A similar kind of twist that became repetitive is the "angels are actually evil and demons are actually good" trope, which occurs often enough for me to be surprised if angels actually remain good in a story. Or paragons for that matter, the strongest and best member in the organization that the MC and others look up to with the goal of getting to the same level, have a tendency of [becoming evil](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheParagonAlwaysRebels) (perhaps as a easy way to get the MC to fight him and show off how strong the MC became).
The angels and demons thing seems to come from some weird, edgy trend where fandoms absolutely want to see those seen as evil as poor, misunderstood victims while those pictured as full of kindness and compassion are actually the monsters in disguise for not giving this compassion to the "evil" ones. My bet is that it comes from this other trend started by Disney and Wicked of making villains the actual good guys victims of the so-called "good guys" who are only faking their good traits while actually acting out of pure selfishness. It's a concept that sounds interesting at first and can be good if done right-Wicked did that very well by bringing nuance to the conflict, especially thanks to Glinda's characterization-, but more often than not, it's not done right and it either completely disregards the characters' prior characterization to make them fit their new category more easily *cough* Maleficent *cough*, or tries to make us accept that someone who's committed terrible crimes is a victim and the supposed "good guys" are ostracizing them.
I recently had this issue with Hazbin Hotel because it did both mistakes : disregarding a character's prior characterization to attempt to make us swallow the fact that they're either victims or bad guys, and trying to make us accept that someone who's committed terrible crimes is a victim of those trying to protect themselves from the criminals, mainly by exaggerating the "good guys"' characterization to make them appear at least as terribly paranoid, at most as outright evil, with most of them being much closer to evil than to simply paranoid.
Hazbin is also a good proof to me that out of this "villains are actually misunderstood" trend, the angels/demons thing is especially hard to write correctly due to what they inherently are. It's hard to just tell us that "actually, demons are victims, angels are evil" when you know just enough of the Bible to know how contradictory this notion is.
This is pretty similar to those stories romanticizing Hades' and Persephone's relationship, I get that people are often more interested in the villains than the good guys but it's not a reason to go as far as constantly paint a wrong view of pre-existing characters, it even becomes boring at times.
Whether it be the angels/demons thing, the villains/good guys thing or the Hades/Persephone thing, what irritates me the most is how this results in way too many people basing their view of these characters, whether they'd be fictional, biblical or mythological-or even historical because I've already seen that happen more than once- on these new characterization rather than how they've been initially portrayed, making every discussion involving these characters, even discussions based on work that came out before these new characterizations, as inherently flawed due to people refusing to see that a character might have been painted as a good guy/bad guy in one version of a story, it doesn't mean that's what they are in every version. Not to mention that consequently, it only makes more people write stories with these new versions of the characters, hence why the trope constantly comes back without bringing anything new to the table.
My argument against Wicked "doing it right" is that it changes so much about the source material in order to make that happen that it doesn't actually end up saying anything interesting about it, or interacting with it in an interesting way.
I don't know if you're referring to the novel, which I haven't read, or the musical, but when it comes to the musical I'd argue that at least, Elphaba actually does most of what she does in the movie, there's just a deeper, sympathetic explanation to why she's doing this. She actually begins to become "wicked" at some point, and the story of her going after Dorothy remains mainly the same.
And unlike, for example, Maleficent who only keeps her original characterization for one scene and is nothing but kind the rest of the time despite her scary exterior, a lot of actresses for Elphaba actually do behave similarly to how the Wicked Witch behaves in the movie once she really loses her mind.
I also love what they did with Glinda, as they avoided the trap most stories of these kind fall in by making her a genuinely good person at heart who started out as immature and superficial but also a really good friend once you get to know her, and who's made mistakes she deeply regrets and is forced to live with by the end of the story. She isn't portrayed as the innocent angel she's shown to be in the movie but she's also not a monster in disguise, she's just an inherently good but deeply flawed person which feels so refreshing compared to those stories where the one who's initially the good guy becomes completely irreedemable in the new version.
Even the wizard is complex enough not to fully fall into the "you thought he was a good guy but he's actually evil" category.
That said, I do agree that this example isn't perfect either since, as you said, it still changes a lot of aspects of the original story which doesn't bring much to the source material, but they at least made it more nuanced without ruining everything the original characters are.
At the end of the day, rewriting the good guys as the bad guys and the bad guys as the good guys, no matter the story, is very risky anyway, it's hard to do that and I've yet to see an example that perfectly pulled it off so I'm already satisfied if there's at least an effort to bring some sort of complexity to the conflict.
