Anatomy of a Fandom Echo Chamber: The Case Study of Big Hero 7 the Series by 1nsanelyCreative
Content warnings: Frank discussions of bullying, cyberbullying, racism, verbal harassment, misogyny, violence.
In fandoms, fanfic is traded like a commodity. It is fun to read, fun to share, fun to discuss. And in some cases, a long, overarching story is consumed by its readers as escapist fun. However, consuming fanfiction purely in escapism can run the risk of readers not thinking critically about the content of the fanfiction. This is exactly what has happened with the storyline Big Hero 7 by 1nsanelyCreative, most notably Big Hero 7: The Series and its prequel Big Hero 7: The Movie. Despite the storyline’s thousands of hits on Fanfiction.net, there has been a pervasive, disturbing silence about critically examining certain features that individually, may not seem particularly virulent. However, when looking at several elements combined, the storyline suffers from what I call a deficit of heart, in which the compassion, friendship, and empathy that is beloved in the original movie and series is swept away. In Part I, we will examine the foundations of these problematic, systemic elements, namely the emphasis on Eurocentric standards of beauty, weaponized racial microaggressions, and the flattening of canon characters of color to support an Original Character (OC).
This is not meant to embarrass or attack the original author or stifle their creativity. There is a Japanese concept called kotodama: the belief that words have power. The written word has power, and it has been used to harm others. Internet authors and critics alike have a responsibility to be aware that the written word can hurt, regardless of intent.
The original character in question is fourteen year old Cora Mizichio, who joins Big Hero 6, which becomes Big Hero 7. Cora fights as the superheroine Aqua Girl. She is explicitly stated to be of Japanese heritage, with her parents Mizuchi and Akemi both having traditional Japanese names. However, Akemi is blonde and blue eyed, whereas Mizuchi is dark haired and brown eyed. Since blonde hair and blue eyes are recessive, Cora should have inherited her father’s dark hair and dark eyes. While it is possible that Mizuchi is heterozygous recessive for both blonde hair and blue eyes, it’s not likely. Let’s take a deep dive into Cora herself, her name, and her design.
Cora’s last name, Mizichio, is not an authentic Japanese name. While the root mizu- is indeed a Japanese root, -chio is not a suffix. Further, mizu is almost never conjugated into -mizi. There were indeed real Japanese names with the root mizu- that could have been used here, such as Mizuno, Mizukami, Mizushima, or Mizumura. The author clearly wanted to base the name on “mizu” to tie in Cora’s water theme, but instead of using the many real names that use mizu, they combined syllables until it sounded Japanese enough to them. However, familiarity with Japanese nomenclature will make a fake name like Mizichio stand out like an ink blot on a sheet of paper. However, there are characters in the story with real Japanese names, such as Miyuki or Ren Seto. The author did clearly look into Japanese names. Cora’s name is treated like cultural wallpaper. And if that weren’t bad enough, Cora’s father was named Mizuchi, after a fabled water serpent or dragon. However, naming him Mizuchi Mizichio has his name roughly mean ‘water snake/dragon of water.” It’s redundant, clumsy, and frankly reading it doesn’t make it any less clunky. Why not pick one of the last names that contain the mizu root and name him something like Tatsuya? For example, Tatsuya Mizushima would mean “one of the dragon of the watery island.” In the story, Mizuchi is the son of a Yakuza clan leader, Nozako Mizichio, and he ran away from her due to her abusive, controlling behavior. Giving his daughter a Greek name instead of a Japanese one might not be too unusual, as he’s trying to distance himself from his Yakuza origins. However, choosing Cora, derived from the Greek kore for maiden, makes Cora’s hero name, Aqua Girl, seem like some cosmic pun, as her name translates to Maiden of Water.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the art the author has made to accompany the Big Hero 7 universe.
First, let’s examine Akemi Sakurai, Cora’s late mother, and once again the Japanese name is at odds with her European features. She looks very much like Cinderella and Aurora. And note that both Akemi and Cora are natural blondes, and that is likely not a coincidence. Akemi had to be modeled on the blonde Cinderella or Aurora, not Belle, Megara, or Jane Porter. The latter three are highly intelligent and filled with personality, but the author overlooks them as potential inspiration sources for Akemi and Cora because they are brunette. Akemi passed away when she was young, so we don’t know what she would look like today. However, women tend to age like their mothers, and Cora lives with Akemi’s mother Kaguya. Conveniently, the author showed off a family portrait of Cora, Kaguya, and Mizuchi.
