• @darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        The healthcare system was just a catalyst for his transformation into Heisenberg. He had multiple opportunities to stop during the first seasons. His greed and pride wouldn’t allow him to do so.

        • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          In all honesty, I haven’t watched it again since it first came out. When did he have opportunities to pay for his treatment? I don’t remember that. I definitely remember the megalomaniacal development that you mention in his character arc.

          • @darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
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            397 days ago

            The best opportunity was when he meets up with his former partners, Gretchen and Elliot. They feel sorry for Walt’s diagnosis and the fact that he left the company the three of them started before it became profitable, and offer to fully pay for his cancer treatment.

            He then lies to his wife, saying that they are paying while he continues to make meth and sell it to fund his treatment.

            There are others, but this one happens early on (around S2 I believe).

            • @disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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              127 days ago

              You’re right. I remember that now. I think I’d enjoy a second watch through.

              The only episode I’ve watched multiple times is The Fly. It has almost nothing to do with the story, but it’s a legitimately brilliant standalone art house short story.

              • @EldritchFeminity
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                67 days ago

                I really need to go back and watch the whole thing, but I remember in one of the first two seasons there’s another point where his wife discovers some duffel bags that he’s stashed that are just absolutely stuffed with cash. Like, tens of thousands of dollars, if not a six-figure number. And when she confronts him about it (I think she knew what he was doing and he had promised to stop?), he says that he wants to make sure that she and the kids are taken care of after he dies.

                But he was lying through his teeth. What started out as a desperate attempt to save his life quickly spirals into a power trip, and his ego can’t let him stop even when he has no need to keep going. The money is just a side benefit at that point.

              • TurtleJoe
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                47 days ago

                I highly recommend a rewatch. You’ll notice what a piece of shit WW is very early on, now that you know what to look for.

              • @darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
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                87 days ago

                The Fly was definitely a polarizing episode. My biggest complaint about it was that it completely threw off the pacing of the story that season.

                If you haven’t seen it yet, I would highly recommend you check out the spin-off series Better Call Saul. I ended up enjoying it even more than Breaking Bad, although it does spend a long time setting up the pieces before everything starts falling into place.

                • @Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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                  56 days ago

                  Funny story. The show was over budget so they had to do something cheap. ‘The Fly’ let them do a bottle episode with an existing set and no new actors.

                  “Bottle episode” comes from Star Trek TOS. They once had an episode where the ship was trapped in a bottle because of budget.

      • @Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        No. Regardless of the healthcare system, White had the option of going to the people at Grey Matters and asking for help. There were plenty of times he could have just walked away with a boatload of cash. He was a cold blooded killer.

    • @masquenox@lemmy.world
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      177 days ago

      Plenty of people thought that Don Draper and Walter White were heroes.

      In our defense, I’d like to say that we have been living in a society that has been teaching us from birth to worship - no, fetishize is a more accurate term - the Don Drapers and Walter Whites of this world for hundreds of years now.

      It’s not an excuse… more just a mitigating factor that should be taken into account.

    • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      127 days ago

      Walter White was a classic anti-hero. He started out with a just cause, and was ultimately corrupted by the power brought on by his own self righteousness.

      • TurtleJoe
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        97 days ago

        Go back and rewatch. He knows exactly what he’s doing from the very beginning. He has chance after chance to get out. Each time he makes the choice to double down, knowing that what he’s doing will hurt somebody, and he does it all for his own self aggrandizement.

      • @Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        147 days ago

        I disagree. White had a simple choice; he could go to his old partners at Grey Matters and ask for help or he could get involved with murders. He never had a just cause, just the desire to prove he was smarter than everyone in the world.

        • @PlasticExistence@lemmy.world
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          87 days ago

          There’s important context about his old partners though: Walter was in love with one of them when she betrayed him, got with the other guy and then they cut Walter out of the same company that Walter’s research turned into a mega success.

          Was Walter prideful about their offer to pay for his cancer treatments? You bet. I probably would have been as well in the same situation.

          Was he prideful there because he wanted to be a drug kingpin? I don’t think that was his primary motivation.

      • @dustyData@lemmy.world
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        77 days ago

        I’ve seen people unironically and without self-awareness admire Draper and want to “be like him”. I don’t get it.

  • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    757 days ago

    They never did figure it out. They had to be told. Conservatives are really bad at seeing the obvious much less any level of nuance.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Conservatives love pastiche. So they can just take shit at face value and have a great time.

      No introspection, because that would ruin the fun.

    • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      26 days ago

      Wait, what is this about? Are you saying that there are some people who can’t figure out that homelander is the bad guy? Can you point me to one of these people?

      • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Just go look through any The boys discussions and you will find those that think he is just doing whats necessary. There you have been pointed.

        • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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          16 days ago

          Just go look through any The boys discussions

          I just had a discussion about it with my friends, some of which are conservatives, and none of the people there were confused as to him being a bad guy, so you’ll have to be more specific than some vague waving around in the air.

