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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

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don't wait for tumblr to give u more tags. go off about tony and steve and zola pls i am humbly requesting

As a part of my ongoing war on my ask box this is a very old post regarding a tumblr tag essay i made forever ago. i half answered this ask when it came in and then forgot to finish. without further ado:

Anon is talking about this post about Steve and Tony’s relationship. I HIGHLY recommend the original post it's great but i copied the original tags essay below since it's been so long since the ask arrived.

#I feel like anyone who writes Tony stark for marvel should have to go watch bojack horseman first as like a mandatory assignment#because that show understood the premise of Tony stark better than any MCU writer ever has and it wasn’t even writing for tony stark#in sum bojack horseman follows the titular bojack who is a washed up 90s sitcom television star#bojack himself is extremely self destructive and the show follows him as his selfish and egotistical tendencies erode at his relationships#However bojack himself is an extremely sympathetic character. his harmful acts are all tied very directly to the trauma of his life#he’s a survivor of generational abuse whose own substance abuse problems stem from the fact that he was in such a neglectful environment#that he had started drinking at an INCREDIBLY young age got himself sober only to relapse due to a spiked drink after fame

#this sympathic is increased by the fact that he does geninuinely love and care for his friends and often goes to extreme lengths to show it#but what the show understands that MCU writers dont is that his tragic past doesn’t excuse the harm or pain he causes and the show goes to#LABORIOUS extents to emphasize the consequences and suffering his actions cause in his attempt towards making amends#it is FASINCATING to me that MCU just fails to grasp this because it’s really the core of Tony’s character. his story is one of redemption#and regret. but what it never seemed to get is that requires recognition of wrongs and change and his relationship with steve is a prime ex.#when they meet tony is 40+ and Steve is 23-25. steve has been awake from world war 2 for less than 2 weeks everyone he loves is dead and hes#visibly haunted by his time in the ice. his ptsd flashbacks to crashing the plane is how his character is introduced. Tony spends the time

#calling him ‘capsicle’ and talking about how much he can’t stand steve. the narrative plays it off as a gaff of little consequence but#practically speaking that’s INSANE. like can you imagine you’re a traumatized war vet who got out of a coma 2 months ago and woke up to#discover everyone you ever loved is dead and this stranger twice your age at your new work nicknames you coma boy and hates your guts bc of#his daddy issues? like Tony in avengers is borderline cruel but the narrative and the fandom never acknowledge it. it’s like removing the#laugh track on a scene from one of those old sitcoms and realizing how mean it is. and while we can fully acknowledge that Howard hurt Tony#that doesn’t make it Steve’s fault and doesn’t give Tony the license to take it out on him. like at the end of the day your healing is your#responsibility and the MCU fails to grasp that with Tony. honestly it does a disservice to the depth of his character b/c Tony should have#already grown past this by the time of Avengers. he had already gone through iron man 2 and grappled somewhat with his relationship w howard#while that doesn’t mean he’s healed yet it does mean that his character needs to learn to grow past it or he risks stagnation. mcu just#happily embraced stagnation and it made the character worse for it. Theres a scene in the comics where Tony is the first to reach out to#Steve post ice. he takes him to the air&space museum and welcomes him to the future. THATS the growth we want. Bc fundamentally even if we

#sympathize for Tony’s abuse by Howard lashing out at someone who was functionally dead at the time of ur dads mistakes is a very juvenile#mindset. /growth/ is deciding to be better than the person who hurt you and the MCUs obsession with blaming Steve for howard cut that off#CW would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING if Tony had formed a relationship with Steve bc Steve would be torn between past and present but#instead Tony is saying how much he hated Steve during the fucking movie and Steve’s taking it with grace. like you’re 50 man you gotta work#past this at some point. out of tags but I have Opinions about Tony and actually zola too but we won’t get there give me more tags tumblr

Fundamentally, my issue with Tony and how he's written for the MCU is that he has the potential for one of greatest redemption arcs ever and the writers are fucking allergic to giving it to him, and his dynamic with Steve is a a prime example of it. How poorly Steve's relationship with Tony was mishandled is a pretty perfect case study as to how Tony as a character was mishandled as a whole.

As stated in the Tumblr Tags Essay above, by the time Steve came on the scene, Tony should have already grown past his hate for Steve. To be clear, that is not saying he should have gotten over Howard or any harm that he suffered as a result of his. Howard was his parent who was, to some degree, at least emotionally neglectful, if not abusive. Healing and learning helping coping mechanisms does not demand you forgive your abuser.

But Steve was never his abuser. He's a 20-something year old guy who has been trapped in a block of ice for Tony's entire life and who woke up two weeks ago to find out that everyone he ever loved is dead or suffering from alzheimer's and that his sacrifice was for nothing because he was just told the thing he drove a fucking plane into the fucking arctic over is Back Again Because We Learned Nothing.

And the thing is that the realization that "This man can hold literally no complicity in my abuser because he was frozen in the Arctic Circle the entire time" requires a level of emotional maturity you generally achieve at the age of thirteen or so. Tony is fucking fifty. Mentally, he's over twice Steve's age. At absolute best, the way Tony treats Steve from the outset is immature and more accurately it's downright cruel. Voluntarily killing himself by driving a plane into ice only to wake up and discover that he has lost everyone he ever loved is undoubtedly one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to steve, and he just woke up from it. He is two weeks out from this. He's actively having flashbacks of what happened right before Tony starts cracking jokes about it. It'd be like if Steve walked up to Tony right after he got back from Afghanistan and called him Waterboarding Boy and everyone treated it like it was a cutesy character trait.

That's one of the most egregious parts of how Tony's character is written--things that are objectively things that need to be addressed in his character arc area treated like acceptable and borderline justified quirks in his personality. Tony's relationship with his father is one of the cornerstones of his backstory and who he became. While he doesn't have to forgive his father on the road to recovery, he does have to realize when he's using it as an excuse to hurt others and stop it.

That's also something he never does, and one of the reasons why i think that the writers for him need to watch Bojack horseman. In the same movie he's claiming to that he was Steve's friend, he's still saying to his face how much he fucking hated him over things that happened when Steve was supposed to have martyred himself to save the world.

There's multiple parts of Tony's character that could have formed the basis of an amazing character arc if he grew and improved from them, but the narrative refused to even recognize them as problems, let alone have him overcome them, and his relationship with Steve is a perfect example of it. The writer's refusal to recognize that brings down the quality of his entire arc and cheapens him as a character.

If Tony had been allowed to recognize that Steve was not to blame for his father, accepted it, and given a man half his age who just lost everything a lifeline, that would have shown an amazing amount of growth. Instead, they left him as immature and cruel. It's a shame and an insult to the potential of his character, and it's a mistake that they repeat again and again. Tony was supposed to be completely against developing weapons for others, but he canonically helped build a major part of Project Insight. Tony's entire stance in Civil War was meant to show that he had accepted that he made mistakes and that he needed to be held accountable for his actions, but then he went and unilaterally built EDITH, whose existence violates multiple international treaties including the Accords and had so few safety precautions that a teenaged boy was able to accidentally call out a missile strike on his teenaged classmate. He's in a movie where he's driven by his guilt for causing the death of someone's college-aged son, and in that same movie he blackmails a high-school-aged boy to join in on a fight he knows nothing about, that goes directly against his interests, and could get him killed even if he was certain that Team Cap wouldn't use lethal force. Rhodey got paralyzed from the waist down from friendly fire. Tony had a moment in the same fight where he had reason to fear that Peter had been injured if not killed.

Ultimately, Tony's entire character is built on a foundation of repentance and growth. That's why he has so much potential and why he's so compelling. The fact that his writers were unable to recognize when he even needed to repent, let alone allow him to grow, was honestly insulting to what he could have been.

Zola:

The reference to Zola is actually more of a response to fandom’s response to Zola as a whole than the actual specific person who made the comment.

Overall, the majority of fandom response that I've seen just seemed to be sort of besides the point? The thing about Armin Zola working for SHIELD is that I personally have only seen discussion about this in context of talking about how Peggy and Howard are Bad or talking about how steve would feel betrayed when he discovered it. To be honest most of the discourse I’ve seen has just been about hating Peggy Carter and using this as a sledgehammer in that discussion.

It’s not that I disagree with that reading of it—like, I do think Steve felt betrayed by the realization that Zola was recruited in the end, and I think it’s bad to have recruited literal Nazis—but I do think that fandom elevated the most tangential point of it to the detriment of its entire narrative purpose. I've only ever personally seen it used in character discourse and shipping wars--which like, anyone can draw on any plot point they so choose while participating in fandom. But Zola's recruitment was the thematic core of Winter Soldier, and it always seemed kinda weird to me that it was treated as a personal defect in Howard and Peggy when it was the entire argument of the movie and one of the best social commentaries that the MCU ever made.

Zola gives what I think is one of the better MCU villain speeches in the bunker about how Hydra recovered after the war. He states that they realized that taking the freedom of the world by force only galvanised people against them. It led to their own downfall. But he explains that Hydra realized that the people of the world would freely give away their own rights and freedoms if you made them comfortable. If you say you’re doing it for their own safety and comfort, then they’ll effectively look the other way while Hydra seizes control of the world. And that entire monologue is bolstered by the fact that that is exactly what happened in Zola’s case.

