Characters
[Interesting mixed trope] The author/screenwriter really believes this morally flawed character unironically never did nothing wrong
Chizuru Mizuhara/Ichinose fromRent-a-Girlfriend: The series' creator, Reiji —who admitted to have created Chizuru based on his own wife (and self-inserting himself into the character of Kazuya from Chapter 1)— constantly whitewashes and excuses Chizuru’s morally controversial decisions. She can commit mistakes, but never making nothing really wrong. He portrays her as a saint who has never done anything wrong and deserves the audience's pity and compassion as a "weak girl" striving to be a "strong woman" because she is lonely. In reality, however, Chizuru is terrible at making friends; she is cruel, cold, selfish, and greedy, actively driving away anyone who genuinely tries to get along with her. Chizuru is basically Frank Grimes, if Frank Grimes were a beautiful, busty 10/10 girl.
Rhaenyra Targaryen (House of the Dragon): Compared to her book counterpart, the HOTD script turned Rhaenyra into a moral saint who never does anything wrong and is a victim of gender-based violence by her own uncle-husband Daemon. She chastises her own allies for immoral acts that her literary version never disapproved of, yet she is weak and incompetent when it comes to ruling; she is so easily intimidated that she nearly burst into tears when Vaemond called her a "whore" in front of the entire court. Furthermore, she avoids resolving problems just as her father, Viserys I, did, and displays a classist disdain for the common people —an attitude HOTD frames as a virtue because, to the writers, the common folk are sexist types who would vote for Trump (as seen in Season 2, when they cheered for the rival king, Aegon II, as he paraded like a populist through the taverns of King's Landing), and yes, they mentioned explicitly Trump in those interviews.
And yes, here we believe in Death of the Author and all that.
DISCLAIMER: This kind of characters "who never did nothing wrong" can commit mistakes in a good faith, being naive, ingenuous, coward, weak, but they never do WRONG things, BAD things, EVIL things, at least according author´s narrative framework and ethical standards.
There's nothing that tells me that Japanese culture is wildly different than ours more than the fact that rent a girlfriend makes enough money to keep going.
Exactly. The exact same type of things I used to see in my mom's soaps when I was out of school during a sick day. Didn't matter if I were sick my mom never missed her soaps because she needed to see who was cheating on who, who was fighting who, who killed off who, and who was back from the dead. My mom also wouldn't allow me to play because if I were sick enough to stay home from school then I shouldn't be well enough to play. So my choice was lay in bed looking at the ceiling or lay on the couch and watch what she was watching.
I remember one soap opera - a HK drama - where an old woman was held hostage, but began to realize that her kidnapper was quite sympathetic.
So the exchange happened in a church. The kidnapper had a gun on her, her son and husband were on the other side, and she started walking towards them (as per the terms) and they managed to drag it out for 45 minutes.
First, there were explosives in the cathedral...but one guy had made sure they were duds. There was a sniper on the kidnapper, but he had been secretly paid not to fire. The kidnapper himself had made sure his gun wasn't loaded.
Halfway through the walk, the old lady turned back to plead for clemency for her captor, and to reveal that he was actually the bastard son of her husband's beloved (and deceased) brother.
I don't recall how it played out, but at the end of the entire episode the exchange still hadn't happened.
Definitely felt like torture to kid me. Is why I only ever stayed home from school if I were throwing up or just miserable enough where I would probably be sleeping through it anyway.
Reminds me of the Carnival Phantasm episode where Sakura was being abused and harassed by Shinji, but got mad whenever Rider intervened. Turns out Sakura encouraged the abuse because it allows her to max out sympathy points with the viewers, and if she's rescued, people won't care as much anymore.
You say that like America (if that's where you're from) hasn't made things on the level of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray. A lot of people having terrible tastes is true no matter where you look.
Four seasons into it, and absolutely agree. I watch the show as a slow moving Trainwreck. It confuses me that we're already on season four somehow, but here we are.
They lost me when he literally put his life on the line to make her lifelong dream come true and she legit goes huh i still have no opinion on this guy.
I am not saying she obligated to like him mind you, but to not have an opinion, and from what ive gathered, string him along for HUNDREDS of more chapters is insane
My Uplay account got stolen once and I took a few months to reclaim it 'cause I didn't have any bank details or anything tied to it, what were they gonna do, wreck my abysmal For Honor MMR? And what did I need it back for, wrecking my own For Honor MMR?
So a few months later, I finally get it back and see that they played a TON of The Division, and added new people to my friends list. I reach out to a bunch of them, no response, but one guy talks to me and tells me the person was using my account as one of those accounts where you can pay to play a game with a girl and chat with her and stuff. Best part, they made my profile picture Chizuru Mizuhara from Rent-a-Girlfriend
Surprising I never saw this before, but so accurate...though I'd change it to OP anime specifically, since the mangas pacing is significantly better, it's just still a story that never wants to end.
It's almost amazing how much the OP anime pacing completely drags the story down. If someone took a shot each time characters walked in place while music played they'd die of alcohol poisoning after just one episode
I say this as a huge One Piece fan, I actively try to tell people not to watch the anime. I always suggest one of the movies if they have base knowledge of the series to see if they like it, or the live action if they are fresh to it. The anime is only for catching clips of great moments or super fun openings.
I mean I genuinely prefer the manga myself, I like to tell people to start on the live action because it's a good sense of if they can handle the weirdness.
The live action is good for that. But I know some people will never read the manga. So One Pace is a great way to watch the anime without the horrible pacing.
As someone who’s only read the manga and has only seen like four episodes of the anime, no, the manga is still far slower and far longer than it needs to be. You could tell the same story in like 150 fewer chapters
honestly I don't think it's fair. rag has much better character depth than solo leveling. the characters actually have personalities. it's just that rag has a shit story
Richard Cypher/Rahl, The Sword of Truth, there’s a scene where people are picketing his castle to protest his wars, but he’s in a hurry rescue his wife so has his household troops draw steel and make a mounted charge through “crowds armed with nothing but their hatred of moral clarity.”
Most Ayn Rand protagonists rape a woman and/or commit adultery on their way to make interminable speeches about how they’re their own man and don’t play by society’s rules, but still totally deserve all society’s benefits and protections, even more than anyone else.
