u/Aros001

Even though TFS Gaming has long since been retired as a YouTube channel I do still occasionally enjoy going back through its various playlists of the games they've played since most of the entertainment value still holds up. The adventures of Dumplin and Puddin, the Pokemon journeys of Lakigr and Tantor, Krillin playing through Outlast and Alien Isolation. All good stuff.

Of particular note for this topic is the group's playthrough of Fallout 4, i.e. the epic of Captain Richard Ravagèr III and his ever expanding name. It's a good playthrough for the most part and was the reason why I got the game when I eventually got a PS4 of my own.

But one thing that bothered me even back when they were first putting up the videos and that still bothers me now when rewatching is their playthroughs of the Far Harbor and Nuka World DLCs, where they complained a lot about how unenjoyable and bad they felt the DLCs were...and it really felt like they only felt that way because they were actively refusing to actually engage with them.

I think the problem was two-fold. The first being that they live-streamed Far Harbor and thus on some level felt like they had to rush through things because they were on a time limit. Which fed into the bigger issue of how it felt like they got way too into the roleplay of the character.

Don't get me wrong, it's a roleplay game where you create your own character. There's nothing wrong with them playing the game the way that The Captain would. The problem however is that by the time they got to the DLCs the character they had developed for The Captain was that he was short-tempered and heavily impulsive psychopath who eventually kills and eats anyone and everyone he feels even slightly disrespected by or that he just gets a whim to. He doesn't care about people's stories or what's going on in the world, which meant every time the story tried to unfold for them or a character was talking the group would frequently disregard and tune out so much of it. "Blah blah blah, yeah, we don't care. Shut up and make us your king or die. And then maybe you'll die anyway."

It gets to the point where, yeah, of course you're not enjoying the game because you're not actually engaging with anything it's offering or asking you to do, you're just doing the same thing over and over again of just killing everyone.

One of their Nuka World videos even has the comments full of people pointing out that one of the group, Grant, even seemed to eventually get a little frustrated with the way they were playing the character when Lani deliberately walked The Captain in front of an Operator who was shooting at a cappy for target practice, causing him to be shot (and doing no damage) and thus they immediately went into their usual "Oh, well, anyone who points a gun at us dies." and killed the guy, causing ALL the Operators to turn hostile because the player just killed a member of their faction for no reason and thus they couldn't progress further in the questline at that time.

Again, the problem isn't that the group was playing the DLC their way, the problem was that they were complaining about the DLC being boring and bad when they wouldn't even meet the game halfway. It's one thing to say a game is bad because you participated in what the game asked you to do and you found it very unenjoyable, it's an entirely other thing to say a game is bad because you ignored everything it asked you to do and dicked around until you got bored.

Weirdly, it was the Vanoss crew Uno videos that reminded me of this and made me want to talk about this topic. They're a bunch of other Youtubers I enjoy plenty of content from, including their Uno videos because of how funny they can be. But then there are the occasional videos where they'll do an offshoot variant of Uno to mix things up a bit, like the Fenyz Quest and Assassin's Creed versions, which too often involves members like Wildcat or Nogla whining and complaining the entire time about how overcomplicated and stupid this new version is and how they can't follow anything that's happening...when they're ACTIVELY REFUSING TO READ THE DAMN RULES!

It's just "Oh, I don't want to read a f**king book (i.e. a couple of sentences at most) in order to understand Uno!" and then acting shocked and irritated when they don't know how any of the new cards or rules work. It's bad because it overcomplicated and not fun? Well, it's probably overcomplicated and not fun because you didn't even try to understand the game you were playing and instead just decided to be mad that it wasn't like the game you already know.

Like, imagine someone complaining about how bad of a game they think Tetris is and all they did while playing it was just stacking the blocks up as high as they could go instead of trying to get rid of them. Yeah, you can play the game that way but it's not the way the game is telling/trying to tell you that it's supposed to be played and it can't fairly be blamed for you not having fun playing the way it's not intended to be played.

I can't help but think about sit-down roleplay campaigns. Often you'll hear about the importance of flexibility for the dungeon master, how they need to role with and adapt to the players taking on their campaign and let them have some freedom, as it's not likely to be an enjoyable game if they just keep all the players on rails the entire time. But on the other side of this it's also still important for the players to have a willingness to actually participate in what the dungeon master has laid out for them. If they just refuse to go on any quests and spend each of their turns sleeping at the inn and ignoring everything, or they just kill every NPC they come across on impulse, or if they complain the entire time that they don't know how to do anything because they won't read or listen to any of the rules and instructions of the game, then it's not really the dungeon master's fault that they're not having a good time.

Both sides, the game and the player, need to make an effort to engage with the other. And if the player won't put in any of that effort then they can't fairly judge the game as bad. You don't get to condemn a game that you declined to actually play.

Yu Ishigami is one of the main cast of Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. In the backstory we learn for him as the series goes on, back in his last year of middle school he had a crush on a classmate named Kyoko Ootomo since she was a pretty girl who was one of the few people who'd strike up conversations with him and just generally be really nice to him. But she had a boyfriend, Ko Ogino, so naturally Ishigami accepted that things were never going to happen between them and for the most part was able to just be happy that she was happy.

However, one day he overheard Ogino bragging to his friends about how he'd been cheating on Ootomo. Ishigami confronted Ogino about it, telling him to stop cheating on her or he would reveal what he'd been doing. Instead Ogino then tried to bribe Ishigami into keeping quiet by offering him pictures he'd taken of Ootomo that are HEAVILY implied to be pornographic in nature (using his own girlfriend as a bargaining chip, as Ishigami's narration put it). This caused Ishigami to snap and attack Ogino, beating him up in front of their entire class. Unfortunately Ogino managed to spin the whole situation by making it look like Ishigami attacked him because he was a stalker jealous that Ogino was dating Ootomo, quietly threatening Ishigami to play along or else he'd ruin Ootomo's life in retaliation, likely by publicly leaking the pictures he'd taken of her.

This caused Ishigami to be put on indefinite suspension until he gave a formal apology to Ogino, which he refused to do, and for everyone, including Ootomo, to think he was indeed just a crazy violent stalker. All because he didn't want Ootomo to be put through the public humiliation, ruined reputation, and mental trauma of what Ogino was threatening to do to her.

Things finally changed for Ishigami months later when the main characters of the series, Shirogane and Shinomiya of the Shuchi'in student council, looked into the matter more on their own and pieced together the truth of what really happened. Shirogane even went directly to Ishigami to comfort him with the knowledge that his months of silence and refusal to give an apology had freaked Ogino out enough that he might still be ratted out that he broke up with Ootomo a while ago and changed schools, all with Ootomo unaffected and none the wiser about what could have been done to her, meaning Ishigami's sacrifice did still have an effect, even if he maybe could have gone about things better than he did. Out of respect for him and to continue protecting Ootomo, Shirogane and Shinomiya likewise kept the secret but overturned Ishigami's suspension, allowing him to go to high school.

About a year after the incident, Ootomo visited during the Shuchi'in sports festival to catch up with some of her old friends and to potentially run into Ogino, and she used the opportunity to vent her grudge against Ishigami, since from her perspective of everything her boyfriend broke up with her because Ishigami beat him up for being with her. Just before an event, she told him that she hopes he falls face flat into the dirt and that he should be as miserable as he made her. However, her being able to say something like that in public and being so full of life instead washed away Ishigami's last regrets of having sacrificed his reputation to save hers, and he rebukes her by saying "Shut up, idiot" ("Shut up, dumbass." in the dub), much to her shock. Despite getting insulted, Kyoko ends up leaving in good spirits, having told Ishigami what she wanted to tell him, and the whole thing lets them both finally fully move on.

So, as you can imagine, the character who receives the most hate for this whole storyline...is f**king OOTOMO.

Seriously, this baffled me back when I was first watching the anime and reading the manga while they were ongoing and it still baffles me even now years later whenever I see it pop up. The way some people just absolutely HATE Ootomo. Condemning her. Calling her a stupid bitch who needs to go f**k herself. Hating how ungrateful she is to Ishigami. I just don't get it.

