Theory About The Writers

[on:]

You can choose to read this, ignore this, merge this, or block it.  Don't care.  Have a theory as to why some characters get treated so horribly by the writers.  Eric Horsted seemed to have a habit of doing bad things to Leela.  I give him credit for cool episodes like Lethal Inspection.  He wrote The Mutants Are Revolting, and had her deported to the sewers, he wrote Meanwhile and made Leela fall off a roller coaster and get her hand severed.

He wrote LATGS and made her turn into a squid, get kidnapped by a giant, then caged, tortured, tied up and locked away by Mom and her sons only to have Fry and Bender come to save her.  The reason I believe that is was maybe because Eric Horsted probably got done in by a woman somehow and got so angry about women that he made bad things happen to Leela in those episodes.  Lord knows he can't take it out on a real woman.  Same with Ian Boothby who writes for the comics.  Issue #54 Leela got sold as a slave, and Fry and Bender came to her rescue by having Fry shoot up all her captors.  And in issue #62, Zapp had her kidnapped by a gorilla and the gorilla lead her to a cult that chained her up and forced her to work at a rockpile, then Fry and Bender shot down the gorilla with flying machines and went to save her.   What the hell? 

Maybe those writers had a posessive wife who kind of abusive to them.  Or maybe one was dating a girl he thought was going to marry him and she dumped him for someone else.  Or maybe one of them was going through a bitter divorce and the wife took everything from him.  Money, kids, the house.....

I mean, we don't know what kind of lives writers lead.   Some people call it comedy when bad things happen to Leela.  Well, it's not.  Or maybe the writers were pissed that they didn't create Futurama so they can make Fry the hero and Leela the victim.  That's what it seems like they want.  And why it happens every now and then. 

Sometimes the writers just go too far putting a character in a horrid situation thinking it would make a great story just so they can make money.  That's captialism for you.  Exploiting the innocent just for the sake of entertainment,  so they can make money while stealing it from the working class average joe.


It's not funny,  If anything.  It's sad.  Very sad how in the final season they have to make Leela be a kidnap victim who was horribly tortured.  She was tied up and electricuted, and forced to watch gross science expirments.   Very sad what writers would do for the sake of entertainment by treating a tough female character with such disrepect like she's nothing.  They should have done something more respectful and postiive with  Leela, like maybe make one where she saves everyone from getting abducted by aliens or make her by a cowboy hero or something like that.    It's beter for her to get kidnapped along with someone else.  Like Fry, Bender, or even Zoidberg.  Instead they treat her like she's some victim fodder every now and then.   It's also stupid how they put her in a bad sitatution and she fights for herself. 
 


Maybe the writers just plain hated her.  Or were burned out and didn't know what else to do.  If you all want to respond to this and tell me off about it, go right ahead.  I don't even care.  This very well could be true.   Leela should NEVER be kidnapped and tortured.  Only if she's kidnapped with someone else, so that way she's treated like an equal. 

 Maybe the wrtiers are just so in love with Fry and maybe that's why they treat him with repect when something bad happens to leela and they make him have an adventure running around free while Leela is all bound and gagged somewhere.  Nothing ever good happens to Leela when Fry is in trouble. 

[Reply #1 on:]

Fry: Well, I may not have brain smarts, but at least I have street smarts. [He is run over by a hoverbus.]

[Scene: Planet Express, Meeting Room. Fry walks in, he is on crutches, has a broken leg and bandages wrapped around his head.]

Fry: I was in the hospital two weeks. No one visited me.

Farnsworth: Quiet, you! I'm trying to deduce the function of da Vinci's lost invention.

Fry: Not even a card.

Where's your outrage and personal attacks on the writer for this scene, Kurt?

[Reply #2 on:]

Uhhh, okay. That made about as much sense as... Well, any of your other posts.

Firstly, the show is largely group-written, so any theories about one specific writer including something regularly in episodes credited to them can be written off as pure coincidence.

Secondly, it's a cartoon. You are talking about cartoon characters. Your rant about the writers profiting off the suffering of innocence is fucking ludicrous on many, many levels.

On that same note, pretty much every character on this show has gone through a huge amount of pain over the course of the series, both physical and emotional. Hell, one of the earliest ideas on the show was to have Amy be the klutz who constantly injured herself - something considered to be a twist on the regular gag due to her gender. Having said that though, I'd say Fry cops the majority of it; largely in part to him essentially being the main character of the show, or at least the audience's point of entry. To argue that any one character should be exempt from violence is asinine.

