alright. i was gonna be mature, i was gonna look away, but comes a point where it just becomes annoying. especially when one acts like their discomfort means that other people have to "educate themselves".
i have probably already said it, i will say it again: i think paparazzi was a good mission, that it fit the narrative and that it should not be taken off the game.
jimmy is not a hero: even if you, the player, goes through the game as him, it does not mean you have to identify with him. he's a teenage boy with a cynical and nihilistic worldview, he's rude and he does shit for money. earnest offered him good money, he did the thing. it is coherent and it works
also, for the record, he does feel bad afterwards, when he talks to mandy and finds out how distraught she is. see, jimmy is a teenage boy, and he has no strong relationship with his mother, so he doesn't have half a clue of what women, girls have to go through from a young age; don't you remember how paparazzi were making shit up about women in the entertainment industry every other day?
so talking to mandy is where it opens his eyes on it, at least a bit. to him, it was no big deal, but now he realizes how fucked up what he did was. it is moment of growth, for jimmy, you see.
plus, again: the theme of the consequences of the sexualization of young girls is a big theme in bully, and i could talk lengths about how the relationship between mandy and lola and their very characters reflects that, how they internalized those ideas and crafted their behaviors and personas about them.
mandy is the attractive girl next door, pure enough to be marriage material but not too innocent as to be boring; she took pride in this, she knew that she was desirable and it made her feel good. but it all crashed down in paparazzi, where she lost entirely that sense of false agency she thought she had over others' image of her.
paparazzi is an incredibly interesting mission, it says a lot about the world of bully, about its characters, about the satire and criticisms that pervades the game, which is a fictional playground to explore themes and concepts and understand a bit better something about our world, too- not a place for morality lesson. so, please, educate yourself and learn to analyze a work past your holier. than-thou discomfort biases.
soo hi everyone!! i'm back on my bully essay/meta/something writing!! sort of. i did this.
anyways anyone who's been on this page for some time know how from time to time i have insistently mentioned the parallels between lola and peanut, right?
welp! that was a joke but the time has finally come!! a super-pretentious essay just for the fun of it!! (and also bc i haven't been writing actually argumentative texts in like months perhaps a year, so. yikes, i really need to practice again)
word count: 2.2k WOAH. IM SORRY
i, in my corner, with my monstrous needs.
— susan sontag, as consciousness is harnessed to flesh
take this quote both as a title and an anticipation of what is to come. the essay will be distributed analyzing first the dependence of each of them on johnny, to then draw comparisons. i'll make sure to steer as away from headcanons as possible, sticking closely to the source text. obviously, some things' interpretation might be ambiguous, but, you know. your usual occupation hazard.
also, a disclaimer before we start: while they are psychologically complex and there is always a mimetic intention in developing them, these are fictional characters, and, as such, their primary function is to be vessels for different themes, questions and so forth. therefore, i will prioritize meaning and themes over moral implications and similar elements.
i. peanut
for how much i can adore talking about him, the way peanut depends on johnny is very much on the nose; worn on his sleeve, even. in 11:11 minutes of voice lines, he mentions johnny 30 times.
many interpret this as the caricature of a boy crush, but i have reasons to believe it is much less cute than that.
the problem is that, really, more than trying to identify specific situations... peanut seems to rely on johnny for a significant part of what he does. when he does good at dodgeball:
Look at me, Johnny, look at me!
almost like a child calling for his parent's attention to be praised. he calls johnny's name when he's going through hardships, when he's scared or when he's sad.
more than someone he just loves, johnny is a point of reference. whenever there's something going on, whenever he does or has to do something, his first thought goes to johnny; vice versa, what johnny asks of him is his priority.
I gotta tell Johnny!
No time. I gotta see Johnny now.
Gotta help Johnny.
