Let Women Be Complex Characters

Once they actually have you know character and are interesting sure. I watch shows not to "look up" to characters. TV and movies are for entertainment, and some people take it too seriously.

sadly most female characters never go beyond the complexity of "i think i am opressed and this gives me the divine right to be an asshole"

they tend to use ASPD disorder to dramatize a character and then use the trauma part of the disorder to gain sympathy from the audience and “redeem” the character. Yes, there are low functioning sociopaths that behave in ways movies represents but there’s also high functioning and logical sociopaths that have never been violent a day in their life. Even when you look up sociopath it brings up all of the low functioning traits. It’s really a spectrum and I would love to see a high functioning ASPD character who isn’t there to cause conflict in a story line, just one that exists. I’m a woman, and we’re more than likely to be misdiagnosed with autism when we actually have ASPD due to the stigmatization even in the psychiatric field. It happened to me before because I was never provoked enough to use violence in my childhood, beside one instance as a teen when I finally used self-defense on my abuser (in which I was arrested for because cops always believe the adult and not the child…). I was extremely isolated and neglected and they labeled it as “anxiety” and then “autism” until it was clear I had ASPD. My symptoms were overlooked and that lead me to be treated for things I never even had. In my opinion Sociopaths are the most tolerable people, I don’t judge (what’s the point?), I don’t go out looking for victim’s and make evil plans, I know if I do something bad I’ll be in jail so I stray from it. Here’s a few bad traits I have to work on: being a social chameleon, selective empathy, controlling my emotions when fight or flight kicks in. We’re not some machine killing animal lmao I hate how popularized that is.

Your review of 'YOU' reminds me that most reviewers either don't understand the show or don't understand the audience. Or they have a small sample of the audience that doesn't represent the rest. Being fascinated by Joe is not the same as rooting for him. Being intrigued and terrified by his actions is not the same as liking him or supporting what he's doing. From episode 1, most people I've spoken to about the show mention their awareness that Joe is a bad, evil man...that part of the "joke" is his good looks and charm, but as outsiders, it is easy to see and acknowledge that he isn't a good guy and no one should root for him. The enjoyment of the show is in the morbid fascination, not wanting him to win.

ETA: The audience also "relates" more to Joe because the show is written and performed through his point of view. We're literally in his head from the very beginning. It's less about showing that they're the same, or even the writers saying anything about gender, and more about showing Joe's twisted view and thoughts of the world. We're not supposed to align with them, but we are supposed to understand them and, by S3, we're immersed in Joe's mind. The overall issue in writing may be true...but YOU isn't the best example because it is blatantly meant to exploit and satirize these ideas...sexism, narcissism, violence, stalking, etc and getting away with it all because you're a "pretty white boy."

Commenting for engagement :) great video. You're very entertaining

Villanelle from Killing Eve is a good example of a likable female anti-hero. She does a lot of objectively horrible things but her character is written so well and the actress is charismatic enough to make the audience root for her anyway

kim wexler literally exists wdym

This was the biggest amount of cope i've ever seen.
The problem with female characters is the left. Forcing them to be BORING strong leads, without flaws. It has nothing to do with made up buzzwords like patriarchy.

The fact that you even use that term unironically discredits this already laughable video.

Too many people will defend Daenerys Targaryen's actions even though she has done things just as bad as Cersei Lannister.

This video is nonsense and low effort propagandist fluff. You cherry picked horrible examples, not describing the character themselves but what they relate to. If this is your complaint then just what one of the many mediocre movies and shows that have women leads or was originally a boy brand that was turned into a girl one. Men don’t hate women who are strong and flawed (the Bride, Sarah Conner, Ripely) and there is no patriarchy controlling what men or women like. “You” was made for women and so was “Fifty Shades of Gray” and so on and so forth. This is a grift.

This guy is so funny 😂 the amount of times I cackled in this video. But also felt cleverer for being enlightened about these double standards

The discourse behind the movie Promising Young Woman is sort of reflective of this issue, too. Like men are allowed to portray their weird abuse fantasies on screen but when someone wants to portray a woman taking revenge it's seen as too much

reall

nice writing, looking forward to more videos.

I never got into You, I remember watching the second season (it was the only one I watched) and I was just waiting for when the writers were gonna make a moment where we’re like “Oh Joe is really, irredeemably bad. This guy is crazy” but there was nothing overt like that. I got the sense we were supposed to like him, and I really wasn’t into it so I stopped watching. Then I heard about how Love turned out to be crazy too and how everyone hated her and I was just like “… how could she possibly be worse than Joe? He’s a literal psychopath, and he does the same things I’m hearing she does so what’s the difference?” It’s insane how adamantly fans of this show will defend it.

