Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Yeah, but there lies the other edge of that sword. A bad status quo...replaced with something worse in mind because they think the current one doesn't favor them enough and would screw over the rest as long as they reap the benefits.

Killmonger, 2022's Riddler, All For One and such are those who see a genuinely corrupt system, but want to replace it with an even more twisted version of it because they operate on self-interests and such.

Edited by LoneCourier0 on Aug 17th 2022 at 10:16:36 AM

Frollo is not queer coded at all. He's generally not included in that category and, on top of that, the usual fanbases for most of the big campy Disney villains don't focus on him nearly as much.

RE: Zendervai ([1])

Oh yeah I remember the Babadook meme (kinda forgot it), but I didn't hear anything about Pennywise being in the same boat.

Oh yeah, of course if a story tries to paint a bad guy as sympathetic or well-intentioned, some of the fans are inevitably gonna root for them. You can say the same for Big Emps (of 40k) or Col. Quaritch (though I think the second one is more because of the heroes being unsympathetic).

Good point. Around last month this thread had a huge debate about changing the status quo in fiction. I quite like this take from Protagonist506.

It also helped that in the books Dany was an actual child. So the way she acted was, well, like a kid would. Thrust said child into ruling alongside motherhood, both literal and metaphorical, and you get a kid who can be on the way to falling apart.

It also doesn’t help the show itself downplays or erases the negative traits of other characters as well to get to that point. Like Tyrion becoming a full on hero when the point he killed his father is the point he becomes a vengeance seeking monster who wants to be a Toxic Influence on Dany so she’ll embrace all her worst traits to burn Westeros to the ground.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Aug 17th 2022 at 2:30:11 AM

I have noticed a trend of people complaining about child characters acting irrationally in media. You know, because real-life children and teenagers are notably sensible and emotionally stable.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 17th 2022 at 5:34:31 AM

D.W and Caillou are getting the brunt of those complaints.

Too much and they can be reminiscent of Scrappy Doo, but at the same time it's not unrealistic.

, is that really a new phenomenon? i thought the D.W. thing at least ran way back to the early days of the wiki. (Caillou always struck me more as memery than actual genuine hatred.)

No, the D.W thing began years after I came here.

People bitching about fictional children acting childishly is a tale as old as online fandom.

Edited by Perseus on Aug 17th 2022 at 8:17:57 PM

The DW thing is pretty recent. Caillou was generally pretty disliked the whole time. He's uh...actually a real brat. Like, to the point that even shortly after the show premiered, there were parents not letting their young kids watch the show because they were getting a lot worse in behaviour via imitation.

I've heard that Ikari Shinji and Kaname Madoka were likewise shat on by some people for acting like normal 14-year-olds facing life and death situations.

I see that is more indicative of how rare it is for children in media to get realistic protrayals as opposed to idealized or deliberately messed-up ones

I'll say one thing to consider is that real children are a pretty mixed bag. Real children range from "sweet" to "absolutely grating" and frequently switch between the two extremes on a dime.

It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that realistically portrayed children might across as grating. Realistic is not necessarily better.

Another thing is also that fictional children are ultimately mouthpieces of their (usually adult) writers. To use a metaphor, Kender in D&D are childlike people that steal because they don't know better. However, someone who chose to play them absolutely does know better.

So, you can think of it as being a doylist problem rather than a watsonian one.

continuing doylistically, children behave however is necessary to advance the plot of whatever work. D.W.'s role in the plot is to interact with Arthur in ways that teach the (presumed very young) viewer how to interact with their younger sibling; she's an asshole a lot of the time so that the show can hammer in "be nice to your little sister even when you're upset with her". it's natural that that can come across as annoying.

i don't know how applicable this is to Caillou, however.

I don’t think I liked Caillou much even when I was of the age that I watched the show. D.W., I think, was a bit more variable, but she was always written as more than a little obnoxious, and since much of the show is from Arthur’s, I think it’d natural that some people were going to find her annoying.

You think so? A bit strange, considering they have an ideology that’s usually given to the ultra-right wing factions. Though I suppose they’re ideal for the more apocalyptically-minded.

Children don't necessarily need to be whiny and annoying in the name of realism, but my particular pet peeve is when audiences criticize their decisions as if they should be expected to have adult knowledge and judgment. Heck, even adults frequently don't have "adult" knowledge and judgment.

More generally, people doing stupid things is a classic catalyst for a work's plot. If everyone acted rationally and sensibly at all times, it would be very difficult for many stories to happen. Consider all the plots that wouldn't work if the gang didn't split up, authority figures believed the scientist, or the castaways murdered Gilligan.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 17th 2022 at 9:00:24 AM

Caillou was a horrible brat on the show. In a way he was a cautionary tale for adult viewers showing why you need to establish boundaries for your children.

First of all, Co opting indeed is a thing everyone does, from progresive to facistic and everything in between, hell queer reader and people of color have co opted lovecraft even when the guy was like a super douche. It kinda sort of happens.

Now with the empire and first order is also a disconect between narrative and visual, I will said visually the first order(and the empire before it) look more impresive than the rebels who often have this dirty, unkempt look on then and the jedi often come as wooden. Narrative speaking the jedi are right and the narrative will always side with then, visually speaking? the sith look cooler.

What I mean to this? well, fiction often side with the memorable chararters and many people dont really want to root for bad guys so they create this narrative to brige the dissonance. people love Quaritch not because he have a point, he was cool, the navi wasnt so people just turn out the narrative and focus on the spectacle.

On child being childish: I will said this is a part when being "realistic" is annoying, it dosent help that grating child often are secondary chararters, when the child is the protagonist often they behave better.

Caillou notably was the protagonist. And he did not behave better.

Wow. Didn't know Cailou was such a demon child.

Go figure.

This one scene tells you everything you need to know about Caillou:

Yes, he's pinching his baby sister for no reason at all.

Apparently he bit her in the original book.

This comes up a lot, but I'll say it again.

There's a tendency sometimes for a work's villain to become the series icon, which in turn makes them close to being protagonists. In fact, sometimes they outright become the protagonist. Good examples include Godzilla and The Terminator.

These both work, mind you, because they actually don't have to be evil. They're also versatile enough that they don't strictly need to be symbols for a specific real-life evil.

This, of course, doesn't really work for something like The Empire, which can't easily be separated from fascism.

The Jedi and the Rebels do get the short end of the stick. The Rebels even moreso. I do think that both are a bit underrated and actually do have a cool factor to them that The Empire does not.

In the case of the Jedi I think the thing to emphasize is that they're cool and in control. Not in the sense of raw chaotic power like The Sith; but in the sense of awareness, finesse, and self-control. I'd tend to emphasize this, personally.

With The Rebels they also don't have a lot going for them. But I think what you can emphasize is them being Combat Pragmaticist and more...practical than The Empire. After all, if you look at rebel troops in Star Wars, they actually look more like a modern military than The Empire does.

According to the YMMV page on the series they apparently did remove or tone down his brattiness in later seasons?

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Aug 17th 2022 at 5:37:03 PM