“Arknights/Limbus Company/etc is obviously very political, why are these incels playing it?” Here’s a longer answer if you’re interested.
If you haven’t been watching gacha communities for the past decade this might be confusing to you, but these guys see the games as just apolitical stories with a majority or all-female cast being there to titillate the male viewer. They are for his consumption. It’s why in both eastern and western “gacha game” communities you can see them talking about how these games are better for having “beautiful” anime women versus the hideous hags of western media. I’ve seen so many people asking “how are incels playing a game with so many strong female characters?” They see them not as “strong female” characters but rather “eyecandy made for me”. tbh when it comes down to it I wouldn’t call any of the designs in these games absolutely groundbreaking for the anime genre they’re aiming for. Arknights even follows the standard “fully animal faced-guy” and the female equivalent “small featured anime animal girl with some fur”. This doesn’t mean the designs are bad or you’re foolish for enjoying them of course, there are a lot of fun ones. Anyway, you can see the same sentiment in the majority of anime communities as well. Like do you think that stereotype of an anime nerd who “loves 2D women but hates 3D women” means he’s a feminist because the 2D girl is still female?
To be frank, after some of the actions taken by these companies (ex. the firing of women for posting anything vaguely feminist) can you honestly say an “apolitical game with anime babes” is not the way the games are often enjoyed? The company Yostar who publishes Arknights in Korea literally wrote a statement saying the game is apolitical and calling feminism a dividing force. If the publisher can say something so flippantly like this just to appease their incel fanbase, how can the game be making any meaningful, hardline progressive political statements? I am of course not saying this renders any positive message you get from these games moot nor am I saying it’s impossible for the writers to be passionate about their work, I’m just relaying the thoughts of the incels/“gacha gamers” playing them because there seems to be confusion. What I’m writing here doesn’t mean the worst interpretation of these games are their defining interpretations. I’m trying to explain how the games that many people see as being antithetical to incel beliefs can have these same men as high-spending fans.
Gacha games are unique in the world of consumer media in their extremely close and constant relationship with the consumer. You have to not only love each character’s design (and sometimes story) but also be willing to drop serious gambling money to “buy” them every single month. It’s like merchandizing on steroids. I think the term “whale” has been watered down since younger kids have started playing, but these people spend thousands per patch. Over the years I’ve heard about multiple games like this being sustained by just a couple of high spenders. In 2018 there was even a western news article about a man who had spent $70k+ on FGO. The publisher can’t rock the boat too much to displease the consumer too many times without risking EoS. Every character design and story of a gacha game is affected by this FIRST while any artistic intent comes second.
A Korean woman who had lost her job due to similar “feminist hunting” tactics wrote an article describing the way these incel men think. I posted it here and part of it summarized: the men that play these games see themselves as buying and “owning” the female characters in gacha games, who are often dressed and presented to them in a highly sexualized manner and will obey their commands. In the same way they “own” these 2D women, they also want to own the thoughts of the real live female illustrators who work on the games. Therefore, if these women have expressed ideas that the male gamers find upsetting, they will be angry she doesn’t conform to what they want like the servile 2D girl and do everything to get her fired (this is where she mentions Limbus Company as the most recent example of this happening).
You can argue for some of these games, maybe the girls aren’t dressed super provocatively and give (you) shit instead of being a simpering doll, but in the end it’s not like they can physically walk away or stop speaking to you. For the “waifu” hunter guy it’s just a different type of anime girl to collect.
The stories in these games are generally not what gets targeted as much by incels. In gacha “gamer” communities, especially the Korean incel ones, their main concerns are: how revealing are the summer swimsuits? How many women work for the company designing characters? and related, Are the male characters designed for women or for men and do they “look gay”? If you search through this blog, you can see them directly speaking about these things in regards to their hatred of Genshin Impact and Star Rail. All of these have also been encapsulated in the original Limbus Company incel attack: they hated that the summer female character looked more “clothed” (wearing a skintight suit instead of a bikini) than the male summer character. They thought the collar necklace and open shirt on the male summer character meant he was “a slave” for the female viewers, so obviously it was designed by a woman. When they learned a man designed and illustrated those characters, they searched to find a female illustrator who worked in the game and went after her instead. These guys WERE FANS that played the game beforehand and didn’t think anything in the story was upsetting enough to attack the company about. They were familiar enough with the works of Project Moon to name their little group after an antagonizing force in one of PM’s previous (non-gacha) videogames. And Project Moon saw them as such a significant part of their gacha fanbase that they wrote an immediate apology and fired the artist. How do these actions in reality inform their fiction and the interpretation of it?