Likewise for this whole "if a character is being held hostage, it should be with another character" argument (and, for the record, Leela wasn't even being tortured in Leela and the Genestalk - the fact that she was singled out is a PLOT POINT due to her being THE ONLY MUTANT in the crew). Futurama cycled through many cliches and tropes in its run, but one of the ways it managed to stay fresh was by different character pairings, and changing up such scenarios accordingly. To say "this scenario should never happen with just one character" is equally as fucking moronic. You would prefer it if the writers limited their possibilities? Go watch something more formulaic, then. I, for one, welcome Futurama's experimentation in this area.

We get it, Kurt. You don't like Leela and the Genestalk. You've made your point again and again. It doesn't warrant any further repetition, let alone its own thread. You don't like this episode because of the character pairings in a certain scenario? There are 130+ other episodes where it doesn't happen! God forbid they try something different once in a while...

[Reply #3 on:]

The reason I believe that is was maybe because Eric Horsted probably got done in by a woman somehow and got so angry about women that he made bad things happen to Leela in those episodes.

So, one of the writers was murdered by a woman (that's what to be done in means), and wrote several episodes after his death as a way of coping with his anger? I suppose I've heard you say dumber things, but not many.

As to horrible things happening to Leela... have you ever sat down and counted up the ways and the number of times that nearly every one of the ensemble cast of Futurama have been injured, maimed, and even killed during the course of the series?

It's not just Leela that gets into a scrape and has to be rescued, either. In MTS, Leela rescues Fry from the consequences of his unthinking drinking. In FOABP, Fry and Leela save Bender from what they think is sure to be a pretty miserable situation (and it's not their fault that it isn't), requiring Bender to save both of them in return. Which happens again in HIOR. In ACOMO, Fry, Leela, and Bender must save Professor Farnsworth (with the aid of Cubert), and in TDTESS, Leela plays a pivotal role in enabling Fry to save the Earth, even whilst she's under the influence of the Brainspawn's stupid field.

Leela isn't exactly singled out for pain and misery - the entire cast seem to get their fair share of it.

[Reply #4 on:]

First "He Who Shall Not Be Named", now Kurt.

Can you people not tell the difference between a real, physical human being and an animated character? Who gives a fuck if they beat Leela around? She'll be as good as new in the next episode, unless they somehow decided to permanently injur her. But the show's over again now, so that can't happen.

[Reply #5 on:]

First "He Who Shall Not Be Named", now Kurt.

Can you people not tell the difference between a real, physical human being and an animated character? Who gives a fuck if they beat Leela around? She'll be as good as new in the next episode, unless they somehow decided to permanently injur her. But the show's over again now, so that can't happen.

Kurt gets very overprotective over Leela, so it's really unsurprising to me about this post.

Honestly, I feel like Fry is getting more physically damaged than Leela.
He had his head chopped off, arm chopped off, humiliated many times.

They are cartoons, Kurt, it's not like they will still have some squidification or gruesome injury.
The writers usually torture all of the characters plus the only monstrosity Eric Horsted ever did to the show was write "Yo Leela Leela".

Plus if the writers hated Leela, she wouldn't even be in the episodes.

The hand-severing in "Meanwhile", it technically didn't happen.
It all doesn't matter now since the show is deader than last year's cat.

That electrocution and imprisonment was utter bullshit and you just threw that in just to try to further prove your point. All she got was a squidification, it's not like she has a target on her back every single episode just because she is a mutant.

Going by your logic, Fry got tons of diseases in "TTOTZ" where Leela only got one yet you weren't complaining about that.

[Reply #6 on:]

I guess you only see what you want to see...

[Reply #7 on:]

I think parts of your argument are very, very overblown. You're making the things that may or may not have happened to Leela sound much worse than they ever were. What happened to her either happened to serve as exposition, to help further the story, or to serve comedic effect. You're making it sound like the writers made an entire episode all about the wonders of torturing Leela, which they simply did not.
As others have said, she's not the only one who's been attacked on the show. Heck, she's probably one of the least abused characters. What confuses me is that you're saying that the writers shouldn't abuse Leela, but instead Fry, Zoidberg, The Professor, etc. What's the difference? It seems that to you the reason they'd be better candidates for 'torture' is because they're male. If that's the case, and I'm more than sure it is, then you really need help. I could understand your case if she and the other female characters were the only ones who got hurt in the show. But, as everyone else has said, they definitely are not.
Another note. Why are you acting like the writers are somehow 'stealing' from you by putting a nonexistent character in harm? That's like saying that they're stealing from you by featuring Scruffy in an episode.

You're trying to make a pro-feminist remark, and I have nothing against that. It's simply that what you're trying to say makes absolutely no sense. I suggest that before you make another comment about the writers wanting to mutilate Leela and kiss Fry's ass, I suggest you thoroughly read all of these posts, as it'll become clear to you that your points are either nonexistent or nonsensical.

