kufothewriting

[kufothewriting]

The Internet Gaslit Me About John Walker: A Marvel Rant

Hey quick thing here but, uh, well, John Walker isn't and was never a meant to seen as a villain.

Ever since Falcon & Winter Soldier, when people get online and act like he's some persecuted saint or martyr, some part of me dies inside because they always fundamentally ignore or misconstrue the way the story (mostly Falcon & Winter Soldier, Thunderbolts is another rant entirely) treats him in favor of being contrarians and saying, "Well actually, I like this guy a lot despite what the writers did to him."

No, you don't. You like John Walker because of what the writers did for him. Walker being sympathetic is not an unintended flaw. It's a feature of his character that was deliberately portrayed time and again. It's not particularly unique to look at him and feel bad or sympathize with him--both Falcon & Winter Soldier and the Thunderbolts go out of their way to make you feel for him.

In Falcon & Winter Soldier, he wasn't portrayed as an enemy or a monster. He was a decorated veteran thrust into the spotlight by the United States government, asked to take up one of the most esteemed mantles in the world during an extremely turbulent time. He was trying his best to live up to the massive expectations thrust on him.

Bucky and Sam hating him isn't some sign of the writers forgetting their core personality traits. Sam worked with veterans, yeah, so what? He's automatically a saint walking, someone perfectly amiable and accepting even he's angry or afraid or slighted? He'd see Walker and salute him with a smile? Try to be nice even as he sees Steve in every movement Walker makes wearing that shield? Stop it.

They would have disdain for anyone picking up the mantle that wasn't Steve Rogers. Their closest friend died and this new guy comes in and takes his shield and starts trying to be friendly with them and you expect them to what, be on board with it? Be nice and friendly and calm? Be professional to what they consider a grave insult to the dead?

Their disdain for Walker might seem unjustified from an outside standpoint but the fun thing about emotions is that they don't need to need justification. Believe it or not, it's not bad writing for characters to be just be legitimately terrible to someone.

Sam hated the idea of a Captain America that's not Steve Rogers and Bucky hated the idea of Captain America that wasn't Steve or the one guy who Steve wanted to be Captain America.

Putting that aside, Walker himself is obviously meant to be sympathetic because the story goes out of its way time and again to make him appear that way. We see his friends, his family, his hesitation and indecision and his sense of inferiority. We see him try to justify himself, be affirmed by his best friend, be comforted by his lover. We see him at his darkest points, and we might be horrified or we might feel pity, but we're not meant to feel enmity for John Walker.

When he gives into his darkest urges and kills the terrorist, it's because his friend, the guy who understood him best, just died violently. And guess what? The United States government does not care at all that he killed the guy. Val literally says it. Why would America care about the life of a terrorist? The point is that it was a terrible look, savagely bludgeoning an unarmed and afraid man in the middle of broad daylight after he'd lost the will to fight. A PR and soft power disaster.

They throw Walker out like he's nothing. After they put the burden of the world on his shoulders. After they propped him up and praised him and fawned over him, they yanked the floor out from under him and acted like he's a madman who they never had anything to do with. It's unfair, and it's meant to be that way. He's obviously been slighted and spurned for one bad moment.

John Walker is good soldier. A great one. He follows orders and executes directives. He does not ask questions. He does not ponder the morals of his actions. He does not seek to understand the motivations or nuances of his enemies. He dispatches threats as he's directed.

Between him and Sam, he's the better soldier, which is exactly why he's the worse Captain America. Sam Wilson questions why the terrorist is doing what she's doing. He tries to engage the root problem and stop the discontent at its root source. John Walker walks in with a pistol and handcuffs and sorts things out the only way he knows how to.

The two are foils. John Walker is America. Violent and dangerous, shooting first, asking questions later. Subjugating his enemies with overwhelming force as he's directed. Steel and gunpowder to solve every problem.

Sam Wilson is what America wants to be. Idealistic, peace-making, solving issues through empathy and understanding. Violence as a recourse, rather than the first and only option. Negotiation, diplomacy, and kindness. Offering second chances, offering olive branches, espousing the ideals of freedom and equality that this country so thoroughly wants to believe that it embodies.