What can I do next to please Johnny? I mean Lola! I mean…
(this also goes in a "negative" direction, envy being the other side of the medal to adoration. especially because, in some way, this reliance on johnny might be felt by him as emasculating, and, being johnny his model of masculinity, adding it to the napoleon complex thing, it's not hard to guess why it can be so unpleasant. we can see this manifest through some of the things he expresses in regards to lola- not as much an interest he has towards her, but the interest he wishes to have from her- which are a bit more different than it might seem at a first glance. but this is a mouseketool we'll need later. still:
Last time I saw her, Lola made eyes at me, not Johnny!
do we really need this part? heh. i'm not sure, but it's always good to point out)
(also, just because, for the purpose of this analysis, it might be useful to specify: while these sentiments are very much implied in peanut's canon quotes, we have no evidence in canon in what measure they are reciprocated by johnny. the fandom has universally agreed that johnny also views peanut as his Best Friend In The World; while in some measure, they must be at least a bit close, i think it is even safe to say, given the caricaturist nature of bully's characterizations, that johnny holds peanut in less consideration that peanut deludes himself into believing. quoting another post of mine, the kids who show some level of obsession towards their leader mention him on average ten or less times (gord mentions derby eight times, parker six times, kirby mentions ted five times). the leaders don't usually make names at all, that much is true; however, peanut mentions johnny 30 times, and, even in front of this proportion, johnny mentions peanut 0 times. just to make that clear)
overall, what undeniably shines through his voice lines is a feeling of general inadequacy, whether about his height, or his strength in front of a bigger adversary. the audios in which he tries to show off range from being disingenuous, to straight up improbable.
crossing what we have until now said, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that he really tries to make up, to fill this empty feeling of inadequacy by taking pride in his role as johnny's second in command.
while i am a big fan of bully's characteristic of having left much content out of the main game, leaving the gamers to dig it up for themselves, i do believe that scrapping some of the stuff that was prepared for peanut is a loss. we have a number of voice lines coming from chapter 3, in which it was heavily implied how important peanut's role as johnny's right hand man was.
for example, much like... all other seconds in command, really, he was to be followed and then fought in the rumble, before you could get to johnny, with the specific duty to cover his back. even his very first scene, the opening cutscene of chapter 3, i believe, is not to be underestimated. most of the other people, as far as i recall, call you when they need it in person; johnny, however, sends peanut. making him, de facto, an extension of himself, almost.
again, you choose the motivation. what is important, from a narrative point of view, is that peanut clings to johnny through these acts of service, almost making it the foundation of his personhood.
basically, he makes it so that, if he can't be of help to johnny, his whole self is fundamentally annihilated, giving himself completely to johnny.
ii. lola
with lola, reading between the lines gets a bit more difficult; first of all, because lola is much less transparent than peanut, her insincerity being a supporting beam of the whole chapter 3. secondly, whether she was done dirty by the creators or not, it is undoubted that being the perspective that of a teenage boy (namely, jimmy, but we certainly, as viewers, are brought to sympathize more with johnny than with lola) with all the prejudices it can bring with itself.
however, it doesn't mean that there isn't anything to work with- quite the contrary, actually. the issue with lola is that there is a certain amount of layers to get through before gaining a satisfying perception of her as a character. still, we're here to try our best, aren't we!
even behind the muddiness of her intentions and the manipulation she shows herself a master at, it is clear from the second we first meet her that what she does is in function of johnny.
to get through this mess with order, we'll start from an easy, measurable numeric information: lola mentions johnny in her audio files 19 times. which, we're assessed, IS a considerable amount.
we have extensively talked about the way her cheating patterns are a strategy not to succumb to the passive role of the girl in the heteronormative, patriarchal prototypical couple (there's a post here breaking down a lot of this stuff, if any of you is interested!!), so, instead of this, i want to focus on what lies beneath that behavior.
ultimately, the whole point is that lola expects and wants johnny to fight for her. whether is it because she feels taken for granted, or just because he can't perceive it if not through grandiose gestures like the rumble- your interpretation will work; she wants to see johnny fighting nail and teeth not to lose her, she wants him to show her that he wants her.
she's all about that attention, and she knows exactly what and how to do to get it. and i think this is especially clear when you compare the moments in which she knows there's no advantage she could go for; when she has understood that jimmy won't fall for her manipulation, when algie and chad leave her unsatisfied, when norton openly accuses her and antagonizes her - she loses her temper, lets go of that sweetened and/or flirtatious voice tone, abandons that specific kind of gesturing. she doesn't care anymore about obtaining something. she was actually angry, and she was actually upset that johnny had disappeared.
in some of her audios, she references johnny with some amount of fondness, as well:
Johnny and I were on the best date ever.
