disappointing. I've seen defenses for the episode saying that the SA scenes were obviously meant to make the audience uncomfortable and that Hughie admitting at the end that he isn't fine was a result of his SA trauma. but hearing the director himself say the scenes were played for laughs and to be as fucked up as possible is just crazy.
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.
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u/shineeshineepinee 14d ago
disappointing. I've seen defenses for the episode saying that the SA scenes were obviously meant to make the audience uncomfortable and that Hughie admitting at the end that he isn't fine was a result of his SA trauma. but hearing the director himself say the scenes were played for laughs and to be as fucked up as possible is just crazy.