Too many times, writers try to give a compelling motivation. Then, oh no. The motivation is so compelling that he ends up seeming more good than the good guys. So they force something in that basically amounts to "sure, this guy wants good things, but he's too much of a dick about it!"
And then you have Infinity War and that little line about Wakanda yearning to enjoy the luxury of Starbucks. "Keep your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed" should be Neoliberalism's official motto.
I think about this a lot as someone who was abused as a kid. It's always the evil characters who have a tragic backstory, and they are never shown compassion for it - it's just presented as an explanation for why they are awful, and never touched again. It sucks to feel that the only path for someone with a past like yours is to be further ostracized.
This is why She-Ra is probably my favorite show. The handling of parental abuse and its effects is actually really good.
It’s always the evil characters who have a tragic backstory
Unless it's Harry Potter, where a decade of abusive neglect having zero psychological impact whatsoever on him is brushed off with "he's a very special boy."
Which is fitting, given that he also casually dismisses Hermione wanting to end chattel slavery, acts like a total asshole to all the girls he dates and immmediately starts to bully Draco when he wants to become his friend, but that's how the character acts when you do a close reading, not how he was most likely intended. He's supposed to be super altruistic, always likeable best friend Wizard Jesus. I don't think making him a sadist jerk with avoidance issues was a conscious effort on Rowling's part, but something unconscious that was completely overlooked by both Rowling and the overwhelming majority of the readers. Because while Harry acts like that, he isn't coded like that at all. And it's not just how he's coded, he is explicitly referred to as a morally superior person within the text itself, it's just that Rowling really struggles to write a morally superior character.
immmediately starts to bully Draco when he wants to become his friend
It's been a real long time since I've read the books and I have no real desire to revisit them, but I don't remember this happening at all and now I'm confused
yeah, i mean in his introduction Draco called Hagrid a half breed and was more interested whether Harry's parents were "the good types" than the fact that they were dead and he was an orphan
The whole house system was kind of dumb and didn't make much sense the way she made it. Like everyone is basically placed into one of 4 categories: smart people, brave people, nazis, and everyone else
still better than western media where you befriend the fascist overlord or you are a bad person.
Ok, so Korra: season 1 is fine, season 2 is hot trash, seasons 3 and 4 are actually quite good. If you can stomach season 2, I'd recommend giving it another shot.
That said, the politics even for the good seasons range from "ok for a kids show" to "actually awful"
The politics were probably the least bad in season 2, but they were still somehow the most frustrating.
The evil villain does a colonialism because he wants to literally destroy all light in the world? How about he just does it because he's a greedy prick and/or actually believes that the Southern Tribe is being grossly irresponsible? Turning him into a moustache-twirling villain just makes colonialism seem like much less of a real issue. It all ends up so flattened, and the fight starts being about metaphysical Light and Darkness and stops being about colonialism.
The way they treated Zaheer in Season 3 also makes it REAL clear that they need theory
I love imagining things like this in LotR.
Gollum has a slight redemption arc that only backfires after Sam continually mistreats him , undoing all the good will Frodo creates through understanding. So it actually shows the possibility of redemption, then it's Sam who causes that to fail.
Also, imagine Frodo in Mount Doom with the ring, then an image of Gandalf pops up in his head saying "If you destroy it, you will become just like it."
Social network size and quality is class mediated, too. The upper class has the most opportunities to effortlessly meet relatable people with shared interests. Making a friend is tough if your job doesn't give you in-work freedom or leisure time. School is a crapshoot, since you share age and geography but little else; university filters for academic field, & so on.
I ended up with nobody except y'all. Probably mental illness in my case.
i mean i feel like most lib cartoons i watch have the villains become wacky friendly side characters after they're defeated
Steven Universe, a children's cartoon I enjoy, is the ultimate lib show, and is all about becoming friends with the bad guys.
trying to remember if Adventure Time was the same or if the "storyline" was too cooked to even have character arcs that weren't love stories
I was being a bit facetious. I think it has its radical elements, and SU Future very intentionally complicates the argument of the show, but its writers have the perspective of creative professionals in the imperial core, and this is made clear in the decision to make the villain an explicitly settler-colonial force which is resisted and then redeemed through the power of forgiveness.
