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Based Camp: The Science of Being a Villain

Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Episode • Jul 7, 2023 • 26m

Join Simone and Malcolm as they dive deep into the intriguing narrative tropes of heroes and villains, exploring societal expectations and the status quo. They draw upon popular culture references, such as Batman and Spider-Man, to illustrate their points. In this thought-provoking conversation, they ponder the concept of "Villains Act, Heroes React," the paradoxical portrayal of heroes and villains in media, and the real-world implications of these stereotypes. If you've ever wondered how societal norms impact the narratives we consume daily, this discussion will open new avenues of thought. So, get ready for a journey into the depths of societal constructs and perceptions, and don't forget to vote for your favorite 'villain'.

Transcript:

Malcolm: [00:00:00] inheriting your powers is a really common trope of heroes. Mm. And achieving powers on your own is a very common trope of villains. Interesting. Yeah. Even when heroes didn't inherit their powers, like Batman, he inherited his money. well, you want the rich, the people who deserve like the, the inherited rich, this long aristocratic, the people who inherited their powers, the people who, that they are there to maintain social order,

Simone: I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react . While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world,

Malcolm: the villain trope is somebody who's fighting against the status quo to try to make things potentially better because . To really make things better, you have to move things past the status quo. You have to move things to the next potential stage.

Malcolm: Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be joining you today for my super villain layer.

Malcolm: We're talking about villainy more generally today, but I like to be. Super. [00:01:00]

Simone: You are always super

Malcolm: in my car. People may be wondering why I don't have my ring today. I lose it all the time. And in today's one of those instances, she jokes, I'm like, Sonic's a hedgehog. I I bump into something and rings go flying everywhere.

Simone: I think I have one. Tied to the car keys. You do do

Malcolm: that. I haven't taken that one. Cause it's hard to get off the car thing. But I'll, I'll use it. That's exactly why it's there. We're going meet with some like. Senator types. And

Simone: so that's why we always have backups all over the place.

Malcolm: I gotta look like a traditional conservative male if they're gonna fund our campaign.

Malcolm: So we gotta look normal. But actually Simone's the one who we're hoping to run.

Simone: Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. But, we'll see if people vote for villains, which I honestly think is how we're often framed in the media. But we read a great tweet recently about heroes and villains from a friend of ours that I thought was just brilliant.

Simone: So she, she noted. I recently heard the screenwriting trope Villains Act heroes react for the first time and it destroyed me. [00:02:00] While there are counter examples, it does seem like the good guys are more likely to protect the status quo rather than try to change the world, and that is so true and I find it really interesting.

Malcolm: Yeah. No, I, I think it is really interesting and I am, well, , the series that both of us were immediately thinking of when this came up was the Kingsman series. Mm-hmm. , because the Kingsman is always about, somebody has some like vision for the future often how they can make the world a better place.

Malcolm: And then there's this secret society for like wealthy, or at least culturally wealthy, if not individually wealthy, but, but it seems like the vast majority of the members do come from wealthy families. British, like elitist who are maintaining the status quo. Yeah. It's like about a secret society completely dedicated to maintaining the status quo of the world.

Malcolm: But in the second movie one of the things we thought was really funny is to say one of the villains. Basically they're lacing, spoiler, by the way. Drugs, with something that kills people to remove the, the dangers of drug addicts where what do they, the other villains like, doesn't [00:03:00] care.

Malcolm: And they're like, yeah, we'll let it happen. Because it removes the drug addicts from society and will make the world a better place. And it's like, that's brutal, but like an interesting theory at least. But what I loved, and Simone pointed this out to me, is how do they demonstrate that they're actually the bad guys?

Malcolm: And you definitely shouldn't be on their side. They, they

Simone: started doctoring festival drugs, which is just a step too far.

Malcolm: They started to potentially hurt upper middle class people. And they, no, the real scene when you're supposed to realize, oh, these guys are really the bad guys.

Malcolm: It is, when it turned out the like, Well-paid office worker was using like Adderall or something as like a performance booster and you're

Simone: like, oh, I thought it was when like a, a bunch of basically Instagram influencers were using the like laced. Lace drug and like talking about it and then talking about the side effects, and that's how it showed up in society that this was a widespread issue that many people were being affected.