Getting this out of the way, they were NOT in any danger, the “fans” were not clamoring to get in their offices or camping outside, they were let in and calmly had a meeting with some employees at the office. You can still find photos of them goofing around, the ridiculous write up they brought with them and a transcript of the conversation. This was not a “guy shows up at Mihoyo’s offices with a knife” situation. In the end it was a financial and moral loss for the studio with many new and longtime fans completely dropping the games and Limbus Company taking one of the biggest financial and D/MAU drops for a gacha I’ve ever seen. You can read more regarding the ramifications of this here, this post is already pretty long for this website anyway.
Again I’m not writing this to shame anyone who plays these games, loves their characters or enjoys their stories. I don’t really care either way, and I obviously find the genre interesting or else I wouldn’t have been monitoring it and the fans for a decade. I just want to shine a light on the thoughts of the more “incel” gamers that play some of these games since I have seen a lot of genuine confusion as to why they would play them. In the future my aim is to write a more in-depth post about these issues, their history and the way antifeminists think.
Adding to what fudgecicles said: This a sadly common phenomenon in many sci-fi and fantasy fandoms. Any story that uses metaphor to explore real-world issues is always going to run the risk of people missing the connection to those real-world issues.
Just look at the Star Wars fandom. George Lucas once famously had to explain to the Star Wars fans that yes the Empire are SPACE NAZIS, and yes he was making the bold political statement that Nazis are bad. And yes, this did and still does get pushback from the Nazi branch of Star Wars fandom.
Or what about the X-Men? Let’s not forget that in April 2023, America had the surreal experience of a Florida state congressman saying that transgender people should be barred from public restrooms because transgender people “are mutants like in an X-Men movie,” and nearly the whole country dunked on him for not understanding that the X-Men are a metaphor for civil rights. (In addition to dunking on him for being a bigot.)
But also: Everybody loves to imagine themselves as a hero fighting against oppression. Which is why fictional stories about heroes fighting against oppression are so popular. BUT. If you’re an incel who believes that feminists are oppressing you - or an antisemite who believes that Jewish people are oppressing you - or a bigot who believes that immigrants and queer people are oppressing you - then yes, you are going to graph your own interpretation onto that fictional story about the plucky heroes fighting against the big bad metaphorical evil, while easily ignoring the creator shouting “The SPACE NAZIS are a metaphor for ACTUAL NAZIS, you idiots!!!” All that matters is that there’s a general idea of Oppression in the story. And then most fans are scarily capable of either viewing the story as completely politically neutral (“Of course the Bad Guys are Bad, but that doesn’t mean that the story has a political message, it’s just a story of good versus evil”) OR as not at all challenging to their worldview (“I agree with the message that oppression is bad, that’s why I fight against the feminist oppressors!”)
so i've seen a post that says that you can't say that karna gets treated better than arjuna, and that karna is haunted by arjuna in the narrative. I can't reblog the post but I respectfully disagree with it and I'm going to explain why.
the first point is fate/apocrypha. in this, karna compares siegfried to an opponent he once knew during their duel. in the post, it's argued that he projected siegfried onto arjuna and that's now his main interest throughout the series. however, karna's main interest in the series isn't just seigfried (although he did want to fight him again, which is why he fights sieg) but rather to have strong battles in general. it's also ignoring his confrontations with vlad, his decision to stay with the red faction and why (to protect the master he is no longer contracted to) and his interactions with Semiramis and Amakusa. his comparison of siegfried with arjuna, while significant, is not so massive that you can accurately say that it negates every other aspect of his characterization in the story. the most important thing it achieved is that it makes him very interested in fighting him, and when he decides he wants siegfried as a rival and the saber dies he later challenges sieg as he can channel the warrior. its disingenuous to say that arjuna is haunting karna's narrative when he doesnt appear at all beyond a single offhand remark.