Yeah, Ishigami is in a really unfair situation where he's being treated in a way he doesn't deserve but Ootomo wasn't the one who put him in that situation, Ogino and arguably Ishigami himself did. It's made pretty clear repeatedly that she doesn't know the truth about what really happened and the reason she doesn't know the truth isn't because of stubbornness or maliciousness or bias or even stupidity on her part but because everyone who knows about the truth has hidden it from her. She has every reason to believe that Ishigami wronged her, yet some people really either can't see that or outright refuse to. They like and sympathize with Ishigami and they thus they hate Ootomo for making him feel bad and disliking him.

It also feels a bit telling that I feel like I never see anywhere near as much hate and vitriol directed at Ogino. You know, the scummy boyfriend who caused all of this?

I even asked on the Kaguya-Sama sub why they think that is and the best answers I got were that Ogino is just forgettable douchebag who has nothing more to him than that. Everybody recognizes that he's a horrible person who did horrible things and thus there's nothing really worth discussing about him, whereas with Ootomo there's more of a discussion to be had over whether her anger towards Ishigami was justified or not. To an extent I get this explanation, at least as far as why I don't see Ogino brought up in discussions as much as Ootomo is, but it still doesn't really address the main issue of how much some of the fan so unfairly hate her, especially when many of them boil her character down to "stupid bitch" and view her just as simple and one-note as Ogino.

At best all the hate towards Ootomo feels like an example of how some people just don't like to think about anything with more than a single layer of complexity. They dislike the unfairness of Ishigami's situation, therefore they dislike the face they associate most with his situation, which is Ootomo's, and their thought process just stops there. "How dare she not be able to see the truth that is actively being kept from her! How dare she be mad at Ishigami for the bad thing she is being deliberately made to think he did to her! Ishigami is the good guy we feel sympathy for, and since Ootomo is in opposition to him that clearly makes her the bad guy we are supposed to hate and have no sympathy for!"

At worst it almost feels akin to victim blaming, like they hate Ootomo for Ishigami's situation because none of it would have happened if she hadn't been dating a guy who turned out to be a scumbag who cheats on her and shares her nudes with his friends and those he wants to bribe and would gladly ruin her life and reputation if it might get him out of trouble. "If only she wasn't an actual person who would be negatively effected by the bad things Ishigami wanted to protect her from then he wouldn't have suffered so, which means it's all her fault that it happened!"

This isn't me saying that I think Hashimoto is a bad character. Heck, Karuizawa is one of my favorite characters in COTE. But as the story went on and especially after he started working more with Ayanokoji I'm starting to see his past relationships and interactions with Sakayanagi and Ryuuen in a bit of a different light.

Hashimoto prided himself on being one of Sakayanagi's "limbs" while also working in the background to make sure that things would always work out for himself, but after getting to know the guy better and with how he's shown himself to act when he's desperate he feels less like someone who always wants to make sure he's on the winning team and more like someone who clings to the strongest person he can find for protection and to clear the way for him since he knows he can't make it on his own, not unlike how Karuizawa was early on with Hirata. Heck, in Y3V2 he almost felt a little worse than Karuizawa in that regard with how constantly connected at the hip he was to Ayanokoji and how he'd never be away from him for too long.

Obviously everyone in the four classes relies on others to some degree or another, even Ayanokoji, but you compare Hashimoto to some of the other notable characters in the series, those like Ryuuen, Sakayanagi, and Ichinose have genuine strengths as leaders that make others want to follow them and work with them, Horikita has steadily improved as a leader that her class can rely on and even when she had Ayanokoji in her class she started to push herself more and more as the second year went on to think of him as more of a back-up or safety net rather than someone whose strengths she should be going to first, Katsuragi is still consistent in his beliefs and convictions even after joining Ryuuen's class, and even eternal lapdogs like Ishizaki are at least aware of their weaknesses and genuinely loyal to their allies. Hashimoto has his own strengths but he doesn't seem confident enough in them that they'll help him get to or stay in Class A, even by working with his allies, and he has no loyalty or consistent connections, to the point that he's burned every bridge he's had in order to join up with the strongest side he could find. He really seems to be all about relying on the strengths of others to get ahead, be it Sakayanagi, Ryuuen, or now Ayanokoji.

Heck, I think possibly the most damning for Hashimoto is that, thus far anyway, despite knowing him the longest of those remaining in Class A and one of Sakayanagi's final requests to him being to judge Hashimoto's actions Ayanokoji doesn't seem to have any plans or desires for Hashimoto to grow beyond who he currently is like he did with Karuizawa. He might not think Hashimoto can grow more.

I thought it was dumb when I was seeing this kind of discourse around My Hero Academia's ending (the anime too but especially with how people acted with the manga) but now it just feels even dumber when I'm seeing it return for the Avatar Aang movie. People complaining that the Gaang don't feel as close as they did when they were kids and how sad it is that they've drifted apart.

Which, much like the 1-A kids, yeah, of course the characters felt like they were a lot closer to each other when they were all literally living together and in situations where they'd naturally be spending the majority of their time together.

It's not that the characters have drifted apart and it's certainly not that they've stopped being friends or stopped caring about each other, they just have other sh*t to do compared to the one unifying thing they all had to do back when they were younger. The former 1-A members aren't students in school anymore, they have jobs now and various responsibilities they've chosen to focus on across Japan. Aang has to be active all over the world while Zuko's duties as the Fire Lord are going to keep him in his nation, while Katara was more active in Republic City, etc. The characters aren't all in one dorm or on the back of one flying bison anymore.

And even then they all still clearly care about each other and want to do things together. They'll do jobs together. They'll gather to celebrate or hang out when they can. When Aang asked for help everyone immediately dropped what they were doing to go help.

Yes, the characters aren't as close as they used to be but that doesn't mean that they aren't still close and it's weird how depressing and sad some people are trying to twist it into. You don't have to spend every waking moment of your life with someone in order to still be their friend.

This is something that tends to bother me a lot with how often I feel like I see it in response to certain media where the people a hero character has worked to protect and save start criticizing or lashing out at the hero, often unfairly. Often I feel like I'll see people who read or watched the story then say that the hero should have adopted a "Well, screw you." attitude in response. That they should just stop saving and helping people if they're going to be so ungrateful, or even that they shouldn't have saved the people criticizing them in the first place. And this bothers me because it usually feels like it just completely misses the point of heroism.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying characters should just suck it up and take it no matter how unfairly they're being treated. Sometimes you do need times like Saitama yelling back at the crowd to point out that a lot more than just a guy's car would have been destroyed if he hadn't punched that meteor, and there's a petty part in the hearts of many X-Men fans (including myself) who enjoyed the Krakoa era despite some of it's issues because, frankly, after the sixth or seventh mutant genocide it's kind of nice to see them just flip humanity the bird and create their own nation where they'll just wait things out until the humans eventually kill themselves off. Turning the other cheek doesn't mean you should just let yourself be slapped endlessly.

But too often this "Well, screw them!" mentality feels like a result of just a complete lack of empathy and understanding, or at least a complete unwillingness to have any, because more often than not the ungrateful citizens who are lashing out and being distrustful of the heroes aren't doing so just because they felt like being dicks that week.

The Dark Deku arc from My Hero Academia is a pretty good example. Yes, the public is treating the Pro Heroes unfairly with how much blame and criticism they are putting on them for the current situation when they honestly did as much as they could have, it just didn't work, but the public is doing it because they're f**king terrified. Japan is in ruins, countless people are dead or displaced, multiple prisons had mass break-outs of some of the worst criminals alive, many pros quit because they couldn't handle the pressure, one of the terrorists responsible for the whole situation is the abused son of the current top hero, the leader of the villains is targeting the specific person (Midoriya) the heroes just brought to one of the few safe shelters left, and the guy they could always rely on before to save the day no matter how bad things got is no longer around. For the average person it feels like they are trapped in a nightmare that they are helpless to do anything about and all that fear and frustration can only build up so much before it forcibly finds an outlet, and unfortunately the Pro Heroes are the closest thing they have to a representation of the situation that they can take any of it out on (since Shigaraki and AFO are in hiding and would just instantly kill them if they were there).