Malcolm: Well, no, but I'm thinking about how they coded for the audience. Cause it was [00:04:00] clear that they were afraid that a little too much of the audience would agree with this person. So they need to show it affecting upper middle class people as well, because that's the way most people identify. Regardless of their actual economic circumstances, it's, it's really interesting.

Malcolm: There was a study done on this that's like something like 95% of Americans identify as middle class. Yes.

Simone: Yeah, actually I was just reading a 1982 Ms. Manners book while we were on a call like earlier today. And she Emily post joked that there are three classes in America, lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class, and there's like literally nothing else.

Malcolm: Is great. Yeah. The versions I, I love that you say that. That is, that is so true because that's how everyone identifies Totally. That because nobody wants to identify as upper class in our society,

Simone: except for us, because we're scared. Quotes

Malcolm: elite, right? Yeah. We're scared. Quotes elite. We will take on the, we will be the only upper class family in all of America.

Malcolm: That is what we're gonna do. We will just take that segment in society. Just for us, just for Malcolm and

Simone: Simone and, and no bless o bleach.

Malcolm: You could [00:05:00] say No. Bless o oblig. Yeah, I I remember I got a, a long thing about basically Noble o Oblig when I got into Stanford Business School, but it was from, from a family member.

Malcolm: They like sent me this, but they, they, they said with great power comes great responsibility. Of course, I'm thinking, Spider-Man, right? I'm like, oh, this is a Spider-Man quote. And what I love is that Spider-Man, and I realize, no, that's just like no blessed beliefs summarized Spider-Man is Spider-Man based on no blessed beliefs.

Malcolm: I think that's antithetical to his character, but that is what I associate that quote with most.

Simone: So, oh God, yeah. No, this, this is so indicative of our generation. I was also just watching a YouTuber who was like, oh, it's like they say in the office dress for the job you want. And I'm like, that, that didn't, that didn't come from the office lady.

Simone: But no, this is, yeah, of course, as Spider-Man's uncle says, as, as the office. Yeah. As Spider-Man's uncle says, it's famously quoted in the show, the office.

Malcolm: Oh, man. Oh my gosh. Wait,

Simone: wasn't there a joke like that? That's Stone Middle class. I, I don't know what [00:06:00] to say.

Malcolm: I, I think you're good. No, I wanna talk about this larger concept.

Malcolm: Cause I think it, it leads to a lot of problems in our society. Mm-hmm. Where any organization that is trying to change things from the status quo, or any individual that's trying to change things from the status quo is seen as villainous. Oh yeah. And. I, I, it's actually really interesting.

Malcolm: I, I think that the people who fight for the status quo in many ways want to see themselves as like the big heroes. I think that's what like Megan and Harry have been doing. They're, they're, they're the true warriors of the, of the status quo. And, and, and that's how they show that they're good people because they look, they say, what does society say?

Malcolm: Makes you a good person, and then I'm gonna do and care. About those things mm-hmm. That society say make you a good person. But I think in reality when people see individuals, especially individuals in positions of enormous privilege, just going along with what society tells them to, it also makes them at least a large portion of the [00:07:00] population, disgusted with them, but they don't see them as villains.

Malcolm: It's interesting is they're often not displayed as villains. They're displayed as like slimy. They're displayed as, as, as pathetic and, and, and like money grubbing, but not villains, but mm-hmm. Elon Musk. Elon Musk clearly has like a vision of how he sees the world could be better and is trying to move towards that vision.

Malcolm: Even if he does get distracted at times. Because his, his vision is quite expansive and not a lot of other people are working on it. But he does a lot of stuff. I dunno what to say, but what a super villain character to the extent that if you look at, I think a lot of content now they are actually framing the villains around archetypes of Elon Musk.

Malcolm: Is, is you, you see this in a lot of shows now. Elon Musk based villains, I've like

Simone: noticed this, but Ironman was also like broadly inspired by his archetype as well. Although, I guess you could argue that, oh, is he trying to change

Malcolm: the world a new, I don't know. I wa I watch Iron Man and he's.

Malcolm: Trying to, he [00:08:00] anhe be less, not like in wars, just have like weapons in wars be less efficient. I

Simone: thought he, wasn't he a weapons dealer? I thought he was, yeah. And he was a

Malcolm: weapons dealer before that. So he is only like trying, I don't see him as being somebody, he doesn't fit the villain trope. But the villain trope is somebody who's fighting against the status quo to try to make things potentially better because to make things better.

