Quotes / Eight Deadly Words

Anime and Manga

"With people like this, it doesn't matter if humanity goes extinct."

— The Lemony Narrator speaking the last lines of the show, Desert Punk

Comic Books

"Some lame Batman wannabe is doing what a bunch of other villains have already tried to do for some reason... "Remake the entire multiverse in their vision." I feel like I've already read this story, but I understood it better. Everything in the universe is turned upside down and jumbled like a greatest and worst hits album. I can't figure out what's going on. And the worst part about it all is... I don't care anymore."

— Superboy-Prime, Dark Nights: Death Metal, lampshading the problems with doing too many Crisis Crossover events.

Literature

"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. ... They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together."

— Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Live-Action TV

"One less character I actually like means one less reason to watch next season."

—Geoff Berkshire writing for Hitfix, on the Sons of Anarchy season 6 finale.

Podcasts

"You need characters that you care about, and you need emotional investment. And then the action and special effects and the slime and the aliens and the coolness is the icing on the cake. But you need 'a cake' to put icing on it. You can't just eat the frosting, or else, uh, it's too sugary and it's bad for you, and you get the diabetes."

— Half in the Bag, Alien vs. Predator rifftrack

Web Animation

"I guess the ultimate question is 'Why
Should I even bother to try?
Every last NPC
Fills me with apathy
Am I expected to care when they die?"

—Zero Punctuation on Wolfenstein (2009)

"There's no relatable humanity to give the shocking stuff context; we might as well be watching you smear ground beef on a RealDoll."

—Zero Punctuation on Agony (2018)

Web Original

Reed I cannot stand for a multitude of reasons. Mayweather I barely register. Put them together like this and you have the better character (Trip) bringing something out of the lesser one (Mayweather) but unfortunately the reverse is also true. Proximity to Mayweather means that Trip is pretty dull. He needs a vivid character to bounce off to really come alive. The sad fact is that when you remove the alien presence from a Trek show it lacks the interest of the other shows. You may as well be watching a show set on Terra Firma.

—Joe Ford on Star Trek: Enterprise, "The Breach"

Despite so much effort to control narrative pacing, most of the characters ultimately are treated as so much set dressing, and paired with some of the dialogue being outright forgettable when it's not being uncomfortable, we are presented with a world wherein the player is genuinely hard-pressed to care.

—The Lolcow Wiki on Revolution 60

Soulless. Not enough people on the development team gave a shit about this game, and it shows.

—Ross Scott on Wolfenstein (2009)

We never get beyond the surface-level with any of these characters and we don't get to know any of them well enough to become invested in their journey.

—Fiona Underhill on Night Hunter (2019)

If any one of these characters were to die in the first fifteen minutes of the film, I would not have cared one bit, because we are never given any reason to care. They feel like the exact definition of disposable horror movie characters.

— Caillou Pettis on The Grudge (2020)

"I have never cared about the crew of this Enterprise. I don't like any of them. I don't hate any of them, either. They're half-finished sketches, completely interchangeable with each other. Truth is, if I had liked the characters, I probably would have forgiven the show's glacial pacing, and all the musty old plots recycled from other Star Trek shows."

— The Agony Booth's recap of Star Trek: Enterprise, "A Night In Sickbay"

Web Video

"IS EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE FILM A LOATHSOME CAD?!"

—Oancitizen regarding Ken Park

"As far as I'm concerned, Doctor Doom succeeding in what he's trying to do would have been a more interesting movie than the one that we actually got!"

—Chris Stuckmann, on Fantastic Four (2015)

Mr. Pickles, do you really want me to get offended? I can't be offended if I can't fucking care. You've given me no characters to gravitate to. Your setting never started anywhere sane or rational. Your jokes never made me laugh because each and every one of them is stupid and predictable. There was no effort and no potential for anything."

—The Mysterious Mr. Enter on Mr. Pickles

"I DON'T FUCKING CARE! And you know why? Because I never once heard anyone in this story say "I 'feel' this." or "I 'like' this." or "I 'wonder' this." There are no emotions being addressed. Traditional storytelling is setting up a character, sending them on their journey, and learning more about them through their journey.
[...]
This isn't me being angry that it's different from [Avatar: The Last Airbender], this is me being angry that it's missing the most essential element of telling any story: If the character can never express any emotion, why should the audience ever express any emotion?

— The Nostalgia Critic on The Last Airbender

"I'm sorry. We're supposed to like someone in this movie, right?"

— The Nostalgia Critic on Deck the Halls

"Who the hell are we supposed to care about in this movie?"

—Phelous on Cabin Fever

"It's two sides you don't like, fighting over a city you don't care about, for the fate of people you don't know."

—Dark Lord Jadow 1, towards the end of his Inhumans review.

"I knew what was going on, I just didn't care."

—Brad Jones from the Midnight Screenings review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Producer: The protagonist was just kind of dragged into somebody else's adventures and everyone's kind of evil, so it doesn't really matter who gets there first.
Screenwriter: That's right.
Producer: So what part of the story are people supposed to care about?

—Screen Rant Pitch Meetings, on the conflict over the Fountain of Youth in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

"Running this script, I just realized that I, one of the most opinionated people I know, couldn't form more than two strong opinions about Dark Souls 2 base game bosses. It's really telling about how little of an impact they left on me. That's not to say that I hated a majority of the bosses, I just don't really care about any of them, and on some level that's worse."

—Feeble King, Another Hate Filled Critique About Dark Souls 2, but I REALLY Tried to Like It!

slowbeef: To be honest, do you think [Mike Dawson] did [the murder]?
Diabetus: I would think no.
slowbeef: Who do you think did?
Diabetus: Well the problem is I don't really care. It's like an episode of Scooby-Doo, I don't really care who did it, I just want to see the thrilling chase.

—Retsupurae, Wrongpurae on Dark Seed II

Real Life

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."

— Elie Wiesel

"I like to become emotionally involved in a movie. I want to be scared, I want to cry and I never cared for THX because it left me cold. When the studio didn't like the film, I wasn't surprised".

— Marcia Lucas on THX 1138

"The first time I missed TWD I had the intention to watch it on the reruns, but when the day came for the episode I had skipped, laziness got the better of me. I realized I didn't care about Rick, Carol, King Ezekiel, the zombies, the tiger or anyone else.

And that's why I stopped watching, because the desire was taken from me, and it didn't come back when I read news that the show could be extended for two more seasons. A show where I get the feeling that there isn't a plot moving forward.
[...]
That's why I won't mourn Carl's death. Because I don't care, I don't even hate him anymore. He and his people bore me."

Mike Medianoche on The Walking Dead

"The ultimate barometer for a film's success is whether it's more interesting than watching the same actors having dinner."

— Gene Siskel

"Stories are, at bottom, about people (or people-analogs, like anthropomorphized talking animals). But more than that, they’re about people or people-analogs that the reader cares about. Hooks and cliffhangers, opening In Medias Res, lots of fast-paced action, brilliant Worldbuilding, intricate plots – all these things that are supposed to get readers interested in a book and keep them reading – won’t matter if the reader doesn’t care about the characters on some level."

— P.C. Wrede, The Eight Deadly Words

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