You have multiple personalities but none of them are poorly written villains
Also, a different Moe than me. A very, very different Moe.
If you get something out of this newsletter or the Depresh Mode podcast, I would appreciate your financial support. Go here, pick a level that works for you, then select DEPRESH MODE from the list of shows. And thank you.
Some of them might be very well written villains
A bad villain is just someone who is evil for the sake of evil. They want to destroy things, they want to rule the world (but have no real policies lined up if that happens), they’re just there to be overcome by the hero.
A good villain, an effective antagonist to the hero’s journey, has a point of view and a rationale for doing what they do.
Like Killmonger in the movie Black Panther.
From The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic:
“Two billion people all over the world who look like us whose lives are much harder, and Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all,” Killmonger scolds the Wakandan court. “Where was Wakanda?”
Killmonger has come to Wakanda as a conqueror. His father N’Jobu facilitated the theft of vibranium in an attempt to arm black people all over the world against their oppressors; N’Jobu is killed by T’Challa’s father T’Chaka for his insubordinate attempt to end the centuries of isolation that have kept Wakanda safe. T’Chaka abandons Killmonger in Oakland, California (the birthplace of the Black Panther Party), leaving Killmonger literally and figuratively an orphan, who sees in his lost homeland a chance to avenge the millions of black people extinguished in The Void, and those who still suffer in its wake.
Now, I’m not going to draw any parallel between my situation and that of Killmonger except to say that sometimes an antagonist believes that they have a better approach, a reason for causing the apparent trouble that they’re causing.
I mean sometimes you just think you have the best plan for restoring order to the universe. And you stick with it even after you’re thrown down some kind of enormous space chute.
Or consider Walter Peck from Ghostbusters:
Here's the thing, though: Peck is roughly one million percent correct in virtually everything he does in the film. Just think about it for a second: if you heard that three discredited college professors were running around New York City with what they referred to as "unlicensed nuclear accelerators," and that they were keeping whatever extremely toxic byproducts that resulted in a homemade containment unit that they slapped together out of chicken wire, duct tape, and good vibes, you would probably want someone to look into that. If you found out that they were doing all of this because they wanted to turn a profit by atom-splitting nuclear laser beams at ghosts, you would definitely want someone — preferably several someones, preferably heavily armed — looking into that. Even the most libertarian view of regulatory agencies tends to make allowances for situations that include the words "homemade," "nuclear," and "Manhattan."
And so let’s talk about the character of depression living not in a movie but in your head. That’s what we talk about on this week’s Depresh Mode episode. It starts out being about dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder) but turns into something broader. I interview Dr. Richard Schwartz about his model of Internal Family Systems (IFS), which argues that we all have multiple personalities in us, it’s just that they don’t come about through dissociating and forming distinct identities.
When you have a thought pattern that tells you that you will end up failing at everything because you’re a stupid failure all the time, that’s one of the personalities telling you that. What Schwartz argues - and what he demonstrates in a mini-therapy session with me(!) - is that you need to talk with that personality and figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing. Maybe they are intent on destruction but it’s based on a belief that something needs to be destroyed.
And then it’s a matter of making peace with that voice, maybe soothing it, and moving forward with more harmony. And with less hand-to-hand combat, light saber battles, and Bill Murray putdowns than our other antagonists faced.
Here’s a headline that made me say, “Well. Good.”
For years, SC has been unlawfully locking up mentally ill youth. Now it wants to stop
For years, South Carolina has failed some of the state’s most seriously mentally ill children by illegally housing them at juvenile detention facilities that aren’t equipped to provide the level of mental health services they desperately need. The long-standing practice of locking up delinquent kids with severe mental illnesses is expressly prohibited by state law and even denounced by state officials, but persists because South Carolina has since 2015 lacked a mental health facility consistently willing to care for these youth.
AI-generated realistic portraits of animated characters
In case your nightmare fuel tank was running low.
Using AI image processing software, Hidreley Diao creates photorealistic portraits of familiar cartoon characters. The one of Moe from The Simpsons is kind of amazing — he’s got the look of a long-time character actor who’s developed so much depth over the years that he starts getting bigger roles and everyone’s like, this guy is actually kind of enigmatic and attractive and fantastic