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The Good Place Primer

Now that The GOT Place has gotten into the parallelogram aspect of the story, I thought it would be helpful to provide a primer of The Good Place. Spoilers are below the cut, but if you get a chance to watch the show, I really, really hope you do! It's a wonderful series that I'll recommend until my last breath.

But if you want spoilers, well, here are your spoilers:

The Good Place is a story about the afterlife and all its complications. In the original television series, we follow four humans (Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani & Jason), who have all died and made it to a neighborhood in the titular Good Place, as opposed to the Bad Place, where people get tortured for eternity.

To keep everything in order, the residents of the the Good Place are placed into neighborhoods that cap out at 300ish people. The separate neighborhoods are built by afterlife architects. The one that Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason end up in was made by a Good Place architect (Michael) and maintained by a walking Alexa/Siri/Hey Google not-a-robot (Janet).

The problems begin when Eleanor realizes that somewhere along the way, mistakes were made and she was mixed up with someone else. She doesn’t belong in the Good Place and the entire first season encompasses her attempts to covertly earn her place, as to avoid unending torture. Naturally. Chidi, who was an ethics professor, teaches her on how to be a good person when she confesses her real identity.

Ethics are a HUGE part of the show, with Kant and Plato and all these major philosophy icons getting mentioned, as well as discussions as to how people should do their best for themselves and for each other.

Here’s the thing - THE BIG SPOILER -

(last chance to back out)

Okay.

They’re all already in The Bad Place.

It’s a torture experiment, specifically made for the original four humans aka the eventual Soul Squad. On Earth, Eleanor was selfish and unkind, Chidi indecisive and wracked with self-doubt, Tahani elitist and concerned only with her status in the world and Jason had many issues, but being from Florida alone doomed him. Everyone else in the neighborhood is a demon in disguise, including Michael.

Janet is Janet, a kickass cinnamon roll who was stolen and meant to function in a real Good Place neighborhood and decides to stick around to help the four humans when she learns the truth. She’s wonderful.

So, as it turns out, every action a living person takes on Earth accumulates afterlife points. Those who meet a high threshold make it into The (real) Good Place. Very, very few make it in - which is a fishy thing they twig onto later.

Through shenanigans and banding together, the Soul Squad convinces Michael and Janet to join with them in an effort to earn spots in the actual Good Place. This takes some time, and it includes them meeting the Judge of the Universe, Hydrogen. Gen, for short. (Played perfectly by Maya Rudolph, btw.)

Michael, who always despised humans, and believed them incapable of change, learns the opposite is true and that all four people became better versions of themselves during their time in his torture neighborhood.

Because of this, he suggests to Gen that the Soul Squad get sent back to Earth, to get a chance to improve their point totals. They do, circumventing their original deaths and moving on with a new lease on life. None of them remember their time in the afterlife, but they each make great movements in becoming better people.

Of course, everything goes wrong.

It all comes down to the fact that no one has gotten into The Good Place in five hundred years. Turns out that the point accumulation system is broken and you can do one good thing (aka bring your mother flowers) but lose points for all the things that are associated but you can’t control (the effect of long distance transport on the climate, the pesticides used, the underpaid workers who cultivate the flowers, the crooked CEO who runs the company and is getting your money - you get the gist). Your good and kind choice ends up leaving you in the negative digits.

In the end, a decision is made to completely reboot the afterlife system itself.

The architects from The Good Place and The Bad Place join forces, paired up to run individual simulations on every person who has died. Everyone gets a chance to improve themselves in the afterlife, away from all the caveats and unknown factors on Earth that would otherwise doom them. Only then are they sent to either place for eternity.

The original four, Michael and Janet save the universe, basically.

I do hope, despite these spoilers, that you watch this show. It is heartwarming and so incredibly funny and the series finale is absolute perfection. Perfection. I sobbed so much when I first saw it and it still makes my chest feel all funny. The way this show makes you think about what humans are to one another, the beauty in the world and doing good for the sake of goodness - there's absolutely nothing like it.

Notable Characters That Show Up In The GOT Place:

Tahani Al Jamil - Former It Girl, Heiress, Model, Best Friends With Beyoncé, texts with the Dali Lama, etc. Her talent for name dropping is unparalleled. In the afterlife, Tahani learns to actually care about other people because it’s the right thing to do, as opposed to making her look good. In reflection of that, she chooses to leave The Good Place and become an architect for all the incoming souls, the ultimate way to selflessly help others.

Gen (The Judge) - A higher being unconcerned with the ins and outs of what is right or wrong, but will hear you out if you’re entertaining enough. Obsessed with Timothy Olyphant. I cannot emphasize how spectacular Maya Rudolph is in such a small role.

