

“Should I?” 

And Karen thought that was so endearing, kissed him and said he was “adorably clueless”, and started reading him these news here and there, that he barely understood most of the time.

“You liked Lady Gaga”, she said, turning to look at him, a sliver of sun on her skin, from a gap in the curtains. “Remember, we watched that movie?”

“The, uh- with the girl that gets famous and the guy…”

“Yes.”

“That’s her, then. Ok.”

Another day, he was sitting at the door, while Leilani played with Pooka in the hallway, when she took out her phone and turned to him. 

“Can I do a Tik Tok with him?”

Frank looked at her a little puzzled, and she showed him her phone. “Like a video? For the internet.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Karen came back from the walk with Lady and he asked her about it, after they all got inside again. 

“It’s like Instagram, but mainly for teenagers, they do these challenges.”

He blinked.

“It’s social media, like Facebook and Twitter.”

She showed him said Tik Toks on her phone and he watched a few, only to declare “I don’t get it”, giving her phone back to her after a few minutes. 

“You never tell me about people I know, like… Prince, he’s cool”, he said after she told him something about someone called Frank Ocean. 

Karen blinked at him.

“Frank…” she started, her voice almost careful. “You know he- he died, right?”

“What- Prince did?”

“Yeah. A few years ago.”

That truly surprised him. 

“Shit. How?”

He spent a few days in a controlled rage about that fact, and started going through a list of artists he knew and liked, checking they were still alive.

“Any more of the Beatles die?” 

“No, they’re good.”

It was Karen’s turn to be surprised when she came home from her own jog one day, to find him sitting on the couch watching reality TV. The Kardashians, to be more specific. 

They had watched the OJ Simpson season of American Crime Story, and she had explained to him that Robert Kardashian was the father of a very famous family that had a show that was still on. 

“I thought it would be like… Different”, he explained when she asked, extremely intrigued, why he was watching that. “But they’re just… Famous because they’re famous, I don’t get it.”

“Yeah, no one does”, she said, walking to the bathroom to take her shower.

To Karen’s further surprise, he kept watching the show. 

“That’s that rapper you told me about”, he said, when Kanye West showed up on the screen one day.

“Yeah, he’s married to Kim.”

“Will it last longer than her other marriage?”

The Kardashians became background noise for a while, and Frank’s knowledge in current pop culture improved greatly, and he spent a lot of time on his computer after Caitlyn Jenner transitioned, researching, Karen suspected.

Eventually, he stopped watching the show, claiming he couldn’t handle anymore. 

“You know what you should watch?”

She sat down to watch Queer Eye with him, and while he didn’t cry once - like she had, the first time she watched it - he didn’t get distracted, sometimes commenting things like “That’s fucked up”, or “nice”, or laughing at something or other. 

Frank sat through six Star Wars movies - which he knew about but had never watched - but was fidgety once he started on the more recent ones, turning his attention to the dogs almost immediately, giving up on actually finishing the saga. 

He sat for almost an hour one day on a video call with Leo, while she explained to him what her favorite Kpop bands were and why. 

“Do you understand what they say?” He asked, and Karen smiled, sitting at the desk, looking at her own computer. 

“That’s what Google Translator and subtitles are for”, she girl replied. “And some of them speak English. And I’m actually picking up on some words, now. ”

Little Victor from upstairs told him that he was reading the Harry Potter books for the first time, and while Frank knew about the books, since his own kids had read them all, he knew next to nothing about it. 

“I know Harry”, he told the boy, as always lying in his hammock, while Victor sat in his own fire escape, little legs dangling. “And there’s his friend, right? With the red hair?”

“His name is Ron”, said Victor.

“And there’s a girl, too. Her name’s complicated.”

He made Victor laugh while pretending not to know how to say the name “Hermione”, going “Herman? Herald? Horace?”, and the kid giggled.

Karen found him reading “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in his hammock, after Victor lent it to him, before going inside to have dinner. 

“It’s a kid’s book”, Frank whispered to her when she got out to join him.

“The first three are, very kiddy. But the other four are more mature. Stick to it, you’ll see.”

“You read it?” He asked, reaching out for her hand. 

“Yeah”, she said, and then smiled. “When I was eleven. But!” She went on, when he made to argue that they were, in fact, kids books. “The last one came out when I was, like, nineteen, and I didn’t read it until I was twenty one, so there’s that. You’ll be fine.”

