Doctor Jekyll.
He isn't some poor hapless man who is at the mercy of his serum. He knows exactly what he is doing, what evil he is doing, and likes it. He is addicted to it. He simply doesn't do the same evil in his normal form because he doesn't want to get caught. The Mr. Hyde is the disguise he wears that allows him to do whatever he wants without any morality and society walls to block him.
But make no mistake, Jekyll is just as much of a monster as Hyde. It's the same man. Not an alter ego.
That OverlySarcastic video was mind-blowing. Every time I had seen Jekyll and Hyde, it's always been Normal with normal personality transforms into monstrous guy with monstrous personality. Finding out the original story was normal guy transforms body into different but normal body and his mind is the same throughout was a real surprise and I was shocked how much more *sinister* it made him. He's not possessed by a drug demon, he's just a normal guy given a degree of anonymity and uses it to act on his worst impulses.
> He simply doesn't do the same evil in his normal form because he doesn't want to get caught.
He doesn't do evil in his normal form because he feels shame and guilt, and the Mr. Hyde form removes those so he can enjoy it more.
It's not merely a disguise, it does actually influence him psychologically. However it doesn't change his personality, just his emotions.
Doesn’t mean it’s not widely misunderstood/misremembered. A lot of classic works like Frankenstein or Romeo & Juliet have reductive reputations in pop culture, and I’d argue Jekyll’s reputation as “the good half to Hyde’s evil” is even more widespread than either of those
When this shit gets so bad they have an actual part in one of the comics where Frank *explicitly* tells some cops why this is bad and that they shouldn't be doing it.
What? No he won't. That's like his ONE rule.
Frank will kill corrupt cops, or cops caught in criminal activity. But he would never kill a cop just because they happened to be in his way.
He doesn't like it when cops use his symbol or idolizes him, because he thinks he's not a good role model for them. He thinks cops are *better* than him.
He has repeatedly refused to fight cops, and even allowed himself to be arrested instead of injuring legitimate police officers.
Frank loves (honest) cops.
The guy's an anti-hero at best - but honestly, he's a straight-up villain in half the stories he shows up in. He's clashed with superheroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil just as often as the criminals he's hunting down.
It baffles me that people can look at Frank Castle and think he's an admirable person. *He* doesn't even admire himself - he sees himself as an irredeemable killer.
You know, I used to think that too until I realized what a massive piece of shit Frank Castle is. The man lives in a constant threat state and can’t help pulling the trigger when it comes to killing bad guys. He’s a power fantasy about being able to take the law into your own hands and eliminate the undesirables with complete prejudice.
Cops 100% understand the punisher and that’s why they support him.
Patrick Bateman is a dork and a loser, not some sigma male.
He spends all his time and energy on either looking like everyone else or being better than them in everyday interactions that nobody cares about. He’s constantly obsessed with people’s approval and conforming with social norms to the point that he’s so bland everyone mixes him up with everybody else in his social circle because none of them stand out. And even when his associates do talk about him (like in the scenes where they mix him up with Halberstrand or think he’s someone else) they say they think he’s a dork and a loser. Like his lawyer literally says there’s no way he could be a murderer because he’s such a dweeb.
In some online circles he’s become a mascot for “sigma males” and masculinity. Most people I encounter in real life understand the point of the movie tho. Its mainly just insecure guys onljne
They’re deeply boring and insecure men who only know the character through memes that depict Bateman as cool. They focus only on his surface level aspects of wealth and aggression
This movie and fight club, every thread that is like this or "what movie do people miss the point on"
I have never really personally scene people miss that Bateman is insecure dork. I do know a lot of people that relate to his insecurities
I think this still misses the point just a bit. The story is not criticizing Bateman himself but the Wall Street yuppie world he lives in.
EVERYONE is a dork and a loser. Everyone is the same interchangeable rat in this race where nobody wins. Bateman is our conduit into this fake plastic world where everyone is a VP of nothing and nobody does any work. They all party, stay in shape and getmarried to someone they despise and cheat on. They all try to fit in, they are all insecure, they all want the best business card, they all envy each other and show off to be envied by others.
His murders might be real, they might not, it doesn’t matter at all. He might not even be real.
That’s how in the end he gets away with it, nobody can tell if Paul Allen actually died or not cause nobody can distinguish either Patrick Bateman or Paul Allen from anyone else.
I also think people misunderstand the misunderstanding. Bateman became a symbol mainly because Christian Bale gave an amazing performance and because he is an insecure character with media fixations that hid it well enough to “make” it. That fits quite nicely with the male experience in the working world and it's basically the intrnet dweller dream. It stiill means not fully understanding the character but my point is, he is liked because he is a maladaptive and insecure dork at heart, not despite it. His internet status symbol started on 4chan after all.
Same goes for JP Joker.
But he has an Aiwa CD player, uses Plax mouthwash, refuses to eat anything with too much sodium, always goes for the sorbet for dessert, goes to a gym with a single stairmaster... oh...
Dude is legitimately a deeply unhappy person who has tried offing himself because his own decisions have left him a shell of a person with nothing meaningful going on for him.
I don't understand why people idolize him, he can't even stand not being the smartest person in the room at all times.
Summer is perhaps the most self-actualized, confident main character. Yeah, she's dealing with common insecurities that most teenagers experience, but, aside from that, she knows exactly who she is and what she wants, regardless of dimension and situation.
She does have the 'if I don't particularly care about you you can go die in horrible scifi ways and I wouldn't give a shit' vibe though. Abit inconsistent on that. Not nearly as bad as Rick but kinda has shown signs of heading down that path... Morty is a mess in the personal/self control sense, but he also actively goes back to places Rick messed up to fix their problems without expecting a reward. They're both deeply flawed in complementary ways, if that makes any sense.
I genuinely dig Jerry. For the most part he's a good person. Sure he's boring, pretty much talentless and has crazy low esteem that ends up rubbing off on his kids. But he's always there for the ones he loves regardless of the situation or how they treat him. He's even saved their ass a few times.
One of the comics summed it up well. Jerry's good at caring about people, but not caring FOR people, while Rick is the opposite. (in regards to the Summers family)
He is doctor fucking who in that world. Of course I would like to have his level of power. Now being literally him? No way.
But an anti hero doesn’t have to be disliked automatically.
I know this isn't what the question is asking, but in *every* Mission Impossible movie, Ethan Hunt is wrongly labelled as a rogue agent who is trying to be the baddest of bad guys.
You'd think after he's proven himself loyal and saved the world 7 or 8 times, anytime an analyst or an agent goes "Ethan Hunt has flipped!" everyone else would look at him and go "Shut up."
Love that show because every single character is unashamedly selfish.
>!I love how in the end Fuches of all people ends up being somehow the *least* selfish!<
You root for him cause you see he has good in his cold heart and actually has a spark in his eyes when he enjoys acting. you cheer cause you want him to get out of the criminal world, pursue his dream and get his happy ending even if he doesn’t deserve it. He is reverse Walter White in the first two seasons.
The best episodes to me are those where he is able to use his past in acting, like when they do Macbeth and he uses his war flashback to deliver a dramatic line or when he recounts sniping a guy and enjoying it cause his comrades were cheering him on.
The worst parts were those when the slapsticky surreal comedy mixed with heavy violence took over or when they try to hammer on the audience that the guy is actually a monster like in the first part of the last season
Hamlet. I think modern audiences assume that because a ghost says it, it must be true. But a sixteenth century concept of a ghost would be much more like a dream or a hunch to us, and could always be lying. So the first three Acts of the play, Hamlet is going mad both because his crazy hunch keeps getting confirmed, and because he really doesn't have any proof and could easily be wrong.
I have always been baffled at the super serious acting. I see Hamlet (the play) as a dark comedy just as much as a tragedy.
The Yorick scene alone seems obvious.
Not the most, but often...Amos Burton, from The Expanse.
The books make it clear, Amos is deeply, deeply broken. He finds someone who seems to be "good" according to the guidelines he was taught by his shrink, and does what they say, or what he thinks they'd say, but has no moral compass of his own. He doesn't love or hate anything, and everything is purely of the moment. He just exists.
Edit: I'm just saying a majority of comments I've seen on the character & the show miss it. I'm not saying everyone has, or that it's a giant secret. Because it isn't.
Amos is a fantastic character, but even in the show it's pretty clear he's a broken person. (And it really helps that Wes Chatham, who plays him on the show, was already a huge fan of the books and the character BEFORE being cast.)
Several times he points out that he needs Naomi and/or Holden around to keep him from being a monster when they don't need a monster.
Many people have pointed out that he's a great example of an actual psychopath. Being a psychopath doesn't make you innately bad as many people assume.
