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deezabee ([info]iseethelight) wrote in [info]capseroo,
@ 2017-11-20 13:34:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:! male, #race/ethnicity: white, *requested, actor: ben barnes, age: 30s, also: beard, eye color: brown, hair color: brown, tv show: the punisher, ~icons: baobabble, ~icons: otokodake, ~icons: squarebox

Ben Barnes, 2, 088 caps



BEN BARNES AS BILLY RUSSO IN THE PUNISHER


2, 088 CAPS, REMOVED FOR SPACE, ICONS BELOW


I laughed several times in the show because of how often people talked about how pretty he is IN THE SHOW. He is very, very pretty. I thought he did an excellent acting job, and frankly, I've always been a big fan so it was exciting to see him in this role. He was in more dark shots than a lot of the others. Classically.

Spoilers in the comments for him in the show.

Icon Sets: 1 @ [info]baobabble
Icon Sets: 1 @ [info]otoko_dake
Icon Sets: 1 @ squarebox

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[info]spoilsofwar
2017-11-21 04:23 pm UTC (link)
SIGH. So pretty, but he's almost Kilgrave levels of grossness as a character for me. Particularly during THAT FLASH BACK.

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[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 04:27 pm UTC (link)
I don't think anyone can compare to Kilgrave, but he was definitely beyond scary several times in that. Very menacing. I'd never have thought he could be that menacing but he always manages.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]spoilsofwar
2017-11-21 04:29 pm UTC (link)
No, he can't, but the way he treated his mother + the fact that he betrayed Frank the way he did? Not redeemable at all. (I've seen a lot of people trying to redeem him already)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 04:30 pm UTC (link)
ffs people just let villains be villains. He was a sociopath, born or made, either way, that's what he was, the show was pretty clear about that.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 04:30 pm UTC (link)
Of course the show was clear on Kilgrave being evil beyond belief and people still made him into a woobie ffs

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]spoilsofwar
2017-11-21 04:31 pm UTC (link)
They're pretty + white dudes + tragic backstory = woobies!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 04:34 pm UTC (link)
It's annoying because I feel like Kilgrave and Billy were the two Netflix villains they were very clear were irredeemable. Intentionally! Some of the other villains I do think they had like "they are bad people but you can understand why," like with Fisk or Cottonmouth and Mariah. Elektra obviously they have a lot of redemptive hopes but losses lol.

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[info]spoilsofwar
2017-11-21 04:37 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I definitely felt like Kilgrave and Russo were irredeemable. Whatever circumstances changed them into the horrible people they were, they were still horrible people.

Fisk had a lot of irredeemable qualities too, but yeah, you could see that he genuinely loved Hell's Kitchen and wanted to make it better. Cottonmouth and Mariah wanted to do the same for Harlem. They weren't doing it strictly for themselves. They thought they were doing good. I like those kinds of villains much better because it makes them real people.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 04:45 pm UTC (link)
I put a spoiler warning up ahead because we're talking about things lol.

I think for Billy the key moment of knowing that was when Curtis gave him kind of an out, asking if he just got turned around and lost, and Billy was like lol no. Because he knows he was always a bad person. It's like that B-99 gif "cool motive, still murder." Then again I think about that for Frank too, lol, which I'm alone in the fandom for.

Netflix has done pretty well in villain department, more so than any of the movies, but they also had time to build them. I think Billy was very compelling, but it doesn't change that he is flat out evil. Even if he did care for some people, he also would kill them in an instant if he felt like it, which obviously he did attempt to do lol.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 05:11 pm UTC (link)
I think the problem with fandom and villains is that people have trouble understanding that they can find a villain compelling and even sympathetic at times, but they don't need to redeem him. It's like people think that if they like a bad guy it makes them a bad guy or some weirdness, so they have to woobie them. Rather than just going, I find the character compelling, sometimes I even felt bad for them, but they are definitely a villain and got what was coming to them.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]fjords
2017-12-13 05:53 pm UTC (link)
people have trouble understanding that they can find a villain compelling and even sympathetic at times, but they don't need to redeem him.

Yes thisssssss, and it drives me flipping crazy. I might've linked this/talked with you about these definitions before, but I love the three categories in this post: What does it mean to be compelling? More detail in the link, but in a nutshell:
SYMPATHETIC CHARACTERS. "Odds are, this is a character you want to know in real life. They either have problems that are like your problems, or they react to problems that you don’t have in ways you probably would."