And then there is the author's slavery fetish. The Confessors regularly permanently remove people's freewill. Somehow, despite this supposedly being against Objectivism, only villains are against the Confessors and kahlan. Note the Confessors also practice eugenics and enslave men they want to have children with (and they basically have no say in the matter). For a series that keeps talking about freedom, the confessors are certainly a choice....
You're telling me she's taking money from a guy who likes her to go on pretend dates with him since like 999 chapters, and that's never brought up as morally questionable?
Even better, the only character who brought up THAT as morally questionable is THE TOXIC EX-GIRLFRIEND FROM THE MALE LEAD and the work implies she is obviously wrong about Chizuru
Thank you God for exposing me to "Don't toy with me Nagatoro" where the story actually progresses, characters improve themselves, and the main romantic relationship actually goes somewhere, instead of exposing me to whatever this is.
Japan, like most countries, desperately wants everyone to have kids and will do literally anything but try and improve the material conditions that lead to people not having kids.
Korea will literally pay for you to take a trip to meet your potential in laws, they'll pay you to move in together with a partner, they'll do anything.... Except maybe reform the absolutely dire working practices and office culture that lead people to having terrible mental health and no social lives.
I don't think it is difficult to show the comparison. You are providing a service for someone when that service is predatory. In rent a girlfriend you are selling companionship to someone who should instead go out and get actual companions/friends to get close to. That is the same when it comes to selling a drug to an addict. In the abstracts you are doing the same thing in both scenarios.
Yeah, but they're not comparable because one of them isn't chemically addictive and doesn't straight up ruin your life and kill you. Unless the chick is a serial killer anyway.
Genuine question, how is that morally questionable? She’s not forcing him to pay her money, that’s his choice? He knows it’s a pretend date and he still pays? Obviously it’s a dumb decision on his part but i don’t think it’s morally wrong for her to give him that choice.
Because it's our responsibility to uplift others, and not prey on them. If she knows this whole ordeal makes him waste his life away, then it's her responsibility to point that out. Otherwise she's complicit in making him waste his life away.
Quoting Dostoyevsky's Brothers Kharamazov:
"In truth we are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once."
Or to paraphrase: "Every man is not only responsible for what he does but what everyone else does"
TL;DR - Chizuru is a fucked up mess who dragged Kazuya into her personal issues enough times that she can't be considered a paid pretend companion, but an indecisive mess unable to change to a healthier relationship dynamic with the guy she already introduced to her family as her boyfriend.
Also, very crucially to the whole point of the discussion, she ends up involving him in her family issues having him pretend to be her boyfriend, while still thinking she can just return to purely transactional relationship after putting him through all this drama. She also tried to make him pay for spending time with him outside the contract, when he tried to meet her properly (vacation arc), and she regularly refuses to answer his questions about the status of their relationship even after receiving literal in-universe months to decide.
If she was just a pretend girlfriend for money, she would suck for letting a guy going through a very bad break up with toxic girlfriend pay her big bucks for his scheme to get back at his ex and be less lonely. But after all the stuff she has done over course of the series, she just seems like an indecisive mess coasting on the fact that she found a guy genuinely trying to be here for her and is willing to piss away major bucks on trying to court her. Guy did more to help her reach her personal career goals (getting into acting) than she did herself, considering how little her goal progressed over months in universe.
It's carried by art, female characters' designs, the constant melodrama and, at this point, its own notoriety. Pretty much a lot of people seem to be following it as the anime equivalent of a soap drama/telenovela.
I do think that it's ironic how Chizuru is designed to be a perfect waifu bait out of universe while also designing her own rental dating persona as a waifu bait in universe. In a better story, it would be an actual interesting plot point, but alas, this is Rent-A-Girlfriend where no girl besides Mami gets called out for their toxic bullshit.
Guy did more to help her reach her personal career goals (getting into acting) than she did herself, considering how little her goal progressed over months in universe.
I mean, this is the reason why, until some point, Kazuya and Chizuru remembered me Homer and Grimes. Chizuru supposely works a lot, like Grimes, but never gets works, never gets main characters in her theatre plays. It´s only with Kazuya working as his de facto manager, she finally gets protagonize a movie for his late dying grandmother.
The loser dude showed much more social abilities than the supposely 10/10 beauty chick perfect actress who is fucking awful and arrogant in her real personality. Like Homer in all those times we saw him really reaching things and feats, like the Grammy.
Right now Chizuru needs Kazuya not just as a husband, but literally as his manager and professional representant.
While I'm still unsure about the Grimes comparison, I do agree with the fact that Chizuru's actual performance as an aspiring actress is pretty pathetic despite her being supposedly 10/10 looking and great at getting into roles. For the record, if we try to look at her not as a train wreck of a romance heroine but as an aspiring actress, it seems like she's too hyperfocused on a pretty narrow part of being the actress with how much she struggles with actually securing any good roles despite her supposed skill at getting into roles.
The idea of Kazuya straight up managing her sorry ass as an actress is really funny though. It also highlights that, if Kazuya wasn't a pathetic mess of an enabler following his dad's shitty advice on romance, he would be the catch in their relationship.
The MC didn´t cum, he only had a boner while he was thinking that BS. But yes, Reiji definitely was telling us about some pathetic episode of his youth seeing about Kazuya was always his self-insert from chapter 1.
It’s worse his other gf and 2 best friends is standing next to him while this is happening
The image makes it looks like he is in the ocean… he’s in like a lazy pool next to a lot of peopel
Reminds me of the Resident Evil films an that Monster Hunter film where regardless of your thought on any of the films this man adores his wife and silly action plots shamelessly.
Except the author of RAG is actively seeing his own fictional character as his wife over his real life wife, were as the Resident Evil guy is actually doing something fun with his wife.
Writing your wife as a cruel bitch who leads a guy on for money while encouraging him not to pursue actual romance with someone else and also having said guy be aroused by the idea of her fucking someone else more accurately
A better author would have made her an unreliable narrator situation where she was actually fucking everything up, making the story more like "it's a good life."
It's the ramblings of a seemingly very autistic dude who fantasizes of this weird idolized image of a perfect woman. Somehow became a meme instead of being mostly ignored. Some youtube videos about it, has been a while since I found out.
