What is The Goth Rebel Dream Girl?

may 21 the twitter user nerdy asians brought deadpool 2 to task for its inclusion of the character of yukio pointing out how she represented a long line of western media featuring spunky asian characters with color highlights in their hair to help define their spunkiness this caused a minor movement as people discussed the association of diet hair streaks as a degenerative media trope what i don't think nerdy asians realized was that they were onto something much bigger something that i've noticed for a long time and something that i've wanted to bring to the attention of the world to show you how deep the rabbit hole really goes as i introduce you to the goth rebel dream girl are you drunk enough yet to sleep with me [Music] answer the question so i'm sure many of you have heard of the manic pixie dream girl the term was coined by film critic nathan raven during his review of elizabethtown to describe kristen dunst's character the term stuck and came to define the archetype as seen in dozens of different films across all different eras i like to listen to the songs in my head sorry i paid the cab driver and buttons when did you first suspect you were dating a manic pixie dream girl everything seemed so perfect at first you know she was cute but quirky and awkward on her first date um she said she wanted pancakes for dinner but i felt alive but then after a few months she can't feed herself she can't hate bills she just wonders at the marvel's every moment in case you aren't familiar with the archetype just think about every character zoe decinelle usually plays hello i came home early yes what i'm doing sexy things with the pillow i'll pick that up later and she's going out to find a rebound who's that girl it's just wait did you just make up a theme song for yourself said i need rebound sex and it totally worked he asked me out they're usually defined by their overly quirky personalities and their abilities to help soulful brooding artistic men embrace the greater mysteries and adventures of the cosmos since this archetype has been identified it's managed to slowly die out in media with its last major appearance being in the young adult coming of age movie paper towns which was designed as a deconstruction of the manic pixie dream girl trope but maybe that doesn't really matter because now they've moved out of the movie screens and into brooklyn by extension though the goth rebel dream girl has not been very well explored despite its ubiquity in the world of animation the goth rebel dream girl is typically a supporting character who's a potential love interest or at least an object of affection for the main character typically she's defined by her sass her alternative sense of style that will include punker goth clothing or anything that defines a sort of niche counterculture aesthetic usually she's athletic or sporty the whole idea is that she has this kind of down to earth girl next door kind of appeal these characters whether intentionally or by design tend to become fetish objects something that is coveted and desired by the fan base of whatever piece of media the archetype appears in and shows up again and again in weird fetish art in terms of characters that fit into the grdg archetype here are a few i've observed gogo tamago from big hero 6 sabine from star wars rebels wild style from the lego movie jailbreak from the emoji movie claire nunez from trollhunters cersei from generator rex fontaine necton from the deep triana orpheus from the ventra brothers lucy loud from the loud house rosaline the vampire queen from adventure time samantha manson from danny phantom mai from avatar the last airbender raven from teen titans gwen from total drama island joan of arc from clone high rogue from x-men evolution wendy from gravity falls jesse from undergrads enid from okko and jane from daria now this list is by no means comprehensive but they are all the ones i could find now the reason i think this archetype exists and so prevalent in the animation world is basically because animators are sad and lonely people the craft of animation is very long and time consuming a dedication towards this craft usually comes at the expense of something else which is usually social contact so of course we have the long-standing trend of animators drawing their dream waifus into their work i think we all know the archetype of the introverted artist who just wants to draw cool cartoons but doesn't want a normie girl who doesn't understand his needs or what's so brilliant about chuck jones or hao miyazaki his desk is littered with figurines and collectibles that make him so unique as his collection of artifacts lets him express his incredible passions so while this person may not necessarily find their dream hipster girlfriend in real life where they have to settle for normie nancy that doesn't mean that they can't draw their dream girl and animation because in the world of animation anything can happen that's my theory at least as to why this archetype exists and it's so prevalent and again it ties into the original tweet with the asian girls and their colored hair streak many of the grdgs tend to be asian because of course many an animator spends their childhood raised on a steady diet of cheap anime so of course asian girl tends to fit into the desired fetish palette in creating the goth rebel dream girl the best example is taking a look at gogo tamago's original design from marvel comics versus a redesign in the animated big hero 6 movie where she goes from becoming a more traditional superhero to a punk rebel design that is loved by fetish artists across the interwebs it all feeds into something i call the craig mccracken lauren faust fantasy in case you don't know craig mccracken is a prolific animator who's worked for several decades he's done everything from work on dexter's laboratory to creating the powerpuff girls and also creating wander over yonder which unleashed this upon the interwebs i'm not your girlfriend or the frightened princess i'm not a little bird who needs your help to fly nope [Music] i'm the bad guy and yeah i guess lord dominator also counts as rdg as well now craig mccracken is married to lauren faust another prolific animator responsible for many things but most importantly the very successful reboot of my little pony if you could take a look she's like the real life personification of the rdg and easily the fantasy ideal that every lonely male animator would like for their wife's girlfriend an ideal to aspire towards in their own personal and professional life now i'm not here to shame anyone for liking or creating these kind of characters or start some kind of twitter hashtag claiming that they need to be purged from the world of animation i'm just here to point out how they are a pervasive ubiquitous trend but i do think that there is a darker side to the goth rebel dream girl fantasy archetype that itself is tied to the many cases of sexual harassment that are unfortunately very common in the animation industry such examples is the firing of the creator of clarence skyler page after he was accused of groping animator emily partridge the termination of chris savio the creator of loud house from his own series after several sexual harassment allegations and of course john lasseter stepping away from running disney animation after the numerous sexual harassment complaints for inappropriate touching hugging and kissing many of the female artists who worked at pixar it's something we see again and again in the animation industry and my theory as to why we see it happen so often is because the girls who tend to usually work in the field tend to fit the bill of real-life versions of the rdgs so you have animators drawing out their fantasy of their desired objects of affection while those objects of affection work alongside them and when the feelings of loneliness and horniness collide with the power and financial dynamics of office life then you have