the next point is that arjuna gets the costumes. this one is just wrong? karna has two costumes, although i hesitate to call the second one a proper costume. Burning Garment of Three Gods is in fact the first free story costume you receive in fgo, unlike most other costumes which you receive through limited time events, and the glasses costume is from an event where he again gets a (minor) role. while both arjuna's alts have a costume each that doesnt negate karna having costumes?
the next thing is a bit rough. 'arjuna gets the character arcs in fgo.' this one is true. its also because arjuna is the fgo original and karna had 2 previous fate entries to receive characterization in, so him receiving it was less of an required focus than it was for a brand new character who had nothing. at the same time, i do agree that karna needs to have more done with him in the game.
the next one is also very rough. in it, the op mentions that arjuna got a lostbelt that karna received poor treatment in. I do agree that how karna was treated, namely being dead for most of the chapter and only brought back for one big battle before being killed again was very poor handling. however....arjuna alter was also really poorly handled? he was offscreen for most of the lostbelt, his motivations were both incredibly unclear and required you to have played the interlude of another ssr, he was given no depth of character or internal consistency, and they didnt give you any greater understanding of who he was or why he behaved the way he did. he is generally agreed among most fate fans to be the most weakly written of the lostbelt kings, and its in part because rather than tell us anything about arjuna's life, indian history or mythology, or the mahabharata, they once again retrod the karna vs arjuna plotline. just because he's the lostbelt king doesnt mean he was done better than karna-if anything, his treatment was potentially worse because while karna's one dimensional handling set him up as a noble hero, arjuna alter's set him up as an unreasonable villain. saying that karna is used as a crutch for arjuna requires also acknowledging how arjuna is constantly and consistently used to enhance karna since the minute he was added to fgo, which is how you get titles he was never called by like 'the endowned hero' (it may be a poor translation of one of his actual names, Dhanañjaya, which means one who conquered wealth and gold but i doubt it) and why one of the first things that's mentioned whenever arjuna shows up is that he killed karna, when thats only one of his achievements and not even the most notable one.
which brings me to my next point: karna is handled one dimensionally in fgo. but it is always as a misunderstood hero, and arjuna is primarily handled as his supporting cast, whether as a jealous villan or long suffering straightman. if you are going to show frustration at people who are glad arjuna got content independently of karna, you need to acknowledge that out of the 23 odd events and story chapters arjuna has showed up in, only around 5 have not also included karna and out of the 8 that arjuna alter has been in, only 4 have not had karna in them. karna has been in 27 events, and 9 have not included arjuna-its not a large amount, but its still the same amount that arjuna and his alter have put together without him. Arjuna in fate, especially at the time of his creation, existed as a supplementary unit to further enhance karna's story as a hero who was oppressed by others, which is how you get things like this
while both their profiles have a heavy focus on the other, karna's talks about his actual life and history to a far higher degree than arjuna's does, while arjuna's fully devolves into his resentment and dislike of karna. he was first as foremost written as 'karna's obsessive rival' to further expand karna and karna specifically, and the later focus on trying to give him more depth was because he was popular and they wanted to do more with him. there was no consideration for who he was historically or his real personality or feats, there was no consideration for what he actually was- they wrote him as a person who would, in his own words 'become the darkness' to karna's light simply for the sake of it
THAT is why fans of arjuna want more content of him independently of karna. is it true that karna has his own issues with his writing? yes! but that doesnt change the fact that for a very long time, arjuna has been twisted from his mythogical origins in fate to make him someone that he simply isnt, and thats what people want to see less of. no amount of poorly executed ssrs or events they both get shortchanged in to emphasis them hitting each other with sticks will change the base issue with arjuna's writing until fate acknowledges this.
and to be clear, i dont think its wrong to be upset that karna doesnt get a lot of in depth expansion in fgo. but that isn't the fault of arjuna, and it's really unfair to try and say that with how often arjuna has been used as a plot device to show how unfairly biased people are at karna
Agree with all of this. But also, to bounce off the idea of who gets a character arc:
I feel like when people talk about a “character arc” they really mean two different things. The first is when a character has some sort of conflict (whether internal or external) that they must overcome, and they end up growing and changing as a person. The second is when a character doesn’t really *change* so much as reveal layers that were always there but kept hidden.