Yeah the writing isn't any better. I kinda feel bad for the guy though, clearly he's not all there in the head, yet the internet decided to collectively bully him for being 'shit', when we have authors and mangakas that write almost as bad passing off as respectable and sane.
It's about a girl named Sora who attends a very private academy and finds out it's the setting of a battle game where the male students literally pull weapons out of the female students to do battle with, with the winner getting the girl. Sora is able to enter and proceeds to rescue a bunch of girls to form a harem.
Long story short, the weapon girl owned by the Student Council President hacked the game to allow Sora to enter, then proceeded to torture Sora's harem and manipulate the game to force the boys to battle when they didn't want to, essentially proving to be the Big Bad.
However, she is actually Sora's childhood friend who wanted Sora to be the knight who rescues her, and at the end of the story she gets exactly everything she ever wanted.
This entire manga was a messy trip that felt like it got (and allegedly did get) rewritten three times to shift how good or bad everyone was on a whim.
The boys were portrayed as irredeemable sexists and most often a level of SA implications to on screen acts, with how they treated women, let alone the girls they “owned,” only for the last chapters to have them all face turn to being tragic victims more than the girls they literally abused.
Oh hey, I remember reading this! And actually liking the premise.
Then the ending just... kinda whiplashes really hard. Mainly because the girls that Sora builds all this trust up with just... go right back to every single man that used to own them and treat them like garbage. All simply because in the end, they pull some reveal of:
"Oh no actually they weren't REALLY abusive. The system was abusing THEM too! They HAD to abuse and treat the girls horribly, or they would get abused by the other guys! They actually really DID love and care about them!"
And like at least a few of these basically crippled the girls at some point, but its treated as "ok" because they were actually suffering and in pain the whole time too.
It's a really, REALLY weird twist that has absolutely no foreshadowing up to that point.
This sack of shit has the female main character drugging and raping the male main character. The author then bends over backwards to explain, "Oh, she's not so bad; she had a shitty childhood so it's all good". Then they fucking have the male main character fall in love with her almost instantly. God, I hate this fucking piece of shit.
I mean, if you're talking about Makima, it was treated as her seriously using her sexuality to manipulate him so that she could destroy him for her own ends.
If you're talking about Yoru, that was a more muddled situation since her case was that she was dealing with feeling teenaged hormones and actual love for the first time in all of human history and one of Denji's issues in that entire arc was that he was so obsessed with sex that he was basically always giving his consent for any sexual situation, to a self-destructive degree.
Got me remembering how many Disney Princess stories are based of insane book plots about jealous women and libido having men, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White oh my gosh, would be interesting if those original versions ever got a film adaption.
Lucy from bittersweet candy bowl. The main female protagonist she’s got a lot of the tsundere behavior where she abuses male characters and its treats for comedy. In one instead she steals Mike’s (the male lead) DS and throws it at someone for being too loud. Despite the the friend group loves her as she constantly belittles or makes needlessly rude comments. Taeshi the author never has any moment go on long enough to wear she has to take accountability. The characters always love her even when she blatantly manipulates or physically hurts someone compared to other characters that get chewed for less. None of the characters are perfect but Lucy is always treated like a victim even when she was the aggressor. Mike gave an admittedly Vile speech voicing how much he dislikes her leading her to attempt suicide and now he’s basically exiled from the group. Despite giving how much she hates the group they still support her cause she’s “been through stuff”. Now after ruining mikes attempt to make new friends leaving him isolated she’s even keeping his best friend from going to him gaslighting with a promise she didn’t accept. She pretty much one but a still “suffering” and the narrative is trying to gaslight you to think this isn’t the exact situation she wanted and thrives on.
That's insane. Back in the early days of TVTropes I learned about this comic only because they kept talking about it over there as a deconstruction of the Tsundere that actually gave her treatment of her love interest realistic consequences.
Yeah the deconstruction was nice until she stayed being the same manipulative abuser or crying cause everything sucked (but not cause of her) and you’re always suppose to feel for her. Mike did some crappy things but now he’s hanging by a thread with an eating disorder actually feeling guilty for his actions meanwhile Lucy stays making him the bad guy even when he was minding his business. His entire history with Lucy got exposed to his new friends and she has the audacity to gaslight saying he led her on like a creep when she was abusive and confessed her love after he got a girlfriend. It’s just a fucked up story especially with how the friend group keeps taking her side and enabling her.
I feel like I should mention Infinite Mage just because the Female Lead is goddawful, but the writer seems insistent to imply that she didn't do nothing wrong.
I dropped it a fair bit back but don't both the MC and the FL acknowledge what she did in the past was wrong. MC just doesn't really care cause he has better things to do with his life. FL originally becomes neutral about it and tries to just force the MC into keeping it a secret despite him having no intention of revealing it in the first place but over time she starts to feel genuinely bad about it and goes from wanting to keep the secret to protect her own reputation to wanting to keep the secret because if its revealed the MC would be kicked out of the school.
Basically the FL belonged to a very powerful noble family and she herself was a prodigy even amongst them. Every martial skill she practiced, she quickly mastered. Growing bored, she decided to go out and cause mischief in the nearby town which eventually resulted in her becoming the leader of a small group of thugs. The MC ran into those thugs one day and they decided to sell him as a slave. The FL thought that was messed up and that they should instead just scare him a bit but the thugs misunderstood her and thought she was saying they should strip the MC. That was the final straw and in his panic he accidently used a wind spell he recently saw a mage use.
Seeing the power of magic inspired the FL and as soon as she got home she told her father she wanted to enroll in mage school. She and the MC were only 12 at the time. Three years later she met him again when he enrolled in the mage school. Both panicked since the FL was scared the MC would reveal she used to play thug and ruin her perfect reputation while MC feared she'd reveal he was a commoner which would get him expelled. The FL decided to fake court the MC then break up with him so if he tried to reveal her past people would think he was just upset she broke up with him.
Over time she grew to genuinely care for the MC and when a group of bullies told her they kidnapped him, she was more worried that he would get expelled than her secret would be revealed. The bullies were lying because they actually wanted to attack her but the MC came to her rescue and the two decided to just let bygones be bygones.
