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"I went into horror, the fifth-biggest genre in fiction, because I only cared about the money. But what I really wanted to do was write historical romance, the first-biggest genre in fiction."
Kinda goes to show how they think of the world outside their echo chamber. All scary, all sinful, only happy with violence and blood and death. When in reality their own religion is bloodier and more gruesome than most people could stomach
What confuses me is she says sex when talking about horror novels… Are they thinking of late 1900’s slasher movies? Cause last I checked horror novels have you know… horror. And romance novels have… yeah. Not to mention said slasher movies always _punished_ the characters for adult fun time…
-Lures in desperate people -Promises to solve all their problems -Deal always goes south for person -Basically punishes them for their selfishness Hmm, I don't think that's an angel...
I've seen a decent argument that God is actually a more charismatic version of a classic eldritch god. >Can't look upon him or his 'glory' will destroy you >Has an existence fundamentally different from that of reality, which allows him to easily manipulate all aspects of reality >Seemingly knows everything but simultaneously acts in ways that can't be understood by humans >Can only be seen and understood by "prophets" that are abnormal humans >All the imagery in revelations (Christ as a seven-eyed, seven-horned lamb with a slashed throat, bleeding snow white blood which his followers joyously bathe themselves in) >Old testament "wheels and eyes" angels as servants >Will inevitably destroy the entire world. The only choice you can make is whether you suffer through that experience yourself or not
What they think is "terrifying existential horror" usually goes along the line of "two gay people understand they are gay, fall in love, adopt a child and go on to live an happy and fulfilling live with the people they love, LIVING FOREVER IN SIN", so it would actually be better if they "embraced it"
god i hate the implication that the purpose of our existence as disabled people is to make abled folks more compassionate, but it's literally everywhere in media
Seriously it pisses me off. Especially when people act like you can’t complain because “It’s a compliment!” No saying how godawful our lives are is not a compliment, jackass.
they 100% meant "historical romance fiction" as in "whatever the hell G-rated life Laura Ignalls Wilder and Almanzo had going on where he'd tip his hat on their way into church and she'd sing wholesome songs on the piano at the town christmas party and kept six feet apart with a chaperone until marriage"
@@gwendolynstata3775 Oh, totally. You'll find exactly that kind of historical fiction on the shelves of Christian bookstores. I read it when I was younger (but CANNOT STAND IT today because the writing is absolutely horrible, not to mention some being HORRIBLY INACCURATE despite being written by a history teacher *coughgilbertmorriscough*).
‘I’m going to die before thirty knowing for certain that my child will lose me before they finish elementary school and likely grow up in the corrupt foster care system’ is a pretty good reason to get an abortion
@@Thecattheratsandthegliders Many magnitudes more people have at least 1 relative, I don't get your point. I don't get why so many people thought it was a better point than mine other than "abortion always best option, lol"
@@Caffeine_Addict_2020 not every family member you have is equipped to care for a child after your death. Just push your progeny on them since they're your family they have to oblige. Which can lead to a lot of messed up psychological damage to your family, especially your kid that will probably feel at fault for everything. I do not trust my relatives to care for a child after my death, why on earth would I risk a child suffering like that?
"Yes, I would like to have my disabled brother come back to life, please." Angel: "Is it because you learned about empathy, compassion, and that disabled people are autonomous, regular people you can't just wish away?" "What?? No, why would I have learned any of that???"
@@Demonetization_Symbol Apparently in her case her brother was just some kind of tool for her to be able to control her urge to party all the time. And that‘s it. She didn‘t learn anything, she just wanted her tool back.
I didn't get his name being Jesse's Christ until reading it in your comment. I don't think the sounds translate their little clever nickname auditorily like they thought it would.
"I'm not going to be able to provide for this child for nearly half of its life as a minor and it will likely be traumatized by my death." Yes, I think having this child is a completely rational decision and can no way backfire
That’s what I was thinking! Like a legacy is cool, but also why would you want to bring a child into the world of you know you can’t care for them because you’ll die? I don’t want to traumatize my kid with my slow and painful death before they’re even ten years old! I don’t want to force the burden of child rearing on my parents or friends who never signed up for this either. Mind boggling.
Joel doesn't talk about it, but I definitely remember hearing the evangelical theory that abortion is a cause of cancer. It's a bit of a deeper cut, but would she have gotten cancer if she didn't get the abortion?
"No, don't worry, you will soon forget your entire past, personality and prior existence and be overwritten like the operating system of a computer. That makes it better, right?"
Imagine if George Bailey didn't just go to a world where he was never born, but instead went to a world where he was never born AND a meteor hit Bedford Falls. Makes u think
It's more, if he wished his brother was never born, then a meteor falls and he spend the rest of his life alone as an alcoholic homeless pariah. And then the angel asks him at gunpoint if he learned his lessons. Truly make you think.
Some real creepy misogynistic undertones in this show. All the stories about women are about them accepting the role that others have prescribed for them, and submitting to authority.
I was about to say that especially with that pro-life episode. Both are just like "The lives of these women didn't matter; it's only about what comes after them/the redemption of the murderer that matters". But this comment made me realize that it was a consistent theme throughout. And of course in one, they had to make a disabled person a prop (this offended me particularly because I'm autistic) but in the process, they still told the woman that she has to be okay with her roles. To me, the moral of that should've been 1. Yes you have to be a care taker but you can still do some things you want in life and 2. Don't be angry at your brother for your role, be angry at the many systemic issues that led you to have to provide an extreme level of care in the first place.
The whole concept of people with troubled pasts showing up at the motel at their lowest point and being punished existentially by it is basically how Silent Hill works
I know! Have the makers of this show never looked in that section of the bookstore! It’s weirdly a thing that sells surprisingly well. Many of my friends seem to read that.
The Shelley story had me rolling my eyes. As an aspiring horror novelist and general horror fan, horror writers have to fight tooth and nail to get recognition. If your last name isn’t “King”, have fun getting published. Because horror is typecast as meaningless gore and sex, it’s not really looked at as a genre. So the idea that someone would give up writing historical romance, the literal best selling genre in the world, for horror because of “money” sure is rich.
