#spoiler alert the hero dies

[benjaminaldridge]

A Look Back At Matthew Venn In The Long Call🩵

#BenAldridge

[igetboredandmakeart]

This film\book made me sob uncontrollably.

[asmalltowngirl]

Just watch “Spoiler alert: the hero dies”. I have been heavily crying for the past 40 minutes

[iwannabeanelfyaknow]

Just watched "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies". Totally no crying my eyeballs out.

[howler-moon]

Season one's finale is fucking child's play compared to what I have just witnessed

[im-tryingtoloveyou]

♪ there's a place I dream about

where the sun never goes out

and the sky is deep and blue

won't you take me there with you?♪

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

In the lastest edition of Lying in the Bed I Made my mother asked me when Mina and Jonathan were going to have a baby in my Strange Wonders series and the ";)" was all in her voice like my mom said "when is this plot going to get some porn into it" to her own daughter.

[hamishcat437]

"Omg, can't belive they made sad cancer movie but for gay people" <- cried like a little bitch

[benjaminaldridge]

HELLO SEPTEMBER 🩵

The Lateral Magazine Shoot

#BenAldridge

[a-little-ray-of-fantasy]

An analysis on how Sir Pentious' character design represents his personality and development perfectly (beware of Hazbin Hotel spoilers)

Let's get this out of the way: Sir Pentious is a snake, an animal mostly known for generally believed negative traits such as poison, deceit and betrayal. We don't know WHY he's in Hell, maybe he was a "snake oil salesman" considering he comes from the Victorian times and he's into hyping up what he does, or maybe he was into war. Thing is, he's a Sinner whose design just scream "Evil".

(BTW, a snake could also represent "fertility": looking at you, Egg Boiz!)

He always had eyes all around him not just because of a stylistic choice.

Sir Pentious always felt like he was watched, and had to watch out for any danger.

"Everyone here is too nice: obviously it must be a lie! I can sense they are planning to kill me, but when?! HOW?! I must be PREPARED!"

Sadly, he's been constantly berated by other demons, far more effective in destruction, status, cruelty and charisma. Alastor won't ever bother to remember him, Cherri always ones up him, and the Vs, the ones he admires to most, won't care less about him.

To the point that Vox sent him as a spy without the intention to save him if things were going to fail. Heck, he even openly tells him to die while calling him a failure.

So of course he's got reasons to have trust issues, or taking everything so seriously, being constantly reminded of what he can't accomplish. So he puts an air of grandure that may be very flamboyant, but is VERY frail.

But, if we have to be frank here, his biggest source of insecurities... is himself.

He has eyes on his tail (his softer, more vulnerable side, which is ironically made even MORE lieable to getting hurt because of how sensitive those organs are), and inside his hood, so he could look out better for danger when on alert mode.

Heck, even the mark on his hood kinda resembles one eye.

Problem is, when you see his hood folded, when he's at ease, neutral or sad, those are not looking at outside sources.

They're looking at him, at his back. A constant stare that happens everytime he lets his guard down and shows how vulnerable he is. A gaze that can sense all of his weakness, his struggles, his insecurities.

And it's all him.

Pentious constantly believes that his inferiority complex will fade away once he'll accomplish something grand that will make others accept him. But he is his biggest critic, his worst enemy: HE is the one who believes he's a failure, that he'll never gain approval from others.

This show takes place in Hell, but this is Sir Pentious' personal Hell: insecurity born out of self hatred. Doomed to feel everyone's gaze upon him, including his own. Believing the danger to his self esteem is from others, when it's really from him.

But then he's accepted at the Hazbin Hotel: Charlie forgives him, he bonds with Angel, Husk and Niffty who don't care a bit about what he's accomplished or not, or what he's done in the past.

He feels more comfortable in showing his vulnerable side, and no one judges him for how easy it is for him to get emotional.

Of course he's still very insecure, considering how he struggles to confess to Cherri, but notice how he stops building machines or planning to attack others as soon as he starts bonding with the others: he doesn't have a reason to destroy or attack, now that he knows he's loved.