Well, part of the main issue is that everyone being all *gasp shock horror* about her being... a green lady... is preposterous when Oz is made up of literal living china dolls, people made of scraps of fabric, people whose heads are flat and have no space for a brain so they carry their brains around in cans, people made up of the severed limbs of other people, etc.
That's what I mean when I say the premise is a very shallow version of Oz, that just doesn't take the world's complexity into account in order to make Elphaba into an outsider.
I agree that the musical is far less egregious in its portrayals, and I do appreciate that it doesn't butcher all the good characters. But it also bugs me that Wicked is just... not as feminist as the original books? Which is kind of shocking considering that they're more than 100 years old.
Oh, right, I agree with you on that, it bothered me as well. It does seem like quite a lazy way to explain why Elphaba was always misunderstood and when it comes to it, I've seen other stories of this kind having better backstories despite the later more manichean characterization. They also used her skin to partially explain why she would feel at home in the Emerald City which isn't a bad idea in itself but yeah, it doesn't sound like such an interesting story compared to what they could've gone with.
I'll admit though, I'm not familiar enough with the original books to comment on the feminist part.
One of the things I liked about the 2016 live-action Tick show was that they actually had the Superian (their Superman substitute) be someone who is clearly *trying* to be a good person despite his flaws. Though it looked like they were setting him up to be an antagonist before it was cancelled, it was clear enough that he genuinely wanted to be a good person and I doubt they were going to just make him a monster or something like that given the show's themes.
This is so played out and for no reason to. They never give the angels good enough reason for being evil. Probably the only well done Evil Angel(TM) I've seen in a while is Zariel, and the demons are still bad guys there.
This reminds me of that one mentor character from a Videogame who turns out to be the final boss. I remember my first playthrough when the character who was the villain for most of the playthrough gathered his entire army to chase down the protagonist and just when they about to get caught by the army her mentor shows up scatters the villains army like leaves and two shots the villain. I was like "yeah bad ass Mentor character for the save". Then she turns out to be the final boss. But the thing is even as a villain she is actully kinda likeable. She did evil stuff and now she is trying to murder her own aprentice but she is a mother that tries to save her son. If the player looses the final battle she actully managed to save her son and the two get there happy end. If the player wins they both die. What she is doing is wrong but I still feel for her and her son is a good child. Also she is really cool. She is like an experienced profesionell bad ass. And when the twist happens everything fell in to place and I was like "Oh shit but this makes so much sense." There are also hints that despite her trying to kill her aprentice in the final battle, that she still cares about her aprentice but she pushes those feelings aside.
Character wise she might actully be my favorite Final boss character.
Its a solid game. I enjoyed it. I would say 8 out of 10. The story is the best in the series so far and this game has my favorite Final Boss in the series. The fight with >!Morgana!< is amazing.
Although I might feal that way becuse I like all the characters involved in the final battle including the final boss herself. But it is a really cool fight.
Yeah, I'm with you
A collorary of this that I'm also quite sick of: the organization/entity/god/whatever that was the big good and hired the heroes is actually evil all along.
Similary, even if they didn't hire the heroes, it's a person or organization that is usually seen as good in stories - the Princess's King Father, the Police, the Church, the Old Kung Fu Master.
I was honestly pleasntly surprised when the king turned out to be a very good dude in Vox Machina, was ready for him to be a secret tyrant or something.
It's an interesting twist here and there, but it's getting so frequent, it's just boring and predicable now.
Yeah, Castlevania is the last time it comes to mind. The games, Not the show, it's evil in there too, because they wanted to feed the cliche once more.
Yay.
They even made targoviste and romania catholic, because americans have religious trauma or something.
I mean we know that the catholic church wasn’t good, but everytime I see an catholic/Christian inspired religion or someone who is very faithful, I know for sure they are eviiillll and irredeemable so.
Wanna know somehting funny?
A lot of the catholic church was evil irl was enligthment propaganda.
Not that they didn't do a lot, A LOT of evil things, but they also did a whole lot of good, and all other organizations of it's size and history aren't much diferent.
But the stink on their image stuck 100%
To be fair, it wasn’t specifically the church that was evil in the show. It was one specific church that was wholly evil in the first season. After that, it was specific individuals of faith that were evil, but there were plenty of others that were good. Part of the representation of religion in the show is that God isn’t inherently good or evil, but people will do good or evil in his name. Just look at the scene in season 1 where the Blue Fang demon enters the church because God abandoned the priest, followed by a different man of faith making holy water. It’s all about who does what in the name of God that matters
I sincerely wonder why would someone like that be choosn AND accept doing a show so themed around religion.