And the horror books now have graphic designed covers that look like shit and don’t give a picture of what the story is about. Hell, you don’t even know what genre the books are anymore. IMO, there’s too many YA books. You can rarely find a good adult horror novel. It’s always YA and shit design with a crappy story. I never like to talk about the “good” old days, but I miss when covers had meaning.
Horror has the ability to tap into deep fears of humanity. Horror can mean a lot more than just surface level jump scares. Horror can be hopeful or not, depending on the messaging. Horror can be cautionary as well. Like anything that can be written, it can be done so poorly or greatly.
I mean yea, meaningless gore and slaughter can be fun for a videogame or movie. But of you try making a gore-porn type novel, its gonna loose its entertainment within the first few pages
What about Paul Tremblay, Stephan Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Grady Hendrix, and Eric LaRocca. I am also an aspiring horror writer but there are so many examples of really good authors who do get notice.
Pretty telling that the wish they went with was “what if Freddy never existed” and “what you had a better support system in place for taking care of Freddy” or even “what if Freddy instead lived with caretakers who were more suited and willing to look after him than you feel you are” was never so much as mentioned. There’s zero thought for Freddy, who is, you know, a person, and his sister just hops on board with “Freddy go bye-bye” instead of showing any consideration for him and other options which might potentially provide him with a better existence, or just any existence at all.
Yeah,but you know this is a TV show, right? If the writers had made her wish any of those, it would be a pretty short show after, probably just a quick scene of Freddie either with better caregivers or living more independently. But there would be no arc where the main character leans anything, or the Angel does much, etc. And while the female character is made to look selfish, caring for a severely disabled relative IS very hard, and no, there isn’t much actual support or respite caregiver services around. The 24/7 care is grueling, year after year, and puts real limits on the caregivers life. It is the best about us and a necessity that we do care for even the most limited and vulnerable among us, but is it SO terrible for a caregiver to sometimes feel overwhelmed, that it’s unfair, and wish they didn’t need to? I don’t think so and that seems like a human response, and weird to focus on it when there is no shortage of actual greed and selfishness out there.
@@Itried20takennames The problem is that the show forces a dumb and irrational moral on the protagonist with the worst possible execuation and makes both the writing and the protagonist look completely unfocused. There is no arc. Especially not the one that you could pretend should have been there. Literally any other choice and execution would have been better to convey the actual moral it should have.
"If violence sells, write that. If sex sells, write that" And she really wants to write....romantic historical fiction?! A genre totally not driven by gratuitous sex and, usually, war!
Minor note: The editor(?) doesn't even say the second "write that". In this show, not even ratings-obsessed businesswomen can just say "You should write sexy times in your books".
Funny how the Bible contains stories with all those things and more, like child sexual slavery, incest...etc.. Yet nobody has a single word to say about that in this episode. Writing horror genre fiction, though? Then you're straight-up married to demonic entities!
Ah, I see you've never seen the fundie version of this genre. Where it's all demure puritan prairie housewives pining for a sweaty racist white cowboy.
One of my favorite books ever is “between shades of grey” it’s a historical fiction novel that goes into brutal grotesque detail at the atrocities the Soviets committed towards their people, and it has an underlying love story in it. So I just bursts out laughing when she insinuated that historical romance wouldn’t have sex or violence in it
@@darth_kal-el I mean, if you want to get down to it, she's a prop too. But if you want to go even further, they're all "props" in a certain sense, because they're just allegorical devices in a show. But at that point, I'd be missing the point of Eve's original comment (which might not be literally 100% true for this exact particular example tv show, but her sentiment is generally [and overwhelmingly] accurate when applied to christian media as a whole)
Going by the cast listing on IMDb, they're almost exclusively white men. Only one black person is pictured, but the actor playing Freddy in the story of the woman who wished her brother away.
It's so goddamn funny how scary the mere thought of atheism is to pure flix films. The overacting in the line "Jason! You don't mean that!" is just so ham fisted. It's cringe and hilarious.
I honestly wasn't sure if Joel had dubbed over that part, since it all happened off screen. It sounded ridiculous. The "oh but I DO" absolutely sent me, it's almost a parody of itself.
What I'm getting from this is that the creators of the show are revealing what they want out of god. They don't want a benevolent god that loves all humans for who they are; They want god to do the dirty work of punishing those they don't like so they can feel like their attitude is justified. They want a god that actively hurts people that behave in ways that the creators deem "wrong" and whose forgiveness is contingent upon a person's willingness to toe the line. Once someone agrees to that however, forgiveness is immediate and absolute no need to be held accountable for your decisions or repent in any way; You don't even have to say sorry to anyone you hurt because your actions are in keeping with god's will.
You hit the nail on the head. What evangelical Christians ultimately want is for everyone to conform to their narrow worldview, so that they never have to go through the uncomfortable process of learning new things and growing as people. And they're so obsessive about it that they even want the universe to bend over backwards to justify their self-centered desires.
I mean, that's exactly what they say they believe. It's pretty much what the Bible describes. There's no morality in such a system. Only subservience to their preferred way of life.
Her dad is mad that she’s writing horror because she should use her gift to “bring hope to the hopeless”??? Weird to assume the horror isn’t doing that or that the historical romance would do it more
It’s funny because Christian horror could do so much. I’m not a horror writer, but as someone who is a writer and a Christian I could do it very easily. God doesn’t hate gore, not when it’s used to tell meaningful stories with good symbolism. I mean, FNAF has a terrible creator but he’s Christian and made so much money from horror without much graphic gore at all. I think that says something.
Even weirder to assume that horror would sell better than historical romance fiction. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it doesn't.
I hate watching shows that use disabled people as ways for “normals” to learn compassion, I even more hate when they can’t even bother to use an actually disabled person in the role.
Unfortunately I don't even think she's supposed to learn compassion. She's supposed to learn that burden - which is what keeps her from 'partying' is good. It's preaching that a) women have to shoulder their 'burden for their own good and that b) caring for others is a burden. They don't view disabled people as whole persons with intrinsic worth because if they did they'd cast a disable person and make them an actual character whose intrinsic human worth and their relationship with the protagonist would contribute to a message of shared meaning and purpose.