It's not fair. It's not okay. No one is saying it is. But what the civilians are feeling is not hard to understand, and the remaining heroes just saying "Screw you, you guys can just take care of yourselves then. I don't care anymore what happens to you." isn't going to make anything better. Empathy and compassion is needed now more than ever if they're going to make it through what AFO has done, from the heroes and the civilians, and leading by example is how remaining heroes like Uraraka get through to the civilians; by showing empathy and compassion and encouraging it in them too to the point it can break through their fear.

Similarly in the Batman Beyond episode "Babel" where Shriek holds the city hostage by using his sound technology to make animals go crazy and mess with people's ability to understand language, promising to stop only if Batman turns himself over to him. This causes many people in Gotham to turn against Batman, demanding that he turn himself over, with some even blaming him for everything Shriek is doing. Terry is given the option and even encouraged by both Max and even Bruce to just stay hidden and save himself, especially as his mom and brother will be devasted if he dies and the city is being so ungrateful even after everything he's done for it.

But in the end, Terry still suits up and is willing to give himself to Shriek if it'll save all those lives, just like Bruce would.

>Bruce: "I wouldn't blame you if you stayed home. Not after what all those ingrates have been saying."

>Terry: "I didn't get into this for gratitude. I have a feeling you didn't either."

Which is touched on again at the episode's end after Terry managed to find a way to win.

>Bruce: "By the way, thanks."

>Terry: "For what?"

>Bruce: "For reminding me why I got into this. It's been so many years now."

>Terry: "But you never really forget, do you?"

>Bruce: "...No. You don't."

Terry didn't become Batman for the public's praise or unending gratitude, he became Batman for the same reason Bruce did. They both went through a horrible loss and experienced pain that they never wanted anyone else to go through anything similar ever again. Yeah, it sucks for Terry to have the public turning on him in their fear of what Shriek will do to them, but as long as he can keep them from coming home to find their loved ones dead on the ground like he did, he can deal with it. As the episode goes over, sometimes you need to walk into a bad situation knowing there might be no way out in order to do the right thing.

One thing I really like in the movie Superman vs. The Elite is that while the movie naturally is on Superman's side of the argument overall it does still take the time to show the other side of the argument and why some people would be choosing The Elite over him other than reasons like "Murder is cool and Superman is lame", because it's hard not to be effected by what feels like constant terrible things going on in the world and want those horrible things to be hit back just as cruelly, and that it's no reason to just give up on those people.

>Clark: "So, even Smallville's rooting for the Elite."

>Pa Kent: "Well, just the loud, angry and stupid."

>Clark: "Come on, it's not that simple. I don't think that I make them feel safe anymore. The way I do things..."

>Pa Kent: "Clark, when people are scared they have a tendency to hop on a bandwagon before they see who's driving it. But when they wise up, and believe me they will, what matters is that you'll be there for them."

It's especially frustrating how unwilling the audience can be to understand the "ungrateful" civilians in examples like Avatar the Last Airbender's "Zuko Alone" episode, which while not a superhero story goes along with the MHA example as the main reason I wanted to talk about this topic. So often when this episode is discussed, especially after some people's first reaction to it, you get people who are so pissy over the village and the mother and son especially rejecting Zuko after he saved them from the corrupt Earth Kingdom militia that was supposed to be protecting them. Calling them ungrateful and that he should have just kept to himself and not saved them to begin with. That he should have just let the kid die if that's how he's going to be treated.

The Fire Nation has been at war with the rest of the world for 100 years. The village is suffering because most of its able-bodied men were call away to fight, including the kid's brother, who may be dead for all his family knows, thus why his father went to look for him. And Zuko just proudly declared that he is the son of the Fire Lord, the man who is actively and happily keeping the war going despite every ability to end it. Of course the villagers don't trust him and instead push him away. His actions in the short time they've known him, however kind or heroic they may be, aren't enough to overcome all the pain and trauma Zuko's nation has put them through. It's not fair how they treat Zuko, but it's also not hard to understand why they treat him that way, and it certainly wouldn't justify Zuko just leaving them to suffer and die when he has the power to do something about it.

Of course, there's also one major aspect of all of this that really should not be overlooked, and it's that NOT EVERY CIVILIAN SPEAKS FOR ALL CIVILIANS!

As we've seen countless times on the internet with how fandoms can be represented by their worst members just by being the loudest, angriest, and most obnoxious, often the reason we see the angry and ungrateful civilians criticizing the hero the most is because they naturally would be easier to see and hear over the people who do still like and trust the hero, and for the hero to just quit, to decide that the world isn't their problem anymore, it feels like they're punishing everyone for the actions of the few. "Yeah, maybe you didn't criticize me, but someone out there did and therefore none of you deserve to be saved or helped.".

In Superman (2025), even after much of the world, including Metropolis, starts to turn on Superman after his parents' message for him is exposed and they think he's there to conquer them, the Jarhanpurians still believe in him and are praying that he'll save them once again from the invading forces from Boravia. What sense would it make for Clark to just not care about anybody anymore and decide that the whole world has turned on him when that's clearly not the case? It was the same in the MHA and Batman Beyond examples I listed. Not everyone was ungrateful or hating the heroes during those hard times either, it was just hard to hear them over all the fear and anger of the other voices in the crowd. There were still plenty of people who actively welcomed being saved and helped and were grateful for all the heroes had done for them in the past, so what sense does it make to condemn them by deciding that everyone isn't worth helping anymore?

And of course, even after Metropolis had turned on Superman, he still showed up to save them in the movie's climax when the tear in dimensions was going to destroy it. He didn't prioritize the Jarhanpurians just because they still liked him, and he didn't go to Metropolis in order to one-up them or get them to like him again. No, he was going to go to Jarhanpur because they needed help, and then when Metropolis showed it needed his help more he asked the Justice Gang to take his place in Jarhanpur instead so that he could go help Metropolis. Who was grateful or ungrateful or who still believed in him or not wasn't a factor to Superman. People were going to die and he did everything he could to prevent that from happening. It was as simple as that, because that's what matters most to him, just like it's what mattered most to Midoriya and Terry and numerous other heroes, and even what characters in the process of redemption like Zuko are learning should matter to them.

And this is a big part why the condemning of "ungrateful" civilians tends to bother me so much. Because for as popular as superhero media is, for as much as some people claim to be fans of superheroes, too often it feels like too many of these same people just straight up don't seem to understand the concept of caring about other people, which I'd argue is the core of most superheroes.

Sometimes it's a matter of the fans being just a bit too reactionary. They get an emotional impulse and just can't/won't see past it. They don't like seeing the characters they like get treated badly and they don't want to understand the POV of those doing it. But other times it can feel like they see the heroic character but only like them for the power fantasy aspects of their character. To them the character does heroic things because it makes them look cool and is exciting and lets them show off how powerful they are, with the actual motivation of not wanting bad things to happen to others just being fluff, if it's even part of the equation at all for them. And thus it's far too easy for them to say that the ungrateful civilians should just be abandoned or never helped in the first place, because in their mind the only reason for the hero to have helped them was for the praise and glory. "How dare these extras who exist just to prop up the character I like and/or am projecting myself onto not be bowing down in worship of them! How dare they be emotionally effected by the world around them!"

I'm certainly not saying that you have to agree with the civilian characters whenever they're criticizing or lashing out at the hero, especially unfairly, or that you can't criticize how they're acting. But if you're arguing that characters like Superman and Batman should just stop protecting and saving people because some of the loud ones are scared and angry then it really comes across like you never actually liked them to begin with, let alone understood who they are.

Definitely correctly me if there's something in the movie that I'm forgetting about their group but I really feel like they had no reason other than just pure stubbornness and ego for not just asking Aang for the map and his help in finding the staff.

It made sense why the Equalists and Amon never considered asking Korra for her help and support. Not only had they been active since before she came to Republic City and probably didn't want to stop the plans and efforts they actively had in motion but Amon's goal was equality by way of forcibly removing bending from everyone he possibly could, which any Avatar almost certainly would have opposed. Aang definitely would have and they'd have little reason to think Korra would be any different.