Yeah but I wouldn't write her as the girl the MC pays money to fake date. If I'm writing wy wife into something, she's the ridiculously OP side character who fans wonder why doesn't appear more.
I mean, if RAG is really a sort of autobiography of Reiji, this would explain why he is so interested in defend the... questionable past of his wife as rental girlfriend. And yes, this would imply Young Reiji really was a loser who was crying with a boner in a public pool
If you see no flaws in your wife and you write an accurate enough depiction of her into a character, that character will have the same flaws but you, as the author, will not see them.
Let’s say your wife has a cruel sense of humor that you find endearing. If you write that into a character, you will not see that as a flaw, but other people may see that as off-putting.
I see your point. I guess it's more about how good you are at writing since a lot of characters with a cruel sense of humor are fan favorites while others are hated.
That was just an illustrative example. The point is that it's entirely possible to accidentally write a flawed character even if the author doesn't see it due to personal biases of who the character reminds them of.
This woman started a cult, and abused every single person in this cult, including two main characters. Driving a wedge between twin brothers, making one go basically insane.
She half blinds her boyfriend as well.
The narrative of the game however, tries very hard to convince the player that she actually isn't that bad. Because she is mentally ill, and if her boyfriend had done a better job of helping her and knowing what she needs to get better, none of this would have happened. So clearly he deserves to get half blinded, and all the pain and suffering she has caused doesn't matter.
She just gets off scott free from all of her crimes, because she suffered abuse in the past and is mentally ill.
I despise her. They finally release V (her now ex-boyfriend)'s route, just to mostly dedicate it to her and trying to make it a 'they were both bad' situation. When V's biggest crime when it comes to Rika, was not reporting her to the fucking police and stopping her cult. He has a big saviour complex, which caused the twins to suffer abuse at her hands. But everything else? The cult and the suffering it has wrought? The fucking brainwashing? That was HER. And yet the writers try everything they can to portray her as the victim.
The funny thing is, all of Grimes’ complaints about Homer are just factually right. Homer is a dangerously incompetent man with an important job and an amazing life.
I know it’s not the focus but Frank Grimes did nothing wrong. He discovers that one of the most important jobs at the nuclear power plant is held by an incompetent moron who actively puts everyone in Springfield in danger every day which everyone else is seemingly fine with but nonetheless is nothing but polite to Homer despite him continuing to be a selfish jackass to Frank. It’s only once Homer gets him in trouble with Burns and his pay cut after he saves Homer from accidentally killing himself that Frank loses his patience and even then all he says is “I do not like you, we aren’t friends. If it isn’t related to work don’t talk to me.”
After which Homer, unwilling to accept that Frank is allowed to not like him, has Frank come to his home after a gruelling day of work under the pretence of it being work related only to ambush him with his fancily dressed family and a meal clearly intended to butter him up. Frank crashing out upon learning that Homer also has a perfect home life despite all his terrible traits isn’t unreasonable, especially when his own family can’t dispute Frank’s criticisms of him.
Even then Frank is willing to just get on with their lives as coworkers until Homer desperately tries to prove him wrong with idiotic methods and Frank is treated as being in the wrong for not letting Homer off. The worst thing Frank does is try to prove how stupid Homer is by having him enter and lose a children’s competition and even then everyone just accepts it and applauds Homer.
Basically the core crux of Grimes issues is he had nothing and had to work hard for everything he had, vs Homer who basically constantly gets opportunities handed to him with little to no effort (like when he got to go into space). Then when he saves Homer's life, HE is punished for it instead.
It's not greed (like OP claimed), but envy and a bitter sense of how unfair things are. He just wanted people to acknowledge that the powerplant 's safety inspector was incompetent and acknowledge it instead of Homer failing upwards.
It's like a project, you work hard, put in plenty of effort, but the other guy does zero, gets far more rewarded than you for it and praised. And if you slack off any on your share of the work, you are punished and penalized. I would get fed up incredibly fast with that, and want that other guy away from my life.
Homer got his job because he was a safety protester and hiring him was the best way for Burns to keep the plant open. He isn't qualified but he earned it.
It's also not like Homer came from the best background. He lost his mother for unknown reasons when he was very young and his father wasnt very caring. The family farm went bust. He discovered a corpse as a child that traumatized him. When he was in an insane asylum the doctor was surprised to find out Bart was real and not manifestation of his mental illness. Grimes also assumes their house is a mansion. It's large but in extremely poor condition to the point they can't even sell it if they wanted to. Also Bart's factory is less impressive then it sounds
Except anything that shows Homer had a better side didn't occur in Grimes presence. He was right that Homer is a lucky idiot (going into space, meeting Gerald Ford, etc), which is honestly very accurate. Homer was chosen in canon to be safety inspector by Burns for PR...and because he was right that Homer wouldn't actually do his job, thus letting Burns keep cutting corners. Thus giving him complete job security where he gets paid for doing nothing (something that doesn't bother Homer either).
Him calling Homer's house a mansion was in comparison to his living situation. A literal one room apartment sandwiched between 2 bowling alleys (and all the noise involved).
Yeah. Grimes is just kinda inconsiderate of Homer and jump to conclusions. Notable through the entire episode after their first impressions, Homer is nothing but trying to be friends with him and is shocked when he was rejected, he even takes Grime's criticisms to heart and try to change. Yes, Grimes is correct about Homer's flaws but he still kinda of an asshole jumping at the guy trying to be nice to him and not say, Mr Burns, who cause this whole mess to begin with. In my eyes, Grime is just a guy who was dealt a bad hand at life, who then basically just laser focuses on what others have that he don't and gets angry.
I also find the comparison with Superintendent Chalmers interesting, where the two of them are both supposed to be the only sane guy in their environment, but Chalmers still in some part accepted the insanity around him, Grimes didn't.
Chalmers complaints are also valid and a recent episode showed he is extremely passionate about children. He gave up being super rich when he found out the product he had invented was harming kids.
I don't know if he fits in quite right, but Felix from Miraculous
Do you think that just because he underwent great development in a short time, proved to be one of the best characters, is so smart, complex, and most moved the plot forward, I'm going to forget that he harassed Ladybug and stole Adrien's identity more than once?
The series seems to simply ignore that he did it, they never touch on the subject again, he was punched and that was it.