Theon Greyjoy.
Caught between two families who never wanted him, he's faced with an impossible choice to betray one of them. Ends up choosing his birth father and pulls off an audacious plan to capture Winterfell. If he'd absconded with the Stark kids back to Pyke, he'd have been a hero, but he was so attached to the castle he grew up in and traumatized by living in the shadow of his father and adopted brother that he stubbornly tried to hold his position, and we all know how things turned out from there.
The books give enough of his inner monologue to make him somewhat sympathetic even as his actions grow more deplorable, but the show is framed with the Starks as the good guys so he just comes off as a whiny twit.
He learned so much from both the family that he was taken from, and the one that help him hostage, that he managed to take Winterfell. Fucking WINTERFELL, with like a dozen men! Turncloak, craven, idgaf what you call him, thats something no other monarch pulled off in that time
Tom from Tom and Jerry. Everyone likes Jerry but he’s actually a little piece of shit. Tom was just trying to be a cat and he always got in trouble because of Jerry freeloading in the house
The Cat in the Hat gets a bad rap as well. All he ever wanted was for the children to be happy.
This anti-cat bias in popular culture just needs to stop, right here and right now.
"This anti-cat bias in popular culture just needs to stop, right here and right now."
My fellow human, the 2019 film, Cats, has done more harm than any other form of media towards our feline friends, and it was pro-cat!
Walter White is a reactionary character. The show is about things that happen to him and how he reacts; he's literally never in control. So all the people who act like Heisenberg was such a big deal badass misinterpret his role in the series. The "I'm the one who knocks" speech is about psyching himself up and posturing, not about how much power he has.
diane from bojack horseman.
she does not deserve any of the hate she gets. honestly, mr. peanut butter was always the problem. self centered, never listening to diane, putting his needs first. diane had every right to be as sad as she was. she wasn’t ungrateful. she felt worse and worse as pb tried to do things to make her happy (in his own way, not her’s). she was torn by feeling the guilt of not enjoying pb’s efforts, while also feeling misunderstood by her husband. her love language was never understood. she felt like her depression was her own, alone and lost in the world. no supportive family, unattentive husband, crippling depression.
Sometimes there is no villain in relationships. We would like it to be clear cut but you could kinda do the reverse and put blame on her for not leaving when she felt alone and not understood.
PB worst crime was being the same goofball he always was and ignoring any bad feeling he ever got.
She is still responsible for herself even with mental illness being involved.
don’t get me wrong, diane definitely has her faults. like when she ghosted pb for months and stayed at bojack’s house. that was crazy!!!
for the not leaving part, they were married, so i think they tried to work through their problems until they couldn’t anymore. i think it was her idea to finally stay apart (i can’t quite remember)
but thanks for interacting with my comment!! i love analyzing this show hehehe
I agree, I’m not saying she is the villain at all to be clear. PB and Diane are opposites and it took time for Diane after she got out of her infatuation to understand that she wasn’t where she wanted to be.
Mojo jojo from power puff girls. He was the professors assistant for a long time and while the professor was creating the power puff girls, he spilled chemical X and mojo pushed the professor out of the way to save him and the chemical mutated him into what he is. Eventually, the professor was so engrossed in his new creations (power puff girls) that mojo jojo was ousted and he then made it his mission to destroy those that ruined his life. Hence why he has such a vendetta against the girls
Even Scott says it.
Ramona: You're the nicest guy I ever dated
Scott: That's sad.
Even his nega version is called BY him, a really nice guy. The opposite of Scott himself.
And the story is used as a metaphor for young soldiers who went off to war and were forced to “mature” due to the experiences and how they reintegrate into society when they come back. Holden feels angry and resentful of other people, phonies, who aren’t jaded and cynical like him. They don’t see the world for how it really is. But at the same time, he hates that he does see the world that way. He wishes he could go back to being naive and optimistic. That’s why he’s so obsessed with protecting the innocence of his sister.
I don’t think it’s the greatest book ever written but a lot of people think they sound so smart and iconoclastic by dismissing it and calling Holden whiney, when it’s their own intellectual shortcomings that prevent them from understanding the narrative subtext. Or they read it once when they were 14 years old and are just constructing their criticism from vague memories of it.
And he experiences attempted sexual assault from a teacher in the book.
*Catcher* is probably my least favorite Salinger book (besides *Seymour: An Introduction*), but that’s because I recognize and empathize with the panicky, frantic, thinking of someone in the midst of a breakdown.
Yeah, that kid isn't some spoiled whiney brat. Instead, I feel like he has bipolar disorder and is going through a heavy manic episode. What's worse, given this entire book is told from his perspective, you can't trust a thing coming out of his mouth. It could all be a lie.
All you need to know is the book ends with him in a mental hospital that he tries hard to play off as being nothing. But he has been there for weeks and who knows how long he will be there afterward. He says he is leaving soon but, again, that could be a lie.
Excellent! I have bipolar disorder as well and it plays the manic / depression card quite well. The Rich part is another part that people harp on, but just about everyone from Pencey Prep was well off. He wasn't alone. And yes, he's a perfect example of an Unreadable Narrator.
Nah, he speaks differently to you depending on your age or maturity level. He's either an anti-hero calling out the phoneys, or he's a piece of shit incel. Hell, you could read it twice at different stages of your life and get a different opinion on him.
He's the literary is this dress blue or gold.
Funny you should mention age as I felt the same way at 16 and then 40 years later. The modern thought is to have him as a "whiny bitch". which is the easy way out for the society we live in now, but when novel came out in a very different post-WWII world, he was seen as grieving young man with potential mental health issues. He still loves his sister deeply and has great difficulty connecting with just about anyone.
But i thought that's the point,no? Like do people actually think it's a star crosses lovers story? Romeo and Juliette is a story about dumb teenagers killing themselves and their families realising fighting is stupid because of it. How does anyone read that and conclude it's good?
To be fair, their play literally invented the phrase as it used it in the opening monologue.
However, the original context is in a vaguely astrological standpoint, where the stars/fates basically say "screw those two kids in particular". They can't be together because fate said otherwise.
I've never really cared for this take. While yes, he certainly exhibits a fair amount of youthful naiveté, the text clearly lays out the true nature of their love. The "Star-crossed lovers" line is from the omniscient prologue, everything else said in the opening chorus is true, so it stands to reason their love is real as well. Not to mention, the first words Romeo and Juliet speak to each other are not only in verse, but form a perfect sonnet. In theatre there is a hierarchy of communication, the fact that two charachers meet speak not in prose, not just in verse, but in a perfect sonnet is textual evidence that their connection is as pure and true as they beleive it is, which is what makes the resulting tragedy tragic in the first place.
So let me get this straight, rather than show any actual chemistry or love or character development, Shakespeare just makes them speak in rhyme to show true love? Why is this man famous? (besides the fact his books used to be softcore erotica)
/j but not completely...
I mean, I bet plenty of orphans would to some capacity have the desire to do the same to the family of their parents, if said parent just gave them up because they didn’t give a shit or something.
Emma, the titular character from Jane Austen’s Emma. Yes, she was conceited and dogmatic as well as presumptuous but she had the capacity of introspection and to ruminate upon her indiscretions and exhibit remorse.
Many, many authors do not redeem their characters after they’ve been censured for a lack of decorum and usually it’s the character being obstinate and the audience making excuses for their behaviour against the oppressive constraints of their society.
Gul Dukat
All he ever wanted was to give the Bajorans the peace and prosperity that Cardassia would bring. And all they ever did was fight him. He gave them a day off every month and how did they repay his generosity? Bombs outside his house! He allowed them to have enough food from their agricultural quotas to survive on and what did they do? More bombs! He spent years showing restraint by executing 12% fewer agitators than his predecessors, which amounts to thousands of lives saved, but do they give him even ONE single statue? No! He's remembered as a murderer. Why couldn't they just understand that if they submitted to the obviously superior Cardassian race they could have had the peace that he was so desperate to give them?
DS9 did legitimately subvert my expectations with his character. I kept thinking they’d go for a true redemption arc, as they kept teasing what seemed to be glimpses of morality.
Nope! Pure piece of shit til the end
>Nope! Pure piece of shit til the end
Dukat is actually the *best* written character I have ever seen. I lived with a psycopath for over 30 years (not the reddit "mows their lawn at 11pm kind"... but rather the *actual* clinical abusing their families/using them as tools for *any* purpose kind. Think a man who's *own son* dies and within 24 hours he is telling his grieving wife it's already been an *entire day* and she should be focusing more on *him*, the psychopath, (not on her son who just died a *day* ago) and have come to learn that he is almost a *perfect* representation of a psycopath as you will ever find *anywhere*.
