#vbros analysis

[weirdmageddon]

#Jackson said this one is gonna have all my issues Doc you take Dean #I’m sorry but that was definitely Jackson going 🙂😐 #venture bros #vbros #this show is literally Man the show #Ik it wasn’t on purpose but the relationship to Masculinity and what makes you a man is a repeat in this show #Dean trying to separate himself from his dad just to realize he’s a clone then realizing so is his dad #his fear of not being the orginal or the real one in reality terms men trying to figure out what type of man they are especially if they #were never traditional or grew up with the tradition mindset end up having this vibe #I also think in a weird traditional way Dean is Rusty do-over which freaks him out #the idea of legacy is something Dean keeps running from the idea you end up similar to your parents too etc #hank is the opposite in he is secure in his masculinity and being a man #Hank thing is heart so he feels lacking in love am I loved? can I be loved? who can love me if i didn’t have a mom? #hank is torn up about a mom bc the traditional stereotype is love #so no mom is hank wondering if all his relationships are doomed to be devoid of care. especially with women it nags at him #and ultimately is proven in the show his relationship with women isn’t god awful like his dad but it’s not good either #Hank accepted that Rusty loves Dean unconditionally and louder if he had a mom would she love him like that? #would she once she sees him look at him and see herself and they have the relationship Rusty and Dean have? take after her footsteps? #weird enough Hank’s focus on this makes the topic of mothers far more important in the show which still isn’t shown #wish they had more time to get into Hank ik they wanted to #I think Hank was gonna be the end part of vbros no matter what. his story to me felt like that #I can see him once he figures out his personal stuff leaving bc Hank once he does like Dean was always going to leave #I think also there’s something to be said how Hank’s relationship with femininity is the same as masculinity #a can-do gung-ho attitude which is Hank yeah but that’s interesting to me still especially on the idea of women in hanks head #I think he has a lot of hope in his mom. a hope he would get disappointed by now knowing who it is lol #the hope is “maybe I’ll see myself in someone and they’ll see me and love me”

wait what’s this about jackson OH

source: A repository for our obsessions: Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer talk Venture Bros. season 7

i’ve heard and read countless interviews with them, i already knew they wrote so much and designed so much after their own life experience but that fact about jackson not having a mom never came across my radar. but that makes so much sense because the emotions feel real coming through hank.

honestly the venture bros deals with some heavily jungian topics even if entirely unintentionally. it’s like they’re stumbling over the same basic things but exploring in a different way, brought out through a cartoon as a vessel for it. when i got to this page that’s the first thing i thought of was, “oh what the hell. that’s exactly the differentiation concept jung was on about. they’re demonstrating that journey through the writing process of the show itself.”

i think that is because doc hammer and jackson publick’s socionics types are LII (Analyst) and ESE (Enthusiast) respectively. i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, while enjoying listening to interviews, commentary and and reading the art book. i wrote extensively about this dual relationship on a forum.

i’ve also talked about these sociotypes before in other contexts, but here i want to point out that carl jung was LII too, as am i. which i guess is why i’m so gripped by these people and their work independently, since they’re a reflection of my own modus operandi. magnetized to it because it feels like it reflects the same way i process and emphasize certain aspects of reality.

jung’s ideas were a big ingredient in the socionics psycho-informational model created by aušra augusta (along with the theory of information metabolism developed by the psychiatrist antoni kępiński). this is what this social-psychological typology model attempts to capture:

“I’ll draw some attention to a typology that was created by Carl Jung and which I slightly improved using the Theory of Information Metabolism of Antoni Kępiński. It makes it possible to look at each individual as a carrier of a particular function in society, which is conditioned by their type of personality or intellect. The type of intellect determines how an individual perceives information from the external world and how this information undergoes a process of selection. This determines the ability to pay attention to one or another aspect of external life: the interests and aspirations of the individual, the direction of their behavior, and their relationship with other people.” (Aušra Augusta, Model of Information Metabolism)

