Mercury's Rising

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If there’s anything I love, it’s in-world propaganda. Just, in general. I like seeing how the “powerful” in a fictional society are managing to manipulate the masses. The Boys does this a lot, even if later seasons it got a bit ridiculous.

I do like the idea of someone like Miss Heed going on an apology tour of sorts where she’s turned to trying to endear herself to the public after being “caught”, so to speak. “Here’s my history, here’s my family, I’m not hiding anything.” Meanwhile, what’s missing is the actual accountability (sounds familiar to basically any influencer you can think of, take your pick).

She puts the blame for her actions on villains. “If they weren’t so ruthless, I wouldn’t have done what I did.” And maybe in some world, that could sound downright reasonable in tandem with all the other in-universe propaganda from PEACE.

You do learn about Heed, but do we learn anything about her we didn’t already know? Her family’s background of being ruthless social climbers much like her, leaving her spoiled but ignored and stunted socially. It’s not terribly hard to read between the lines here, she’s a rotten fruit from a deeply rotten branch of people who use desperate conflict for their own gain. Is she interesting? I think she WAS, when she faced narrative consequences for her malignant narcissism leading to an outright mental breakdown. What concerns me is the possibility of her just being brought back to do… the same exact thing she was doing before, having learned nothing, not even a better strategy to do said thing she was doing before.

Now, the page on Flug itself, I’m mixed on this. She switches the blame to him for the kiss she initiated, in her words “he forced the kiss on her”. And while, I do think it’s IN CHARACTER for her to go as low as to throw a false accusation like this out there, solidifying her as just… as low as they come, I think it also signifies my problem in general with how Villainous handles women.

Women are boy crazy, they’re portrayed as vapid and overtly sexualized, they’re constantly objectified in both official content and promotional images. Meanwhile their objectification is seen as justifiable, specifically with Heed, because it is made clear they are not GOOD people. Heed’s sexuality is treated as just another weapon she wields, rather than something she has true ownership of. “It’s okay to objectify her because SHE wants you to.” But how does she actually FEEL about it?

I’m of two minds here. In terms of in-universe propaganda, it works, it’s the type of thing Heed would do to cover up being the true aggressor in this scenario, however I do think it’s important to exercise caution when depicting a woman leveling essentially a PG version of a false SA allegation against a man.

I do always wonder just how much access villains and heroes, or villains and civilians have to each other. ARE villains truly a wholly manufactured threat? Regardless of intent, Penumbra DID doom half the population of her town, and the show’s premise indicates they have no trouble making deals with who might as well be the literal devil to achieve their goals. It seems heroes are needed, in that case, while being no exception to corruption by any means.

Villainous does this thing where it dips a toe into what I believe it’s trying to convey, then recedes said toe in favor of showing us how cool and powerful(tm) Black Hat is for the 40th time. I think I enjoy Villainous more when he isn’t present at all, but I’m not entirely sure him being a seldomly used nuke button for the narrative is intentional or the result of him just not being that interesting.