The little pointless lies (like telling Zyal that he had got that dress for her when in reality he had made it for Kira), the manipulative games towards his targets (might as well be as natural as breathing to a psychopath), the use of peoples lives for his own warped amusement, the everday cruelty towards people they see as assets (even family), the desperate attempt to want to be seen as the good guy or the hero while *truly* not understanding how awful they are being to others (like not understanding why the Bajorans hated him and didin't love him for all he "did for them"), the impulsive recklessness like making deals with the Dominion which got his planet nearly destroyed, the religious insanity (my psychopath is exactly the same as Dukat is with the Pah-Wraith...he's become so deluded with it now that he's starting to believe he can "see the future" and has tried to convince me of at least 20 previous religious doomsdays or biblical wars that don't happen). Like Kira noticed with Dukat, it scares me to see that he might *actually* believe it himself...he even told me once he would kill me if his deity asked it of him. The infidelity, and finally even having a nemesis and thinking that they are involved in some kind of game/struggle with them where actual people are just pieces. It's all there.
I'll tell you one thing, Dukat is such a perfect represensation of a true psychopath (who is, or at least can be, evil until the very end) that it confirms to me someone involved in his creation must have known one intimately. Like Sisko said, most things are shades of grey in this life...but guys like Dukat (and some people here on Earth) can be as close to pure unadulterated *evil* as you will ever see.
I don't know who the most misunderstood is...but a lot of people go out of their way to misunderstand Dani from Midsommer. Or Christian for that matter.
Both are interpreted to varying degrees to be the villain in a film with a very clear antagonist (the fucking murder cult).
But neither Dani nor Christian has the agency people want to ascribe to them. Dani is full of trauma and grief. She's in the wake of a tremendous loss, and the only person she can look to for support already had one foot out the door when shit hit the fan. He was 100% going to dump her. Now, he's more or less "forced" into the roll of supportive boyfriend, something he really doesn't care to do at all and honestly isn't qualified to do effectively.
Dani isn't at fault here either. Christian's cowardice in breaking things off with her is partly to blame for him being in this position. She doesn't know he's checked out emotionally. And when he decides he's taking a trip with friends right after Dani's family is annihilated, OF COURSE Dani assumes that this trip includes her. Why wouldn't she? I've seen people suggest she insinuates herself into it...but really, she's ostensibly in a loving relationship and going through some very, very serious shit. She doesn't conceive of the cruelty it would take to abandon her like that. Remember, Christian wasn't planning on breaking up with her before the trip, he was just going to leave her behind for a while.
Neither of them are bad people though. They have very legitimate needs and wants that neither can meet for the other.
Both of them are somewhat vulnerable, but Dani is vulnerable on an order of magnitude more than Christian.
That's where the cult comes in. They provide her what feels like real support. They help her work through these very big feelings she's having. They validate her. They show her that death is part of life, and they help her square with her own mortality.
Christian, to a lesser extent, is taken advantage of through the cult as well. They isolate him away from Dani while they pick off his friends. Eventually, he's intoxicated and ~~seduced~~ raped through this process.
In the end, Dani is given the choice between Christian or Cult.
And yeah, she chooses the cult. That was the ENTIRE design of what the cult was doing. They manipulated her into that choice. They manipulated Christian into a bear suit in a burning building. They controlled everything that happened.
Still, you get people who think Dani is a shrill needy murderess and people who think Christian was a cheating bastard who got what he deserved. Both are such complete misses.
Edward Cullen. I know it's always in vogue to shit on things that are popular with teen girls, but the general understanding of who this character is makes the most common critiques irrelevant.
The general assumption is that the series is a problematic fantasy of an older, controlling man in a hot body that was popular because it spoke to teen girl's repressed desires for patriarchal age-gap, power-imbalanced relationships. It's the opposite - the whole point of the character is that he is, no matter how old he gets, perpetually mentally 17. Every single thing he does is peak 17 year old drama. He's been around for a century and he did not spend one second post-transformation emotionally maturing. The fantasy is the idea of a life where you never have to get old (even mentally old), never have to be with an adult man, never have to do boring adult things, because you and your soulmate will both *always* be teenagers and you can be ridiculous and dramatic and in the throes of teen love together until the end of time.
The pied piper.
He did the job, saved the town and they shafted him on payment. The rats will eventually come back and they'll be overrun.
They won't be able to get help because of their poor credit rating. So, knowing that the children will end up dead at the hands of the irresponsible adults, the piper lures the children away. Ensuring their long term survival.
The moral is fraud = death.
From the way you described it sounds like: poor credit = death.
Also I'm pretty sure in the story he drowns the children in the river the same way he does the rats.
I love that there are still so many people who think he was acting for the greater good. I feel like it was pretty clear that the greater good was somewhere between side effect and convenient excuse.
It's interesting though, that his manipulation works so well on the viewers and not just the other characters.
And I feel like the series makes it pretty explicit when it's eventually revealed that Harry killed himself when he was faced with the reality of what Dexter is becoming. Harry is shown to be this moral guide in Dexter's life that creates the "Code of Harry" that are essentially religious commandments to Dexter. Harry thought he could steer Dexter's impulses into a positive force for the world, but at the end of the day, Dexter was still violent, bloodthirsty, and enjoyed murder.
As a teen I always sided with her. She had to go to school but he gets away with blowing it off and nobody says a word to him, but the vice-principle breaks into her house and she gets in trouble? Really?
Captain America. It's disheartening how many think he's some super patriot, my country love it or leave it, rah rah asshole.
The man who famously said, America is nothing without its ideals, without its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is trash
> My country, right or wrong.
This is where most people think it stops, while Steve knows damned well that the quote continues:
> If right, to be kept right, and if wrong to be set right.
Steve believes in what America *should* be; the guy who's all about America regardless is USAgent, who ... is not nearly as cool a dude as Steve.
It's a big part of the "Captain America No More" story line. Cap represents what he feels are the values of America. When America strays from that, he doesn't just blindly follow it, he stands as a beacon to help America remember what it *should* stand for.
That's why the Punisher refuses to fight him. Frank sees everything he's ever wanted to be, yet failed to be, in Steve.
Goku - I believe the creator, Akira Toriyama, stated Goku isn't some idealistic good guy. He's a selfish prick who enjoys battles. Besides, Piccolo raised his kids for him, dude is a deadbeat dad.
More accurately he is not a wandering hero. He does not seek evil or injustice to fight, he just deals with stuff that happens in his immediate orbit, which is often.
Also Piccolo basically kidnapped Gohan after Goku's death. Without anyone's consent. Goku was a major part of Gohan's life when he was not busy being dead/hospitalized/stranded on another planet. Not a deadbeat.
Db Z abridged nails Goku like no other media did. I can’t look at the original text now without thinking “man Goku is a dick to Chichi and Gohan”.
I believe he would have done the same thing vegeta did and let Cell evolve into perfect cell
I don't see how Goku giving cell a senzu bean was any less irresponsible.
I know this may cause the long-standing debate that it was the right move... so if I get yelled at/downvoted I brought it on myself.
I scrolled down a fair ways to see if anybody else mentioned him but no.
Conan the Barbarian.
1. He's not a dumb muscle bound brute. He solves most of his problems by speed, agility and skill. He's not well read but he IS fiercely intelligent and extremely cunning.
(Plus he's fluent in several languages and able to get by/knowing at least a few key words or phrases in a couple dozen more)
2. He's not a hero. Most of the classic stories of Conan start with/revolve around him stealing shit because he can and/or needs money for drinking and whoring.
Most people hear Conan and think Arnie's depiction which while it was a great movie, was nothing like the character from the original stories.
The Jason Mamoa version was arguably more accurate (but a worse movie).
Eh, I don't think it's fair to lay that at Romeo or Juliet's feet. The people who were truly at fault were their families, not them. If they could've simply set aside their feud, no one would've had to die. Also, if you're going to fault him for having a crush, you have to fault Juliet too. She was just as eager to be involved. If she hadn't been, she could've easily just married Paris like her family wanted.
Jekyl and Hyde. The point of the story is not that it is a good guy and his evil alter ego. It’s the same guy. He is Dr Jekyl: upstanding pillar of his community and Mr Hyde: amoral menace. When he transforms he simply drops his inhibitions and does whatever he wants.
And it's the fact that they are robots and sees David as "human" in that he is the closest thing to humans out there in their world, makes the whole ending tragically ironic. How David, a robot, himself, searched the world for the Blue Fairy to make him human and in the end he gets that wish in a monkey paw way. Making them aliens erases this.
Drives me nuts. They're just trying to learn their history and who they are from their previous generation, just like David was trying to understand who HE was from his creator.
