Villain Decay

Kind of like what happened to Bush after Trump came around.

Seriously. I was at the right age to be much more politically intense back then and absolutely despised Bush.
Now, I almost feel bad about it after witnessing the last 20 years of politics.
- We can have room in our hearts to hate more than one monstrous US president.
- But only almost.
- Nah don’t, bush was a horrible monster.
That's called "The Memory Hole".
We take all the illegality and corruption and horrific violence and torture and wars and media manipulation/intimidation and petty dictator shit and stuff it down the Memory Hole. Then we get to pretend

Wasn't such a big deal after all.
- That spoiler tag did NOT work what the fuck dude
- That's right! The war crimes go into... The memory hole!
- America has been the bad guys for close to a century at this point the difference maker is their marketing game was on point.
  Now? They no longer with Saatchi and Saatchi lol
- Jesus Christ.
  I very well remember seeing the censored version of that image... this is the first time I've seen it uncensored.
  I've seen uncensored pics from the highway of death, other graphic shit that made it onto the early days of liveleak... but there ya go, memory hole in action.
- Yeah but at least it was a scandal. That asshole, and a bunch of others, went to jail, even if it wasn't long enough. If it happened today they'd either never be charged or pardoned and that asshole would be the Secretary of Defense.
- What in the ever loving fuck is this??? And why am I being shown it?
I was telling my Zillennial partner about Bush this morning. About the extraordinary renditions. About kidnapping and torturing a fellow Canadian citizen for no fucking reason. About prosecuting child soldiers and holding them with adult mercenaries for a decade or more. About sanctioned torture, unsanctioned mass abuses, and complete abandonment of due process. And "y'all" are shocked today to find you live in a fascist country. Like, how the fuck are you surprised.
- They’re not surprised. Lots of Americans wanted this. Stupid as fuck population.
https://youtu.be/AiLkYw76Rm4

Jesse and James were always effective, they just suck at villainy. They are good at dressing up, making rube-goldberg devices, and many other things, they just aren't evil enough to elevate that potential. If they were, Giovanni would be sleeping with the magi-karp, and Ash would be eaten by their Arbok.

good at dressing up
Ah yes, I still remember questioning my sexuality over James when I watched pokemon as a teenager. Good times
- Was that with or without his massive tits?
- What was the answer to the questioning?

and then you have the venture bros, where the monarch starts off as goofy and ineffectual but becomes more menacing as the series goes on and the stakes get higher

Villain Cay
- Alternate name for Epstein Island
They did fucking stellar work with the character growth. I normally hate the "you need to give it a couple seasons" kind of thing, but Venture Bros did so well to have a moment where you feel the tone start to change, and somehow, the goofier start ends up working in the shows favor.
I will never look at a Homies the same way again.
- wait i've just described ordinary (if incredibly well done) character development
If anyone is a victim of "Villain Decay" in the Venture Bros its Brock Sampson. The Swedish Murder Machine is practically a teddy bear by the final arc.
I didn't realise that "Venture Bros" was a TV series and thought you were talking about Silicon Valley tech bros and venture capitalists and was like "sounds about right".
That's three times Venture Bros have come up for me this week, guess that means its time for another re-watch. :logs into Nightreign as The Bat:
- Don't forget the movie between seasons Uhh... 4 and 5 I think? I didn't know it existed and was very confused.
Also goddamn the Monarch is one of the best-written villains of all time.
- My brother recommended Venture Bros. to me since I like the recent Harley Quinn series. I need to start watching it sometime.
And then you have real life, where… well… shit
- Supposedly harmless asshole to fascist cult leader is actually pretty common. Hitler's rise was similar.
Only to rivals, though. His plots against Rusty stayed pretty slapstick and harmless. They even worked together in a late season.
- between the death's head panoply, the butter glider, and the scarionette cannon? i'd definitely say he upped his game from the dreaded candiru and the deadly cloud of deception slash diversion.
  beyond that, going from threatening bodily harm to financial ruin was definitely a glow-up in my opinion.