Zola was brought into SHIELD as a part of operation paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a post-war initiative by the United States government to recruit key Nazi scientists into United States scientific development. This entire initiative was brought about in response to the Cold War arm’s race and it was justified on the basis of dire national security need. Both America and the Soviet Union were EXTREMELY CONCERNED about losing the cold war. As a result, they were willing to take pretty much any strategic advantage they could, including After, President Truman, who gave the final go-ahead for the initiative, said that "this had to be done and was done."

Even after it became public knowledge, it was defended as more of a necessary evil and the cost of the practicalities of governance than a world power welcoming war criminals with open arms. Multiple participants have been linked to human experimentation, slave labor factories, etc, though none were ever formally found guilty of anything--which may be because the US aggressively whitewashed their pasts and then went so far as to help relocate one of the members of the initiative to Argentina.

This was, again, all a part of the Cold War arms race with the USSR--who had an identical program going at the same time, Operation Osoaviakhim.

En arguendo, let's just assume that all of this was done with the best possible intentions and execution. The nominal rationale was the Cold War. While analyzing the Red Scare and the entire Cold War period would take way too long, I think a solid premise we can agree on is that nuclear war is bad. It would have been disastrous for anyone alive if the Cold War had escalated, and recruiting top scientists from the Nazi regime 1) kept the USSR from doing it instead, which they were actively doing, and 2) helped prevent strategic advantage in one country or another that may have led to an escalation. Now, I'm not a historian, and all of these premises can naturally be debated, but these were the like, best faith premises that world leaders had at the time. If you want a nuclear deterrent, you need the biggest stick.

The thing is that, if you assume these premises as genuine for the sake of the argument, the absolute best this leaves you with is doing a very bad thing for a very important government purpose. You're supposedly preventing nuclear war, but you're doing so at the cost of justice for all the people who suffered at the hands of these people, and the risk of future harm that they may cause.

Which, thematically, is the core of the Winter Soldier.

I've usually seen Zola's recruitment discussed in terms of Peggy or Howard making the decision to let him in, when in reality, they probably didn't make the call themselves so much as become complicit in it later. Zola was captured and recruited right at the end of CA:FA (he later clocks this at 1945) but Peggy and Howard didn't even have an organization at that point, let alone the power to recruit a head Nazi scientist. This was two decades before SHIELD was ever founded, and if we take the Agent Carter series as binding canon, at the time of Zola's transition into American government would, Peggy had so little sway that she couldn't even get anyone to listen to her, let alone recruit a nazi scientist, and Howard was potentially on the run and definitely not involved in any formal governmental decision making. Even if you assume that they were somehow in charge of a government agency at the time of Zola's recruitment, the actual recruitment and function of Operation Paperclip was conducted by independent agencies (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and the Counterintelligence Corps) that Peggy and Howard weren't a part of, and the person who made the call for Operation Paperclip itself was The Literal President Of The United States. Whatever way you cut it, Peggy and Howard probably had nothing to do with Zola's initial recruitment--what most likely happened was that two decades passed (the time between Zola's recruitment and SHIELD's founding) and when resources were being allocated some big-shot in the overseeing body was like Yeah You Do Weird Stuff? We Got A Guy Who's Been Doing Weird Stuff For Us For Like Twenty Years and then when Peggy and Howard saw him they were like Oh Its This Motherfucker.

To be clear, this is not at all to absolve howard and peggy for working with a guy they knew did literal human experimentation because he did it on one of their best friends. But this is to more clearly reframe it from Decision They Personally Made to The Ways Being At A Certain Level Of Government Makes You Complicit With Horrible Things, which perfectly encapsulates the heart of the movie.

At the open of the movie, Steve is visibly on a fucking ledge with SHIELD. Fuck, Fury and Nat spend most of the opening trying to keep him from flying the coop. And it's because Steve for the very first time has to grapple with the consequences of being an active participant in a governmental body.

Straight up--Steve spent the entire war going AWOL. His entire military career was spent doing what he wanted and flipping his superior officers the bird. The man was a terrible fucking soldier but by the time anyone figured it out they had already given him a comic book and the Medal of Honor and the man could bench press a tank it was simply too late. Then, he got encased in ice for 70 years, woke up, had two weeks of fun future integration activities like Not Getting Therapy For His Problems and Looking At Pictures Of His Dead Friends, got tapped in because they fucked up with the exact thing he lost everything to stop, immediately went AWOL again, almost died again, went on a roadtrip of self discovery, and at some point between then and CAWS started working as one of the main STRIKE members of SHIELD. This is likely his first time having to ever deal with the realities of being a hand of the government.

One of the most insidious things about high-level government work is there's rarely some Main Guy sitting behind a desk signing Evil Decrees and responsible for everything. Power is allocated and things get messy very quickly.

Take Ghost for example. One of SHIELD'S Main Guys falls out with another Guy, smears his name, which makes the Ex-Guy so desperate that he takes unnecessary risks in his experiments that predictably blow up in his face and leads to his young daughter having a debilitating power that results in her uncontrollably phasing through objects. Another Guy tries to do the right thing and help her, but Other Main Guys think "This kid would make a GREAT assassin" and leverage a cure for her debilitating health condition into turning her into a forced operative. This health condition starts to kill her, but the Main Guys were so happy with their new forced assassin that they never looked for a cure to begin with and was going to use her until she died. She goes rather reasonably goes AWOL, and in her attempts to cure herself, she's willing to do just about anything to get cured, and including contemplating kidnapping Scott's daughter as an option.

Steve obviously wasn't called in to help with that (he was AWOL himself at that point) but assume he was--he would only get pulled into this mess at the very end when all the damage is done and there's a highly unstable assassin kidnapping little girls. SHIELD was at fault for every horrible thing that happened to this person. He has a strong sense of justice, and he'd likely to be furious to find out that SHIELD took an orphanged child and abused their incredibly painful and terminal medical condition, which was indirectly caused by them, in order to force them into becoming a highly skilled operative.

But there isn't just one person that he'd be able to find and blame for what happened with this--culpability was stretched out over Multiple Main Guys who made bad decisions, a lot of Lower Guys who built the suit, trained her, handled her in the field, and experimented on her to learn her limits, many of whom likely didn't even work for the organization any more.

Who do you go after for that? The Main Guy who smeared her dad? But he didn't have anything to do with the assassin business or the actual accident. The Main Guys who made the calls for the assassination thing? Better candidates, but is it that simple? What about the guys who just get orders every day and have no decision making authority, who were handed a little girl who was vulnerable and in pain and told to train her to kill? What about the ones making a child-sized tactical suit with no details about what was going on but who had reason enough to suspect it wasn't all good? They were just following orders, but so were Nazis working the camps.

How do you go after people for that? Fire them? It's been decades. Most are probably retired. And that's a pretty lame punishment for what they did. He doesn't make the calls for legal action, they definitely have qualified immunity for their decisions, and there's a whole host of problems with proving anything.

But, on the flip side, what does he do about Ghost? what happened to her is terrible, but if she had kidnapped Cassie Lang, he couldn't exactly sit on his hands and let it happen no matter the justification. There's a very good chance he has to stop her and become another link in a chain of what's been a lifetime of abuse. Things get messy when you're just a cog in the machine of a sprawling agency that has a lot of power to abuse.

While we don't know what Steve's been doing while he worked for SHIELD, we do know that it pissed him off to high heavens. The very first thing we see him doing for SHIELD is recapturing the off-course Lemurian Star from pirates, and he is the exact opposite of a dutiful soldier during it. He doesn't just salute and follow his orders without question--one of the first lines of his mouth is calling them out for lying about the ship being in those waters because it was off-course. He's like "Oh, so it's not off course, it's trespassing" to which Nat says "I'm sure they had a good reason" and Steve replies "I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."

He's saving the hostages, and then all of a sudden he finds Natasha in the control room downloading the drive and realizes that this was about SHIELD's data to begin with but no one clued him in on that fact. He's pissed because the hostages could have died, which is a fact he immediately goes after Fury about.

There is so much character jammed into those few minutes of screen time. This is visibly an old argument--at one point, Fury says to him "It's damn near getting past time for you to get with the program, Cap" to which Steve tells him not to hold his breath. Steve doesn't like or approve of a lot of SHIELD's actions, but he's called in after all the bad things they did went to shit. Like, what's he going to do--say, sorry, the Lemurian Star was obviously Up To Some Shit that I don't want to be a part of, RIP to the hostages but I'm just going to let them get shot in the head? He's the janitor and he's sick of getting called into SHIELD fucking something up through their own immoral actions and calling him to pull their ass out of the fire. He spends the entire first half of the movie on the verge of flying the coop entirely, and Nat and Fury visibly know it and are trying to get him off the ledge in every interaction they have on screen with him--which directly contributes to the fact that Steve doesn't trust either of them for the first half of the movie.

