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Tweak says, "Morituri Nolumus Mori"

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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iseethelight
2017-12-13 08:28 pm UTC (link)

It's such a fandom thing too because like the writers have been as clear as day how they are trying to portray Kilgrave and Walter White. THe actors are like THEY ARE BAD PEOPLE???? So it's just interesting how fandom and also society bends over backwards to see what they want to see and alter things.

Re: LAURA MOON WITH THAT LAST PART. Omfg I've seen so much hatred toward Laura when she legit, if she was a male character, would immediately be a fan favorite, but because she's a woman there's so much hate for her it's downright alarming. And when someone goes "if she was a dude you all would be crawling over her" they get so defensive when they are literally doing it in the same show about the same type of character lol.

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	fjords 2017-12-13 08:33 pm UTC (link)
	OMFG YES LAURA, THIS TIES PERFECTLY INTO THE DISCUSSION WE WERE HAVING ABOUT HER DEFEND LAURA MOON 2K17 (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	iseethelight 2017-12-13 10:00 pm UTC (link)
	LAURA MOON IS THE POWER LADY FOR THIS TROUBLESOME CONCEPT LOL. Like the fact people were swooning over Mad Sweeney who LEGIT MURDERED HER and is generally as bitchy and outspoken as she is, and I love him for it, but I also love her for it, like their whole thing is how they're basically foils to each other. But everyone loooooves him and haaaaates her. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	fjords 2017-12-13 08:16 pm UTC (link)
	(I haven't watched Bojack yet, but THAT STORYLINE SOUNDS SO SO GOOD AND SO IMPORTANT) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

iseethelight
2017-12-13 08:25 pm UTC (link)

Bojack is pretty much the most depressing thing I've ever seen. I am not kidding you. It is the most depressing TV show I've seen by far. But it also is one of the best representations OF DEPRESSION and narcissism and serious issues on TV too. Just prepare yourself if you do watch it, because I was not ready for the level of intensity, and it addresses some really serious things. For example, lol, there's a storyline about how one woman becomes a mass shooter and Hollywoo (instead of D) tries to ban female users of guns, and the main female was lke well we can either ban guns altogether or admit that we live in a society where women feel so unsafe that the only time they feel safe is when we have a gun to do it in, so we can address that issue. Instead they passed gun control and banned them lol. The woman Diane was like are you seriously saying they'd rather ban guns than address female safety and Bojack's agent was like ... are you surprised????

Basically that show pulls zero punches, it's intense.

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	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)

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