that is a constant in Dragon Ball.

enemies get defeated, surpasseda and then they become entourage

It was hilarious watching Dragon Ball after growing up on Dragon Ball Z. When Yamcha shows up and is a threat I lost it.
The list of opponents Goku agrees need to be eliminated is much shorter than the list of ones he wants to fight again when they are stronger. Despite most of them after the start of DBZ being existential threats.
Though he goes back and forth on Frieza lol.
- Frankly speaking Frieza has somewhat mellowed out, probably the end result of being killed and sent to hell a couple times. He went from let's genocide the filthy monkeys to let's torture the filthy monkeys, which is progress I guess.
Piccolo noooooooooooooo!
I'm in the cell saga of dbz. Do those dragonball goons, the girl and the fox and the little blue baby tyrant ever come back?
- Yes, but you're decades away lmao
- That's the best part of the whole series IMO. I loved cell as a villain.

This same process is why u stop watching cop/detective dramas as soon as a protagonist gets kidnapped.

This happens 100% of the time, usually 3 season in
You know they’ve gone from procedural to full on drama at this point
The quality always drops off a cliff here

Examples?
- Castle, Bones, Law & Order SVU, The Rookie (though it still has good episodes, the protagonists get kidnapped a lot tho), NCIS, Criminal Minds (again, multiple times), Hawaii 5 0 refresh, CSI, Monk…
Anybody remember that season of hawaii five-0 where they spent like half the episodes almost killing danno
- I remember a lot of really bad product placement for windows phone and cars
  I stopped before the final season though

Reminds me of D&D in a high level party and you run into a couple giant spiders. Aww... how cute!

damn you, Kakarot!

Villainflation

Is this a good example?

Sort of, except he was probably the smartest of the lot by cloning himself, and then one of them got smart enough to off all the other clones. By himself he was manageable. He had the luck or foresight to cause problems when other problems granted the opportunistic window.
- That too, but also, he sort of downgraded the egoistic Goa'ulds seeking to be Gods to like.. somewhat grandiose villains who know they're villains and don't delude themselves about being gods. Also, he then joined with SG1 to fight the... the... ohmygod. I need to either lower the amount of Ambien I take or rewatch SG1. The baddies from the other galaxy. I won't google it I'm gonna let that fester until I remember it.

I heard that something like this happened in an old superman villain. It took one season to defeat him. But later they defeat two by throwing a table at them

"Supernatural" in a word

Hercule.

Dude didn't even have super strength.

Yeah, but you know shit’s about to get real when he summons all the characters into the drawing room.

But not the Joker.

Captain cold in cw flash

I don't think that's fair as Captain Cold was never a credible threat to a speedster in the first place
- Just about nothing but another speedster is. The dude can think and move faster that the speed of light, he spent an entire episode in the split second it took for a nuke to go off. The fact that he's constantly getting his ass kicked is a flaw of the character more than the writing IMO (though don't get me wrong, the writing was also bad).
  I loved in the first season and then again whenever Zoom happened where you'd get him saying at the end of the intro "My name is Barry Allen, and I'm the fastest man alive", immediately followed up with "Previously on The Flash: (highlight of him being outrun and beaten up by another guy)"

I see this in politics and everyday acquaintances all the time. When the turf you've been fighting over gets attacked by a mutual significant foe, some hostilities get paused.

Why did they posted a picture of Team Rocket? Does Pokémon actually have more villains?

Team rocket is basically the mafia, and then gen 3 has team aqua and magma, one of which wants to remove basically all water and the other wants to basically remove all land.
I think that's a pretty drastic shift.
Giovanni is the big bad in the early seasons iirc. No clue how the show progressed past that though but there was always a more serious organization looming (ie Team Aqua and Magma, Mewtwo in the movie are the only ones I can think of right now...)
idk for more recent seasons, but i know the xyz and sun & moon arcs had more serious villains (especially xyz)

"But the as the stakes"