Kaguya’s face is devoid of age spots, fine lines, and wrinkles despite being old enough to have a fourteen year old granddaughter. Harmonia from the Oedipus myth would be in awe of how well this woman has aged. This pushes the idea that healthy aging in women is undesirable.
In contrast, Mizuchi is allowed to look like a grown man. However, the author tips their hand when it comes to their Eurocentrism, as Mizuchi’s features are almost an exact copy of Flynn/Eugene from the Tangled franchise, who is notably very European. Even though Mizuchi is explicitly Japanese, he is not allowed to have Japanese facial features.
Cora herself has dyed blue hair and purple contacts. The explanation she gives is, “They’re my favorite colors, so why not?” Note her very wide, European looking eyes. Her face looks very European. If someone looked at this girl and was asked to guess her race, that person would conceivably say, “White…”?
Miyuki Frost is obviously modeled on Elsa. She has ice powers, her hair is tied in a side braid, her darker eyebrows accentuate her almond shaped blue eyes, even the shape of her hairline. The author cast Mae Whitman as Miyuki’s speaking voice and Kristen Bell as her singing voice. However, why not cast Idina Menzel as Miyuki if she’s clearly meant to be a meta-nod to Elsa? Something glaringly obvious comes to mind: Idina Menzel is Jewish. Whitman and Bell are both very white. Even if we ignore the whitewashed casting choice, Miyuki herself is from Pennsylvania and her surname of Frost indicates Germanic, Norse or English heritage. Why did her white parents give her a Japanese name? Was it to be trendy? It comes off as white characters having Japanese names to be ‘exotic’ rather than out of true respect for the Japanese culture.
In the Big Hero 7 continuity, Mizuchi Mizichio is on the run from his mother, Nozako because she’s crazy, violent, and abusive. Let’s temporarily ignore the fact that Mizichio is a made up name and therefore the Mizichio family would be the only people in public records with that name. Mizuchi is living with his mother in law, Kaguya and his daughter, Cora. He probably is living under a false name, because Nozako would find him if he used his real name anywhere. Probably has a fake social too. In Big Hero 7 the Movie, Cora immediately wants to attend SFIT as soon as Hiro announces his intention of going, despite never showing interest in higher education. She was homeschooled and she has a valid high school diploma. However, a high school diploma is the bare minimum to get into college. Colleges want extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation, standardized test scores. I honestly believe Hiro took standard college entrance exams in high school just to get a higher score than Tadashi, so he could rub it in Tadashi’s face. I think Hiro definitely had exam scores he submitted to SFIT. However, Cora has no extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, or test scores.
When Cora tells Mizuchi her plans to apply to SFIT, he asks her if she’s sure. He does not react to the elephant in the room: he is working low-paying jobs just to keep groceries in the house. Where is he going to get the money to send his daughter to SFIT? SFIT is basically MIT on steroids. The tuition is likely sky-high, and then there’s the cost of living in San Fransokyo, which, if the cost of living in San Francisco is anything to go by, is obscenely high. Also, even if Cora got a free ride scholarship universities require legal transcripts and identity verification. Mizuchi’s cover as a runaway mobster would be blown immediately, yet the narrative ignores this in favor of giving Cora an easy pass into SFIT. In addition, Cora’s wish to attend the same university as her boyfriend feels impulsive and frankly, unhealthy. Again, she had no interest in the institution previously. The story frames an almost codependent whim as romantic.
Ok, I consider the following elements to be the most egregious. Big Hero 7 the Series contains many, many moments of racial stereotypes and bias as well as misogyny and ableism. There is also systematically defamation of characters of color, including Karmi, Momakase, and Diego Cruz. This first example occurs early on, in Chapter 16, on SFIT’s campus as the students get ready to attend Trevor Trengrove’s seminar:
Cora: *Sarcastically cheerful* Wow it's so nice to meet up with you again Karma.
Karmi: *Annoyed* It's Karmi.
Cora: *Slightly smug* No, it's Karma. Cause if you don't stop inflating your ego, you'll end up slapping yourself in the face.