Shawn - Demon. Formerly Michael’s boss and current frenemy, but he will never, never, ever ever ever everevereverever admit to a soft spot for anyone.

Vicky - Demon. Takes over as Head Architect from Michael when it turns out she’s surprisingly well suited to the job. Drama queen. Terrible singer, but doesn’t let that discourage her.

Glenn - Demon. Hapless, goofy, the second demon after Michael who is willing to say that maybe humans aren’t entirely garbage. Kind of a sweetheart. Shawn’s favorite whipping boy. Bad Place Architect who helps train Tahani and (in the story) becomes her partner in afterlife tests.

Beadie - Angel and Good Place architect who trains Tahani. V nice. V bland, as The Good Place staff tends to be.

Todd - Demon/Bad Place architect/Lava Monster. Pretty chill dude, though.

Jeremy Bearimy - Often referred to as a Bearimy. Not a being, but a concept. Time in the after life does not run in a straight line with a strict beginning and end, but in a series or loops and twists that circles back upon itself. It looks like this:

The dot above the eye is not a typo. Don’t try to fully understand it, though. Chidi briefly broke his brain in his attempt to do so.

Thank you for reading and I hope you give the show a chance! ❤️

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random drawings of yj98 . drawing them doing normal teen shit is so healing. nothing bad ever happened to them and theyre all happy and living together and everything is fine ^___^

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sorry i really just don't vibe with the idea of tim's time as robin being characterized as this doom and gloom sad thing. like yeah a lot of bad things happened during that era bc the 90s and tim himself had some personal tragedies but like the point of his character was to bring light and hope back into an IP that needed it back so when people go all in on like "he saw it as a duty/job!" "it was a grim and sad time that he merely felt obligated to fix" it's like okay. guess we're ignoring that the purpose of his character introduction was to fundamentally heal a fractured IP not being a stopgap placeholder for 20 years. when you characterize tim's time as robin as fundamentally sad, the writers who hate robin and want bruce to an isolated broken man win. like they didn't show azbats deliberately distancing himself from and not listening to and eventually kicking out *tim/robin* specifically to show his descent into a grimdark batman who kills as a way to show the fanboys that wanted that they were wrong for no reason!!

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PEAKKKKK

Timstephlonnie but what if they all switched their mantles and teamed up

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Jack: You ruined my son.

Bruce: He was like this when he found me.

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My hc that golden lloyd can just spawn one of the golden weapons, not even to use it just for hype moment + aura

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Going through the Nightwing and Huntress miniseries and there’s actually this really interesting exchange between Dick and Barbara as they’re discussing a case.

Dick just had a fling with Helena, and there’s this implication — or maybe more of an acknowledgement — that Dick’s compulsion towards these sorts of short explosive romantic relationships is founded on a mixture of obligation and need for human interaction rather than any sort of sexual desire.

This, alongside context from the lead up to the fling, make it feel like Dick is simply desperate for any form of human comfort and believes the only way he can get it is through his attractiveness. He doesn’t even seem into the sex. He just can’t find another way to keep anyone from leaving him.

Combine that with the “every time someone’s even nice to you… this pathological need to-“ bit, which suggests Dick feels pressured to give sex as a form of paying people for emotional availability, and this makes me feel all sorts of uncomfortable.

I unironically think man just wants a hug, but at this point in his pre-crisis run, there isn’t a single person in his life who is willing to provide that emotional vulnerability on a consistent basis without a sexual trade-off.

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brothers of all time!

Tim first through on Dick getting a world record is buying him a Space Ranger medal 10/10 no notes

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yall… dickbats + batgirl!cass + robin!tim would’ve been such a powerful trio…

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"god i love that kid" -dick grayson, nightwing #110

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Cass's Batgirl covers always went so hard I'm glad that the new run is carrying on this tradition

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“both ways” said while dressed as the bi flag

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“Oh. So… if I annoyed people, I’d feel alive, too?”

Secret is truly the master of accidentally saying the funniest, most heartbreaking shit you’ve ever heard in your life.

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(whispers) dick and tim's relationship is the foundation of the post-crisis batfam. don't @ me. i'm objectively right

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Im a bit new to the comics, but im in the middle of my Batgirl 2000 read, and the further I get, the more pissed i get at the fancanon for her.

Shes speaking. So. So much in these later issues. She keeps a diary purely from voice recordings. She's hilarious and quick-witted, and filled with spite and joy and determination and I think it's lame as hell and borderline racist that people refuse to let her speak in their fan content and instead badly insert ASL onto her like its not its own language.

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The whole world at her fingertips.