John Walker is not Sam Wilson's enemy or his villain. He's not a dark reflection of Sam, or Steve. He's a man who tried to represent a country as it is instead of what it wants to believe that it is.

He's a victim as much as he is a victimizer. He was meant to be that way. He has issues, and they're well-known. It's not that the writers don't know they're doing or that they treat him badly or that the people around him don't give him enough respect. In Falcon & The Winter Soldier he deals with people who are angry and grieving, and in Thunderbolts he deals with anti-social loners who couldn't care less about dignifying who he is or who he used to be.

No, John Walker is not misunderstood. He's a victim of a system that has well-documented tendencies of victimizing people. He's sympathetic by design, not flaw, and the way that people champion him is precisely because the writers did a fantastic job of creating a good character.

Kay, rant over, bye.

[kufothewriting]

Freedom Is Really Weird

(Spoilers for Attack On Titan / Sinners / Shadow & Bone / Hunger Games)

Freedom in stories is super funny because it's one of those broad overarching ideas where you never really know what you're gonna get until you see how the writer chooses to play it.

Like, I was watching Sinners the other day (great movie, check it out, it's as good as you've heard and better) and I thought the angle they played with "freedom" as an idea was great there.

People as impressive as the Smokestack twins--strong, unflappable, handsome, and nominally always the figures of authority in whatever room they walk into--are, for all their strength and all their money, rats trapped in a cage. They've gone from south to north and back, chasing a dream of being unconstrained and able to live how they wish without being beholden to anyone.

Unfortunately, their vision is barred by the cramped world they live in. The dream they spent years building gets demolished in the course of one night, and by the end of that night we know from the story's mouth that it was never going to last anyway. All they can do, all they've ever done, is chase a dream. Their freedom doesn't last. They can't build anything that remains, so they find their joy in their journeys, in the company of others, in the little moments they can find in a sunset or music or love. It's brief, but beautiful.

That's the freedom they're afforded by the small world they live in, and though they can fight and kill for more, that's all they'll have. That's the freedom they have. And from an audience perspective, it's noble. No one can argue against wanting to be unconstrained by a corrupt world.

Freedom has such a great ring to it because of the shared human desire for self-autonomy and independence. No one wants to be slave or servant or serf. People want to pen their own scripts and write their own destinies.

Freedom is a beautiful idea. In reality, no one is ever 100% free. We all live within the bounds of a society dictated by social and legal rules and consequences. Don't do this, or you'll go to prison. Don't do this, or you'll be scorned.

For most people, that's fine. They find freedom in the ability to live as they within the bounds of that society. But in a story where the world is so cramped or so hostile where people are unable to live as they want, then freedom as an idea gets weirder.

Take a look at one of the most ubiquitous freedom-chasers in media, Eren Yaeger. He's literally the poster boy for freedom because he won't stop talking about it. But his brand of the idea is inherently much darker.

He lives in a cramped world, but his view of gaining freedom isn't by reclaiming a sense of joy or peace in the smaller moments, but by tearing open the cramped world entirely and making sure that no one will ever be able it that way for him again.

This happens, of course, by committing omnicide. In destroying all his enemies, everyone who would ever think to hurt or cage him, he gets freedom by having no obstacles left.

Let's ignore the fact that he's basically a slave to the idea and other wacky time travel shenanigans. At the core of his actions, Eren can say he's chasing freedom and not necessarily be lying.

It's sort of like the spectrum with someone saying they want peace. Both the oppressor and the oppressed in any situation can say that they want peace and not be lying.

The oppressed wants peace in the sense that they'll stop being abused and violence will stop being inflicted on them. Peace through people choosing not to make conflict.

The oppressor, though, wants peace in the sense that they want to take as much as possible, own and control everything they desire, and not have anyone oppose them. in this sense, peace means quiet. It doesn't necessitate pacifism, but rather such overwhelming violence that no one will want or be able to resist after the fact. That peace comes through people not being able to make conflict, because any person who would even think to do that would be dead or enslaved.

Freedom is interesting as a principle and a theme in the same way. Characters of a vast moral spectrum, from the most lawful good to the most heinous evil, can champion freedom as their cause and still not actually be wrong in that description.

