Debase the Beef Canoe

In the beginning when Mr. Incredible says, “Go home, Buddy. I work alone.” He’s holding up Bomb Voyage

In Syndrome’s flashback, he’s looking down on him, no bad guy in sight

oh 

In the flashback, it’s a different scenario completely!! The lighting is all focused on Bob as if he’s under a spotlight and it is only the two of them. Bob’s pose here is also ridiculously condescending. He has his hands on his hips like a superhero and is looking down at Buddy with contempt and scorn. In addition, when he turns to leave, he dismissively waves his hand as if saying “Get out of here.”

It’s also interesting to note Buddy’s position here. His arms are extended either in worship or as an expression of all he has to offer in this relationship. He sees himself as a victim because he thinks he gave all of himself to Mr Incredible, just got him to reject him.

It’s also amazing to me how much Buddy’s suit is a reflection of himself. Everything from the black and white color scheme representing his black and white way of thinking, to the huge S because here only thinks of himself.

That makes two things abundantly clear:

Bob doesn’t have an aversion to working with other people. Remember when he runs into Elastigirl earlier in the day? She reminds him not to “forget”, and he promises he won’t. They were standing over a thief they ended up accidentally nabbing together, or so we thought. They bantered back and forth about working alone, yet they nabbed that thief so seamlessly, you’d think they’d done it before. Then you find out later, Elastigirl is the woman at the altar. Making it clear that they had to have worked together, very frequently, enough to end up trusting each other to the point that they revealed their secret identities and had a romantic relationship outside of Super work, culminating in literally marrying each other. Bob is more than fine with a partner because he married his.

The other is that, Bob is trying to protect Helen. She may be more than capable of handling herself, as she flirtatiously reminds Bob on the rooftop just hours before their nuptials. But the one thing that’s priceless to the Supers are their secret identities. With Syndrome following Bob begging to partner with him, it puts Helen in danger. A fanatical fan like that can end up possessive, meaning once Syndrome discovers her, could see her as a direct threat stealing “his” position working with Bob. And because he obviously has a knack for following people undetected (he was right on Bob’s heels all over a huge metropolitan city for literal hours), he could very well stalk Helen, discover her secret identity and expose her in order to eliminate her, putting her directly in danger. Bob isn’t an idiot, he knows working with this kid doesn’t just put this child in danger, but also his own wife and their identities. It’s better to say he works alone and let this kid down as gently as possible, hoping to finally shake him off for good so he can work in safety and peace.

- The reason Syndrome found all the other supers first (including Frozone) was because Bob kept getting fired from his jobs, forcing the government to wipe his existence from multiple companies and forcing his family to move each time that happened. He unintentionally saved his family by forcing them to relocate so often.

- Two of the biggest differences between the two versions of “go home, Buddy” is the focus, and length. In Mr Incredible’s version, “Go Home, Buddy” is a midpoint, a random event that just happened to stick because it was weirdly specific, and it was right before the important parts. The attempted suicide, train crash, and wedding are much more important because those were more important to Mr Incredible (since the first two ended the superhero movement, and the last was his wedding). Buddy, on the other hand, only flashes back to “Go home, Buddy”. Which is weird because Buddy almost died later that night from a bomb on his cape, and he almost killed dozens of people on a train by dropping a bomb on them, and because of that, he was indirectly responsible for the death of supers. All three of those things should be much more important to Buddy, but it’s a sign of his psychosis that the one thing he remembers is not Mr Incredible saving his life, or his life being in danger, but instead Mr Incredible rejecting him. Buddy was unstable, and an extremely unreliable narrator who edited out massive chunks of his own story to better justify his hero syndrome.

- Also, on a more sobering note, some have brought up how Incredibles 2 seems a step down from Incredibles 1, and while that’s arguable, there’s some related bits in there I’d like to mention. You know how there were a slew of superhero’s in the movie for when they made superhero-ing legal again?

Notice anything funny about that lineup? Anything at all? Okay, here’s a hint then. How many of these heroes were working before heroes got banned? How many of these new heroes are from Mr Incredible’s era?