It also is likely the motivator behind why he does ultimately trust Sam. Steve spends the first half of the movie getting Managed. He's increasingly pissed and distrustful of SHIELD and its agents, and he's got good reason to be--Nat and Fury hide things from him and keep trying to persuade him to stick with the program (to be clear Nat's (and to a somewhat lesser extent Fury's) own actions and whether any culpability for things like project insight could possibly be imputed to her has to be analyzed under an entirely different lens due to the difference in her personal history and character type, but this is already way too long to tackle that here. this isn't actually meant to assign blame to her, but more to analyze the likely results on steve). Fury takes him for a tour of his Fascist Death Machine and tells him that's what the world needs. The neighbor he was growing increasingly intimate with was a SHIELD agent who lied to him about her name and the fact that she was spying on him. At the end of the day, the majority of the of the early movie is spent with his desires and principles are treated as secondary and unwanted complications to the fact that they really need him to keep throwing that shield on SHIELD's behalf (whether this is actually what nat and fury specifically are trying to do is, again, a separate analysis we don't have time for, this is just to go to how it likely affects and appears to Steve).

Sam, meanwhile, is beautiful and charming is the only one who openly expresses a genuine concern for Steve as a person and not steve as a solider. Sam spends the entire first half of the movie reaching out to someone in a position he's been in himself and trying to get him help. his entire first meeting with Steve is defined by him trying to help a fellow Vet recover from war. he tries to gauge where Steve's at with the future, invites him to the VA, and packages it in a easily-seen-through excuse that gives them both plausible deniability--Steve can come by and get the help he needs not as Captain America The Man The Myth The Legend Who Is Really Fucking Struggling, but as Steve the guy helping Sam impress the girl at the front desk.

When he comes to the VA, Sam has the direct opposite response that everyone else in the movie has to Steve questioning his place in SHIELD and in government work--he's like "Quit. Quit now. Be free and beautiful like me. become an ultimate fighter or whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't give two shits about what the world will do without Captain America keeping it safe--he just cares about what Steve needs.

This all goes to a greater analysis about how Sam is beautiful and charming the perfect parallel to Steve, the only one who could possibly have taken up his shield, and actually wrong in that line he says about how he does what Steve does but slower because he consistently decides to do the right thing before Steve is another analysis that would go too far off the point to get into. The point being is that Sam exists in the narrative as the direct opposite and alternative to the reality fury and nat offers Steve. Steve spends the beginning of the movie with Nat and Fury seemingly sacrificing the means for the end, but there's Sam, beautiful and charming someone who made the same decision he's now faced with, being like "fuck it. sometimes you have to walk."

Steve's entire struggle about his position with SHIELD reaches its climax when he first finds out the truth of Project Insight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, SHIELD secretly being infiltrated by HYDRA has no effect on how wrong Project Insight was from the start--it just emphasized how horrifically wrong it could go. But "Space Super Death Weapon That Can Immediately Kill Dangers To National Security" is a bad idea no matter who is in charge of it. First off, Steve is right--punishment follows the crime. No government has a crystal fucking ball and anyone who justifies things on the basis of "taking out threats ahead of time" is talking out their ass. to be clear, i'm not saying you need to wait for someone to be on a plane and flying at the twin towers to stop a terrorist attack--in law, we have a designated level of "closeness" that lets us say "yeah you were totally actually doing what we don't want you doing" at which point you can charge them with attempt, and often a lot of the earlier steps leading up to the Big Harmful Thing are actual crimes you can intervene with.

Project Insight was the flagship of of a "quantum surge in threat analysis." It did exactly what it was designed to do: it took out threats before they became threats. The only difference between SHIELD being at the helm and HYDRA is who gets defined as a threat. HYDRA would have defined that as anyone from a high school valedictorian in Iowa to Stephen Strange, but it's not any better if SHIELD's defining that as some random kid in Afghanistan who shows whatever traits show a risk for one day becoming a combatant.

And yet, steve's the only one in the movie who says this. We don't actually know how much Nat knows about Project insight itself, but Fury is fully aware and a participant in it, and Tony Stark apparently took one look at the thing and said "your engines are shit. i'll improve them." Steve takes one look at them and calls it fascist bullshit.

At the end of the day, you can never justify shit like this under the assumption that the people controlling it will use it for the best, because you cannot trust the people controlling it. Yeah, Project Insight was probably pitched with being used against the worst threats. Dangers to public safety, terrorists, that kind of thing. Do you want to know who else was considered a danger to public safety? MLK, who the FBI fucking murdered. The people who define threats to national security are the ones who have the same incentive to maintain the status quo in an unjust world. Even if we assume Project Insight was made to stop the next 9/11, we also have to assume that at least some of the strikes it would have carried out under not-HYDRA control would have been for the wrong reasons.

What the fuck does all of this this have to do with Zola?

Operation Paperclip and Peggy and Howard's decisions within it directly mirrors Project Insight and Fury's decisions within it, directly mirrors Steve's journey and central conflict over the course of the film, and directly contrasts with the alternative Sam poses within it.

CA:WS at its thematic core, says that initiatives that sacrifice justice for claims of national security and public safety are exactly what robs us of our rights and freedoms and ultimately endangers us all. It's not even subtle--Zola says it out loud in his evil villain speech. but operating at a high level in a government agency puts you in a position where you're meant to make that decision again and again, even if we assume you have the best of intentions.

Peggy and Howard were people who believed that they had to make the hard decisions to save the world. They were handed a decision where perception of culpability was obscured by how distributed out the blame was, and the direct public benefit to national security was posed to be overwhelmingly good. It leads to SHIELD's infiltration. Project Insight went through on the exact same reasoning. Fury, Maria Hill, possibly Nat, and Tony (off-screen) all do the exact same thing and justify the means by the end, and it leads to the helicarriers being made.

Steve spends the movie being told, explicitly, to "get with the program" and start making the same decisions. His central conflict is being someone on the inside of this club, being told that he needs to start understand what keeping the world safe demands, and his journey leads to him refusing to do it. The climax of the movie is a character so minor that we never learn his name refusing to launch the helicarriers with a gun pointed at his head, even though the complicity he carried in it would have been just as attenuated as Steve's was as SHIELD's janitor. And all throughout it, there's Sam, someone who left the military explicitly because he couldn't follow the rules he was being given anymore.

Peggy and Howard's decision to go along with Zola in Operation Paperclip is a direct parallel of the decisions Fury made with Project Insight and the decisions Steve ultimately refuses to make himself. Making Peggy and Howard complicit in what let in Arnim Zola encapsulates the entire core argument of CA:WS and it's so weird to me that I've only ever seen it discussed in shipping wars and discourse as to whether a Character Is Bad.

Peggy and Howard, ultimately, were members of a governmental task force who made the Hard Decisions for The Public Good. As an inherent part of that role, they did bad things. Unjust things. They undoubtedly saved the world multiple times over as a part of their tenure as the head of SHIELD, but it would be absolute naivety to assume that anyone in that position didn't become complicit in terrible fucking things. It's the direct product of their positions in the government, and it's exactly what leads to Steve's position in Civil War. it is absolutely bonkers to me how people watched Winter Solider and then reacted to Steve's opposition to the Accords like Local Imperialist Military Boy Refuses To Listen To Anyone Else. Steve just had a masterclass in how people in the government make decisions that sacrifice justice up to and including people he once trusted with his life. Of course he didn't fucking trust General Human Experimentation And I Consider Bruce Banner The Property Of The United States Military with his every action as Captain America. He had just learned that he couldn't even trust Peggy and Howard with it.

#this became very long #and you know what #if i want to say the same thing in the tags of some unsuspecting person's post then that's my right #more tags when #more tags NOW

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n3v474 · 1 year

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!!THINGS TO SCRIPT!!

Little note: idk where yall are shifting or what ur shiftibg for or if any of these will be helpful but personally i have 2 DRs. Diary of a wimpy kid (rodricks so damn foine😍🫶🏼) and a boarding school with a bunch of characters i like from diff DRs. The boarding school thing would be so fun. Like imagine going to get ice cream with Olaf, or going shopping with Cat Valentine, or skipping class with Sarah Lynn from Bojack Horseman… All in one DR!?!? Idk just seems fun to me. Ok thats enough fantasizing about that dr. TO THE THINGS TO SCRIPT!!

☆Script that nothing traumatic happens !! I saw sb talking about how scripting that you’re immune to bringing trauma back to ur cr doesn't make sense or work so js script out traumatic events?? Idk if that makes sense still tho, tell me if it does idk.

☆if you cook or bake script that cooking is easy for you and you dont make mistakes on accident. Like u dont burn food, dough isnt too sticky, nothing comes out the wrong texture, u dont over/underseason, etc

☆Script that ur hair always behaves omg!! I have curly hair and this is a NEED. Script that its healthy, shiny, desired length nd thickness, CANT GET TANGLED, doesnt get frizzy, etc.

☆Script a cool teacher character, trust me. I think it'd be so fun to have a nice cool (hot😍) teacher. Like that one guy on tiktok idk if anybody else has seen. The hot psych (maybe) professor, like that guy😍.

☆script that whenever u order food it gets done quickly, im not waitin no 45 mins for a pizza !!