And his final design, when he goes to Heaven, shows how much he's changed, yet stayed the same. He may have died a hero, but he's still the same awkward snake we've come to love.

Speaking of love, let's talk about that!

No more eyes on his tail, now it's just on his chest (showing he's opened his heart), his glasses are now heart shaped, and even the markings inside his hood resemble kiss marks more than anything else.

And look: the mark on his hood is now heart shaped!

Why all these hearts? Why did all the eyes disappeared from his body? Even his eyes that were looking at his back?

Simple: love. Love defeated his insecurities and self hatred. He died for love.

He died protecting his friends, his new family, his new home.

He confessed and kissed Cherri knowing full well he wouldn't have made it, and yet he went anyway.

The usually cowardly and timid Pentious actually faced a great danger with courage and determination: he acted selflessly by putting himself in harm's way, he didn't steal (naturally) and by going against Adam he did indeed "stick it to the man"!

He used his weaponry knowhow and battle experience not to conquer, but to save his loved ones.

His only thought up until his demise was: "I'll go down protecting them".

And he's been rewarded not only by becoming an angel, but also being spawned directly in front of Emily and Sera, two Seraphim, the highest rank for an angel to have, who have also been depicted as snakes of fire throughout history! Sir Pentious, the lowly demon considered a failure by everyone, actually has been noticed by the Seraphim! He's come so far!

He's now come to represent the REAL symbolism of a snake: the duality of death and rebirth, transformation and immortality (ironically a reference to the fact he's been around since 1888 without ever dying from any Extermination or blessed weapons).

And isn't so poetic that a snake, the "source of the original evil", was the first sinner to ascend to Heaven? Or that this episode was released on February 1st, or National Serpent Day?

And of course, as the Bible itself says:

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

(John 15:13)

And knowing him, I'm confident in saying he'll keep helping his friends even in his new position, like the soft hearted noodle he's always been, but was to afraid to show it up until now.

[coderzxd]

An update:

I read the book! It was so incredibly sweet and heartfelt. It was funny, kind, and just about the saddest thing I've ever read.

I don't expect movie or show adaptations of written media to be able to fully encapsulate the written work. The book had more special moments, organized in a more hurtful (/pos) way. However, what the movie was able to do, was capture the book's essence. The experience. In a word I think the main character of the story would appreciate: The Vibe.

10/10

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown preliminaries

Propaganda:

For Kazuma Asogi:

ok so he’s not CANONICALLY queer but it’s ace attorney. so… he does, however, canonically have a katana! a sword so integral to the plot it gives me shivers just thinking about it. the sword also has a name, it’s karuma (translates roughly to karma) and it gets passed onto the main character, ryunosuke naruhodo (who he calls partner), after kazuma (spoiler alert) dies in case 1-2. except (SUPER spoiler alert!) he isn’t dead! he comes back in case 2-3 and would you look at that he has ANOTHER SWORD, a more european sword (cause he ended up in england after his amnesia brain said he REALLY had to go to england). once he gets his memories back, ryunosuke gives karuma back to him and proceeds to use it to destroy the wax figure of his dead presumed serial killer dad (long story), and now he has, you guessed it, TWO SWORDS! for the next two cases he wears both swords at his sides, and also he broke the tip off of karuma attempting to murder someone (he didn’t actually murder anyone but still) and then turns out karuma’s hilt has the REAL serial killer’s will in it. very VERY important sword. in the end, kazuma gives karuma back to ryunosuke which is really symbolic but that’s besides the point, and they cross swords and it’s a whole big thing. 10/10 gay sword guy.

For Raiden:

Man catches knives with his heels and uses a sword to cut through robots 20 times his size

He's such a tragic character! Raised to be a super soldier from birth and is constantly being exploited by the government. As for the lgbt part him and his rival in the latest game he's in have so much tension it's unreal (gay). I headcanon him as trans too because he has a feminine figure, his voice gets more masculine as the series goes on (testosterone) and his entire body gets replaced with cybernetics (trans allegory...)

