Dewey Decimal Duck

Show version of the cover art from my beloved Jill Thompson's Dbda manga (og below the cut)

However shallow or flawed a piece of media is, if you like it, it's because of something it did well - at least well enough to affect you, on the day that you encountered it.

There are a lot of good reasons to acknowledge this. One is about gratitude and manners: someone worked hard on that thing, and if they provided something that gave you happiness and pleasure, it's nice to honor that. Another is about breaking down the insidious habit of sorting everything into simple good/bad boxes. A piece of media, like a person, can do a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right, and the things on one side do not magically erase the other.

Alison: Aw, a slow burn

Part of what made Ghosts for me was Alison and Mike's relationship. If they had been written to be a couple that fights over money, are constantly at each other's throats about house renovations, and the setbacks they face it would have made them unbearable to watch.

I genuinely felt a connection to them and I love their relationship as characters. Alison and Mike struggling to start out felt so relatable, instead of them both having pre-established careers and stable lives. I loved the messiness and chaotic nature of their lives and seeing them grow as people. Alison and Mike had their conflicts but in the end, they always worked it out! The only real times they had any genuine fights that I can recall were when Mike almost got blown up by a literal prototype mine (honestly valid- I would have been mad too king-) and over Bear Grills. Even then their fights did not end in tears or saying regrettable things or worse coming to blows, they handled it in a very healthy way.

Mike cares so much about Alison and is so supportive of her, her dreams, and her weird ghost things. Mike genuinely puts up with so much from the ghosts for not even being able to see them and can hardly interact with them. He would get annoyed at times and rightfully so but he would never be extremely resentful or hateful to Alison for the ghost's behaviors.

They are genuinely the best couple I have seen in media, granted I don't watch much but STILL.