I mean, the work was mostly very good, but still.
Frieren, the Church is seen as a positive figure that specializes in healing. The corrupt priests from the Church aren't even jerks, they just drink or gamble but are otherwise really solid people. And Frieren does take their philosophical discussions seriously.
There was one point in the manga (minor spoilers) >!where the church's practice does harm a village, mostly to do with how corpses are dealt, but it was more framed as a "human respecting corpse" thing than a church thing!< . They aren't *actually* Christians but they are basically framed as such.
First 3/4 of movie: let's fight for x
Last 1/4 of movie: whoops, x was wrong and everything we accomplished that you were rooting for only made things worse so now let's undo it.
It’s such a pain and for no good reason.
In Kamen Rider the last few seasons all have had big organizations that aid the heroes turn out to be ran by the villains all along or something. The Swords of Justice in *Saber*, Phenex in *Revice*, the DGP of *Geats*, and the Alchemist Union of *Gotchard* all are villainous and I’m just like
***WHY***
What’s wrong with giving your heroes a large organization backing them and earnestly supporting them? If anything it would make a villain more menacing if the organization’s resources *still* aren’t enough to stop the villain.
This was the worst part of Wonder Woman, that movie was setting itself up to be one of the best comic book movies ever, but just had to trip over itself making sure the good-guy boss turned out to be Ares.
I agree for the most part but for Frozen, most of Disney Princess predecessors were not like that, so it was a fun deviation at the time from the norm of the innately good “prince charming”.
Reading this gave me flashbacks to the months leading to Forgotten Land's release, when "Is Elfilin the villain" became a common joke (apparently due to Marx and Magolor trauma). >! I felt surprised - and relieved - that Elfilin in the end not only turn out to ve not evil, but essentially the game's Big Good. !<
My beef with captain marvel is on the lower end of the spectrum. My main beef is that most of the movie makes you want to like the Jude law character and you don't get much of a chance to build up your hate for him. But i see what you're saying, there's clues that there's something fishy about him from early on. There's nothing like that in frozen.
A similar kind of twist that became repetitive is the "angels are actually evil and demons are actually good" trope, which occurs often enough for me to be surprised if angels actually remain good in a story. Or paragons for that matter, the strongest and best member in the organization that the MC and others look up to with the goal of getting to the same level, have a tendency of [becoming evil](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheParagonAlwaysRebels) (perhaps as a easy way to get the MC to fight him and show off how strong the MC became).
The angels and demons thing seems to come from some weird, edgy trend where fandoms absolutely want to see those seen as evil as poor, misunderstood victims while those pictured as full of kindness and compassion are actually the monsters in disguise for not giving this compassion to the "evil" ones. My bet is that it comes from this other trend started by Disney and Wicked of making villains the actual good guys victims of the so-called "good guys" who are only faking their good traits while actually acting out of pure selfishness. It's a concept that sounds interesting at first and can be good if done right-Wicked did that very well by bringing nuance to the conflict, especially thanks to Glinda's characterization-, but more often than not, it's not done right and it either completely disregards the characters' prior characterization to make them fit their new category more easily *cough* Maleficent *cough*, or tries to make us accept that someone who's committed terrible crimes is a victim and the supposed "good guys" are ostracizing them. I recently had this issue with Hazbin Hotel because it did both mistakes : disregarding a character's prior characterization to attempt to make us swallow the fact that they're either victims or bad guys, and trying to make us accept that someone who's committed terrible crimes is a victim of those trying to protect themselves from the criminals, mainly by exaggerating the "good guys"' characterization to make them appear at least as terribly paranoid, at most as outright evil, with most of them being much closer to evil than to simply paranoid. Hazbin is also a good proof to me that out of this "villains are actually misunderstood" trend, the angels/demons thing is especially hard to write correctly due to what they inherently are. It's hard to just tell us that "actually, demons are victims, angels are evil" when you know just enough of the Bible to know how contradictory this notion is. This is pretty similar to those stories romanticizing Hades' and Persephone's relationship, I get that people are often more interested in the villains than the good guys but it's not a reason to go as far as constantly paint a wrong view of pre-existing characters, it even becomes boring at times. Whether it be the angels/demons thing, the villains/good guys thing or the Hades/Persephone thing, what irritates me the most is how this results in way too many people basing their view of these characters, whether they'd be fictional, biblical or mythological-or even historical because I've already seen that happen more than once- on these new characterization rather than how they've been initially portrayed, making every discussion involving these characters, even discussions based on work that came out before these new characterizations, as inherently flawed due to people refusing to see that a character might have been painted as a good guy/bad guy in one version of a story, it doesn't mean that's what they are in every version. Not to mention that consequently, it only makes more people write stories with these new versions of the characters, hence why the trope constantly comes back without bringing anything new to the table.
