The Good Damage in the Creative Mind

“Good Damage” is the 10th episode of the sixth and final season of Netflix’s Bojack Horseman. It aired in January 2021, and has been my favourite episode ever since. I don’t rewatch the series in full that often, I mostly just put on a few of my favourite episodes to capture that jolt of serotonin the show gives me. But when I do stick on an episode of Bojack, Good Damage is always the one I put on first. I love it so much, and I’ve never really understood why it rarely sits at the top of other fan’s rankings. Like sure, The View From Halfway Down, Time’s Arrow, and The Old Sugarman Place are all classics. Masterpieces even. Hell, I’d probably go as far as to say that The Old Sugarman Place is the best episode of the show objectively. But it’s funny, even though I know that those episodes are objectively good, I rarely find myself rewatching them. But other fans can’t seem to get enough.

That’s not to say people hate Good Damage. Far from it, I’ve seen many other creators and creatives alike resonate deeply with it. I guess it just doesn’t take it’s premise far enough to reach the level of hype all the other best episodes get. Well, that and all of the Diane hate in the fandom. Yeah, what was up with that again?

For whatever reason, the Bojack fandom at large decided that Diane was the absolute worst character in the whole show. I still don’t get it, like it was probably mostly just misogyny mixed in with a little racism for good measure, but even so, Diane couldn’t do anything, and I mean anything, without being criticised for it. She was just written off as an “Asian Daria”, and damn do I hate that comparison. Like it was funny at first, back when I first discovered the show, because I loved Diane, and I love Daria, another one of my favourite shows, but as time went on it just became exhausting. Fandoms as a whole have this habit of latching onto a joke, or a meme, and just running it into the ground, way past the point of it being funny, and sometimes even way past the show airing. In some cases these types of jokes can be all you find when you visit a fandom, and whenever new content for said fandom drops, fans will go well out of their way to apply the old memes to it, desperate to latch onto their precious memes they know will get the likes. And “Asian Daria” is not exempt from this.

But it’s more than that. The “Asian Daria” joke exhausted me not just because it was repetitive, but because it ignored so much about Diane’s character. Because yes, she does share a few traits in common with Daria Morgandorffer, but the things that make her different are just so massive. Like, for one, her love of romance. Diane Nguyen may hate large, romantic gestures that draw attention and make her feel uncomfortable, but you know what she doesn’t hate? The small, intimate romantic gestures. The ones that highlight that feeling of connection and belonging that she’s spent almost her entire life looking for. We see this in her teenage years, when she becomes penpals with “Leo”, and fantasises about the kind of person he is, and the life he leads (before finding out that it was actually a cruel prank played by her brothers), and we see it again in her adult life as she sits down and delights in the thoughtful small acts Mr Peanutbutter does when he proposes to her. Diane loves romance, and while she may not voice it out loud during the run of the show, she’s clearly eager to have that connection with someone.

Not to mention, and this one is just for fun, Daria Morgandorffer was sent into an episode-long spiral when she got a writing rejection, whilst twenty-something Diane is elated by it.

Wow, okay, this kind of got off track fast. What was it I was going to talk about again? Oh right, Good Damage.

Okay, so what I’ve been rambling on about for the last few minutes, is that Diane Nguyen is a complex, beautiful character whose story tells very well the struggle of creatives, and creatives with mental health problems, and how that can affect their work. All of this comes to a head in Good Damage, where Diane is trying to write her most personal work yet, but is struggling to form coherent ideas. Kind of like what I’m doing right now.

Because I’m not writing this for any purpose. I was just sat in bed one night, watching a YouTube video about Diane, and it got me thinking about Good Damage, which in turn led to me questioning my status as a writer, because I haven't been able to finish anything that wasn’t for school or this one fanfiction event thing I did in I don’t know how long. Whenever I try to write something, my ideas pretty much always look like Diane’s do at the start of the episode. Unfocused, sketchy and rough, and what I do end up getting on paper I always hate within a few hours, or by the next morning. So after flying into a period hormone induced spiral about whether or not I’ll ever be able to call myself a real writer, I sat down and my laptop and opened a new Google Doc, only to once again not be able to think of anything that I actually wanted to write. My brain just wasn’t in the mood for it, I guess. Next thing I know I’m typing out this ramble about Good Damage, because it’s the only coherent thought flying around my head, and all of a sudden I’m almost 1000 words in. I don’t even know if this is anything, or if I’ll end up sharing it anywhere.

Good Damage is my favourite episode of Bojack Horseman because it does visually what I’ve been trying to explain to people who aren’t me for years. It shows that writing, or any other creative endeavour, is hard, and getting into the right mindset to actually make something is even harder. That sometimes even when I feel determined to sit down and write something, I end up not being able to translate my ideas properly, and that my writing ends up being bad. I know first drafts are meant to be rough, but even they feel worse than they should be. And explaining why that happens, and that I have no idea how to fix it can be so difficult, and it’s not often someone in my life understands it. Hell, I barely understand it.

I’m not on antidepressants like Diane is, but that comment she made about things being so clear, and yet clouded at the same time hit me so hard. Because yeah, it makes no sense, but that’s how it feels sometimes. And no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I say I want to, I just can’t seem to get my brain to focus on things. At least, not long enough to finish them. Because there are times when things do feel completely clear for a little while, and I get enough energy and focus to start a new project, outline a few things, and maybe even draft something. But it never lasts, and I almost always end up getting bored with it, or hating it, and just moving on to something else. Or moving on to nothing else, and sitting back down in the foggy area for a while.

I can’t finish a short story, yet I can somehow write two pages of whatever the fuck this is in an hour. I’m at nearly 1300 words now and I’m just ranting but I also can’t stop. I dread to think how badly this is all going to read back, if I ever read it back, because from what I remember what I’ve written tonight is just an unstructured, rambling mess.

I just hit page 3, so I should probably find a way to round this off; bring it back on track. I guess this took care of the energy I had to write something, though I don’t feel like I’ve done anything productive. I wonder how long it’ll take me to delete this one? Or to send it to the folder of forgotten rants that started just like this one did. I wanted to channel these thoughts into a short story. Have my characters say something that I could then show to people to remind them that I’m a writer, and I do actually write things sometimes. God, this stupid idea started as a fucking video essay I’ll never make. I’ll never say that out loud, of course, because me having a YouTube channel where I post video essays is yet another on a long list of things I'll never actually end up doing, despite thinking about it from time to time.

I need to stop writing, move on to something else, or go to bed, but I don’t want to. I want to turn this into something. Want to make this rant mean something. Maybe I should start keeping a journal. I’d probably fill the whole thing in one night. My first and only book, because God forbid I focus enough to actually write one and become an author.

Why do I always get like this the second I have a day off? Every week, like clockwork, I end up down some kind of anxiety spiral, questioning everything I’ve ever done or will ever do. It’s probably a sign that I shouldn’t be spending so much time with myself. Or I should go back to therapy. Or both. I’m at nearly 1700 words now, so I think I’m just going to end this here. Thanks for listening, I guess.