Arjuna’s character arc in FGO is more obvious because it’s an example of the first type. Arjuna comes pre-loaded with trauma and guilt and a desperate need to live up to an image of himself that doesn’t jive with reality. And then, to make a long story short, he grows and changes and gets better. I don’t think that Arjuna’s character arc in FGO is written particularly WELL, but at least it’s THERE, and in a rather in-your-face obvious way.
Karna’s character arc in Apocrypha - and later in FGO, if you squint - is an example of the second type. Karna isn’t a guy who’s ever really going to change who he is. But he IS a guy who keeps revealing unexpected sides to his character, whether it’s the stubborn vanity beneath his seemingly pure nobility, or the capacity for warm affection beneath his cool exterior. Karna’s character arc can be summed up as “he’s more complicated than he seems on the surface.” And that’s a more subtle type of character arc than the metamorphosis that Arjuna undergoes in FGO. But it’s still a character arc nonetheless.
Furthermore, I’m going to contradict everything I just said to add: Not every great character even needs an “arc” in the first place! Especially not in a franchise like Fate. Great writing for a character doesn’t always mean giving them an “arc.” Sometimes it means just letting them get to shine exactly the way they are. Arjuna’s writing in Samurai Remnant is a perfect example of this. Arjuna in SR isn’t confronting his inner darkness or growing as a person; he’s just being the goddamn greatest in every scene that he’s in. And that works perfectly fine, too!
Broke: Acknowledging that a character who is an objectively terrible person is also a complex and intentionally well thought out individual with different levels of nuance you can empathize with in some ways while not in others is immediately “woobifying” or “poor little meow meowifying” them.
Woke: “This character is a bad person” and “this character is still a person” are two statements that can, should and do coexist and admitting that they exhibit nuance and depth and are more than just their bad actions doesn’t immediately excuse or condone their bad actions or mean that you’re ignoring or trying to soften the canonical version of the character.
Bespoke: That’s the whole point, that’s always been the point, to be made to empathize with horrible people so you can understand that they can be anyone, that bad people can be likeable, can be interesting, can be human, are human, and it’s scary to think about all the ways they’re just like you and all the ways they’re just like everything you hate, forcing the use of critical skills in media analysis, forcing a confrontation of the duality of man.
Whatever Level is Above Bespoke: But sometimes, yeah, sure, maybe they are a poor little meow meow, what are you gonna do, get a lawyer
...Not to get weird and dark on a useful/amuzing writing post, but...
Years and years ago, I read someone's experience of finding out that his mom's boyfriend was a serial killer. How much it sickened him to put together odd bits and pieces of their experiences together, recontextualizing them, suddenly understanding new and horrifying things.
But while that was awful, what really fucked him up later wasn't the clues he'd missed or anything-- it was that, one time, they'd been working together on some kind of home project, and he'd been on a ladder and suddenly gotten off balance-- and his mom's boyfriend had immediately reached out, yanked him back, both of them frightened and swearing and then gasping in the aftershocks of panic, and how grateful he'd been that the boyfriend had been there, how they'd both started laughing as the adrenaline washed through them and out again, hugging fiercely, how grateful he still was that the boyfriend had been there, because he owed his life to this man, this almost-father that had kept him safe and had been afraid for him, and the cognitive dissonance of that, the visceral disgust and the aching love and what it meant to be beholden to a monster for the gift of that moment--
And that's why we need to practice the little lies of fiction, where we can see that characters may not always be rendered in black and white-- it helps us learn how to live in a world that may serve us the worst people we may ever know doing us the greatest kindness of our lives.
Potentially hot take but I find the mandatory disclosure of pronouns increasingly prevalent in academic and some professional settings to be dystopic as hell, not cause “pronouns cringe” but because the mandatory reporting of your personal gender identity to a group of total strangers over and over again is fucking weird and invasive
Exactly fucking this. What happens to trans people who are not publicly out when they have to repeat pronouns that misgender them over and over again? It probably doesn’t feel fucking great.
LGBTQ people, especially Western LGBTQ people who seem to have forgotten homo/transphobia exist outside of online discourse, really fucking need to reacquaint themselves with the idea that someone’s relationship with their gender and/or sexuality is their business and absolutely no one else’s. You do not owe disclosure of those identities to anyone aside from yourself (indeed you don’t even need to form an identity around it if you don’t want to or have a different way of experiencing such things). Learn to leave people tf alone.