For Claudine Saijou:

Fights with a longsword! Should be number 1 for this line alone: “For heroes, there are trials. For saints, there are temptations. For me, there is you”, said to def not her girl crush but rival btw (stream Revue of Soul) Vote for my disaster theatre kid its what she deserves!

Her gay levels are off the charts. She has a homoerotic rivalry with another classmate (Maya Tendo/Tendou Maya) that is integral to her character, as she was always first until she met Maya. She’s also half-French, but that’ll be important later. When she’s looking at pictures of Maya stretching (to study her form of course) and another character asks her what she’s looking at, she panics, blushes, and says none of your business. Her and Maya have a heartfelt conversation while stretching with Claudine’s face pressed into Maya’s chest (between her stomach and breasts). Some art from a magazine has Maya pushing Claudine into a deep stretch, but it looks like something a lot different (Claudine blushing doesn’t help. Also I realized that there’s a lot of gay stuff related to stretching with these two).

During a two on two duel (I know it’s not a duel), they fight together. Not only that, but at one point they hold hands and take a pose typical of romantic partners in dancing. For no reason. They just pause and do it to show off. They aren’t even fighting. Anyways, when they lose, Claudine starts crying, not because she lost, but because Maya lost. So, of course, Maya starts speaking to her in French, with one of the things she says being “You’re cute even when you cry, my Claudine.” All of this is stuff that’s happened in the series (except the magazine thing).

Now for the gay stuff in the movie. Their duel with each other is so dense with sapphic undertones they can hardly be called undertones. For starters, the song that accompanies this revue is called “A Beautiful Person, or Perhaps it is.” While this title is incomplete, the director states that he wanted the watcher to fill it in and this removed the end of the original title. That title is “A Beautiful Person, or Perhaps it is a Love Song.” The duel is framed as a fight between a hero (Maya) and a devil (Claudine). Maya is in an outfit reminiscent of Renaissance Italy and Claudine is in a suit. Thus, Maya signs a contract giving her soul over to Claudine, as is the case with marriage. With her own blood, in the shape of Position Zero (an important symbol in the show), which happens to look like a T, for Tendou. After a few minutes of fighting, Maya disappears and monologues, appearing in a white dress. This means that Maya has signed her soul over to Claudine, and they are now both wearing a white dress and suit. Not beating the gay marriage allegations. Maya finished her monologue with “For heroes, there are trials. For saints, there are temptations. For me, there is a devil.” They continue to fight, Maya proclaiming herself emotionless and empty. Maya then cuts the medallion from Claudine’s chest (they wear medallions and you lose the duel if it gets cut off).

Claudine falls. Maya attempts to claim victory by stabbing her sword into Position Zero, which is then covered by steel doors. Claudine sits up and reveals she has another medallion in her mouth, which she does by sticking out her tongue in a uhhhh. Anyways, after a bit of back and forth, Claudine tells Maya that she’s full of arrogance and pride and envy and longing. She then says that “No matter how many times I die, I will revive! Tendou Maya! To beat you, my rival, into submission!” She then makes her stage entrance, taking Maya’s usual entrance speech and mocking it. She also says “I fill myself with exploding passion, now, and bash it into your heart!” After some talking, Maya makes her stage entrance, taking Claudine’s usual entrance speech and mocking it. Up until now, they have been playing characters, but still letting their own emotions shine through. Now, they are entirely themselves.