If Love had succeeded in killimg Joe and that was the finale of You, I would have rooted for her and found it to be a satisfying ending

I’ve been discovering this creepy genre of video games where you just abuse women as this omnipresent figure (My T-Gotchi and Needy Streamer Overload). It’s so unnerving how general audiences find women deep when they’re suffering or mentally ill but when women take power into their own hands and usually at the expense of male characters, they’re “bitches”. Women can’t make their own mistakes, they have to be products of men’s mistakes. It feels like more than a double standard, it feels like men relating to the sexist entitled rampage of toxic male characters and feeling threatened when women exhibit similarities.

My favorite complex bitch has to be Mallory Sterling from Archer.

This was well thought out, well edited, and I enjoyed your vibe throughout the video. Gave me a lot to think about

Arcane is a good show that deals with masculine women very well, as well as masculine and feminine men

her name was "Love" because her parents named the twins using tennis lingo (her brother's name was Forty). in this case "Love" doesn't meant 'love' as in the feeling, but as in 'zero' (lack of score) which i believe is symbolic to her entire character and relationship w Joe.

Not sure if Marla from I Care A Lot (or the whole movie, honestly) constitutes a complex character with how cartoonishly evil shes characterized to be and how mostly underdeveloped her paralel with Peter Dinklage's character is, but I do agree with the overall argument, I think a show that excels at writting a morally gray female character without making the audience unsimpathetic is FX's Archer with Mallory Archer, making a play on femme fatales by making the main characters mother a manipulative and greedy woman long past her prime who has however consolidated a ridiculous amount of status and power through ethically questionable means which she then exploits througout the show for her own gain, her codependant relationship with her son being probably the most complex and memorable in the whole show and definitely not one you get to see often in media without painting the woman as downright iredeemable

This is the same thing as complaining about Captain Marvel being greatly criticized and blaming it on her being a woman instead of the valid critiques that her character isn’t written well or very relatable. Instead of a complex character who has their faults, to make a “strong female lead” they literally just made her a strong, stoic woman which is no where near the same thing

Thank you

"Boys will be boys and girls will be quiet" is such a raw line, goddamn.

Did nobody learn from the sopranos?! Evil is not glory!!

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?!?!?!? Walter is NOT a good or a COOL man, literally the entire show is about a guy who was pushed around his whole life becoming evil and LIKING it. Nowhere in Breaking Bad are his actions justified. HE hides behind a lie that he is doing it for his family, but it's really convenient how you didn't mention his final words with Skyler where he says that he did all of this for HIM.
Dude who bullied you as a child in school for you to be this much unhinged?
Also cherry picking You a show that is literal shit, that has bad characters, is badly written and awful with other good movies/shows, but just because this one show has a charming guy that girls like is really not helping you in proving your point. Also show me who are the guys that watched this show that actually rooted for him? The overwhelming audience for this show are women. You yourself said that! They like this type of characters. So what's your whole point?
And there's so much media where women are portrayed the same way, where the writer want's you to root for them despite them being a horrible but charming characters. Yes most of them are using their looks and sexuality, but isn't that THE SAME thing that Joe from You is doing?!
Also Andrew Tate... You are doing this on purpose right? This whole video is a satire right? Majority of people mock him, and know he's a hustler. Nobody is taking him seriously and honestly his videos are pretty funny and hilarious. And he's also in prison house arrest wow, imagine that. And mentioning Milo, a guy who isn't relevant for the last... would you look at that, at least 8 years...
But hey you have to cherry pick to make your point at least somewhat believable. : ^)

The way i see it is i dont like characters who have no flaws and can never fail like Rey and such. I like characters who are fallible.

I really like the part where you say, "What does femininity look like without the burden of sexualization?"

Then why are yandere's are so popular?

FIGHT CLUB

Also, horror movies such as Jennifer's Body or Teeth were met with absolute, chilled horror from male audiences who had enjoyed plenty of violent slasher films. The difference was that this time, the scary thing was a woman.
Media depicts male violence against men in action movies, female violence against women (often reduced to "cat fights" or "chick fights"), and plenty of examples of male violence against women.
Female violence against men is rarely shown. When it is, the story tends to have the man win in the end and put the woman in her place, or it's shown as a joke.

love everyone naming female antihero movies I WILL be watching them all

Ok, just because we watch villains, doesn't mean we think they're good people or that we're rooting for them. I think interested is a better word to describe. Villains can be interesting, but that doesn't mean we want them to succeed. And yes, we do think a domineering woman is a b**ch, but we also think a domineering man is an a-hole. We don't see him as a leader, but as an annoying presence we want to avoid like the plague. I wouldn't follow some obnoxious bragging loud mouth, regardless of gender. I hate those people.

