u/Glass_Equivalent_683

every time i see one of these posts, dan is listed as one of the most hated male characters ever and to this day i’ll never understand it 😭

genuinely how? you have an entire show filled with objectively terriblee people but yet dan is the most hated? there are literal rapists and abusers in the show what is this bs he’s literally named here with actual serial killers/rapists lmao that’s absurd

even if you could argue it’s bc he was gossip girl, the characters around him were the ones sending the tips he was just posting it online, making them just as bad but even then majority of the time dan isn’t even hated for that reason, he’s literally hated more for being slightly annoying which mind you so are all the other characters

dair you deserved so much better 💔 a true romcom couple

I find this topic interesting, i’ve seen it being brought up at times and how some of the female characters in the show have plot armor and should have died for example in s5 with kate and bronte, some then go on to call it “feminist” that the women tend to survive joe but they don’t realize that the entire show is feminist itself then, i think only now some have caught onto it weirdly enough but plot armor has existed in this show since s1 similarly when candace survives joe and is “brought back from the dead” even when she was buried alive so it’s surprising why some viewers only now care about it when it’s been part of the show for a while but also not when joe has the biggest plot armor out of every character (understandably he needs some bc he’s the main character but it’s kind of overdone to the point where any amount of realism is sacrificed for tension or shock value). Carrying on from candace being brought back, marienne survives captivity partly bc of extremely convenient timing and planning and is able to escape joe (also tricking him successfully), love quinn repeatedly gets away with impulsive murders and covers things up unrealistically well, nadia uncovers the truth about joe unusually fast and breaks into his apartment to find clues etc and peach constantly has suspicious instincts that almost expose joe at exactly the right moments (she was one of the few people who clock that something is deeply wrong with Joe almost immediately, way faster than a normal person realistically would) the show giving her character almost “detective intuition” for dramatic purposes and entertainment. Her death also reinforces one of the show’s recurring themes which is: people who get closest to the truth about joe often lose bc the narrative protects him until the story is ready to punish him, that’s one of the biggest forms of plot armor in You from the very beginning.

The show simply just doesn’t have realism as its main priority and that’s okay (although it used to try sometimes), it isn’t trying to be a realistic crime procedural anymore It’s more like a heightened psychological thriller/satire and it wouldn’t be half as entertaining if it was bc joe would’ve been caught way back in s1 but i guess ppl just now have realized this. Once you view the series through that lens the “plot armor” becomes part of the genre mechanics rather than something unique to one character, criticism towards characters like kate or bronte surviving ignores the fact that You has always operated on extreme plot armor for basically anyone important. People sometimes act like the female characters surviving or outsmarting joe suddenly “breaks realism” but realism was already gone seasons ago (also anyone is able to trick joe through his weaknesses and it doesn’t take a genius to do that). Joe’s entire existence depends on impossible luck, surviving murder attempts and things that realistically should have killed or exposed him, escaping investigations, ppl ignoring glaring evidence and conveniently finding ways out of every situation, yes part of that is him being pretty smart but he’s also impulsive and acts on his emotions at times which is then saved by luck. So when viewers accept joe surviving five seasons but suddenly complain when a woman survives him, it becomes a double standard bc if anyone has earned the most criticism for unrealistic survivability it’s joe, he survives situations far more absurd than most of the women in the series or just characters in general.

The biggest thing ppl miss about You is that the entire show is built on selective realism so it picks and chooses when to be psychologically grounded and when to become almost absurdly convenient for drama or shock value which is why i find the backlash towards female characters surviving inconsistent, ppl are willing to suspend disbelief for joe surviving the impossible scenarios but suddenly draw the line when a woman survives, escapes or outplays him. It creates a noticeable double standard bc the show has always protected key characters through narrative convenience and thematically, it acc makes sense for some women to survive joe in the end bc the show is fundamentally about obsession, misogyny, control, the fantasy joe creates about women and so on. Now obviously that doesn’t mean every twist is perfectly written, some definitely stretch believability but the criticism should be applied evenly to all characters even the show in general with how they handle some scenes but you can’t suddenly pretend realism matters only when a female character gets narrative protection too.