[Image ID: Tumblr reply from biSexyRanger reading: Playing “do I want to be misgendered or do I want to be outed” at the start of every college semester /End ID]
Thank all of you for these posts. I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with forced public disclosure of pronouns these past few years, but I couldn’t really articulate why. These posts help a lot. I especially like the idea of public/private pronouns because there are definitely so many situations where that distinction matters.
One thing that I will add: A question on the private first-day-of-class card that I give to my students is “Is there anything that you’d like me to know about contacting your family members?” This question covers a lot of ground, but I admit that I added it mostly because I was concerned with accidentally outing a transgender student who wasn’t out to their family. Which unfortunately has happened in the past. I still feel awful about it.
I also don’t feel great about having to ask such a private question directly (albeit privately on a notecard that no one else will ever see), but I’m not sure what else to do about it? I am contractually obligated to contact family members regardless of how well or how poorly a student is doing in my class. The parent/guardian contacts must be made and there is a log that tracks if I’m doing it.
So for all y’all out there who are still minors and still in school: Please be aware that your teachers might HAVE to contact your families at some point. If you feel comfortable enough to be out with a teacher but you still aren’t out with your family members, then I’m certain that teacher would appreciate a heads-up about the family situation.
Again, this is not a perfect solution. But I think it’s important for teachers, doctors, and employers to recognize that being out in one context doesn’t mean being out everywhere all the time. And we all have to do our best to respect everyone’s gender expression AND their privacy AND their safety.
I saw WW84 and boy do I have some feelings about it.
There was so much that I loved about this movie. I loved how unabashedly the film embraced the cheesy 80’s visual aesthetic, tone, and storytelling tropes. I loved all of the performances. I loved the post-credits cameo. I loved the thematic messages about the power found in accepting truth, the importance of letting go, and the fundamental goodness of humanity saving the day. I admit that I loved how the movie felt like an overt corrective to one of the dumbest moments in the DC comics. And IDGAF if it’s overused, I loved when “Adagio in D Minor” started playing and I bawled my eyes out during that scene.
Unfortunately, the movie as a whole is not nearly as good as the sum of its parts should be. Mostly because the narrative gets tangled up in itself, and the story ends up badly undermining its own intended messages.
THE FILM IS THEMATICALLY INCOHERENT, LARGELY BECAUSE BARBARA’S STORY IS SO POORLY HANDLED.
The fantastic opening scene sets up a clear theme: Lies are bad, denial is a personal weakness, and truth is good. “The only shame is in knowing the truth and not accepting it.” Here’s the Moral of the Story laid out for us. We see Little Diana failing to accept the truth in the opening scene, and thus we know exactly where her character trajectory is headed: In this movie, Adult Diana must overcome her demonstrated character flaw and learn to Accept the Truth. So far, so good. We have a theme, we have a setup for a character arc, and we have a personal failing for Diana to overcome. The movie opens with a great setup. But then...
The setup shoots itself in the foot.
What is the truth that Diana cannot accept? It’s the loss of Steve. We find out that for decades Diana has been so consumed with mourning Steve that she has refused to make any meaningful connections with any other humans. She has no friends. She has no romantic partners. Her whole life, this whole movie, and Diana’s whole character arc revolves around Steve. To have a Wonder Woman movie completely focused on Diana getting over the loss of a man rather than, I dunno, ANYTHING ELSE (even a personal defeat like happened in the opening sequence) is annoying to say the least. But you know what? I can accept that this movie is about Diana Feeling Sad About Steve because that part of it IS actually really emotional and well done. Yes I hate that Diana learned to fly because of Steve and not because of her own insight, strength, or motivations... but fuuuuuuuuck me if I wasn’t crying my eyes out when “Adagio” started playing anyway.
But let’s go back to that setup again. The real antagonist in this movie is Lies. The magical MacGuffin object is powered by Lies. The characters can only defeat the Lie-Powered MacGuffin by accepting the truth and renouncing their wishes, which means renouncing Lies. In Diana’s case the setup is clear: Steve being brought back from the dead is a Lie, and she must accept the truth and renounce him.
But what about Barbara??