Admittedly I've just watched clips but spoilers for RWBY
spoiler
Cinder's back story was revealed and she was pretty much a slave that killed her abusive guardians/slaver. The orphanages are revealed to be basically involved in trafficking and all this seems legal. The one sympathetic figure in her life that was trying to train her to get her out tries apprehending her after she kills her abusers and she kills him in return. Felt annoyed with people saying things like she crossed the line when killing her step mother and I'm like seriously? Non violence for thee but not for me mentality.
With villains wanting to rule and gain power I would say they aren't always wrong. Might makes right and heroes tend to be defenders of the status quo. If the villains succeed then they would have been right and been the new ones in charge. When you are powerless I can easily understand wanting to seize power since this is the only way to acquire it, it will never be given up voluntarily. Villains see how power is gotten by those in charge and are want to repeat it.
Spoilers for One piece
spoiler
The current world government was established after some struggle in the past where they came out on top. They decide what is right or wrong based on whether an action threatens their power. You can be a mass murdering sadist but as long as you work for the world government then it's all good.
Don't know if spoiler warning was needed but whatever sleepy tempted to try posting in anime comm later.
It's not good cinema.
It's not good anime.
It's not even good CGI.
I kept waiting for the show to get good and it never did.
In anybody else's hands I feel like the show could have been good. The writers really did not understand how to portray racism other than a tiny no faunas sign and a few assholes. They also bad on lgbt characters too not mention writing women. All of this is I think the writers being two privileged guys. At this point I'm less watching it for entertainment and more to see what happens. Recently rooster teeth got bought out by at&t so I thought the series and the company might have been scraped as a tax write off.
I like the music, the fights and some of the characters but at this point the series works better as fodder for fanfics. I been having fun seeing things fans produce instead of the original. Not to mention that behind the scenes the company has a lot of sexist things going on. I swear if the series doesn't end with a lot of characters dead I'm gonna be not disappointed anymore but idk bored.
edit After all my criticism I still like it. I feel like while hbomb analysis of the show was good more should be done. A lot of criticism of the show comes from the right and we need some more criticism from the left. We all know it's garbage but if we let the right take charge in criticizing it then younger audiences will go away thinking it's bad because sjws or lgbt when in reality it's a show written by libs.
That show has always looked like trash, idk why anybody even started watching it. The animation is super ugly.
They had a guy who did fight scenes who made some pretty cool fight animations back in the day, that dude died tho
Same, I think a decent leftist writer could polish it up. Idk just take the show away from rooster teeth.
Game of Thrones is probably the most disappointing piece of media I have ever experienced and it will be tough for anything to top it. The show started off so strongly and it could have been an absolutely legendary series, and in like two seasons it went from that to me wanting nothing to do with it ever again. And yeah, if (giant if) GRRM finishes the books, I bet they are going to be just as phoned-in as the show, since he obviously has lost his drive to complete them.
The books is better, in the show they whitewashed her during the first seasons but then they realized that in order to do her (probable) original ending they'd need major changes.
So they did them. In a single episode. A change that should have been foreshadowed seasons in advance. Sure, the destruction had been foreshadowed, but not her incredibly sudden change.
Also, just because some prophecy says X will happen doesn't mean the lead up to that end will be well done by the author or showrunner.
Read a book, do not recommend, called the philosophy of batman or something. It's lib shit that glorifies cop among other lib shit but also had a weird current of misogyny through it. Hard to explain and I really don't want to pull out the book again.
Anyway wouldn't say the character with the slave background was gonna end slavery or anything but fighting back against your captors and killing them was a good thing. Others say wanting freedom was good and all but wanting power is bad. It's like how else will you maintain your freedom by asking nicely? The character in question does become power hungry but compared to the rest of the protagonist I can't really blame them. They like all of us were shaped by society it just gets weird when you throw around weird magic in the mix.