“Through testing his model, Jung became convinced that most if not all of a person’s relationships with animate and inanimate objects were determined by the mental structure of individuals. That is, people have different relationships with things around them, and the reason for this difference is the difference in the mental structure of individuals. Therefore, by using relationships as a starting point, it is possible to construct not only one model of the psyche, as Freud did, but several of them, as Jung did. One might immediately ask: Why were relationships the starting point? As we will see further on, it is because of the fact that the author of the typology was an “introverted” type, whose conscious perception was directed not to objects, but to the relationships between them. Jung discovered the mechanism of how signals perceived by the psyche get selected. This mechanism can be called the code of information metabolism (IM), or the rules of the language of information transmission. The mechanism is formed of eight elements, different combinations of which make sixteen codes of IM. Each person is the owner of one of these codes, and therefore, from the standpoint of Jung’s typology, a person is not only an individual and a representative of the human race, but also a representative of a certain type of IM. Types of information metabolism are qualitatively different constituent elements of humankind.” (Aušra Augusta, Commentary on Jung’s Typology and an Introduction to Information Metabolism)

it doesn’t mean that people of the same type will have the exact same life path or go into the same occupations, as that’s evidently not true. for example, i’m pursuing a more of a medical occupation (i’m extremely interested in neuropsychoanalysis though but it’s such a niche field. becoming a radiography tech is economically safer and more flexible and accesible in these uncertain times), doc hammer is an artist musician-writer-painter. but the types of information and things that they pick up on more distinctly in their mind compared to other people do correspond to each other. the best definition of what encompasses a socionics type is “type of information metabolism; what one wants from others and what one wants to give to others in the most general sense; large-scale behavioral patterns and strategies” (from this article on the limitations of the system.)

“It turns out that the human mind breaks down the world around us into various constituent parts — aspects. Each type of personality receives highly differentiated and realized information about one of these aspects, while information about other aspects is perceived in an undifferentiated, compressed form. Therefore, different types of personality, despite being in the same situations, remember and describe completely different things about them with different words. Stories are described with different facial expressions and emphasize different aspects of the situation. The main reason why one person listens pleasantly and alertly and the other feels unpleasant and tired is precisely due to what kind of patterns in phrasing in which they express their thoughts, as well as the facial expressions, gestures, and intonations they use in tandem with their speech. When an individual hurts another, it is not done so much by their actions, but by the way they explain their actions, which is the motive that they put forward. That is why one individual can be forgiven for something another individual cannot be.” (Aušra Augusta, On The Dual Nature of Humanity, Part 1)

^ i noticed the venture bros actually uses this a lot to comedic effect. having characters in the same situation and the comedy comes from emphasizing their different reactions to the same information.

Orpheus: And the bucket?

Shore Leave: Oh, that’s for the GEYSER of pea-soup vomit.

Orpheus: And the camera?

Hank: Also for the vomit. ;D

Orpheus: Do I even have to ask?

Dean: They said there was gonna be vomit...

that is also honestly THE way to highlight personality differences if you’re writing something, it’s simple but incredibly effective and natural. now that i think about it, it’s also pretty much aligned with scientific principles of experiment design since it’s analogous to having the independent variable (a situation all subjects are put in), and dependent variable (the reactions).

to come back around to what you were saying in the tags though, absolutely. you probably know that doc and jackson commented about this.

Doc: “To me, if you're a creator of something, find out why you do it. And if you're not doing it to, I don't want to sound big pants over here, but try to fucking better the world. I mean, try to make the world a better place. Try to spread the little things that you've learned and the love that you have, and Jackson and I have this very distorted idea of, you know, we grew up weird and we're doing our best to just spread our version of love. Which is trying to find out who we are, which is why we stumble upon these things that would be called toxic masculinity. When we started doing that, that wasn't a term that we thought about. If we even knew it, it was really like, Jesus, why is our dad?... And for Jackson and I, our dad is not just our father, but the media we consumed, and James Bond, these are all our dad. Like, why are they such assholes? (Jackson laughs) You know?” (Interview with The Venture Bros. Creators Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer — Swimpedia)

1:56

Interviewer 1: For inspiration, do you guys go back and read comics in the offseason? Are you guys big comic fans?

Jackson: Uh, I am. You’re not as much, right?

Doc: No.

Jackson: I go to the comic shop every week, but I only buy like two things, so… but no, I’ll get big old Omnibus things… “Omnibi”? of like… Jack Kirby Fantastic Four or something, just to kinda get jazzed about it again, but I never make it all the way through.

Interviewer 2: He’s more into punk rock.

Doc: I like music, it’s correct.

Interviewer 2: So how do you bring that passion? …. into this space?

Doc: It shows up in the show. It shows up in the show. Plus, you know, comics; music… it’s all culture. And that’s kind of what our show is about. It’s not a direct parody of anything but the crap we ingested in our lives, and then we cough it up in jokes.

Interviewer 2: How do you feel the comic book world has really evolved now with the web and how people are interacting with characters in different worlds. How does that impact how you create these stories? Or it doesn’t?