[Reply #8 on:]

This is completely ridiculous. Everyone on the show gets an equal amount of "torture", except perhaps Zoidberg and Fry, who both receive more. And as the others pointed out, your so-called "arguments" are flimsy at best.

[Reply #9 on:]

Show spoiler

You can choose to read this, ignore this, merge this, or block it.  Don't care.  Have a theory as to why some characters get treated so horribly by the writers.  Eric Horsted seemed to have a habit of doing bad things to Leela.  I give him credit for cool episodes like Lethal Inspection.  He wrote The Mutants Are Revolting, and had her deported to the sewers, he wrote Meanwhile and made Leela fall off a roller coaster and get her hand severed.

He wrote LATGS and made her turn into a squid, get kidnapped by a giant, then caged, tortured, tied up and locked away by Mom and her sons only to have Fry and Bender come to save her.  The reason I believe that is was maybe because Eric Horsted probably got done in by a woman somehow and got so angry about women that he made bad things happen to Leela in those episodes.  Lord knows he can't take it out on a real woman.  Same with Ian Boothby who writes for the comics.  Issue #54 Leela got sold as a slave, and Fry and Bender came to her rescue by having Fry shoot up all her captors.  And in issue #62, Zapp had her kidnapped by a gorilla and the gorilla lead her to a cult that chained her up and forced her to work at a rockpile, then Fry and Bender shot down the gorilla with flying machines and went to save her.   What the hell?

Maybe those writers had a posessive wife who kind of abusive to them.  Or maybe one was dating a girl he thought was going to marry him and she dumped him for someone else.  Or maybe one of them was going through a bitter divorce and the wife took everything from him.  Money, kids, the house.....

I mean, we don't know what kind of lives writers lead.   Some people call it comedy when bad things happen to Leela.  Well, it's not.  Or maybe the writers were pissed that they didn't create Futurama so they can make Fry the hero and Leela the victim.  That's what it seems like they want.  And why it happens every now and then.

Sometimes the writers just go too far putting a character in a horrid situation thinking it would make a great story just so they can make money.  That's captialism for you.  Exploiting the innocent just for the sake of entertainment,  so they can make money while stealing it from the working class average joe.


It's not funny,  If anything.  It's sad.  Very sad how in the final season they have to make Leela be a kidnap victim who was horribly tortured.  She was tied up and electricuted, and forced to watch gross science expirments.   Very sad what writers would do for the sake of entertainment by treating a tough female character with such disrepect like she's nothing.  They should have done something more respectful and postiive with  Leela, like maybe make one where she saves everyone from getting abducted by aliens or make her by a cowboy hero or something like that.    It's beter for her to get kidnapped along with someone else.  Like Fry, Bender, or even Zoidberg.  Instead they treat her like she's some victim fodder every now and then.   It's also stupid how they put her in a bad sitatution and she fights for herself.
 


Maybe the writers just plain hated her.  Or were burned out and didn't know what else to do.  If you all want to respond to this and tell me off about it, go right ahead.  I don't even care.  This very well could be true.   Leela should NEVER be kidnapped and tortured.  Only if she's kidnapped with someone else, so that way she's treated like an equal.

 Maybe the wrtiers are just so in love with Fry and maybe that's why they treat him with repect when something bad happens to leela and they make him have an adventure running around free while Leela is all bound and gagged somewhere.  Nothing ever good happens to Leela when Fry is in trouble.

You can choose to read this or ban me or mail me a dead squirrel full of TNUK Brand Bull's Milk. I don't care - great Ba'al has laid a task upon my heart, so I must speak this truth: It is disgusting that the Futurama writers treat Fry so horribly. In defiance of all human decency, they even made an episode reducing the noble Phillip J. Fry to a household pet, and in the final season, no less. He was brutally ripped from his family and friends, then made to eat literal shit and subjugated as a pet, with imminent danger of being outright killed by a giant alien. I do of course speak of TTT, though it is but one of many episodes in which the undeserving Fry is harmed by uncaring and malicious writers. I give them credit for great episodes like That One Where Nothing Interesting Happened But At Least Fry Wasn't Harmed Or Made To Feel Bad In Any Way (TOWNIHBALFWHMTFBIAW for short).