One Piece villains are great, because they’re mostly just assholes. We got to see Doflamingo’s tragic childhood, except we also saw that he was a child psychopath. Granted, you could argue that his privileged early upbringing caused that...but whatever.
Hody Jones was asked explicitly what humans did to cause him to hate them so much, and the reader was primed to expect a backstory of enslavement and abuse, but he just replied “nothing”. It was awesome, sometimes a story just needs a monster, and sometimes that’s what reality produces.
I mean Hody Jones was radicalized as a child no? The only people he had to look up to were people like Arlong. Yeah he an asshole. but idk rings close to home of how shooters come about. To say they were just assholes I think takes blame off of the society that made them in Hody Jones and Doflamingo's case being Arlong's crew and the celestial dragons. Doflamingo I would say never had his psychopathic tendencies challenged and never learned empathy.
Big Mom could be another tragic figure in that she never grew up and was only encouraged to be a child by her adoptive mother who really was just a trafficker.
Sure, but other people came out of those same upbringings to become good people; Corazon most notably. I think the implication was that power and subjugation are not ultimately determinative of whether you’re a good person, but they do shape and foster evil. I’m still undecided on just how evil Big Mom is.
I think those are the exception rather than the rule though. I lot of things have to go right so peeps can have have control over their lives. Not saying a lot of these villains need to retain power but that under better circumstances then they wouldn't exist. Carazon had Law to look after which I think really helped him learn to live for someone else. Admittedly I might not have as much knowledge as you but just mulling things over. We talk about anime but as a means to think about our own world.
Certainly. I don’t think Oda meant to suggest that it’s nature over nurture as a rule, definitely not as a political commentary—he seems pretty conscious of the oppressive nature of hierarchy. But I do think he’s comfortable in writing a story with villains that are just plain bad, without worrying about making the audience feel sorry for them (though he sometimes does) or analyzing the origins of their personality. And that’s refreshing; it makes for fun storytelling and isn’t necessarily inaccurate. There are some individuals who, through some combination of nature and nurture, are just antisocial.
I think he has interesting concepts showing things are neither good or bad. Like selfishness in the series. Luffy and Big Mom are both very child like and do want they want. With Luffy he comes off as good because he happens to do a lot of good by befriending others and helping them while Big Mom puts herself above her children through her tantrums even though she has a wrap view of equality. Luffy helps not because it's the right thing to do but because he wants to.
I still want the villains to go down but also the government too if that makes sense. Too often it's the villain fault for everything and taking them down means everything is fixed. Know the circumstances of Domflamingo helps so another one doesn't pop up again later. Knowing why he does the things he does also helps to not just defeat him as a person but what he represents vs what the straw hats represent. Battle of ideas are my favorite over just fights that look cool. The villains were shaped and rewarded by society so they act they way they do.
Absolutely. A story that’s all about overcoming abstract oppressive systems isn’t really a story, that’s just history. You need characters driving a narrative. But yes, a purely personal conflict doesn’t have nearly the weight of a clash of ideals and organizations. One Piece builds enough of that stuff to be endlessly interesting, but is still principally a story about a group of good guys going on an adventure beating up bad guys, which is just way more fun than anything that is mostly concerned with making some point.
RWBY some american anime thing. Or you talking about what it's doing? I still don't have much hope for it tbh just watching it out of boredom.
It's worth noting that the bad guy is about to pwn civilians before the charismatic heroes step in. The most moral action is to beat the breaks off of him and then address the poverty.
Before he had a handle on being the son of a hokage, handler of the strongest village's strongest tailed beast, trained by an insulated line of hokage, and was shown to be the literal and explicit chosen one, Naruto was famous for talking villains down from chosing revenge by relating to their pain and that was neat.
Shout out to the guy who flew away with a city destroying bomb, sacrificing himself to save everyone - AND THEN FUCKING SURVIVING WHAT THE FUCK?! Bravo, Oda
I'm like 200 chapters behind and every week I slip further from the cutting edge.
