butcher!?

im shaking in fear idk how to use tumblr!! i doubt ill repost much stuff let alone nsfw but just in case 18+ 😼

[papertowness]

“ homelander and butcher are two sides of the same coin ! “ “ annie and butcher are narrative parallels ! “ both good but i raise you m.m and butcher are mirrors in the sense that both of them glimpse into each other’s eyes and see someone they might have been

[unfunky-and-out-of-time]

well it was fine. it wasnt gonna be good anyway

[bjbutcherhaha]

[bjbutcherhaha]

[bjbutcherhaha]

oi brev who u fink u are ill get my man on yeh who u fink ya talkin to . absolute melt

[bjbutcherhaha]

if people dont start hopping on the butchmilk train after this ep im gonna explode

[deliciouskeys]

[emolander]

wait I’m jorkihg it

[bjbutcherhaha]

you better be

[bjbutcherhaha]

if people dont start hopping on the butchmilk train after this ep im gonna explode

[bjbutcherhaha]

HUNDID percent best and im sick of pretending its not

[bjbutcherhaha]

if people dont start hopping on the butchmilk train after this ep im gonna explode

[matlab-exe]

the boys season 5 is in full motion and my dormant marvinbutcher (butchermilk?) sleeper agent got woken up. evil toxic fernbrams.

[bjbutcherhaha]

butchmilk takeover I BEG I BEG I BEG

[unfunky-and-out-of-time]

in a just world butchmilk would be the no 1 the boys ship...

[unfunky-and-out-of-time]

there is no way so many of you want to fuck soldier boy....

[unfunky-and-out-of-time]

real talk why bother reading the boys like is ANY of it actually any good or is it really just constant rampant bigotry

hi! it's a really interesting and warranted question. i'll talk a bit about my thoughts on it!

in short: the main the boys comic is a collection of edgy and offensive writing with at least some interesting moments of sociopolitical commentary. i hesitate to write off the former from coming from a place of pure bigotry (and i'll explain why in a bit). still, it employs racist, misogynistic and homophobic tropes without offering any subversion. this makes it unenjoyable and indefensible, no matter what the author's intentions might be. beyond this, it simply is a mediocre story.

in the spin-offs (by which i mean butcher, baker, candlestickmaker and dear becky),i see the potential for character analysis, as well as character expansion, especially for certain characters i felt were neglected in the show. it's for that reason i even bother with them.

rambling a bit more about it:

(a small disclaimer: i didn't take the time to more specifically research garth ennis' past and current writing beyond what i'll mention because i honestly am just not that interested.)

i never bothered to fully read the main comic and it just bored me. i was mostly interested in exploring how ennis tied up his story to compare it with where we are standing now with s4. there are surprisingly more similarities than i thought? there's a functional analogue for the virus at least and butcher (who in the comics is more like kessler) wants to use that. more's not important. i just hope they go the same route w butcher's death

the spin-offs are a bit different to me. garth ennis treats butcher markedly different because he's such a butcher glazer and it shows. he loves him!!! he's protective of him even on the show if you've read a few articles about it. unfortunately, it hindered him from fleshing him and his flaws out for the most part in the comics. dear becky digs into it a bit more but it's just too little, too late in my eyes.

dear becky dials the violence and shock factor from what you might know from the comics. i always call it "an apology for the edgy writing of the main comic" because of how different it feels at times, how it ""only now"" addresses certain topics (which mind you the show hasn't done itself…) it's a really strange case and the comics will have these every now and then—it's why i hesitate to write them off fully and immediately.

(panel from dear becky)

this part stood out to me when i first read it. to me, it ties back to how becca's rape is handled in the show (keeping it short because this could be a whole new post). comic becca (becky) is a flat character that serves as the main motivation for comic butcher's whole arc—she's quite simply an egregious example for fridging and is never given any depth because she's long dead before the main story ever takes place. the show fleshes her out much more and gives her the opportunity to make (in those terrible circumstances) a choice for herself and more specifically a choice that goes against butcher, our main character and ennis' absolute favorite. it serves to criticize and deconstruct his motivations and to me it's very effective. ennis cant take this approach as strongly because becky was always supposed to be dead and because he’s incapable of criticizing his favorite character and creation.

i've said it before, but it's exactly this writing that ends up falling flat in s4—with hughie being sexually assaulted for laughs, annie's abortion only serving as conflict fodder, frenchie being confirmed to be bisexual while also past seasons writing him as a victim of sexual abuse. even becca in s4 can't escape it. kessler is introduced as an opposite force to becca and he is more expressive in how he is allowed to approach butcher. he's directly misogynistic in how he confronts becca—he was even supposed to hit her based on the leaks which, judging by how many of those were correct, was cut very late in post production. becca is stripped of her autonomy and reduced again to her attachment to butcher and she is made the victim of male violence again.

you have the drop of quality on the show to a level that feels more in tune with ennis' original writing of the characters. it really made me wonder… why?

from a character writing perspective, the comic fails in multiple ways and it goes back to my earlier point. ennis likes butcher so much, he twists the story to suit his actions. again and again. multiple characters suffer as a result of it—if you can call them characters, sometimes they're really just the closest thing he can have to giving him a fourth wall to speak to. the supes in the stories are really nothing but a justification for all his anger. there are very few characters that can hold their ground to his attitude. mallory comes to mind, and he ends up getting killed by butcher so the messaging is pretty clear. ennis gives butcher the decor of a necessary anti-hero through a tragic backstory and an honorable military background and cartoonishly evil antagonists. and omg just once again i need to point out he is never criticized for it!! it's unbearable. butcher is the core of the comic and the majority of the flaws of the comic are reflected in him.