@@abelromero8967 yeah, I wrote this before I finished the video and thought I knew where the plot of the episode was gonna go, since this show somehow has more awful and backwards plotting than anything else in the world. My overall point still stands, but it somehow was worse than expected.
The worst thing about that episode with the disabled person is that like...as someone with a disabled family member, I don't think I've *ever* wished they weren't born. At my worst, I've wished they weren't disabled, but I think the most common thing personally has always just been that I wish someone *else* could take care of them. The thought of them not being alive hasn't entered my head once and I don't know why it would. It feels really mean spirited for no reason, much like rest of the show.
Srry a year later, but THIS! I have a disabled sister and growing up the WORST thing I would've wished for was that I was adopted and that my 'real' family would take me away. Lol. (also my family is amazing so even in those daydreams I would just move into a mansion w my rich new parents and still be best friends with my sister and mums lol). As HARD as it can be sometimes, I can't imagine what sort of person you'd be to wish your family member DIDN'T EXIST. Who thinks like that
I’m sorry that you’ve had these hardships, but just keep in mind it feels a lot worse to be a burden than it is to care for a burden. Though let’s be honest, no one would be put into any of these situations if we respected disabled people enough to help them adapt to abled society in a way that isn’t discomforting for them. You know, teach them to be as independent as possible and figure out ways to manage the issues that come with their disability. This is just my perspective as a disabled person. There might be something I’m missing or something that might have come off as offensive. That is not my intention and if offense is taken, I apologize.
@@teallineart8805 Oh, trust me, I'm just as familiar with being a burden. Both through disabilities and otherwise. And yeah, there is a lot of blame on ablist systemic stuff, for sure, though I will say that not every disabled person is capable of integrating cleanly into society while remaining fully independent. Though at the same time, there's more we could do as a society for those individuals as well.
@@SheepUndefined True. And I’m not saying they have to be completely independent. Just as independent as possible. Even if it’s stuff like being able to shower by themselves or dress themselves. That’s still something. I just feel like people give up on their disabled family members and just assume what they’re capable of.
It would be such an easy thing to research too. Just do one google search for sales figures, or if they don't know what a google is, walk into their nearest barnes and noble and just look at how much shelf space horror and historical romance respectively take up. It reveals their lack of both understanding and curiosity about the world around them.
This show really says ‘For men, you will overcome what you’re going through and live a self-fulfilling life where you are happy’, ‘For women, you will conform to the situation you’re stuck in and live a life of misery knowing you’re going to literally die’. Making the women okay with living a domestic and ‘god-focused’ life, like what? I feel bad for the creators wife.
"Don't you understand, detective? God had to kill 4 women for you to pay attention. If you had paid attention before maybe those 4 women wouldn't have died as god tried to reach you." Like so far every episode has had sexist undertones but I am really obsessed with "women will have to keep dying until this man grows up" presented as like a thing a good deity does
It's not sexism. The genders could just as easily have been swapped. It's very typical for devout religious folks to ignore all of the suffering of people around them and instead focus on the relationship between themselves and their deity in order to find meaning in life. Everything then becomes a part of some sort of divine "plan" God has for them, leaving others as merely pawns in that game. It's not so strange if you think about it: most folks who are deep into religion really just want an omnipotent "daddy" to take care of them in this scary world. And if you don't feel secure about your own position in life, you're more likely to neglect that of others. It's also a handy method of reasoning away all of the misery in the world while focussing on an all-loving god who just "happens to work in mysterious ways...."
@@Simon-A.-Tan I mean I absolutely agree with the statements that this is pretty regular for religion, but given the tone of the rest of the show, where women just need to listen to their fathers and are only allowed to persue their dreams in ways okayed by them, and the first lady's life is bad bc her disabled brother is a prop to stop her from partying and make her a good homemaker (also that when the other lady stops writing bad icky horror she immediately has a husband) it seems like there is a resounding way this show treats women. And that's not even touching on the abortion ep
@@Simon-A.-Tan if the genders had been swapped then it would still be sexist. You have to think "why did all the people who died have to be women"? That was their choice consciously or subconsciously. I think it probably hinges on the sexist idea about women being infanatilized, representing innocence/being innocent and needing to be protected from evil.
I really love in the Queen of Scream that we’re supposed to know that historical romance is like very not sexual graphic Christian love stories set on like the Oregon Trail, when most people would hear “historical romance” and immediately think of smutty Regency era paperbacks.
*Oh.* That makes so much sense -- I forgot about that genre even as it reminded me of the fetishistic Amish Christian romance novels. Remembering how the latter novels tend to go helped me understand why her father would consider these a good use of her talent to glorify God, as the protagonists were usually being drawn to more religious lives as they were drawn to single handsome religious men.
I gotta say, as nightmarish as this show is overall, the reveal of William at the end of Queen of Scream is absolutely horrifying. Seriously, even the whole “last 30 years will fade from your memory as your life in this new timeline takes hold” is less terrifying than “you have a husband, you’ve had him for years, and you also are now meeting him for the first time. Have fun!”
As said elsewhere in the comments section, you have to keep in mind the intended audience. 90%+ of the intended audience would have recognized the actor playing "William" as John Schlitt, lead singer for a couple decades of the Christian rock band "Petra". That band was one of the very few legit groups with talent on the level of other bands of their era. Most women of that age in the Christian scene would have loved to wake up with him as their husband.
@@MM-jf1me It's something that probably wouldn't even merit a second thought for most of them. We're talking a group that would just assume "Oh, yeah, that makes sense that getting married is totally something you'd "be blessed with" if you're "following God's plan". It's the Christianized version of Just-World-Theory (And the implied victim blaming that accompanies it). To be clear, _I totally agree with you._ I just don't think they'd have the initial reaction you would, and then wouldn't bother revisiting it either.