But the Denied's goal was just to find the staff in order to give themselves and other non-benders bending and achieve equality that way, which hurts no one. Aang would have zero reason to be against their goal and while the group might have a bit of bias against natural-born benders the Avatar is well known for being a neutral party who seeks good and balance for everyone, not to mention Aang was the one who defeated Ozai and ended the war where Firebenders abused their power to terrorize the whole world for 100 years. Even if they're upset that he wasn't there before he's clearly here now and actively putting the work in to make things better.

Seriously, imagine if they just went to the Air Temple, approached Aang without hostility, told him that they'd been looking for the map hidden inside the statue he found and about the fabled staff that could supposedly long ago gave people the ability to Airbend. He would have been completely onboard with helping them, if not completely overjoyed to help them. Heck, he OFFERED to help them with whatever it was they were aiming to do if they just calmed down and talked to him even after they attacked him and he still didn't know exactly what they wanted.

They just made things so much harder for themselves then they ever had to be because the peaceful, cooperative option was apparently never even a thought in their heads.

Now, I'm not talking about making up their minds in regards to the quality of a story or character; deciding in advance whether it'll be good or bad. That can go hand-in-hand with the topic but what I'm more specifically talking about is the bad tendency of so many people online who seem to just make up their minds in advance what a story will be doing. What plotpoints and direction it'll go. What it'll do with characters and what those characters will be like. These people get so wrapped up in their theories and speculations that they start trying to insert it into the canon itself even when the part of the story they're talking about hasn't happened yet.

Lilith in Hazbin Hotel is a pretty decent example of this. She's a character who has been referenced throughout the first two seasons, talked about by certain characters, and we were shown brief moments with her. And now she'll finally be properly entering the stage in season 3. And yet despite us not having heard her say a single line of dialogue yet, nor had her actually interact with any of the other characters, so many fans of the series are already making up their minds on the kind of person she is.

We don't know yet why Lilith is up in Heaven, why she hasn't been in contact with her family, what exactly was the deal she made, how accurate other characters' views and memories of her are. There are many possibilities that season 3 will hopeful be answering. And yet despite all those possibilities and our lack of exposure to the character there are people already loving/hating her in advance solely because of what they are assuming she will be like, what they're assuming her reasons were, what they're assuming her relationships and dynamics will be like, etc. They're not waiting for the story to be told to them, even if just to see if they're right, they have already decided what the story is because they're convinced they're right and won't hear otherwise.

This kind of thing can really hurt how you interact with media, because far too often the kinds of people who make up their minds in advance about a story will outright reject anything in the actual story that comes along and proves them wrong simply because they got far too invested in their idea of what was going to happen and became closed off to anything else.

Heck, this already happened with the character of Lucifer from the same show, where some people complain that they liked the characterization he was given in the pilot over what he was given in the actual series...when he wasn't even IN the pilot! He was a picture on the wall! That was the most direct view of his character we were given. Any characterization or personality is pure speculation and theory, and that's what they got so invested in that how he is in the actual show when he actually shows up and what we see of his actual character doesn't feel right to them though there isn't anything that contradicts it. It's just their imagined version of the character that was based on nothing vs. the actual character the story tells them the character is.

Mind you, sometimes we get people being so insistent on imagined versions of stories and characters less because it's what the person thinks or wants to happen and more because of stupid agendaposting crap, where it's deliberate bad faith arguments being done just to push a specific narrative. What's been circling Korra's character ever since Avatar: Seven Havens was first announced is a pretty good example. People aren't waiting to actually watch the show to see what it does with her, they're deciding right NOW whether she's completely innocent of everything or a horrible villainous person who destroyed the world because she's the worst Avatar ever, because it's all about defense and slander for them. It's all about doing whatever they can, even lying and making up shit out of nothing, in order to convince other people that their views are right.

It really does feel like people's patience has gotten shorter and shorter as time has gone on. They don't want to wait, they want to judge NOW. They want to condone or condemn NOW. Theories and speculation are fine, it's part of what makes fandom enjoyable, but when you get so sucked into them and so invested in your specific idea of what things should be like that you stop wanting to be told a story and just want to be told that you're right, that's a problem.

It's just such an incredibly arrogant and dismissive statement, usually coming from the starting point of the person insisting that their opinion is what is objectively correct and therefore the only reason why anyone would have an opinion that's different is because they're either lying or delusional.

I've been seeing this most recently with the new Odyssey movie but naturally it happens with pretty much any piece of notable media that people are giving their thoughts on. Heck, this probably part of the mentality around the "Disney shills" accusations that get thrown around whenever a Marvel movie does well; that the only reason it's getting good reviews (even from random people on the internet) is because they're being paid to say it's good. Or in cases like Supergirl, where they're only saying they like it because they don't want the DCU to fail, not because they actually like the movie. Or cases like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, where they only say they're good because they just want to be different and feel special compared to those to like more popular mainstream movies like The Lion King or Aladdin.

In the case of The Odyssey I've been seeing some people accuse certain reviewers of saying they like it when they actually don't just because they don't want to upset anyone or have anyone coming for their head for daring to give a negative opinion.

Or, you know, they could just like it for exactly the reasons they said they do.

I just finished this volume and I'll be reading vol. 0 first before I move onto year 3. But before I do that there's one small bit I'd like a little clarification on, though it might not be quite the one you think.

So in chapter 5.2 it initially looks like Ayanokoji doesn't want to break up with Karuizawa and has changed his mind because he's actually fallen for her, but this we get the reveal that the narrator is actually Karuizawa and this is just what she was hoping to be the case, that they wouldn't break up because they'd both truly fallen for each other, and it's shattered by Ayanokoji breaking up with her. Shame because I was actually kind of rooting for them despite the main red flags, but it makes sense for their characters and the story, so oh well.

But at the start of chapter 5 when Ayanokoji is about to leave to go to the movie and break up with Karuizawa he finds he can't take the first step. He's hesitating.

Does this imply that, like he's hoping and praying for, Ayanokoji did develop at least some genuine feelings for Karuizawa, they just weren't strong enough to keep him from going through with the plan (like he likes her but he's not in love with her)? Or that perhaps he does have feelings for Karuizawa but can't consciously recognize them through his thoughts and words, only subconsciously through his body? Or, more sadly, is his hesitation only because he's about to get the answer to whether or not he's developed any feelings for her and he's not sure that he wants to face that answer yet?

The thing is that the narration in 5.2 about him never loving her and never having fallen for her is entirely from Karuizawa's POV. Should I take this as what the story itself is saying is true or as just what the character herself believes? We don't actually see what Anayokoji is thinking about during the break-up. Thus why it feels like there could be a few different possibilities to me.

Also, Ayanokoji broke up with Karuizawa on March 30th, the same day he planned on meeting Ichinose. If nothing else I am weirdly happy he didn't cheat on Karuizawa, but more on topic, was Ayanokoji expecting that he and Ichinose were going to have sex? I'm asking for clarification just because I want to make sure I'm reading things correctly because to me the answer seems to be no. The whole point of going to see her was to see if she could come up with an answer from the 1% unknown that he hadn't considered. He truly saw the only solutions being her staying as her class's leader and the class failing or her dropping out of school so he could take her place as class leader. Instead Ichinose came up with the idea of him taking Sakayanagi's place now that she's dropped out and becoming the leader of her old class, which makes sense as an option Ayanokoji hadn't considered since the bet Sakayanagi and Ryuuen made was something they'd done on their own and suddenly sprung on Ayanokoji, forcing him to choose who he'd rather have stay to fight him in year 3 when his initially goal was to have them all last long enough to fight in year 3.

Given what his narration and thoughts are saying about how he thought he'd led and guided things to that day but now he's reconsidering, plus his belief that Ichinose would have hated him and yet doesn't, it doesn't seem like he expected Ichinose to turn him into her "accomplice" the way she did.