Malcolm: That's the thing about the status quo. Right. You can be at a local optimum, but to really make things better, you have to move things past the status quo. You have to move things to the next potential stage. And what's really interesting is if you look at our message and all of our prenatal advocacy, you could say, well, a lot of people, one of the problems was trying to move things past the status quo is it removes individual agency to an extent, which is, which you see a lot of climate activists doing.

Malcolm: So I can guess, I can see how those people could be framed as villainous. But when you look at prenatal advocacy, it's all based around individual. Like, like the major organization, which is ours, like the core mission we have is to ensure maximum reproductive [00:09:00] freedom at the level of individual families and maximum cultural freedom at the level of individual families.

Malcolm: So even when we're fighting for more individual autonomy, Insofar as that autonomy removes the autonomy of the system, like trying to create new school systems and stuff for, for high school instead of these government ones which we see as erasing people's cultures. We get framed as, as super villains because we're trying to change the world.

Malcolm: Well, I think there are two,

Simone: there are two broad things in place. One is on a, on a individual level humans are afraid of change. Humans really don't like change. Different is bad. Having to try something new is bad and scary. So that's, that's one side of it. So anyone who's trying to push something new on you, even if like let's say they're trying to get you to try a new food and it looks gross and it ends up tasting really good, but you're still like hating them for making you try it, right?

Simone: That that's something that, that is ultimately villainous cuz it's different. We don't like different. The other thing is societies at large are very optimized around driving and enforcing conformity. So anything that fails to conform, [00:10:00] anything that is different or new, even if it's better, is going to be villainized.

Simone: Because of course, I think in the past and, and like from an evolutionary standpoint, that which is extremely different. Is more likely to probably do something that is going to cause risk, harm, infection al vulnerability. Well, you also

Malcolm: just the cultural evolution standpoint. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm: Which is to say the cultures that have survived are the ones that are the best at stamping out ideas and world perspectives that clash with their own. Mm. Because they, they represent an intrinsic threat to the existing world order, right? Mm. That's why you burn witches, right? You, because they represent a cultural mutation.

Malcolm: Mm. And, and that's what we are seeing the dominant culture do today. So you are right. It definitely has that element to it. . To the first point you made though, that different is scary. I think even the idea, even making people aware that things will change, that society will change, that the world will change, [00:11:00] is threatening and to an extent can make you a villain.

Malcolm: Just airing that. Mm-hmm. So one of the points that we make is, If you look at humanity, what it means to be human will change. Mm-hmm. Whether it's through genetic technology or AI or human integration with electronics and stuff. And so a lot of cultural groups, they're like, well, that is bad. Like humans should stay exactly what humans are today because if we deviate from that, then we're something else, and that is bad or monstrous, or.

Malcolm: Whatever. Right. But the problem is, is then you really only have two potential futures. Either we do differentiate and we will differentiate in the future. I think it's inevitable. Mm-hmm. Cause even if one country, or one region, or one culture effectively prevents this type of experimentation and change, any region that does will just so significantly outcompete the ones that don't, those cultural groups will become economically irrelevant due to the advantages, the cultural groups that engage in.

Malcolm: Genetic and [00:12:00] technological change we'll have. Yeah. But then the cultural groups that are against that stuff, they will need to be very dictatorial in how they impose that stuff. Mm-hmm. So whenever I see a show like, what we were watching or Orville or something like yesterday and, and that the characters in it, like the human characters that they think.

Malcolm: Far in the future, thousands of years in the future that HU humans would look still broadly like we think humans look today. That's just absurd. Like that could only happen if basically a fascist one world government takes power that systematically prevents any sort of human technological integration and any sort of genetic selection or genetic Advancement.

Malcolm: But even if you had that, it really wouldn't work. And the reason why it really, you'd also then need to kill a lot of babies. So the reason you need to kill a lot of babies in that scenario is only a few generations ago, it was true that about 50% of human infants died in when they were babies, right?

Malcolm: Young deaths was really common. But this had a big impact on our genes. It took a lot of potentially [00:13:00] negative things out of our genes now that most babies survive. What it means is the things that were being selected against cancers and the like, are going to begin to build up in the human genome at a really fast rate rate.

Malcolm: So if you go three or four generations down the line, we are going to be and, and you, and nothing happens. We're gonna be walking balls of cancer. Of course there's three solutions to this. One is to genetically, crisper out the, the, the parts of the gene that are causing these problems.

