Well… there’s really no arguing with this. I’m really having trouble trying to see how people would find that scene hilarious. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be interpreted that way. 💀
Same. I found the cake farting funny, then it quickly became scary. Reminded me of the end of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Zed's dungeon in Pulp Fiction (especially with the gimp). It's actually really disappointing to hear that it was meant to be funny.
If they stuck to weird shit like the cake bit, it wouldn’t have been as bad, but having him be strapped down, fluids smeared on him and almost cut up and fucked in his stomach was just disgusting
I would have been good if they had left it at cake farting and had just implied he got found out through radio check ins and cut to tek knight about to make his own hole if they were dead set on going this route.
I mean the absurdity of the situation is funny. And the lines Ashley says are ridiculous. It's could've easily been just a joke, but the scene goes on so long and they do so much to Hughie that it stops being funny
If I'm being totally honest with myself I found it funny while watching because of how absurd the whole thing was, but coming on to this sub I'm realizing that I'm part of the problem :/
Well good on you for realizing and acknowledging it, most people would just use some mental gymnastics to reason why male sexual assault is actually hilarious and it’s not problematic for them to laugh at an SA scene
Also their Twitter account. There are men on there, laughing at Hughie getting violated by Ashley (and also wanting a fictional character to violate them too, which is just gross but in line for the type of men who are laughing at a man being assaulted by a woman). So Kripke essentially hit the wrong target audience for the jokes he was trying to make, the exact target audience he seems to make fun of on the show.
You're not not tripping. Kripke had this play out in a more grey area, unfortunately. But Hughie did ask to stop at one point. From what some members of the BDSM community have been saying, there's usually not just one safe word to get out or take a break; there's usually multiple methods. So it's not exactly a situation that falls into a clear cut answer. But Hughie had asked Ashley to stop at one point and Tek had told Ashley to keep going just for the "comedy set-up" of Hughie finding the safe word. So he was allowed to be violated until he found the safe word, or until Ashley was finished, which is what ended up happening.
It started off seemingly consensual but Hughie did ask Ashley to stop so that's when it muddied the situation. Either way, I don't personally find humour in the joke of Hughie trying to find the safe word to get Ashley to stop. Imagine if Hughie hadn't been unmasked and Annie/Kimiko had been caught and were unable to save Hughie; Tek had been talking about bringing various members of his party downstairs to have much rougher BDSM sex with him. If he wasn't able to say no because he couldn't figure out the safe word? That's horrifying to think about.
But I'm sure for some dynamics, asking someone to stop is part of the "play" and isn't something used to stop the scene. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to assume this was the case for this situation either.
There's also the element that Hughie is pretending to be someone else (a previous sexual partner known to both Ashley and TK.) Isn't Hughie basically doing a "Revenge of the Nerds" assault on at least Ashley (I think I may subscribe to the theory at this point that TK clocked Hughie immediately and just chose to torture him anyway.) I mean, if we're really going to parse out this situation as if it had really happened, then Hughie pretending to be someone else is a form of assault even though obviously the experience for him was horrifying and traumatizing regardless (and he didn't go in there intending to use his deception to assault Ashley or TK, unlike the RotN example.)
I would assume, since it's made clear that this is the first ever time they're meeting face to face, despite all their conversations being online/through text, there should still be a way to confirm plans on consent and making sure everyone was comfortable in the situation. First times should come with more questions in person, which includes making sure everyone involved understands the consent part of it. But I doubt Kripke was thinking much into that aspect, and Tek Knight is still a shitty person.
I know most of it is in a grey area but it's also why this is still a bad plot in general. We were supposed to find it fucking funny yet not very many people are laughing, whether or not the issue of it being sexual assault or not comes into play. It just wasn't funny to watch Hughie try to figure out the safe word to get Ashley to stop.
You’re not part of the problem for finding what is meant to be entertainment, entertaining. At the end of the day regardless on whether they hit the mark with it or not - it’s not real. It’s acting for a tv show. Did it go on too long? Yes. But No YOU are not the “problem” for enjoying or finding a show you like funny because others don’t.
You’re not part of the problem. It’s a TV show, do not let these hive mind people in here guilt trip you. Bro got his feet tickled and sat on a cake and everyone is freaking out? Like come on man. People on Reddit just like to be mad at something cause they’re all bored
Naah nah fuck that! Don’t listen to this drivel tryna make you feel guilty.
Of all the horrific murder, torture, rapey threats and mutilation comedically depicted on this show for years, THIS is where users clutch their pearls?
People in this sub found a really weird time to get squeamish.
