"In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team. They are the ball." - Anita Sarkeesian

This is what I think makes "Megamind" so special. Megamind is the incel villain who needs to fight an even more pathetic incel villain. This causes Megamind to actually grow as a person.

I saw a post online about the "sexy lamp test", which is basically that if a female character could be replaced by a particularly sexy lamp that just sits around and is a sexy lamp with absolutely nothing about the story changing, the narrative fails. I think it so aptly describes Penny here.

It's just like those "Revenge of the Nerds" kinds of movies. The tormented and underestimated geeks, rather then trying to subvert the narrative established by the jocks and escape that dynamic, instead put themselves to the jocks level so they can become the "alphas". Also, heaps of misogyny.

"The fact that there is a problematic hierarchy is not the issue. The fact that I am not where I want to be within that hierarchy is the issue."

The problem is the bully-victim and chad-incel dialectics don't map onto the hero-villian dynamic. A Bully isn't just someone with extra-ordinary ability, they are also looking for power. Similarly the incel isn't just some very unattractive person but someone who feels they deserve power. The Bully and the Incel are two sides of the same coin, both feel they deserve power, but one has the means to attain it. In this sense they are both Villians, Captain Hammer is a bully and Dr Horrible is an incel. Neither is a chad or a victim, neither is a hero.

Watching Dr. Horrible as a woman always made me feel... invisible. Penny is just a pawn in the story, not a real person. This is Felicia Day! I love her, and we don't get to know her AT ALL.

I’m glad to have faster, lower polish videos from you. Your ideas are what I come for, not the production value. 🌸

Why she is who she is, is a question I think a lot of female characters never get to answer... thanks for making this video, learned a lot.

I think this misses quite a few major, and intentional points by the writers. Every single scene of this movie is set from Billy’s perspective, and the lack of character development she receives is not because she’s not developing, but because Billy doesn’t notice it. What she’s thinking is clear at many points, and she’s a much more developed character than captain hammer, but it can’t be any less subtle, because billy would notice.

"All persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental."

In your “lower polish” video, you still manage to:

Two things.

Is it me, or would the obvious ending have been for Penny have been to break up with both of them?

Penny definitely deserved better than that, but the story also unambiguously intentionally shows that Dr. Horrible turning to scheming and violence fucked it all up. It is about how he became an actual literal villain. Although it's framed so that he is sympathetic, it also shows that he was wrong.

"She dresses like a Becky, but falls Stacy-like for the first Chad she meets like a Gosling imprinting on a balloon with a drawing of a goose on it."

This makes me want to re-watch Megamind with a thoughtful eye....

"She dresses like a Becky but falls Stacy-like for the first Chad she meets" is most most 'internety' sentence I've heard in a while lol

I appreciate that the creators did four one-shot comics that flesh out the personalities of the characters and briefly explain why they are who they are (namely, Billy, Hammer, Penny, and Moist). In the musical, I think Billy not knowing who Penny is inside is kinda the point: he's in love with the idea of Penny, not Penny herself. A lot of guys are attracted to the idea of having a girlfriend, not genuine interest in someone else's life and an earnest desire to see that person succeed. This is why the first big clash of ideals often leads to dramatic breakups and the shoulda-been-obvious realization that "they're not the person I thought they were".

"she's not a character. she's barely a plot device." - folding ideas on the book of henry (2017)