(there is also a voice line in which she says "He told me he likes me because of my personality. Isn't that sweet?"; due to it being a general chatter and not exclusive to one chapter, i assume it is relatively safe to assume she is quoting johnny. however, as i said at the beginning, we're trying to stay as close to canon material as possible, so, do your thing- and i'm open to arguments!!)
a considerable amount of audio files, however (which will lead us to our final point) is about her... calling for help for johnny, or stating, confidently, that he will come save her, or avenge her later.
Someone get Johnny!
Johnny's gonna get you for this.
Johnny is gonna kill you!
but wait... i have some sense of déjà vu...
You're gonna be sorry when Johnny finds out!
iii. two faces of the same medal
if i had to pick an effective image for a metaphor, i'd say that the thing about lola and peanut is that they are both dogs looking for someone to take their leash; we’re talking here about an exclusive relationship with someone they can rely totally on, someone we’ll call the Other (with a capital o, distinguished from just other. yes it is unnecessarily complicated i’m sorry).
for what my professor would call accidents of history, it happened that both of them found that Other in johnny.
each of them attempts at creating an exclusive relationship with the Other, one foolproof and fundamentally… perfect. perfect in the way that everything works like oiled gears, in the way that every next move is predictable, in the way that any accident will not break the created equilibrium. (even if, in the general sense of the term, lola and johnny's relationship is everything but perfect, it is in the connotation that we have established here. lola is aware that, no matter what she does, johnny will come back around. hell, the very thing that she does is aimed at keeping that balance; specifically, keeping him a bit on the edge, pushing him into a corner where he has to actively make an effort to keep her close.)
they both hide something they are ashamed of, regulating not only their actions and reactions but their very way of existing in the world, in order to keep that gear working, in order to remain in johnny's hand. lola hides that craving for a genuine and stable affection, dissimulating it with the cheating and the fatuous physical demonstrations of closeness; peanut hides his sense of inadequacy and complex of inferiority, by being the tough and reliable second in command.
basically, what they mean to achieve is a sense of security, the safety of not really being the one to lead but, at the same time, finding a purpose, other than a shield from the outside world that they are not willing to concede themselves to. like a... symbiotic relationship?? i was going to say parasitic, but, yknow. the Other does get some advantages, which are, respectively, peanut's acts of service and lola's capacity to boost johnny's pride.
now, of course, johnny is not aware of either of their play. which makes it even better, since, as we already said, both of their approach to the relationship needs some degree of insincerity.
like, i don't deny that johnny might be a good friend, or a loyal one. but he is an oblivious, prideful fuck who can't see past his own nose; he's got a tendency to make it all about himself - which of course goes perfectly with what we said about both peanut and lola making the Other their center, taking up, in a certain way, a passive role in the relationship.
this way, both of them aim at creating with johnny a relationship that is, in a way, codependant and conditional, in which the do ut des (their respective "service" ↔ johnny's guarantee of stability) creates the foundation of the very relationship.
this, of course, brings up the problem of exclusivity; on which, however, i prefer not to delve into too much, as this would bring us to the topic of their antagonism which... isn't really what i wanted to go for, at least not here. (it would risk bringing us a bit too close to my subjective interpretation and too far away from the canon, which i PROMISED i wouldn't do. however, someday i might elaborate on that??? idk , please do lmk if someone's interested around here)
i will, however, show you a diagram (it looks like a triangle- i guess it is, but it is VERY important that it is a pyramid, with a top and a larger foundation) and a quote, to wrap this up bc i think it is already WAY too long and ramble-y lmao. let me know what you think anyway, my ask box is always open <3
it almost feels like a joke to play out a part
when you are not the starring role in someone else's heart
you know i'd rather walk alone (i'd rather walk alone)
than play a supporting role
if i can't get the starring role
-- starring role, marina and the diamonds
Throughout the entire game, who do you think are some of the most underrated or under-appreciated characters?
stumbling into the askbox whyyy hello there!!! it had been a while!!