Are we to accept that Barbara gaining confidence, dressing well, and standing up to street harassers is all a “lie” that she must renounce? Is the implication here that Barbara must accept the “truth” that she’s somehow inferior to other women? (Uggggggh.)
Obviously not, right?? I’m sure that message is NOT what the film intended. But because the film badly blunders Cheetah’s storyline, that is the unintended message that comes across.
Let’s talk about Cheetah for a moment. The biggest problem with her character is that she gets NO CONCLUSION to her character arc. This is especially baffling because the conflict created by her wish is so clearly set up: Barbara MUST be convinced to renounce her wish, but because she unwittingly gave up her human compassion in exchange for personal power, this seems like an impossible task. How can Diana convince someone who has lost her compassion to renounce her power for the good of others? This is the perfect setup for an ultimate test of Diana’s unique strengths as a superhero: Wonder Woman’s power as a symbol of truth, compassion, and female empowerment should have broken through to Barbara and saved the day.
Diana could have used the Golden Lasso to show Cheetah a vision of the “truth,” being her strengths as a human being: her intelligence, her compassion, her wit, her courage. The message here COULD have been that the “lie” was Barbara believing that she needed to be someone else at all, and that the “truth” she needed to accept was that she was valuable and worthy of friendship/love/respect just by being herself. This would have been a MUCH better message than “Sorry Barbara, but being strong and confident is a lie.” And it would have had the added bonus of female friendship saving the day, which would have been, you know, thematically appropriate for a Wonder Woman movie. It also would have dovetailed nicely into Diana’s character arc about no longer closing herself off to forming relationships with people who are not Steve.
But did we get any of that? No. Did we get any conclusion WHATSOEVER to Barbara’s character arc? No. Nope. Nothing. We saw Diana beat up Cheetah, we saw Diana use the Golden Lasso to broadcast visions of the Truth to the world, and then we saw... Max Lord’s entire backstory and then an extended sequence of his son suffering and scared, which became his motivation for renouncing his wish. At no point were we shown what Cheetah saw when she was affected by the Golden Lasso. At no point were we shown Cheetah having any motivation whatsoever for renouncing her wish. In fact, given the state of mind that Cheetah was in after her fight with Diana, it’s completely baffling as to why she would ever renounce her wish in the first place. And yet I guess she did... But why? The film does not consider this an important question.
The film does not consider Barbara an important enough character to even show us what became of her after the Great Renouncing. Max Lord gets to have an emotional reunion with his son and a tearful confession that concludes his character arc. But Barbara gets NOTHING.
Barbara has no conclusion at all to her character arc, and in the end the movie just... throws her away.
Barbara is implied to be the first real, meaningful human connection that Diana has forged in decades, and in the end the movie just... forgets all about her.
Barbara has no reason or motivation to renounce her wish. The movie could have SO EASILY and so meaningfully fixed this problem by at the very least showing us the vision that Barbara was given by the Golden Lasso. But in the end the movie just shrugged and said... Nah, Max Lord’s character arc is more important.
In the absence of any sort of meaningful conclusion to Barbaras’s character arc being shown onscreen, all of the Unfortunate Implications of Barbara’s storyline are just left sitting there, totally unchallenged: Sorry, Barbara, but the “truth” you have to accept is that female empowerment just isn’t in the cards for you.
NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT MACGUFFIN RULES AND “COSTS”
Okay, so... The Dreamstone. The Lie-Powered MacGuffin. The stone that grants one wish, no matter how impossible, but at a terrible cost that the wisher cannot know beforehand. In Steve’s words, it’s a classic Monkey’s Paw.
Diana unwittingly wishes to see Steve again. And then, Steve magically returns to life! But he has taken over another man’s body.
So that must be the terrible cost, right? Steve has returned to life, but at the cost of having stolen another innocent man’s life and body. That’s HORRIFYING, right?? That’s a TERRIBLE ethical dilemma for Diana to wrestle with, isn’t it??
Nope. Steve jokes about how handsome his stolen face is, Diana paws through the other man’s wardrobe and dresses up Steve in a fun 80’s Fashion Montage, and at no point do either of them EVER express any concern for the man whom they kinda-sorta just murdered. The mechanism of Steve’s resurrection is accepted at face value. Diana’s only concern seems to be finding out why it happened, not how to reverse it or how to help/save the man whose life was just displaced.