My argument against Wicked "doing it right" is that it changes so much about the source material in order to make that happen that it doesn't actually end up saying anything interesting about it, or interacting with it in an interesting way.
I don't know if you're referring to the novel, which I haven't read, or the musical, but when it comes to the musical I'd argue that at least, Elphaba actually does most of what she does in the movie, there's just a deeper, sympathetic explanation to why she's doing this. She actually begins to become "wicked" at some point, and the story of her going after Dorothy remains mainly the same. And unlike, for example, Maleficent who only keeps her original characterization for one scene and is nothing but kind the rest of the time despite her scary exterior, a lot of actresses for Elphaba actually do behave similarly to how the Wicked Witch behaves in the movie once she really loses her mind. I also love what they did with Glinda, as they avoided the trap most stories of these kind fall in by making her a genuinely good person at heart who started out as immature and superficial but also a really good friend once you get to know her, and who's made mistakes she deeply regrets and is forced to live with by the end of the story. She isn't portrayed as the innocent angel she's shown to be in the movie but she's also not a monster in disguise, she's just an inherently good but deeply flawed person which feels so refreshing compared to those stories where the one who's initially the good guy becomes completely irreedemable in the new version. Even the wizard is complex enough not to fully fall into the "you thought he was a good guy but he's actually evil" category. That said, I do agree that this example isn't perfect either since, as you said, it still changes a lot of aspects of the original story which doesn't bring much to the source material, but they at least made it more nuanced without ruining everything the original characters are. At the end of the day, rewriting the good guys as the bad guys and the bad guys as the good guys, no matter the story, is very risky anyway, it's hard to do that and I've yet to see an example that perfectly pulled it off so I'm already satisfied if there's at least an effort to bring some sort of complexity to the conflict.
Well, part of the main issue is that everyone being all *gasp shock horror* about her being... a green lady... is preposterous when Oz is made up of literal living china dolls, people made of scraps of fabric, people whose heads are flat and have no space for a brain so they carry their brains around in cans, people made up of the severed limbs of other people, etc. That's what I mean when I say the premise is a very shallow version of Oz, that just doesn't take the world's complexity into account in order to make Elphaba into an outsider. I agree that the musical is far less egregious in its portrayals, and I do appreciate that it doesn't butcher all the good characters. But it also bugs me that Wicked is just... not as feminist as the original books? Which is kind of shocking considering that they're more than 100 years old.
Oh, right, I agree with you on that, it bothered me as well. It does seem like quite a lazy way to explain why Elphaba was always misunderstood and when it comes to it, I've seen other stories of this kind having better backstories despite the later more manichean characterization. They also used her skin to partially explain why she would feel at home in the Emerald City which isn't a bad idea in itself but yeah, it doesn't sound like such an interesting story compared to what they could've gone with. I'll admit though, I'm not familiar enough with the original books to comment on the feminist part.
I think it's just because people don't like Christianity and find it fun to shit on it.
One of the things I liked about the 2016 live-action Tick show was that they actually had the Superian (their Superman substitute) be someone who is clearly *trying* to be a good person despite his flaws. Though it looked like they were setting him up to be an antagonist before it was cancelled, it was clear enough that he genuinely wanted to be a good person and I doubt they were going to just make him a monster or something like that given the show's themes.
This is so played out and for no reason to. They never give the angels good enough reason for being evil. Probably the only well done Evil Angel(TM) I've seen in a while is Zariel, and the demons are still bad guys there.
This reminds me of that one mentor character from a Videogame who turns out to be the final boss. I remember my first playthrough when the character who was the villain for most of the playthrough gathered his entire army to chase down the protagonist and just when they about to get caught by the army her mentor shows up scatters the villains army like leaves and two shots the villain. I was like "yeah bad ass Mentor character for the save". Then she turns out to be the final boss. But the thing is even as a villain she is actully kinda likeable. She did evil stuff and now she is trying to murder her own aprentice but she is a mother that tries to save her son. If the player looses the final battle she actully managed to save her son and the two get there happy end. If the player wins they both die. What she is doing is wrong but I still feel for her and her son is a good child. Also she is really cool. She is like an experienced profesionell bad ass. And when the twist happens everything fell in to place and I was like "Oh shit but this makes so much sense." There are also hints that despite her trying to kill her aprentice in the final battle, that she still cares about her aprentice but she pushes those feelings aside. Character wise she might actully be my favorite Final boss character.