They begin to fight again, running downs white aisle before clashing swords, with Maya saying “Such an ugly, emotion drenched appearance-“ and is cut off by Claudine, who says “Show me more, Tendou Maya! Right now, you’re the cutest you’ve ever been!” To which Maya responds “I’m always cute!”  The song starts up again (duels are accompanied by songs), with Maya singing “With a grin of deception I’ll tear this piece of cloth.” Deception in Japanese is mayakashi, a reference to Maya’s name. Maya then sings “I want to show you my feelings becoming dyed in black.” Black is Kuro in Japanese. Claudine, in Katakana, is Kurodine, with her nickname being Kuro, so that line could also be interpreted “I want to show you my feelings becoming dyed in you.” Claudine then sings “Only me, always, forever,” before they sing in unison “You only need to look at me,” as they lock blades. Some fighting happens and they’re falling through the sky, holding onto each others clothes and Claudine says “Only I can make you lay everything bare!” To which Maya responds “I’ll expose my everything, on the stage!” Claudine shoots back with “There’s a partner you can expose everything to, on the stage!” At this point, there’s a short time with independent vocals for Maya and Claudine in addition to their talking. Maya has been singing “If I’m on the stage, if I’m in front of you,” for the last two lines of dialogue. Claudine sings “Be it ugly or beautiful,” as Maya sings “I will expose, anything and everything, all of me, all of me.” As this happens, Maya is saying “We love the stage,” which is continued by Claudine saying “And we can’t part from the stage!” Maya calls them both “Pathetic clowns!” To which Claudine corrects “No, rivals!” Maya says “If you’re there, I have to strive higher!” Claudine says “You make me even more beautiful! Maya!” Maya then yells “Claudine!” Claudine yells “For heroes, there are trials!” Maya continues “For saints, there are temptations!” Then, as one, their swords crossed, faces inches from each other, yell “For me, there is you!” Over top of this, their voices sing a line in unison: “Forever and ever, I’d like to cross swords with you.”

Claudine’s sword stabs through the contract, through the Position Zero in blood, which may be Maya’s family name, and Maya says as an aside “Saijou Claudine… You are beautiful.” Claudine cuts the medallion from Maya’s chest, finally beating her rival.

[dual1pa]

the tribute

Warnings: THIS IS SAD, talks about Eddie's death, death in general, quick snippet of eddie dying, crying, trauma, eddie's gf's speech at his funeral, talking about seeing someone die

eddie munson's girlfriend at his funeral

SPOILER ALERT

She sat with her arms folded together while sitting near the front of the church, at times she picked off the black polish that was chipping off her nails.

She was sure her eyes were red from all the crying she had done for the last few days.

-

Seeing the love of her life, the person she thought she'd marry one day. (She knew this cause they talked about it constantly)

"You and I are gonna get hitched one day, babe, I know it," he said while driving with the windows down, breathing in the warm summer air.

She could cry just thinking about it.

She was there when Eddie died. She couldn't describe the pain she felt, like she was being stabbed over and over again by an invisible knife.

She continued to kiss his forehead and repeated that everything was going to be alright - but they both knew it wouldn't be.

He wanted the last thing he saw to be her, and it was.

-

She didn't want to be there - but probably not for the same reason everyone else didn't want to be there - she didn't even think the priest wanted to be there.

Of course, there weren't many, but a few of Eddie's family showed up to mourn the loss.

Most people thought Eddie was a monster, that he was the one who murdered Chrissy - he didn't - it was some monster from another world.

But who could she explain that to? No one listened... or cared.

The only people that knew the truth were seated next to her or behind her.

She sat next to his uncle in the front row, who encouraged her to sit with him, he told her she was family.

When it was her turn, she gently got up from her feet and walked up the stairs, looking at Eddie's casket and a huge picture of the man she loved and tried not to cry.

She looked around at the looks on everyone's faces, her best friends, Nancy and Robin gave her supporting smiles all while Dustin, the kid Eddie was closest to the most, wiped a tear from his eye.

"Uh, hi everyone. I know most of you know who I am but for the past two years, I am, uh was, Eddie's girlfriend. We met when I was a sophomore and he was a junior. It was like we clicked instantly, even though we had different tastes in music, movies, and celebrities, we just... connected. Most people knew Eddaie as Eddie 'The Freak' Munson, but I knew him as Eds. I was the only one that could call him that though, someone in his club, excuse my language father, The Hellfire Club, heard me call Eddie Eds, so he said it and was almost punched in the face. 'My girl can only call me Eds' he said to him. It almost made me laugh so hard that I fell out of my chair."

She had to stop herself from crying, even though she couldn't help it.