Oh I guess the “cost” that Diana has to pay for her wish is losing her powers. Because... Reasons? Dramatic tension? An extremely literal interpretation of Robin Wright’s speech in the opening sequence?
But come onnnnnnnn. Isn’t the fact that Steve’s return came at the cost of another man’s life enough dramatic tension to drive Diana’s character arc by itself?? The answer is yes. Yes it is. If the movie could have just ACKNOWLEDGED the horror of its own wish-granting premise, that would have been an extremely dramatic and compelling struggle for Diana to wrestle with. To wit: How could something so inherently good, the return of someone so brave and kind, the fulfillment of a wish made from love - how could something that like that come at the cost of a human life? How will Diana deal with being forced to choose between the man that she loves and the life of a total stranger? If the trade being made is one life for another life, is it fair to weigh the value of those respective lives? What if one man is worth more to the world? What if one man is worth more to Diana? How does one even MEASURE the value of one human life? How can Diana stay true to her principles as Wonder Woman when she's being asked to give up something that, once again, is so fundamentally good - a miracle made from love?
Diana could have chosen to renounce her wish to spare the life of an innocent man, rather than choosing to renounce her wish to... get her punching powers back. The former would have been an extremely dramatic and emotional character arc for any superhero movie. The latter is kind of, well, blah. Yeah yeah yeah it matches the thematic throughline of the movie, a true hero’s strength cannot come from lies, therefore Diana must accept the truth to get her superstrength back. Yes. Okay. Got it.
But it’s still SUPER WEIRD that Diana, of all people, shows absolutely ZERO concern for the innocent life whom Steve displaced. And it’s super dumb that the movie refuses to acknowledge the obvious “cost” of Steve’s resurrection and tries to tack on this “Diana loses her powers” bullshit instead.
(My mom, while watching the scene where Steve and Diana snoop through the displaced guy’s apartment: “Wait, so is that guy dead? What if he has a family? What about his job?” Shhhhh, Mom! The movie doesn’t care about these questions and neither should you.)
Next, let’s talk about Max Lord.
The idea of what Max Lord does is actually really cool. As far as villainous plots go, this one is both smart and full of delicious chaotic potential: Wish to BECOME the Dreamstone, and then be able to extract whatever “cost” you want from any other person who touches you and makes a wish. As an added bonus, you can trick people into wishing for things that benefit you personally! The whole concept of Max abusing this power for personal gain while the consequences of his wish-granting spiral out of control is FULL of dramatic potential. This a really neat way to drive the conflict of the movie forward and, potentially, could have been the setup for all sorts of globe-hopping action and fun set pieces.
Buuuuut other one cringe-inducing jaunt to Super Stereotype Egypt and one action sequence of Diana Versus Some Jeep And Some Tanks, we don’t get any of that. More damningly, however, Max’s villainous plot starts to fall apart the moment that the film gets tangled up in the “rules” it has established (or failed to establish) for how the Dreamstone worked.
When the main antagonist’s plan revolves around exploiting a loophole in the Rules of Magic, then those Rules must be clearly established and never left vague, implied, or ignored altogether. And yet that’s exactly what the movie does with the Dreamstone: The “costs” of each wish are sometimes vague, sometimes left implied, and sometimes ignored altogether.
The whole concept of each wish having a “cost” is further muddled by the fact that the Dreamstone grants wishes in a shitty way, but these shitty ways are apparently NOT the “cost” that’s being extracted. Nope, the “cost” is something extra. Take, for example, Diana’s wish: The Dreamstone grants her wish by sacrificing an innocent man’s life, but the “cost” is that she loses her powers. Isn’t the loss of an innocent man’s life cost enough?? Or take, for example, some of the wishes that Max grants in his quest for power: A man wishes to have his ancestral homelands returned, which immediately causes a giant wall to appear and separate people from their source of drinking water. Max extracts the “cost” of this man’s oil and then, when it turns out that there is no oil, take the man’s security team instead. But isn’t the fact that this wish caused life-threatening consequences for huge numbers of people “cost” enough?? Or take, for example, some of the wishes that we see in the montage during Max’s global broadcast: A girl wishes to be famous, which immediately costs her her privacy and safety. But she also pays an extra “cost” in that Max apparently extracts some of her life or health or organs or whatever. But isn’t the loss of her privacy and safety cost enough??