If I was Jennifer, after meeting my unwanted adult baby and finding out that my hopes and dreams were all dashed because I didn't terminate the pregnancy, was a single mom (watched another review of this episode and her boyfriend pretty much tells her he wants nothing to do with the baby), and on top of that I would die from cancer in ten years, my response wouldn't be, "better give up all my plans." Nope, I'd go back to Jessie and say "thanks for the heads up! I'm going to go to law school, harvest some of my eggs for later, and get regular cancer screenings. Glad to know I won't be leaving a kid to the foster care system or for my parents to take care of because I died when she was 9. You really saved my family and me a lot of pain and heartache!"
Yeah, that was really strange to me. If I found out I was going to die of a cancer I was going to get later in life, my first reaction would be to get myself screened for cancer again and again to catch it and treat it when it's still in its early and easily managed state.
Yeah I get that they thought they were going for a pragmatic pro-life argument of "at least my unfortunately short life will have some meaning because I brought a child into the world" but there are just so many more ways one could interact with this info dump that make more sense than the one the show pushes her towards
@@captaintomato5433 I guess we shouldn't be too surprised though. The writers and/or general audience for PureFlux content aren't exactly deep thinkers or into introspection. Even my Catholic husband (personally pro-life, but pro-choice when it comes to policy) thought that it was a truly terrible argument.
I think another message of the first one, since it was written by evangelicals, was “as a woman your place is as a servant, for without constant work your kind can easily be lead astray” or something horrible like that
I think you've hit upon the fundamental flaw in Christian ethics in the analysis of the first episode. In the Christian ethical model, others become objects that either help us to reach salvation or who demonstrate our own moral corruption. I got into a horrible fight with my partner of many years, said a lot of cruel things, and afterward felt quite guilty. After sitting with these feelings for a bit, I realized that a good part of the guilt I was experiencing was not based in empathy and love - nor a real concern for the feelings of my partner - but was because I felt as though I was a "bad person"; I had a major stain on my character. I've been an atheist for many years, but noticing and understanding this thought process, the inevitable effects of my Catholic upbringing, was quite striking. This definition of morality literally precludes selflessness, as every action is weighed according to its affect on one's own character, the virtue of which is (because of the threat of damnation) always the primary concern. Not only is this moral scheme immoral, but it somehow manages to turn every "moral" act into a performance of deep narcissism.
this was just 🤌🏾 *chef’s kiss* 🤌🏾a delicious comment to read. i was raised christian (not catholic though) and have talks all the time with my still-christian mom about how caught up other christians get in what’s sinful, what makes them a bad person, etc. instead of thinking about how to be kind and loving to others, they’re concerned about if other christians think they’re “good” or not. (not to mention how so many of their notions about what’s right and wrong are tbh fucked up.) her beliefs have come a long way, and reflects a lot on how church really fucked her up as a kid, and how hard it is to unlearn all those ideas. all that to say, guilt is a huge part of institution-based christianity. it seems catholicism puts conscious emphasis on it, but it runs deep in other sects too whether they say it aloud or not.
@@peterprime2140 as someone who has read a lot of historical romance it seems to mostly involve womanizing dukes learning to be good husbands by boning their new wives.
Christian show: If you're going to die, you should have children because that way part of you will still exist after you're gone Heaven: Am I a joke to you?
A lot of Evangelical Christians are taught they have a moral imperative to "out breed" everyone else. It's not about undermining the concept of an afterlife, but being brainwashed into believing they need to gain power and control by having a gazillion children each. This is dogma they really started to push in the 70s. Pair with that the homeschooling that also teaches them they must go to political rallies and protests to push their agenda, and some things about how US politics has shifted starts to make more sense -- the people instilling importance in fighting for what's right, and caring about politics, etc, has mostly come from this warped version of Christianity.
@yossarian down with the quiverfulls, down with the duggars. The familial environments they try to create is ripe for abuse by pedos. It's a perfect playground for them.
Evangelist have a very strange concept of having children. Like there is a movement that straight up encourages you to have as many children as possible, with the hope that they will become policymakers in order to spread evangelistic values.
Sad to say a lot of people outside of religion still believe this, but the quiverful movement is like rats breeding and overrunning the planet with the plague.
I love how becoming a very successful published author wasn't good enough for her dad because he didn't like the genre. If I wrote a book and it sold 10 copies my parents would never stop telling people their son was a published author.
Idk, if you were selling adult fun time novels (not romance or horror) would they still be proud? I feel like that’s what they were going for but I don’t know. Even for non-Christians, society can feel really puritanical
@@DeathnoteBB Plot twist: The parents are also smut writers, and are proud of their son for following in their footsteps and continuing the family tradition.
Every time I learn of a new piece of Christian media, I always ask myself “will it be better than Veggie tails”. And the answer is always no. Veggie tales will always be the only good Christian show.
This is because Phil Vischer, creator of veggie tales, is a distinctly "left wing" Christian, complete with the philosophical curiousity that comes along with that.
I want the opposite of this show, with a cool demon who makes people into better versions of themselves as they leave the church and unlearn dogma and stop being assholes...
Yes! I would watch that show! I feel like I actually reflected on myself, and changed as a person so much more when I left the church and felt so much relief when leaving then what I ever was a part of it.
I bet that the horror novelist was a reference to Anne Rice. She must have been a source of real frustration for the evangelicals as she went in and out of her belief. And now they get to strawman her in this episode.
Christian black mirror is some real scary shit EDIT: Holy shit as someone terminal the idea of leaving a baby behind, with my condition no less, seriously horrifies me to no end
Honestly one of the worst pieces of earnest storytelling ive ever heard. Mixed messages for sure but also like "well you dont have time to achieve career success by gods standards, so you should at the very least have a kid". Actually shuddering that a group of people made a concerted effort to put this into our world.
@@crunchytoast4993 amazingly, we are all going to die; any and all of us could die at any moment, yet tons of folks still have tons of kids knowing this... somehow we are ok?
Agree with your edit 100% I had a stroke last year and my youngest just turned 10. There's no way I'd have continued having kids if I'd known my health would decline so sharply so soon. I hope you have all the love, care, and help you need and more. 💘
The story about the writer implies she becomes a successful historical romance author that does not include sex. That's less believable than the angels and multiple universes.