Doc: Probably doesn’t change anything for us other than we have more viewers.

Jackson: (laughing) I didn’t even really know that’s happening. Right?

Doc: Well I mean, you could say that the comic books of our youth and the media of our youth is now the canon of our adulthood. You know? Star Wars has lost its “hey, remember Star Wars”-ness and it has become the mythos of our culture. It’s… it’s big stuff. Our Zeus story is fu- Star Wars.

Jackson: It’s in our DNA now.

Doc: Yeah, and a whole generation grew up on it as a very big part of their lives. So inside of that, we’re indebted to it as much as anybody is.

8:02

Heidi: You know, the Venture Bros. was a show about toxic masculinity-

Jackson: (smiles) Heh.

Heidi: And uh, without giving too much away, this movie does sort of address the female element in it. But it’s still, you know, it’s a boy’s world.

Jackson: Yeah.

Heidi: I mean, was that on purpose? is what I’m asking.

Doc: Well, it’s— you are SO correct, cause you want to say it’s a “man’s world”. It is not. It’s a “boy’s world”. This whole world is not about…

Jackson: Yeah. Yeah.

Doc: I mean yeah, we can go and sit there and armchair diagnose our characters very quickly. Doc [Venture] is a… he’s a… narcissist. He was made that way by his father. And it’s a horrible fucking thing that is real and we have to deal with it in… government. I mean it’s a real thing. It’s just that with the Venture Brothers we were able to talk about it in a way that wasn’t shaming, and wasn’t condoning. It’s a very unique thing that we did, and I don’t think we set out to do it. Just… the topic of toxic masculinity from the first episode of the Venture Bros. was just out there, or at least episode 2. Doc had a father that was an asshole.

Jackson: And specifically also just, yeah… adolescent male fantasy is what the adventure genre is; it’s what superhero comics are. To play in that world—and these are dumb men’s worlds—and then for us to go, “Yeah, well, this is what happens when you don’t have a mommy (laughs) or a reasonable female voice.”

Heidi: (laughs)

Jackson: And any woman you meet is either a femme fatale or a potential love interest and that’s reductive and damaging to the- this is why none of these characters have grown up. This is why they’re trapped in circles of their lives. You know? And our characters are the first ones to start breaking out of it. Like, this is kind of about escaping your… you know… um, generational, parental kinda bullshit to some extent. You know?

Doc: Yeah, not just toxic masculinity, but hopefully looking at it where people could… find a roadmap out! We’re not giving you the answers but we’re definitely pointing and going, “Ehh, you should recognize this paradigm…”

Jackson: (laughs) Yeah!

Doc: This… this is… this is everywhere. That this is the road to forgiveness, that you have to embrace this and not perpetuate it. You know?

Heidi: Right. Right.

Doc: Venture Bros. wasn’t trying to be a public service announcement.

Jackson: (laughs) Right.

Doc: It was trying to entertain you in a way that made you kind of uncomfortable, but go, “…I.. I think I’m learning something about myself watching this mess.” And that’s all we ever wanted to do.

this is why i said this show was incredibly jungian in its essence. it has all of this within it. (see the section starting page 32 in particular)

you’re absolutely right about hank’s arc seeming like the end game territory of venture bros and that “his story felt like that to you.” and i think i could explain.

like jackson himself, hank is also ESE. he also has the ESE structure. both doc and jackson seem to talk about their characters as their inner traits, like about having parts of [character] in themselves when talking about themselves, stemming from an alignment or comparison in some trait parameter(s). the phrase “that’s very Hank of you” in-universe is just a great example of that talk leaking into the show.

they are of course separate people, but the reason hank’s character growth arc feels so right coming at the end of the venture bros is because hank’s own processes are core to the DNA of the show’s creative process itself. hank learns the lessons of differentiation which is exactly what the show is doing and the creators are doing in the process of making it. doc literally spelled it out in one of the interviews above, “we're doing our best to just spread our version of love, which is trying to find out who we are”.

Hank: I mean... I guess I could give it another try out there. Yeah, but I don’t think they’re gonna want to go back. Look at them!

Orpheus: Then leave them. They are the stuff of fantasy, conjured by a hurt and frightened boy who has outgrown his need for them. They belong in this place.

Hank: But they’re! ...(thoughtful) ...Me.