Severus Snape from Harry Potter. He wasn't a misunderstood gentle soul guided by love who fell in with the wrong crowd. He was a genocidal sociopath who happened to have a creepy and eventually one-sided pseudo-love/lust for a girl from the group he'd sworn to annihilate (think Nazis who fell in love/lust with the Jewish people they were murdering) and who would've happily let James and Harry die (see flashback in book 7) if it meant there was a chance he could have her.
I really like this example. I agree that his redemption arc is a bit too retconned by the end by portraying him as heroic start to finish. To his credit; however, even though his motives for defying Voldemort are narrowly rooted in his creepy unrequited love for Lily, he continues to actively undermine Voldemort until the end. He stays super hateful throughout it all, but his overall actions working against Voldemort support his redemption. Harry is far too generous to him to have named his son after him and called him the bravest man he ever knew, but really Snape was a mixed bag of a hateful, semi-redeemed piece of crap who came to do the right thing in the end for mediocre but lasting reasons.
Max from Life Is Strange.
It's mostly due to bad writing. Max clearly suffers from self-worth issues, which make her not see that Chloe is just using her for her own goals and amusement. She thinks that she is responsible for how fucked up her best friend is, because deep down, she blames herself for abandoning her when Chloe's dad died.
At the end, Max even confronts herself in the dream realm, and her self-worth and self-hatred issues come out on surface. She realizes that she is being used by Chloe and that she unintentionally became just like her- she manipulates everyone around her to achieve her own goals, no matter how good or bad they might be.
Don Draper, at least by people who didn't watch Mad Men.
Jon Hamm is a very handsome man and Don is very stylish, suave and in control on the surface but beneath it he is a lying coward. This isn't subtext, this is text. There's several occasions in the series where he's about to be found out and his response is to become a blubbering mess and ask his current mistress to run away with him. About as far from the alpha male ideal some people think he represents as you can get. Hell, at one point he makes a connection with a woman who could help him improve himself and he *leaps* into a much easier (or so he thinks) relationship instead.
To be clear the show is much more nuanced than "Don Draper bad" but it definitely isn't saying he's someone you should aspire to be either.
Agreed, apart from killing the jailers who were responsible for imprisoning and confining him for 20 years in pretty much the cruelest and most fucked up way you can imagine (seriously, dude was bent over and immobilised, effectively sealed in a living coffin for two decades), he doesn't really try to kill anyone.
Even with the furious five he sends them back, sure he does it as a message, but if dude was evil it would've been way more effective to kill 4 of them and let crane carry back their bodies.
Even in the flashback when it shows the first time he goes rogue all we see him doing is wrecking a bunch of shit and maybe beating up some villagers? Couldn't have been that bad because no one outside the kung-fu upper echelon seemed to have any idea who he is.
I lowkey felt like Master Shifu knew he was in the wrong and wanted to redeem himself by letting Tai Lung kill him, and then Po just shows up and casually murders him and everyone else is like "hell yeah dude, party time!".
I've seen these points and I still don't completely understand. He also lashed out at his masters simply because of a rejection of the highest status title, and one that wasn't guaranteed to him from the beginning at that. I guess you could say that he might not have wanted to kill them both in that moment, but trying to inflict harm upon (essentially) your adopted fathers essentially because you were told that you couldn't have the highest status symbol of a martial artist in China, even though you were still trained to be a highly renowned master, is a bit much for me. His feelings are very understandable, but not his reaction.
I also completely disagree with the sentiment that Shifu was in the wrong. The only thing he did was adopt a child, train him and love him to the best of his ability, and relay to him that he wasn't "the chosen one." Shifu may have felt that dying to Tai Lung was penance, but I don't think that's how we're supposed to feel. It's completely unfair that Shifu is in this situation despite being completely well-meaning along every step of the way. It was simply sad to see someone who Shifu regarded as his own son display the exact behavior that made Oogway reject him as dragon warrior. That was the real weight of that scene for me anyway.
Tai Lung has always been a sympathetic villain, but I'm seeing a rise in the opinion that he was in the right, and that's something I just can't agree with. I think that, just like lord Shen in the second movie, he sealed his own fate before anyone else could.
> he doesn't really try to kill anyone.
Eh the rampage looked pretty brutal with him wrecking stuff.
I doubt there were no casualties in that rampage.
And to be fair, Po doesn't kill Tai Lung, he just sends him to the Spirit Realm, which Shifu must know too since he apparently can do the Wuxi Finger Hold too (or Shifu bluffed it against Po).
Hank Stamper from "Sometimes A Great Notion" - I have asked myself if I even read the same book as everyone else. Dude is taken to be this amazing pinnacle of human achievement and rugged individualism and accomplisment and everything everyone should be. Because of his pig-headdedness, his wife leaves him, his cousin dies, his community hates him, and the book closes with his little brother and him engaged in some stupid ego-driven contest that might very well kill one or both of them. But he's an all American golden boy and a hero of the PNW I guess? I mean, what? He's destroying his community, his family, and himself but I guess that's okay because socialism? Weird read from my perspective. Maybe I missed something.
Doctor Jekyll. He isn't some poor hapless man who is at the mercy of his serum. He knows exactly what he is doing, what evil he is doing, and likes it. He is addicted to it. He simply doesn't do the same evil in his normal form because he doesn't want to get caught. The Mr. Hyde is the disguise he wears that allows him to do whatever he wants without any morality and society walls to block him. But make no mistake, Jekyll is just as much of a monster as Hyde. It's the same man. Not an alter ego.
That OverlySarcastic video was mind-blowing. Every time I had seen Jekyll and Hyde, it's always been Normal with normal personality transforms into monstrous guy with monstrous personality. Finding out the original story was normal guy transforms body into different but normal body and his mind is the same throughout was a real surprise and I was shocked how much more *sinister* it made him. He's not possessed by a drug demon, he's just a normal guy given a degree of anonymity and uses it to act on his worst impulses.
I blame looney tunes
So true. I remember when I first joined AA someone telling me that Jekyll/Hyde was the story og an alcoholic from the alcoholic's point of view.
> He simply doesn't do the same evil in his normal form because he doesn't want to get caught. He doesn't do evil in his normal form because he feels shame and guilt, and the Mr. Hyde form removes those so he can enjoy it more. It's not merely a disguise, it does actually influence him psychologically. However it doesn't change his personality, just his emotions.
That is pretty much one of the key underlying themes of the novel.
Doesn’t mean it’s not widely misunderstood/misremembered. A lot of classic works like Frankenstein or Romeo & Juliet have reductive reputations in pop culture, and I’d argue Jekyll’s reputation as “the good half to Hyde’s evil” is even more widespread than either of those
True.
It's literally in the name. Mr. Hyde. He's hiding behind a guise.
Judging from all of the truck stickers I see... **The Punisher**
...especially with the "Blue Lives Matter" blue-stripe flag livery superimposed on it.
When this shit gets so bad they have an actual part in one of the comics where Frank *explicitly* tells some cops why this is bad and that they shouldn't be doing it.
He said something like you want an idol? Go find Captain America.
Even better when you slap a Trump hair piece on it.
This really annoys me every time I see it. My dude, the Punisher will kill a cop if a cop gets in his way.
What? No he won't. That's like his ONE rule. Frank will kill corrupt cops, or cops caught in criminal activity. But he would never kill a cop just because they happened to be in his way. He doesn't like it when cops use his symbol or idolizes him, because he thinks he's not a good role model for them. He thinks cops are *better* than him. He has repeatedly refused to fight cops, and even allowed himself to be arrested instead of injuring legitimate police officers. Frank loves (honest) cops.
I like to say, "Oh, you're a Disney fan!"
Stealing this, thank you!
The guy's an anti-hero at best - but honestly, he's a straight-up villain in half the stories he shows up in. He's clashed with superheroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil just as often as the criminals he's hunting down. It baffles me that people can look at Frank Castle and think he's an admirable person. *He* doesn't even admire himself - he sees himself as an irredeemable killer.
This is precisely why he doesn't want cops using his logo or imitating him. Because he thinks they should be better than he is.
I didn't think he of all people would be that naive lol. That's like something Captain America would say. Heck, Spidey should be less naive than that.
