#yes i know raccoons have literal bones in their stuff and that makes it worse

[thecarvingwitch]

Sigh.

I've tried to stave it off but it kept creeping back in. We restart the calendar tonight.

Day 1.

Anyone else noticed that this happens almost monthly, and around the same week?

But no, according to the doctors, my PMDD "isn't that bad"

Sir I have a specific counting ritual that I have to do every single month without fail or else I will viciously mutilate myself and then fling my gory, flayed body from the nearest tall building and onto the cleanest part of the sidewalk I see just so everyone who is unlucky enough to see my remains has a real fuckin bad day too

But no. I'm fine. Totally cool here 👍. Havent had a month WITHOUT "suicide week" in a GODDAMN LONG WHILE and I'm tired sir won't you take this fucking thing out of me it can't even make kids anyway you wormy, cowardly little bitchsuck. You government dog. You disgusting, ineffectual, tiny, limp raccoon penis of a man. You pathetic excuse for a medical practitioner who most likely can't change a lightbulb because I've definitely never seen one light up above your head, you dumb motherfucker. You pay for that degree instead of study? You take the D to get that MD? Cause my dead grandmother is more helpful than you and they took her nursing license away for gross malpractice. And she's also dead.

[youmissedone]

A little rant about Doc from Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

First, I’ll say... this post contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for this movie, so if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read on unless you don’t care if things get ruined for you, heh.

Next, I’ll mention that this is not a platform to shame the movies in general or to say Final Chapter sucked. I know a lot of you can (and would) say most if not all of the movies sucked, whether on their own or in comparison to the games, but I really love them, despite their flaws. So we’re not going to hate on the movies... except in fun ways, heh. There is a lot I have been able to enjoy, piece together, extrapolate on with these movies, maybe because I have a writer’s brain and a pretty good imagination, so I can overlook certain failings of horror/scifi movies and see their potential in other ways. It’s brain candy for me, so I can’t hate them too much.

Except... Final Chapter... Doc. (sigh)

Words cannot express how much I hated this character. I could just stop there. Buuuut, I won’t. XD Read on if you don’t mind spoilers or you hate Doc as much as I do, haha.

Right, so... Doc. This guy right here.

Doc represents to me the epitome of bad writing, bad plot twists, bad plot twist reveals, and bad scripting. I cannot say bad acting, because... with what this actor was given to work with I think he did a good job. Too bad the writing and script made him look like a total ass. 

So, Doc was made exclusively for the trope of good-guy-turns-out-to-be-spy. I mean, it’s overused, but in some cases it’s an effective and even necessary trope. Not here. Aside from the fact that Doc served no discernible function in the entire movie other than to save Alice from a trap he let her ride into in the first place, Doc was written so poorly that anyone with a decent amount of experience in mapping out and writing story arcs could spot his flip a mile away. But then, once his duplicity is revealed, the movie’s banking on the viewer’s acceptance of this “revelation” is so complete and so obvious that he actually changes in personality, demeanor, and body language. Come with me while I rip Doc’s character apart for being such an affront to expertly crafted spy and betrayal arcs everywhere.

We first meet Doc when Alice wakes up from riding into a trap that full-body bitchslaps her off her motorcycle and causes her to fall unconscious. She wakes up to Doc trying to ram a needle in her heart and get her full of adrenaline so she’d wake up. (sigh) Imma already stop here. Because... already we have problems. When she asks him what's in the syringe, the conversation goes as follows:

“I needed you awake.”

“Why?!”

“Somethin’s comin’. Somethin’ big. Same direction you came.” 

I just... *rubs temples* I have so many problems already. First of all, this is supposedly a group survivors that have barely enough to live on in a building crumbling so badly that it’s down to its metal framework. Where... the frick... is he getting pure adrenaline from? Okay, his “name” is Doc. I’m guessing that’s not his real name. Maybe he was supposed to be an actual doctor? I’m not buying it, and they never really went into that at all. Anyhoo... if we ignore that there’s really no way he would have something like that (unless it was given to him... but I’ll get back to that later), the bigger problem of how does he know something big is coming remains.