Oh, but not if you're an evangelical historical romance writer. That's like one of the biggest genres of Christian fiction, and the sex is buried under layers upon layers upon layers of repressive subtext.
Would make sense if like she had a calling to god or something had a talent in that way they could tie in. I’m not even of this faith I just am trying to make it more digestible
This is scarily accurate to how my Jehovah's Witness adopted family viewed disability and subsequently treated me. I lost my eye-site to a botched surgery when I was 8 and they always told me that me going blind was a great thing because had I not lost my vision I would be an ignorant ghetto sinner and partying on the streets just like the (other people like me) referring to Black people. It's truly disgusting
I am Christian, not Jehovah Witness but we do have some similar traits but I swear we aren't like that. I hope you are ok and got the help you needed. If you ever wanna talk you got me bro. Also the Bible says that you don't discriminate, just disagree with something but not being rude (I know it doesn't apply to your situation because that is just straight up wrong). Sorry for being preachy I just wanna help people.
@@jacksonspitsfax4526 I know y'all're good willed, I have no maliciousness when I ask: why do y'all always go "we're not all like that", like-we know, we're just describing our experiences.
In the abortion episode, if the daughter said something like, "A few years later my mom died of cancer, so, it inspired me to go into cancer research and I found a cure." It would still be stupid, but, it would make more sense. Literally a message of "That life growing inside you is a miracle." But women with an high education? And in science? Yuck.
Huh. Ya know, that gives me a real fucked-up idea for an episode of this kinda thing: Asshole father who recently had a daughter, and is stopping at the hotel on his way to Vegas with his secretary gets to meet two future versions of his daughter, one where he stayed in her life and she became a PHD scientist working in medicine, and another where she lives a life turning tricks off the highway or something. Could work? I don't know.
This show makes a ton of sense if you grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church. The author one makes a ton of sense to me especially the author one. She chose evil at first and though she had money from it, she didn’t have the fundie woman ideal: a husband and children! When she turned her life “right” she got the dream! A husband to support her!!! What did she ever need a fulfilling career for?? I’m not really sure how to explain it better atm the moment mostly because I’m too high to really think too hard about it.
The episode about “What if my brother didn’t exist?” is so bigoted and ableist that it actually crosses the line into egoistic psychopathy. And wait… If Jennifer has the foreknowledge that she’ll have cancer at a certain point, couldn’t she just anticipate the cancer before it happens? I mean, if she knows approximately when she’s going to get cancer, then why couldn’t Jennifer just get regular checkups so they’ll find the cancer early on and give her chemo or something before it has a chance to progress? She knows she’s going to have cancer at a particular age, and even if the cancer wasn’t caused by something she could just avoid, Jennifer still knows ahead of time what to look for! As an aside, I really hate the term “pro-life,” because anti-abortion nuts don’t really give two shits about life. If they did, they’d support healthcare so sick children wouldn’t die of treatable diseases! It’s a pathetic attempt to hide the obvious fact that anti-abortionists just hate women, plain and simple. Great video, Joel! Man, these Evangelicals are the bloody Antichrist…
Pro-life is just another case of the right being better at branding and marketing unfortunately. They’re anti abortion? Now they’re pro-life! You can’t exactly be anti life, so the other side has to pick a worse brand, which is why we went with pro choice. They’re pro guns? Well now they’re “pro freedom.” Nobody can oppose that
Misguided religious fiction can be so weird. I grew up Muslim and was in this Islamic club thing in school, and there had to be a play written by a student with some Islamic moral. The student who wrote it was a chill, funny, likeable guy who wasn't particularly religious. Anyway the play he wrote was about a dude, let's call him Timmy, who wants an hour off for Friday prayers, and his boss is like no, work comes first, besides I don't even pray. And Timmy's like, I gotta pray, fire me if you have to, and the boss is like okay you're fired. Then Timmy goes home and his wife is like I love you, you did the right thing, also I'm pregnant, let's pray. Then Timmy's ex-boss's wife... just fucking dies. She just dies off-screen, cause he doesn't pray. And Timmy gets a better job and a baby and his wife doesn't die and he has a meeting with his new partners and says 'okay let's go pray'. The end. It's weird how at the time the story just sounded weird and kinda silly to us when its implications are honestly horrific. And it's sorta interesting how trying to turn very tradionalist religious ideas into simple morality tales tends to turn people, often women, into props. I think the boss in the story is an asshole for not accomodating his employee's harmless religious practices, but him getting punished with death for that is nonsensical. But it's so much worse that his wife, who had nothing to do with anything, was the one who died instead. The stories in this show kept reminding me of that, how these tradional morality tales tend to teach people lessons by treating their loved ones as disposable props.
Hearing the story of Job made me turn away from (my uncommitted orientation toward) Christianity when i was like..10 or something God killed that guy's whole azz family on a BET? WITH SATAN? AND THEN HE GAVE HIM NEW ONES?
@@no_peace also, hello from someone with a chronic, extraordinarily painful illness. Let's not forget that in addition to the merciless slaughter of his wife and kids, Job was continually (almost daily) tortured with physical agony and sickness (which would've also affected his food/water intake and injured him that way as well). Fun Friday night events in heaven, I guess.
@@no_peace I had a similar experience around the age of 9 with the Samson and Delilah story my mom read me from a Children's Bible. I thought it was outrageous that it was supposed to be a good thing that God gave Samson his strength back so he could kill a bunch of people in a temple!
Jessie Chris' actor is kinda perfect for this show, because his face perfectly expresses that kind of outward simulation of kindness while you can see in his eyes that he's judging you constantly and believes himself to be the arbiter of all morality at the expense of every other person in existence.
