He didn’t want to die, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to make more money while undermining his own survival. Basically they were making fun of the self destructive, profit over everything else and infinite growth at all costs philosophy of capitalism and corporate culture. I think the writers’ intention was for him to be the personification of capitalism.
Yeah that’s what I figured. I was just confused because he doesn’t save his own skin like any IRL capitalist would. But if he’s supposed to be a personification of capitalism as a system it makes sense
The thing is that he’s blind to his own upcoming demise.
He’s not dying of boneitis right now, so he can make a profit and use his money to do something about it when it actually becomes an issue, but in the end, when that happens he’s too late. And to top it all off he curses the boneitis instead of his own mistake of destroying the company making the cure.
It’s similar to how capitalists will likely react when their homes and lives are destroyed by the byproduct of climate change - it will be the weather’s fault, not theirs for choosing profits over fixing the issue.
except for Zapp Branigan. I couldn’t stand that bastard.
Yeah, but as a story writer and worldbuilder I’m inclined to cut them some slack on Zapp. I’d say writing a balanced and well thought out morally-bad character or villain is the hardest thing in character development. Counterintuitively, you can’t make the reader genuinely hate them like many do with Zapp, even if they are the designated big baddie, because if they feel such strong negative emotions, they won’t want to keep reading/watching your story. The reader doesn’t have to agree with their ideology or actions, there is a misconception that the villain always needs to be a little right to be compelling, but that’s not necessarily true. Really the most important thing is you need to make sure that you’re not making a character that the reader can’t stand and reading their interactions an unpleasant experience. At the same time, you have to make their motives believable and make them evil enough that whatever punishment your plot has in store for them is actually justified, all while still retaining a basic level of sympathy in the reader. I feel that Mary Sue heroes are talked about way more, but Mary Sue villains are just as detrimental. I definitely struggle with this.
Thank you so much! I’m an amateur writer as a hobby. I currently mainly do worldbuilding posts (on Lemmy!) and also do literary roleplays (basically like a Dungeons and Dragons style roleplay but entirely in text, where you take turns writing a story bit by bit). Eventually I want to turn my worldbuilding into (most likely) a web series of episodic novellas, already have the overarching plot outline mostly figured out but haven’t started writing my canon story yet.
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