UNDERSTANDABLE CHARACTERS. "The thing about sympathetic character is that the audience directly connects to the character themselves. This is different from merely understandable characters, where a character does things the audience would not do, but these actions are understandable due to the circumstances the character is in, or their history in their world."

COMPELLING CHARACTERS. "But the really odd duck in all of this are characters who are neither sympathetic, nor understandable: they are not like us, we would not act as they do, and we have no means of explaining exactly why they do what they’re doing. So why do we keep watching them? Why stay with a character if you have no access to them? We watch them, in essence, because we are compelled to."

-- and he has the really good example of Walter White (Breaking Bad) starting off sympathetic, then slipsliding into understandable, then evolving into awful-yet-compelling. And I wish fandom would understand this! That Billy can be deeply compelling without you needing to interpret him as someone you'd want to go out for a drink with or redeem or forgive. But yeah, sadly it usually only happens when the villain is a handsome white man, which also explains how they get away with so f'in much IRL too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

/wound up here bc I came back for the caps again

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[info]iseethelight
2017-12-13 06:32 pm UTC (link)
hahahahahh I never mind more conversation on this. I some day want to write a whole thought piece on redemption arcs, because I think people have a very interesting back and forth on that as a concept. Because sure you see a lot of people wanting the redemption arcs, but then are willfully "sometimes a villain is just a villain" in other cases. I also think redemption arcs are becoming Too Much Of A Thing, to the point where we as a society believes that people can fuck up many times and should still be forgiven and that if you don't forgive them you are like this heartless monster who doesn't believe in redemption even if you were the injured party in their bad behavior.

For example, Thor doesn't HAVE to forgive Loki for anything. He does, because he loves him, and that's okay too. He chooses to forgive him multiple times. It would be okay in my opinion if Loki fucks up so many times that Thor is like this is a toxic relationship and I'm not sure I can keep giving you chances. But I don't think people would be okay with that, like how dare Thor not give his brother ANOTHER dozen chances after he's tried to kill him a bunch. It's this whole toxic relationship thing. And especially with Loki, this weird feeling fandom has that like ... all the Avengers should forgive him too??? Or just get over the last time they saw him he tried to murder everyone, because ... I really don't know because maybe he's trying to be better. But it's not like they have to do that, and yet.

This goes back to Frank though in the concept that like ... Dinah for example the story pressures to just accept Frank killed her friend but it's somehow okay because Frank feels bad about it and he was ordered to do it and there was clear narrative push for her to just be okay with it. Rather than allow her to be like ... you killed him, and you've killed a lot of people, and I don't HAVE to help you or believe in you or let you go or whatever. I get they needed her to do that to push the plot forward, but I also feel like it's a continuous need to force people who are actually wronged to forgive someone if they're on a "redemptive" arc.

I don't know if you've seen Bojack Horseman but there's a story in that show that I found fascinating, in that Bojack fucked over a good friend of his and didn't stand by him when he got ousted for being gay. And his friend is dying and he apologizes and feels bad abut it and his friend just goes ... I dont' forgive you. And Bojack is like ...ummm but I apologized. And I feel bad. And I'm sorry. And his friend goes okay I hear that but I don't forgive you and I don't have to. Which I pretty much never see in media, especially not as it relates to a main character.

I also think there are times people can be forgiven and redeemed mind you, but I feel like there's a difference between when it is narratively satisfying - the character WANTS it and works for it and builds to it - or just ... you have to be okay with this because we're telling you to crammed down your throat. Which DOESN'T HAPPEN with Billy, and I love that, so it's like no fandom. Just accept they are saying this dude is not redeemable and THAT IS OKAY.

also I think it goes without saying that every example I can find about this is about how we forgive white men more than anything ever and it's a whole different story when it's POC or women.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]fjords
2017-12-13 08:16 pm UTC (link)
I also think redemption arcs are becoming Too Much Of A Thing, to the point where we as a society believes that people can fuck up many times and should still be forgiven and that if you don't forgive them you are like this heartless monster who doesn't believe in redemption even if you were the injured party in their bad behavior.