✩clothes u order are always high quality, immune to getting stained, stretchy and fit well, etc. For the shien hoes...

☆script that ur desired resturants are near u. I wanna be getting some chicago pizza in my boarding school🤤

☆script short painless periods or get rid of them completely, script that its natural and healthy though ofc.

☆nice school. Clean luxury bathrooms, good lunch, good teachers, good field trips, rooms that are decorated well, etc.

☆script good intuition !!

☆script waterparks, malls, trampoline parks, stuff like that near you. You dont wanna get bored in ur dr ??

☆script naturally good hygiene. If ur super tired one morning and don't wanna shower then ur not gon stink all day!! And if u forget to brush ur teeth or wash ur ass or smth ur not gonna smell, it wont matter.

☆SCRIPT THAT EVERYONE HAS GOOD HYGIENE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE‼️

!!SLIGHTLY NOT SO SFW SECTION!!

☆Never get caught doing less than legal stuff

☆dont get nic sick, green out, hungover, etc

☆age to buy stuff (🍺🍃💨) is lower. Its 21 for me, gotta lower that😉

☆“organisms“ are a million times stronger

☆“organisms“ come quicker

☆soundproof walls...yk if u need them for any reason...ion judge🤫

☆bed doesnt move or make noise...incase u need it yk...🤫

☆u taste and smell good, they taste and smell good. Script the taste and smell. Script it tastes like whatever food you’re craving at the time😉

OK THATS ALL FOR TD, YALL HAVE A GOOD DAY/NIGHT STAY SUPER FREAKY HAVE GREAT VAGINA ND HAPPY SHIFTING!!🥰

#reality shifting #subliminal #shifting #quantum jumping #permashifting #reality shifter #scripting #shifting community #desired reality #current reality #master shifter #reality shifters

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zabadi · 1 year

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something about the way fans draw/write harry just does not click to me ... he beat someone into a wheelchair for petty vandalism. And rigorous self critique tells us he's violent and unstable. he's gross and sad and a little meow meow but he's also a Cop. dont get me wrong i love him he's an amazing character but idk it just doesn't fit w my perception of him when i see art or fic about him having a fuzzy little happy ever after. he got a bojack ending like there is hope for change and amends but you dont just get to escape it

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void-selfships-archive · 1 year

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I just. Thinking abt Bojack [and also it's under the cut bc maybe Angst! I'm talking about the True Timeline. I'm thinking too hard. Tws for unhealthy relationships]

I'm thinking so much about the horrible dependency that comes from the relationship I have with Boj in the true timeline and honestly sometimes I wish they started dated earlier because the fallout. I'm thinking about the fallout, and it's weird but sometimes leaning in to that awful fucked up part of their relationship makes me feel better knowing that it's not all sweet and it's not even inherently healthy [and it's nice to know that they break up and dont even get back together immediately at the end because of this because in reality? Definitely not.]

Dont get me wrong I LOVE the sweet shit, the softcore aspect of it all but this ship is not! It's not meant to be like that all the time! It's like breaking a vase over and over- accidentally or not and helping put the pieces back together but everytime you lose another piece and everytime you put it together the process gets slower, more tired because this stupid vase keeps breaking and you can't find a solution to keep it from breaking without having to get rid of it entirely- and the only reason you kept the vase for this long in the first place is because you love it so much, it's got so much value in your heart even if it's been shattered so many times but fuck!!! You're so tired of putting it back together, and you're tired of people telling you to get rid of it! That's what the relationship feels like sometimes

#sigh im just.#god #anyway in the process of typing this my brain went #heres how you parallel diane and PB actually and that. snapped me out of the angst brain real quick #anyway on one hand i wanna keep my drawings for this ship softcore on the other hand the urge to draw that last fight is strong #two vibes when i think about Boj. softcore sillies and deep feelings #♡: i love you mr. blue #☆warren whispers #shut

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the-feral-sequel · 2 years

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10 characters game!!

I was tagged by @scribeoffate thank you so much btw, but since this is a very multifandom-y post, i shall put this in my multifandom blog!

game is to list 10 characters from 10 fandoms!

I'm fairly new to fandom things so I dont know if I have enough fandoms, but I'm gonna try to pinch out 10!

Jackson Whittemore: Teen Wolf The apple of my eye, Beacon Hills' resident asshole. i love him so much.

Jack Twist: Brokeback Mountain Never going to acknowledge the last 20~ minutes of the film. Most of my feelings toward him is usually envy because I wanna be a naive cowboy in love with a emotionally constipated at times but still very loving cowboy

Stanley: The Umbrella Academy he took the latest season by storm for me. Man I do love a snarky little mischievous kid who's first thought of getting rid of a body is to dissolve it.

Merlin: Merlin Ah, yes, the titular character from a show that's named after said titular character. Can't go wrong favouriting that. But I do love Merlin and his magic and witty lines and his cute-ass smile and his character arc and his little scarf and his love for his friends, his king, his family, his mentor, and his undying loyalty and his

Legoshi: Beastars God this wolf guy, he's just so <3<3<3. Wish him nothing but good things and definitely some down time and relaxation with Haru and Louis.

Neo AND Trinity (do not make me choose): The Matrix Simulation Superman (re: his flying) ilysm, Girlboss with guns and a badass motorcycle i also lysm. I am so Bi for them.

Princess Carolyn: Bojack Horseman Love this show and the way that it handled its characters, gotta love PC and her arc though. I find her arc to be something so powerful and I love how she found happiness in the end and just, omg, her <3.

Ryan: Barbie Life In The Dreamhouse This show is literally the best thing ever. Ryan and his cardboard cutouts and rivalry with Ken and his fear of dolphins is one of the best things about this show. If I could, I would've picked the show as a whole because I love the characters in it and everything about the show is perfect.

Gulliver: The Humans (written by Matt Haig) idk if this qualifies as a fandom since this is a book and i have yet to make any fandom strides towards this book other than t h i n k about it deeply. I love this book to bits, and gulliver has a special place in my heart. I srsly want to write fanfic about him and christopher post ending because i want more happy fluffy feels like the book was aiming for towards the end. i really have quite a few other ficcy ideas surrounding gulliver and the plot of the book because yes why not.

Tin Tin: The Adventures of Tintin Tin Tin is one versatile guy, he knows everything from shooting a gun to befriending gorillas. He deserves a spot on this list since my bday cake back in february was Tin Tin themed.

Tagging with curiosity: @rhyslahey @jovialsandwichsoul @scintalla and @sequinedmonkey

if the url isnt as connect the two dots as it is, it is i, @domesticated-feral

#feral says things #multifandom galore #tag game

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achillesmonochrome · 7 months

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Vent under the cut.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.

I think about that quote from Bojack Horseman "Everyone loves you, but nobody likes you." And feel is the opposite for me.

My company can be pleasant, people can like me, but love me? Such a more difficult task.

Is my fault, in a way. I have trouble socializing, I dont know how to talk on ways that arent related to hyperfixation, so if not about that, friendships fizzles out.

I don't know what I'm doing, ever, I dont know what to do to change things.

I scream in the void, pleading to be help, but nobody responds. I know people that in theory I can reach out, but that voice in my mind always says the same; I'm bothering them, they just answer out of necessity.

I feel nobody knows me, I had been used to masking for so long I dont know how to take the mask anymore, if I even can. Some of my earliest memories is playing pretend, to fit in, nobody liking the cry baby that always wanted to talk about wolves.

I dont know what's the point, I'm stagnant, impossible to move forward.

I want to relate to people, to have people who love me and know me, but I dont know how to. The best I get is stolen hours at a club, having meaningless sex to somebody I'm not even attracted to; anything that helps with the loneliness, to not think anymore.

Is so sad, to think how my family doesnt now me, how I could show them how I write online and wouldnt know it was me, how if they saw me flirting and talking at the club they wouldnt believe it was me. So used to the version of me that barely talks, afraid of saying the wrong thing.

I'm so tired.

#vent #depression

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bojackhorsemanobviously · 1 year

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so the idea bojack should live cause he deserves to be miserable i feel is the wrong one to have

some people might call it a fools errand to still want bojack to have some happiness after sarah lynn but considering he was ready to kill himself just what a few days after? possibly freeze to death in his grandparents lake house / hates himself for it already I'm not sure what insisting him spend the rest of his life miserable would do.. it wont bring her back and i doubt her parents barely even care at alll they were awful people.

he spent 50 years being miserable and it affected everyone who hung around him it wont help anyone. if he wallows in self pity forever.

Nah the main message I got was you can be a stupid very stupid selfish piece of shit but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve your mental health/ get support find some happiness later on in life,

I think the show is about you do shitty things , feeling bad about it solves nothing you need to hold yourself accountable and face the facts then work on improving yourself so your life can get better. whether he deserved it wasn't really the point to me, the point was if someone is trying to improve their lifes its not up to society if they're worthy or not. esp not rooting for their death. (off the top of my head i dont want say shia lefbouf/ brad pitt johnny depp/amber heard dead eveyone whos been accused of abuse thats very bleak/disturbing outlook to me i still recall people celeb the royals death and i found that kinda weird .)

i think if a horrible person tries to get better they should they should without being beaten down over it, , them staying miserable wont help the people they hurt/being dead would devastate their loved ones.