Why do the writers hate Fry? They have killed him, dismembered him, subjected him to the horrors of Slurm addiction, inflicted various diseases on him, made him into a helpless head on Amy's shoulder, stripped him naked and probulated him, impaled him with a giant stinger (he had to get a whole new motorcyclist spleen after that one!), killed his sperm, given him bedsores, infected him with parasites, swapped his gender and made him do a bikini photoshoot, made him a weak character who often has to be rescued by the other PE crew members, had him wallow in a puddle of his own "cowardice", given him severe burns from that radiator woman from that radiator planet, killed his dog, RAPED him in AWITM (does it matter that he was OK with the snu-snu if it was going to happen regardless?), made him stink at Monkey Fracas Jr, forced him to hang out with Pauly Shore, and made him lose his shoe in the episode N.

This disgusting mistreatment all gets written off and ignored because it's supposed to be "funny" when bad things happen to Fry. Well, it's NOT funny. It is sick sick sick. How would YOU like it if YOU lost your shoe?

It's clear that the writers were all severely mistreated by moronic inbred orange-haired men in red jackets, and the resultant damage to their psyches is making them enjoy hurting this poor sweet innocent character. They probably specifically signed up to work on Futurama for the opportunity to act out their sick anti-inbred-ginger fantasies when they heard the hero was going to have orange hair and be a man and also his own grandpa. If they could get away with it they would probably do this stuff to inbred orange-haired idiots in real life. They go too far, and their disgusting hatred for the wondrous and saintly Fry should be recognized for what it is: a heartless money-grubbing vendetta. It is shameful that they would use their hatred to become identity thieves and empty the bank accounts of poor people or something, I'm not really making sense at this point.

This abominable behavior is sad. Very sad. Very sad. Very sad. Very sad that the writers would do such monstrous things in the name of entertainment by treating such a happy, friendly, positive, and sexy character with such disrespect, like he's nothing but a Zoidberg. They should be more respectufl and only have things happen to him if they happen to all of the characters at once. If Leela turns him down for a date, she should be declining EVERYONE on the PE crew. It's only fair. Remember how in TBOI when Bender was sober and all the other PE crew were also sober? That's how it should be. And when Zoidberg went into a mating frenzy, and everyone else in the crew also went into an insane sex frenzy at the same time? That's good writing. What's stupid is when Fry is victim fodder and also fights for himself.

Maybe the writers just hate Fry, and are burned out and not good writers (As opposed to me. I'm a good writer because I constantly steal ideas from other shows/media and plug the Futurama crew into them. Creativity!). I bet you are all going to respond negatively to this post just because you disgree with it (YOU FRY HATING SICKOS). I don't care. Fry should NEVER have to lose his shoe unless someone else does as well. Equality FTW.

I also think the writers are sexually attracted to the Mary-Sue character of the series, Zoidberg. They shower Zoidberg with blessings like how he's had a steady home for the entire series, and give him superpowers like being able to eat practically anything, an ink bladder, super strength, the ability to survive an autopsy, etc. And of course he enjoys the steady friendship of his BFF Hermes for the entire series. Remember that time he got a sandwich and NOBODY ELSE did? Because the writers love Zoidberg, they hurt Fry so Zoidberg can have more moments in the sun. Sickening.

[Reply #10 on:]

Well, it only happens to Leela every now and then.  Not all the time.  I know that. I was not making some feminist statement.   Just because someone doesn't like what happens to a female character, doesn't mean they're a feminist. 

I still stand by my opinion on this.

[Reply #11 on:]

Well, it only happens to Leela every now and then.  Not all the time.  I know that. I was not making some feminist statement.   

Cool, Kurt admits this thread is pointless. Good talk, everyone! Let's go home.

[Reply #12 on:]

Just because someone doesn't like what happens to a female character, doesn't mean they're a feminist.

Well, yeah, feminism isn't about being overprotective of female characters, it's about believing that women should be treated as equal to men.

However, it's pretty obvious that your overprotectiveness of Leela is based on her gender since you outright accused the writers of being misogynists.

[Reply #13 on:]

I had a little trouble driving home........

[Reply #14 on:]

I had a little trouble driving home........

Hope you're insured, SS.  

Anyway, thread should be closed in 5....4....3....2...

[Reply #15 on:]

This thread aggravated me enough that I actually had to join this forum just to say how much it aggravated me!

King Kong.

Have you ever heard of it? because the scene where leela gets taken by a giant gorilla sounds pretty much just like King Kong, which would make that whole scene a reference.

[Reply #16 on:]

This thread aggravated me enough that I actually had to join this forum just to say how much it aggravated me!

King Kong.

Have you ever heard of it? because the scene where leela gets taken by a giant gorilla sounds pretty much just like King Kong, which would make that whole scene a reference.

Hi, stum.
I don't see the point of keeping this thread alive.

[Reply #17 on:]

Hi, stum.
I don't see the point of keeping this thread alive.

Stum?