the show obviously handles butcher infinitely better. you can probably count a million reasons why yourself so i'll skip that part. i wanna point out something in particular that really drives home the difference. butcher's backstory in the show has been changed to having served in the war on terror, specifically in special forces. he's been confirmed to have been a war criminal already back in s2 when the butcher short film was written and filmed and then again in s4, though i have my issues with how it's portrayed… like a sort of "fond reminiscing" of his crimes with kessler that in my opinion will go over the head of most viewers (at the cost of dehumanizing very real victims). however, if you consider how back in s1 and s2 homelander as a figure more strongly represented bushism and bush-era politics (through his call for militarization and the focus on "super terrorists" in the regions bush and the US have waged war on), this juxtaposition adds a further layer to the satire—that is unfortunately only ever left between the lines after s2. still, it's the sort of writing for butcher ennis never would've bothered with. ennis has been a vocal critic of the war on terror and US politics post 9/11 especially in his works and sometimes i do wonder what he thinks of this aspect of butcher's character LMFAO

(from here)

i think these moments of commentary are interesting… the story is just not there.

i can't tell you if the shows politics at its core are so much better. i question the morals of any man who finds a drawn out sexual assault scene of a male character "hilarious". i'll always view the comic in a slightly different light because it's the vision of a single person and published more independently.

i don't look to the show for well-written leftist takes because it is a show funded by amazon, a company notorious for having made its money off the exploitation and denial of the most basic of rights of its workers; because it's a show run by eric kripke, because it's a show that has kept a zionist and former idf squad leader employed for five seasons.

i don't look to the comic for well-written leftist takes because it draws on racist, misogynistic, homophobic tropes over and over again and offers little to no critical depth of its characters.

that being said, there's a level of US-criticism we won't ever see in the show and i consider the overreliance on "parody" of current school of conservative thought very glaring and weak. to me, it hides the major issues of US politics that have landed us in this current political climate. and those go back further than just what s3 and s4 cover.

here's a review of ennis' punisher run from 2004 that reads in a very interesting way…

i haven't read his punisher stuff and i probably won't. but that's a level of direct critique of current US politics we'll never get with the show. and i know we didn't really get it with the comic either because the comic just sucks like… narratively. but it comes from a piece written by ennis and though i disagree with the guy on so many aspects, it's still something i take into consideration.

to answer: why bother reading the boys? is any of it actually any good? it's not good as in entertaining and it really doesn't treat its characters very well. you're allowed to have higher standards in this day and age and i'd beg you to. however, after s4 turned out to be so terrible i was just really curious to see what the writers were working with.

i don't regret it as much because it's given me a new perspective through which to view the story that i otherwise might not have cared for as much. it's not constant rampant bigotry that comes from a place of hatred of minorities as much as it's just mostly mediocre writing to paint a very black-and-white moral picture. it doesn't make it any better of course.

my considerations above are mostly to try and shine a bit of a light onto the environment that influenced the comic (and to draw a comparison to the show) and also try to explain why my attitude to it might be a bit different without excusing it.

[unfunky-and-out-of-time]

a few thoughts regarding the physical origin of butchers powers in s4 (and powerscaling):

in the body, cells come together in associations that collaborate with each other by giving and taking, stimulating and inhibiting, growing and dying. it’s a delicate balance that must be constantly regulated, coordinated, maintained and adjusted for different needs.

cancer progression is a microevolutionary process. consider the core principle of darwinian evolution: natural selection drives the survival of the fittest of individuals. it’s those who are adapted who pass their traits on along their lineage and survive and prosper under these environmental conditions.

in an union of cells, a multicellular organism, a cell cannot compete with its peers as that will ultimately mean its demise. it must adhere to the rules of the organism, which represents an ecosystem of itself, to ensure the survival of the germ line (as the cells of the germ line carry the same copy of the genome of the somatic cells).

when a cell breaks off from this union, it betrays this arrangement. it turns on its cooperating cells. it becomes cancer and threatens the organism. it will tip this delicate balance in its own favor. the other cells of the organism have many control points and defense mechanisms and, given that they don’t want to die, will fight it. and so each time, the body will set up a hurdle to clear, each one higher than the last one. but, by doing so, it will also select the cancer for the most aggressive, the most adaptable and the most adapted of its kind. the cancer cells will accumulate changes that allow them to outgrow and outlive their neighbors. by protecting itself, the body will ultimately lead to its own death.

as butcher takes the permanent compound V at some point in between seasons, it seems to have no positive effect for months, probably years. it makes no sense for the tumor to absorb it all at once, as that would obviously make it so much stronger and be able to kill butcher without a problem. but if instead the compound V was absorbed by both his own body and the tumor, we would see this principle of tumor progression, this microevolutionary process, be realized. while he lives on, seemingly unchanged, getting sicker but not dying, in the background, the cells of his body are fighting his tumor. it’s a constant back-and-forth.

the tumor will suppress the cells fighting it, and will try to colonize other tissues. it ultimately does not care for the multicellular society it arose from. the cells of the body will defend themselves—but it really does not lead either party any further, does it?

so kessler proposes a compromise. a symbiotic relationship, however skewed this perception might be. a temporary partnership.

how do you begin to reintroduce a tumor into the organism it originated from?

[mpregeminem]

happy when we're all done here i'll buy you a nice big family size bottle of top shelf lube and i'll tickle your balls till you beg me to stop and even then i won't i just won't do it wednesday