She quickly wiped a tear away and continued, "I know most of you think my boyfriend is a monster. he is nothing of the sort. i get faces everywhere I go in this town and I hear what people say about me, 'the monster's girlfriend' and all that. It's not true, if some of you got to know him on a personal level, you would know that. But I didn't come here to convince you anything - I'm here to tell you about my Eds. eddie died a hero, he was looking out for his friends, his family, me, and the world from the unexplainable, the reality no one wants to listen to."

She took a deep breath and read her next sentence, "When Eddie died, I saw it. I wouldn't wish witnessing the death of a loved one on anyone. it's vile, cruel, and not to mention traumatizing. there's no right words on how to explain how i felt watching him die. the man i knew i was going to marry one day."

She grabbed the front of the podium and shielded her face from the crowd so one could see her sobbing, except the priest of course.

He got up and asked her if she wanted to take a break and he would finish what was on her paper.

"No, no. I'm okay. I want to read this," she said.

"Sorry. Uh, yeah, if he would have proposed to me before we finished high school I would have said yes. He made me laugh, cry, angry, happy, heard, and just made me feel special. He stood up for me, he held me when i failed a test that i studied so hard for, made me laugh with his dumb jokes. When I introduced my family, at first they were pretty skeptical of the way he dressed or how he styled his hair, but he eventually won them over and they wanted him over for dinner as much as possible. I'm going to miss all those things about him, I'm going to miss his touch, his laugh, his smile, his kisses."

She looked over to his picture and finished her speech, "I'll miss you my Eds. Rest easy, baby."

She folded up the crumbled-up piece of paper and went back to her seat.

She felt many hands on her back and hand as she got through one of the hardest things she'd ever done.

[sakubabypowa734]

🚨 BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA CHAPTER 427 ALERT SPOILERS! 🚨

2/5 chapters before the ending!

3 main points in this chapter.

First: Deku meets Spinner and tells the message that Shigaraki wanted him to give to Spinner and only Spinner.

Spinner called Deku a murderer

He was totally furious and angry and devastated by the death of his first and only friend.

Remember that Spinner was an outcast, so he decided to stay alone and playing videogames, especially the League of Legends. After that, he met Shigaraki who told him he played LOL too. Spinner found in Shigaraki a friend and a hero.

While Spinner transformed and got bigger, the police wanted to intervene but Deku stopped them.

He wanted to let Spinner confessing everything he held in his heart and told his sorrow...

Spinner said "The past never dies", that he will continue what Shigaraki has started and told him he gonna write a book about it and Deku answered him, not to a book but a comic.

Before leaving, Deku said he won't forget Shigaraki for as long as he lives.

And Spinner said to Deku to tell the "octopus" aka Mezo, to do his best.

Second: Overhaul met again his boss.

The boss said it's too late to apologize to him, that he should apologize to Eri for the rest of his life. Maybe Eri will forget about Chisaki, but it wasn't the reason to forget what he did to her. The boss told him that he'll stay by his side and scolding him until his death...

Third and last part: welcome back to UA.

Almost a normal day with fangirls running after Bakugou and Todoroki...

Jealous Mineta and shocked Deku!

Break next week. And the last one before the end!

Expectation:

- Deku talking to Uraraka about the war and Toga

- No confession cause I can't see anymore the same relation between them like at the beginning

- Uraraka feeling better for talking with Deku but Deku still the same since the beginning of the year

- Aoyama's party with the class 2A but Deku stay apart and is lost in hsi thoughts

- Maybe we will know who is the mysterious person from chapter 425?

Wish to meet Daddy Midoriya in chapter 430...

Don't forget his sorry a**, Hori-sensei!!!

[physalian]

On Grimdark (Or conditioning your audience for cynicism)

Because Game of Thrones is on my mind again for the Hardhome sequence. Everyone has their two cents about the grimdark genre but one thing I don’t see discussed at much length, or widely enough, is how wrapping up a grimdark story has one unique challenge: If you establish a world where everything is miserable and characters are selfish and honorless and there’s no hope for heroism or selflessness, you will not be able to sell your audience on a satisfying ending unless everyone is dead.