From what I've seen of the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen wants to be free, and her actions and beliefs in attempting to gain that freedom literally could not be more justified. She's forced to be a pawn in too many people's games. They make her a hero and a rebel martyr. They force her to watch lives being lost, force her to take lives, string her along in their self-centered machinations just because she had the unlucky fate of being a symbol.

Katniss, meanwhile, doesn't want any of this. She literally wants nothing to do with power or the people fighting for it. She wants to survive, and she wants the people she cares about to be safe, and that's it. No sane person could look at her and say her brand of freedom is "wrong actually" because it literally asks the least after being subjected to hell and back.

But, egad, whoops, another murderous maniac, The Darkling, wants freedom, and what does he do to get it? Instigate a coup and drown countless innocent people in a sea of shadows and monsters. For his and his people's freedom.

He lives in an unjust system, yeah, but he goes above and beyond in performing atrocities, gaslighting, and generally being the worst, and he justifies himself with his timelessness. He puts his body count on the bulletin board of his goals and keeps it moving, and he literally could not be less bothered by it.

Freedom justifies him to do anything and hurt anyone without a shred of guilt or remorse. Why would he feel bad, after all? He's doing it so his people can have somewhere to be free.

Freedom is an awesome idea, but its pursuit can be anywhere from "Woo, awesome," to "Uh oh, atrocities," because wanting freedom means wanting to not be contstrained from something.

Society. Rules. Oppressors. Enemies.

Put a face to the thing keeping a character from their freedom and spin a wheel on whether that thing is holding a gun or a gavel or a noose, and you can get a lot of different outcomes.

[kufothewriting]

Lately I've been violently obsessed with Hiroyuki Sawano like it's really bad and I don't know how to make it stop but hey it's been great for daydreaming fight scenes in the car and honestly as a person I don't think I need anything else

[kufothewriting]

Recently I've really liked looking at those characters who don't like themselves, but don't explicitly say it until someone else points out how worthlessly they treat themselves and says how they need to take care of and love themselves, much to the characters' non-understanding.

Like, it's not so much that they don't care as much as the fact that they never seriously considered the possibility of caring. It's something outside their purview, at best an oddity and at worse an obstacle in the way of them helping others. Self-care is an inconvenience in the way of their goals, but when they say that quiet part out loud they're often immediately and rightly rebuffed by the people who obviously care about them and think that that their thesis on self-care is astoundingly bad, so they only ever really show their flagrant disregard for their own lives when push comes to shove and they have to make the hard decisions between helping others and helping themselves.

What makes watching this decision fun is the fact that it never actually registers as a real decision to them. There's not two options that are either bad for them or someone else, there's one logical option and another that never once crosses their mind. It's a no-brainer that they'd take the bullet or fight the dragon instead of of their friends. How else could it be?

In reality seeing that sort of psychology in a person has implications that are sort of icky to say the least, but with a character it's deeply interesting to see the workings of a mind that's so focused on preserving lives from harm while simultaneously not even once stopping to consider counting itself as one of those lives.

[kufothewriting]

Honestly I think the greatest trick I ever pulled was convincing people on the internet that I'm a skillful and observant media critic with maxed out stats in media literacy and reading comprehension when in reality I'm not only one of the most easily entertained but also one of the most gullible people in the world.

Like, I remember watching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with my girlfriend a few years back, and both during and after the movie, I actually caught myself feeling bad for Snow. Not because he was a good guy or justified or played by a good actor, but because I felt that he was the product of an inhuman bourgeoisie environment that naturally fostered cruelty and bigoted ideals in its citizens as a necessary prerequisite to maintain itself (sidestepping the fact he was surrounded by people who purposefully defied this norm).

Somewhere in my head I think I actually considered him as much a victim of a broken society as the people he harmed, just in a much different way.

Then, I got on the internet and saw people talking about his thoughts from the book and realized that, no, I didn't know what I was talking about and that, yes, he was clearly meant to be a monster from the beginning.

Honestly, you'd think I would have noticed that from the start, but in my defense that was a while ago and I think Rodrigo's after credit song gave me a post-movie lobotomy by way of quality.