OKAY SO. let's start from one fact: every. single. character has something special about them. so like the easy answer is... anyone, lmao. truth be told we (the whole community) has been around for llke, 18 years (WOAH) and some sides are completely unexplored. even just from the idea that... have you guys ever noticed how little content there is around about nerds and jocks, for exmple? and i don't only mean art but also writing, analysis, metas, thoughts and such. not to mention the townies, the townies, when, having some of them been given some actually adult attributes, there would be a lot to unpack.
i feel like this is a) mostly for the nerds, that the rightful fisgust for the horrible thing they did to mandy discourages a lot from engaging with them as characters too, and b) because they are quite overshadowed by the fan favorite preps and greasers. which, i mean, very legit. but i think that they do have a lot of potential, again, in terms of characterization and themes, and i feel like we are collectively missing out on a lot.
and there's also the fact that, even with the fan-favorites, there is so little tapping into the more serious and sometimes mature aspects. i wouldn't say christy is neglected by the fandom, but it's not often that i read someone talking about her repressed anger that explodes whenever she feels too much, that heirloom of her father that of curse she doesn't have, she isn't a problem boy like her brother, what do you mean with that, i could use this tie to strangle you goddammit! or vance, that we all love as the sunshine jokester of the greaser and heartbreaker queer icon, but how come none of us ever mention him having a canonical addiction, and what if his messy dating habits have to do with that, too? what if he's running from something inside himself, rushing to next best thing just so he can feel something?
but this is just me rambling as an introduction oops. so, just trying to list a couple of my favorites:
thad carlson (& dan wilson) (putting them together bc they're intrinsecally connected and while i do stand by the fact that he's wildly underappreciated in the fandom i would hit dan in the face with a brick): i would lterally give my first born for these two. they are what they actually wanted to write when they wrote about cain and abel.
i'm not sure what is the exact reason why they have different last names, and i don't wanna enter headcanon territory here. what it does unavoidably indicate, though, is that they were doomed from the start. like it was written in their names.
so, picture this: they were in the nerds together. they suffered the bullying, the abuse together. the humiliation tasted like blood in their mouths and shone like the stars they'd see with their heads smashed in a locker, but at least they knew their brother would've been there to hold them.
there's something very visceral about suffering together with a brother. like the blood they share creates somewhat of a shell, one that can protect them from what is outside, that can give them the comfort that they will never be alone. whether they like it or not, their brother will forever be with them; it's inside them.
except that thad had the rage of a wounded animal; dan had the fear of a small prey.
so, while thad kept standing tall and proud and chin high against his bullies, dan started training and morphing until he could be accepted in the jocks.
dan wasn't the bullied anymore. he was the bully. while his brother was still on the other side of the war- the side of the eternal losers, that is. the side that, no matter how many battles they will win, they will always be at a disadvantage.
so thad has got all the hurt of having been betrayed by a half of himself, like the phantom pain of a lost limb. and the hurt makes him angrier and angrier and when he wants to take revenge on the jocks his brother is the first target he wants, because, see, he is the victim, his brother is cain who has killed abel.
but also dan has got his head on backwards to look out for enemies and for anyone who might uncover him as the fraud he is, the way he just thought- they are just bullying me for what i am, so what if i become someone different? except that it's not like he didn't feel like a loser anymore, he just feels like a loser with a football sweater.
so at that point you look at the direction of that violence, at where the anger and the resentment lies, and you stop there and wonder. who's cain there? who's gonna be the victim, who the executioner? like nathaniel orion said, "i want to kill him sometimes. i think sometimes he wants to die". i love them ur honor.
