I absolutely hate how S4E6 treats Hughie

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My man hughie needs some help seriously,too much going on for him since season 1.

Hopefully they'll tackle the fallout in the next ep, no brushing it under the rug

I think this is valid criticism. Out of all the shock value scenes this was the one I struggled to watch the most. It should have ended at the cake scene tbfh. Not even the absurdity of the lines from Ashley and Tek-Knight were funny, it just felt like I was watching Hughie get violated for fun.

The last scene felt like it was too little too late, and didn’t really feel all that genuine considering it was more about his dad than what happened

While I disagree that it was entirely played for laughs, it 100% went on for way longer than it should've. Every time it cut away from those scenes I was hoping that it wasn't going to continue but then it got worse and worse.

That might've been the intended reaction, but even then it could've definitely been cut down at the very least to showcase more of the fallout and Hughie's thoughts during and after the whole thing.

My thoughts exactly! My sister and I were watching the scene and seeing Hughie being violated was so disturbing, especially when he was trying to guess the safe word. I get that it was to show that Tek Knight was depraved and that's how the show is but this was one of the few scenes where I was questioning if it was really necessary.

And you're spot on about Hughie mentioning his dad towards the end like it's simply downplaying how traumatic sexual assault is. It's not good enough.

I really like this show but I hope the writers can do better with this. It's so unproductive reducing male sexual assault and rape to some edgy BDSM shit.

yeah, the whole sex dungeon rape thing is just poor taste and kinda expected boys-esque superhero twist, but what they actually did with it is disgusting in ways that no entertainment content should be.

they clearly think it's funny because the man is a victim. if starlight was in place of hughie, this would've been painted at the most horrific / traumatic event that happened to her on screen with seasons long consequences and tons of controversy online with "did they take it too far".

Indeed poor Hughie. Getting SA'ed isn't funny.

it was awful i just had to skip through it

The comic fans have been hearing FOR YEARS how the series treats rape like a joke, and that TV show is better because it does not.

BOY DID THAT AGE FUCKING BADLY

I don't know, I wasn't laughing when Hughie was crying with Starlight in their base, it was a very real moment for me, it was short tho I agree with you

It felt like a south park episode.

I’d hate to be that guy and as a male victim myself but this was a plot point in the comics and it had a slow burn payoff. Sadly a large part of Huggies character in the show and comics is that he is a good person in spite of whatever horrid things happen and I’m hoping this will have a payoff later on in terms of his growth and development

I've just accepted that Hughie has been reduced to a joke character to give the supes someone to make lazy shitty quips about and call him a twink because that's what qualifies for comedy for this show somehow. It's just not the same Hughie the writers got you emotionally invested in in season 1, which is a shame, because the plotline with his dad could be powerful if we didn't just watch an entire episode of him being brutally SA'd by multiple characters for laughs. Can't wait for the next episode where we see someone call him a pussy twink while his partner Starlight derps out in the corner pretending not to hear it.

People will excuse it csuse its the boys and the boys has always tried to make shocking moments, but to me having a character get full on raped for half an hours, its not funny

The boys shocking nature has always had humor laced in, and this episode still ttird that but it fails miserably cause it just isnt funny. Theres no true abdusrdity, its just a man getting raped for half an hour and we are intended to laugh? Rape should never be used in a show just for the purpofe of cheap character development or even worse laughs. Terrible episode, will skip it in any future rewatch

that scene was horrible. there’s no way it would have been that graphic with a female victim, and for good reason. you can have SA in a show without having your audience see it- the show has literally proven that many times over. i seriously doubt ashley will be portrayed as rapist going forward, or that it’ll ever get mentioned again.

Honestly side eyeing kripke hard for this one. Starting to suspect that the old adage about those who lecture constantly being creeps is true.

That shit was just disturbing, and yes, absolutely played as humour. Utterly fucked.

Don't even need to go to "if it was a woman" (that's what they want you to play into), it's just gross, period.

I have liked season 4 quite a lot. Until this episode. I'm very disappointed with how he was treated as well.

Going into leak discussion, hence the spoiler tag: Spoiler

yeah I felt like every episode has been getting more and more edgier over time to the point where it's repeating the mistake that the comics made. It's slowly became edgy for the sake of edgy and I don't like that because it undermines the actual good writing we've seen from previous episodes

My man, I’m sorry you’re not alone tho. I was shivering through the whole scene. It was downright terrifying. They went too far especially with a main character like that for no reason. If this same shi happened in season 3 when Hughie was feeling powerless beside Starlight and this scene was what propelled him to take temp V, it’d have made more sense rather than putting this right after his dad’s death. I hope you’re feeling okay now🫂

Wasn’t the way The Deep forced a blowjob off Starlight one of the main ways the comic and TV series differed tonally in S1? In the comics I believe it was played for laughs; in the TV series it was Starlight’s trauma and The Deep’s reputational downfall. It seems bad and inconsistent where SA is now recognised as serious for female victims but not male ones.

Haven't seen it yet, but now I'm not sure if I even WANT to see it.

That sounds a little bit too much.

