It should be obvious to even those men who aren't trying to pay attention that women will simply never get over having been so terribly wrong back in Eden.
I will be spoiling the only thing that should really matter: the plot. Here's the relevant excerpt from the plot synopsis:
The Internet is restored and Vanellope decides to stay in Slaughter Race. Coming to terms with the changes in his life, Ralph returns to the arcade and begins participating in activities with other game characters, while staying in touch with Vanellope through video chats.Couple short points and then a big, long one.
1) "Game jumping" was one of the biggest evils from the first film, but this was thrown out because Vanellope got bored.
2) "Make peace with your role in life" was one of the big takeaways of the first film, but that was thrown out because Vanellope was unhappy with her role.
3) Vanellope's glitch prevented her from leaving her game, this was a huge plot point in the first film, and that glitch wasn't fixed at the end of the first movie, but now she's still got the glitch and is leaving her game and going on adventures because...?
4) Ralph and Vanellope are apparently platonic friends, contrasted with Felix and Calhoun that got married at the end of the first film, and thus supposedly so now are Vanellope and Shank, her new girl-crush, but that hasn't stopped people from applying more intimate overtones to the relationship between Ralph and Vanellope, while also desperately trying to prevent anyone from doing the same to the second.
Vanellope chose to stay with her new "totally not a lesbian" girl crush and making courtesy phone calls to Ralph because she got bored with her life and wanted more and despite all that Ralph did, he couldn't provide the freedom she didn't realize she had always desired.
The significance of Ralph's relationship with Vanellope is directly tied to how close the two are really supposed to be. For any of the relationship dynamics to be "creepy", for Ralph's reactions to being "left behind" to be unmerited, and especially for him to be the only one "at fault" in how things play out, the only one that needs to grow or change, the mutual nature of the relationship dynamics cannot have been platonic and distant.
And if you want to understand the undertone of perhaps how at least Vanellope viewed the relationship, let's take a look to someone who has a viable claim to a deep connection: her voice actor.
Sarah Silverman has deep connection to her ‘Ralph’ character
“I had done voice-over work, but this character was really special,” Silverman says. “This is a character that feels really close because I am playing my own inner child. In the first movie, she was a glitch and she made that her superpower.The thematically pertinent portion of the article reads like this though (emphasis added):
Silverman’s character is facing a new challenge. There’s a restlessness in Vanellope that she doesn’t quite understand until she and fellow arcade character Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) have to go into the internet to find a way to keep Vanellope’s “Sugar Rush” game going. While searching for the solution, Vanellope discovers a much more exciting driving game, “Slaughter Race,” and begins to look at a different kind of future.Why is this relevant?
Because Silverman has publicly commented about having chosen her career over motherhood.
As a comic always working & on the road I have had to decide between motherhood & living my fullest life & I chose the latter. (archive)
Men don't have to do that. I'd so love to be a fun dad, coming home from the road & being my best fun dad self. (archive)
So this is just a lil fuck all y'all bc u can't be a woman w/out sacrifice & that's the fact jack. (archive)If the voice actor who feels a "deep connection" to a character already has a chip on their shoulder about the choices between career and being a mother, and has delusions that men don't also make sacrifices, leading to an unfounded envy for fathers, how exactly do you think that person is going to feel a "deep connection" to a character that just-so-happens to make a remarkably similar choice for remarkably similar reasons? I mean, really, what are the odds?
If you doubt this connection, why does she portray the choice as being between "motherhood" and living her "fullest life"?
These parallels aren't an accident, and they run even more personal, and disturbing, than you may guess or really want to know.
For example, did you know Silverman suffered, and likely still does, from urinary incontinence?
From the article above, she notes the similarity to when she wrote a book about it and how she used her own "glitch":
“That is a lot like when I wrote the book, ‘The Bed Wetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee’ (Harper Perennial), that talks about the humiliation of being a bedwetter and thinking that would be the deepest, darkest secret of my life. Then I grew up to be a comedian and it became this rock, this piece of strength in me because if people are going to boo me or hate me, I already know what humiliation feels like.”
Did also you know Silverman has cited her depression as another reason she doesn't want to have any biological children?