a disaster waiting to happen so what is the solution should there be some kind of hashtag movement to permanently ban animators from creating these characters should we publicly shame introverted people for creating characters in mass that reflect their deepest fantasies and wish fulfillment i don't think shame is a particularly effective tactic we've had eight years of the gilded liberal paradise under obama which saw the rise of several left-leaning media titans like buzzfeed huffington post upworthy and even traditional media fixtures like mtv chasing the get woke or go broke mentality constantly turning out a never-ending stream with progressive news stories and videos a never-ending crusade to spread wokeness and teach men to respect women and stamp out misogyny because if we could somehow get that message through all the bad stuff will go away but the problem is people are fundamentally selfish we've seen self-proclaimed male feminists like chris hardwick and josh whedon being forced to reveal their real colors and these slogans of gender equality just become blank jargon to parrot and masks for guys to hide their real motives and justify their skeevy behavior the thing is we all see things from our own limited perspective where we are the heroes of our own stories fundamentally we are social animals that crave physical interaction attention and affection and when deprived of those things we tend to go a little crazy which is why isolation is one of the worst punishments that can be administered to another human being so at the heart of all this harassment in the animation world i think there's a beating core that often gets overlooked that's a crushing sense of loneliness and denial i think one of the best most honest explanations for the rationale that leads to such behavior is dan harmon's apology towards his inappropriate attitude and harassment towards community writer megan ganz when he was running the series before being fired in his apology he bears some greater truths that go beyond simply having a traditional 1950s misogynist attitude in in 2000 whatever whatever i can't remember 2009 2006 2000 something something i had the privilege of running a network sitcom and i uh i was attracted to a employee i really want to be careful about that language i think a huge part of the problem is a culture of feeling things that you think are unique and significant because they're happening to you and saying things like i had feelings for and i it i fell for and all these things i mean the most clinical way i can put it in fessing up to my crimes is that i was attracted to a writer that i had power over because i was a showrunner and i knew enough to know that these feelings were bad news that was easy enough to know i knew that they ran the risk of undercutting people's faith and my judgment her faith in her talents the other writer's respect for me the entire production the audience i knew that i wasn't doing anybody any favors by feeling these things and so i did the cowardly easiest laziest thing you could do with feelings like that and i didn't deal with them and in not dealing with them i made everybody else deal with them especially her flirty creepy everything other than overt enough to constitute betraying your living girlfriend to whom you're going home every night who is actually smart enough and respectful enough to ask you do you have feelings for that young writer that you're talking about that you're paying all this attention to and saying to her no because the trick is if you lie to yourself you can lie to everybody it's really easy and so that's what i continued to do telling myself and anybody that threatened to confront me with it that if you thought what i was doing was creepy or flirty or unprofessional then it's because you were the sexist you were jealous i was supporting this person i'm a mentor i'm a feminist it's your problem not mine it's your you're the one that actually is seeing things through that lens and and so i let myself keep doing it and it's not as if this person didn't repeatedly communicate to me the idea that what i was doing was divesting her of a recourse to integrity i just didn't hear it and it because it didn't profit me to hear it and this was after all happening to me right there's a profound sadness to this apology something bolstered by the entitlement of his position dan harmon is not what most would consider a conventionally attractive person he's an alcoholic he's overweight and has a beer belly if you saw him working at a local checkout lane you'd probably want to avoid eye contact but because of his comedic writing achievements he's gained a status that places him above other failed 40-something alcoholics who strip off their clothes at public events and because of those achievements when dan harmon sees the grdg of his dreams who is a writer working under him who he has power over he feels that she should warrant a reciprocation of his affection to give him the relationship he believes he deserves and because of his one redeeming trait that cancels out all of his faults because it put him in a position of power he was also in a position to abuse that power to try and get what he wanted but that's not the world we live in every person we find ourselves infatuated with or attracted to will not be guaranteed to feel that way back no matter how entitled we may feel towards that affection they are under no obligation to reciprocate it back that is just a fundamental fact of life that everyone needs to learn to deal with no matter what their race gender or sexual orientation might be but some people can't deal with that fact in their desperation to fill the emotional hole driven by their social need for physical affection they take things too far and another metoo story gets its wings it doesn't help that we've been fed so many narratives featuring guys going after their one true love again and again and again what would normally probably constitute harassment in the real world is considered romantic just imagine if something like scott pilgrim played out in real life if a socially inept loser like scott went after the grdg of ramona flowers but because the story didn't demand it he never won her over think about how uncomfortable his continued persistence starts to become as he orders amazon package after amazon package just to force her to visit him so is there a solution to stop the western world of animation from creating grdgs so poor people don't obsess over them as an unattainable ideal to fill the emotional holes in their hearts i don't think so i think shame and guilt are very poor motivators to force people to do what you want for example dan harmon eventually got the grdg girlfriend of his dreams in comedian aaron mcgathy but their tumultuous relationship as covered in the harmantown podcast and movie was something that was ultimately so toxic for both of them that the best thing that ever happened was when they eventually divorced and split up for good so even if you do get to fulfill your fantasy it may decay into something that becomes destructive and ultimately toxic and maybe that's the truth no one likes to hear that a fantasy is ultimately a fantasy and not indicative of real life it's an ideal but to pursue something that is not tangible in real life to fulfill some kind of deep-seated emotional need is a recipe for disaster but this is a lesson that can't be taught in a hashtag campaign it's not something that can be transmitted in a buzzfeed article it's a personal lesson everyone must learn on their own so to you dear viewer if you have some jdrg fantasy girlfriend you obsess over in the fictional world and see something that reminds you of that in real life i ask that you make sure that you always take a step back and ask yourself is what i want and desire something that will ultimately make them uncomfortable if the answer is yes then it might be a good idea to withdraw yourself before someone gets hurt [Music] you