You seem to be getting downvotes by clowns who are just here to watch edgy bullshit.

We are starting to stray from the era of scenes of women being assaulted for shock value. And that's a great trend that should keep going.

But why is this any different? Like you said, the whole thing is being played for laughs while the protagonist is being brutally assaulted by two people?

And that fucking Zendaya line at the end to top it all off. Of course this post is gonna be downvoted while people who say the Zendaya scene was peak comedy will be on top of the sub tomorrow.

It's pathetic. And for those who are saying that's how the show is- that's not really an excuse.

Also, not really true either. Other seasons had plot, mixed with these scenes. Now, we have an episode full of someone being raped with a generous 10 minutes of plot maybe. For what it's worth OP, I agree with you.

Seems like they're running out of ideas and trying to make up for it by padding episodes with edgy shit. And look at the episode discussions, clearly it's working. Fucking pathetic.

Yeah it showd me that Kripke has drunk his own cool-aid & is ultimately missing the point of his own show.

Have to say as a fan of this show I agree with you. Tickling fetishism is a niche kink and its inherently hard if not impossible to have it played out on screen in a serious fashion, so I'm pretty sure it was a deliberate choice to make the situation seem light and goofy. Not to mention the other stuff like having him try to guess the safe word repeatedly. There's absolutely no way in hell a female character would be shown in this situation.

Compare this to Starlights SA in the first episode and how seriously that was rightfully portrayed. They definitely dropped the ball with this for sure.

Man I just wished, REALLY wished, that Hughie just decided to fight back Tek. It would make him have even more character prigress and would have made this episode much more better, but noooo we need stupid and useless Hughie amiright?

This entire episode felt off to me.

Though I disagree about your last point, about the clip tacked on at the end. I felt it was a very good moment. Hughie is acting like he's fine to continue working after losing his dad, I believe Starlight already showed concern earlier in the episode.

What happened to him in that episode was what finally just broke him. And the episode itself ended on a down note, sad credit music etc. He didn't need to mention what happened to him, Starlight found him in the Tek Cave it was probably obvious to her what went down.

I just really, really hope they don't just throw it away in the next episode and move on. This show has a tendency to play stuff off as jokes, I hope they don't do it with this.

But yeah, poor fucking Hughie man, that dude is going to be messed up for life after these last 4 seasons.

What you say is entirely correct, but there is a certain part of the fandom who is so cruel that they dont want to understand this. The whole raping or torturing guys in movies is a trend for the last decade. That and using male nudity for shock value or humiliation. It feels like they cannot go an episode without it. I love the show, but those are their weakest moments because they just rehash old cruel trends.

But as if that wasn’t enough, what makes me genuinely furious is that THIS WHOLE SCENE GETS PLAYED FOR LAUGHS. I don’t care what people are trying to argue, the writers absolutely were playing the scene for laughs. Ashley and Tek-Knights various interjections and absurd lines were 100% written in an attempt at humour, and Hughie trying to guess the safe word was also a blatant attempt at eliciting laughs

yeah they try to play both sides, play it for laughs while pretending they treated it seriously cause there was a 5 second scene acknowledging it which gets thrown away right away towards being focused on the death of his dad

and i don't see any space in the current world ending storyline for there to be focus for the aftermath of hughie's rape and his trauma

house of the dragon apparently is not going to show any female rape scenes or anything like that but for men it's still just a-okay for it to be the punchline, i still don't think that it should never be shown at all but if ur gonna do it treat it fucking seriously and take your time with it.

and your post seems like it's being downvoted hard as well, real sad how people hate even acknowledging anything to do with this

Yes. Well said.

Even in 13 reasons why, they ended up showing it so graphically. That shit traumatized me. Male rapes are already so underreported and not taken seriously.

That little dialogue with Annie and Hughie doesn't change the fact that they played it for laughs.

People have been complaining on this sub about the writing and referencing silly things that can be explained with a bit of thought, but this here is a legitimate criticism of the writing. We really didn’t need a main character to be assaulted by his childhood hero for what felt like a really long time when there were other ways to write the scene to get the same effect. I’m not against the idea of a billionaire playboy super hero having a gross sex dungeon where he assaults people. That’s on brand. Even having the threat of a character put in the dungeon is fine.Having to sit through it is another thing. There are men who’ve been through similar situations who likely watched that and were launched back to their own assault. I’ve done live theatre with themes of trauma before, there are ways to tell these stories that won’t horribly scar survivors. One of the ways to do it wrong is to play the assault scene for laughs.

I don’t think portraying men as victims is an issue, I actually think it would have been a good thing if they had portrayed it like they did Starlight or Becca because it would show how awful assault is no matter who it happens to, but they made the scene way too long and didn’t make the lines serious enough for it to have that impact. The scene with Hughie at the end being upset could have been a good opportunity to show how he was affected by it, but it was way too short! It felt like twenty minutes of the assault scene and thirty seconds of him dealing with it. I have liked how this show has portrayed feminist ideas with Starlight, Maeve, and Kimiko, but I feel like they threw it all away here by making male sexual assault into a shock value joke. Men are not taken seriously about these things because masculinity is associated with sex and there’s an idea men don’t need to consent because they’ll never say no (obviously so wrong). They had a perfect opportunity to portray this correctly, and even delve into this idea that men aren’t taken seriously because they should have “liked it”, but instead they just blow it and continue with the same patriarchal bullshit that makes men’s victimization taken less seriously than women’s. You can’t portray feminism without showing men’s struggles too, and I’m tired of media ignoring it.