Orpheus: No more than the Hank whose diapers your father once changed, or the Hank who lost his first tooth, or scanned the December sky for Santa’s sleigh. You will carry them inside you always. But their time was passed.

seen a lot of people take “hank has DID” at face value without much thought probably because it’s a trendy diagnosis. my mom is a mental health worker, a very discerning of people’s psychology one at that, and she says majority of the people online who claim to have DID have complex ptsd or borderline. and she’s gotten them as patients and could see it wasn’t really DID. in her almost 30 years of psychiatric nursing she says she’s only seen two cases of actual DID. it’s not nearly as common as you think. so i actually highly disagree that hank has DID. but i totally agree with dean and comatown phineas phage that hank has ADHD and an overactive mind though. hank is definitely neurodivergent and i say it as an autism adhd person recognizing something of my own kin in him. (and hey so is doc hammer, he’s on the spectrum.)

also, remember that this is a cartoon so it can do things in ways that aren’t possible in our reality to represent psychic forces. we can see this intention based on the directing choices, like when The Bat disappears off the screen after hank walks past him saying “I’ve got this one”. hank is having an internal conversation with himself. but you know what’s more likely and universal since we’ve already covering how intermingled jung’s ideas are with the creators’ experiences? complexes. i think hank’s alter-egos inside himself embody complexes with their own archetypal figure.

similarly, you could also see hank venture as a character representing a personal complex (a cluster of thoughts and emotions and wishes) around being motherless that jackson publick could be exploring through the character, among some other traits.

“Publick, who felt Hank (and the Monarch) were the characters who contained the most of him, drawn from “[his] own dumb thoughts, and actions, and misbeliefs […]”

when you think about it you start noticing a fractal.

a couple of last things: all of this reminds me of the values of dual pairs from Romanov’s website.

“According to the author's hypothesis, further developed, all 7 dichotomies of dyadic values ​​are associated with how the subject positions himself in the connecting chain of generations. This is how these features differ between the 8 individual dual pairs that play a role in positioning themselves within their generation. The difference in the poles of features in marriage partners is necessary to ensure maximum genetic diversity of offspring. In this situation, they seem to look at each other, seeing their opposite in the other. But the coincidence of the poles of dyadic values ​​is necessary for completely different purposes - to ensure the success of raising offspring by the couple. In these matters, coordination of actions in the couple, its internal unity is already necessary - so that both partners look, so to speak, in the same direction, and also make efforts in one global direction.”

and what it says about LII-ESE:

LII+ESE (obstinate, farsighted, judicious)

The key value is the willingness to give of oneself to one's children.

The first altruistic dyad. The altruism of this couple is of an emotional nature, connected with empathy towards one's children, the joy of realizing that children continue and develop the best that is in you. Thus, the most important element of life here is parenting as such - as the process of forming the personality of one's child in the process of everyday communication with them in the family or small group. ESE is an ideal mother, sensory caring, involved in the child's life at its early stages, when affection and instillation of a general positive image of the world are most important for the developing personality, LII is an ideal father - non-aggressive, finding pleasure in developing games with children, able to collect the most valuable knowledge about the world and pass it on to children in an accessible form, without threats and coercion, based on interest alone.

saw an interesting link there. doc has said “our relationship is the show.” so in this sense, the show was their “child”, technically. it was their creation. and that’s exactly how they developed it.

also doc hammer is so so so much like me in so many ways. lots of overlap both in internal experiences, our own taste. i was also listening to jg thirwell foetus before i even heard of the venture bros. that kind of if-you-know similar taste. the alternative new york gen x scene he hung around was the same clubs my own mother frequented, like danceteria, CBGB, mudd club, club 57 (irving plaza). she told me his face looks familiar, and they know mutual people (e.g. dj patrick cusack). obviously we’re not the same person but he’s genuinely the closest person to myself i’ve ever known to just exist out there, and for me at least i’ve noticed that’s really fucking hard to do. i mean it. i remember in particular kicking my feet listening to the post-punk podcast interview which i have never done, because hearing what he had to say were my own realizations that i have had and will have. i learned so much about myself listening to his own self-insight at his age older than me; it held this particular weight for me because of that. if you scroll up on that same socionics forum thread i linked earlier you can see me passionately get into it.

last but not least i think this totally explains why hank brings me so much joy and he’s my favorite character my comfort character my imaginary yume person and i feel for him the most out of the whole cast. makes sense i have this deep psychic spiritual hunger for someone like him, cause i feel like he’s complementary to my own self. it’s like your last tag about hank’s hope in what he’s searching for, “#the hope is ‘maybe I’ll see myself in someone and they’ll see me and love me’” like ummm wait i’m doing that. hopefully you’ve absorbed everything i was saying in this post and understand why i feel that’s substantial?

so many reasons i love this show in such a personal way and its creators so fucking much.

whereas dean was tormented by being a clone and hank wasn’t, not having a mom or mother figure seemed to torment hank a lot more than dean which is interesting.

