Plurbbin Out

Carol Sturka Apologist, Hive H8r

[plurbzone]

🙂🙂A place for me to get my plurb on.🙃🙃

🥞 Carol Sturka fan/defender, she is mostly correct about everything - modern Shinji Ikari that will save humanity.

🧫 Hive hater, but mainly because people keep defending them, otherwise I would simply enjoy them as the antagonistic force they are. I believe the hive is evil, but not in a mustache twirling way, just the way any virus that would wipe out civilizations is "evil" from the perspective of those it harms. They are simply acting on their nature, but that nature is harmful. However, the intelligence of every manipulator on earth makes them particularly nefarious.

✏️ metas, mb some art later, will organize my tags at some point...

👭 toxic yuri stursia enjoyer

[plurbzone]

I think after some distance from this show, I actually don't view the hivemind as badly as I did haha. I'm kind of like, I don't really like humanity overall, why did I find this so upsetting? But I'm sure on rewatch I would. It's just that I'm a little too much like Carol. I don't like people and don't get along with them, I think the earth would be better off if humans stopped being so horrible, yet none of this means I would want to sacrifice my own individuality because despite also being human well... I like being the kind of human I am, which would be degraded by joining with other humans whom I dislike and don't need the acceptance/understanding of.

[plurbzone]

Those talking about some "American mindset" or "imperialism" and stuff are just desperate for pluribus to be a social commentary rather than a simple philosophical horror thriller. The others mainly dudebros weren't ever ready to listen to a female character's story and perspective.

My main hang back is the way Carol gets defeated each time with her arguments or challenged so strongly you get a broader view of the situation instead of just her view, which is an important thing to connect with main character. When you experience how resolute almost dogmatic characters are about their principles, you get sympathetic to their worldview, in other words a little bit of Mary sue-ing is necessary for every MC. My poor girl didn't get that, everyone was combative, when she gives up, a definition of what I described shows up and guess what!! She doesn't even give equally compelling reasoning this time. Vince could've easily made a compelling argument about surrender and the point of a all but no

I think it was like that for a lot of viewers yeah, though for me I think it just sort of characterized her as a very isolated, lonely, person who can't communicate well and is also mb inherently ostracized due to things like being a lesbian, maybe she's a little autistic, etc. like if she was some Don Draper type man that could give a well thought out pitch to the others then they would have more readily considered what she had to say but because she lacks an inherent authoritative aura people are inclined to dismiss her. This and isolation are very important to her character, very important to why she doesn't want to assimilate in the first place. Everyone disagrees bc unfortunately there's a whole racial dynamic - but I don't think VG intended people to not feel a little frustrated at the inaction of the other survivors.

I think people have an odd idea of VG's sensitivities - they give him too much credit really. Like, they don't want to think the survivors are wrong because that would = white lady right, poc wrong. But like guys, VG is white. He's probably not even thinking about it coming off like that lol. It's not as though BrBa and BCS were really racially sensitive, idk where this idea comes from. And you can consider it a flaw in the series, but he's writing it from a perspective where Manousos is also in his mind so he's not seeing it that way.

[plurbzone]

I hate how we got to see others' valid or compelling points in response to Carol's idealism at first so it never felt like she was lionized for it, actually rather reprimanded for it considering the zosia arc that made her see both the hive's and other survivors' perspective that she argues against Manousos with later on. While Manousos doesn't have any arc dwelling on his idealism and isolation, in fact we got to see how heroic he's stubbornly travelling by himself, and finding out a crucial component of the solution ( the frequency thing) not only that the mc bows down to him as she comes crawling back. Like it renders her arc so useless, the careful balancing of everyone's view that the show was doing pointless. Worst of it all it kinda puts more importance to him instead of the mc, Vince can repeat all he wants he cares about his female characters but knowing how his fans always reacted to them, he shouldn't have raised Manousos to this status while not emphasizing Carol' crucial role. Every mc needs hype moments and aura, it's a shame we got that with the supporting male instead.

I disagree! I think people simply don't see Carol's heroic moments as heroic and Manousos silly moments as silly, definitely because of the way their gender frames things.

I think Carol meeting with everyone, trying to talk Kusimayu out of assimilation while the adults there were content to let her think it was what she wanted (as a minor should she even be allowed to make such a decision? But no one cared other than Carol), her fighting off the wolves from her wife's grave, her almost getting information out of Zosia and doing intel on her own to find out they were cannibals (which I think they would have avoided ever coming clean about if Carol wasn't investigating it and they simply wanted to get ahead of her), etc. etc. these were all admirable moments of Carol's imo!