You might be like uhm... the armies of undead? Headed their way? That the Dr. Isaacs clone is leading to them? Duh. *wags finger* Okay, just wait up. First of all... how does he know what it is? What does he have like a sixth sense? I thought that was Alice’s job. And second of all, this would almost fly if they had said he saw it through the binoculars or something, but then later on when Abigail alerts Alice to the armies headed their way, she acts as if this is new news. Did Doc see it and just... not report it? I mean, if he was a spy, that would make sense, except that NOBODY REACTED AT ALL to him saying that. My first comment if I was one of the survivors would be, who the hell is this chick (Alice)? But my second one would be, wait what? What something big? Holy crap, Doc, why didn’t you say something?! But nobody reacts. Okay. Fine. Maybe it’s just bad script writing. Yeah, it is, and it only gets worse.

So then when Alice begins to succumb to the really bad wounds she sustained from hitting the trap, she’s taken to Doc’s little infirmary, where she’s offered... mouthwash? Hahaha, I mean that’s what it looked like to me, this bluish-green liquid that’s like... okay, wtf is this now, and where did he get it from? He says it’s the “specialty of the house,” and that it’ll have her on her feet in no time. Sure enough, Alice drinks this shit, and she’s all better. No limping, no more gross coughing, she’s fine! Wtf.

I wanna know what that stuff was, because nothing would have instantly fixed the bruising, possible broken rips, maybe a puncture lung, and possible other broken bones that Alice must have had from that trap. Unless... it was from Umbrella. Honestly, after I had written the earlier scene off as just not making sense because of movie crap, heh, this scene really made me think something wasn’t right with Doc. I immediately had the notion of... he’s getting information and supplies from Umbrella. That’s why he has this great stuff that heals people, that’s where he got the adrenaline from, and that’s how he already knows the armies of undead are coming. That combined with the “Alert our operative in Raccoon City” comment from Wesker pretty much confirmed it, but I’m not done with this scene yet.

So once he fixes Alice up, Claire and him have a little moment. And I mean little. Literally all we get of their relationship is this scene and a bit of hand holding later on. But yeah, they stand close together and that’s supposed to mean something, and then Claire says to Alice, “You know, he and I...” and Alice says, “I noticed.” That’s it. It’s almost like the movie was coming out of itself and telling the view, “Oh, by the way, these two are involved. That’ll be important later, so pay attention.” I mean, seriously, it was so blatantly, extraneous, and unnecessary, and therefore it felt out of place and odd. Also rushed. For all those reason, I already had Doc pegged as the traitor.

And how typical would that be? It’s always the guy you least suspect, right? The movie tries to set him up as a hero, an honorable badass. He’s involved with Claire, and we all like Claire. (Okay, not everybody likes Claire, or Ali Larter’s portrayal, but the movies assume you like her.) You’d never suspect the guy who helped Alice and who was involved with Claire would be a bad guy. They go out of their way to make Doc seem like a great guy - maybe too great - complete with the stoic, calm, suave persona the actor portrayed. He never lost his head, kept other erratic members of his group in line, was a natural leader, and seemed to have a lot of honor. All of these were red flags of a character that is being set up to be too glowing in a world of ambiguous and downright evil people.

Then... we have Doc’s participation through the standoff with the aforementioned zombie armies, the descent into the Hive, and eventually delving into the Hive. He was always asking Alice about things. Where are you going, what are you doing, have you seen (insert name of underdeveloped minor character here)? He really seemed to want to keep tabs on people, always know what was going on, always know what was happening next. To me, that’s exactly what a spy would do... except they would be MUCH LESS FREAKING OBVIOUS ABOUT IT. Double agents who are constantly asking WHATCHA DOIN’ THERE? don’t make it very far, heh. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he had an “I’m a spy” sign on his damn forehead.

And at this point, I feel like the movie might have feared that you were catching on, and it tried to point you in the wrong direction like a kid who says HE LOOK OVER THERE to get you to turn around and then runs in the other direction. I see what you did there, movie. When the Red Queen warns Alice about the “informant” Umbrella had in Raccoon City, the camera skips around to everybody present, Murder on the Orient Express-style, as if to ask the viewer oooooh, who could it be? And in doing so, the camera stops on everybody for a fairly decent moment, until it gets to Doc. Then it kindof flits away like WHOOPS you didn’t see him, don’t suspect him, it’s not him. (sigh) Yes it is, movie. I totally called it.

So yeah, that’s half the reason I hate Doc. They way he was set up was so contrived, and the path leading up to the reveal is so obvious, that I didn’t feel like it was a twist at all. By the time Doc is revealed as the informant, I was surprised at the movie’s insistence that this was big news. I honestly was shocked to realize that they hadn’t blatantly already told me that. That’s how obvious it was.