[fearandloathe]

and if i made a super weird vbros sideblog then what. i need to post a fruedian analysis on rusty or else ill go insane

[lordpresidentbusiness]

it is kind of insane to follow people who are into what i am into (generally adult animation) on tumblr bc there willbe like, cute fandom posts of the metalocalypse guys or like someone who hasnt seen vbros 10+ times like i have putting together a subtle line about the plot for the first time, but also like random male characters in palyboy bunny outfits and stuff"??? like idk i havent done fandom snce i was like, in high school, so im AWARE these are bnormal fandom things, but im still like.. rusty venture would NOT wear that.

tho let me be clear i am not judging, because the fandom shit i talk about with luci about all our adult cartoons is the same level of like, transheadcanons, jokes abt nathan explosions pussy, extensive critique and analysis of everything we watch, you know. but also what if rusty venture did wear the playboy bunnyoutfit. hm.

[garyfischy]

Still trying and failing to finish a vbros analysis ive been writing for over half a year now

[phoenixfangs]

Coming from me, someone who has only played the first game, about AA: What ships in the fandom do you think people just Don't Get? I know the big one being the boys Miles and Pheonix so odds of numbers people are likely to mess up that dynamic often.

But any others that stand out in the fandom that have you thinking They Wouldn't Say That vibe? Please, feel free to go wild, I'm curious

kobi im kissing u on ur mouth for indulging me

ur totally right that people get narumitsu wrong, ill steal a phrase from pepper analysis of franmaya (another ship people get totally wrong but they explained it better in fewer words djffkj) to say that people often reduce them to sunshine boy and grump (boring dynamic), or worse, seme and uke. people will really write these guys like theyre bad yaoi stereotypes and think its Good just because it made them horny

now i love yaoi. i love porn. i love porn of these guys. but they are the MOST complex characters in the entire series, so reducing them to Just top/bottom for the sake of beating off to it is so. idk frustrating lol

its not all bad though, my buddy bloodofgrapes (hiiii hello grapes) probably produces my favorite nsfw content where bdsm concepts and roles like top/bottom are Intentionally Part Of It, because he actually puts a lot of thought into the dynamic as it pertains to phoenix and miles, rather than just stapling yaoi tropes onto them. the characterization in his comics/fanart is top notch, high recommendation 👌 (obviously this also means the non nsfw content that grapes makes is excellent too, as an aside)

idk if u know who kristoph is, if ive perhaps auts-ed out at u about him before, but he and phoenix make up krisnix, which is my Current ship brainworm. i dont even bother looking up ship content of them because me and pepper are the only people on the planet who understand them apart, and them together. read a fic where (admittedly they werent dating, idr if they had a relationship pre-fic but whatever this is more about the general dynamic) kris abducted, tortured, and like Half Killed phoenix and yknow as much as i feel kris Wants phoenix dead, kris is SO hung up on having phoenix in his life that he could never actually go through with killing phoenix. hed probably kill himself right after djfkfjdja he wouldnt know what to do with himself if phoenix werent around

aside from that one fic, my Dread is that people write it to be this completely one-sided abusive relationship where phoenix is a hapless victim and its up to miles to (somehow) save him by being his Real Love, because a kinder codependent relationship with the "correct" partner is the solution to a mean codependent toxic relationship 🙄 and the thought of that makes me sick to my ass

the thing about krisnix is that its, to quote one of my favorite jokes/lines in vbros, "a game of cat and also cat": there are highs and lows, wins and losses, for both parties because they are worthy adversaries, they are contemporaries. i think kris Does do a lot of shitty toxic things to phoenix, but i dont think phoenix is above giving some of that energy back during the 7 years they know and are circling each other. To Me its very much unhealthy obsession by the blake robinson synthetic orchestra, theyre Definitely stalking each other

and also they fuck nasty

[taibobo]

quite literally everything in that tag is x reader content which usually would not be a bad thing but when it’s reader insert fanfic about men from Military funded propaganda …. oml

You know what i may love objectifying and sexualizing fictional US army men from cartoons because i think it’s funny and reparations etc etc but at least i’m not gagging on the boot of watching some shit like top gun

[weirdmageddon]

whereas dean was tormented by being a clone and hank wasn’t, not having a mom or mother figure seemed to torment hank a lot more than dean which is interesting.