What I mean by this is if you have your one little flicker of hope in your protagonist or even a side character, the odds of them having a happy ending in a world that you’ve written to consistently show the worst in people, that ending becomes too unrealistic to feel earned.

In other words, Game of Thrones, but also The Walking Dead and on some level, The Boys. In all three of these (have not caught up to The Boys past Jensen Ackles’ season), the threat of doom is so insurmountable that every victory is consistently one step forward, three steps back.

In GoT it’s corruption and the infallible nefarious ways of the villains and their villainous agenda that keep winning while the good guys keep dying. In The Walking Dead every beacon of hope for a cooperative society for humanity dug out of this zombie hellscape is squandered by organized sadism. In The Boys, the hero propaganda machine and institutionalized living weapons where even the good guys are bad guys, there is no way to win aside from nuking the planet and starting over.

—

I don’t mind grimdark academically. I think it’s interesting to explore as a way to interpret the psychology of the author and what compels someone to both write and enjoy content that’s just misery porn. Grimdark has its place in the cultural zeitgeist as a controlled dose of suffering to help us feel better about the world we live in, like watching horror movies for a controlled dose of terror.

It has its (not as deep as it thinks it is) cultural commentary about the human nature or the political landscape or how we treat our heroes or the tragedy of war, etc and tends to feel more gritty and realistic to what these fantasy worlds could be like without all the hope and optimism. There is a place for it.

However, constantly hammering your audience over and over again with a message of hopelessness and that chivalry is dead and that anyone smiling is naive, dumb, or lying Pavlovs your audience into expecting it all the way to the end.

Meaning: The ending of GoT was a dumpster fire, and it was always going to be. If this is the reason the author hasn’t finished writing it, I wouldn’t be surprised. This is a universe where (spoiler alert):

Sexism, racism, rape, assault, slavery, abuse, torture, child murder, and animal abuse are the law of the land.

Pedophiles walk among us and continue to get away with it (specifically Littlefinger) for far too long.

Even when the good guys take the bad guys down with them, the other bad guys resurrect the corpses of the defeated bad guys to continue carrying out their evil schemes, or Oberyn and The Mountain.

Children are burned at the stake for what amounts to be a pointless ritual, because her mother hangs herself and her father loses catastrophically in battle and then dies, or Shireen.

Sansa’s entire arc. All of it. She gets no reprieve for five whole seasons.

So when you’re staring at the mess you’ve made trying to come up with a satisfying ending for so many arcs, you find yourself with a problem: This world doesn’t run on happy endings. You’ve spent 7 seasons proving happy endings are childish and stupid. You have no way to end this cathartically, because by the rules of your world, all your heroes will end up murdered in gruesome ways. Congrats.

But maybe I’m just bitter.

Like this whole iron throne business. Melting it was the only course of action. Why? No matter who sits on it, the life expectancy of those who do is criminally short. Bran probably died choking on a chicken bone shortly after the end credits.

There is no evidence given in-universe for anyone disappointed that they didn’t end up king or queen to just sit back and take it without continuing to scheme and plot and get a lot of people killed.

There is no evidence to suggest that any of these people would realistically rally together to fight a common enemy without stabbing each other in the back once the threat is handled.

There is no evidence that these people would let bygones be and cheer for the new and just ruler to take the throne indisputably.

While the show does have its bright moments of camaraderie, loyalty, and trust, they are vastly outnumbered by the so-called “realistic” nature of the rest of Westeros. In no reality in the current canon would any leader be able to rule because they’re loved more than they’re feared. That’s not how this show operates, thus there is no way to end the series with your audience confident that Bran or Sansa or Jon or whoever would have actually led the kingdom into brighter futures. They’d just be dead just like their naive, dumb, dad.

—

The Walking Dead is no different. The unofficial motto of the show was that the walkers are bad, but the true enemy of humanity is other humans. Every new group of people either got murdered for being too weak, or did the murdering. In a world where the mortality rate vastly outpaces the birthrate and every group has become jaded and cynical enough to shoot first and ask later, anything less than humanity going out on a bitter and cynical end wouldn’t fit the established tone.