The internet has definitely made me more cynical but it's hard to help that when there seem to be so many people who have the view that the redemption/atonement of a character who has actually done bad things doesn't count unless they are essentially actively tortured in the name of the bad things they did AND they cannot have anything good in their life by the end of the story, because if they do then the writer was taking it easy on them.

But wait, you may be saying, didn't Kuzco suffer a bunch throughout the movie? He was turned into a llama. He was chased by jaguars. He got a mouth full of bats. He fell off a waterfall. He was nearly killed by his own guards. And so on.

Ah, but you see, most of those were by "happenstance". They weren't done to him by people trying to specifically call him out and hurt him and punish him for being a spoiled and selfish brat, so they don't count, especially when he has Pacha there saving him and trying to help him despite all Kuzco puts him through.

Oh, there'd be so many complaints about Pacha, calling him a whipped, spineless cuck or something along those lines, because being a good person who can't bring himself to let someone suffer and die despite how bad they may have been to him is just inexcusable, no matter how much his good nature influences Kuzco and pushes him to feel bad about his past actions and be a better person. Kuzco treated him terribly and was going to destroy his family's home, so Pacha's a bad character for actually caring about him anyway.

Let's not forget about Yzma and all the people who'd be claiming that the writers just HAD to make her so evil and unpleasant because it's the only way we'd ever root for Kuzco over her. That Yzma is actually the real hero of the movie because she's completely justified in trying to kill him.

And of course the worst offense of all, that being that Kuzco got continue being the emperor at the end AND he even got accepted into a family that loves and cares about him. He didn't have all the good from his prior life completely stripped from him. No, even after how bad he was before, he got to keep the good in his life and even got rewarded with more good in it. He's in a better place at the end of the movie than he was at the beginning, which is just another example of how his redemption doesn't count. For it to have meant anything Kuzco shouldn't have been able to get anything that he wants.

It's probably something that has always been there to some extent and the internet has simply made the voices more connected, especially the loud ones, but it really does feel sometimes like we just get more and more people these days with a complete hard-on for capital punishment and suffering, to the point they see it as the be-all end-all of character development, especially when it comes to redemption stories. A character who did bad things needs to be beaten down, tortured, and stripped of everything with no ability to get any of it back, with all the other characters directly spelling it out to both them and the audience that it's what they deserve, in order for it to actually count as redemption. It's not a matter of the character actually learning any lesson, of them actually being a better person going forward and trying to make up for the things they've done, it's just about how much they were made to SUFFER.

Keep in mind that the Justice League is my favorite superhero team (X-Men or Teen Titans is in second depending on how I'm feeling) and I absolutely want more good movies for Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, and the other usual heroes who make up the team.

But the general discussions around the current DC cinematic universe, how it's doomed to fail because it's not operating with some big endgoal plan like the first phase of the MCU did with their leadup to Avengers, how they're going with movies like Supergirl and Clayface instead of the big names who'd make up the Justice League, I guess I just...don't really get what the problem is.

Being worried for the future of the universe after Supergirl did badly at the box office? Sure, I can understand that. While I think people are dogpiling on the movie way more than it really deserves (personally I thought it was fine at worst) the negative reception and hit to profits is something that can effect how willing WB is to handle other DC movies going forward. But why does the DCU need to be leading up to some big event right now? Why can't they, for the moment, just be making movies that take place in the same universe but that are each doing their own thing? Why is it "dooming" the universe? Why does it have to have some lighthouse on the distant shore that it's aiming for?

I've seen some try to make the argument that "Well, what's the point in getting invested if it ends up not leading anywhere?", which...I don't know...the same reason you watch any movie that isn't part of some big multi-chapter building storyline? Because you
think you'll like it? And you don't watch it, not because it's not building to something five movies down the line, but because you think you won't like it?

Honestly this feels like an argument more in favor of the way the DCU is doing things right now than anything else. You judge each movie and show on its own merit and don't have to worry at all about where the collective may or may not be going.

It was bad that the Star Wars sequel trilogy didn't have a overarching plan for its trilogy but that's because it was planned to be a trilogy from the very start. There is no excuse for not having an endgoal planned for the three directly connected movies you know you're going to be making that likewise have the story flow from one right into the next. You don't even need to have seen Superman in order to follow the story of Supergirl, and I likewise doubt you'll need to have seen either to follow the story of Clayface. I'm kind of predicting Superman 2 won't require watching Supergirl even if Kara's in it, just Superman 1 since it's that movie's direct sequel.

Then there's movies like The Mummy (2017) which rushed to set up the Dark Universe and Scoob! which rushed to set up some Hanna-Barbera universe and both failed because they were so focused on the shared universe that they ended up not even being good movies about what they were supposed to be about.

It's not like the movie order is "Superman, Supergirl, Clayface, Superman 2, Justice League". The DCU isn't on some kind of deadline where it has to have the big crossover after a specific number of movies. They already tried having a shared universe before that, while it had its good movies in it, ultimately failed in part because of how much they forced the crossovers and tried to do too much too soon.

I feel like it's also very worth noting that Flash and Aquaman 2 were only three years ago, back in 2023. Those are two very big DC heroes who normally are on the Justice League, with both movies not doing very well. Same with Wonder Woman 2 in 2020. I think it's absurd that WB treated the Green Lantern IP like box office ever since 2011 when its movie didn't do as well as they had hoped but generally speaking studios tend to let at least some time pass for the audience to move away from the original movies before restarting/rebooting their characters and concepts for a reason. Even BATMAN didn't get another live action movie to himself until 2022 with The Batman, which was ten years after The Dark Knight Rises. Of course the new universe isn't starting off the line-up with a Superman movie, then a Batman movie, then Wonder Woman, then Flash, then Green Lantern, then Aquaman. It hasn't even been five years since their last movie for half of those guys!

I keep seeing people say that the current DCU movies can't compare themselves to the phase 1 MCU movies because it's a different time now compared to them with a very different media landscape, and that's right, but for more reasons than just how used to superhero movies and shared universes audiences have become. The DCU can't just do what the MCU did by having a phase 1 where they give each member of the Justice League a movie in the lead up to a Justice League movie because they already gave movies to a lot of those characters in their last cinematic universe not that long ago. It's arguably what they should have done the first time, but it's not the first time anymore. They made their mistakes and they have to deal with them, and what they're doing now is how they're choosing to deal with them; by focusing more on other characters that haven't been used as much/as recently and holding off on doing the big cinematic crossover event. It was either that, wait a much longer time before starting the new universe in order to put enough distance between the reboots of the characters and their old version, or just simply give up and not bother trying at all with any DC shared cinematic universe.

So, the DCU went with Supergirl and Clayface because there were creatives who wanted to make those movies rather than some other movies that could have helped build up to an eventual crossover. ...Why is that bad? How does that hurt the universe in any way? I feel like you can't even make the argument that they hurt the branding because Aquaman came right off the heels of the failure that was the Whedon cut of Justice League and yet good word of mouth caused it to become not only become the highest grossing movie of any DC property but the third highest grossing WB movie after Barbie and Harry Potter 8, because ultimately most people don't seem to care how good or bad the rest of the movies in a cinematic universe are as long as the movie they're actually watching is good.

With the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader coming up I decided to finally give the show a watch. I hadn't been avoiding it or anything, I just simply didn't have as immediate access to it as I do now and I never heard anything about it being something that I absolutely just HAD TO watch, so I got around to it when it just finally sounded like something I was in the mood for.

Overall it was pretty good and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do in season 2. The 1930's/1940's setting was more for flavor and aesthetic than for a proper exploration of that time period in regards to topics like race, gender, war, etc., which I know some were disappointed by, so while I liked it in part because of that style I can see how that lack would be enough to turn someone off the show, or at the very least why it wouldn't stand out enough from the many other bits of Batman animated media we have to feel worth going out of their way to watch.

However, one thing that does help the series stand out a bit is the spins it has on certain villains. One in particular that caught my interest was its take on Harley Quinn, and likewise the different reactions people had to it.

Most people know what Harley Quinn is like and generally supposed to be. Psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel who was manipulated by The Joker into falling in love with him and becoming his jester accomplice for years until she eventually realized how abusive the relationship was and struck out on her own. The exact details and characterization can vary a bit from comic to comic and adaption to adaption but that's the general overview.