So yeah the idea bojack dying would be a good ending/he has to live with the guilt for the rest of his life (he prob does ) but anyway thats a bleak idea to me.

to me the show is about realizing the toxic life from your childhood doesnt mean you can't improve yourself in the future or take it out on everyone around you, and even if it takes 40 years to do so you can get better you can change. any attempt to change is better than none at all some people will still love you , some will love and leave you but you have to make a change for yourself and you want to be a better person cause no one else can decide that but you. and we as a society can be often really to hung up on canceling people in general

just my two cents.

#bojack horseman #my messy rambles

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painted-starlight · 5 years

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When a cartoon or tv show attempts to tackle a highly sensitive topic it clearly doesn’t know how to handle because the creators/writers are all white and have no fucking idea how to approach the subject (like racism) properly and only incorporate it in a way that they are personally comfortable with (animals and magic are metaphors for discrimination, etc) because they want it to be “mature” without having the balls to portray the subject it outright or research/community involvement required to do so all I see is this:

#come on man #i like aspects of star vs but COME ON #this is also zootpia #and cats dont dance #now that I think about it I should really be more angry at cats dont dance because they literally went for animals=black people didn't they #shake shake shake my goddamn head #if only i didnt love seeing animals tap dance i would be soo livid #i mean im really fucking pissed #dont get me wrong #its just that there are better metaphors for this kinda thing #so yeah #every time a creator does this shit im going to hit their nose with a newspaper #and you wanna know what bojack horseman too #yeah I fucking went there #and another thing these metaphors are always sooo easy on the people who do the discrimination #like fuck off no

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attemptsonherlifepdf · 3 years

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bojack horseman and bo burnham: the art of acting like you’re acting and the comedy of misery

at the core of bojack horseman, raphael bob-waksberg’s 2014 comedy, is a story about the relationship between performance and depression. the protagonist of this renowned tragicomedy is best described as a sympathetic villain; he is shown to clearly be in the wrong across various events of the show, and is explicitly referred to as a bad person, but the audience is granted deep access to his personal struggles, resulting in some portions of the audience finding themselves on bojack’s side. the duality of his character is complex, but can be broken down into some core components, that all stem from the impacts of stardom and performance. the standup comedy of bo burnham arguably echoes this sentiment in real time. having been a performer from a young age, burnham creates work that serves as a satirical commentary on the life of entertainers. he uses original songs to explore the reliance upon and resentment for his performative nature both onstage and within his personal life. both the comedian and the netflix show are widely understood to be thinly veiling their critiques of the entertainment industry behind a particular brand of witty and absurd humour.

both bojack and burnham’s content openly criticises their audiences and explicitly states the manufactured nature of the narrative the audience is fed. in the fifth season of bojack horseman, the show satirises itself by having bojack star in a police procedural drama, parts of which are actively written by other characters to reflect events of bojack’s life. the titular character he plays, philbert, is the epitome of selfish male angst, and an example of what bob-waksberg’s show could have been; another story about a sad and angry man whose guilt supposedly makes up for the people he has hurt. according to bojack, philbert teaches us ‘we’re all terrible, so we’re all okay’, an interpretation that is harshly disputed by diane: ‘that’s not the point of philbert, for guys to watch it and feel okay. i dont want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behaviour because of the show.’ this moment is a direct reaction to some of the online reception bojack horseman has received. various circles of the show’s fanbase have found themselves relating to the protagonist to the point of defending his untoward behaviour, a response not intentioned by the show’s creators. this is not the only example of bob-waksberg’s ability to make his work self-evaluative. in season six’s exposure of bojack and sarah lynn’s problematic relationship, characters question their sexual encounter from the first season. the writers use this as a way of examining their own choices, and the harmful tropes they played into when using this exploitative sexual encounter as a gag. this self-evaluative quality is what sets bojack apart as a show that assesses the performance it participates in, much like the comedy of bo burnham.

bo burnham is known for directly addressing his audience, particularly in terms of discouraging idolisation and parasocial relationships. some examples of this manifest as responses to hecklers rather than a planned bit in the show, for instance:

heckler: i love you!

bo: no you don’t

heckler: i love the IDEA of you!

bo: stop participating!

he actively addresses the issues posed by being an entertainer, and encourages the audience to understand and recognise that his onstage persona is just that: an exaggerated persona. not once does burnham claim to be fully authentic onstage, and even moments of authenticity we see in his latest special, inside, are staged. we make the assumption that having the physical setting of a stage stripped away grants us a more personal look at the entertainer’s life, but he makes it clear that even in his own home we still see the aspects he has carefully constructed rather than the full truth. arguably though, parts of the show really are authentic; in his monologue during make happy, bo deconstructs his own show in a way that is similar to bojack horseman’s later seasons, admitting that all he knows is performing and thus making a show about the more mundane and relatable aspects of life would feel ‘incredibly disingenuous.’ in his attempts to separate himself from this onstage persona he actually manages to blur the lines between what is acting and what is now part of his nature as a result of his job. this notion is echoed in bojack horseman as bojack’s attention seeking nature is attributed to his years acting in front of a camera every day.

bo suggests that the era of social media has created a space in which children’s identities mimic that of an entertainer like himself, describing the phenomenon as ‘performer and audience melded together.’ in this observation he criticises the phenomenon. bo attempts to force the audience to recognise the ways in which their lives are becoming shaped by the presence of an audience and to some extent uses his own life as a warning tale against this. he points out the way in which the ‘tortured artist trope’ means that your cries for help or roundabout attempts of addressing mature themes such as substance abuse, mental illness and trauma become part of that on stage persona and therefore become part of the joke. both bo and bojack address these topics in more discrete manners earlier in their careers, but this eventually becomes expected, and thus they are forced to explicitly detail their struggles with these topics in order to be taken seriously. even then, portions of the audience are inclined to see it as part of the persona or as something that fuels the creators creativity and thus does not need to be addressed as a legitimate issue. the emphasis on creating a character or persona promotes the commodification of mental illness: any struggle must be made into a song or a joke or a bit, must be turned into part of the act in order to have value. this actually serves to delegitimise these emotions and create a disconnect between the feeling and the person, as it becomes near impossible to exist without feeling as though you are acting. even when an artist’s cries for help become blatant, they continue to go ignored because now they serve the purpose of creating content that criticises the industry they stem from. online audiences can be seen as treating bo burnham and his insightful work as existing to demonstrate the negative effects entertaining can have, and because this insight is useful or thought-provoking to audiences, he is almost demanded to keep entertaining and creating. in response to this demand, his work becomes more meta and his messages become clearer, and the more obvious his messages, the more people he reaches. this increases audience demands and traps entertainers in a cycle fraught with internal conflict.

during bojack’s second season, bojack’s date asks him, ‘come on, do that bojack thing where you make a big deal and everyone laughs, but at the same time we relate, because you're saying the things polite society won't.’ this moment exemplifies how aspects of his genuine personality have now become a part of his persona and this is demanded of him in genuine and serious situations, undermining the validity of his emotional reactions. he immediately makes a rude comment to the waitress at the restaurant they’re in and satisfies his date by performing that character he has set himself out to be. some circles of the fan base have argued that bojack is written as a depiction of somebody with borderline personality disorder, offering a psychoanalytical lens through which to view this notion of performance. a defining symptom of borderline personality disorder is a fluctuating sense of self; having grown up on camera, being demanded to perform to others as young as six years old, bojack’s sense of self will have been primarily dictated by the need to act. whether this acting is for the sake of comedy, or as a representation of masking his mental illness, when they need to act is taken away bojack entirely loses his sense of self and relapses into his addictions: ‘i felt like a xerox of a xerox of a person.’ burnham’s depictions of depression run along a similar vein; in his new special he poses the idea that his comedy no longer serves the same personal purpose it once did for him. he questions ‘shit should I be joking at a time like this?’ and satirises the idea that arts have enough value to change or impact the current global issues that we are facing. burnham’s ‘possible ending song’ to his latest special, he asks ‘does anybody want to joke when no-one’s laughing in the background? so this is how it is.’ implicit in this question is the idea that when the audience is taken away and there is nobody to perform his pain to, he is left with his pain. instead of being able to turn his musings and thoughts into a product to sell to the public, he is forced to just think about them in isolation and actually face them, an abrupt and distressing experience.

the value of performance and art is questioned by both bojack and burnham, particularly during the later years of their respective content. burnham’s infamous song, art is dead, appears to be a direct response to the question ‘what is the worth of art?’ he posits that performing is the result of a need for attention (‘my drug’s attention, i am an addict, but i get paid to indulge in my habit’) and repeatedly jokes throughout his career that the entertainment industry receives more respect that it deserves (‘i’m the same as you, im still doing a job or a service, i’m just massively overpaid’). his revelations regarding the inherent desire for attention that runs through all entertainers is frequently satirised in bojack horseman. bojack is comically, hyperbolically attention hungry and self-obsessed, and the show has a running gag in which he uses phrases along the lines of ‘hello, why is nobody paying attention to me, the famous movie star, instead of these other boring people.’ his constant attempts to direct the focus of others towards himself result in bojack feeling like ‘everybody loves you, but nobody likes you.’ his peers buy into his act and adore the comical, exaggerated, laughable aspects of his character, but find very little room to respond to him on a genuinely personal level because of this. interestingly, bojack appears to enjoy catering to his audience and the instant gratification it produces, whereas bo burnham becomes increasingly candid about his mixed feeling towards his audience. ‘i wanna please you, but i wanna stay true to myself, i wanna give you the night out that you deserve, but i wanna say what i think and not care what you think about it.’ he admits to catering to what audiences want from him, but resents both the audience and himself in the process as it reveals to himself which parts of his character are solely for the sake of people watching him.