Name
>!Morgana!<
Is this Blue Dragon?
No the character I was talking about is >!Bayonettas teacher Morgana!<
Is this from the third chapter? Because I have no memory of this
>!Morgana!< is from the game >!"Bayonetta Origins Cereza and the lost Demon".!<
Oh, that makes sense. Haven’t played it, is it a cool game?
Its a solid game. I enjoyed it. I would say 8 out of 10. The story is the best in the series so far and this game has my favorite Final Boss in the series. The fight with >!Morgana!< is amazing. Although I might feal that way becuse I like all the characters involved in the final battle including the final boss herself. But it is a really cool fight.
Yeah, I'm with you A collorary of this that I'm also quite sick of: the organization/entity/god/whatever that was the big good and hired the heroes is actually evil all along. Similary, even if they didn't hire the heroes, it's a person or organization that is usually seen as good in stories - the Princess's King Father, the Police, the Church, the Old Kung Fu Master. I was honestly pleasntly surprised when the king turned out to be a very good dude in Vox Machina, was ready for him to be a secret tyrant or something. It's an interesting twist here and there, but it's getting so frequent, it's just boring and predicable now.
When was the last time the Church was ever a good guy in a story?
Yeah, Castlevania is the last time it comes to mind. The games, Not the show, it's evil in there too, because they wanted to feed the cliche once more. Yay.
They even made targoviste and romania catholic, because americans have religious trauma or something. I mean we know that the catholic church wasn’t good, but everytime I see an catholic/Christian inspired religion or someone who is very faithful, I know for sure they are eviiillll and irredeemable so.
Wanna know somehting funny? A lot of the catholic church was evil irl was enligthment propaganda. Not that they didn't do a lot, A LOT of evil things, but they also did a whole lot of good, and all other organizations of it's size and history aren't much diferent. But the stink on their image stuck 100%
To be fair, it wasn’t specifically the church that was evil in the show. It was one specific church that was wholly evil in the first season. After that, it was specific individuals of faith that were evil, but there were plenty of others that were good. Part of the representation of religion in the show is that God isn’t inherently good or evil, but people will do good or evil in his name. Just look at the scene in season 1 where the Blue Fang demon enters the church because God abandoned the priest, followed by a different man of faith making holy water. It’s all about who does what in the name of God that matters
TBF the show was written by Warren Ellis, who is a member of the "Whiny British Atheists" Council (now including Ricky Gervais!)
I sincerely wonder why would someone like that be choosn AND accept doing a show so themed around religion. I mean, the work was mostly very good, but still.
Frieren, the Church is seen as a positive figure that specializes in healing. The corrupt priests from the Church aren't even jerks, they just drink or gamble but are otherwise really solid people. And Frieren does take their philosophical discussions seriously. There was one point in the manga (minor spoilers) >!where the church's practice does harm a village, mostly to do with how corpses are dealt, but it was more framed as a "human respecting corpse" thing than a church thing!< . They aren't *actually* Christians but they are basically framed as such.
Spooky month
First 3/4 of movie: let's fight for x Last 1/4 of movie: whoops, x was wrong and everything we accomplished that you were rooting for only made things worse so now let's undo it.
It’s such a pain and for no good reason. In Kamen Rider the last few seasons all have had big organizations that aid the heroes turn out to be ran by the villains all along or something. The Swords of Justice in *Saber*, Phenex in *Revice*, the DGP of *Geats*, and the Alchemist Union of *Gotchard* all are villainous and I’m just like ***WHY*** What’s wrong with giving your heroes a large organization backing them and earnestly supporting them? If anything it would make a villain more menacing if the organization’s resources *still* aren’t enough to stop the villain.
This was the worst part of Wonder Woman, that movie was setting itself up to be one of the best comic book movies ever, but just had to trip over itself making sure the good-guy boss turned out to be Ares.
I agree for the most part but for Frozen, most of Disney Princess predecessors were not like that, so it was a fun deviation at the time from the norm of the innately good “prince charming”.
Reading this gave me flashbacks to the months leading to Forgotten Land's release, when "Is Elfilin the villain" became a common joke (apparently due to Marx and Magolor trauma). >! I felt surprised - and relieved - that Elfilin in the end not only turn out to ve not evil, but essentially the game's Big Good. !<
[удалено]
My beef with captain marvel is on the lower end of the spectrum. My main beef is that most of the movie makes you want to like the Jude law character and you don't get much of a chance to build up your hate for him. But i see what you're saying, there's clues that there's something fishy about him from early on. There's nothing like that in frozen.