I can't get over how much he reminds me of the actor who played Randall Flagg (aka Satan) in The Stand and how incredibly amusing that is. It's not the same person obviously, but the facial structure is similar. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Flagg#/media/File:Randall_Flagg_(Jamey_Sheridan).jpg
Thanks for putting my thoughts into words. I'll also add that he sounds like Tucker Carlson sometimes so every time he talked I had to fight through a miasma of rage in order to pay attention to the point Large Joel was trying to make.
them telling the guy who couldn't find the serial killer that god could only talk to him when he hit rock bottom and had no where else to turn is just the PERFECT example of how christians target people who've had tragedies to try to convert them bc those people are so desperate for an answer/solution they'll try anything and they know they'll have a better chance of roping them into their religion. honestly amazing commentary the show didnt even notice it was making lmao
Honestly I kind of hate the abortion twist even more. The idea of children being legacy haunts me to no end. I didn't have a terrible childhood and I'm on pretty good terms with my parents but if I learned that they had me so that I could continue their lineage or survive them in the event of tragedy it would break me. I had enough existential horror from my own mind pondering my existence as a teen thank you very much I don't need this as well. Being like "hey I guess I'll have a baby because I'm gonna die soon" is kinda terrifying, she's knowingly leaving a kid with no parents. It is fundimentally saying it is better to have a traumatized child than it is to die a nobody. They don't give a sh*t about the life of the fetus or whatever, as long as it eventually grows up to be a Christian they don't actually care.
As an HLS grad, I had to rewind and listen to it again, sure I had misheard. You mean we didn't all need that pesky bachelors degree first? Damn. It's a grad school, guys.
Complains about writing sex, decides instead she wants to write historical romance fiction.... which won't have any sex? Trash romance has as much sex as trash horror...
As someone who has grown up with a mentally and physically handicapped loved one (who I am blessed to know and love), THANK YOU for calling out the first story. It’s challenging to be a full-time caretaker, don’t get me wrong, but it’s about the person you’re caring for!!
“I’m going to die soon? Oh man, I better produce a child who’ll lose their mother during childhood and probably never know their father, meaning they’re completely left up to chance as to whether or not they’re adopted into a good family, stuck in the foster system for 18 years, sent to an abusive home, or any other random assortment of outcomes that may or may not lead to an incredibly shitty life, all while they’re traumatized from my early death. Hope it works out well for them!”
"Yep, truly the kid won't have any mental turmoils that will stick with them into adulthood that. Or be told multiple times that it was "god's will" when having fits of crying hysteria at times. I'm sure that child will be FINE!"
@@paulgallagher5889 and because I'm mean to my daughter she'll have to stay at the dream motel ahhahahah my actions have no meanful consequences muahahahaha
Akteeng But seriously though, who okayed that take? Who okayed this show? It’s like the Hallmark channel ate a prayer service broadcast and vomited it back up…
I’m really glad that you spoke about that first episode; as a disabled person with medium support needs, there’s constantly this voice in the back of my mind that tells me that my disabilities make me a burden to the people around me. And having pretty much all of the disabled characters on television be emotionless, thoughtless shells of human beings that are just used for sympathy for the main character/s and/or inspiration porn for the viewers definitely doesn’t help. Seeing how the life of the woman’s brother was used, and how her relationship with him was such a burden to her, really fucking hurt. Thank you for calling that out, I was a little worried that you would skip over that like most abled people probably would.
"Historical romance" Ah yes, that oh so Christian and sin-free literary genre. I'm sure her extremely religious father will be much more accepting of her writing books with names such as Thirsty For Tudors and My Victorian Adonis.
😂 yes…the funny and sad thing though, as someone who grew up in very conservative circles, is it’s TRUE. Lots of very conservative Christian women read historical romance, at least the kind where sexy doesn’t happen til marriage, like Pride and Prejudice etc, because of that. I think it’s how bawdy stuff is snuck in without questions 😂
@@ZijnShayatanica What I don't get is Charlie got to relive his life again while she's just still that age and having to adjust to a completely different life she never got to live.
12:38 oh so we’re just gonna let “been at the bar this early, have we?” slide on by 😂 the patronizing way he says it strongly suggests she’s a drunk in her new Christian life
Gotta say, as someone who’s been told both “you won’t live to 50” and “you’ll never have kids” the concept that only children bring meaning to short lives sure is GREAT.
That latter part is actually completely and utterly false. The words "you'll never have kids" to me sounds exactly like "congratulations!" I LOVE kids, but have the responsibility of an entire other human being is the most terrifying thing I can think of.
What’s messed up about this show’s stance on abortion is how it commodifies children. That woman’s child is going to grow up without a mother. It’s not about the child. It’s about what the mom or dad gets out of it regardless of what is good for the child.
True, but I feel Joel missed a critical message in the episode. It not only puts a twist in the consequences of abortion. It sets up the timeline where she has a daughter as one where the mother must make the ultimate sacrifice - give her life - for the life of her child. This echoes with the sacrifice of Christ and implies that christians should be willing to sacrifice their own lives in service of God.
@blooshkin Did you not read at all what they said? It’s about sacrifice and she’s sacrificing her life so her child can have life the way that Jesus sacrificed his life to give new life. Yes, she died. They never said she didn’t.
man that first story about the girl with the kid in one timeline and not in the other really bugs me. Often when women aren't able to have access to abortions and systemically forced to have a child that they can't afford to take of, they end up being pushed deeper into poverty, ESPECIALLY if they're single parents that don't have the benefit or financial stability of a two-parent household. There's a reason why the increased accessibility to abortions in the 1970's correlates very closely with the sharp decline in violent crime from 1990 onward; far fewer children that would have been born and grown up in poverty didn't exist by 1990 and onward, so as that cohort grew up, there were fewer adults that were forced to resort to crime to support themselves, and more would-be single mothers that were able to wait until they were more financially stable to have children. Obviously, correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, and there are a lot of other systemic factors that resulted in this drop as well (the Lead-Crime Hypothesis is really interesting to look into and also correlates with the same drop in violent crime). It's really why opposition to abortion by Conservatives really has nothing to do with being "Pro-Life"; denying access to abortion really is just a vehicle to continue to suppress the poor and hold them in poverty, thus their children in poverty. And then when they grow up, they have no choice but to either accept garbage wages and jobs out of desperation, or resort to crime and be imprisoned in the for-profit prison system. It's a lose-lose game for the poor and Working Class.