YES this. And it's also why I harp on about fictional representations of stuff so much, because I feel like they do reflect & shape & program how we respond to things. When Ibsen wrote A Doll's House in 1879, he depicted a wife walking out on her husband, and reviewers at the time described it as “the door slam heard around the world,” because it was just SO shocking and unthinkable that a woman could/would do that. I think it is so important for fiction to show people what's possible, and how they might react to situations. So when we never get to see people cutting toxic influences out of their life, and instead forgiving characters like Loki over and over and over... :|

(On that note, I really loved their conversation in Ragnarok, where Thor finally was just like "Nah, I don't expect anything from you anymore, we've grown apart and we're just very different people and will never see eye-to-eye, I get that, it's nbd". The movie still undermined that by the end but I adore that they at least get closer to touching on that point, at least?)

Like I see fandom going through SUCH horrifying contortions to redeem & support actual monsters like Kilgrave or Walter White.

I absolutely still love me some proper on-screen redemptive arcs, but the best ones are a) not where fanon is making it up~~ and shoving it in there, and b) where they have to work for it and actually put in some goddamn time & effort to change themselves properly? I'm trying to think of actual Excellent versions of this, and Zuko is one of the only ones coming to mind, because thx to it being a TV show they actually get enough episodes to devote to the arc.

Whereas, yes, 'unlikeable' female characters are NEEEEVEEERRR given anywhere near the same amount of leeway, ever. Fans will rain down hatred on a female character for like, saying one snide thing, whereas child-murdering male characters walk off beloved.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-12-13 08:28 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]fjords, 2017-12-13 08:33 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-12-13 10:00 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]fjords, 2017-12-13 08:16 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-12-13 08:25 pm UTC

[info]iseethelight
2017-12-13 06:32 pm UTC (link)
it goes without saying = you just said it. BUT IT IS INFURIATING.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 05:44 pm UTC (link)
This. ALL OF THIS! These were my exact thoughts. Like you feel so much for Fisk and Mariah and Cottonmouth. They're AWFUL people. But you're meant to go, 'what if'. For them. For Elektra.

Particularly, the intentionally bit. I kept feeling when watching Billy that they were just going all out in making him awful. Like I said below. Whenever I was like. Okay. This is as awful as he'll get. It was like the writers were like LOL. No. We want NO DOUBT this is scum.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 05:47 pm UTC (link)
This is definitely just the CLASSIC CASE of fandom wanting to protect pretty white dudes. Because I feel like the show was VERY DELIBERATE in how they handled his character. They WANTED you to hope he wasn't terrible and then were like hahahahaah no guess what he's the actual worst.

And I'm really glad they didn't have him be the one who killed the family? Because I feel like that was too easy of a decision and they already presented him as plenty evil. And he was right, of course he wouldn't have missed! It's almost like standing to the side and doing nothing either way was worse.

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[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 06:11 pm UTC (link)
It really is. Especially when I see his "friendship" with Frank get more focus than Frank's with Curtis. (Okay, slight SPOILER but: FRANK AND CURTIS SHARED A FORHEAD PRESS MOMENT! Like you know if Curtis was a white dude they'd be getting the same focus as David and Frank or Billy and Frank. Which all complex and interesting relationships. But none to the level of pure trust Frank and Curtis have).

It is. Because in a way. He was like, I would never! (Okay not like that. But sort of. It was like. No, I said nope. I wouldn't do it. But Frank is like ... you knew. And his answer is just so like /shrugs, yeah I did. Like ah, well. Dems the breaks. This is how things are.)

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[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 06:17 pm UTC (link)
Well to be fair, lol, I think that was BECAUSE he was the villain. Frank and Curtis' relationship was straight forward, pure loyalty, love, trust, respect. Think of those relationships in other media too, it's usually when it's friends turned enemies that get the focus. Because you want to understand how that even happened, and the CHARACTER wants to understand, because they're being betrayed. Frank wasn't betrayed by Curtis, so there isn't a serious reflection and confusion and hatred there. So it wasn't necessary in my opinion to delve into the two of them. You understood Curtis and Frank from that first scene together.

LOL I KNOW RIGHT. I laughed out loud. I WOULD NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT. hahah but yeah I knew about it also that they died oh well I mean this is really your fault if you think about it. /shrug

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(no subject) - [info]grapecase, 2017-11-21 11:03 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-11-21 11:18 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]grapecase, 2017-11-21 11:42 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-11-21 11:45 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]grapecase, 2017-11-22 12:06 am UTC

[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 05:42 pm UTC (link)
I get the sentiment. For once. Because AT FIRST. I thought he was going to be a Frank or Elektra level of dark. Or Fisk. Where he is obviously the villain. But you could just be like .... okay. I sort of see where you're coming from. You're still shity. Cool, motive. Still murder. But I see it.