He read the three books that Victor lent him in two days, and told her that “shit was starting to get intense for Harry” after he finished the Goblet of Fire. 

“Is he gonna end up with Hermione?” He asked during diner one night when Victor tossed him The Order of the Phoenix. 

“I’m not gonna tell you!” Karen protested, putting a big spoonful of mashed potatoes in her plate. “Why? Do you want them to?”

“Nah”, he said. “I’m just asking, because I think her and Ron make more sense.”

“Aw. Do you ship Romione?”

He looked at her, swallowing a mouthful of steamed broccoli. 

“Do I what the what?”

Karen smiled. “Nevermind.”

His pop culture knowledge hadn’t made it to the lingo yet. 

[thenightling]

Opinion on the rioters who dressed as The Punisher

Opinion on the Rioters dressed as The Punisher:

I recently found out some of the Capitol rioters were dressed as The Punisher from Marvel comics.  Do I blame the character?  No.   However, i have become very cautious in regard to hardcore fans of the character and not merely over this.

First, I admit, I never really liked The Punisher as a character.   I thought of him as an edgy byproduct of comics gradually shifting to being darker and grittier.  He was one of the first heroes to not preach about justice and redemption but instead wanted to kill.  He was not a protagonist.  He started as a villain in the Amazing Spider-Man comics.  Stan Lee had not liked the character. (This is a fact that is easily checked and Googled).

In the late 80s and early 90s he became very popular as comics became darker and so he was given his own comic and appeared more often and often as a protagonist anti-hero.

I never liked the concept of him.  Sure, he had a sympathetic backstory but the “Killing is the only answer” never sat right for me.  The lack of mercy he showed even to the repentant, it always bothered me.  I got that he was supposed to be mentally-ill but in his own comics his behavior was, far too often, justified.

Other media tried to mimic the character.  The Ben Affleck Daredevil behaved more like The Punisher than Daredevil.  Instead of a defense attorney he was now a prosecutor.  And if he lost a case he would hunt down the criminal and kill him, brutally.   There’s one scene where he severs a man’s spine and then gloats as a train comes to hit him, as he lays paralyzed on the track. That’s not Matt.

Ben Affleck again played totally-not-Punisher in his portrayal of Batman.  A gun-using batman that was loosely inspired by Frank Miller.  And all the Zack Snyder Fanboys came crawling out of the woodwork, insisting that this was “realistic” and “more accurate to the comics” and “but look, he killed in these old comics!”   They either were lying by omission or didn’t know about Crisis on Infinite Earths and how main continuity Batman had been anti-gun and anti-killing since at least 1985.  The entire plot of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke was based on this established lore. 

There’s no doubt Punisher has had a serious influence on popculture and something I called Darkity, dark, dark writing or as others have named it: “Edgelord.” 

It’s a sort of “dark and gritty” “realism” popular among boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen who genuinely think crime would end if we shot every criminal and don’t realize that most real world police officers have never drawn their gun, despite what you might see in the news.  If murder truly was the norm, people wouldn’t still be horrified by it.

Now on to the fans.   There are far too many Punisher fans who think he was and is in the right.  They think he is an aspirational figure to admire and look up to.  A “realistic” hero by Zack Snyder standards, because hope and mercy are what is apparently unrealistic in a world consisting of aliens, Greek Gods, witchcraft, and even the folkloric Sandman (That’s in DC, not Marvel though Nightmare is arguably the Marvel equivalent).

I used to be Facebook friends with a Punisher fan.   He was equally obsessed with The Joker.  At first i just let it be.  You’re allowed to like edgy or dark characters.  There’s no harm in that.  But... he got creepy.   He would quote the Joker in conversation about “SJWs” and “progressives.”   He would say things like “My eyes were opened as yours soon will be.”   

He was convinced liberals tried to ruin The Joker movie and posted pictures of the Joker dancing down the stairs with “HAHAHAHAHA!  Suck my dick, Progressives!” in at least two of the facebook groups I run.  It got embarrassing that when people would search for my Horror Comics group, the sample post Facebook gave was that one.  

He kept talking about how both The Punisher and The Joker are right.  His facebook picture would alternate between the two characters depending on his mood.  He would post memes “explaining” why The Punisher is right.