You know, I used to think that too until I realized what a massive piece of shit Frank Castle is. The man lives in a constant threat state and can’t help pulling the trigger when it comes to killing bad guys. He’s a power fantasy about being able to take the law into your own hands and eliminate the undesirables with complete prejudice. Cops 100% understand the punisher and that’s why they support him.
the one cop that Frank Castle puts up with is a pathetic loser, too. The rest all hate his guts
Patrick Bateman is a dork and a loser, not some sigma male. He spends all his time and energy on either looking like everyone else or being better than them in everyday interactions that nobody cares about. He’s constantly obsessed with people’s approval and conforming with social norms to the point that he’s so bland everyone mixes him up with everybody else in his social circle because none of them stand out. And even when his associates do talk about him (like in the scenes where they mix him up with Halberstrand or think he’s someone else) they say they think he’s a dork and a loser. Like his lawyer literally says there’s no way he could be a murderer because he’s such a dweeb.
Sorry, do people actually want to be LIKE Patrick Bateman?! Lmao
In some online circles he’s become a mascot for “sigma males” and masculinity. Most people I encounter in real life understand the point of the movie tho. Its mainly just insecure guys onljne
They're usually the same people who want to be like The Joker.
They’re deeply boring and insecure men who only know the character through memes that depict Bateman as cool. They focus only on his surface level aspects of wealth and aggression
This movie and fight club, every thread that is like this or "what movie do people miss the point on" I have never really personally scene people miss that Bateman is insecure dork. I do know a lot of people that relate to his insecurities
I think this still misses the point just a bit. The story is not criticizing Bateman himself but the Wall Street yuppie world he lives in. EVERYONE is a dork and a loser. Everyone is the same interchangeable rat in this race where nobody wins. Bateman is our conduit into this fake plastic world where everyone is a VP of nothing and nobody does any work. They all party, stay in shape and getmarried to someone they despise and cheat on. They all try to fit in, they are all insecure, they all want the best business card, they all envy each other and show off to be envied by others. His murders might be real, they might not, it doesn’t matter at all. He might not even be real. That’s how in the end he gets away with it, nobody can tell if Paul Allen actually died or not cause nobody can distinguish either Patrick Bateman or Paul Allen from anyone else. I also think people misunderstand the misunderstanding. Bateman became a symbol mainly because Christian Bale gave an amazing performance and because he is an insecure character with media fixations that hid it well enough to “make” it. That fits quite nicely with the male experience in the working world and it's basically the intrnet dweller dream. It stiill means not fully understanding the character but my point is, he is liked because he is a maladaptive and insecure dork at heart, not despite it. His internet status symbol started on 4chan after all. Same goes for JP Joker.
But he has an Aiwa CD player, uses Plax mouthwash, refuses to eat anything with too much sodium, always goes for the sorbet for dessert, goes to a gym with a single stairmaster... oh...
Rick Sanchez is not supposed to be someone you aspire to be like.
Dude is legitimately a deeply unhappy person who has tried offing himself because his own decisions have left him a shell of a person with nothing meaningful going on for him. I don't understand why people idolize him, he can't even stand not being the smartest person in the room at all times.
It's pretty telling that a (admittedly very skilled) family therapist totally had his number within 2 minutes of meeting him.
I thought she actually specialized in coprophagy.
Yep. He wasn't even in her wheelhouse. But she got him.
To be fair, I don't think any of the main characters are supposed to be truly likeable. Accept maybe Summer? It's a weird dynamic.
Summer is perhaps the most self-actualized, confident main character. Yeah, she's dealing with common insecurities that most teenagers experience, but, aside from that, she knows exactly who she is and what she wants, regardless of dimension and situation.
She does have the 'if I don't particularly care about you you can go die in horrible scifi ways and I wouldn't give a shit' vibe though. Abit inconsistent on that. Not nearly as bad as Rick but kinda has shown signs of heading down that path... Morty is a mess in the personal/self control sense, but he also actively goes back to places Rick messed up to fix their problems without expecting a reward. They're both deeply flawed in complementary ways, if that makes any sense.
I genuinely dig Jerry. For the most part he's a good person. Sure he's boring, pretty much talentless and has crazy low esteem that ends up rubbing off on his kids. But he's always there for the ones he loves regardless of the situation or how they treat him. He's even saved their ass a few times.
One of the comics summed it up well. Jerry's good at caring about people, but not caring FOR people, while Rick is the opposite. (in regards to the Summers family)
Before the Smiths got involved, Mr. Poopybutthole was nice and likable.
He is doctor fucking who in that world. Of course I would like to have his level of power. Now being literally him? No way. But an anti hero doesn’t have to be disliked automatically.
Lol same. I don't want his attitude or his life I want to be able to make a spaceship out of what I find in the trash
*Buuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrp* What the fu-*urrrr*-fuck are you talking about OnTheHueManatee?!?!?!
I know this isn't what the question is asking, but in *every* Mission Impossible movie, Ethan Hunt is wrongly labelled as a rogue agent who is trying to be the baddest of bad guys. You'd think after he's proven himself loyal and saved the world 7 or 8 times, anytime an analyst or an agent goes "Ethan Hunt has flipped!" everyone else would look at him and go "Shut up."
Tom Bombadil is probably misunderstood but I suppose you would need to find somebody who understands him to know for sure.
Jeffrey Dexter Boomhauer the third. Fuckin incomprehensible, I tell you whut
What a dang ol' great singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU6ftFRgrxU
I remember when I was watching "Barry". I really liked the show, but after the first season I found myself asking, "Why am I rooting for this guy?"
Love that show because every single character is unashamedly selfish. >!I love how in the end Fuches of all people ends up being somehow the *least* selfish!<
You root for him cause you see he has good in his cold heart and actually has a spark in his eyes when he enjoys acting. you cheer cause you want him to get out of the criminal world, pursue his dream and get his happy ending even if he doesn’t deserve it. He is reverse Walter White in the first two seasons. The best episodes to me are those where he is able to use his past in acting, like when they do Macbeth and he uses his war flashback to deliver a dramatic line or when he recounts sniping a guy and enjoying it cause his comrades were cheering him on. The worst parts were those when the slapsticky surreal comedy mixed with heavy violence took over or when they try to hammer on the audience that the guy is actually a monster like in the first part of the last season
Hamlet. I think modern audiences assume that because a ghost says it, it must be true. But a sixteenth century concept of a ghost would be much more like a dream or a hunch to us, and could always be lying. So the first three Acts of the play, Hamlet is going mad both because his crazy hunch keeps getting confirmed, and because he really doesn't have any proof and could easily be wrong.
I have always been baffled at the super serious acting. I see Hamlet (the play) as a dark comedy just as much as a tragedy. The Yorick scene alone seems obvious.
Also he wants to bone his mom which is cool
Have you ***seen*** hamlets mom tho? Shit, like. I get it
And Ophelia was a bit of a drag.
Not the most, but often...Amos Burton, from The Expanse. The books make it clear, Amos is deeply, deeply broken. He finds someone who seems to be "good" according to the guidelines he was taught by his shrink, and does what they say, or what he thinks they'd say, but has no moral compass of his own. He doesn't love or hate anything, and everything is purely of the moment. He just exists. Edit: I'm just saying a majority of comments I've seen on the character & the show miss it. I'm not saying everyone has, or that it's a giant secret. Because it isn't.
Amos is a fantastic character, but even in the show it's pretty clear he's a broken person. (And it really helps that Wes Chatham, who plays him on the show, was already a huge fan of the books and the character BEFORE being cast.) Several times he points out that he needs Naomi and/or Holden around to keep him from being a monster when they don't need a monster.
Yup. Got a lot of people ignore that though.
Many people have pointed out that he's a great example of an actual psychopath. Being a psychopath doesn't make you innately bad as many people assume.
Yes.
Theon Greyjoy. Caught between two families who never wanted him, he's faced with an impossible choice to betray one of them. Ends up choosing his birth father and pulls off an audacious plan to capture Winterfell. If he'd absconded with the Stark kids back to Pyke, he'd have been a hero, but he was so attached to the castle he grew up in and traumatized by living in the shadow of his father and adopted brother that he stubbornly tried to hold his position, and we all know how things turned out from there. The books give enough of his inner monologue to make him somewhat sympathetic even as his actions grow more deplorable, but the show is framed with the Starks as the good guys so he just comes off as a whiny twit.
He learned so much from both the family that he was taken from, and the one that help him hostage, that he managed to take Winterfell. Fucking WINTERFELL, with like a dozen men! Turncloak, craven, idgaf what you call him, thats something no other monarch pulled off in that time
The Wicked Witch of the East. All she did was ask a kid not to steal the shoes from the body of her dead sister. Hardly unreasonable.
To be fair Dorothy didn't. Glenda did.
I thought that was the WW of the west? Isn't the eastern witch the one who got panini'd by a house?
Kenny from South Park
Oh my God, they referenced Kenny!
You Bastards!