Because of wheel of Trash... I gotta root for the short guy in I care alot

YES THANK YOU i have always been a love defender and i wish her and joe would have ended up together because they were literally the same and i love her and she is iconic and she did nothing wrong and i literally could not keep watching you because i started to hate joe when he was disgusted with love for doing exactly what he does.

Didn’t know people accepted terrible behavior from male characters and not female… regardless of gender these characters are pieces of 💩

I have two experiences but they are weird and do not quite fit the image. My best friend is male and he's gay ofc most of my family does not know this and I post a lot of photos of me and him at events and I have been bombarded by people asking me if I'm in a relationship with him hell when we where younger he thought I had a crush on him when in reality I was just shy and stuck to him cause he's a sweet dude. The other situation has been with both of my exfriends exes who are both cool guys. One of them called me pretty while drunk while it is not something life-changing it was unusual for me to get a compliment and it had our friendship rocky for a while but we got over it. The second story is more serious as it has to do with the way I view intimacy. The ex kissed me at a party and I drunk and high on adrenaline kissed him back. I'm sure that for him it was some sort of revenge since my friend treated him horribly and for me well due to consent issues created by that ex-friend it meant nothing because my ex-friend had done the same to me except she hadn't asked for permission but other than that occasion we have a close friendship

As a proud Murder Husbands girlie, the whole “I can fix him” thing is so bizarre to me. Like hon, no you can’t. Run. But I’m gay, so what do I know.
TLDR: morally grey characters are great in a story. You don’t want those people in your life.

For me. It makes complete sense in You that Love is othered as somehow "worse" than Joe because its from his perspective.


Cluster B types, especially narcissists are incapable of recognizing their faults.

So, he projects everything he hates about himself onto Love.

I think its also why so many people were upset Beck was ungrateful and didn’t want to be with him?

Because he couldn't see himself accurately. So, viewers cant necessarily see him clearly either.

Its something that I appreciate about the writing. But also makes me worry. Because people are so much more susceptible to manipulation than I ever could have imagined.

I did really enjoy this analysis though. Recently Ive been noticing this trend a lot in media.

I can't count how many times I've seen people say a woman is more terrible or evil because they are supposed to have maternal instincts.

Like there is some biological imperative that keeps women from doing bad things.

It both minimizes people being believed when a woman DOES do something evil.

And it reduces the motivations and reasoning of women to something biological. Which is a huge disservice to telling a good story.

my favorite example of this is how the bojack horseman fandom treats bojack vs how they treat diane, even though his actions are way worse than hers.

I came here for the thumbnail.
I think the difference between the protagonists in your thumbnail is that Walter is not framed to be a hero or a good person or anything like that. We revel in his exploits but understand he’s an asshole and the show portrays him in that light. And even then you can sort of sympathize with him initially because he’s doing it to provide for his family.
But that B from “I care a lot” is just pure evil. She’s fine with scamming old people out of their money… even worse, making them wards of the state against their will. And she’s framed as some sort symbol of empowerment. And even when the movie provides a chance to give her a comeuppance with the Russian mobsters, she still prevails and forms an even more horrible empire, allied with human traffickers.

The contrary to this is Rebecca in Crazy Ex Girlfriend who is very flawed but relatable, and there is Trent who is exactly like her but a guy and it's makes it evident how actually problematic their behaviours are.

Honestly, women have idols who do nothing but seduce and plot. It's women creators who do this! They equate women empowerment with being sexist towards men, like the Barbie movie. There is enough blame to be shared with female creators here as well.

Besides, euch characters are a uniquely American problem and it's imported to the rest of the world, NGL.

Huh... I think our friend forgot Peter Dinklage character actually is a woman AND drug trafficker...

Thank you for this video! We need content like this 💯

Small correction but Megamind never wanted to kill anyone, arguably not even hurt anyone and his arc is less about changing as a person and more changing how he percieves himself, when he escapes prison he doesn't hurt anyone (both times), he doesn't want to hurt Roxanne which is why she's not scared of him (but she is scared of Tighten), he views his rivalry with Metro-Man more like a game that he low key expects to lose and while he does "kill" Metro-Man he wasn't expecting to.
Not that he doesn't do bad things/not change at all but as i said his ark is mostly about self perception.

Erm actually Love is named that in the book too 😭

In what part of the world is that the way people are socialized?
I haven't seen it where I'm from

gender norms to the guillotine everywhere, not just my home