I didn’t watch past the season where Carl was killed off in the conspiracy of the year, but I didn’t think I had to. Killing off Carl was the beginning of the end—they symbolically and literally killed the future of humanity. Judith exists, but Carl is just old enough to remember what the world was like before, to have context for how humanity should be, where Judith doesn’t.

They never made any significant efforts to find a cure or more substantial means of eradicating the walkers. There was no overarching goal of the characters beyond Just Survive Somehow. It just wasn’t sustainable to ever have a satisfying ending, especially when no matter if you get bit or not, you become a walker when you die. So even if they all packed up and sailed to a remote island free from walkers, one unseen death could wipe out their entire camp.

It was always going to be a Sysyphisian task to end that show in a meaningful way, and I don’t think they even tried.

—

The Boys… man, I hate this show. It’s not bad, it’s just not as smart as it thinks it is with all its commentary on the political landscape, as the events they’re criticizing continue to unfold around us. Season two has neo nazis… as real neo nazis are still running amok.

It has the same preaching pitfall that so much liberal content does—if you get too preachy, those who already agree with you will feel talked down to and bludgeoned with your unsubtle message, and those who don’t agree with you won’t feel at all compelled to change sides if you spend every waking second of your show insulting them.

The supers in this show are so omnipresent, so powerful, so staggeringly OP that there is no solution beyond attempting genocide on all of them. There’s no legal avenue to pursue, because you can’t imprison them and they don’t care about petty attempts at enacting justice. You can’t arm the regular humans with basic guns and army gear when the main villain can just laser-eye them all in seconds. You can’t mount a peaceful protest movement or a resistance of any kind when telepaths walk among them and can literally stomp out any signs of nonconformity.

You’ve written yourself an unsolvable problem while trying to write a well-constructed criticism of politics and hero worship. If we can’t solve it in the real world in a single cohesive and satisfying narrative, what makes you think you can?

Anything that tries to kneecap the threat would look weak and cheap, because this show has stuck so close to the ongoing real world narrative. The supers aren’t all robot minions of a hive mind where one bomb that takes out the brain disables the entire hoard. Kill the main bad guy and another will just take his place. There is no winning The Boys, at least the story of it that I’ve seen, and I wasn’t impressed.

—

So no, I don’t like grimdark in application, in settings where you have long-running series with audiences dedicated to following arcs and expecting satisfying endings, because grimdark demands enemies and forces of evil that are just too insurmountable to write a cathartic ending that isn’t cheap or unrealistic.

In both GoT and TWD, since those have finished, they didn’t have to end as disasters. If both had sat down in the writers' room around season 4 of both shows and planned out their five-season step plan to shift the narrative away from grimdark and let their characters actually pursue a viable plan for fixing their miserable worlds, you can still kill off all the characters you want in the name of the end goal of whatever utopia they dream of. But the characters still have to work for it and sacrifice for it and maybe they do lose hope but they keep on keepin’ on despite it.

Grimdark sucks, in my opinion, because as a storytelling convention, it never ends. “Hey what if the world was miserable,” is all well and good, but if your goal is to entertain, how do you tell an entertaining story when the miserable world your characters live in will chew them up and spit out something unrecognizable? I don’t even need a happy ending, but the only convincing ending that grimdark allows is dead heroes and “life sucks get over it”.

—

I don’t know how The Boys is doing or how it will end and I don’t care. I hated it for a lot more reasons than its attempts at sounding smart, like Huey as the most annoying modern Everyman I have seen, and that they didn’t even try to redeem Soldier Boy or stick him in therapy to be an actual better alternative to Homelander, which is what they sought him out for in the first place.

So yeah. Grimdark. Maybe it’s just the late capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in, but why would I read it when I am living it, following characters who don’t have solutions, while watching real leaders who also don’t have solutions?

If you want to write in this genre, more power to you, just think about the long term, overarching goals of your heroes before you get too far in so you can start them on the long road to victory in a believable and satisfying way, otherwise you end up buried in a ditch like the endings of two television juggernauts.