And though she adores kids, Silverman says, she does not want any. "Maybe down the line, in my 40s, I might want to adopt, but for a few reasons I just do not care to have biological children," she says. "I feel like, other than vanity or ego, I can't justify it. There's just millions of kids that have no parents, and it seems crazy just because you want to see a little you to have a baby. And I also think that everyone has things about themselves that they don't like, and I am afraid to see that.... My parents, my sisters and I, all of us had a lot of sadness in our childhoods; it's in our genes. Depression. And I just can't bear to see it.... "One of Vanellope's fears in the first movie is that her glitching will cause people to not like her, thus ending her "life" when they "pull the plug" on the game. The plot finds a way to make the glitching work in her favor, but because reasons it doesn't also get rid of the glitch, despite one character quite literally having the ability to fix anything he hits with a hammer.
If Vanellope is Silverman's "inner child", and Silverman's glitches were her incontinence and her depression, then despite those things not getting in the way of her relative success, she can't ever "cure" or "fix" them, and thus neither can Vanellope lose her "glitch" either.
Vanellope being restless "at home" in the "daily routine" with Ralph, is coincidentally blessed by circumstances that expose her to a "different kind of future" that is "more exciting" and so she decides to follow that path and live life to the fullest, just like how Silverman thought that being a mother would not let her live to the fullest and so she chose a career instead. I mean, how did the Disney writers know how to try and do all of this? It's such a mystery! *roll eyes*
But what we're supposed to believe is that Ralph, whose genuine concern is with fixing Vanellope's game, and eventually the future of their relationship, so that she can go back to where she belongs is the one who is the real problem. Tricky how that works out, isn't it? The manipulation is subtle, but it turns what is normally very healthy into something sick, because the reality is that the best way to stay married is for the relationship to have a higher priority than your own pleasure and comfort.
What is "normal" gets portrayed as "evil" by those who are "evil" and yet still seek validation that never comes outside their own fantasies.
Is it then any surprise that a woman who now claims to never want to get married, for reasons that you're not supposed to notice would also contradict her prior demands that same-sex marriages be legalized, would so closely identify with a fictional character that also chases what is exciting and new, without really considering the impact of how such choices would play out or reflect on her?
Vanellope's new "totally platonic" life partner also just happens to be the leader of a gang, isn't that also convenient that she'll be able to help raise and teach these other racers who lack any biological connection to her. The parallels are just so convenient and we're supposed to believe entirely unintentional, I must put on a face of genuine expression to express how shocked I am to find these connections!
So that's Vanellope's "side", basically just Silverman without wrinkles, bedwetting, and mind-altering depression medications, and Ralph is a bitter clinger who wants her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
What about Ralph?
From the first film, another of the "big rules" is that if you die "outside your game", you can't ever regenerate or come back, and for this reason alone, Ralph's concern for Vanellope and everyone else who had been in Sugar Rush is genuine and well-founded, in that if any of them "died", since they've all been forced out of their broken game, that's it, kaput, they'll never come back again. Dead-dead.
And if folks want to argue that yet another extremely important rule from the first movie now somehow doesn't apply, because the story they want to tell demands it now change, congratulations on being too stupid to understand the importance of continuity and its relevance to good storytelling.
Morons like you are why Star Wars is now dead.
Anyway, Ralph apparently thought that because he had saved someone's life and then had fun spending time with them outside life-threatening circumstances that there was an actual relationship there worth fighting to keep. Ralph was apparently under the impression that there was more to their friendship than there actually was, and so his behavior comes off as "creepy", but again only if there wasn't really ever any mutual depth to what they had in the first place.
If Ralph didn't do anything for Vanellope, if he wasn't actually her best friend, if they didn't spend time together and enjoy each other's company, let alone her hero and savior from death, then his behavior would be like that of a stalker, and the creepy categorization would fit perfectly.
The thing is, Vanellope does owe Ralph something, because even with the problems he created, he ended up solving all of them and even bigger ones in the process. Her place in the arcade is literally due to Ralph's efforts, and without him she'd still be stuck in the proverbial gutter, alone and unloved, if not dead.
But the story plays out like a Pretty Woman remake but the idiot who tried to make a hooker into a housewife gets upstaged by a lesbian. The parallels between Ralph and Ross from Friends are not an accident either.
As thanks, Vanellope gets bored and when Ralph tries to again step up to her rescue, her subsequent choices then start causing problems which he is not able to rectify. He still comes to the rescue time and time again, genuinely sacrificing for her, but any expectation on his part with respect to reciprocation is framed as controlling or toxic.