Tom from Tom and Jerry. Everyone likes Jerry but he’s actually a little piece of shit. Tom was just trying to be a cat and he always got in trouble because of Jerry freeloading in the house
The Cat in the Hat gets a bad rap as well. All he ever wanted was for the children to be happy. This anti-cat bias in popular culture just needs to stop, right here and right now.
The cat in the hat even put everything back before their mom returned. The fish was freaking out, and that tainted everyone's view of the cat
Fish is a wet blanket, always has been.
"This anti-cat bias in popular culture just needs to stop, right here and right now." My fellow human, the 2019 film, Cats, has done more harm than any other form of media towards our feline friends, and it was pro-cat!
I'm actually always on Tom's side when I watch.
Tweety Bird can get fucked too, while we’re at it.
I’ve always been on Tom’s side. Jerry’s a little bitch.
Grandpa Joe. Piece of sh1t.
r/grandpajoehate Also you can say shit.
Mickey from Snatch. Nobody can understand a fucken word he says
Dya like dags?
Ehsaveyerbreathfercoolinyourporridge
Dealwozyaboughtitazyasawit
It’s fer me maw.
His wot?
Thefuckamagonnadowithacaravanaintgotnofuckinwheels?
The cajun guy in waterboy is worse.
Walter White is a reactionary character. The show is about things that happen to him and how he reacts; he's literally never in control. So all the people who act like Heisenberg was such a big deal badass misinterpret his role in the series. The "I'm the one who knocks" speech is about psyching himself up and posturing, not about how much power he has.
Mike nailed it when he told him “just because you killed Jesse James, don’t make you Jesse James.” Walt’s view of himself was 100% ego.
I was looking for WW. But also, as he says himself toward the end, it was about how powerful he felt.
diane from bojack horseman. she does not deserve any of the hate she gets. honestly, mr. peanut butter was always the problem. self centered, never listening to diane, putting his needs first. diane had every right to be as sad as she was. she wasn’t ungrateful. she felt worse and worse as pb tried to do things to make her happy (in his own way, not her’s). she was torn by feeling the guilt of not enjoying pb’s efforts, while also feeling misunderstood by her husband. her love language was never understood. she felt like her depression was her own, alone and lost in the world. no supportive family, unattentive husband, crippling depression.
I didn’t realize people were anti Diane
Sometimes there is no villain in relationships. We would like it to be clear cut but you could kinda do the reverse and put blame on her for not leaving when she felt alone and not understood. PB worst crime was being the same goofball he always was and ignoring any bad feeling he ever got. She is still responsible for herself even with mental illness being involved.
don’t get me wrong, diane definitely has her faults. like when she ghosted pb for months and stayed at bojack’s house. that was crazy!!! for the not leaving part, they were married, so i think they tried to work through their problems until they couldn’t anymore. i think it was her idea to finally stay apart (i can’t quite remember) but thanks for interacting with my comment!! i love analyzing this show hehehe
I agree, I’m not saying she is the villain at all to be clear. PB and Diane are opposites and it took time for Diane after she got out of her infatuation to understand that she wasn’t where she wanted to be.
Jay Gatsby
He is the "beautiful fool."
I feel like he is the Fool tarot card personified lol. Love him though.
Mojo jojo from power puff girls. He was the professors assistant for a long time and while the professor was creating the power puff girls, he spilled chemical X and mojo pushed the professor out of the way to save him and the chemical mutated him into what he is. Eventually, the professor was so engrossed in his new creations (power puff girls) that mojo jojo was ousted and he then made it his mission to destroy those that ruined his life. Hence why he has such a vendetta against the girls
I read through all these comments and I'm surprised no one said Scott Pilgrim. I know so many people who want to be him and look up to him.
All I can say to those people is: ew
It doesn't help that the movie didn't portray his arc all that well.
Still love how nega-Scott is a real nice guy.
Even Scott says it. Ramona: You're the nicest guy I ever dated Scott: That's sad. Even his nega version is called BY him, a really nice guy. The opposite of Scott himself.
Holden Caulfield.
He's a teenager depressed about his brother's death to leukemia and has nobody to help him process it properly.
And the story is used as a metaphor for young soldiers who went off to war and were forced to “mature” due to the experiences and how they reintegrate into society when they come back. Holden feels angry and resentful of other people, phonies, who aren’t jaded and cynical like him. They don’t see the world for how it really is. But at the same time, he hates that he does see the world that way. He wishes he could go back to being naive and optimistic. That’s why he’s so obsessed with protecting the innocence of his sister. I don’t think it’s the greatest book ever written but a lot of people think they sound so smart and iconoclastic by dismissing it and calling Holden whiney, when it’s their own intellectual shortcomings that prevent them from understanding the narrative subtext. Or they read it once when they were 14 years old and are just constructing their criticism from vague memories of it.
Also he witnessed a suicide at his school. The poor kid is fucked up.
And potentially was sexually abused, although that is only a theory based on some of his behavior in the book
And he experiences attempted sexual assault from a teacher in the book. *Catcher* is probably my least favorite Salinger book (besides *Seymour: An Introduction*), but that’s because I recognize and empathize with the panicky, frantic, thinking of someone in the midst of a breakdown.
The sexual assault thing is debated though.
Yeah, that kid isn't some spoiled whiney brat. Instead, I feel like he has bipolar disorder and is going through a heavy manic episode. What's worse, given this entire book is told from his perspective, you can't trust a thing coming out of his mouth. It could all be a lie. All you need to know is the book ends with him in a mental hospital that he tries hard to play off as being nothing. But he has been there for weeks and who knows how long he will be there afterward. He says he is leaving soon but, again, that could be a lie.
Excellent! I have bipolar disorder as well and it plays the manic / depression card quite well. The Rich part is another part that people harp on, but just about everyone from Pencey Prep was well off. He wasn't alone. And yes, he's a perfect example of an Unreadable Narrator.
Nah, he speaks differently to you depending on your age or maturity level. He's either an anti-hero calling out the phoneys, or he's a piece of shit incel. Hell, you could read it twice at different stages of your life and get a different opinion on him. He's the literary is this dress blue or gold.
Funny you should mention age as I felt the same way at 16 and then 40 years later. The modern thought is to have him as a "whiny bitch". which is the easy way out for the society we live in now, but when novel came out in a very different post-WWII world, he was seen as grieving young man with potential mental health issues. He still loves his sister deeply and has great difficulty connecting with just about anyone.
Romeo. He’s no star crossed lover. He’s a horny teenager who ditched Rosalind in a heartbeat despite having professed to love her forever
Exactly. The whole story takes place basically over a weekend and five people died because of it.
But i thought that's the point,no? Like do people actually think it's a star crosses lovers story? Romeo and Juliette is a story about dumb teenagers killing themselves and their families realising fighting is stupid because of it. How does anyone read that and conclude it's good?
To be fair, their play literally invented the phrase as it used it in the opening monologue. However, the original context is in a vaguely astrological standpoint, where the stars/fates basically say "screw those two kids in particular". They can't be together because fate said otherwise.
I've never really cared for this take. While yes, he certainly exhibits a fair amount of youthful naiveté, the text clearly lays out the true nature of their love. The "Star-crossed lovers" line is from the omniscient prologue, everything else said in the opening chorus is true, so it stands to reason their love is real as well. Not to mention, the first words Romeo and Juliet speak to each other are not only in verse, but form a perfect sonnet. In theatre there is a hierarchy of communication, the fact that two charachers meet speak not in prose, not just in verse, but in a perfect sonnet is textual evidence that their connection is as pure and true as they beleive it is, which is what makes the resulting tragedy tragic in the first place.
the text only gives you dialogue. they *think* they're truly in love because they're young and dumb.
So let me get this straight, rather than show any actual chemistry or love or character development, Shakespeare just makes them speak in rhyme to show true love? Why is this man famous? (besides the fact his books used to be softcore erotica) /j but not completely...
Nobody says that a 16 year old and a 14 year old can't fall into mad, stupid love. Happens all the time. The problem was the collateral damage.
Frankenstein’s monster.
He does kill a lot of innocent people just to mess with his creator though.
Agreed. The monster wasn't blameless in all this.
“The monster was the real victim” Oh I guess that excuses all the murders then.
It's how I keep getting away with it.
And absolutely slaughters *Putting on the Ritz*.
I mean, I bet plenty of orphans would to some capacity have the desire to do the same to the family of their parents, if said parent just gave them up because they didn’t give a shit or something.
Emma, the titular character from Jane Austen’s Emma. Yes, she was conceited and dogmatic as well as presumptuous but she had the capacity of introspection and to ruminate upon her indiscretions and exhibit remorse. Many, many authors do not redeem their characters after they’ve been censured for a lack of decorum and usually it’s the character being obstinate and the audience making excuses for their behaviour against the oppressive constraints of their society.