Answer: None.

Frozone, Elastigirl, and Mr Incredible are the only ones who were active before the ban, or more specifically, were left from those active before the ban.

Think about it, Elastigirl was on the news basically continuously, there was a UN declaration on supers, any super left who had even been five degrees of separation away from Elastigirl back in their heyday would’ve come up to talk to her and her movement. But when Elastigirl was brought in to meet other supers, she didn’t know any of them.

And it’s not like she and Bob were loners who never interacted with anyone, look at their wedding day, it’s packed to the gills with capes (and possibly some secret identities too):

So…what happened?

Syndrome happened. This isn’t just some serial killer picking people at random, Syndrome systematically wiped out an entire community of people, arguably, an entire generation of supers, since Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack seem to be the only kid-supers in existence.

That’s why Elastigirl is so emotional when she’s introduced to these new supers, she thought her people, barring her family and Frozone, were wiped out by Syndrome. And in a way…they were.

Nobody’s left from her era of superheroics. None of her old friends survived. It’s just her, Bob, and Frozone left out of what was once a thriving, vibrant community. All those bright lights snuffed out because some kid couldn’t handle being rejected but his hero.

- Honestly, this allegory kind of brings to mind the AIDS crisis and the gay community. A “syndrome” almost specifically targeting a subset of the population with a flair for dramatic outfits and superheroics, picking off members one by one until the population is decimated. The members of the community have to intervene themselves to slow/stop this “syndrome” because the government, which was supposed to protect them, is unaware of, or is blatantly ignoring the crisis until it starts hurting the “normal” community. Because of this “syndrome” there’s just this gap in this community, where an entire generation is just…missing…with the few survivors having to counsel the new, untouched generation, and helping them achieve widespread support and acceptance they could only dream of.

- Side note: I just realized something. Take a look at Syndrome’s kill list:

And take a look at that wedding shot again.

Anyone look familiar?

If it’s to hard to tell, at least four of the people Syndrome killed were at Bob’s wedding.

Mr Incredible wasn’t watching supers getting killed, he was watching his friends getting killed. People he trusted enough to share his secret identity with people he trusted enough to share his wife’s secret identity with. Hell, our poor boy Gazerbeam got a front row seat with Edna and their NSA agent that’s usually reserved for family only.

And that’s bad enough, but something else occurred to me, Bob and Helen clearly haven’t been keeping in close contact with their superheroic friends, Bob asks Frozone if he’s been keeping in contact with Gazerbeam, implying they haven’t talked in a while.

Additionally, Bob’s life, and the superhero community’s life, went tits up basically immediately after his wedding night. So if there was any point for them to stop talking with other supers, it’d be then.

So what does that mean?

It means, in all likelihood that when Mr Incredible looked at that list of dead friends and superheroes, he realized with growing horror that, his wedding?

The happiest point of his life?

They may or may not have been going for an AIDS metaphor with that plotline, but I do wonder if whoever came up with it was significantly affected by it? Either personally or via friends or even as a “degrees of separation” thing.

It’s that simple.

And I think this is a dynamic a lot of people with bad parents can relate to—or rather, more likely, people who have one Bad Parent and one Good/Less-Bad Parent.

The objectively worse parent’s awfulness you get numb to. They are static and almost one dimensional to you, where their bad behavior gets internalized as something inevitable and fundamental to who they are. They are inherently bad, they are not capable of loving you (or loving you in a way that matters), they are unchangeable because if they COULD be changed, your other parent or you should’ve been able to change them, right?

They can be many other things, you can have complicated feelings about them (love them even!!) and their bad behavior, but their badness is a core part of how you relate to them. It’s a permanent caveat, a bright red asterisk.

Your Good Parent (or Less Bad Parent or Almost Aways Good but Sometimes… Parent) is met with a lot more love. Because… obviously.

But the issue is sometimes you resent them more than the Bad Parent because you aren’t numb to them. You love them but they are also the person who invited the bad parent (bad step parent, bad boyfriend who comes over to the house, etc) into your life. The person who took care of you is now failing to protect you. They love you enough to do their best but don’t care enough to shield you (or themselves) from the bad person.