Now, Ralph is actually wrong to keep doing this, because it highlights the dysfunction in the relationship where Ralph is literally doing everything he can for her, and in the end she just moves on and expects him to do the same. She and he clearly didn't view the relationship the same way, and that should have been a big red flag for Ralph. His ignorance, though, does allow unfiltered hypergamy to be put on display, lauded as a virtue in Vanellope for continuing on to bigger and better, while any of Ralph's discontent with this arrangement is declared to be rooted in a problem with him.
Ralph is "creepy" because he doesn't ever really understand that Vanellope doesn't want freedom from the routine that happens to involve him, but from feeling like she ever owes Ralph anything, because their bonding never occurred on her terms, and any confusion on this is entirely Ralph's fault, because solipsistic narcissists assume everyone else can put the dots together just like they did, even if critical information never left the mind of the narcissist.
The White Knight Ralph may save the damsel in distress, but he is supposed to be doing it simply because that is what he is supposed to do, and his reward is in getting to save the damsel in distress, but expecting anything more is simply unheard of, and demonstrates how stupid, backwards, controlling, and thus "creepy", he really is.
What makes this even more clear is that Vanellope didn't return to the arcade and split time with Ralph, her literal savior, and instead shacks up with her new "totally platonic wink wink" girlfriend, and their only contact after that point is through video chats.
Vanellope wanted freedom from Ralph, using the "routine" and "boredom" as the spoken cover, and then exploits Ralph's inexperience with this manipulative relationship dynamic to lead him down a path where he will inevitably make a "mistake" that she can then point to as the "real reason" that she now needs freedom from not just the arcade, but Ralph as well.
This is also what "chivalry" has become, or really always was, a means by which women assert dominance over men they otherwise cannot. Women, under this system, benefit from the sacrifices of men, while having no moral or social requirement to reciprocate, and men think it demonstrates great virtue and quality on them, as opposed to exposing them for the rubes they really are. About the only other place we find such a relationship is with respect to worshiping a deity, and that's why I referenced goddess worship in the opening.
Modern woman are, by no accident, an embodiment of a capricious goddess character, hedonistic and short-sighted, selfish and deeply flawed, and yet Vanellope is held up as a "role model" for young girls, while Ralph is supposed to be the warning to all men.
Ralph is the "traditional" fuddy-duddy who simply hasn't gotten with the times, and his backwards thinking is not just a problem for their relationship, but for the dynamic of the society as a whole, which is why his problem breaks the internet, because being a stick in the mud is that big a threat to the entire modern social dynamic. Ralph is the kind of guy who doesn't think he worships women as goddesses, but if it'll get him a wife, he'll hold open a door or drive a certain type of car or eat the forbidden fruit.
To people who still think like Ralph, what is the correct response to gradual ostracizing by a goddess?
Thankfulness! You've been spared a terrible fate you were otherwise attempting to invite upon yourself. The favor of a goddess is never a blessing, but a curse, and if you've been freed, be thankful and don't seek to bring such a curse back on yourself again.
Ralph is the guy who thinks that the "old rules" regarding friendships are what still work. The guy who thinks that being nice, providing, and being a protector, will net him a good partner for life. That simply isn't how it works anymore, and the exceptions prove the rule.
The reason Ralph should be thankful is that if Vanellope is really so stupid and shallow as to think she'll find more satisfaction with people who have sacrificed nothing for her, with people that don't share almost any history with her at all, who simply recognized she had a talent they could exploit to their benefit, then she'll deserve the unhappy ending that will inevitably come as soon as she has stopped being of use to them, and Ralph will no longer come to her rescue.
So while the movie is terrible, and destroys any of the good set up by the first, perhaps that is itself the "silver lining". The two movies show men how, even if you sacrifice and slave away to a woman's benefit, she'll dump you the moment she thinks something better has come along, and it only needs to appear better because she's not smart or mature or rational enough to need it to actually be better. She's a creature of emotion, capricious and volatile, happy to drink deep of your resources and then move on to the next ignorant sap who thinks that he'll do any better.
The movies show that our (((secular society))) expects inequality between men and women, and women are the ones who will net all the benefits. That men will be told to work harder and harder and that they should be be thankful for the opportunity to do so, while women are told not worry about the men they are stepping on to make their dreams come true.
It's a film I won't pay to watch, but it does still have utility and purpose, in serving as a sign of the times. We are heading towards great calamity, but people think all that awaits them is fun and excitement and freedom. They do not realize the hell that awaits them, and how there won't always be someone there to save them from themselves.
Those folks simply cannot be saved, and aren't worth saving, and your delusional attempts to do so will only result in your own damnation as well.
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