*Cora gestures to her phone. Karmi's eyes widen as she recalls the memory of when they had their talk after the report. Her smirk turns into a glare at the young girl and turns around with a huff. Cora then walks back towards the gang.*
Wasabi: Man, if looks could kill Cora, you'd be dead right now.
Honey Lemon: What were you two talking about?
Cora: Oh nothing much. Just the philosophy of karma
When I read this, I couldn’t believe it. This is not a joke. This is not okay. Cora weaponizes Karmi’s name by making a smug pun about karma, which is a sacred concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Cora reduces this complex sacred concept to a punchline about karma coming to slap Karmi in the face. We don’t know if Karmi is Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, or Sikh, but given that she’s South Asian, the odds are nonzero. Cora also dresses it up her little racist comment the way Regina George dresses up insults: “We discussed the philosophy of karma.” Regina George is not a role model; she is the universally reviled school bully in Mean Girls. The author openly complained about Karmi’s bullying and cyberbullying in an unhinged ranting essay on Tumblr called “Everything Wrong with Karmi and Why it is a Problem.” They claim upon watching Failure Mode:
“Failure Mode had ultimately destroyed any sort of sympathy I could have had for her since then, the one to make me shout ‘WHAT. A. BITCH!’ and make me absolutely hate her.
During the episode of Failure Mode, her second appearance in the show, Hiro Hamada's first attempt at his project has been a failure; to which her first reaction to doing so is to film the blundered presentation and post it online for all to see. Her action during that moment is in fact, cyberbullying; an act to which the bully will post slander or humiliating moments of their victims' actions online to further humiliate them. The fact that Professor Granville, a professor/Dean of the school, who was teaching that class, in particular, does not reprimand Karmi for her blatant bullying here is disgraceful as no other teacher in authority would allow such a vile act happen in their classroom.
When I first watched it I was staring in horror at such a blatant act of bullying. I actually stopped the video I was watching because I couldn't stomach watching any more of it and it took me a solid week until I could watch the rest of the episode. And even then, she didn’t stop there: She does it again when Hiro’s second presentation inadvertently destroying the other student’s projects to which Karmi(and a group of students standing behind her) taking pictures of the whole ordeal. The next scene shows Granville and Hiro having a moment discussing how Hiro shouldn’t be discouraged and that he shouldn’t call himself a failure… to which Karmi barges in with her project and asks Granville point black to let Hiro call himself a failure many more times,(curiously the next scene cuts off to the gang before it gets to Granville’s reaction so we never see if Karmi was scolded for this.)”.
Yet, the author writes their self-insert OC openly bullying and cyberbullying (the threat with the cell phone). So bullying is ‘disgraceful’ only when it’s happening to Hiro or Cora? And no, the author cannot claim that Karmi was rude to Hiro and Cora, so therefore she deserves to be bullied back. Cora is weaponizing her race and possibly religion. No matter what Karmi said or did previously, that is out of line.
The narrative also makes it seem like Karmi is being a stuck-up bitch by glaring at Cora, however: Cora just openly used a racist microaggression against her. So not liking the fact that Cora mocked her race and possibly her religion makes her the aggressor? Worse, Cora does not admit her racism to Wasabi and Honey, who inadvertently become party to it. If they had heard the microaggression, they would have taken her aside to tell her that this kind of derogatory language is unacceptable in a school setting.
In addition to Karmi, an Asian student, being harassed with a racist microaggression by a blonde haired blue eyed student, there is also the parallel of their performers. Karmi is voiced by Haley Tju, who also voiced Marcy Wu in Amphibia. If I had a nickel for everytime Haley Tju voiced a cute teenage girl in a Disney cartoon who gets manipulated by a psychopath, turned into a monster against her will, and forced to attack her friends, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s pretty weird it happened twice. The author has stated on social media that their dream voice for Cora is Tara Strong, who is very obviously white. So the author has a blonde haired, blue eyed, Asian in name only character voiced by the very white Tara Strong use a racist microaggression against a dark haired, dark skinned Asian girl voiced by an Asian actress. And worse, the narrative seems to reward this as the white-presenting girl putting the Asian girl in her place.