otto tyler: i have no literal idea why there is so so so little about him. admittedly, content about townies is in gnereal harder to track down, since they have... no last names.... for the most part. but the otto tag is absolutely desolated.
this boy is what you'd call too angry to be this young. his first response to anything is extreme violence and fantasies of it. playing his audios you will be met with die, kill, die, kill, kill, die, die. and all of his vitriol is poured on the school, like they have all come together specifically to hunt him down. and he's been canonically hospitalized, as well; when you walk in the asylum for the first time (galloway away i believe) he tells you not to "anger the watcher"- but who is this watcher? the composition of the scene seems to implies it is the statue in the courtyard; the most coherent correspondence would be the orderlies you will have to avoid as you walk past them; maybe otto himself has just been told not to anger the watcher by the people who are supposed to take care of him, but that are just playing with his mind to make him too afraid not to behave. which, incidentally, doesn't sound too different from what he might have suffered at school.
otto will ask you if you have ever punched a wall. he will swear he hates everyone in the school, that everyone in the school hated him, he will threaten to destroy it.
otto is a landmine, he's an unstable kid who just needed some ground to stand on, and instead they placed him all alone on a shaking earth. all is anger is desperation, it's having spent too much time without a support system, too much time bound -to a chair, in a cell, in a straitjacket- surrounded by people who couldn't understand him. who stifled his expression instead of channeling all the feelings he had all the time, exploding and intense in an overwhelming and violent way.
i like to think of him as an artist. he mentions tattoos; i like to imagine he's learning to do them himself. that he's finding that as an outlet for his expression.
and yeah overall. i am a lot fond of otto, and i think he would have a lot to say.
mr. wiggins: look, this guy is super unlucky. he's the only teacher with no class minigame; he's only ever walking around, and if you saw him you probably mistook him for the more familiar mr. matthews. but believe me when i tell you he's a real one.
example 1: when someone snithces to him, he says something along the lines of "thank you, but i will never be able to trust you again". BRO. let me tell you, in 1968 this guy was OUT on his college campus and he was MARCHING and RIOTING with workers and students. he even mentions having spent a night or two in JAIL.
he will walk into class and say the nastiest things about reagan while he keeps saying that as a teacher he will have to be politically neutral as if he didn't just have a fight with hattrick about socialism.
considering the state of bullworth (the city), what do you think the state of the country or world is like? do you think bullworth has a unique culture, or is it almost representative of the society outside its perimeters?
i think about what hal esposito said a lot when he and lucky were finding things to watch on the tv. "what? war footage and natural disasters doesn't do it for you?"
considering it is highly likely that the world's condition is very chaotic, how might this affect bullworth and its residents?
hello there!!! ah yes, geography. my beloathed
that's an interesting question of course, yes!! my instinctive thought when first reading this ask was what i always asumed, ie: the news hal and lucky were referring about weren't local but, yknow, american general news. also bc paris from the carnival says something very similar in front of her tv, and we know that the carnival travels, so i wouldn't think of something too different.
however!! let's go by steps there, because thinking about it that's something i never properly expanded upon.
so, first of all: canonically speaking, bullworth is in new england. now, as a non-usamerican, i have very little knowledge of anything about hyperspecific cultures in america, maybe just some west coast zones or south and some midwest.
however!! the fact that there are so many kids of italian certain descent and some other kids with non anglophone last names (kowalski, brakus, luna, karamazov, etc) implies that it is an important destination for migrations. this makes me think of earlly 1900s new york, which would certainly be coherent.
now, a long time ago i found the certain information that bullowrth was supposed to be in new hampshire. however, since i have learned that "trust me bro" is never a good source, i went back to dig some deeper into the whole thing: it still seems to be more or less agreed upon that the state is new hampshire, also because someone noted a striking resemblance of bullworth with the phillips exeter academy. of course maybe it wasn't as explicit and direct as this user puts it, but it is suggestive enough that it would be nice to go with it.
