A good example of it is the title character in The Mick played by Caitlin Olson, and seems to be an extension of the one she played in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dee.
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Mick always blurts out what she’s thinking, jumps to conclusions, is short-sighted etc etc. But not in a clueless or id-driven way. And lacking the dark nobility to be antiheroic. Antiheroes and antiheroines aren’t cringe.
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She is portrayed as smart but as pulling consequentially stupid jackass moves that female characters don’t generally do, due to being ungoverned.
Women are rarely written as geniuses but rarely written as jackasses (jennyasses?) either. The harmless ditzy type is more common.
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Reminds me of argument from 2017 that ‘maladjusted party girl’ is the right mental model for antiheroine. Maladjusted party girl types have a sort of tragic quality to them that the cringe jackass-heroine lacks. But there’s some relationship. Comic antiheroine?
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Replying to
I totally missed cringe as an axis and I agree it's an important ingredient in that whole cultural soup
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have you followed the Caroline Calloway saga at all? new twist on disaster chic (well, not really new, but raw derangement is so much more accessible at the fingertips now... has mentioned this often)
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this is old so lacks the latest... plot developments? but I think it's the best all-in-one intro to Caroline theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/
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the real-time version is always being broadcast on instagram instagram.com/carolinecallow
and naturally has generated a lively commentary community
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Oh okay now I remember. I’d read about her then blocked it out as too much of a trainwreck to follow.