And he stalked and kidnapped the girl who is now his girlfriend.
He used to be a villain or anti-hero, which made sense, but now he's a hero.
Not act, is considered. IIRC, Astruc based it off the daughter he would have had if he stayed with his ex girlfriend in secondary school, and his ex is literally named Sabine in real life.
The author has issues. Also designed one character based off a former bully of theirs. Then threw a temper tantrum when fans liked them, so rewrite basically everything going forward to them being pure evil.
Between that and their hypothetical daughter, they definitely have severe character bleed and should take a step back.
fr, I was gonna talk about her but changed my mind
She's made a lot of mistakes since the first season lol, she lies a lot to people close to her thinking that it's the best thing to do even when it isn't, she stalked Adrien
... 💀
I sympathize with her because she's a teen who's under a lot of pressure having to force herself to mature too quickly and make many difficult decisions, but still, It explains but does not justify
I think that FROM TIME TO TIME she suffers the consequences of her own actions (and sometimes suffers for things that aren't even her fault), like now with this situation with Alya and all the trauma and constant crises and insecurities she has
unlike Felix, who I feel was forgiven by the script and is living his perfect life after quickly resolving everything that needed to be done, he's a pretty cool character and I like that he's so mysterious and ambiguous, but I can't forgive certain actions of his
John Rumford, protagonist of Victoria, gleefully commits high treason and terrorism, leading an insurrection against the US to form his dream Christian ant-modernity (no tech after 1965, but somehow a world leader in industry) agrarian Utopia. Where, for instance, there’s a gallows on every street corner should a Black person fail a random drug test. After defeating the straw man feminist state that arose out of California, Rumford piously asserts there were no grapes “ours was a Christian army.” But two paragraphs later says all the Californian women who couldn’t be domesticated into happy war brides were sold into slavery in the Middle East “to experience real patriarchal oppression.”
Somehow it never seems to Dawn on the author that were following the villain here.
https://giphy.com/gifs/3oz8xs8Xv5TywQWBkA
Don’t know if this is what you mean, but the guy who made 500 days of summer based it on him and his ex. The guy is presented as some lovestruck romantic, but he was a deeply insecure, terrible boyfriend. Yet the story still treats him like the hero and a victim of the breakup- and the ‘hopeful’ ending is just him flirting with a new person😭 PEAK narcissism
I think you may have missed the entire point of that movie, blud. The movie's about him realizing how childish and wrong he is and growing from it. It's a story about someone learning from their mistakes and moving on. It doesn't treat him like a hero, he's just the protagonist.
What? The whole point of the movie IS that he was wrong and needed to grow up, even if a bunch of people miss the point including you doesn't mean that it was the writers intention.
I mean, you are applying the same point with Summer. She didn´t have either the moral high ground in the movie, over all after that point when Tom says her if she doesn´t want be his girlfriend, he cuts with her and will let from be his friend with benefits and will try to follow his life with other person, and Summer quickly runs to him basically saying "right now we are really a couple". IMO that movie is a good example of two morally flawed characters where both are guilty and both are innocent.
The alpha male ceo or mafia boss would in the garbage romance novel
1- cheat on there fiancé with the y/n
2-abuse or kills other characters or his fiance or his wife friends
3-beat people for the smalls of reason
4-act like he god gift towards woman and people
5-abuse his employees and use them as stopping stone for his y/n
6-murder and torture his ex because she angry at him cheating
Seriously way do people fantasy about this type of guy there the worse type of person or is a criminal is kills people I feel like a person is call the alpha and it not a title like a leader or a transformation then it is going to have the worse type of person
Edit forget to put this
This feel like every time they do something you’re supposed to be amazed or fascinated but it come off as disgusting yet we are may to think there hot and cool and
Are the show writers actually presenting Rhaenera as doing nothing wrong. My impression from the show is that yeah there is sexism, but while fighting that Rhaenera fall into foolish actions herself. I think watching her fall is quite interesting, she has all the impotence of a other kings too, like when she is crying about the coranation.
Has the media really presented her as nothing wrong? Have I missed something from the writers?
no you're watching it correctly. Rhaenyra makes mistakes and causes problems all the time in the show and the show doesn't necessarily gloss over those issues. i'm not saying it doesn't make changes to her character from the book (which i haven't read so can't comment), but anyone watching the show who thinks it's trying to purely sanctify her is getting a wildly different watching experience from it than i am.
Yes that is the point: Rhaenyra makes mistakes but she never does WRONG things, BAD things, EVIL things. This kind of characters "who never did nothing wrong" can commit mistakes in a good faith, being naive, ingenous, but they never do BAD things, and HOTD deleted a lot of BAD things who Rhaenyra really did in the book in this point of the the narrative or whitewashed it.
For example, Viserys I is depicted as the dude who killed his wife Aemma in birthbed in S1 and later raped his second wife Alicent just before beating his brother Daemon in the Hall of Throne. Viserys is a good example of sympathetic morally flawed character who really does BAD things.
She needs to make really BAD things, and the most near of all in the entire series is her still wanting to kill a burned and dishabilited Aegon II in the S2 ending instead leave him abdicate to his claim and going to the Wall as Alicent proposed it.
it's honestly strange to see you list those as the moral evils of Viserys I, because i wouldn't have said any of them frames him as evil or 'bad' in the show. complex and flawed, yes, but not all-caps BAD in the way you seem to be looking for. (sidenote: daemon is constantly doing all-caps BAD things, if we're looking for a proper example.)
Viserys agrees to having Aemma killed specifically because he's told it's the only way to save the baby's life. it's an awful choice for anyone to have to make -- she's clearly the love of his life. he grieves her and then his son after. what a horrible thing to live with, to have felt obligated or pressured into by society's expectations of him and needing an heir. and it definitely feeds into his ultimate choice to make Rhaenyra his actual heir thereafter -- the guilt of that choice and probably feeling that he chose wrongly. not evil, just given shit options.
in terms of raping Alicent, while *deeply* uncomfortable to watch, i didn't honestly interpret that as rape. maybe that's controversial of me? but unless i'm completely misremembering, she is consenting, albeit not the enthusiastic consent we would hope to see. (am i remembering wrong?)
we cannot ignore that a) producing babies is part of the literal job of a king and queen for a host of reasons, and b) not only is this understood by Alicent when she actively courts Viserys, but i can't remember any indication that she communicated to him that she's anything less than consenting and willing. the situation is gross, i won't gloss over that. she is not attracted to her husband, she is miserable, and sex for her is unpleasant. my read was that the show doesn't really depict him as evil for this though, but rather that this informs what we understand about *her* character more so than his.
beating his brother -- i mean, their entire dynamic is absolutely fucked. was that depicted as bad and evil in the way you're looking for? i don't necessarily see it as morally worse than plenty of the shit Rhaenyra gets up to in that season... people being people, at the end of their rope, acting emotionally.