[kufothewriting]

I can't put into words how unspeakably selfish it was for Mark to make the conscious decision to sit by and  do nothing as his alt versions wrought havoc across the world. Was it understandable that he was concerned about Eve, and was it realistic that he cared more about her than the myriad people whose safety he only ambiguously cared for? Yes.

But that does not excuse his inaction in the face of a series of mounting dangers that only he could effectively stand against. There's concern, and there's carelessness, and Mark made the conscious decision to leave everyone else out to dry, and then just feel bad about it after. I love Invincible (guy and show), but it feels so insane watching him time and again choose himself over other people. The decision he made was fundamentally selfish, and it underscores the reason that Mark isn't the paragon he's considered himself to be (pre season finale). He's a good person, but a flawed one, and when he makes the decision to pick and choose his fights based on how he feels, people suffer for it. He's available only on condition.

Mark is someone who wants to do good, someone brave and bright and strong, but his altruism ends where his emotions begin. Mark's journey is about becoming a hero, but unfortunately for the people of earth during the Invincible war, he's not one yet.

.

[kufothewriting]

The fun thing about being me is reading or consuming a story I really like and immediately thinking to myself, “Man, this story is so good. I love it a lot. I should alter my plot and characters and magic system to emulate this one even though that wouldn’t make sense within the context of my story at all and would set me back an inordinate amount of time.”

[kufothewriting]

Vash is his people's greatest fan

and I love that. He is not just the city, he also cares about his people far above the value they can offer. He knows them by their names, not their jobs or titles. Whenever he interacts with them, he is genuinely kind and supporting.

I bet he is the kind of god that gets giddy over everywork his people do, whatever it is. A great open air performance of an epic? He is somewhere watching that. Every evening, even the rehearsals. Some child scribbling down a rhyme? He absolutely adores that! Some fishmonger plying their trade? Fascinating! They are calling out so loudly, moving so efficiently!

I like to think that Vash is the kind of guy that would love to take images of his people and all their crafts, great or small, high or low, and stick them to his fridge. (If he had a fridge. But. I think the concept is clear.)

[kufothewriting]

So, You Took Away Your MC's Powers

So, you took away your protagonist’s powers.

First of all, congratulations. Really. 

If you’ve gotten to the point of permanently depowering your story's central figure, it more than likely means you've reached or are approaching the end of your story and deliberately chose that specific option as the best way to wrap up an important conflict or plot point.

So let's talk about it.

Your protagonist, through some turn of fate, lost their power. 

An enchanted item, a bloodline trait, an inherited power—whatever it was that made the protagonist special or incredible or uniquely able to complete the plot has now gone away. Whether it was a deliberate decision made in the interests of the greater good or an unfortunate consequence of a dangerous decision that backfired or had unforeseen consequences, the result remains that the protagonist is no longer special. At least, not in the way that they were before.

As someone who’s been online a lot longer than he should, I can say first and foremost that it seems that there’s a lot of ill-will for this trope. Some people seem more than willing to scream from the rooftops that it’s bad writing and makes for a poor ending and that anyone willing to depower their character is in the same realm of cruelty as people who call online strangers slurs and then say they're joking when they get flak for it.

Is that true?

I’d personally disagree. It’s hardly that simple. In my opinion, few tropes are just bad or good, cut and dry. Stories are complicated, endings are tough, and when trying to decide how to wrap your narrative, sometimes it can be a difficult task to defeat the villain or solve the overarching conflict without having your hero take desperate measures. 

The depowering of a character can come in many different flavors, depending on the medium. For more battle-focused stories (cough cough shonen), a hero can lose their powers to an enemy’s tactic or in service of defeating a villain far too physically overwhelming for them to overcome by ordinary means. 

In some narratives, the protagonist’s power could be the cast’s power, and it might be the case that this power or its source is actually a major contributing factor to the reason behind the story's driving conflict. 

In that case, it would seem strange to solve the plot without directly addressing the core issue. If the power itself is the problem endangering our heroes’ way of life, then it stands to reason that taking out the problem would solve the issue in a neat little wrap, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So what’s the issue? Why do so many people seem to hate this ending?

Well, keep in mind this is all conjecture. But let’s start with a premise.