Caped Crusader's take is noticeably quite different, in some ways even designed to be a deliberate inversion of how the character usually is. In this show's universe Dr. Harleen Quinzel is more fun loving, friendly, and silly while her alter ego Harley Quinn is very serious, calm, and speaks softly. Joker has no apparent involvement in her origin or why she does what she does. Instead Harleen's motivation is because for years she served as a therapist for some of Gotham's most wealthy and corrupt elite and became so fed up with how indifferent they were to the harm and cruelty they inflicted that she began kidnapping them in order to torture and psychologically break them into obedience, with her primary goal being for them to donate all their belongings to the needy and then kill themselves.

Naturally, a topic of conversation around the character is that since she's so different from how Harley Quinn usually is should she even be Harley Quinn? Because Caped Crusader's version is different, does it fail as an adaption? Can it be considered inherently bad writing right from the start since, regardless of how well built the character and their role in the story is, the character is not being written like the character they are supposed to be? You can write the greatest story ever about a man born with incredible regeneration powers and retractable claws trying to uncover his lost memories after his government experimented on him in order to turn him into a living weapon and he constantly has to fight back against his more feral killer urges...but if you were to insist that this character is Silver Surfer people would naturally have some issues.

There's another adaption of Harley Quinn that I think actually makes for a very interesting comparison to the Caped Crusader version, and that's the version from Batman: The Brave and The Bold.

In that show's universe Harley Quinn was also quite different from any other version we'd typically associate with the character. She was entirely lacking in any sort or jester or clown theme, instead being modelled after 1920's flappers (women whom disregarded or even had active disdain for prevailing codes of decent behavior at the time) and was even colored to be completely black and white like the rest of Joker's gang, possibly so none of them stand out more than him. Also, despite the wiki talking about her background as Joker's psychiatrist in Arkham, that is not something that is ever mentioned, referenced, or hinted at even once in any of Harley's few appearances in this series. It is pure assumption based solely on what the character of Harley Quinn is traditionally like and not anything that was ever actually established about this specific version whom already noticeably differs from the traditional Harley.

As far as what aspects of the character have been adapted, it seems to be only her being a woman hopelessly devoted to The Joker because of her romantic feelings for him (though one could also make some reasonable speculation from the flapper design that Joker's complete disregards societal norms and expected behavior encouraged her to grasp the freedom and way of life she has now). In comparison, for as different as the CC version is it is a version that is arguably actually adapting more aspects of Harley Quinn. It puts heavy focus on her being a psychologist and therapist and her pride in her profession. There is active acknowledgement of her sexuality. She actually is a jester. Again, while it is a deliberate inversion, the playful fun side and the serious professional side of Harley was something that was clearly thought about and incorporated into this version.

The BATB version doesn't have much in her adaption other than her connection to Joker. The CC version adapts more but completely lacks a connection to Joker, and whether you consider Harley's origin to be her joining Joker or her origin to be her leaving him, that's a pretty big absence. And neither version of the character has the personality typically associated with Harley Quinn.

But speaking of personality, that's the other reason I wanted to make the comparison to the BATB version. You see, while Batman: The Brave and The Bold ended in 2011 it did have an official movie that came out years later in 2018, which was an official crossover...with Scooby-Doo. And considering that BATB was all about Batman teaming up with not just DC characters but also the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Space Ghost, Abraham Lincoln, and Jeffrey Ross, the Scooby gang was actually a perfect fit for how the show usually did things.

Harley makes an appearance in the movie and she's been changed a bit. While she is still wearing the flapper hairstyle, she's completely in color now, wearing white face make-up, and has been given a personality more in line with how Harley Quinn typically is, even being voiced by Tara Strong, who does most Harley Quinn VA work these days. Pretty much everything that was unique about this version of Harley Quinn was changed or removed in order to make her more like what Harley Quinn is expected to be.

Something similar was done in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, where despite supposedly being a continuation of the Harley Quinn who was in the Arkham games this version was suddenly made to be more like the modern Harley Quinn. Suddenly she was happy to be independent of Joker and had at least some level of morals, despite how beyond devoted she'd been to Joker last time we saw her in Arkham Knight, how devastated she was that he was dead, and how much of a monstrous villain she was presented as.

But these versions are now more like how the character is supposed to be, so that makes them better right? In my opinion...no. Not at all.

Is that because I don't like modern Harley? No, that's not it. While I have a lot of love for the original version from Batman The Animated Series I do like modern Harley too for the most part, and in fact one of my favorite version of the character is from the Harley Quinn TV show, which is a pretty good representation of modern Harley, letting her be over the top and comedic but also taking the time to let her have character growth and show the more serious sides of the character.

My problem with what they did to BATB Harley and Arkham Harley is that they got rid of what was actually unique and interesting about them as versions of Harley Quinn in order to turn them into more of what we already have and we didn't even get to see the transition from one to the other.

The reason I use the term "reimagining" in the title is because that was a term attributed to Tim Burton when he did a remake of Planet of the Apes. The original was considered such a classic and good movie that no one believed it could be done better, and Tim seemed to be in agreement, which is why his goal wasn't to improve on the same story but to create something new using the same concept and ideas but approached from different angles. And this does certainly have its appeal. Psycho infamously had a remake in 1998 that went out of its way to be as close as it possibly could to the original, down to the exact shots, and it's a pretty quintessential example of a movie whose existence feels pointless because of that. Even if it were to be better on technical levels or be something modern filmgoers would be more inclined to see because it was a more modern movie compared to something from the 60's, if it's doing so little that's different there's still no real reason for people to spend their time on it over the original, be it watching it or making it. It's a problem people are having now with many Disney live action remakes of its popular animated movies. Most of them don't even qualify as bad but they're generally far less popular compared to the originals because most of them, even with greater length and different effects, are essentially just the original again.

While I've been using DC and Marvel characters as my primary examples this applies to practically any character who has had a long history of stories and many different adaptions of their characters. James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Zorro, Blackbeard, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, figures from mythology like Greek and Norse gods, Barbie. Even characters who only have one story to their name like Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella have many incarnations and retellings of both that story and their character in general, varying considerably in tone, style, and interpretation of what they are like and what can be done with them. And in many of those cases the differences don't exist just for no reason, they're made to fit with what the new interpretation of the story is like or what about the concept and characters the new storyteller wants to explore.

Harley Quinn in Batman: The Brave and The Bold is very different from BTAS Harley and modern comics Harley but that's because the world of BATB is very different from the world of BTAS and the modern comics. It wears its silver age inspirations completely and unsubtly on its sleeve, acting almost as a modern version of what such an era would be like now. That's why it doesn't just adapt stories and characters from the silver age. The Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle and the Justice League International came well after the silver age and yet feature prominently in BATB, and likewise Harley Quinn didn't exist until BTAS in the 90's, but the show still brought her in and had fun imagining what a character like her might have been like if made during the silver age or at least made with the style and tone of the version of the DC universe that its show created.

Beyond Batman: Caped Crusader being what inspired this post, part of the reason I'm talking so much about Harley Quinn in particular is that because of the nature of the character's creation there are multiple people who are credited for her creation and how her character developed into what she was across BTAS. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini are the two primarily seen as Harley's creators, though naturally the many other writers on BTAS had a hand in her too and even Harley's VA Arleen Sorkin had a considerable amount of influence on the character, especially as she served as the initial inspiration for Harley. And what's noteworthy is that both Timm and Dini have had their chances to reimagine Harley again since BTAS, with both putting different focuses at the forefront.

Paul Dini wrote the episode "Two of a Kind" for the 2004 animated series The Batman, which introduced Harley Quinn into that world. While on the surface this version seems pretty in line with the BTAS version, there are some very significant differences, one of the biggest being the exact dynamic she has with Joker. While their relationship is still far from healthy and Joker ultimately still cares about himself more than anyone else, Joker and Harley's relationship in The Batman isn't abusive or onesided, which is what heavily defined their relationship and both characters in BTAS. They are on more even footing in The Batman and Joker is genuinely attracted to Harley and enjoys the mayhem they cause together. He never had to manipulate Harleen or trick her into believing he was some tragic, misunderstood figure that she was the only one he was comfortable opening up to. She knows what he's like, she knows what they're doing, and she actively enjoys it.