Malcolm: Another is to pre-select embryos that aren't pro to these problems. So you're still having the babies die, basically, but the babies are dying at the embryo stage instead of the stage of a human child. Or you kill the children who are prone to this, you test them, which, which seems like the obviously immoral answer.

Malcolm: But I don't know. , I guess you could say that you could use some technology to edit the genes of adults, like, use maybe a virus as like a vector. Mm-hmm. But that's really hard to do whenever you're talking about, like, editing a person's genes for like [00:14:00] cancer or something like that.

Malcolm: The problem is, is our, our, our bodies are made up of billions, I wanna say, of cells, billions of cells. And you need to, you need to edit the DNA of every one of those cells that, that's really hard to do. And, and then I don't know that, that to me also doesn't seem like a good answer with any sort of near future technology.

Malcolm: Yeah, not near future, not near future technology, but there might be other solutions to it. The broad point here being is the only way that we end up with a future where humans five, 10,000 years from now, look broadly like humans do today, is if you have a fascist state that is essentially preventing.

Malcolm: Human genetics or human genetic toying or human integration with technology. Mm-hmm. But the other thing that always shocks me is when these shows think they're being like progressive by showing different ethnic groups. The only way that 10,000 years from now, we would still have.

Malcolm: Black people and white people is largely [00:15:00] if racism survives in like a big way.

Simone: Oh. Like if, yeah, if groups still like stay isolated

Malcolm: and don't inter well, you would need to have some sort of genetic isolation of the different ethnic groups for those groups to stay, looking anything like we think of today as black people, white people, Asian people.

Malcolm: Yeah. So again, like when I see a show, which is so interesting, you see a show like Star Trek and they're trying to. Portray it as all really good. And in the back of my head I'm thinking, oh, so this is like a super racist society, was a fascist, dictatorial government. Which I, I suppose is why I see like star Starship troopers as such a brighter future.

Malcolm: Mm. Because at least it's an honest future. At least they admit it's a, it's a dictatorial, fascist government that, that does honestly seem to be trying its best for people. Thanks for honesty. For sure. But, but it is, it is interesting that when you point out these basic things, that I, that, that, that humans will change, the things will change, that [00:16:00] the world will change.

Malcolm: People freak out. It reminds me of these environmentalists who go out there and there's almost this form of morality, which I've always found really. Disgusting myself because it's so shortsighted. Mm-hmm. Where when you're talking to environmental groups, there's sometimes two groups of thought, which is, okay, we want to reintroduce like these old coyotes that went extinct a while ago, but okay, but now you're interrupting the new ecosystem.

Malcolm: Right. Because things have evolved to fill that cultural niche. The animals have since evolved to deal with sort of the new environment that they're dealing with, but they believe that the state. And, and you see this in this, let's keep humans exactly the way they are now. Like keep humans exactly how they were when we first built our first cities.

Malcolm: And they're like, and let's also keep the environment like exact, well not even our first cities. Cause they don't wanna bring like mammoth back and stuff like that. They wanna keep the world.

Simone: Exactly. No. Isn't there a company right now that's bringing back near

Malcolm: community, right? I'm talking about this type of environmentalist.

Malcolm: Ah, yes. Right. They want the world to be exactly where it was. [00:17:00] Like 1900, like that environment, those species need to stay static forever. No further evolution. Humans need to stay static like that forever. So in a way, humans are becoming this sort of perverse actor on the environment where we are now preventing further evolution of species preventing extinction, a species preventing them from.

Malcolm: Having to come to terms with rapid environmental shifts or something like that. Something that has happened multiple times throughout the history of the world. Right? But, but no, not this time. We gotta end it this time. And they go, oh, it's because a species is causing it, except. That's happened before that there was the, the, it's happened a couple times before.

Malcolm: There was a time when the first bacteria started producing oxygen and that was what called the Great Oxidation Event. I, I, I think I wanna say, and they gave, made themselves in almost everything like them. Extinct because they were producing oxygen as a waste product. And oxygen in, in, in oxidation is very caustic to [00:18:00] any sort of cell or biology that hasn't evolved specifically to deal with oxygenated environments.

Malcolm: So they, it caused its own mass extinction. So like, not the first time we've seen this either, yeah.