          That being said, I get that people might side with him. Just like people side with the joker and Tyler durden. But how do you know they’re conservatives?

          • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            Go away troll. No matter what I say you will just come back with some other lame question. Go read the threads and find out. I’m out.

            • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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              15 days ago

              You’re inability to defend the claim is not my fault. It’s easier to call me a troll than admit that maybe the claim is straight up bs.

              • @surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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                25 days ago

                Of course there are some conservatives who think homelander is the good guy. Some percentage of every group is just f****** stupid.

                But if you’re looking for examples, the top comment here is an easy one. There will of course be more out there because conservatives aren’t some monolith who all have the same opinion. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBoys/comments/1djocb4/comment/l9cld4p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

                Of course that’s not representative of all conservatives. The ones you know are probably very fine people.

                • @EatATaco@lemm.ee
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                  15 days ago

                  Of course there are some conservatives who think homelander is the good guy. Some percentage of every group is just f****** stupid.

                  Yeah, agreed. I shouldn’t speak in absolutes. There are probably also people from the left who think he is the good guy.

                  But I agree with the sentiment of that comment itself: they idolize him because he does what he wants. I would also add that he projects himself as outwardly strong, which is another train they probably admire. But I don’t think they are confused into believe this is the good guy. I think that thread is actually pretty good evidence of what I suspect - that this isn’t really a thing - because the only thing in that thread that points to any type of evidence is that picture. . .which is certainly open to a ton of interpretation outside of “Homelander is the good guy.”

                  My guess as to what has happened is that some people were idolizing him for his projected strength and arrogance, kind of like how they idolize Trump, maybe even tongue in cheek a bit, and people thought “only conservatives could be that dumb” and then it morphed into “conservatives think Homelander is the good guy.”

    • I disagree. It’s the most obvious you can get, like judging a book by the cover without even reading the blurb on the back of it. Why open the book when what it’s about is obvious? No effort, analysis, or thought required.

  • @Asifall@lemmy.world
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    617 days ago

    Reminds me of my stepfather who is deeply conservative and an huge supporter of the military but his favorite movie is full metal jacket. I’ve tried to discuss what he thinks the point of the movie is and it seems like he never got past the “it looks cool” part.

    • @Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      A huge portion of American men are only as tough as the things they own.

      In Texas they call it “all hat no cattle” Skaters just call them “posers”

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      You can’t have a good war movie that’s also a parody, because people just take the cool/funny parts as approval of the atrocities.

      And nothing is safe. You’ll have sitting American Congressmen putting out hacked up Attack on Titan videos with zero context, because David v Goliath is just a cool image and you want to make teenager shock troops fighting hideous (((monsters))) on top of a big wall look Based.

      Your enemy is always an existential threat and doing war crimes is incredibly cool. So yay fascism!

    • @HaleHirsute@infosec.pub
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      86 days ago

      It’s like Paul Ryan (Republican politician) being a Rage Against the Machine fan. Even the band members were like dude, you don’t get it.

      • @Snowclone@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        I remember really liking their music on the radio when I was like 12-14, and I knew my conservative parents wouldn’t buy my that record. With Rage Against The Machine on the front and songs about cops being kkk, and homeless people hanging out with the ghosts of guys who died for the working class, and saying “wake up” but not like in a ‘‘you gotta get ready for school’’ type of way. No sir. They wouldn’t be down. You don’t have to know much to understand they weren’t talking about the washing machine.

    • @thatgirlwasfire
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      36 days ago

      Growing up, one my my classmates favorite movies was FMJ, but yeah he was super conservative and said his dream was to die for his country. Idk what goes through these people’s minds.

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    527 days ago

    Pick up a US or World Hstory book as an adult and two things will dispel the illusions you may have about Americans and the human race: First, the rest the world hates us for very good reasons, and the things we did on a smaller scale in previous centuries are now much more widespread. Second, our species is infinitely more capable of evil than you were made to understand.

    • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      167 days ago

      The US wasn’t even close to the worst offender when it came to imperialism or colonialism though. In fact we were quite bad at it, and actively stood against it for much of our history. The US actually played a big role in getting the European powers to give up their colonial claims after WW2.

      • @RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        An appeal to hypocrisy doesn’t hold water here. Also, getting the Europeans to get rid of their colonial claims opened those former colonies up to our economic and strategic exploitation. There was nothing altruistic about it.

      • @Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        407 days ago

        This is just a quick list I can think off the top of my head: the trail of tears, slavery, Jim Crow laws, fighting Mexico to gain the west coast, fighting Spain to gain the Philippines, Florida, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, deposing democratically elected governments in Central and South America for cheaper bananas, isolating Cuba from the rest of the world when it turned communist but still keeping possession of Guantanamo Bay, putting down the Boxer Rebellion in China, invading Middle Eastern countries for their oil, fighting the communists in Korea and Vietnam, deposing the Hawaiian government and then annexing it for cheaper pineapples, and leveraging its position at the end of WWII to solidify its hegemony throughout the world via the petrodollar. I’m sure there are plenty of other things I’ve forgotten. The only other imperial power that would compare is England up until WWII.