The other half of why I hate Doc is the change in him after he’s revealed as a traitor. Up until then, he was brave, unafraid, cool/calm/collected, stoic, tough, you name it. Golden badass boy. And a leader. Then we’re told that he’s an informant for Umbrella, and all of a sudden, he’s acting like a totally gullible, unintelligent, dumbass. This irritated me two-fold.

Firstly, the trope that good guys are sexy, calm, and collected, and bad guys must be irrational, erratic, and insane idiots in order to be bad is PLAYED and UNREALISTIC. Why does Doc’s personality need to change after he’s revealed to be a duplicitous asshole? Why can’t he still be a suave sexy bastard, but just be evil? The second he’s revealed as an asshole, he becomes a spineless follower instead of an honorable leader, sucking up to Isaacs by telling him he’ll disable the charges Alice placed in the Umbrella High Command cryo-tubes (even Isaacs patronizes him by saying, “You’ve done well, Doc.” It’s the way he says it. It’s clear he thinks Doc is nothing but a dog to order around...) and then begging for his life, first to Alice and then to Claire. By the time Claire is getting ready to shoot him, he’s yelling out loud in fear of being shot. Was this at all consistent with Doc’s bravery from before? I would have actually liked the character a whole lot more, even despite the crappy buildup, if he had remained the fearless leader-type character he was before he was revealed as a traitor. That would have been so much more interesting and frankly dangerous than the groveling, sniveling, erratic mess he became.

Secondly, I was really pissed off at how little he cared about Claire. And frankly how little she cared about him. Like... granted, their relationship really had no fleshing out whatsoever, but I have a writer’s brain and I tend to fill in blanks on my own. You tell me they’re in a relationship? I’m gonna assume a certain level of bonding has occurred. Now, this kindof goes along with the whole "good guys are badass and villains must be insane dumbasses" peeve, but why can Doc not be a spy for Umbrella AND be genuinely in love with Claire? It would have been far more interesting and compelling of an end to his arc if he had continued to love her and defend her until the end.

I mean, I can tell you why he didn’t. Because if the Resident Evil movies suffer from any catastrophic failures at all, it’s that they insist upon character fitting molds and tropes. It’s too difficult, tedious, and time-consuming to have characters that don’t fit the mold because then we have to address those feels. First of all, these movies don’t have time for that, they’re incredibly rushed. Second of all, they assume for us all as viewers that we don’t want emotions and uncomfortable psychological issues (outside the bare minimum norm for this genre) in a horror/action film. This is evident in them cutting many other scenes in the franchise that would have brought up difficult talking points and emotions, such as the White Queen questioning the morality of Dr. Isaacs butchering so many Alice clones in his obstacle course of death in RE: Extinction.

How uncomfortable and outside the box would it be if Doc still maintained the same affect he had before the reveal (strong, stoic, brave) AND defended Claire against Wesker. Not that he had a change of heart or anything like that. He can still be a villain, but can also genuinely love Claire. The two things are not disqualifying against each other. How cool would it have been if Isaacs ordered him to kill Claire and he said that’s the one thing I won’t do, and then he’s shot for it or dies protecting her from Wesker? That would have been...... awkward at best for the viewer, because you hate this guy. He betrayed Alice and Claire, but then oh... he does really love her and is a brave guy despite his morals not being in the right place. Uncomfortable.... but good.

But horror/sci-fi/action movies tend to not go to places like this with their viewers because they feel it ruins the action or the feel of the movie. To me, Doc would have been more compelling and seemed more realistic and human if things had gone this way instead of the way they did. Villains are real and they’re among us. They’re human just like us. They’re not robots, they’re not all insane, they’re not all grovelling spineless idiots. Sometimes they’re brave dudes who love people. Yes, villains can be capable of great love, and showing that in Doc would have been a very powerful moment. I also would have appreciate a tear or SOMETHING from Claire. I understand he’s betrayed you, but you’re in love with him, or at least involved somehow. Show us that you care, even despite knowing what you have to do.

Phew! *sits back and fans self* Okay. I feel better. I finally got out this long rant about this character that I’ve had in my for a while, haha. This was actually a lot of fun to write. If anyone has anything to add, feel free. if you agree or disagree with what I’ve said, let me know. I love talking about my rants, so feedback is welcomed!