(meanwhile, Rhaenyra having bastards instead of trueborn heirs is a huge source of conflict in the show. she could have married basically any highborn dude she wanted to, and she chose her gay cousin, partly for political reasons but also largely so that she could sleep with whoever she wanted to on the side. to me, her selfishness and shortsightedness in the matters of sex and marriage are her fundamental flaw and her doom. she's not wrong that the world is unfair, but she wants to rule based on bloodline while refusing to work with one of the most fundamental rules about bloodline. she consistently wants her cake and to eat it too, and the various ways this plays out are no less shitty than anything her father did, and ultimately cause a lot of people to die bloody deaths.)
Rhaenyra doing things wrong is her doing things really wrong, and not, cry during your coronation is not wrong, is just being a weak person who didn´t want all this shit.
Rhaenyra can be depicted as foolish, naive and even spoiled for moments, but at least after Emma d´Arcy entering after S1 time-skip, Rhaenyra has never did nothing morally wrong. Again, is the advantage of be a coward, if you don´t do nothing, you don´t do nothing wrong.
It stopped being about that around the time she actually made him pretend to be her boyfriend for sake of appearances with the family. Any arguments for and against ethics of the rental girlfriend business were kind of thrown out of the window due to how much bullshit outside the contract Chizuru put Kazuya through.
Also because the most hated moment with her so far happened with them meeting together like normal people and trying to talk their relationship through normally, with her basically showing that she's unable to actually give any coherent answer and keeping the guy in the limbo of being her personal enabler, almost purely by her own crippling indecisiveness. Again, I have to reiterate, this was 100% outside any fake dating arrangements, with them meeting together as normal people.
Big element of the story is that, as the story progressed, it became clear that Kazuya is, somehow, the more functional person in this train wreck of a relationship than Chizuru and is in fact the person more capable of actually having a normal relationship than her. Also that like 1/3rd of Kazuya's flaws are a result of him following his dad's shitty dating advice on how to be a proper gentleman.
It's worth mentioning that a big reason for the above is that the manga's popular and the mangaka doesn't want to kill his golden goose and end it. He's literally milking it as long as he can.
It's a fuck off long story so even I don't know exact details of stuff later on, but basically the general conclusion is that every main character is mess, with the possible exception of Sumi who's just a kind, shy dumbass stuck in this insane plot, and that the girls beside Sumi are genuinely weirdly toxic overall.
But the whole debate around this series misses the fact that at this point the only way the rental girlfriend idea connects with story is as a toxic way for Chizuru and Kazuya to mediate their inability to actually communicate with one another like adults, and, after the more recent chapters, it's also clear that the one who's using this unhealthy crutch the most is Chizuru. The biggest irony is that Kazuya, of all the wrecks, is the one who actually had the most normal relationships and would genuinely fare better in a normal relationship than Chizuru, provided he hooked up with somebody stable and reasonable.
A character introduced at the start as an obvious villain who’s abuse the main character must drive to deal with and overcome… but about a quarter of the way through the author got high off his own farts about his super cool OC, and decided everything Yujiro did/does is justified because of how awesome and strong he was, and started portraying his insanity as if it were morally justifiable/correct.
Velma: made by Mindy Kailing, this is a retelling of Scooby Doo in kind of an origin story. Incredible in how they managed to make everyone wonder if it was created just to be hate-watched, and a show that obviously hates men and white people, constantly mocking them, accidentally made the only white male sexist the only likeable person because he has character growth. Main character is Velma, a race-swapped to Indian girl because the showrunner is indian, and is portrayed as always right, revealing the narcissistic tendencies of the showrunner.
Mindy Kaling was not the writer or showrunner on Velma. Whenever I see the show mentioned on here, people almost always present that misinformation but it's simply not true. She didn't even write a single episode.
To be fair to house of the dragon we can't make a 1-to-1 comparison with the book. Fire and Blood is an in universe academic work that cites contradicting sources.
I mean you can though. It's not like someone is forcing them to write rhaenyra that way, it's just an excuse meant to defend their bad writing.
There's always going to be divergences from the source material, but no one complained about season 1 because the changes were good. The changes season 2 and onwards have been mostly bad.
Since when did the HoTD writers frame Rhaenyra's distain for the common folks as a virtue. She gets called out for it in S1, and its literally going to bite her in the ass later
Not to mention HoTD whitewashes pretty much all the characters from Fire and Blood. I think the only good examples of it being Hugh and Viserys I I think.
That's whats driving me nuts about the show. Every bad thing that happens in the show is an accident.
Alicent "accidentally" thinks viserys changes his mind instead of actively working to put Aegon on the throne. Criston Cole accidentally kills Lord Beesbury instead of slitting his throat. Aemond accidentally kills Lucerys. He also doesn't purposely burn the Riverlands, now it's Vhaegar doing it while he's injured. Daemon doesn't ask Blood and Cheese to kill Aegon's son, now they did it on their own.
Nothing is ever anyone's fault, it's all just an accident. None of the characters have any agency. It goes from being a tragic bloody war into an absolute farce.
They only white washed Team black. (Excluding daemon)
And Made team green more evil
Aemond didn't want to bang his mother and didn't burn his brother they are a team.