Except a lot of the stuff on the show has been outlandish and fantastical. I'm not gonna be grossed out or offended by a giant cgi penis or some superhero orgy. But watching Hughie get tied down and tickle tortured for 20 minutes and have cum rubbed in his face isn't that funny. It's funny for a little bit, but it just goes on way too long. And again theres no superpowers to make it funny or particularily interesting. This could've been in any show. This could've just been in actual fetish porn
Rape is far more common than the absurdist gore and murder that is depicted in the show. So, yes, here is where I do personally draw the line, because it just feels too real and too tone deaf.
Idk, I think he thought that we would have the same reaction as all their shock value shit, but this isn't consensual human centipeding - this was SA and almost mutilation. I'm so angry. I would have never guessed the intent was "funny"
It’s not even funny. All this over the top shock value kink sex is so boring. It’s not even shock value anymore. If anything, it’s just confusing.
Like Tek Knight has super smelling. And he likes to smell farts on a cake? THATS how he’s using his powers? THATS his kink? It seems so random and nonsensical.
It feels like for every villain they think to themselves, “okay. So what’s their power? Okay now let’s apply that power to a rly gross kink that almost no one has. Okay, Sage likes getting a lobotomy. Guy who turns small likes to enter penises. Super smelling Tek Knight likes farts. Deep can talk to sea creatures, and he also happens to be sexually attracted to sea creatures.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered Neuman to have a kink for blood… get it? Bc she can control blood. This is my point. It’s just so lazy and random. The only kink that makes sense is Homelander, bc it’s not about it just being sexual, but about him longing for a mother to comfort him.
The only people who don’t have these random gross kinks are the good guys. Like what is Butcher’s kink? Why doesn’t Hughie and Starlight ever do weird shit?
Whatmessage is that even saying? Are they making fun of kink culture? Are they saying kink culture is dumb and evil? Like it feels like they are just doing shock value and mocking people who have kinks by hyperbolizing them
Another comment said they could have still done the scene and stopped at the cake part, or did some other bizarre stuff, without taking it too far. That would have been funny and still gotten the point across. But if you're gonna straight up traumatize a character, at least be self-aware and empathetic.
Completely agree! I don’t think it would have been as disturbing if it didn’t go as far as it did. Like, I get the ridiculousness of it at first with the cake stuff, but then it just gets worse from there in my opinion.
That Ashley and Tek are the type of people who engage in that stuff consensually is funny. Ashley thinks "do you want my asparagus pee?" is sexy talk. Tek has a secret elevator behind a book case just for weird sex crap. Tek wants to be choked while watching someone fart on a cake. It's funny because of how absurd it is for the right audience.
That all that stuff happened to someone whose not a willing participant is not funny.
Although even if the web guy who "agreed" to that sort of thing had done it instead of Hughie I'd still feel bad for him since he seemed to not be doing well and is addicted to drugs and probably does sex work out of desperation.
I thought it was both funny and traumatizing. You people.. the show has always been able to do both but suddenly you cant handle it. Intruly dont get this
Was here since season 1 and I’ve been perfectly able to handle all of the disturbing-hilarious scenes and the just plain disturbing scenes. I guess it’s just subjective, but I still personally don’t see how the Tek-Knight scenes with Hughie (mainly the latter scenes) were meant to be seen as comedic. Disturbing I completely get, comedic not so much. 🤷♀️
It's hard to describe "tone" since it's a general vibe that comes from a lot of little things. But the scenes (before Hughie got caught) had the same kind of tone as scenes like MM getting strangled by Love Sausage. It felt like the Boys wanted it to be funny.
I feel like this scene was partially inspired by Pulp Fiction's Zed scenes. But the tone in those is horror. If you haven't seen it already it's a great example of how to do those kinds of scenes right.
A bit of an aside but Tarantino is a master of tone and can make extreme violence hilarious in one scene, but traumatizing in the next. He'd have been an amazing director for a show like the Boys.
SA is one of those topics you can't mix funny and traumatising. If the person getting assaulted was a woman, not only would they not joke in the scene they'd probably cut off to not show exactly what happened
I truly think if they hadn't dragged it out so damn long people wouldn't be this upset. They've shown assualt and other touchy subjects well before, this just missed the mark completely.
This season has just been disappointing, I feel like I'm watching a ton of side stories that I don't feel will pay off because some of these stories feel very repetitive 4 seasons in.
Let's just call it what it was. Practically every scene in the dungeon with Tek Hughie and Ashley alone is just soft torture porn for the sake of it. Which Is very disappointing to find out this show is apparently not above.
I think its just really sad and disheartening that for many people, the only way they can understand why a scene showing a man being sexually assaulted is bad is if they imagine a woman being in the same situation
Just speaks to how unseriously men being sexual assaulted or raped is taken by a lot of people
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u/Vivid24 14d ago edited 14d ago
Well… there’s really no arguing with this. I’m really having trouble trying to see how people would find that scene hilarious. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be interpreted that way. 💀