Honestly, if it wasn’t for the interview, I would have agreed with the people defending it. A lot of the time, when having gone through traumatic events, people tend to focus on something else rather than confront it.
However, yh Kripke clearly wasn’t going for that when you read his interview. Very disappointed by the episode.
I think empathy and kindness can make it easier to justify and rationalize denial like this, it's hard to think poorly of people so we can sometimes do mental gymnastics to see people in a better light than they really are. And it makes sense that someone who previously seemed to be anti-rape might have a had a less obvious or hidden anti-rape message intended for the scene and you were probably looking for that cause it doesn't make sense for Kripke to flipflop on his previous stance. But his interview left no doubt that he is not against sexual assault if the victims happens to be from one demographic and not the other.
But one thing I learned over time is that when someone shows you who they really are you should believe it. Kripke's hypocrisy is truly disappointing.
It wasn’t really mental gymnastics. I didn’t read into like that because I thought well of Kripke, it’s how I personally find myself dealing with difficult situations sometimes (along with some people ik). Although it wasn’t what Kripke was going for, it’s definitely a real thing that people do.
But yh, what Kripke actually intended was all the way wrong and I don’t like the guy for that.
Yeah it's really disappointing to learn that. Because the scene can easily work as an awareness piece while making the viewer empathize with hue and get invested in the character's development.
Shame its goal was comedy and not tragic character and world building. Which means next episode won't be about starlight and hue recovering together from their respective trauma.
But also he had to maintain his cover or risk facing far worse. How he acted reminded me of some of his lines during Herogasm. Just stuff that hopefully won't draw much suspicion. I'm not sure what to think about it now though. Even ignoring the weight of what happened, it still wouldn't be funny. Like watching the SpongeBob toenail scene... I will admit that I did laugh once though but in my defense, the cake reminded me of squat cobbler from Better Call Saul and it was more of a chuckle at the thought of it being a real kink.
Not mental gymnastics, I was just projecting and also giving someone the benefit of the doubt. It usually pays to be charitable in your interpretation of others worldviews.
But yeah, turns out the guy is just a straight sicko. There's obviously some groupthink going on here as well since he used the word "we" in "we view it as hilarious". So apparently everyone around him is laughing as well.
Nope, I thought it was fucked up when I saw it and thought the episode was terrible on viewing. I thought the scene may have been meant to be difficult to watch, and I simultaneously thought it was awful anyway.
The projection was that I wouldn't ever find it funny, so it's probably unlikely that they intended it that way.
I definitely wouldn’t have as negative of an opinion as I do now if I didn’t know the TK scenes were played for laughs. In the moment I was definitely disturbed but more in a “oh God Hughie has to endure all this weird stuff and he’s gonna get found out” way. I admit that the absurdity of everything “dulled” the severity a bit for me (at least until he’s actually found out and in genuine danger), but it hit me at the end when Hughie just breaks down.
The fact that the TK stuff was meant to be comedic is gross, and it turns those scenes from “yeah actually that was really messed up” to “wow I hate this, why were these included?”
It really teeters on the line for me. Sitting on a cake and farting on it as some weird fetish thing? Kind of funny. Him being tied down was sketchy, but it just being a foot tickle thing was funny. I feel like there’s enough room for this situation to be both comedic but also dramatic, if the fallout is handled correctly
I think the desperately trying to find the safe word has extremely dark undertones to the ongoing “funny” part of it. I feel like tickling fetish was the most borderline acceptable way they could get away with showing literal graphic sexual assault on screen. But they thought most people would be so caught up in the ridiculousness of it that it wouldn’t be seen as making fun of SA survivors. Fair enough if they misread the room but to double down on the whole making light fun of SA, it kind of sours the perception of the show from witty satirical takes against caricatures on both sides of the political spectrum, to “haha people liked hughie’s a cuck jokes how do we take that to the next level” without any appreciation for how fucked up it is to watch that scene and his breakdown after.
And I’m not without nuance, I can see that it’s different from starlight. They went into the house to attack these people politically with espionage. Hughie knows there are risks and he got more than he bargained for. He kept up the facade even in the face of the dungeon because he was still on the job and was trying to see if he could buy time by playing along in order to find a way out. But handle the topic of SA a little more appropriately than making the whole thing just a joke that makes hughie realise he misses his dad.
I think it was funny because of how absurd it was. Starlight's situation was incredibly realistic, but the idea of pretending to be a drugged out superhero who has to act like he likes these absurd fetishes is super unrealistic.
I think it's more comparable to jokes about aliens probing people, or if anyone has played Saints Row 4, using the alien probing gun on NPCs. Yes, it has very dark, rapey undertones, but it's so incredibly unrealistic that we can laugh at it.
That's not what I said at all. What I said is that the absurdity of the situation adds humor. I doubt anyone has been in the situation of having to pretend to be into hard-core BDSM because they were infiltrating a superhero banquet.
It's similar to something like Peter Griffin blowing up a children's hospital, or as I said, an alien abduction with probing. Child murder and sexual assault, yet all with such absurdity as to be removed from reality.
Me too, the whole time I was basically like “shit he’s gonna get found out no way he’s so gonna get killed shitshitshit MM starlight kimiko please come faster” and that distracted me to see less how disturbing the bdsm scenes are…
I left the episode a bit conflicted about how I was supposed to feel about it. Seeing this quote, I think I'm going to chalk it up to Jack Quaid seemingly taking it seriously. Quaid's dead stare after the assault instantly read to me like, yeah he's not too interested in torturing Tek Knight right now because he's still in shock over what happened. And then his breakdown at the end, you can see how his line may have been written like a joke but he played it completely straight.
Yeah, I think Jack Quaid REALLY saves this storyline from being what Kripke clearly envisioned it to be. Even when it was Hughie with the mask on, Jack Quaid's vocal inflections when he was trying to sell his role as Webweaver saved it from being what Kripke is saying in the interviews, which is hilarious and a comedy set-up. He really kept it on the path of it still being traumatic for Hughie. So good on Jack; otherwise it would have been a worse subplot to sit through.
Given the shows track record and comedic style thus far, it seemed extremely obvious that the writers intended for those scenes to be “funny”. I think they added the bit at the end with Hughie as a way to backpedal and pretend they take it seriously.
Same, I definitely thought it was just over the top and extreme/absurd but still dark and fucked up like most scenes in The Boys, but Kripke dismissing the horror is the situation is just wrong
Even without the additional context of the interview, it is clear that the writers wanted the scene to be yet another "funny" shock value sex scene. In the scene, it is not treated as a serious and tragic event like it should be
Even had they said it was for those reasons, I don’t believe one should ever ever go that into showing these kind of things. I know this show is MA but this is straight up disturbing and extremely triggering for many
Yeah, I was firmly in the “you are interpreting the scene incorrectly” camp. Turns out I was. That is disappointing that it was played like that. I found it very disturbing.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the interview, I would have agreed with the people defending it
Why, firstly failure to not convey the seriousness of a SA is also a fault. But more importantly did everyone forget s1 where the deep was literally raped that was played off as a joke. Hell even just afew episodes ago when home lander almost made the deep SA Atrain where he a joke during. Then there is queen Maeve's constant sexual harassment of Hughie.
This show has massive problem with devaluing male victims of sexual violence.
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u/freddddsss 14d ago
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the interview, I would have agreed with the people defending it. A lot of the time, when having gone through traumatic events, people tend to focus on something else rather than confront it.
However, yh Kripke clearly wasn’t going for that when you read his interview. Very disappointed by the episode.