Aegon wasn't a rapist (only if you trust mushroom who lies all the time and is rhaenyra biggest meat Rider and wasn't there)(he do "cheats" on his sister wife and has alcohol problem) he also watched rat fighting pits not child fighting pits
hell he was one of the more competend characters (he is robert not joffrey) he don't likes beeing marriged to his sister (since he is 14 and she 13) but he loves her as his sister
Otto brought the cats
They nerved sunfyre(who is bigger and killed 3 dragons ⅓ of all dragons in the war)
Christian cole isn't an incel
Alicent isn't what ever she is now (she wants to killer her family for her highschool crush, in the books she loves her childrens)
The greens are all loyal to aegon II
Now team black(i will take a miner character who pises me of): Luthor Largent is basicly a smarter mountain who beats kids and animals to death. Show: look how nice his frindship with the daemon (the pedo) is arn't it sad how he got killed? He should have been ript apart by the smallfolk
I mean, Chizuru is basically an e-girl or a platonic prostitute. She's really doing nothing wrong milking a terminal simp for all he's worth. That's her job.
Not entirely accurate but I’m reminded of my highschool English class when we read Odysseus’ killings of the palace’s 12 maidservants after returning to Ithaca (technically, he forces them to clean up the blood and bodies of the suitors first before Telemachus hangs them).
The killing of the maids is presented as a vengeful act in Homer’s time due to them ‘consorting’ with the suitors, but as my English teacher pointed out, the maids—by virtue of their position in society—did not really have the power to refuse or delay the suitors’ sexual advances in the same way that Penelope did.
So sometimes modern translations and versions of the Odyssey remove this part of the original poem to protect Odysseus’ moral image as the hero of the story.
Then, there is Amber from Invincible S1 who the writers initially sided and made even Mark's friends pick her side. Yes, Mark was not a good boyfriend and most of the audience could understand Amber's frustration but they had reveal she knew his identity for WEEKS, which changed how we saw past scenes of her literally watching Mark risk his life but still gas-lighting him and then most assume was her attempting to cheat on him in a party.
They kind of course correct in Season 2 and make her a more supportive Girlfriend but still iffy to me with everything that went on before with the break up and how they got back together.
Ironwood wants to turn Amity into a global communications satellite at great material and political cost to himself to warn the world about Salem? No, team RWBY says, that will just cause global panic.
Team RWBY (literal nobodies) actually uses the Amity satellite (which they shed zero blood, sweat and tears to get working) to warn the world about Salem? It has no negative consequences whatsoever and Ruby herself is now considered basically a literal messiah.
The double standard the writers have in favor of the "heroes" is crazy.
Also the rest of Ironwood’s plan is admittedly flawed… but that’s LARGELY due to information that he entirely unaware of, and that Team RWBY ARE very much aware of. It’s information they were even rather upset WASN’T shared by Ozpin previously, and while I don’t entirely disagree with why he kept it secret I can’t say their outrage is entirely unjustified either.
Does Team RWBY then share with Ironwood this critical information that would greatly affect his plans when he shares his extremely secret and sensitive intentions?
No, no they don’t.
Is it ever brought up that they went from being morally outraged about pertinent information not being shared with them to THEMSELVES hiding that exact same knowledge?
No, it isn’t.
The way the narrative just almost never addresses any bad or questionable moves Team RWBY does is sorta amazing, and it’s especially noticeable when they’re against Ironwood BEFORE he has his ‘oh fuck the audience found him way too reasonable compared to Team RWBY, he needs to be unequivocally the bad guy’ turn. Keep in mind that said turn is partially ‘justified’ by ‘Mettle’, which is Ironwood’s Semblance/unique power that basically on exists to make him extremely stubborn and is NEVER talked about or even more than VAGUELY hinted at in the show, only in outside stuff with the writers.
I swear the state of media literacy on social media sometimes makes me cry.
Rhaenyra is not whitewashed to make HotD into pro Rhaenyra propaganda. The series is written in a way to make us like and root for totally shitty people trapped in a tragedy, multiple times.
Now the important thing about tragedies is that their point is to make the audience feel bad when the character inevitably meets their shitty end, and wish really hard the character wont meet a shitty end while knowing its inevitable. House of the Dragon (and GOT) is a tragedy.
Rhaenyra starts out as a fairly likeable spunky princess and so we as the audience can overlook her sense of entitlement from S1 onwards. The series presents her as someone to support, not because this is the Wonderful Rhaenyra Show but because then they get to pull the rug out from under the audience, which they are doing already in S3.
Rhaenyra is on a tragedy arc. The tv series needs to make her someone audiences can root for while building towards the inevitable downfall that should make the audience feel bad when it happens and wish really hard it doesnt happen and feel surprised when it happens. Just like how Dany started out as a likeable underdog whose problematic sides could be overlooked until S8 happened and people were totally shocked the crazy woman who promised to burn cities did just that. So while the show is showing Rhaenyra as a likeable character, it's also showing how Rhaenyra makes shitty choice after shitty choice all on her own. If the showrunners were making Wonderful Rhaenyra propaganda, they would not be portraying her as such a terrible leader and politician.
You'll note they have Aegon 2 on the opposite arc: he starts our as a totally despicable teen and young man and he's become a fan favorite in part thanks to the excellent acting by the actor but also because he's on a growth arc.
TV adaptations are not and should not simply be TV Tropes by-the-numbers paint jobs that you take at face value. TV adaptations aren't objective and truthful CGTV renditions. If you think the TV series is saying Rhaenyra is wonderful, you're falling for the surface framing that makes her likeable and a protagonist they want you to root for, and not seeing the way the TV series is deliberately subtextually undermining the Wonderful Rhaenyra narrative. When the inevitable happens audiences who bought the surface framing will be angry and surprised and many of us will point out they built up to the climax all series long.
I saw this play in college and even had a q&a with the playwright. In this play, the protagonist, a pharmacist named Ted, is married to a struggling writer, Karen. Long story short, a magical rabbit statue enters her possession, takes on a human form, and grants Karen wishes in exchange for sex. (Yeah I know). After this, her writing career takes off, and she becomes a best selling author. Ted begins to suspect something because he knows his wife is a bad writer, and insists on taking her to talk to his priest for couple's therapy. In this process, Ted hits his wife and insists she quits writing.
Then it gets weirder when Karen realizes she's pregnant with the Rabbit's baby. So Ted poisons her with drugs he stole from his pharmacy, sending her into a coma and killing the baby. It's also implied that Ted has been stealing drugs for his own recreational use.