within bojack horseman, this concept is applicable not only to the protagonist, but to the various forms of performer demonstrated in the plot. towards the show’s end, sarah lynn asks ‘what does being authentic have to do with anything?’ to which herb kazzaz responds, ‘when i finally stopped hiding behind a facade i could be at peace.’ this highlights the fact that because entertainers are demanded to continue the facade, they do not receive the opportunity to find ‘peace.’ this sentiment is scattered throughout the show, through a musical motif, the song ‘don’t stop dancing.’ the song stems from a life lesson bojack imparted to sarah lynn at a young age, and becomes more frequently used as the show progresses and bojack’s situation worsens.

sarah lynn is also used to explore the value of entertainers; in the show’s penultimate episode, she directly compares her work as a pop icon to the charity work of herb, arguing that if she suffered in order to produce her work. it has to mean something. she lists the struggles she faced when on tour: ‘i gave my whole life...my manager leaked my nudes to get more tour dates added, my mom pointed out every carb i ate, it was hell. but it gave millions of fans a show they will never forget and that has to mean something.’ implicit in this notion is the idea that entertainment is the epitome of self-sacrifice. there is a surplus of mentally ill individuals within the industry, largely due to the nature of the industry itself, but some may argue that the cultural grip the industry has, and the vast amounts of respect and money it generates annually, gives the suffering of these prolific individuals meaning.

the juxtaposing responses entertainers feel towards their audiences manifest as two forms of desperation: the desperation to be an individual who is held accountable, and the desperation to be loved and validated. we see both bojack and bo depict how they oscillate between ‘this is all a lie’ and ‘my affection for my audience is genuine’, or between ‘do not become infatuated with me im a character’ and ‘please fucking love my character i do not know how to be loved on a personal level.’ bojack explicitly asks diane to write a slam piece on him and ‘hold him accountable’, similar to bo’s song ‘problematic’ in which the hook includes the phrase ‘isn’t anybody gonna hold me accountable?’ for his insensitive jokes as a late teenager. their self-awareness is what enables their self-evaluative qualities, but self-awareness is its own issue. bojack grapples with a narcissistic view of his own recognition of his behaviour before settling on a more nuanced, albeit depressing take. originally he makes the assumption that in recognising the negative aspects of himself, he is superior to those who behave similarly: ‘but i know im a piece of shit. that makes me better than all the pieces of shit that don’t know theyre pieces of shit.’ eventually, during his time at rehab he is forced to reconcile with the fact that self awareness does not, to put it bluntly, make you the superior asshole, it just makes you the more miserable one. the show does, however, make a point to recognise how the entertainment industry protects ‘pieces of shit’, prioritising their productive value over how much they deserve to be held accountable, demonstrated using characters like hank hippopoalus. the show itself obviously stems from the entertainment industry, as it is a form of media produced by netflix, one of the most popular streaming platforms available. bojack horseman and bo burnham represent the small corner of the industry that is reflective enough to showcase the damage it inflicts. this is powerful in terms of education and awareness, and urges audiences to question their own motives and versions of performance, but the reflection alone is not powerful enough to help the artists in question. burnham’s candid conversations surrounding his mental health continue to reveal a plethora of issues somewhat caused or sustained by the nature of his career. within bojack horseman, bojack is only able to stop hurting other characters when those characters construct a situation that forces him to face consequence, his introspection alone is not enough. while bojack ends on a message of hope, suggesting to the audience that reverting back to the status quo is not the only acceptable way for events to end, it leaves stinging lessons and social commentary with the audience regarding the unnatural and damaging narrative that performers live through. on a similar but markedly different note, bo burnham’s work and personal progression is playing out in real time, and not in a way that is as raw and genuine as it appears. each bit is planned, even the most vulnerable moments that appear unplanned and painful. his latest special is not entirely devoid of hope, but does translate to audiences as a somewhat exaggerated look around the era of social media and the development of performance, using himself as an example.

the absurdist humour that often acts as a vehicle for poignant statements or emotionally provocative questions is very specific to each media creator. bob-waksberg’s use of puns, tongue twisters and entirely ridiculous circumstances served to simultaneously characterise his points as an expected part of the show’s style of humour, similar to bojack’s emotional instability, but also to make them appear gut-punching in comparison to the humour. burnham’s work is similar in that poignant but blunt statements are often sandwiched between absurd and exaggerated jokes, making them stand out via contrast but not giving the audience too much time to dwell upon them as they are said. performance art is second nature to entertainers, and is presented a an issue that is infiltrating the general population via social media rather than solely affecting the ‘elites’. bojack horseman and bo burnham present the duality of artists simultaneously attempting to level the playing field and increase their chances of survival in the industry, and encourage audiences to know that everyone is bluffing and you’ll never have the right cards anyway.

i.k.b

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josmichel1 · 2 years

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im literally bojack horseman none of you stupid dumb bitches who say omg i relate to him actually know what the fuck youre talking about im extremely gone at this point im extremely alienated i havent uttered a single genuine thought in a long long time and every time ive felt slighlty wronged by the people i used to trust ive chosen to completely cut them off the truth is nobody deserves me not a fucking person in this world deserves my presence nor my chat nor nothing yet im so starved for connection and intimacy that i keep giving myself away for free because honestly what can people give me back??? absolutely fucking nothing and even if they could i dont want that shit i dont need anybody i dont need love and the actualy truth is i dont gaf about actual betterment all i want is to be seen as better better better than everybody else in this world i just care about superiority and nobody being able to fucking touch me or raise their voice at me but what does that give me truly?? fucking nothing but idc im deeply unhappy and miserable and nobody can fill the void i carry inside of me also these fucking machines are about to make me kill myself i dont care but thats false i care way too fucking much i cant not care all i do is care and care and care and the more things i get a grasp on the more shit i have to care about and now i could kill myself any sec because this music shit isnt working and my mixes fucking suck on those little ugly speakers nothing is going my way and maybe things could actually be going my way for a bit but this emptiness i fill wont ever let me enjoy them i cant lead a normal life i would kill myself so if i dont make it im definitely tightening a rope and hanging myself off a fucking lamp or sum i wish i had friends i wish i could genuinely enjoy someones company i wish i could experience love without feeling like i have to do shit to earn it theres nothing i crave more than that pure and unthought love but fuck that sounds so lame and dull and non cool i might as well just end it all if im tryna please everybody but myself i hate this stupid voice im listening to right now i hate this text i hate myself for not being able to swallow these fucking feelings and these fucking thoughts and just start working detachedly i wish i just didnt feel at all i wish i was a fucking robot i wish i was dead

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dawsonscreekwasalwaysbad · 5 years

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season 6 thoughts

hey quick question why the FUCK did you start with that

like on the one hand i’m glad that now i know what happened right after the end of “that’s too much man!”. on the other hand… ow

the mountain bojack climbs is called “metaphor mountain” God bless Lisa Hanawalt

i LOVE the way the episodes are framed… like you get one flashback to bojack drinking and you think that was the first time then it’s like NOPE he was even younger

CINDY CRAWFISH AKSHDJDSF

AND BABY BOJACK SNUGGLING UP TO HIS MOTHER… TRYING TO FEEL AN EMBRACE SHE WOULD NEVER GIVE… CATCH ME CRYING IN THE CLUB

WHO THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THIS NEW INTRO

AND THE WAY IT HAS ALL THOSE FLASHBACK SCENES BUT IT STILL ENDS WITH HIM FALLING INTO THE POOL AND DIANE AND PEANUTBUTTER CHECKING TO SEE IF HES OK AND THEN HES JSUT LOUNGING IN HIS APPLE SHORTS;;; it’s just,, he’s going back home in the end, going back to the place where he started, as if everything will go back to the way it was before and he’ll find himself stuck in the same cycles he tried so hard to escape… all im saying is, i dont think this season is gonna end well

and how it dwells on his past, everything he did wrong, all the most heartwrenching moments, and there aren’t any changes to the intro (as far as i could tell) until episode 8… nothing changes if all you do is look back.