I also like how they demonize the atheist character as much as they can so they can push their false ideals of “religion is the center of morality” how persecuted they are
What's even more odd is that the supposedly good, Christian mom who knows her husband is dangerous and knows that Atheism is 'evil', stays by his side no matter what. As if a Wife must be with her Husband, even over God and Jesus. (Sarcasm)Cause you know, that fits perfectly with this show!(/Sarcasm)
@@DingoWalley01 On the contrary, that’s exactly what people like that think. Divorce is often seen as a horrible and unforgivable sin, even when it’s to get out of a horrible abusive marriage.
What I also thought was interesting was how they constrewed the father as an athiest just because they experienced a traumatic event and got upset with god. Notice how the father still believes in god (we know this because he plays to him) despite saying otherwise. It shows how something between some and many Christians don't believe that Athiests and/or agnostics can legitimately doubt or question the existence of a/their god. I think that this is why Athiests and Agnostics often get the questions: "Who hurt you?" or "What happened to you?" from some Christians (or religious people in general) whenever these secular people say that they aren't convinced of (a) god's existence. All of this isn't to say that those who left Christianity/religion due to or because of trauma aren't also valid in their opinions.
I used to be obsessed with the Book of Job and what it meant. His children died to teach him a lesson, but that only works if you're a main character. What about his children? Far more than suffering being meaningless, far more than being punished for my sins, I was terrified by the idea that my suffering existed for somebody else's personal growth. I had recently been diagnosed with a long term disability, and I started to really focus on the Evangelical dialogue on disability. The main idea is that a disabled child is "a special angel sent to teach you about kindness", and, though I'm sure that helps some parents find comfort in what can be a painful and exhausting process, there are not words for the pain of feeling that your life, your struggles, your happiness, only has value as somebody else's moral prop. At least it's better than 'your disability is a symptom of incomplete faith and, if your moral were better, you'd be healed', but damn, at least that narrative gives you some agency
I had never even thought of that horrible story in that way. Too busy nearly vomiting at the idea that kids are replaceable property like camels I guess. I’m sorry it hurt you like that
I love how Job is supposed to be inspiring. No, rather, it's the summation of Christianity - the bidding to follow an abusive god while no one else matters but the main character. In the US, evangelicals follow Republican Jesus and are more than happy to have the disabled dead anyway. But it's fucking annoying how these people look down on someone else's problems and preach. It's like how it's "god's plan" that my house is standing and yours isn't. If you are dying of a painful terminal illness, you can't end things because Joan on the other side of the country thinks "life is a gift." The disabled are pieces of some asinine plan someone else has to deal with. Children are toys to be molded to your whims. Like us as disabled people don't matter. Our pain is some god's shitty plan and there's no help whatsoever forthcoming from the people smiling and hi-fiving. An intensely egotistical and hateful philosophy of objectification and murder. It's no surprise that American evangelicals are an anti-human nightmare brigade when they follow examples like Job.
I am just so focused on the angel taking the dude who wanted to hunt down his wife's murderer and stops him from killing the killer in an act of revenge because "he has a normal family later if you don't kill him" and I am focused on it because if presumably the angel can look into the future and change the past and see "god's will" or whatever then why doesn't he just go back in time and stop that guy's wife from being killed. I presume, like most married couples, they have kids together. Are their kids evil and that's why his wife had to die and there's no going back and fixing it??? What are the morals here. Obviously killing someone in an act of revenge is not itself justice but it's framed as wrong because "he can have a normal family after taking yours away and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that normal family gets made by changing the course of history, and instead of stopping this man from being a killer and saving your wife from this drive by shooting I am instead going to just make sure he gets the fulfillment of a family." Like what??? That's the best argument you could make??? If it's God's will that dude's wife gets murdered in an act of senseless violence how is it not also God's will the killer dies in an act of revenge?
If I recall, under Mosaic (old testament) law, it was permitted and even encouraged to take revenge by killing someone who killed your family member. This was called an Avenger of Blood (see Numbers 35:19) There were limits on its usage, but it just goes to show how different the times where this morality comes from are from our own.
@@carlweiskott7623 i can understand that. if they were going with a true old testament moral system in the angel, or even just a comparison of old testament morals vs modern day morals that would be interesting. im more confused with the message not even being "revenge bad" or "revenge good" and instead "this particular guy has a normal wife and kids later. presumably you dont. so you can't take revenge" which is a frankly weird stance to take
If they had decided to do meeting Madison as a "she died in childbirth" situation, there would have been a very different decision to make here. I thought that's where they were going until they said she died of cancer later on.
Pretty much all Evangelical Christian television looks like this. It's because there's no shot variation or thought put into the framing. In most TV, even low-budget TV, a lot of effort is put into framing shots to get across the tone and perspective of the scene, tell us who's the most powerful character in the scene and what emotions the characters are experiencing, etc. Evangelical christian TV, due to a mix of just not caring and a strange suspicion of subtlety, tend to frame everything equally, greatly underuse sound and lighting cues, and compensate by having people just say their emotions to the camera and/or exaggerate them in acting. The result is something with the budget and acting to just pass muster as a 'real' TV show, but with a construction that screams 'amateur production'. It's a bit disconcerting when you're not used to it.
I love how this show thinks you can't make things scary without sex, drugs, violence, or "satanic" creatures. As if horror isn't about fear and the unknown or the responses of humans in situations out of their control. Also Shelley's life sounds like a horror novel. A strong independent writer, turned into a christian G rated historical romance author because of a strange eldritch hotel that wipes away 30 years of her life.
It’s almost like this show is about literally demonizing others and concepts that are antithetical to the religion as propaganda, instead of actually providing some kind of media or insightful commentary.
The writers of this show would be baffled by the concept of internet horror phenomena like The Backrooms. An entire horror universe built off the idea of getting stuck in a dimension of endless dingy hallways. Or really any horror based around the concept of liminal spaces. Hell while we're talking massively successful horror lit many of Stephen King's most effective short stories have hardly any violence in them at all: "The Jaunt," "The End of the Whole Mess," "Survivor Type," etc. One of the defining features of Michael Haneke's notorious self-condemning slasher film "Funny Games" is that all of the explicit violence happens off screen, with Haneke choosing instead to force the audience to marinate in the emotional consequences of said violence without the catharsis or cheap thrills of seeing it carried out. Horror is so much more complex than the people who hate it give it credit for.