And honestly, when it comes to annoying bully characters, Karmi barely qualifies as a speedbump compared to Adonis of the Hercules cartoon. Zeus himself says of Adonis, “That kid is practically wearing a ‘smite me’ sign!” In the episode, “Hercules and the Prince of Thrace”, Adonis insists that his slaves dig at an unrealistic pace: “Mumsy said I could have a pool, and I want it today!” Adonis literally owns slaves, and he forces said two slaves to perform backbreaking labor under the hot sun with just a pickaxe and a shovel just so he can enjoy a swimming pool and yet Karmi’s snarky comments and recording a presentation are described as literally making the author sick. What would Adonis’ blatant human rights violation do? Make them pass out?
Moreover, the initially prickly bully who eventually grows and respects the main character is practically a stock character in these Disney cartoons at this point. The author complains about Karmi being a bully, yet does not complain about, for example, Pacifica Northwest, Sasha Waybright, or Andrea Davenport from Gravity Falls, Amphibia, and The Ghost and Molly McGee respectively. Which leads me to ask: why hate Karmi and not, say, Sasha, who actually did intend to kill someone in her respective show? The fact that Pacifica, Sasha, and Andrea are lily-white while Karmi is dark haired with a tan skin tone has nothing to do with it…? Sure, I would chalk that up to coincidence but given the author’s previous examples of upholding Eurocentric features over Asian features with Cora’s family or rejecting the Jewish Idina Menzel in favor of Mae Whitman and Kristen Bell for her Elsa inspired character Miyuki, I’m starting to doubt it. This is a continuous pattern in the story, despite the author trying to look progressive by writing about a diverse group of heroes and giving authentic Japanese names to side characters like Ren and Miyuki.
Later on, Hardlight places a bomb on Karmi’s skirt. Cora then berates Karmi in her superhero guise:
Cora: Help!? Help is staying with the others until the battle is over. Help would be directing the other fans to safety! Help is not when you are too much of a self-centered brat to not only be blind to that the fact that there was a bomb on your skirt! It isn't help when you ignore his warning about the said bomb that could have gotten everyone around here killed! And it is definitely not help WHEN YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF PUTTING YOUR PEERS IN DANGER! THOUGH I SHOULDN'T BE SURPRISED SINCE YOU HAD WORKED WITH SYCORAX WHERE YOU WILLINGLY HELPED A CRIMINAL AND BULLIED TWO TEENAGERS BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPID PRIDE AT YOUR SCHOOL! I DON'T CARE IF YOU SINCE 'CHANGED', THE DAMAGE YOU HAD DONE IS UNFORGIVABLE! GO HOME KARMI! YOU ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH US AND WE DON'T FUCKING NEED YOU!
Stone the crows, Cora. Yes, Karmi was rude to you. That wasn’t in dispute. However, she just almost got blown up by Hardlight, yet you’re screaming at her for not noticing the bomb. This is textbook victim blaming. Then you scream at her for working with Sycorax and how she ‘willingly helped a criminal.’ Yes, she took an internship with Sycorax, and Diane Amara was doing creepy, unethical stuff, but…look at it this way. If I were a finance student, I take an internship at a firm, and Michael Milken was my boss, do I get in trouble when he gets busted for insider trading? No. And then Cora, you say, “You bullied two teenagers because of your stupid pride at your school.” Yes, again, she was rude to you. But that’s not a crime, and it is not relevant to her almost getting blown up. You can give her flak for it later, you can hate her for it, but right now she was in immediate danger and your obligation as a superhero was to save her life. Screaming at a victim, blatantly blaming her, in public in front of your teammates and the general public makes you look immature and frankly insane. Considering the ubiquity of cell phone cameras, someone probably got your rant on camera and posted it in the world’s equivalent to TikTok under something like Epic Aqua Girl Meltdown. And it baffles me why none of your teammates are saying anything. The final line, “You are not affiliated with us and we don’t [f-bomb] need you” is more Regina George-style gatekeeping. The tirade and the subsequent non-reaction feels cheap because Cora suffers no consequences from her actions: her teammates don’t call her out on her unprofessionalism.