Yeah I was watching and all I could think was, "This is like something they'd do for humour like 20 or 30 years ago."

Hughie desperately trying to guess the dafe word to make it stop actually made my stomach flip over This is the WORST episode in the whole series no doubt. Fucking inexcusable garbage

They (the writers, et al.) are just trying to one up the craziness episode to episode. Not surprised now that it'll only be 5 seasons. Which was a surprise it'll last that long now.

Just wanna say I agree with many users here about how, for all the show's talk of being progressive and pointing fingers at the bad guys for being bigoted, homophobic, bodyshaming and bullying (amongst worse things of course), it does suffer some "haha joking at the expense of men's bodies is funny".

I'm glad that most people here acknowledge the severity of sexual assault with men as victims. It's not just conservatives the ones that make fun of it. Progressives and liberals can fall under that lack of empathy as well.

Sadly, when people as a whole think of rape, they still instinctively think of men doing it to women. They are able to recognize abuse of men from a logical standpoint, but they haven't internalized it and condemned it as much as with the "default" form of rape.

This show truly is Kripke’s soapbox.

Genuine question: when does he get raped? SA'd ok I understand, but he's not being raped. Unless it's implied off screen but I just finished it an hour ago, Starlight and Kimiko arrive at the right time before Tek cuts Hughie.

I do understand how triggering that scene must have been, I was uncomfortable with it so I'm not trying to defend this.

I honestly took those scenes as meant to be horrifying. Like that's the whole dynamic, you know? You the viewer are yelling "hurry up" to the others so Hughie doesn't get into more and more awful shit.

I get some absurdity there but that's because of how vile it is. Tek and Ashley thought they were doing consensual BDSM with Web Weaver. Hughie had to play along to not blow his cover (and end up dead). But the show, I feel, showed him as terrified. He was super silent and his body language was tense. Through Tek Knight, we see him even trembling at one point.

I feel it's weird to say "wow the writers put Hughie through shit, that's bad." How is it bad character writing to make a character experience a truly dark period like Hughie did? Is it bad writing what Jessie had to go through at the end of Breaking Bad (if you know, you know)? In this case, I feel it is building for Hughie to preserve and serve a pivotal role this season.

SA representation in media is always a hard and genuine conversation. What line do you go for art? What's okay to show? When is a line being crossed? How can this impact survivors in real life? I think the criticism of there being any laughs to be had is a fair one. I think, since I took away horror vibes, maybe they should have leaned into that more and cut the comedy. But maybe we cut the topic altogether and they should have done something else to make Hughie suffer.

The writers 100% are the type of people who think men getting raped is funny.

They'll be on twitter arguing with people about how anyone who has a problem is a racist misogynist.

It wouldn’t have been shot for a woman that’s for sure.

Perhaps it’s just my perspective. But, it never felt as though it was playing for laughs.

We as an audience know that Ashley and Tek-Knight are depraved individuals. So, I never saw this as The Boys playing a joke of Hughie.

Hughie in the episode tries to pretend he’s fine; even in the context. But, he’s not.

Do I think the episode needed to remove parts of content. Absolutely. I think the cake moment would have been enough. Then, you could have had Tek-Knight realise that Hughie is not Web Weaver.

Alongside, the fact, personally wished that Hughie escaped his restraints on his own. As it feels as though Season Four has had Hughie lose his edge. Especially in comparison to Season One or Three.

But, I don’t feel this was played for laughs.

Yeah I'm really not bothered by the insane shock value of the show, but I think they really missed the mark with this one. They could have had some actual social commentary about male victims, but they clearly weren't trying to make that commentary, and just tacked on the ending to make it seem not as bad. I still enjoy the show, but fucking yikes man.

Did something happen to Hughie that we did not see did Ashley dildo him or something

He was only really getting tickled and did that butt cake Stuff willingly

Your feelings are valid, but I am taking it for granted you've never read the comics the show is based on?

For me, this wasn't as uncomfortable as The Deep rape scene is S1.

It was supposed to be funny? I don't think anyone in the world today watched that scene and let out a chuckle.

I’m growing very tired of the over the top bullshit. It’s gone from being funny to childish and tiresome.

Farting on cake is not ok but forcing masturbation in front of other characters is 😐

I’m mean he wasn’t brutally raped

He was sexually assaulted sure but not raped

Didn’t they break in and stop it before he was raped ?

I really don't think that scene got played for laughs. The only time i laughed was sage behaving like a 5yr old kid.

I also don't think writers intended it to be for laughs either. The book they pull out for that bat cave door to open is "120 days of sodom". If you know anything about that movie or book, you know they weren't being subtle in portraying that what was happening to hughie wasn't for laughs.