Sometimes the Monkey’s Paw seems to extract a double cost. And yet, other times, it seems to extract no cost at all. The guy who wished for a coffee pays no cost, I guess? And when Alistair wishes for his father’s greatness, I thought for certain that the movie was going to make Alistair suffer some terrible cost for his wish, which in turn might send Max into a desperate downward spiral in which he would keep trying to use the Dreamstone’s lie-fueled powers to solve the problems that said powers created in the first place. But, nope! Alistair seems to pay no cost whatsoever for his wish. Unless you count his father’s “greatness” resulting in total nuclear annihilation to be a cost. But is that a cost extracted by the Monkey Paw, or a natural consequence of the wish? The movie doesn’t care about the difference.
Look, I realize that ranting about a MacGuffin not having clearly established rules sounds like nitpicky whining. But, once again: When the main antagonist’s plot is based on exploiting the rules, then having clearly established rules right from the start MATTERS. The movie should not have waited until 2/3 of the way through to explain how the Dreamstone works. It could have easily established that in the Dreamstone’s first appearance by showing the coffee guy, I dunno, tripping or losing his wedding ring or forgetting something important. More importantly, the movie should not have unnecessarily complicated its own narrative by making the “costs” of the wishes so much more complex and confusing than they needed to be. The story continually ignored dramatic, compelling conflicts created by the wishes themselves - like Steve’s life being traded for another man’s life, like Alistair accidentally making a wish for which he did not know the cost - in favor of sometimes tacking on extra costs to the wish and sometimes ignoring that the wishes have costs altogether. The result is a confusing mess of a narrative powered by a MacGuffin that doesn’t play by any consistent rules.
(My mom, watching the IRS swarm the offices of Max’s former investor: “What the hell is going on? I’m so confused.” I’m sure that my mom isn’t the only confused person. And I had to think about the movie for hours before I figured out that the “cost” Max paid for his initial wish was his physical health. The movie doesn’t explain this at ANY point!)
THE TL;DR VERSION
Cheetah deserved a real ending, Diana should have showed at least an iota of concern for Scarf Dude, and the Dreamstone - which could have so easily driven a clear and compelling narrative - instead became the center of a goopy, confusing, and poorly-explained story.
This film had such a good setup. It had such a cool idea for the main antagonist’s villainous plot. It had such great performances. It really is a shame that the narrative made such a mess of itself.
So I wrote a fanfic about my favorite union and how I imagine the whole “destiny brought us together” thing might have actually played out. I had a lot of fun researching the lore/backstories involved and trying to fill in some of the worldbuilding gaps with my own imagination. I hope you enjoy it!
Title: Luminosity
(Six chapters, Complete.)
CW: graphic depictions of violence
Chapter One: Wave Interference. In which there are nightmares. Belinda is given a quest and recruits an new ally.
Chapter Two: Reflection. In which there are ghosts. Belinda’s quest is off to a very bad start.
Chapter Three: Diffraction. In which there are lions and Durri and bears, oh my. Belinda has a new plan, but is farther than ever from her goal.
Chapter Four: Refraction. In which there are demons. Belinda fails to complete her quest and fails to fulfill her promise.
Chapter Five: Resonance. In which there is Darkness, but Belinda finds the Light.
Epilogue: Ray of Light. which there are dreams, some of which might even come true. Someday.
Comments and criticisms are very much welcome. Thank you for reading!
I share the same Disney live-action remake fatigue and yearning for a return to beautiful 2D animated movies that the rest of y’all do buuuuut
if there is one Disney movie that desperately NEEDS a remake, it is most definitely Lady and the Tramp.
I mean
Have you seen the “Siamese Cat Song” (yes that’s what it’s called)
And the chihuahua character is pretty bad too.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the 1955 version, but the little nuggets of racism in there are REALLY bad (even judged by the standards of the time) and if we can have a new version of Lady and the Tramp without evil squinty-eyed Chinese cats singing about stealing shit in broken English then I’m all for it.
Three F/GO prints I made for a recent convention. I had to draw all of them in 5 days as I’ve been travelling… but I’m finally back! Time to sleep and read and be lazy in general >:3
gummygunk
titsay
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
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romaincrisis