He would post articles about this or that criminal being arrested and refer to them as “it” and “thing” and how “it should be tortured four hours before someone kills it.”   things like that, about various people who did things that were (admittedly) horrific and reprehensible but he would go into graphic detail about what he wanted to do with them   Very sadistic, Saw-like tortures before “Mercifully” killing them.  

He once casually told me how he wanted to kill all progressives.  I gently reminded him that I have liberal leanings and I got a “You’re different” sort of response.  

As his behavior got more fanatical and disturbing, the more uncomfortable I became.   After the progressives threat I made the mistake of telling someone who was mutually friends with us both that I felt threatened.  Needless to say the one I have just described to you called me a liar, insisted he never said anything threatening.  And accused me of being “one of them.”

I told him he had been acting increasingly strangely and needed to stop posting the pro-Joker stuff.  And it wasn’t just the film The Joker.  It was the version from Gotham (TV series) he tried to emulate and praised.  A woman celebrity he didn’t like was soon being called “It.”  Then some feminist (I didn’t agree with this person) was saying how The Mandalorian didn’t have enough female characters or diversity and should be canceled.  It was some stupid opinion piece published by a site like Buzzfeed or Io9 during the first season of Mandalorian. 

This guy was very conservative but had a bad habit of seeking out fanatical articles like this to make himself angry.  The only time I ever agreed with him on the matter was when he came to my defense for not liking the 2016 Ghostbusters.  Someone in my own Gothic Horror Facebook group had decided to call me a self-loathing misogynist and insisted the only reason I didn’t like it is because the characters were women.   No, I don’t like slapstick comedy.  I didn’t like that they didn’t bother to use real parapsychology or theoretical physics (as the original had done).  I didn’t like that the “genius” of the group licked her proton blaster and that was the common promo image for the film. I didn’t like that people who praised the film entirely forgot that there was a diverse team lead by a woman in the 90s. (Extreme Ghostbusters).   I didn’t like that they destroyed ghosts instead of trapped them.   That violates the law of conservation and most spiritual beliefs as even being possible. It was just a bad movie.

I agreed with him on that one but when this anti-Mandalorian article came out he went too far.  He insisted the woman who wrote it should be dragged out into the street and shot.  He called her “it” and “thing” and said she didn’t deserve to live . I told him he was going too far, and she couldn’t take the show away, that he was over reacting. 

He then blocked me.   I thought it was done and over with, then the Pandemic hit.

When the Pandemic happened he unblocked me and in a revisionist history of events insisted he had blocked me because I had “lied” and said he threatened me.   No, he had told me he wanted to kill all progressives, knowing that I am one.   And that was not why he blocked me.  It was because I disagreed about his death threats about the writer of a Mandalorian article.  He wanted to fight.  He alternated between insulting me and trying to show how good he was to come to me during a world crisis, like he was doing me a favor.  I blocked him this time.

That night my Facebook account was disabled.  Someone had reported my account as not being a real person, and Facebook wanted photographic proof that I’m real.   It was re-enabled as soon as I sent in a photo but as I don’t have a smartphone (I live in a deadzone) and I’m visually impaired it was a little bit of a pain.  This was not something that had ever happened to me before.  And I had witnessed this Punisher fan report accounts of those he wanted to “punish” before.

And now I find out some of these rioters were wearing Punisher shirts.   So yes, I keep my guard up around Punisher fans.

Do I blame the character?  No.  Not really.   If not him they would have found someone else to try to emulate and idolize.  Getting rid of the character won’t get rid of this mentality.   I never liked the character but I don’t want him banned.  I would be happy if less people were obsessed with him.  I would be happy if those obsessed with the character didn’t all remind me of the man I described here.  I would be happy if fans of the character were more likely to say that they don’t agree with the character’s actions, they just like his story.

There’s nothing wrong in liking a character with problematic behavior.  But if you can’t acknowledge that it’s wrong and instead glorify and romanticize the actions of the character, that’s the problem.   I love lots of characters who do bad things.  I love Count Dracula.  I don’t intend to drink blood and sic wolves on people.   And I have absolutely no interest in impalement.   

I think far too many Punisher fans don’t realize he’s in the wrong, instead want to be like him, and have trouble separating fiction from reality.  I do not blame the character.  They would have found someone else if not him.  But unfortunately, I AM starting to view hardcore / obsessively being a fan of The Punisher as a bit of a red flag considering how many of them behave this way...