I am LOVING the Mr. Peanutbutter we’re getting this season. I was never really attached to him before; it’s not that I hated him, just that I liked all the other main characters better. and now that they’ve had him do something really bad and reckon with that,, he’s plumbing new depths, exploring those dark places, questioning if he’s truly as happy as he says he is

and bonding with bojack??? who would have guessed

bojack keeps giving advice that is, at best, the kind he doesn’t follow himself, and at worst, bringing others down into the well of self-pity that he’s been stuck in the whole series

Someone give Princess Carolyn a break…

SHE NAMED HER DAUGHTER RUTHIE IM CRYING

Guy seems like a cool guy but I feel like they’re setting him up to seem nice so that it’s more surprising when it’s revealed he’s not. I’m probably being too suspicious, but also we don’t know much of the details about his divorce, do we? Lakeith Stanfield's great tho

EPISODE 4 WAS COMEDY GOLD

The return of Queefburglar69

I WANNA WRAP PICKLES UP IN A BLANKET LIKE A BURRITO AND TELL HER EVERYTHINGS OKAY

Oh man Pickles talking about how her subscribers will always be there for her… like… it’s not one person, it’s a cloud of people, the contents and shape of which changes, might even be completely different and unrecognizable from one year to the next, but they’re all still there as this nebulous support system. and it reminded me of what bojack said to young sarah lynn about how her fans are the only things she can count on

Todd is babey.

Also him wearing the ace colors under his hoodie!!

I knew Diane’s rationale for going to chicago was bullshit. she said it makes her feel good, but “it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s who you are,” and she still dwells on her bad feelings and hates herself just as much in chicago as she did in LA. moving somewhere else isn’t necessarily gonna change those tendencies, she has to work on it herself.

OH MAN AND WHEN BOJACK GETS DR CHAMP DRUNK AGAIN… THROWING THE BOTTLE OUT THE WINDOW WAS A WAY TO AVOID RUINING ANOTHER LIFE AND HE ENDS UP DOING THE EXACT THING HE HOPED HE WOULD NEVER DO AGAIN

was honestly kinda hoping that Dr Champ was just pretending he got drunk to show how bad bojack could get if he relapsed but at the end when he was like “stay…” that’s how i knew that shit was real.

todd is so fucking stupid i love him

ngl am kinda disappointed that todd’s confirmed white, cause i’ve kinda been picturing him as latino for a long time and i know rbw said he doesn’t want to alienate latino viewers who relate to todd. but it makes a lot of sense, cause he always gets away with stupid shit and gets to the top of things without even having to try just because he knows a guy. and maybe the reason he’s so positive all the time is because it’s so easy for him to be, he never has to worry about shit bc of the privilege his whiteness affords him. also I love that we got to learn more about his backstory

THE CONTRAST BTWN “all the shitty things I did that I can barely even remember because I was high or drunk or it was thirty years ago” and “I remember everything. I’m sober now.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!

sharona sounds like a cross btwn princess carolyn and margo martindale

I have… mixed feelings about the haircut

Oh man Mr. Peanutbutter had a moment… he finally got that crossover episode… I was kinda hoping for a joke that went “Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack Horseman in the same room? What is this, Philbert?” or “What is this, a short-lived show on a streaming network that got canceled because the star got addicted to painkillers and strangled his costar in a drugged haze?” but this is SO MUCH BETTER. I've never seen him cry before and the way he reacts to himself crying suggests that maybe he’s never cried before at all, and that’s why he just keeps laughing, almost like it’s forced, cause this is supposed to be his happiest moment and it’s not supposed to make him so sad. fucking,, character development

and the cold open of ep 8… you can forgive yourself and move on from your past wrongs but it doesn’t erase the things you did, the effects they have on people, and the trauma they’ve suffered. and then like, how can you forgive yourself if they never forgive you? how do you maintain that balance? why should you move forward if they can’t?

its weird to have an episode consisting entirely of guest stars but it also illustrates the extensive world they’ve built and i applaud that… also where the fuck is ana spanakopita

GINA RETURNS!!! HELL YEAH

her quote about not wanting to be defined by what bojack did to her has always stuck with me, and i feel like now, that quote has sort of come true. like, her saying that made us avoid reducing her to what happened to her, and thats why i wanted to see her come back this season, hopefully moving past it. but she can’t. it traumatized her. and everyone can see the effects of it but she feels like she can’t come forward, cause if she does she’ll be punished. shit like that changes you.

and it’s another instance on the show where someone chooses to advance their career & preserve their reputation over doing the right thing (like what bojack does with herb & sharona), but bojack does it out of self-interest, and gina does it so she doesn’t have to relive her trauma every time she gets interviewed or recognized by a fan. but even when she keeps quiet about it she’s still reliving her trauma

noah fence but what a waste of the once-per-season fuck word. youre really gonna use it in an episode IN WHICH BOJACK DOES NOT EVEN APPEAR, and not only that, but RECYCLE AN OLD SENTENCE FROM A PREVIOUS EPISODE

netflix places no limits on a show’s use of the fuck word (i think), so… fingers crossed for something better in the second part?

OH MY GOD PETE REPEAT INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS PETER ITS ALMOST LIKE HES TRYING TO FORGET THAT TIME & THAT PERSON HE WAS (im probably reading into it too much, I’m sure it’s mostly so we wouldn’t figure out who it was immediately. maybe im just like the kid with the coffee cup.)

and just… ppl describe this show as “family guy or the simpsons except the protagonist faces consequences for his actions” but bojack has gotten away with everything.

you ever just like… you ever watch a scene and feel the cliffhanger vibes creeping up and you just know it’s gonna end there and leave you unsatisfied and begging for more but at the same time that’s what makes it such a good place to end it. that was me with this. (and also the ending of undone)

the thing about this show is, it illustrates what it’s like to be a toxic person. and sure, he has it hard, but the show never asserts that he has it any worse than his victims, even if bojack himself does so. and he only does it so he can feel better about himself. he deserves a reckoning, he needs to pay for his bad deeds. but then, when you know what made him this way and what goes on inside his mind and that he wants to get better, it makes you feel for him, and forces you to ask if he deserves to get better and forgive himself and move forward. but even if he does, it doesn’t change the things he did. it doesn’t fix the lives he’s ruined.

anyway sound off if you think bojack’s gonna die at the end. hopefully not by suicide

#long post #bojack horseman #diane nguyen #todd chavez #princess carolyn #mr. peanutbutter #pickles aplenty #pete repeat #bojack horseman season 6 spoilers #doctor champ #sarah lynn #gina cazador #horsin' around #mr. peanutbutter's house #netflix #raphael bob-waksberg #lisa hanawalt #phoebe talks #mine

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fortissimohands-archive · 4 years

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ok im gonna turn into a bojack horseman blog real quick because the last few episodes came out and I have Thoughts

this is kinda rambly but whatevs, you gotta get the infodump out

-it’s … a LOT harder for me to empathise with BoJack after the real Sarah Lynn story came out. I sort of assumed that his guilt over it was just because he took her on the bender (and was also a dick when she was a child) but the revelation that he waited 17 minutes to do anything, when he could have saved her, is just ... bad. especially since it was never mentioned before now which makes it seem like a retcon

-also, people are gonna try to argue with the above point by saying he was also drunk/high at the time, but I don’t think he was? I know they were on a bender together but we dont know how drunk/high he was as of the hotel/planetarium scene. im underage and ive never drunk alcohol or taken a drug stronger than ibuprofen so i might be wrong here, but I feel like someone whos sober enough to plan out how to avoid getting in trouble for that (right down to the detail of calling himself on her phone) is sober enough to not wait 17 fucking minutes to get someone medical attention

-Im lowkey upset about the lack of closure with hollyhock? we never even find out for sure if Pete told her that it was BoJack who gave maddy alcohol poisoning, theres a few comments that imply she does but her complaints about him not giving her space are perfectly valid by themselves and she doesn't really seem to be angry until after the interview comes out so who knows

-personally, based on how Pete hesitates at the end of A Quick One, While He’s Away, I feel like he doesn’t tell her, probably because he sees how much they look alike and guesses she might be related to him, BUT shes very suspicious that its him because lets face it that's exactly the sort of thing he would do, which is why she wants to keep her distance in the next episode

-I have mixed feelings on her letter never being shown? on one hand it feels kinda cheap that we never see it even though its arguably the main turning point that pushes him over the edge, but on the other hand I think its best this way because theres nothing she could write that wouldn't feel underwhelming after all the build up. sort of like how I lowkey hoped for a reveal of what Erica looks like, but I also knew that nothing they could animate would really be able to match all the jokes

-also, random weird theory: when he calls hollyhock after reading the letter, it says the line is disconnected. except it sounds like hollyhock saying that? and her voicemail message up until then is “leave a message … if you’re a hundred”, so it’s pretty clear that she doesn't get voicemails often, and its not a stretch to assume bojack is the only person who would call her (her friends and dads would probably text). conclusion: her line isn’t disconnected, she just changed her voicemail to get him to stop trying to call her

-the fact that Judah's band is called “SPECTRUM of enchantment” confirms he is autistic and no I do not take constructive critisicm

-I fucking loved the reprise of Don’t Stop Dancing, which is my fave song from the series by far, but I wish it was longer and reprised all the verses from gina’s version.