Karmi is not the only Asian character to suffer railroading and defamation. Momakase has always been liked in the fandom, but “Hiro the Villain” made her a fan favorite. In Big Hero 7 the Series, Momakase works for Nozako, Cora’s grandmother, but secretly hates her. Like in the episode “Hiro the Villain,” in the corresponding chapter of Big Hero 7 the Series, Momakase browbeats Hiro to help her retrieve her family’s heirloom swords. In the original episode, she and Hiro work together and gain a better understanding of one another. In the episode’s ending, Momakase even helps Big Hero 6 escape from the police. However, in this adaptation, she does not gain any of this depth. She tries to kill Hiro even though he helped her regain her most prized possessions. Not only that, she tries to kill Cora because she wants to get back at Nozako. Now, Momakase has probably killed many times before, but I highly doubt she would kill a young girl over a third party grudge. Momakase is flattened into a dragon woman stereotype, the idea that Asian women are inherently untrustworthy and dangerous.
And this is not the first time Momakase’s character is stifled on the page. In the adaptation for Fan Friction, Obake slaps Momakase, who simply takes it with equanimity. Okay, if Obake had actually tried that, she would have sliced his hand off. And Obake wouldn’t even have considered it. He’s incredibly cerebral and would rather use his sharp tongue than his hand. Moreover, Momakase in the show holds him at knifepoint, and that same scene is in the adaptation. The author had seen the episode, knew that Momakase takes disrespect from no one, and even wrote in the scene where she points an incredibly sharp graphene knife a few centimeters from Obake’s carotid. Obake is not stupid. He would have known that was a lethal threat. And look at how this looks: Obake, a European man, slapping an Asian woman. And before you say, “How do you know Obake is European?”, Obake’s ethnicity is not specified in the show, but he is likely of Germanic heritage. His real name, Aken, is likely an Americanization or simplification of the German place name Aachen. Aachen was historically a center for learning and research, which suits Obake’s mien. Obake slapping Momakase degrades both their characters.
Chief Cruz is demoted after the events of Globby Within and replaced by Interim Chief Atallah. At first, I thought Atallah was a step in the right direction. She is of Middle Eastern ancestry, and she shares with Megan some of her own life experiences after Megan is bullied in school. Atallah mentions that she was about 16 at the time of 9/11, making her about 48 now. She mentions that she was harassed because of her heritage and her religion during the post 9/11 environment of open, rampant Islamophobia. The author clearly knows how hurtful racism and prejudice are, yet has Cora openly use a racial microaggression against her South Asian classmate and stereotypes a professional Asian assassin as a dragon woman. The hypocrisy is staggering. During the pursuit of a suspect, the suspect fires a gun at Fred, but Atallah throws herself onto the bullet. Ok, this was unnecessary because Fred was in a full-body suit at the time. Fred’s suit has clear defensive capabilities that outweigh the body armor that Atallah was wearing. We’ve never seen a bullet strike it, but honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if it bounced off like it was made of rubber. So a woman of color, who is a competent leader, becomes a meat shield for an upper class white guy, who didn’t even need to be shielded. Even if this use of the tired Minority Meat Shield trope was not intentional, how does it look? That out of the multicultural team of heroes, Atallah is shot protecting the one white guy? Furthermore, Atallah contacts Fred as she’s recovering in the hospital, saying “I’m impressed and proud of you for helping your friends and teammates, and I know your father would be too.” So Frederick Frederickson IV, aka Boss Awesome, would be proud of Fred for letting a woman take his lumps? That doesn’t seem very awesome of him. He is a paragon of silver age comic chivalry. This is using a woman of color as a disposable plot device to force emotional growth on Fred, a white character, while trying to absolve Fred of an innocent civilian getting shot on his watch – and a high ranking police officer at that.