Simone: Also discussed in the Twitter thread was an observation that often the villains are. Either like Novo or not. Aristocratic and that the heroes are aristocratic, which definitely shows up in Kingsmen.

Simone: I think in both Kingsmen movies, the first two it was like tech elites more that were

Malcolm: the villains. Well, I'm think inheriting your powers right is a really common trope of heroes. Mm. And achieving powers on your own is a very common trope of villains. Interesting. Yeah. Even when heroes didn't inherit their powers, like Batman, he inherited his money.

Malcolm: Go, come on.

Simone: Batman's. No, Batman doesn't have. Bruce Wayne's power is he's rich and autistic. No, he's born

Malcolm: rich. His power isn't that like, even though that he was born rich, that's his power. Thats his power. And people he's fighting are [00:19:00] like these self-made, like you got poison ivy, who's basically an environmentalist.

Malcolm: Yeah. I do agree. Environmentalists are largely evil, but she's trying to engage action in the world. You got Joker, definitely a, a self-made man. You've got people like the Penguin who in, in most iterations has the affectations or was born into a wealthy family, but lost it all like orphaned.

Malcolm: Right. Had to rebuild himself. Yeah. But of course that makes him truly villainous. Similar to me, my, my own backstory, going through, oh, do you, do you

Simone: share penguins backstory,

Malcolm: court appointed prison alternatives and stuff like that? And then Yeah, I have, I have a backstory similar to the the, the penguin from the Tim Burton's Batman returns,

Simone: Yeah. So you're, you're not so much Batman as you are Penguin. Yeah, I guess look at how you're dressed. I, unless you're like off

Malcolm: this way. Yeah, I'm going for you. I got the KAA pot. I got the Kaa Pot virtue here. Nobody is interesting because I think that society fundamentally believes, like in the back of our cultural brains, what feels nice.

Malcolm: Is, [00:20:00] is actually classism the,

Simone: the elite? Yeah. That you want the, the, the, the king to save the day.

Malcolm: Right? Well, I, well, you want the rich, the people who deserve like the, the inherited rich, this long aristocratic, the people who inherited their powers, the people who, that they are there to maintain social order, those

Simone: high and a great

Malcolm: chain of being, because historically that's what the story's told.

Malcolm: What's a night? But often somebody who was born to a noble family. Yeah. And then was appointed to maintain the status quo. Yeah. And those are the stories that culturally our visions of heroes came from. And who's the villain? Well, it's the person with the other religion typically, like the witch from the woods, like your morana or something.

Malcolm: I don't know if she came from a long line or something, but I typically think of the, the villains of the, the night stories as being some witch, someone culturally deviate. Often didn't come from a position of power. But, but they came through power perversely because they earned it themselves. They, they went out and studied.

Malcolm: They [00:21:00] found it in, in books and, and, and

Simone: working. Oh, because isn't that also in it in itself a villainous act? If it's a subversion of the social order?

Malcolm: Yes. It is, you are right. Subverting the social order is a villainous act. Mm. And so I think in many ways we are the archetypical villains of society, and as such, people are right to hate us.

Malcolm: Because that is the role of the villain. We believe we're trying to make the world a better place. But isn't that true of all women? That's

Simone: Yeah. It's exactly what, well, I don't know. There are some villains like bond villains and stuff who are just out to make money. But I think that's the other thing is, is we're also we're often villainized for being capitalist and people see, I think capitalist is like a whole different sort of fill.

Simone: And I don't know if that's just because like. Socialism is a very pervasive kind of sentiment now that like a lot of villains are just easily just capitalists, just easy to hate people for it.

Malcolm: No, I think it's that socialist. So when people believe in capitalism, I think it's typically because they've [00:22:00] thought through it.

Malcolm: When people believe in socialism or communism, I think it's much more like a religion. Mm. And like a religion. When we talk about evolved systems that shut down any idea, that's a threat to it. Mm-hmm. They react as if. They're reacting to a, a religious threat. So one of the things we talk about in our book is the concept of cones.

Malcolm: If people are aware in Buddhism there's this thing where they'll be like, oh, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, like what does it really make a sound? Right? This is a cone, but many religion, Catholicism has things like this. What these really are is. Gaslight. It, it's a form of gaslighting that's used to enforce a Master's authority over the pupil and to get people to doubt their own beliefs about reality.

