i feel like it says a lot about where joss whedon & co’s heads were at that the protagonist of dr horrible is an aspiring world conquerer but secretly a good guy, and the antagonist’s fate is to lose his macho manly superpowers and immediately start experiencing emotions

Dr. Horrible reads as a "the protagonist is the bad guy" story on a surface level, but with even a bit of examination, instead falls apart into a weird dynamic where the so-called bad guy is actually the hero. Billy is obviously the better choice for Penny, in the long run.

Captain Hammer might be a superhero whose actions regularly help people, but he is repeatedly shown throughout the show to be a thoughtless, emotionless meathead that only cares about himself and the glory that his actions give him. His appearances on-screen are all showing him

to be an absolute buffoon who well and truly doesn't deserve the "prize" - in the case of this story, Penny herself - that Dr. Horrible spends the movie fighting for between his vague, unexplored plans for conquest.

All we get to know about Penny is that she's pretty and cares about the homeless and likes frozen yogurt and does her laundry at a laundromat. All we know about Hammer is that he cares about winning and about getting the girl.

But Billy has a much more well-explored emotional life - which is fair, because it's a story told from his perspective. Even the scenes of Hammer and Penny together are punctuated by Billy sneaking around and eavesdropping.

It's even shown during these scenes that Billy ONLY cares about getting the girl in a way just as shallow as Hammer - it's just that Hammer is honest and Billy is a "nice guy." He doesn't even care enough to help the people that the object of his affection cares about.

And when he gets the thing that is ultimately what he's supposed to want, his heart's not really in it, because at the end of the day, he didn't get the girl. He can be as successful being a bad guy as he wants but he's depressed because his own stupid, dangerous actions and

pointless monologue leads to Penny's death. It's entirely his fault, and we're still led by the music and story to believe we're supposed to still be sympathizing after he gets everything he wants but not the pretty redhead he knew nothing about but thought was pretty.

And Hammer's loss of his powers at the end causes him to cry. The ending stinger joke for him is that he's at a therapist. It's not funny, it appears to just be representing the loss of toxic masculinity and expressing emotions to be undesirable and weak.

There's an alternate universe where this is a better story and Billy loses EVERYTHING - not just the girl. He doesn't get even the consolation prize of getting to be the evil villain he aspired to be. The fact he even accepts the invitation after he kills Penny seems to show that

he didn't really grow at all, or change in a meaningful way. He's back at square one - there's a girl he can never have, and his only meaningful way of courting her is to do things that she is repeatedly shown to find reprehensible. But the story expects us to be sympathetic.

Maybe I'm reading the whole thing wrong. It has, admittedly, been a while since I've seen it. I'm really not sure why I'm thinking about it now. These are just some thoughts I'm vomiting up onto Twitter Dot Com for some reason.