Meanwhile Manousos, while burning his car and everything seemed cool, him being so stubborn was NOT actually hype moments & aura and I think him almost getting killed by a tree is hilarious and meant to sort of highlight his flaws as a character? Being so stuck in his ways he almost gets killed by a tree? Both Carol and Manousos are stubborn and it bites them in the ass in different ways, but it also makes them admirable in different ways. It's just that people don't see it. They see Carol as bad for representing American mindsets or whatever so she doesn't get to be seen as heroic for trying to tell Kusimayu that she couldn't be sure of what she wanted even if she felt alone and scared, the mutually assured destruction of her nuke is also just another aspect of her Americanism instead of just showing how far she's willing to go to not be violated by people who want to fundamentally change her - her identity that she already had to fight to not lose before.

They're both cool, they're both silly, people that can't see that are the problem.

[asneakyfox]

western media reviewing pluribus: in the collectivist cultures of The East, which place no value on individuality, the hivemind would not be understood as horrific uniformity but as a vision of harmony. the genius of the show is in gradually making us realize carol's resistance to the diverse and global hive is grounded in her ideological corruption by individualist capitalism and privileged position as an american white woman. i am very smart.

the japanese and chinese reviews i just looked up in like five minutes with google translate: the insidious hive is an obvious metaphor for western cultural imperialism and its determination to erase global diversity. love the subversion of making this english-speaking white person a victim of metaphorical colonialism for once, the shoe's on the other foot now huh carol? bit too on the nose to name the show after a latin word written on american dollars though

[queermasculine]

pluribus spoilers ahead cause i need to tell someone that when vince gilligan was altering his concept to be about women instead of men i really really think that shouldve included manousos... not to take away from the actual lesbianism that occurs on the show but manousos the machorra very much shouldve been on that yuribus... imagine carol sturka having to pull out the cover of her book a second time when yet another tall woman with dark features shows up at her door, and this time the woman literally has a sword a machete on her hip. proud stubborn manousos who just braved 9000 kilometers of untold dangers just to speak to her. sexy butch manousos who is more like a genuine real-life raban than any alien hivemind could ever be like do you fucking get me do you understand

[queermasculine]

manousos the bucha who ran that storage unit facility like it was the navy... imagine

[wexler]

iconic

[plurbzone]

Finding weirdly that I miss ZosiaGPT, she is a comforting presence so they were effective at that hahaha

[suddenrundown]

[heavymwings]

[birdplushie]

thinking about that moment in the first episode where carol puts the napkins over their drinks before leaving the bar, followed by the shot of the news (presumably about the virus) on the tv, neither of them seeing it. something about that little sequence really gets me, idk how to put it into words. an attempt at protection against the wrong threat. a warning they just missed for something that could not have been stopped anyway

[plurbzone]

This scene is bewildering to me actually because no women I know would do this (that napkin aint gonna protect anything!) but I guess they have a lot of trust in that bar/the regulars there.

But it's definitely intentional. Something about, idk, I guess the plurbs kind of roofied humanity lol - slipped something into the air.

[queermasculine]

another butch manousos

[thriftedflannel]

BUTCH MANOUSOOOOSSS

[witchwardian]

I need to know what stopped Carol from demanding her eggs. Demanding all her cells, and all the research about them, and that any remaining information be destroyed. I feel like that is a question that will be answered, but I don't even think Vince knows why that didn't work yet. Cause she absolutely would have done that.

[plurbzone]

they would just say no/dodge the question just like they do when she asks if there's a way to reverse the joining

[serenfire]

in the universe of pluribus, as the hive is giving birth for at least the next nine months, statistically it is possible that a baby will be born with the stem cells that prohibit the virus from transmitting to them.

unless there’s another way to get stem cells from a newborn without the needle in bone marrow, presumably the hive will have to wait for the baby to give consent. possibly the hive will want to wait until the baby is mature enough to give informed consent.

in that case, imagine being a child and being The Only child in the world. growing up and experiencing nothing but a community of the hive, who teach you and raise you with the sole goal to convince you to join them. where there’s no goal for you in life, nothing to believe in or aim for, and the present and future are completely stagnant. what would the hive teach a child? how would they raise them, what choices would they make in order to most effectively convince them?

[plurbzone]

I'm not sure the hive would be capable of raising an immune child because by the time they could talk they'd only want to eat candies and cookies and the hive would let them do whatever they want and probably eventually get the kid killed lol

[myosotisa]

can you imagine being one of fourteen people left on the planet and feeling so unbearably lonely only to find out the other thirteen people are all speaking to each other regularly and intentionally decided not to include you

[plurbzone]

feel like there's not enough recognition for how cruel this is. "Well Carol is mean" so? A woman being mean is enough of a reason to completely exclude her from the last remaining humans on earth?

[warningsine]

[eloiscbridgerton]

RHEA SEEHORN wins BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards (January 4, 2025)