I love how the singing episode is clearly building up to some beautiful gospel song, or at least something very emotional and religious. And then you get to the song and it's the most generic radio country shit ever, complete with audible pitch correction.
I can explain "Queen of Scream" for you a bit, Joel, as someone who grew up evangelical and became a writer. Evangelical Christianity tends to drive out its young artists unless they conform to a VERY specific model of art. I was told over and over as a kid that I would write the "great Christian novel," which was understood to include no sex, minimal violence, and moral lessons or Bible verses every other page. When I wrote a play with strong religious themes that happened to be set in a bar, I was forced to change it to a bar and grill where literally only Satan touched alcohol. You can imagine how people reacted to my vampire murder mystery novel at age 13. 😂 Those kinds of restrictions, especially the extra restrictions imposed on women, tend to drive young artists away from the church. It's no coincidence that the main character's new genre is historical romance (a perennial bestseller in Christian bookstores that features women being rewarded for "proper" old-fashioned behavior) and that she's now got a husband (aka a man to be in charge of her, as the evangelical God intended). Ironically, for artists who grew up evangelical, her new life is the horror story. Btw, this is why so much current evangelical art stinks. The most talented artists usually experiment with something "un-Christian" at some point, and get booted. Only those who conform perfectly, or lack the imagination to transgress, are permitted to stay. Makes for a lot of mediocre art.
@@shadenox8164 Well, the Old Testament doesn't really count in those arguments, but, um... * points to graphic descriptions of Jesus' crucifixion * Yeah, you ain't wrong. @Brandon Pilcher
The name "Jesse Chris" tells you all you need to know about the level of thought and creativity the writers would invest. Besides, isn't he supposed to be an angel? How about Gabe Riley?
Ya know, I think it's interesting how a lot of the episodes share the same general theme of selfish protagonists being rewarded by acting selfish. Like, none of these people do the "right thing" because of virtue, they do it because the alternative is worse. In other words, they only pick the "right path" because they selfishly want to avoid something worse. The very first episode has a woman caring for a brother she wants gone, and her mind is only changed when her life gets worse rather than better. Like what if her life DID get better, but the guilt and emotional emptiness of a life without her brother causes her to realize she made a mistake? What if she went back to a WORSE life in the end, because she loved and missed her brother, and realized no amount of material wealth and success could ever replace him? To me that's way more compelling of a story that's supposedly about being virtuous. It's very telling that this show believes that to get people to do the right thing, you have to threaten them and appeal to their selfishness.
On my fifth rewatch I just realised that Tony tacking up Jesse on his offer is simply insane: for all she knows this guy is either pulling an elaborate prank on her or is planning to murder her brother. And yet she still goes through the door. Fascinating (derogatory).
Being a best-selling author, Shelley could just publish whatever book she wanted to write. Even if it flopped hard, the sales of her tremendously popular horror books would back it up.
@@edgarallenhoe3518 yeah, just like Stephen King with The Green Mile and that other prison one with the guy and the poop tunnel. Not to the mention that horror is a window to societal anxieties and general sentiment and a framework for examinig humanity on limit situations, there must be genuine reasons for people to engange with her books and she seems completely oblivious to it XD PS: loved your username
Also, horror is not an easy genre to make/write and requires you to be able to make people feel strong emotions, which, in my opinion, seems like a perfect training for romance as well.
Angels: "If it's God's will it's right. Nothing we do really matters" Also Angels: "This person is making a terrible mistake. This can't be God's will. We need to fix it"
It's so glaring that for me, watching that series would be like watching horror. Seriously, just hearing about it in this video made my skin crawl at some points.
Basically, these stories are about omnipotent, omniscient god getting "do-overs" for "his plan" when it doesn't go right the first time -- it's just whack...
I actually think this is the only unfair criticism of the show. I’m not religious but I think you have to grant the story the theological context it’s in. Beatified Angels are generally understood to be incapable of acting against God’s will by their nature. Humans are granted free will by God and can choose to reject or accept God. That is really the fundamental distinction between angels and humans. I think it makes perfect sense, in that context, for angels to speak deterministically about themselves whilst also viewing humans as free agents.
“She got accepted to Harvard Law right out of high school.” God this script is incompetent. Edit: A student in New York WITH A PHD? The highest terminal degree? How is he still a student??? This script was written by an alien.
I despise any writer who makes it even a question whether it’s okay for a character to wish someone disabled were dead just because they’re inconvenient
Real talk: the story for Charlie would be so much better if he was offered the chance to go back and refused it. He could say something along the lines of, "I've already gotten my second chance. That's all I need." It would really drive home his commitment to doing better. He's willing to live with the consequences of his actions and improve himself. It would be, dare I say, an act of faith? Something surprisingly lacking in this series.
This ending would also say a lot about forgiveness, not just from others, but from the self. So much of Christianity is about forgiveness but this show seems so uninterested in making it's characters own up to their mistakes and forgive THEMSELVES, instead God just magically fixes their lives so they never made any mistakes, which is NOT how God's forgiveness is supposed to work.
This episode, and the episode with the writer both seem to show an uncomfortable truth of the writers of this series view redemption. In both episodes, the central character can't just work to live a better life. Their actions needs to be erased from existence. As such, the series presents sin as something that a person must bear forever, rather than something you can be relieved of through hard work. Essentially, the show isn't meant to make to its viewers think critically about how to live a good Christian life. Instead, it's meant to assure their audience that they are leading a good life already. Whether this med school drop out turns his life around is an after thought.
Yeah, writing horror fiction makes you unable to write anything else ever, including grocery lists. I wrote a short horror novel in high school and now I have to do my grocery shopping blindly and always forget something. And every girl I message flees in horror when I say her eyes look like twin graves.