People consume fiction for a variety of reasons. Personally, I’ve been enamored with the creation of worlds, characters, ideas, and belief systems for as long as I can remember. Consuming fiction is something I doubt I could ever give up, and consuming fantasy is something you couldn’t pay me to. A protagonist with the ability to summon light or fire from their hands or transform into a dragon is just a certain type of wish-fulfillment alternate-reality hijinks that tickles my brain just the right way, you know?

Seeing a super-powered protagonist navigate through an unfamiliar world full of strange and incredible abilities is gratifying in a way that’s difficult to describe. I keep finding myself returning to these stories time and again. 

It’s not something based on age or maturity, but some inherent curiosity inside that asks, what if the world was like this? What if people were like this? What would it look like if these kinds of people, with these different abilities and emotions and ambitions, shared the same space? How would it change them, and how would it change the world around them? 

Even if you don't consider something like that fun to think about, I at least think that it’s interesting to lose yourself in the fantasy of a world so different from our own, where people are incredible in a way that feels so utterly divorced from our reality. At least, that’s my viewpoint. Whether or not you consider that escapist or not is up to you.

But when it comes to stories that have the protagonist lose their power in the end, there comes a sudden, staunch divorce from our immersion. The story that previously said, "Hey, look at this cool person and the cool thing they can do!" at its beginning turned around at the end and said, "Actually, this cool person and this cool thing they can do? We won't be having that anymore."

A gross oversimplification, but you probably get my point. Depowering a protagonist as the solution to the plot can feel deeply jarring, especially if that power or its source is something deeply connected to the protagonist’s character or something that in some way saved them, whether salvation was from a mundane life or a brutal murder in some backstreet alleyway.

Losing what makes you special can feel deeply hurtful, like a betrayal of trust. By no means is it a negative trope wholesale—I personally feel that the depowering of a character, though often unsatisfying, can be a good way to wrap up a narrative conflict or story arc previously infused with escalating stakes perpetuated from increasingly arcana or overwhelming abilities that most characters likely can’t realistically match with conventional means.

Still, for a lot of stories, a protagonist left depowered in the wake of a major event while all their allies and friends and even remaining enemies get to retain their abilities feels a bit like a gut punch. All they did for the world and for others, and in the end, they lost the thing that made them special. Regardless of how they feel about it, whether they hated their power or cherished it, unless the protagonist truly suffered as a result of their ability, it can feel like a sad thing to see them let it go. 

Depowering a protagonist isn’t a bad writing decision, but I feel like at its best it runs clearly into the bittersweet territory. Despite its narrative credence, it can feel unsatisfying, and for many, an ending with a character resolution (especially a protagonist's character resolution) that feels unsatisfying might as well be a bad ending. 

If a viewer walks away from a story thinking, "That shouldn’t have happened," it can be tough to woo them over with arguments of foreshadowing or sacrifice or skillful full-circle narratives the author established by going that direction. It’s tough both for creator and consumer, and I think that’s part of why the “depowered protagonist” ending is a bit of a sore spot for many people (And that’s not even getting into the gender dynamics of the “depowered” trope usually affecting more powerful, plot-relevant women than men).

It’s an interesting trope. I don’t think it’s bad at all—in its best form, I think an ending that depowers a protagonist in service of solving the major plot problem says that, yes, this new reality may not be ideal, but it was one that they reached after fighting and clawing and bleeding to make it through. It was an outcome born of struggle and perseverance and potentially, loss, but in the end, had they not done what they did, the world would be all the worse for it.

In stories where the protagonist loses their powers, the result that arises from that power loss is typically one that’s leagues better than what would occurred without it. And, in a way, that’s emblematic of real life. To create something, you have to give something up. To build a bond with someone, you have to give up time. To create an item, you have to give up materials. 

And to protect the things you care about? Well, you might have to give up what makes you special.

[kufothewriting]

I really like those analytical moments in battle scenes where a character has their internal monologue wherein they state a definitive rule of the magic/power system that cannot be broken or circumvented under any circumstances and then from that point of logic deduces that the enemy has to be using some kind of strategy or trick within the bounds of the power/magic system's logic, because the alternative is actually impossible.