I hate hate HATE all those 2edgy 4me theories about kids shows. Like Angelica dreaming up the rugrats, or the ed, edd, and eddy children being ghosts, or literally anything that takes a lighthearted and fun kids show and has to turn it into some tragic take of rape or murder or misinformed mental illness.
So you know what? From now on I’m gonna do the exact opposite. Every cool grim-dark show is now because of a bunch of children. To get us started:
Game of Thrones: A middle-school DnD campaign with the most angry, vindictive DM who has promised to kill everyone’s player characters (and their family) by the end.
The Walking Dead is actually a bunch of kids playing zombie apocalypse in their neighborhood and every time someone “dies,” it’s because their parents called them home for supper.
Breaking Bad is actually just a fanfic the students in Mr. White’s class write about him because no one has any idea what he does with his free time and the running jokes about it got wildly out of hand.
Hannibal is someone’s two cats who are murderous and evil and also adorable, because cats. Their person tells stories at work about their shenanigans and adds the anthropomorphic interpretations of their behavior. (Their person also has dogs, who are..dogs in the stories.) People being eaten are variously cat toys, dog toys, hairclips, rubber bands, and once a real (dead) mouse.
I hate hate HATE all those 2edgy 4me theories about kids shows. Like Angelica dreaming up the rugrats, or the ed, edd, and eddy children being ghosts, or literally anything that takes a lighthearted and fun kids show and has to turn it into some tragic take of rape or murder or misinformed mental illness.
So you know what? From now on I’m gonna do the exact opposite. Every cool grim-dark show is now because of a bunch of children. To get us started:
Game of Thrones: A middle-school DnD campaign with the most angry, vindictive DM who has promised to kill everyone’s player characters (and their family) by the end.
The Walking Dead is actually a bunch of kids playing zombie apocalypse in their neighborhood and every time someone “dies,” it’s because their parents called them home for supper.
Breaking Bad is actually just a fanfic the students in Mr. White’s class write about him because no one has any idea what he does with his free time and the running jokes about it got wildly out of hand.
Folks: you CANNOT censor trigger tags. When you block a tag, it doesn’t block other “spellings” of it. Writing it as “r@pe” or “r4p3” means that someone who has “tw rape” as a blocked tag will still see that post because you didn’t wanna say the word rape. You are hurting people. Do not censor words, because people do not have those filtered out.
And honestly if you can’t even write the word rape to protect other people then you probably aren’t old/mature enough to be on this website.
This right here, if you want to consor something post a tw but stop censoring the words! it defeats the purpose of someone being able to block the content.
“Jack of all trades, master of none” … “but ofttimes better than a master of one.”
“Blood is thicker than water.” “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb.”
“Money is the root of all evil.” “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
there’s also “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” which conservatives are oh so fond of saying
bootstraps are, well, straps on your boots. you cannot physically pull yourself up by them, and that’s what the original phrase meant. “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is meant to be an impossible task
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
“The best thing we can do with power is give it away” - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing “Jason Todd is a cop” debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
“A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power.
I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large.
But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read.
The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact…
The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return.
Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story.
But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive.
We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies.
But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you).
The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take.
So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson…
The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY.”
ALT