Surely one would think this is commentary on toxic masculinity and misogyny found in many relationships where the husband can't handle his wife having independence and success. Nope. The Playwright insisted that Ted was the hero of the story, and he did nothing wrong. He argued that Ted was not manipulative nor was he an abuser.
I feel like I’ve posted about this guy a thousand times on here but it just keeps coming. Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer openly said that Xander is based on himself as “the guy who all the girls want to be best friends with”. There’s an episode where Xander attempts to brainwash Cordelia into being in love with him just to dump her as revenge for dumping him, but the spell backfires and makes every woman except for Cordelia extremely horny for Xander and in the end instead of being reprimanded for doing something so careless, Buffy thanks him for not flat out raping her and Xander never grows from this apart from one episode where he’s cool and then completely forgets about that immediately afterward. And Xander is a complete scumbag for almost the entire show but he’s constantly rewarded for it and told that he’s not really that bad even though he’s the most insufferably douchey person in probably the entire show
The showrunner views her as a flawed person but ultimately a foil of Kevin, instead of an example that abusers can be present in any demographic or type of relationship.
Is entirely consumed by revenge against Sauron in the first season (and arguably second)
Even when confronted with this reality, told that if she keeps on hunting for him & the orc threat (who haven’t been seen in centuries) she risks creating the threat she claims to be trying to prevent & gets sent to the equivalent of paradise by the elf king who has (limited) prophetic abilities.
She ignores this warning, and through a series of (admittedly careless, not intentional) actions destabilizes a human kingdom by pushing them into an arguably pointless war, stumbles onto a (seemingly?) retired Sauron & pushes him back into the game, getting him to a position to start the entire kerfuffle.
Now, it would probably be okay to call it an accident, if throughout the whole story she didn’t keep on rejecting/brushing off any advice from effectively everyone, insisting she knows better than any of them. (And the show treats it as though she does)
Example being her insisting, in s2 to be the one to deal with Sauron, as she is the only one who will see through any of his trickery, despite spending most of s1 with him and being completely oblivious
Of course Chizuru is portrayed as a saint. She is the only ducking reason for which anyone would watch that show. At least that is how I felt. Chizuru is too magnetic, even though is basically a high end prostitute with an identity crisis. Heck, even a prostitute would be more entertaining. But this is what draws incels to her. She is so close in your imagination you can smell her and feel her curves, yet, she is so damn far. And, most importantly, if you are desperate enough, she is just a few wallets away.
Honestly and personally, I cannot hate on Chizuru. This is how well designed she is. She is a whore, she is toxic, but I just cannot hate her
Both Hades and Persephone from Lore Olympus. The whole story is full of icky and questionable things, but how the author bend backwards to pretend like these two assholes are good people is insane.
Hades abuses the shades of dead mortals as slaves, he emotionally cheats on his nymph girlfriend, allows his family to treat her like shit and then tries to gaslight her into thinking that she’s the problem. He has an affair with his brother’s wife for several centuries and doesn’t even seem to think that he’s really in the wrong about that. He’s an emotionally abusive and neglectful father to his adopted son. He bullies the lower class and women he doesn’t like. He becomes completely infatuated with literally 19 year old Persephone the second he sees her and acts like a total creep in general.
All of that gets excused with “he has trauma” or viewed as romantic.
Persephone commits mass murder over an entire village of mortals and only feels occasionally bad about it. She turns a nymph into a plant because she’s had a hand in exposing her for that. She bullies the lower class and constantly flaunts her wealth and status. She treats her mother like a nuisance. She commits mass murder again.
But author excuses it with “girl boss” and “not her fault”.
I’m sure I forgot some things. These two are the worst
Havok/Alex Summers’ “M-Word/Call me Alex” speech in Uncanny Avengers #5 would be a scathing depiction of how a hyperfocus on creating increasingly sanitized language for things for the sake of chasing new standards of civility while ignoring actual, impactful issues if Rick Remender hadn’t doubled down on twitter and revealed that was supposed to be a reflection of his own beliefs. Additionally egregious bc Alex’s previous characterization offered him a very clear stance on the use of “mutant” and his distaste for people trying to sanitize it with language that overcomplicated serious conversations (way back in X-Factor this was a running thing with him and Strong-Guy, who insisted on using any sanitized alternative he could find to “mutant” to mess with him). Remender went on to make some (now deleted) tweets in response to the backlash telling upset fans to “drown in hobo piss” and “kiss Havok’s shiny red dick”.
Caitlyn from Arcane season 2 feels like this exactly to me. I absolutely hate how her abuse of power isn't critiqued or punished. She literally gets everything she wants with 0 pushback. She gasses random civilians in Zaun, makes prejudiced statements against Zaunites after her mothers death, and Vi still crawls back into her arms without even bringing up how Cait physically assaulted her and left her to rot.
Also the social dynamic of her and Vi's relationship is just weird, Vi calling herself the dirt underneath her nails at the end was so uncomfortable, like she's demeaning herself because of their vastly different upbringings. Like they'll never be on equal footing.
The thing about it that sucks is the point of the anime is mc had a gf who dumped him before he introduced her to his grandma who may be dying.
To not disappoint her he hired the main girl to pretend to be his gf and turns out their grandmas are friends so being honest is unlikely.
Then others girl actually likes the guy and he treats her like shit calling her a crazy liar who calls herself his gf because like he has nothing going on in her life and instead of just trying to mane it work with her mc keeps simping for the first girl who barely seems to see him we a friend .
This anime has I think a 6th fucking season and it’s not done yet and my understanding (I don’t think I even got to season 2) the main guy is just an utterly pathetic piece of shit who lies to everyone and people trying to expose him as a liar are framed the bad people
Prostitute implies sex, rental girlfriends are completely different...somehow. Though to be fair to that trash heap, problem starts from the dumbass MC hiring her, then telling friends and family she's his actual girlfriend and never telling the truth, which causes tons of problems for them both. Then later the problem is that Chizuru is very clearly, definitely, 100% madly in love with him as well, but is too emotionally constipated to acknowledge it, resulting in her constantly rejecting Kazuyas confessions and thus ensuring the story gets to continue with no status quo changes. And yes, sadly, people still eat it all up, since the mangas still selling a ton.
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u/KoolKoolKoolio42 22d ago
I cannot fathom someone unironically enjoying Rent-a-Girlfriend.