I try to avoid online feminist discourse about women in the West because the level of freedom they talk about is something I can only dream of for people in my country. I wish we could have debates about things like bi-erasure in media or subtle misogyny, but that feels so far away in a place where same-sex marriage isn’t legal and marital rape isn’t even recognized as a crime.
That is why when I see some white woman bragging about her choice to be a "trad wife" or adopting Hinduism as a religion, it disgusts me. These aren’t empowering choices for us - they’re tools of our oppression. Here, women are forced into arranged marriages, denied basic education and pressured into being docile housewives. Hinduism isn’t some liberating "girlboss" religion - it’s deeply rooted in Brahminical patriarchy.
And oh boy, when these kinds of videos and discourses from the West make their way into the Indian manosphere, it just gets harder for us to fight against these oppressive, patriarchal practices.
Something that gets me about The Good Place every time is the way that Michael interacts with Chidi, Eleanor, Jason, and Tahani in season 3. He saves each member of the group from death, watches over them on Earth, shows up at pivotal moments in disguise to point them towards good decisions that change their lives for the better.
Michael, a whole demon, becomes the group's guardian angel.
the gang goes to hell convinced me that if they were in the good place charlie would be the one to figure out they'd been in the bad place the whole time and everyone would think he's crazy
I constantly think that The Good Place universe is absolutely brilliant for creating a SVSSS AU
(Warning: major spoilers for The Good Place. Seriously, watch it if you haven't, it's a GREAT show.)
Then Shen Yuan dies. Okay, he wasn't like, the best of people, just a geeky hikikomori neet— He wasn't hurting anyone, but he wasn't contributing to society either, and he spent more time reading porn than he'd like to admit.
Then Shen Yuan wakes up after dying, and there is a system telling him [ Hello! Welcome to the Good Place! :D ], which is, wow, amazing, cool, wonderful, a kind of xianxia heaven for immortal heroes? Except the person everyone thinks is him... isn't him. For some reason, he is registered as, Shen Qingqiu???, and no, he is definitely not the person who should be there.
Oh, by the way, The System introduces him to his new and true soulmate, Luo Binghe, who is the closest thing to a holy and heavenly being that Shen Yuan-Qingqiu???, has ever met. Luo Binghe, who suffered tragically every moment of his childhood and survived through his own efforts as an orphan and without anyone's support. Shen Qingqiu, quite terrified of what might happen, he needs to trust Binghe: he tells him that he is not Shen Qingqiu, that he does not belong there, that he is not an immortal hero and that he has NO IDEA what is going on.
In parallel to this, absolutely weird and chaotic things start happening all the time, demonstrating that there is clearly a cog in this Good Place that is not working as it should.
A gear that can be like the "Mute Monk" who is actually Shang Qinghua another damn impostor like Shen Yuan (who ends up having a very strange but romantic relationship with the artificial intelligence "Mobei Jun"), or Shang Qinghua's "soulmate" Liu Qingge (in a horrendous miscalculation) finding out everything, and deciding to help Shen Yuan not be discovered because... Well, he's learned to like him.
When they finally discover they're actually in the Bad Place, one built specifically and punctually so that they torture each other, well, it's not so much a surprise as chaos.
And after hundreds of restarts and Shen Yuan discovering everything again, and again, and again... Okay. Okay. The System itself might also need to ask these damn humans for help figuring out why the hell this hell it's not working.
didi from man on the inside lying down to listen to the sound of waves after a resident has passed. chidi anangonye who says we are all waves returning to the ocean.
The Good Place weaponizing the format of a sitcom for its end-of-season-1 plot twist is actually so great because yeah I guess sitcoms kind of ARE perpetual cycles of torment and tribulation inflicted upon characters for the amusement of demons (audience)
the good place is like. we will find each other in every life time. we will find each other in every afterlife as well. we teach each other to be better more understanding people. we have infinity to spend together. its still not enough
I truly don't think I will ever be over The Good Place. Especially Chidi and Eleanor.
Chidi, who agonizes over every single decision to the point of causing himself physically pain, because making a decision to deliberately hurt or inconvenience someone, even a stranger, in the slightest way is objectively, in the binary, black and white sense of the word, bad. This man basically tortures himself his whole life (a la Doug Forcett) in an impossible quest to be, objectively, good to his fellow man. To be a good, ethical person, because that is his duty as a human being.
Eleanor, who couldn't give a flying fuck about other people. Who was, in all but the legal sense of the word, abandoned by her parents. She just wants to be alone. Why should she care about other people when, inevitably, they leave her? Why put energy out into the world when it never seems to come back to her? So, she does exactly what she wants, what makes her happy, other people be damned.
And so, these two people are put together in the afterlife to torture each other, but instead they make each other better. Eleanor teaches Chidi that it's okay to be selfish some times. Telling her to shut up when she is being annoying, does not make him a bad person. That going after what he wants without stressing over the consequences can lead to new paths that he never would have otherwise had the courage to. Chidi teaches Eleanor that life is better when we are kind to each other. Connecting with other people, even though it's scary and messy and not always good, can lead to wonderful things. That when you open up and put your best out there, you will find people that will love you and want to stay with you, even through your worst moments.
These two were put together to bring out the worst in each other, and instead, their "worst" brings out the other's best. Chidi stops worrying about the consequences, Eleanor starts caring about her fellow man. Is there a word for when two foils perfectly balance each other?
i've discovered a quite large category of people who never got into The Good Place and the only way they could articulate their disinterest was, "there's no stakes cause they're already dead." i'm obsessed with the idea the only reason they could enjoy seinfeld is they imagined kramer could beef it any fucking second