And this is definitely a major change, as seen with many of the discussions that happened when the first live action Suicide Squad movie came out. People very much have their opinions on whether or not Joker and Harley's relationship should ever be presented as non-abusive, even in a continuity and history that is deliberately different from the norm, since they feel that is such a core element of their dynamic that to not have it alters their characters far to much, much like how there's plenty of opinions on whether Harley should ever be able to get out of her abusive relationship with Joker, with some feeling that element of tragedy where she always goes back to him is so core to Harley's character that you can't not have it and have the character still be Harley Quinn.

Another difference is how legitimate of a psychologist The Batman's version of Harley actually is. Beyond her getting her degree from a questionable online source, her talk show is directly called out as being more focused on gossip than anything else and the advice she does give and conclusions she comes to often bad and unfounded. The doctor aspect of Harleen is not treated as something to be taken seriously or that psychology is something she actually knows that well. And this is something that can also be seen a bit in the comic The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, which was Dini and Timm's first time ever giving a proper origin to Harley Quinn (the comic was eventually adapted into BTAS afterwards). As Batman and Alfred discuss, while Harleen did earn a scholarship to Gotham State University through genuine gymnastic ability she didn't try to earn her psychology degree through actually studying, with the heavy implication being that she passed her classes by seducing her teachers, and her endgoal was to be a pop psychologist with her own line of self-help books. It's another potential explanation for why a psychologist would fall for Joker's bull, because she never really was a legitimate one to begin with and was in over her head from the very start because of her own bad actions. The Batman's take can be viewed as basically a what if for Harleen actually succeeding in becoming a pop psychologist and finding fame through it, with everything crashing down anyway because of, again, her own actions and shortsightedness.

The version of Harley Quinn Dini reimagined for The Batman is not at all a tragic character or even that much of a sympathetic one and that is because of the aspects of her character and concept he chose to focus on and give new spins to versus what aspects he decided to discard.

In contrast there is Batman: Caped Crusader, which Bruce Timm acts as the primary showrunner and its world is made in accordance to his vision, and its reimagining of Harley Quinn, where Harleen's background as a psychologist is treated as legitimate and taken very seriously, to the point it is one of her most defining characters traits, with it even likely being the reason she's dressed as a jester in the first place (beyond the obvious that her name is Harleen Quinzel, like harlequin, which even the BTAS version told Joker she'd been called before), given she dresses her kidnapped victims like their Jungian archetypes. Because of her career she's put in a position where she eventually mentally breaks and becomes a villain, much like what happened in BTAS, but unlike BTAS where her patient deliberately broke her through lies and manipulation CC's patients unintentionally broke her because of how they used her as an outlet to vent about the problems in their corrupt and evil lives all while being completely unable to recognize their corruption or change their ways despite her attempts. She's still a villain, she's still doing horrible things, but we can sympathize with Harley to an extent and there is some tragedy to her character because of the aspects of Harley Quinn the character and concept that the show chose to focus on and give new spins to versus what aspects it decided to discard.

Despite how different they are from each other and Harley Quinn proper, they are indeed what I'd still consider reimaginings of Harley Quinn and whose adaptions have something new to add to conversation around the character based on what they feel she would be like in the contexts of the worlds they created.

My Adventures With Superman I think is another good example to bring up for contrast. While I quite like the show one problem I do admittedly have with it is how it's gone about adapting some of the villains. Beyond how many of them how become tech-based and/or tied to Krypton, some of them really don't feel like adaptions at all. Livewire is the most primary example of this. Outside of being a woman with electrical powers there isn't really anything resembling the original Livewire from STAS (where she was created) or the comics or that feels like a spin on any of her concepts. Be it a shock jock, a blogger, a viral prankster, or so on, original Livewire is an egotistical entertainer with a personality and goals to match, while MAWS Livewire is an irritable thief who deals in stolen technology just to make money and is pretty business focused. Take away the name and powers and there isn't any overlap between the two. MAWS' version, while not a bad character, feels like she's an original character being called Livewire rather than being MAWS' reimagining of Livewire.

By contrast, some of my favorite MAWS villains are those like Brainiac and Mister Mxyzptlk, where despite how different they are from the original versions they still do feel like they are actually adaptions of them. They are MAWS reimaginings that aren't just using the same names and powers but the actual ideas and concepts.

HOWEVER, as is part of why this post even exists in the first place, just because an adaption actually is adapting the original, even if in its own way, that doesn't inherently make that adaption good or something that people want to see as that character regardless of how unique and different it is from what we've already seen.

Take Superman for example. It's quite easy to take the ideas and concepts that make him up and adapt them into something that turns him into a murderous and self-important tyrant who cares for no one but himself. For as different as it'd be from the norm, it'd still be an adaption. But would it be an adaption worth telling? As even The Boys comics called out with its Superman pastiche Homelander, for as much as he wants to see himself as something unique and special and above everyone else the story makes a very deliberate point through him that what actually would have been unique would have been if Homelander used his great power to help others and make the world a better place. Instead he just did what anybody else with all that power would have done, which is be a completely selfish and self-centered monster. He's not unique or special or even subversive, he's obvious. And likewise such a direction for a Superman adaption would have a very high chance of being the same and being a story not really worth telling compared to something far more in-line with how he normally is. It would be Superman but it's not someone the audience wants to see as Superman and they would rather have be its own thing.

Or for something a little closer to home, one of DC Comics' big events was Dark Knights: Death Metal, where one of the big aspects of it was that the invading army was made up of evil Batman variants from across the multiverse; each one being a spin on Batman's history, ideas, concepts, and essentially anything and everything you can do with Batman while still having him be Batman. And as one of the tie-ins made a point of saying with Owlman, not all these variants are created equal or have the same worth. Some of them, like him, are too good an idea to not bring up and explore the possibilities of, while others like a bratty and murderous Bat-Baby in a cybernetic suit are not going to be remembered because of how stupid an idea they were from the start.

There's also something worth saying about how we all have some level of personal bias to what we see as acceptable, especially because of factors like nostalgia. Batman: The Animated Series is incredibly beloved to this day, with it not only being many's favorite adaption of Batman and his world but some even consider its versions to be the definitive versions of those characters and concepts that they compare all others to. But BTAS also took plenty of liberties. The showrunners have directly stated in interviews that when writing for the series they'd look back at the characters in the comics, get rid of whatever they felt didn't work about them or that at least wouldn't work in their version of Gotham, and then replaced those aspects with their own ideas.

And of course you have the very notable example of Mister Freeze, whom they completely reinvented and has practically nothing in common with his comic counterpart anymore aside from the freeze gun and cyro suit. This version went on to completely replace his prior comic counterpart because of how beloved he was, but statistically speak there were people out there who had the "Mr. Zero" version of Mister Freeze as one of their favorite Batman villains and weren't happy that he got changed so much. So is a very different reimagining only okay if the fanbase of the existing version is small enough that no one has to care about what they think and can safely dismiss their opinions? That certainly seemed to be the case with Guardians of the Galaxy, which is still one of the MCU's most popular movies but forever changed the tone and characterizations of the team compared to what they'd been before, even in the comics themselves.

The reason this feels worth bringing up is because one semi-common comment I saw some make about Caped Crusader is that if they really wanted an evil psychologist villain then rather than Harley Quinn they should have made the character Hugo Strange instead. However, even taking out the jester aspect (and setting aside that Hugo may be appearing in season 2 as something more akin to his golden age mad scientist monster maker incarnation), the show still would have had to have changed Hugo Strange quite a bit in order to fit the same roles and themes that its take on Harley did, especially as he has never been a character who has done things for morally good or noble reasons and would not have the same relationships with other characters like Renee, Barbara, and Bruce that Harleen does in the show. He's a little closer to what the show did than Harley traditionally is but still different enough where it'd be far from a faithful or accurate adaption. But that would still bother people less because Hugo Strange is a far less known and popular character than Harley Quinn. Like with Mister Freeze they don't care what liberties are taken with him because they're not as attached to him, whereas they do care with her.