-it was kinda weird that butterscotch was secretariat? they managed to pull it off pretty well but still, its weird how its never explained. I guess its because neither of them were developed as much as the other characters so having them both would have meant having two characters with only a few lines, but both were needed for the plot (butterscotch for the revelation that he maybe did care about bojack and Beatrice,secretariat for the poem)

-honestly I LOVED The View From Halfway Down. both the poem and the episode as a whole

-also. my finale predictions were basically this: it wont end with bojacks suicide, because weve spent 6 seasons following this guy and if he dies itll all be for nothing, but theres way too much drowning symbolism for it to not pay off in some way. so my best guess was a failed suicide attempt by drowning. so yay i was right!

-anyone else seeing symbolism with Hollywoob? like yeah, its a nice conclusion to both the Hollywoo gag and the recurring gag of mr peanutbutters shitty sign company, but the original reason the D was stolen was for Diane, back when Diane/Mr PB/BoJack was an actual love triangle. and I feel like the fact that it got replaced represents her choosing neither of them, but the fact that it’s a B instead of a D represents that shes changed a lot since then?

-alternatively: looking at it from mr peanutbutters perspective, the D was for Diane, back when they were married. the years of Hollywoo represented their shitty marriage and divorce (we know diane hates big gestures, so their relationship was doomed starting from when the D was stolen). and the B is for BoJack, since mr PB is one of the only characters who hasn’t at least implied that he wants to keep his distance from bojack

-im so glad we get to actually see how the voicemail affected diane. as well as address the fact that, intentionally or not, hes been making it her job to “save” him and that's not fair to her

-honestly im a big fan of the theory that BJ does die and episode 16 isn't real. I know its less of a theory and more of a fandom retcon because the ending came across as rushed and too open-ended (because honestly it kinda did), but the fact that the first shot is the last shot makes the theory feel really fitting

-my take on that theory is that the last 2 episodes are bojack’s hell? sort of like a Good Place-esque hell where you’re trapped in an infinite cycle of things being awful, but just not bad enough for you to realise you’re in hell. my guess is that first he goes through the hell of the dinner party (which he mentions is a recurring dream), but eventually he gets used to it so he moves on to the showcase, after which he ends up in a never-ending cycle of “waking up”, going to prison, going to the wedding, talking to diane, and starting over

-especially since when diane is persuading him to tell the truth about sarah lynn, one of the points she makes is that if he stops lying, he won’t have to constantly feel like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. so now hes stuck eternally being scared of what will happen once hes out of prison, which will never happen because it resets on the roof. he’s made his bed, now it’s time for him to lie in it. forever.

#bojack horseman #suicide tw #drugs tw #alcohol tw #overdose tw #death tw #drowning tw #ask if you need anything else tagged

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Animation Reviews: SVTFOE: Camping Trip

Happy Father’s Day! And today I decided to focus one one of my faviorite characters from star Vs King River Butterfly. For those unware or needing a refresher, River is star’s dad, king of mewni and former prince of the johansons, another royal family on mewni that is rough and tumblr and fight happy, which shows as River is where his daughter gets most of her personality: A love for fighting, boundless energy, lack of boundries... lot of that comes from the poppa. I’ve loved the character but oddly I never got around to watching his second spotlight episode and with it fitting father’s day perfectly, I thought it was sabout time. So join me after the cut as I celebrate father’s day as it was intended: watching a crazy man try to prove his daughter still needs him even though he didn’t really need to.

We open at some sort of national park in Echo Creek... they never really name this park. Weird. Anyway the diazes and star are going camping! Star instantly gets bit by a misquito and tries to use a “Cataclysmic Total Extinction Death BLast” on it forgetting it’s on her arm and apparently forgetting the spell for the rest of the series even when that’d be really useful.. unless that’s what she used on toffee.. food for thought. Anyways Marco stops her from murdering her own arm, and possibly the whole country, and reminds her this isn’t mewni and “Nature’s nice here”.Well he’s not wrong I mean this is also the spot where once every hundred years Donny Most rises from the mist.

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I miss when that show was tolerable. But Marco plans for a bit of fishing, a bit of hiking and then to see the local gyser Old Youthful errupt, which star is all hear for. While his parents ARE around and drove them there, they won’t be coming as they prefer painting their actions to slide shows. IT’s a good gag and a good explination. Before Star can ruminate on it being just the two of htem a metor crashes into a mushroom cloud which turns out to be River who screams CAMPPPINNNG and could somehow sense his daughter was going camping and rather than just portal in normal made one in the sky and meteored to the ground.. what a legend. Naturally River joins up as he taught star to camp and is clearly not happy about Marco trying to teach her to camp earth styles, we’ll get to the why as we go. Marco TRIES to teach him to fish... but, despite what he’ll teach later, patience, like with his daughter is not river’s strong suit so he does what any conan would do: grab a rock and beat the water with it before biting up his own foot in a rage. Well when you love fish like he does you want them to die with dignity.

Cut to the trio walking the trail, with Marco going slow because River’s foot is torn up because you know he bit it a lot and likely sharpens his teeth. River refuses any offer for help, does a handstand and offers his daughter a piggy back ride which she refuses before running off. Star tracks him by using her wand as an infared tracker.. which it can do.. and again never used again. She mary poppins her and marco up into a tree where they find an Eagle, with Marco understandably not wanting to get htem arrested while River is trying to break it’s spirit to fly them there before having a slow motion breakdown as why he came, and why he’s acting so weird become apparent as he , out loud so marco and star can hear: battles with his own inner monologue about possibly being replaced by marco, the possiblity of star dating, because he was apparently clearly in denial about her former relationship with tom despite his parents probably not being subtle about it, and is thankfully interupted by the local park ranger. River pays off his fines iwth a pile of gold he apparently keeps in his loincloth.. or up his butt, probably both. With time running out according to the park ranger, the group set out again, finding a maze of trails. They choose poorly and end up 50 miles from the gyser and river, realizing this MIGHT just be his fault, decides to go get a ride. Naturally given this is River he steals a bear and has to give the sherif his crown and more ass gold. Marco is upset they didn’t make it while Star finally calls her dad out for acting even crazier than usual and ruining Marco’s chance to see old youthful. We then get a nice moment as it turns out Marco has seen it at least 10 times, it’s just with all the wonderful, impossible things star has shown him since she met.. he wanted to show her some special as a way of paying her back. I missed THIS marco: a good natured, normal kid who while he can kick ass deepd own is just a decent person trying to do the right thing instead of the selfish , jealous nightmare he’d be for 2/3 of season 3. And it says something that this moment is genuinely touching and mildly romantic versus .. well the entire last third of season 4. River is touched and while Marco’s prepared to just go see it another time the park ranger says the gyser is drying up and this is the last time.. and the way he phrases it hits river hard, so he’d determined to piggy back ride those teenagers all the way to that gyser dammit! So river runs ALL THE WAY THERE, up waterfalls over rocks and past a war reinactment, before passing out as they reach it.. and it’s already splooshed it’s last sploosh.

River is finally somehwat honest about his insecurity: he tells star she needs someone younger to take care of her like her boyfriend marco here.. and while it’s been obvious since his conversation with himself on the eagle’s nest, it isa nice conflict: while we’ve seen the “Parent is worried their older child will grow past them thing” dozens of times, hell disney even made a whole movie about it starring everyone’s faviorite dad Goofy, but this one feels unique, as River’s also clealry dealing with his age and his daughter growing up and being away from him. It’s understndable and takes what could’ve been, and at times still is a cartoon cutout ofa man and gives him a suprising amount of depth. It’s part of what made this show work when it did work: It had weird shit happening all the time but like say, Bojack Horseman, the characters still felt belivieble and grounded despite the weird as hell setting.

Marco corrects her on the boyfriend part he poitns out how river just climbed up a waterfall and carried them miles in minutes, while Star reassures her dad she’ll always need him. After a daughter dad hug, awww, Marco playfully shoves river accidently knocking River into the gyser.. which errupts again, sending him into the air, sending star oooing and having the other ranger at the station tell the one we’ve been seeing to stop lying abotu the gyser, no matter how fun it is. River is thankfully alive and OH GOOD GOD... you know after THIS yesterday.

I thought I woudln’t find anything more horrifying for a while. You know I mean look at Gregg and Drupe. You’d think I couldn’t top that... you’d be wrong. Behold freshly steam shaven burned looking like a new born baby river.

That that’s burned in my mind now.... we also get a bit of the diazes showing paintings of this horror show climbing and the episode ends but just.. my eyes.. the goggles do nothing. Still better than waking up with mud on your dick...

Final Thoughts; GAH WHY DID I PROVIDE THAT IMAGE I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO CONCENTATE. Here have abe simpson talking about sex I need something less horrifying to buffer that image.

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Okay good we have a buffer, i’m glad I finally watched this one. Itt’s damn good. River’s antics are funny, but dont’ go too far into unlikeable as we get where he’s coming from and he does get called out, Not much more to say, it’s funny heartwarming and as good as the series was at it’s best and focused on a character I love dearly for his antics, while giving him a good amount of depth, something later seasons would keep up every so often. So like this review if you enjoyed it, follow for more, shoot me asks about my reviews or with suggestions for future one and until next time, later days.

#star vs the forces of evil #river butterfly #star butterfly #marco diaz #father's day #camping trip #camping #alan tudyk #the simpsons #donny most

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