        • @ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          fighting the communists in Korea and Vietnam

          I would add dropping most of the bombs left over from WWII (literally!) on Vietnam’s neighbors because reasons.

          The only other imperial power that would compare is England up until WWII.

          This is underselling Spain which wreaked havoc in the Americas (and elsewhere - like the Philipines) for centuries before they got supplanted by us in the havoc-wreaking department.

        • @JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Britain (which you mentioned), France, and Spain all have pretty awful imperial histories too. Not saying that to diminish the atrocities of the US by any means, but let’s not pretend the rest of Europe didn’t get up to some bullshit.

        • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          A lot of this firehose is pretty marginal. The Boxer rebellion for example, the US was a minor player. Puerto Rico won self rule via the US fighting the Spanish so it’s kind of weird to quote both. Also Spain is in NATO. Korea was a UN action. Hawaiians voted to become a state to escape the plantation owners from imposing new feudalism. Nobody is saying the US is without sins but these pale in comparison to things the major European powers did.

      • FlashMobOfOne
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        177 days ago

        The US wasn’t even close to the worst offender when it came to imperialism or colonialism

        LOL, what a super apologist argument.

        • Seriously. Here’s a map of US military installations across the world, plus the US has a stranglehold on large portions of South America. They may not treat everyone as poorly as the British did, but they sure love to kill brown people to get their natural resources.

          • @Veneroso@lemmy.world
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            107 days ago

            Not going to defend America. We’ve done a lot of terrible things.

            But when it comes to our military bases? Just imagine the world if we weren’t there.

            It wouldn’t be a utopia. I guarantee that the regional power in that area would be grinding those people under their heels.

            Especially the Emu. They faught a war against them. The Emu won.

            Do you really want to live in a world with Emu hegimony!?

            https://youtu.be/Bw-bz6RChUI?si=EwezgJbpzms9aBYM

            • @uis@lemm.ee
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              47 days ago

              Especially the Emu. They faught a war against them. The Emu won.

              Do you really want to live in a world with Emu hegimony!?

              Damn, I this is not what I expected

              • @Veneroso@lemmy.world
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                47 days ago

                The raptors from Jurassic Park clearly took inspiration from the Emu. It’s probably where the “farting into a Pringles can” growls came from .

                These are basically dinosaurs of today…

          • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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            137 days ago

            Its a map with red spots. I didn’t know we controlled the UK or Australia? You are really stretching the idea of imperialism or colonialism to include where the US has bases. Ironically counter to your statement the map has very little of south america in red. Also or a another point of humor your map doesn’t include Liberia. A country the US took over and dumped as many former slaves as they could there. One of main proponents of this action was Abraham Lincoln. Who preferred shipping former slaves back there rather than they remain in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia

            Truth is the UK is responsible for more independence days around the world than any other nation. There is a meme about it

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_gained_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom

            • @StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              I don’t get what your point is. Your comment is primarily disjointed, rambling criticism. Are you just doing the ol’ Reddit “I have nothing useful or interesting to add to this conversation, so I’m just going to criticize some comments so I can feel better about myself”?

  • @Pringles@lemm.ee
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    467 days ago

    So I haven’t watched after season 2. What did Homelander have to do for conservatives to realize he’s not the good guy?

    Did he become an environmentalist or something? Because sociopathic narcissism, kidnapping, mass murdering innocents and being an allround asshole didn’t do that, not even mentioning his literal nazi girlfriend.

    • ericatty
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      657 days ago

      I don’t think it’s Homelander’s actions so much as Kripke saying in interviews that he and the writers are trying to be as obvious as possible that Homelander is the bad guy and based on Trump. And following up by saying if people think Homelander and his followers are role models then those people are not the fans they want.

      • @dustyData@lemmy.world
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        327 days ago

        The fact that he had to spell it out loud because media literacy is dead and most people are incapable of reading nuanced subtext is appalling. Some people actually believed that it was nothing more than a gory satire of Marvel and DC comics.

        • @III@lemmy.world
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          127 days ago

          It stopped being nuanced after season one. Each season since has been an exercise in how far they have to go for some people to figure it out.

    • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      297 days ago

      It’s more that this season they have abandoned almost all the nuance and are really rubbing their face in it. There was a whole episode about how Homelander supporters are big into all the conspiracy shit that modern conservatives are

      • @PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee
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        16 days ago

        They have a guy hold the place up demanding to know where the kids in the basement are lol They definitely abandoned any subtlety about who they’re making fun of.