Malcolm: So what they're doing is you go, oh, what's the sound of one hand Classic? Well, I, no either, it's no sound like this is a definitional thing, and they're like, oh, no, you don't understand the question if you, if you come to me with that answer, which what they're really doing is just saying, I have authority over you.

Malcolm: Basically, no matter how you answer, I always have a greater access to truth than you. And this causes people to distrust their own logic and helps. It's a, [00:23:00] it's a good system for establishing authority. But what's really interesting is that you see this within the communist worldview often is, is when you describe to someone white communism, stupidist, oh, you don't really understand communism if that's why you say communism is stupid.

Simone: Wow. I did not expect you to connect like Buddhist cones with. Communist gatekeeping, but it

Malcolm: works. But you see this constantly, whatever you explain why communism is stupid, they go, well, that's not, either, that's not true communism or that shows that you think that that's why communism doesn't work. That you don't of course understand

Simone: course.

Simone: Yeah. You just don't understand. And then they start using like, oh, well you haven't read this, or you don't follow this person's

Malcolm: voice. Well, then you're like, actually, I have, or I have engaged with this, or I have gone over this. I, I, I do have a, one of our books, it was a top. Top selling nonfiction book in the US by Wall Street Journal.

Malcolm: It's is on governance structures, right? Like we are something of I wouldn't say full world experts on governance, but we're definitely in the top percent. And communism is stupid. Like you have to be actually [00:24:00] kind of dumb to think it's still a good idea. And we've done other videos on this, but the point being is it's the people who believe it now, they believe it for more religious reasons.

Malcolm: So when they're attacking us, they're more reflexively trying to determine if we're part of their social group or not. And when they determine we're not part of our, their social group, they then just reflexively are like, I hate you because you're not a part of my social group. And that's what they're saying when they're saying, I hate you because you're capitalist.

Malcolm: Whereas when capitalists are people with more nuance, we're not like pure capitalists either. I think the government definitely has a role in the economy. When, when people with a more nuanced understanding of, of economics attack us they're attacking us often for issues that are more germane to the actual reasons that they specifically don't like us.

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, I don't know that we're not using all of our embryos or something.

Simone: That and we have punchable faces, but yeah. No,

Malcolm: well, that's a good reason to attack us. It super villain legit means a punchable face. And I think I a punchable

Simone: face just means you need to punch the face. I, I don't know what to tell you.

Simone: Well,

Malcolm: I need to, I'll do this for like the picture.[00:25:00]

Malcolm: That'll be the nice YouTube picture for this one.

Simone: Right. Very good. Very good. Well,

Malcolm: can you do a super villain face? What's your super villain face? Um, That's just Dr.

Simone: Evil Go. It's a universal sign Language for evil. Hello? I, I don't know what to tell you.

Malcolm: I think we are universal sign language for evil, and I like being a super villain. I like being a super villain. I, I, as a kid, I always identified with the villains over the heroes. I always, I never saw the heroes and I was like, I want to be like that.

Malcolm: I was like, because the villains. I could be like them. I could make my own suit, I could build my own science powers. I could maybe one day make my own money. And they're

Simone: self-made. Yeah, they're they're self-made. They're very, they're self-made.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. And so I always identified with that. Cause I was like, that is my path, respect.

Malcolm: And so one day people will fear me and.

Simone: Well, I love being an evil duo with you. You [00:26:00] are my O T P of Evil. I love you so much.

Malcolm: Absolutely. And one thing we've mentioned before is in movies, another thing about villains. Only ones who have healthy relationships, whether it's, team Rocket or the Adams family, or you go through media.

Malcolm: Vast majority of healthy relationships are villains because in our society's mind, I think when you're talking about these progressive Hollywood writers to them, they cannot imagine anyone who's like them ever having a happy relationship. Mm. So it becomes villainous and socially transgressive to them.

Malcolm: To have a genuinely happy relationship. Well, it's the creative types. They are not, they are not prone, they often really buy into this urban mega culture, which makes it really hard to form healthy relationships. So yes, I think we have a healthy relationship. And that healthy relationship is in itself socially transgression.

Malcolm: Well, it's

Simone: monsters, evil, villainous. It's beautiful and I love it. And I don't care if this is what evil feels like. [00:27:00] I wanna be evil cause it's so good. I love you. Yeah,

Malcolm: sweetheart. I love you too.



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