And, unlike Kilgrave, he comes off so charming at first. So likeable. And it's like BINCH DON'T DO IT. THESE PEOPLE LOVE YOU. And everytime I think okay. This is the worse he'll get. And I can maybe tolerate that? He gets worse. To the point where it's just. UGH. I'm like totally with you. What he's doing to his mother? What he did to Frank. AND HOW. He did it. It wasn't like he was pushed to it. Or it angsts him. It was like, /shrugs. Well. It happened. And that's just no.

(But he's pretty so. And white. And male. And fandom's gonna fandom.)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 05:45 pm UTC (link)
Oh no I think they did an amazing job at pulling back the layers. Because he IS very charismatic and he DOES come off as a possible redeemable character in the start. Like you know he's a bad guy, but he's so likable and genuine and you're like BUT BUT BUT. And then they're like PULLS CURTAIN AWAY no guys he's like flat out evil. I think that was all intentional! You were supposed to want him to be more like Fisk until then, really, so I think it was extremely well done. The unraveling of who he was under the pretty exterior.

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[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 06:08 pm UTC (link)
It really was. A part of my brain is STILL BUT BUT BUT. But more in the sense of the characters he hurt (/pulls out Tyra). Like BUT Frank LOVED YOU. BUT his kids! BUT MADANI! Even when I'm like die in a fire, die.

And Ben. Not just the writing. Ben played it so well. One of the things I noted is that Russo always seemed to be thinking. It struck me in a couple of certain scenes. And I noticed it more in gifs. Which makes sense. But like there were moments where you could just SEE it. And I feel that added more to the character. Because it feels like, this is a sharp mind calculating how to best respond, how to best assess how something might come out to his advantage. But I feel it was so much subtle than seeing Fisk work his Fiskness or even a character like Shades -- who you definitely knew what to expect.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 06:14 pm UTC (link)
Yeah seriously. And it's like, you have to show that he is capable of caring, because otherwise there'd be no explanation for how those characters loved him in the first place. If he was always this vicious bastard on the outside, there'd be no explanation for why Frank was best friends with him and Curtis drank with him at the grave. So yes, there is definitely the facade of caring, the facade of having a code, but the whole point is that on the inside he is cold. Cold enough that he cares only to a point, but if he managed to win and killed Frank and Madani you know he wouldn't have given it a second thought in the end. Been like 'eh, that's unfortunate you made me do it."

Ben really was incredible in this role. Because it's like as charming and compelling as he was, you KNEW there was always something so cold and calculating under the surface. From day one, even though I knew he was a villain, I was like well who knows which kind he'll be. But it was there, under the surface, Ben played his charming warm self, but there was an edge from the very beginning that got sharper and sharper with every episode.

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[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 11:07 pm UTC (link)
Exactly! Like even in the kitchen scene. I don't know. Just how the three of them played it. I can't even describe it. That Curtis was actually like 'you promise?' and Billy's petulance. If it wasn't for the gun and the bleeding. You'd think it was just three friends having a disagreement. You could still feel that ... chemistry. I guess? That is what I am looking for? Between them.

That last sentence though. AND THAT is why I don't think I could ever want redemption. (Even though my heart is still catching up with my brain lol). Because there was no regret when he turned around and just SHOT her. It's exactly that attitude he brought to Frank. 'You made me do it'.

Definitely. Til it just peeled itself open like an orange.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]iseethelight
2017-11-21 11:25 pm UTC (link)
They all had excellent chemistry with each other. All three of them together and in separate connections. And yeah I think that's the thing with Billy. He would be like oh that's unfortunate but really what did you expect. He has a lack of any accountability, but I wouldn't say he has a victim complex either. I don't think he felt bad for himself because I don't think he really feels anything lol. Classic sociopath. He might have like vague feelings, but when it comes down to it, he has no real heart to speak of.

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[info]grapecase
2017-11-21 11:45 pm UTC (link)
They really did. If anything, I would like to see them early on in a brief featurette. Not too much of one. Or rather, no you're right. Like he wasn't woe is me, but he also kind of had a very big HOW DARE YOU WRONG ME. So pride. I feel that scene in the kitchen and his mother's situation. It was a pride, in a sense. I feel even his 'I TOO KEEP MY WORD' had a lot to do with Frank saying he gave his word first. Or that scene where he promised to give Frank a quick death and Orange was like nah ... and he got annoyed.

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(no subject) - [info]iseethelight, 2017-11-21 11:46 pm UTC

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