Overly Sarcastic Productions

If I took a stab at it, I would imagine Hyde would have been seen as a horrible villain in the day of the book; The monster hiding under your skin and the reason WHY we repress certain base urges. You repress them because indulging them would make you a monster. If not going to an extreme of Hobb's view on humanity; Humans are inherently evil at our base level.

It is interesting to consider that, while I feel confident Hyde would be the villain in the era the book was published, our social moors have shifted to where Jekyll would probably be instead seen as the villain, or at least a toxic product of society's expectations and taboos in a time unfriendly to 'Base Urges' which could be subtext to anything from masturbation and sex to homosexuality to drag. After watching the video, I'm kind of interested in re-reading the book and maybe trying to pen a script adaptation with the examination of Jekyll as the villain or tragic monster.

It probably wouldn't be that hard to spin either. He separates himself into two distinct forms and is horrified at the actions of the 'other', but the other is really just doing what he would do free of inhibitions and social fear/pressure/expectations. Most adaptations put this as 'He wants to kill and murder like Jack the Ripper' and that obviously makes Hyde bad, but if Hyde's wants are... instead exploring a deeply repressed interest in sexuality that would be unremarkable in our modern norms, he instantly becomes sympathetic. You could actually really color Hyde as normal to us, but utterly taboo by the norms of the time and that could be interesting. This could lead into an arc of Jekyll trying harder to suppress Hyde back inside, leading to erratic behavior and possibly the other dark actions (Murder, etc) stemming from those re-suppression attempts.

The problem is... if we're adapting the book, I don't know how to end this fight without it becoming 'Tragic Gay Death' trope. 'The Cruel World was not ready for him and he died because of it'. A trope I loathe.

Come to think of it. ATLUS might get some mileage out of the book for any upcoming Persona games, as the themes lend themselves well to the idea of a person's suppressing their shadow and putting on a mask to please society.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 2nd 2019 at 7:15:11 AM

The book could be seen as a an allegorical cautionary tale, that repressing your emotions and other "base urges" can lead them to eventually manifesting in a toxic manor.

Blue talks about Machiavelli:

Red talks about Nemeses:

Edited by jouXIII on Nov 15th 2019 at 6:22:28 PM

Let's do some history:

Sorry about doubleposting, Red is talking about Krishna:

I think a lot of the video can be summed up as "Phenomonal Cosmic Power + Kids being kids = Weirdness and Shennanigans".

Comments are a goldmine for that one:

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Nov 29th 2019 at 3:20:50 PM

We've got another Trope Talk episode today, this time talking about kaijuu. Red goes on about how kaijuu are often used to represent nebulous invisible fears like racism, nuclear power, climate change, etc.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Dec 13th 2019 at 9:12:26 AM

So which is the Trope Maker for Eldritch Abomination, Godzilla or Lovecraft?

In all seriousness, probably mythology.

Trope Maker, yeah, almost definitely mythology. Trope Codifier? Almost certainly Lovecraft

I haven't watched any of the godzilla movies, so the whole twisting nukes into a good thing was news to me, but god daaamn I'm immediately skeeved the hell out by it.

Edit: wrong thread

Edited by TheAirman on Dec 15th 2019 at 2:54:39 PM

These 12 Definitely Not Christmases are also rated on a scale of 1 to 10 on Holiday Creativity, Relevance to Plot, and Seasonal Message.

And of course Hogswatch came in first.

I kind of wish Hearth's Warming was on there. It was pretty much heavily apart of the My Little Pony Lore.

New Journey to the West video:

I remember finding this part of the story really funny when i was young (and it still funny now). However my favorite story arcs probably the Bull Demon King and the Iron fan Princess arc and the Fake Sun Wukong arc

Edited by BattleRaizer on Dec 28th 2019 at 8:15:57 PM

I'm still waiting for the arc where they all got pregnant.

Today Blue tells us four more stories of historical hilarity:

So we have:

• The corpse of Dante Alighieri got fought over by Florence and Ravenna, to the point that the Pope ordered Ravenna to hand over his sarcophagus. Ravenna did...but it turned out Dante's body wasn't in the sarcophagus. And since opening a sarcophagus was considered somewhat taboo, Florence couldn't call out Ravenna on this.
• Alexander the Great gets called off a conquest campaign because his tired troops insisted that if they crossed a certain river, they would fall off the edge of the world.
• How did Hellas become Greece? The Romans assumed that various city-states were colonies of Graia. When they realized that maybe that wasn't the case, they just ended up calling them Graecia. In Blue's words "Imperialism in a nutshell."
• Liechtenstein declared independence during a war between Prussia and Austria. They had an 80-man army guarding an Alpine post between them and Austria, but saw no action because Austria didn't even consider invading. When the army disbanded, they had 81 men because some Italian guy joined them because he wanted to live in Liechtenstein.

That's the wrong Helen I think

Today's episode of Trope Talk is about the Anti-Hero and how Red feels that the definition of "hero with unheroic qualities and/or lacking heroic qualities" is a bit too broad:

Honestly agree. Trying to say something as flexible and culturally specific as a hero, and then basically call it a not-hero is just inviting several, less clear definitions. It's a useful term to say what a hero isn't, but beyond that it's more like a collection of potential traits rather than an identifiable archetype.

Like a hero, anti-hero is a concept that is often based on what culture designates it as.