Channel: Lobster Magnet's Review: The Channel

Views: 1,058,612

Rating: 3.779393 out of 5

Keywords: What is The Goth Rebel Dream Girl?, Goth, Rebel, Dream, Girl, Mavis, Wendy, Gravity Falls, Go Go Tamago, Gwen, Total Drama Island, Dan Harmon, Metoo, Sexual Harassment, Animation Industry, John Lassater, Western Waifu, Western Animation, Lego Movie, Wild Style, TV Goths, Goth TV, Cartoon Goths, Cartoon Goth Girls, Punk Cartoons, Cartoon Punks, #metoo, Sam Marston, Gwen Total Drama Island, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Adventure Time, Animation, Animators

Id: Eop3V1IUryo

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

What more would you expect from a video titled “What is The Goth Rebel Dream Girl.”

[u/djspookychar]

That video was a hot mess. Give me my 15 minutes back

[u/[deleted]]

the real cringe comes from thinking about how much prep work and editing went into making this

[u/imonlyaman]

Do people say "normie" now or is this guy just an incel with a goth fetish?

[u/[deleted]]

WOW.

[u/bleunt]

How was this confusing?

[u/Chronalgia]

Ah yes who could forget "Rosaline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time"?

[u/CynDerNatsu]

Sorry for such a long video, visit the comment section of the video to see everyone’s opinion on it. It’s very strange

[u/Dave-1066]

Two things that you’ll never find in this life:

1. A normal adult who is fascinated by cartoons.

2. A normal adult who is fascinated by cartoons.