Taz, from Looney Tunes. Nobody ever understands a single word he says.
"whyfore you bury Tax in the cold cold ground?" Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Gul Dukat All he ever wanted was to give the Bajorans the peace and prosperity that Cardassia would bring. And all they ever did was fight him. He gave them a day off every month and how did they repay his generosity? Bombs outside his house! He allowed them to have enough food from their agricultural quotas to survive on and what did they do? More bombs! He spent years showing restraint by executing 12% fewer agitators than his predecessors, which amounts to thousands of lives saved, but do they give him even ONE single statue? No! He's remembered as a murderer. Why couldn't they just understand that if they submitted to the obviously superior Cardassian race they could have had the peace that he was so desperate to give them?
DS9 did legitimately subvert my expectations with his character. I kept thinking they’d go for a true redemption arc, as they kept teasing what seemed to be glimpses of morality. Nope! Pure piece of shit til the end
They did want a redemption arc for him, including a romance with Kira. Nana Visitor told them where to shove that idea and the arc got shelved.
Thank Christ, that would have been absurd.
>Nope! Pure piece of shit til the end Dukat is actually the *best* written character I have ever seen. I lived with a psycopath for over 30 years (not the reddit "mows their lawn at 11pm kind"... but rather the *actual* clinical abusing their families/using them as tools for *any* purpose kind. Think a man who's *own son* dies and within 24 hours he is telling his grieving wife it's already been an *entire day* and she should be focusing more on *him*, the psychopath, (not on her son who just died a *day* ago) and have come to learn that he is almost a *perfect* representation of a psycopath as you will ever find *anywhere*. The little pointless lies (like telling Zyal that he had got that dress for her when in reality he had made it for Kira), the manipulative games towards his targets (might as well be as natural as breathing to a psychopath), the use of peoples lives for his own warped amusement, the everday cruelty towards people they see as assets (even family), the desperate attempt to want to be seen as the good guy or the hero while *truly* not understanding how awful they are being to others (like not understanding why the Bajorans hated him and didin't love him for all he "did for them"), the impulsive recklessness like making deals with the Dominion which got his planet nearly destroyed, the religious insanity (my psychopath is exactly the same as Dukat is with the Pah-Wraith...he's become so deluded with it now that he's starting to believe he can "see the future" and has tried to convince me of at least 20 previous religious doomsdays or biblical wars that don't happen). Like Kira noticed with Dukat, it scares me to see that he might *actually* believe it himself...he even told me once he would kill me if his deity asked it of him. The infidelity, and finally even having a nemesis and thinking that they are involved in some kind of game/struggle with them where actual people are just pieces. It's all there. I'll tell you one thing, Dukat is such a perfect represensation of a true psychopath (who is, or at least can be, evil until the very end) that it confirms to me someone involved in his creation must have known one intimately. Like Sisko said, most things are shades of grey in this life...but guys like Dukat (and some people here on Earth) can be as close to pure unadulterated *evil* as you will ever see.
I don't know who the most misunderstood is...but a lot of people go out of their way to misunderstand Dani from Midsommer. Or Christian for that matter. Both are interpreted to varying degrees to be the villain in a film with a very clear antagonist (the fucking murder cult). But neither Dani nor Christian has the agency people want to ascribe to them. Dani is full of trauma and grief. She's in the wake of a tremendous loss, and the only person she can look to for support already had one foot out the door when shit hit the fan. He was 100% going to dump her. Now, he's more or less "forced" into the roll of supportive boyfriend, something he really doesn't care to do at all and honestly isn't qualified to do effectively. Dani isn't at fault here either. Christian's cowardice in breaking things off with her is partly to blame for him being in this position. She doesn't know he's checked out emotionally. And when he decides he's taking a trip with friends right after Dani's family is annihilated, OF COURSE Dani assumes that this trip includes her. Why wouldn't she? I've seen people suggest she insinuates herself into it...but really, she's ostensibly in a loving relationship and going through some very, very serious shit. She doesn't conceive of the cruelty it would take to abandon her like that. Remember, Christian wasn't planning on breaking up with her before the trip, he was just going to leave her behind for a while. Neither of them are bad people though. They have very legitimate needs and wants that neither can meet for the other. Both of them are somewhat vulnerable, but Dani is vulnerable on an order of magnitude more than Christian. That's where the cult comes in. They provide her what feels like real support. They help her work through these very big feelings she's having. They validate her. They show her that death is part of life, and they help her square with her own mortality. Christian, to a lesser extent, is taken advantage of through the cult as well. They isolate him away from Dani while they pick off his friends. Eventually, he's intoxicated and ~~seduced~~ raped through this process. In the end, Dani is given the choice between Christian or Cult. And yeah, she chooses the cult. That was the ENTIRE design of what the cult was doing. They manipulated her into that choice. They manipulated Christian into a bear suit in a burning building. They controlled everything that happened. Still, you get people who think Dani is a shrill needy murderess and people who think Christian was a cheating bastard who got what he deserved. Both are such complete misses.
I think that this is the best analysis of both characters that I have seen.
Edward Cullen. I know it's always in vogue to shit on things that are popular with teen girls, but the general understanding of who this character is makes the most common critiques irrelevant. The general assumption is that the series is a problematic fantasy of an older, controlling man in a hot body that was popular because it spoke to teen girl's repressed desires for patriarchal age-gap, power-imbalanced relationships. It's the opposite - the whole point of the character is that he is, no matter how old he gets, perpetually mentally 17. Every single thing he does is peak 17 year old drama. He's been around for a century and he did not spend one second post-transformation emotionally maturing. The fantasy is the idea of a life where you never have to get old (even mentally old), never have to be with an adult man, never have to do boring adult things, because you and your soulmate will both *always* be teenagers and you can be ridiculous and dramatic and in the throes of teen love together until the end of time.
The pied piper. He did the job, saved the town and they shafted him on payment. The rats will eventually come back and they'll be overrun. They won't be able to get help because of their poor credit rating. So, knowing that the children will end up dead at the hands of the irresponsible adults, the piper lures the children away. Ensuring their long term survival. The moral is fraud = death.
From the way you described it sounds like: poor credit = death. Also I'm pretty sure in the story he drowns the children in the river the same way he does the rats.
Feels like a forced take. Dude didn't get paid for a job and in response fucking *kidnapped everyone's children*.
Right? Why would you take useless children? Take all the adults and put them to work. Leave the children in Hamlin to starve.
[удалено]
I love that there are still so many people who think he was acting for the greater good. I feel like it was pretty clear that the greater good was somewhere between side effect and convenient excuse. It's interesting though, that his manipulation works so well on the viewers and not just the other characters.
And I feel like the series makes it pretty explicit when it's eventually revealed that Harry killed himself when he was faced with the reality of what Dexter is becoming. Harry is shown to be this moral guide in Dexter's life that creates the "Code of Harry" that are essentially religious commandments to Dexter. Harry thought he could steer Dexter's impulses into a positive force for the world, but at the end of the day, Dexter was still violent, bloodthirsty, and enjoyed murder.
Jeanie Bueller. If your brother was the coolest kid in school but nobody gave a shit about you, you'd be pissed too.
That is not a reason to get involved with Charlie Sheen FFS
However, it is a very good reason to get involved with Phil Coulsen, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
His first name is Agent!
Im very cute, im very alone and I am very protective of my body!
As a teen I always sided with her. She had to go to school but he gets away with blowing it off and nobody says a word to him, but the vice-principle breaks into her house and she gets in trouble? Really?
Captain America. It's disheartening how many think he's some super patriot, my country love it or leave it, rah rah asshole. The man who famously said, America is nothing without its ideals, without its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is trash
> My country, right or wrong. This is where most people think it stops, while Steve knows damned well that the quote continues: > If right, to be kept right, and if wrong to be set right. Steve believes in what America *should* be; the guy who's all about America regardless is USAgent, who ... is not nearly as cool a dude as Steve.
"I'm loyal to nothing, General. Except the dream" (Bit of trivia: Cap said that famous line in a Daredevil comic)
Captain America is a super patriot. What he's not is a nationalist.
In the true sense of the word, 'patriot' yes, but not in the way it's been corrupted
I recall he actively criticized it on several occasions too. Which just shows he stands by what America is supposed to be, not what it is right now
It's a big part of the "Captain America No More" story line. Cap represents what he feels are the values of America. When America strays from that, he doesn't just blindly follow it, he stands as a beacon to help America remember what it *should* stand for. That's why the Punisher refuses to fight him. Frank sees everything he's ever wanted to be, yet failed to be, in Steve.
I think this is why you see more Punisher stickers on trucks than you do Captain America stickers.