It’s irrational, often victim blaming, but it becomes, “I get why Bad Parent is bad, I don’t forgive it, but I accept it as an unmoveable truth. Why is Good Parent failing me? This parent is meant to protect me and they aren’t. Why is their love not enough? Why am I not enough for them to move away from this bad person?”

Abusive family dynamics are more complicated than that but I think a lot of people can relate to the idea of expecting bad behavior from certain people but being much more personally betrayed when a trusted person fails them, even if the failure is less severe than what the Bad Person did.

Claudia learned early on Lestat was fucking awful. He was her Bad Parent. And she had his throat slit and coffin dumped into the garbage over it. She punished him and she got away from him. (Which is also a huge part of this—she got to punish Lestat, she got to one up him already, he knew exactly how she felt already.)

Louis was supposed to be her protector, the one to run away with her. He stayed when she ran. And then when she was forced to come back, he fucked up their escape because he loved their abuser too much, and only then did he run away.

And… he ran straight to Armand, who also abused her along with his coven. And he killed her.

And when Louis’ guilt became too much, when the truth became clear to him, the first thing he did was fly back to Lestat. For closure!! OVER HER!!!

She’s alone in hell and Louis’ path of getting closure over her murder was reuniting with a man who played a part in separating her forever from Madeleine.

And this is a more intimate betrayal than what Lestat did to her because that wasn’t meant to be the terms of their relationship. Louis was supposed to do right by her. He was supposed to protect her.

He was the good one.

And it hurts so much worse when even the good parent can’t do right by you. When their goodness and their love isn’t enough.

So, yeah, sometimes you resent the person who was better to you, more like you, than the person who actively hurt you, hurt you both even.

LET’S TALK ABOUT NARRATIVE FRAMING

Because it’s a really important factor in how we’re supposed to view these two scenes.

We’re supposed to be against Wesley in the first one, and in the second one we’re supposed to empathize with him at the very least, if not outright agree that what he’s doing is the right course of action. But the thing is, he’s using the exact same rationale both times (he just explains it better in the second instance).

It’s all about the narrative framing.

In the first one, Wesley is an outsider. He’s a character who was brought into the mix for the express purpose of being disliked, both by the Scoobies and by the fandom. And in Choices, he further cements that dislike by advocating taking an action that might result in the death of a beloved character.

Two years later, he’s a core part of the group. He’s grown and changed and become a lot more likeable and a lot more liked. He’s a true leader now, and he cements that leadership role by making a hard call, implementing a plan that will definitely result in the deaths of some nameless rebels

When Choices takes place, we’ve had nearly three years to get to know Willow and become invested in her story arc, so we care about what happens to her. Meanwhile, Wesley’s been around for all of six episodes at this point, and he hasn’t done much to endear himself to anyone. So when Willow’s life is in danger, and Wesley is the one standing in opposition to a surefire plan to rescue her, we feel inclined to side against him.

By the time we get around to There’s No Place Like Plrtz Glrb, we’ve had nearly three years to get to know Wesley and become invested n his story arc, so we care about him a lot. Meanwhile, these rebels have been around for all of two episodes, and we haven’t had any time to become attached to them. We don’t even know most of their names. So when their lives are in danger, and Wesley is the one putting them in that position, we feel inclined to side with him.

But the thing is, what he’s doing the second time around is arguably a lot worse.

In Choices, he flat out says he wants to help Willow just as much as the others do, and he means that. He isn’t suggesting they do nothing. He just wants to stop the Scoobies from rushing into the first plan they think of without even trying to find a way to save Willow that doesn’t involve giving up the one thing they have that can prevent the Ascension and save thousands of lives.

Whereas in Plrtz Glrb, he sends an entire group of people into certain death, because he believes it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than the rebels losing the battle and being enslaved again. Freedom for all at the expense of a few is worth it to him.

Won't You Stay With Me

A series of fanart pieces by @qedart