Hi! Hope you are doing well. By any chance, have you happened to watch The Glory?
Oh no.
I say "oh no" because I have, in fact, watched Part 1. I will not be watching Part 2. And... my feelings on this story run long, and they run deep. I have only talked to two friends about it because my feelings are so unpopular but--
I hate The Glory. I truly, truly hate it as a story, as a piece of media, and I cannot for the life of me understand why it gets any praise at all.
Well, that's not fair, I guess. I can understand--it appeals to the id. But I still think people neglect critical thinking when it comes to this story, and as someone for whom this issue--bullying--is extremely personal in a lot of ways, I find it offensive.
*Also, I do want to acknowledge that there are absolutely cultural elements I am not familiar with. That said, I'm also not coming from "just googled it" when it comes to the specific cultural elements around bullying portrayed in The Glory; I do have experience there. However, I was not raised in this culture, so there are certainly many elements I'm missing*
Listen, I know I'm usually in the "fiction isn't reality!" camp, but I also always add that fiction doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is shaped by and therefore can shape reality. Lots of factors go in to determining how, and I do believe stories, especially those that deliberately try to be "issues" stories, should take care to be responsible. The Glory frames itself as an issues story, and it takes no care to be responsible whatsoever.
Yeah, yeah, it's a revenge story. But revenge stories, frankly, are very dull stories most of the time unless they are 1) shocking or 2) intellectually interesting. The Glory has no interest in provoking questions beyond the very basic "oh, did she go too far?"
The Glory in a rare category of my opinions where I think it is a bad story and the people who made it should reconsider their choices. It goes along with 13 Reasons Why in terms of how NOT to tell a story about an important issue, even if the makers are well intentioned (which I do think was the case for 13RW).* Not every way of bringing awareness to an issue is equal. There are irresponsible ways to talk about issues in fiction that actually reinforce harmful stereotypes, and that transcend the boundary between fiction and reality because the story is designed precisely to do so, and this is one of those cases.
*(Given what came out about the director of The Glory, it doesn't even seem like there was a good intention here. Also this was 0% shocking because the entire damn story is literally "How Bullies Think 101" but presenting it as how a victim thinks and without the self-awareness of calling that out. It's dishonest, unhealthy, irresponsible, shallow, and uses shock value to cover the fact that it has little depth. I hate to tell you but literally 99.99% of bullies think their victims deserve it. This could of course be an interesting meta commentary, but the story's not interested in anything deeper than "bullying bad," which everyone, even the worst of bullies, would say if you asked them if bullying is good or bad.)
So yeah. I hate The Glory.
I will say this: as someone who was bullied as a child, as someone who has worked with victims and with bullies themselves... The Glory is offensive, inhuman, and perpetuates every surface-level understanding of what bullying is, who perpetrates it, and who suffers from it. The reality is that portraying bullies as people who are just born bad is wrong. Morally, it's wrong. Issue-wise, it's unhelpful.
I could tell you stories that would make the abuse depicted in The Glory look tame. I could tell you what happened to those kids, and I could tell you about what it was like to protect kids from their bullies at the expense of my own wellbeing. I could tell you how helpless it feels when you know that other authority figures aren't just ignoring it, but actively contributing to bullying kids, and how many hours of sleep I lost working out plans to protect kids so that even if I couldn't save them, they knew someone cared. I'm still in touch with a lot of these kids today, actually.
I could also tell you what it was like to sit with those perpetrators and understand their lives, what motivated them, how goddamn scared and hurt they were, because hurting people hurt people, and know that I couldn't protect them the way every child deserves to be protected. When you've exhausted every legal avenue to save a kid who abused another and there's nothing you can do, how do you live with that? I could tell you what it was like to watch a child attempt suicide in front of me. Except I don't want to violate those kids any more.
I never met any kid whom I thought was doomed to be a perpetual victim or a perpetual bully. I did meet kids who were beyond my help, and the help my associates could get for them, but it should never have gotten to that point.
Even people who like to perpetuate the idea that rich kids are the problem--I've worked with kids who were literally royalty, who flew on private planes, whose parents are Important, and I've worked with the kids whose parents are coolies and who don't ever get fed at their home. You know what's remarkably similar about extreme wealth and extreme poverty? Attachment issues in their kids that lead to behavioral issues, because their parents aren't around for them physically or emotionally. Yes, rich kids still have more options, not denying that at all. But there's an interesting complexity here that could make for an interesting story, but The Glory is more "rich kids bad." Which is just not a particularly interesting or insightful commentary itself.
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Tom Paris had to plan how to build The Delta Flyer (a large shuttle craft) for years. Paris, Tuvok, Seven of Nine, Harry Kim and B’Elana Torres spent days on the construction working flat out, around the clock.
How did Geordie build a whole damned starship in his spare time in a matter of days? The Enterprise D is the size of a city. They literally have shipyards where they build these giant starships- we’ve seen them in episodes with Utopia Planitia. Hundreds of people working for years to fit every bolt, every bulkhead, every panel, every turbo lift.
And Geordie was able to replicate it all perfectly, in his spare time, by himself, in just a few days? The Enterprise is at least several hundred times bigger than the Delta Flyer. Where were you hiding this humongous side project, Geordie? Why didn’t anyone notice this starship as big as a city in your pocket? Where did you get the materials? Where’d you get the warp core? Who helped you construct it all, or did you do it yourself? Because my man, if you built a fucking giant STARSHIP by yourself, in just a few days, in your SPARE time?? I mean you spent most of your days scolding your adult daughter about how she didn't measure up to you, so how did you possibly have time to build a dumbass ship?
If you managed to build a huge star ship in a matter of days by yourself, you should be the new Prime Minister of the Universe. You are the most powerful human being out there. That's like Q levels of magic.
Cos the entire Voyager crew was really tired working together flat out to build the Delta Flyer- a shuttle— and it still has to do test flights and corrections. The hull even breached on their first outing. They had to upgrade it several times.
How did you happen to know you needed to recreate your old starship to begin with? Again, Q levels of competency, there. Is Livingston the fish in Picard’s ready room replicated, too? Picard's archaeology books? His Shakespeare compendium?
How many test flights did you take out this giant star ship on in the couple of days you were working on this thing? You even had time to get the carpet right? And recreate the plaque? And do all of this without anyone noticing.
Even Data working at super-human speed couldn’t build the Battle Bridge or a shuttle the size of the Delta Flyer in a few days by himself- but you built a whole ass giant ship??
It took over 1000 people to run this giant ship on a normal day. And even with it fully automated, the idea that 7 people could run the entire ship into a battle?
CRUSHER: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.
At least in ‘Remember Me,’ the idea of such a small number of people running a giant starship was preposterous- laughable. But apparently you can run a ship the size of a city with 7 people when the fuel is nostalgia.
Oh and after he’s rebuilt this perfect Federation ship, they’re not going to put it into service? They just rechristen the Titan instead? Or was it just so poorly put together that just the bridge was perfect and the rest was held together with duct tape? it really could only handle that one little battle? In which case, shouldn't you have spent more time making sure the ship was space-worthy instead of replicating and laying the fucking carpet??
The fact that Picard writers/show runners thought this was passable and not laughable is sad. audiences swallowed this bullshit is just pathetic, and shows how low the bar is for quality as long as nostalgia is the fuel.
Fuck. This. Show. Fuck this nostalgic impossible bullshit. Fuck this magic replica of a giant starship. Fuck Picard. Fuck that carpet.
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