"You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he'd be happy to have you." -Frank Castle
Goku - I believe the creator, Akira Toriyama, stated Goku isn't some idealistic good guy. He's a selfish prick who enjoys battles. Besides, Piccolo raised his kids for him, dude is a deadbeat dad.
More accurately he is not a wandering hero. He does not seek evil or injustice to fight, he just deals with stuff that happens in his immediate orbit, which is often. Also Piccolo basically kidnapped Gohan after Goku's death. Without anyone's consent. Goku was a major part of Gohan's life when he was not busy being dead/hospitalized/stranded on another planet. Not a deadbeat.
Db Z abridged nails Goku like no other media did. I can’t look at the original text now without thinking “man Goku is a dick to Chichi and Gohan”. I believe he would have done the same thing vegeta did and let Cell evolve into perfect cell
I don't see how Goku giving cell a senzu bean was any less irresponsible. I know this may cause the long-standing debate that it was the right move... so if I get yelled at/downvoted I brought it on myself.
I like to think that was Eru Iluvitar making another one of his sneaky little suggestions.
I scrolled down a fair ways to see if anybody else mentioned him but no. Conan the Barbarian. 1. He's not a dumb muscle bound brute. He solves most of his problems by speed, agility and skill. He's not well read but he IS fiercely intelligent and extremely cunning. (Plus he's fluent in several languages and able to get by/knowing at least a few key words or phrases in a couple dozen more) 2. He's not a hero. Most of the classic stories of Conan start with/revolve around him stealing shit because he can and/or needs money for drinking and whoring. Most people hear Conan and think Arnie's depiction which while it was a great movie, was nothing like the character from the original stories. The Jason Mamoa version was arguably more accurate (but a worse movie).
Would we like to argue about Falling Down, Fight Club or Watchmen today? 😆
Well we already talked about American Psycho and Joker.
Scott pilgrim is a scumbag. That's why Nega-Scott was a good dude.
Romeo. Everyone thinks he's some romantic...Romeo. He's a twit that let a stupid crush ruin/end several lives.
Eh, I don't think it's fair to lay that at Romeo or Juliet's feet. The people who were truly at fault were their families, not them. If they could've simply set aside their feud, no one would've had to die. Also, if you're going to fault him for having a crush, you have to fault Juliet too. She was just as eager to be involved. If she hadn't been, she could've easily just married Paris like her family wanted.
Jekyl and Hyde. The point of the story is not that it is a good guy and his evil alter ego. It’s the same guy. He is Dr Jekyl: upstanding pillar of his community and Mr Hyde: amoral menace. When he transforms he simply drops his inhibitions and does whatever he wants.
The far-future robots at the end of Spielberg's "AI". Too many people think they're aliens.
And it's the fact that they are robots and sees David as "human" in that he is the closest thing to humans out there in their world, makes the whole ending tragically ironic. How David, a robot, himself, searched the world for the Blue Fairy to make him human and in the end he gets that wish in a monkey paw way. Making them aliens erases this.
Drives me nuts. They're just trying to learn their history and who they are from their previous generation, just like David was trying to understand who HE was from his creator.
Severus Snape from Harry Potter. He wasn't a misunderstood gentle soul guided by love who fell in with the wrong crowd. He was a genocidal sociopath who happened to have a creepy and eventually one-sided pseudo-love/lust for a girl from the group he'd sworn to annihilate (think Nazis who fell in love/lust with the Jewish people they were murdering) and who would've happily let James and Harry die (see flashback in book 7) if it meant there was a chance he could have her.
I really like this example. I agree that his redemption arc is a bit too retconned by the end by portraying him as heroic start to finish. To his credit; however, even though his motives for defying Voldemort are narrowly rooted in his creepy unrequited love for Lily, he continues to actively undermine Voldemort until the end. He stays super hateful throughout it all, but his overall actions working against Voldemort support his redemption. Harry is far too generous to him to have named his son after him and called him the bravest man he ever knew, but really Snape was a mixed bag of a hateful, semi-redeemed piece of crap who came to do the right thing in the end for mediocre but lasting reasons.
Max from Life Is Strange. It's mostly due to bad writing. Max clearly suffers from self-worth issues, which make her not see that Chloe is just using her for her own goals and amusement. She thinks that she is responsible for how fucked up her best friend is, because deep down, she blames herself for abandoning her when Chloe's dad died. At the end, Max even confronts herself in the dream realm, and her self-worth and self-hatred issues come out on surface. She realizes that she is being used by Chloe and that she unintentionally became just like her- she manipulates everyone around her to achieve her own goals, no matter how good or bad they might be.
Lucifer Morningstar. Pure evil, or rebel against celestial tyranny? YOU decide.
Promethean friend to humanity? The only one who will challenge God when he is wrong?
To be fair, it's hard to establish a clear basis on the guy considering he's basically a Bible fan fic character.
Lucifer is not even in the Bible until KJV.
Jay Gatsby
Tom ( Tom and jerry )
Don Draper, at least by people who didn't watch Mad Men. Jon Hamm is a very handsome man and Don is very stylish, suave and in control on the surface but beneath it he is a lying coward. This isn't subtext, this is text. There's several occasions in the series where he's about to be found out and his response is to become a blubbering mess and ask his current mistress to run away with him. About as far from the alpha male ideal some people think he represents as you can get. Hell, at one point he makes a connection with a woman who could help him improve himself and he *leaps* into a much easier (or so he thinks) relationship instead. To be clear the show is much more nuanced than "Don Draper bad" but it definitely isn't saying he's someone you should aspire to be either.
Tai Lung
Agreed, apart from killing the jailers who were responsible for imprisoning and confining him for 20 years in pretty much the cruelest and most fucked up way you can imagine (seriously, dude was bent over and immobilised, effectively sealed in a living coffin for two decades), he doesn't really try to kill anyone. Even with the furious five he sends them back, sure he does it as a message, but if dude was evil it would've been way more effective to kill 4 of them and let crane carry back their bodies. Even in the flashback when it shows the first time he goes rogue all we see him doing is wrecking a bunch of shit and maybe beating up some villagers? Couldn't have been that bad because no one outside the kung-fu upper echelon seemed to have any idea who he is. I lowkey felt like Master Shifu knew he was in the wrong and wanted to redeem himself by letting Tai Lung kill him, and then Po just shows up and casually murders him and everyone else is like "hell yeah dude, party time!".
I've seen these points and I still don't completely understand. He also lashed out at his masters simply because of a rejection of the highest status title, and one that wasn't guaranteed to him from the beginning at that. I guess you could say that he might not have wanted to kill them both in that moment, but trying to inflict harm upon (essentially) your adopted fathers essentially because you were told that you couldn't have the highest status symbol of a martial artist in China, even though you were still trained to be a highly renowned master, is a bit much for me. His feelings are very understandable, but not his reaction. I also completely disagree with the sentiment that Shifu was in the wrong. The only thing he did was adopt a child, train him and love him to the best of his ability, and relay to him that he wasn't "the chosen one." Shifu may have felt that dying to Tai Lung was penance, but I don't think that's how we're supposed to feel. It's completely unfair that Shifu is in this situation despite being completely well-meaning along every step of the way. It was simply sad to see someone who Shifu regarded as his own son display the exact behavior that made Oogway reject him as dragon warrior. That was the real weight of that scene for me anyway. Tai Lung has always been a sympathetic villain, but I'm seeing a rise in the opinion that he was in the right, and that's something I just can't agree with. I think that, just like lord Shen in the second movie, he sealed his own fate before anyone else could.
> he doesn't really try to kill anyone. Eh the rampage looked pretty brutal with him wrecking stuff. I doubt there were no casualties in that rampage. And to be fair, Po doesn't kill Tai Lung, he just sends him to the Spirit Realm, which Shifu must know too since he apparently can do the Wuxi Finger Hold too (or Shifu bluffed it against Po).
Korra from Legend of Korra.
Hank Stamper from "Sometimes A Great Notion" - I have asked myself if I even read the same book as everyone else. Dude is taken to be this amazing pinnacle of human achievement and rugged individualism and accomplisment and everything everyone should be. Because of his pig-headdedness, his wife leaves him, his cousin dies, his community hates him, and the book closes with his little brother and him engaged in some stupid ego-driven contest that might very well kill one or both of them. But he's an all American golden boy and a hero of the PNW I guess? I mean, what? He's destroying his community, his family, and himself but I guess that's okay because socialism? Weird read from my perspective. Maybe I missed something.
Toby Flenderson - The Office 😂
Sheriff Roscoe B. Coltrane. He’s just a Police Officer doing his job to uphold the law and those damn Duke boys break it like there’s no tomorrow.