Finally, we come to Chief Cruz. Like in canon, he plays fast and loose with the rules. As was mentioned, he is removed from his office temporarily by Commander Carter, which is baffling because Carter is not the Police Commissioner or the mayor. Carter oversees superheroes and gives Big Hero 7 legal permission to operate in San Fransokyo. He has no authority to remove any sitting Chief of Police or appoint an interim chief. In the original episode, Mini-Maximum Trouble, there is a hilarious moment where Hiro visits Megan to discuss her new article for her school newspaper. Upon Hiro’s arrival, Cruz takes Hiro to Megan’s room and announces, “You have a visitor…a boy visitor.” That last sentence is in a somewhat distasteful tone, made funnier by Nestor Carbonell’s masterful delivery. Cruz then says, “Who wants some cookies! I’ll go get some cookies!” He then inserts himself between Hiro and Megan, then physically moves Hiro away from Megan by about two or three feet. “Cookies for the kids! Who are pre-dating age!” He punctuates the last sentence with a finger wag. And just to make absolutely certain that Hiro does not miss the point, Cruz shoots him a death glare from the hallway. In the adaptation for Big Hero 7 the Series, Cora accompanies Hiro to Megan’s house. Which offhand seems like a good idea. Three sets of eyes on the topic. Cruz offers them cookies, Megan turns him down, but Cruz snaps “I’m getting cookies anyway!” then shoves Cora and Hiro. This also goes against the Latino rules of hospitality (hospitalidad) and respect. Cruz would not shove a random girl in his house, and doing so makes him look like a brute. The original scene had him give Hiro this frosty reception because Cruz assumes Hiro is romantically interested in Megan. Some of the humor in the scene comes from the contrasts: Cruz is scouring the city looking for Big Hero 6 but is oblivious to the fact that the leader of Big Hero 6 is in his house as well as the fact Cruz thinks Hiro is romantically interested in Megan when Hiro is not even being remotely flirtacious. In the Big Hero 7 storyline, Hiro is there with his girlfriend. Cruz has no way of thinking this is anything more than a brainstorming session, yet the scene proceeds as in canon, but Cora and Hiro are both knocked aside like tenpins. Not only is Cruz flattened into a violent thug, his culture, seemingly respected in the original, is also erased in favor of a cheap slapstick gag.
There is also an ominous undercurrent of ableism in this story in addition to the racial tropes. The most prominent victim of ableism in the narrative is the true Liv Amara. In the original show, she’s in a medically induced coma and only wakes up in the episode City of Monsters II. Liv’s canon screentime is limited, but she reverses the mutations on Karmi and Chris and declares that she is ashamed of Diane’s actions. It indicates she has a strong moral compass. However, in Big Hero 7 the Series, Liv is depicted as Diane’s twin rather than creator/ortet. She is also evil, little better than the psychotic Diane. Why? To railroad her into being a villain feels mean-spirited, considering she is terminally ill and confined to cryogenic sleep. There is one final damning act of ableism that ties with Kaguya’s youthful appearance. Nozako, Cora’s paternal grandmother and Yakuza boss, is allowed to be physically aged. She’s described in the story as almost ghoulish looking: “There was a mixture of morbidity and beauty of her hands, they were aged and thin to the point where he could see the skeletal frame that makes up her hands…her long, black fingernails extending like claws. All this, which would make many repulsed”. The good grandmother is beautiful and youthful, the bad one is an aged crone? The outer appearance is supposed to match the inner reality, relying on a tired, regressive trope that physical aging and body frailty symbolize corruption of spirit. By framing Nozako’s natural aging and her terminal illness as inherently sickening or ugly, the story illustrates a discomfort with aging bodies and illness, leaving an uncomfortable connection between physical perfection and righteousness.
When we look at the total picture of Big Hero 7: The Series so far, a deeply unsettling pattern emerges. The author clearly wants credit for being a progressive, culturally aware writer—weaving in subplots about historical Islamophobia and giving secondary characters authentic Japanese names. However, this progressive veneer completely shatters the moment you look at how canon characters, particularly canon characters of color, are treated. When your protagonist is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, "Asian in name only" OC who is imagined with a white voice actress, and her primary narrative triumph is publicly using a microaggression to a dark-skinned South Asian classmate—all while the narrative reduces East Asian canon women to "Dragon Lady" caricatures and systematically punishes brown girls while forgiving white ones—it ceases to be a simple fanfiction story. It becomes a textbook case of an unexamined Eurocentric power fantasy. The story doesn't lack content, but it suffers from a profound Deficit of Heart. It trades the genuine empathy and found-family warmth of the original Big Hero 6 for a hollow, rigid echo chamber where characters of color are flattened, derailed, and bullied just to make an OC look righteous. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will dive into Chapters 82 and 83 in particular and how they reinforce the negative trends highlighted here, from incel rants to more tired stereotypes to more out-of-character (OOC) moments.