now, first about the culture: we mentioned bullworth being basically a melting pot. this means that it is not only unique, but in fact very diverse, also depending on the zone. for example, i think in new coventry you'll find an especially colorful culture, with people coming from different places and different cultures, everyone holding onto their own but also interacting with their neighbor. you'll find people giving each other giving their best wishes to their neighbor for a festivity they don't even celebrate but know the other does. i mean, maybe you'll have some catholic complaining about the shop being closed just that day, but cue to the stereotypical southern italian wife smacking him behind his head and telling her good friend is home with their family and he mustn't be an annoying jerk (not in so many words, of course).
it is probably quieter the more you get closer to the vale. maybe in town there will be the occasional decoration outside of the house or in a shop, but overall… i'd say that the fundamental sentiment in bullworth is, exactly as the school crest says, canis canem edit. mind your own business and you'll live a hundred years, like an old saying goes. keep a good distance, so they don't hurt you and you don't hurt them.
and in fact, the vale is where this hyperindividualism gets ornated with the hypocrisy of the Good People, some facade to keep so that not only no conflict is created, but any chance and risk of it is perfectly concealed. you have the middle class-bourgeois, christian family who greet their neighbors with a smile and then speculate on all their disgraces as soon as the front door closes. and everything that happens in the family stays in the family, dirty laundry is washed at home.
yeah, overall i'd say. the whole point of bullworth culture is self-sufficiency, it's doing the best of what you have and care thoroughly and not let anyone else touch what's yours.
now, the natural condition of the territory: established that we are on the new hampshire coast, i have tried to dig a bit. i will bring up again something i mentioned earlier: i immediately assumed it was us or global news, but, while it is unfortunately enough to desensitize the general public to military violence, natural forces can be… a bit different.
i will tell a small anecdote about me. i grew up in an extremely seismic area, and by that i mean that we would experience at least a couple waves every some weeks, not strong enough to cause damage but enough to be perceived and do small stuff like making small objects fall off or ceiling lamps shake. and, y'know, it has always been perfectly normal for me, it has happened while i was in class and the worst thing was that i smudged a line on the essay i was writing. but then i moved away for college, and, when in geography we started talking about earthquakes, my professor admitted being scared shitless of seismic waves. my friends got the news of some waves in my native area and asked me how my family was; my mom was like “what do you mean four? i only felt three”
what was that to say? well. in my experience, the general masses are much more moved by natural disasters than by wars. so, in some way, the idea that hal and lucky were at most annoyed by the repetitiveness of the news makes me think that they have some experience with it. earthquakes probably aren't the ones, since, well. plate tectonics. which i will not explain here mostly because i have already passed that exam and i want nothing to do with it ever again LMAO. but anyway the east coast is a very stable area of the earth, so no earthquakes nor volcanoes. and, since it is located tightly in a small gulf, i think sea storms and tidal waves are out of the question too.
however! apparently, tornadoes are not too infrequent in the area, nor, i guess, storms and other similar climate events. as i mentioned before: what happens there is that you get kind of desensitized there; the thought of anything horrible happening isn't there, or, if it is, it barely hits with its full force. “but what if it is stronger next time?” we'll all just die, at least i won't have to worry about rent anymore, maybe my boss will finally kick the bucket too, ha-ha. what do you mean someone died in the next city? well, you know, it can happen.
so yeah, when you ask how it affects the people of bullworth- it probably just amplifies whatever nihilism is already there, y'know. see constantinos, who's most probably clinically depressed, or lefty's “life sucks and then you die”, which is disturbing, especially coming from a kid his age.
i guess it's not the only factor, but it does contribute to this feeling of bullworth just being some lost land, forsaken by god himself left to its own devices. it's like the entirety of the population is... in survival mode, as i tend to say; you just pull through, which should be the bare minimum, but there we are. think of yourself first, then your neighbor, but actually fuck your country, since it has never done a thing for me.