I talked about how I really like MAWS' take on Brainiac, but part of that is because while I'm very familiar with the Coluan version of the comics my first exposure to Brainiac was through Superman the Animated Series and general DCAU, so the concept of Brainiac being a Kryptonian AI is not that hard for me to accept, whereas people who knew the Coluan version first and are much more attached to that are probably really sick of Brainiac being inherently tied to Krypton instead of being allowed to be his own separate thing. I have at least some level of bias in this regard that is likely influencing my views, because everybody does to some degree or another.

I really like Caped Crusader's take on Harley Quinn. I'm completely willing to accept it as a version of Harley Quinn because it still falls within aspects that I consider to be Harley Quinn. But that's because of my own personal views of the character fueled by my own personal biases that are a result of my own personal experience with the many incarnations and adaptions of the character that existed before I watched this one. I've watched and read many great versions of Harley Quinn and feel so assured that I will continue to get more as time goes on that I'm open to reimaginings that play around more with her character and concepts. Whereas I'm a little more closed off to the various adaptions of, say, Spider-Man because as time has gone on I feel like in movies, TV, and even the comics themselves the versions and aspects I like about Peter Parker have been less and less represented and outside of the Spiderverse movies and PS4 game I haven't been enjoying what's taken its place. Sometimes it's a simple matter of quality but regardless it's always a matter of bias to at least some degree.

TL;DR: So, how different is a reimagining allowed to be? How much do you have to adapt in order for it to still be considered a spin on the original rather than something that's basically its own thing? There isn't really a completely solid, satisfying answer to that. How different a reimagining is allowed to be depends heavily on where you personally see the line of "too far"; on what you consider key aspects that need to be included or that can't be changed versus aspects that are more malleable or that can be safely removed. On what spins you personally consider to have worth while still falling within your definitions of what makes the original what it is.

A reimagining is still a form of adaption and an adaption has to actually adapt things in order to be considered an adaption. But beyond that basic rule the actual specifics of what to adapt and how are incredibly subjective. What makes for a bad and completely unacceptable reimagining for one person can be a very enjoyable and welcome take for another, and both are because of the same reason of personal bias.

This episode is commonly brought up as an example of how Dipper frequently has to give up what he wants in order to either do the right thing or appease Mabel's selfishness (other people's phrasing, not mine), but frankly even before the climax of this episode it's hard for me to be on Dipper's side. I certainly feel some sympathy for him. It sucks when the person you like gets into a relationship with someone else. But that doesn't really justify his actions in the episode.

Here's the thing: Robbie is an insufferable douchebag that Wendy could and should do way better than. But it's still her choice whether or not she goes out with him after he asked her if she wanted to. And when you get down to it, the plot of this episode is essentially Dipper messing with time because Wendy made a choice for herself that he didn't like. She chose to start going out with Robbie, and so Dipper did what he could to keep her from ever making that choice to begin with.

And it's not like Robbie did anything to cause Dipper to accidentally bean Wendy in the eye with the baseball, or even that Wendy was upset with Dipper over getting beaned because she wasn't, she knew it was an accident. Nor did Wendy decide to go out with Robbie because "Well, you got me ice for my eye, so I guess I'm obligated to date you now.". Robbie wanted to go out with Wendy, so when the opportunity came up he asked her if she wanted to go out, and she said "Yeah, I guess so." because she wasn't any more opposed to the idea than she was with the numerous other guys she's gone out with the past that she listed off to Mabel in "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel".

Heck, even before the incident with the ball Dipper directly talked with Mabel about how he needed to try and keep Wendy away from Robbie because of his tight pants and ability to play guitar, and you see similar stuff in episodes prior to this one. Dipper knows that Wendy might be interested enough in Robbie to go out with him, and so he wants to keep that choice from ever coming up for her, with him stealing Blendin's time machine being the furthest extreme he goes in trying to do that.

I want to make it clear that I don't hate Dipper or his character for what he does in the episode. Much like many defenses of Mabel, he's 12. Of course he's making some immature decisions that he hasn't really thought through. But I still greatly disagree with what he's doing and am not on his side in the episode because he's still very much in the wrong, especially when we get to the episode's climax where he does finally succeed in preventing Wendy from getting hit by the ball and prevent Robbie from asking her out by getting Mabel to help him.

Because Mabel helped him make his miracle throw, she wasn't able to win her pet pig Waddles like she did in the original timeline and in all of Dipper's attempts to not hit Wendy in the eye afterwards. Instead her rival Pacifica won him, much to even the pig's horror. Naturally Mabel wants to use the time machine to go back and win Waddles again but Dipper won't even consider it, because he finally got the outcome he wanted and is insistent that there's no other way.

I've seen people frame this episode as Dipper being forced to give Wendy up so that Mabel can have a pig she just met, but that framing is wrong for a few different reasons, one of the biggest being that Wendy isn't Dipper's. He's not giving her up because she isn't his to begin with. Robbie didn't steal Wendy from him. He didn't even steal his chance to ask her out because Dipper wasn't even planning on doing that at the fair. He's not losing anything if Robbie asks Wendy out or gaining anything if he doesn't, because what he wants is to just keep the current status quo going and it's entirely Wendy's choice if anything does change, thus why he doesn't want her to make the choice at all. Meanwhile Mabel actually is losing something with Pacifica winning Waddles instead, especially if she's planning on eating him like what the winnable pigs in that weight guessing game are intended for. Not to mention that Mabel isn't the one insisting that only she or Dipper gets what they want, Dipper is. She is still completely willing to help him, she just also wants to keep Waddles, and they have a time machine which means they have an unlimited number of attempts to try and get them both what they want!

And all of this is just within the context of the episode itself. Dipper is even more wrong when you look at this episode in hindsight with the context of the rest of the series. Waddles wasn't just Mabel's random interest of the week, she proves time and again that she genuinely loves that pig and cares the world for him. She wasn't being petty and spiteful by acting sad in order to guilt Dipper into setting the timeline back to the way it originally was, she was genuinely heartbroken to have lost her pet. More importantly, Wendy was NEVER going to date Dipper. She does not and will never see him in a romantic light because the age gap between them is too large for her to not view them as a child and teenager respectively. As she tells him when she eventually lets him down gently, she's just too old for him. So even if Dipper succeeds in keeping Robbie from asking her out, even if he manages to successfully keep Robbie from ever asking Wendy out on any other occasion (since it's not like he could only ask her out during that specific fair), he STILL wouldn't be getting what he wants, which is a romantic relationship with Wendy. So if Dipper had left the new timeline intact, he'd be forcing Mabel to give up something she really cared about for nothing.

Even the idea that Mabel should be sacrificing something for Dipper anyway because he's always losing out on things throughout the series isn't one I buy into because most of the time when Dipper does give up something important to him he's usually rewarded for it by the episode making it so that he didn't actually have to give up anything, like when he gave up his lifeguard job to help Mabel with Mermando and he almost immediately found out Wendy had been fired too and she was the only reason he'd wanted the job in the first place, or spending Summerween trick-or-treating with Mabel instead of going to the same party as Wendy and he finds out Wendy had left the party early and went to hang out at the Mystery Shack, so he got to spend time with her anyway. Or when Dipper does suffer some big loss or defeat it's rarely actually because of Mabel's part in the story, like when Rumble McSkirmish beat the crap out of him or when his efforts with Wendy were sabotaged by the Dipper copies, both of which were plots Mabel had nothing to do with (and in fact she'd earlier given Dipper advice that would have helped him avoid the problems he encountered in those plots).

I can understand wanting to see Dipper get the win, but "The Time Traveler's Pig" isn't the episode for that. He is in the wrong. The conflict of the episode is that Wendy made a choice for herself and Dipper didn't like it so he tried to keep her from ever being able to make that choice in the first place. I can understand why he did it, I can even sympathize to an extent, but he's still wrong.