"Castor and Pollux"; The Importance of the Male Duo in Fiction

[Geokeyser]

I'll keep this brief and just launch into my point: if we are ever going to have our own segment of culture, as in art music and film, then there needs to be an emphasis on the power of small groups of men, specifically a duo.

Many films have been released which appeal to us and people similar to us in personality. These films are usually tagged as "sigma" and "incel." While these films might be great, or at the very least more digestible than other modern kino, there is a subversive element to it. I don't mean crypto-Leftist rhetoric, but the more hidden subversion: the assumption that in the battle of man vs. society, the man must stand alone.

In this type of media, it is always a lonely man with no one to rely on, and if they DO have someone else, their only companion is a woman. The message being directed is 
obvious: "You are helpless in this stand against higher authority, and the only cure for your problems is finding love." And that is genuinely what occurs: the girl in these stories are often not a motivation for taking actions but a depressant that calms down any righteous anger from the protagonist.

I could go on about these issues but I'll stop to give my solution: We create our own films in this genre except the protagonist has a best friend. The power of a duo should not be underrated; BAP has spent years emphasizing how many great deeds have been accomplished by two men who have each other's back. And it's not even unseen: in shonen anime, in buddy cop films, in high fantasy, there is often a masculine duo as the main characters. Yet, this duo never appears in films with anti-social themes.

Why? It's because they are afraid of it. They only show duos in pro-social contexts, as a friendship used to maintain the status quo. But to have the divine twins, the archetype of Castor and Pollux, fighting against the status quo is too dangerous for Hollywood to even play with. They want to hit a balance with disillusioned men by lying to them and giving them a false dichotomy: lashing out impotently alone or finding peace through the Longhouse. What they don't want is to inspire what will ACTUALLY make a difference, which is through the power of a brotherhood, which can be as big as a whole team but even as small as a duo.

To conclude: the "sigma incel" film genre is subversive but it is attractive for a good reason; we just need to fix it into something with proper fangs.

[august]

The idea is well-intentioned but some practicalities come to mind that I feel may be worth getting down before this becomes too much a discussion of school shooters.

For one, male duo movies aren't as popular because it's only too natural for people to like the idea of 'the hero' or 'the antihero', one person that they can either aspire to be or see themselves in. So many libtards like to say "I don't believe in the Great Man Theory." They're lying and only say this because they're retarded commies (which is an ideology that requires adherents to tell themselves a lie about human nature). Even some of the best characters and figures of history that you may like, how many of them come in pairs? Yes, it's common in many origin myths, but it's not like we refer to "Hitler & Goebbels" only exclusively as a pair. In literature or film, my guess is that this is why we have the idea of the sidekick; there can only be one star of the show. Who knows if Dantes would've been able to pull it off without the help of Jacopo? He probably wouldn't have, and we're glad that Jacopo was there. But only one of them could be The Count. And what of Zarathustra, so relevant to the model of man that many seek to bring about? Who were his friends? An eagle and a snake... but what did they mean?

This is not to say that 'dynamic duos' aren't important. The concept of friendship is the best weapon against this way of ""life"" we are witnessing that seeks nothing other than the destruction of man as he has historically existed, and your post hits on a pretty good area for us to think about and discuss. But even so, I think that it's much more natural for us to want to see our one main character of the story, even if it's true that they surely wouldn't have been able to do it entirely on their own. 



“What a loss for France and for me!” It's noted in history that Napoleon was the most distraught many would ever see him in his life upon the death of Marshal Lannes. Everyone knows who Napoleon was, but only those that make up a sliver of the global population that's interested in a teeny tiny period of history know that Jean Lannes even existed. 

Your conclusion, that there is a "sigma incel" genre that is subverting what people should really be taking away from movies, or art. I think a better, more accurate way to put it is that these movies, Drive, American Psycho, Taxi Driver, Blade Runner (the one with Gosling), etc, were appropriated by people who made the "sigma incel" meme their reality... the "sigma incel" perspective was perhaps projected onto these characters. It follows logically: the main character (the "sigma") is someone who can't quite fit in to the hierarchy of normal society around them so, whether by their own volition or not, they are placed outside of it. When you look at young guys today, and especially the types that make these characters their personalities, they're essentially just attracted to something that resonates with them on a personal level. I'm unsure how effective seeing media with "male duo" protagonists would be for a loner that's already without any true friends in his real life to begin with. I feel like if I was in such a position, I would watch it and think, "wow, I really wish I had a friend like that." 

To that end, since my premise here is that these types of young guys seem to be attracted to characters that appear to reflect their personal situations, I think that it would be necessary to first find ways to foster real life friendships before making a bunch of friendless people wish that they had friends. I was surprised by the discussion of this in the shoutbox because -- as many here have recently expressed desire to rehabilitate forms of male bonding from antiquity -- no one mentioned anything about one that has existed and remained true for thousands upon thousands of years. That being, athletics. I'm not talking about watching niggerball on the TEE VEE and talking about it with braindead retards. I'm not even talking about going to the gym and lifting so you can be a cool "RW" "bodybuilder". Rather, I'm talking about the bonds that groups of men can form through sport by making a physical and mental sacrifice together with the sole objective being a shared desire to WIN. Few things come closer to the feeling of having a shared investment in accomplishing a goal than training for hours, months, years together, knowing that a tenth of a second is what might separate each of you, together as one, from victory or defeat. You'd be surprised how many never get to experience something like this. In both the winning and the losing, I believe one can find some of life's most valuable lessons that can only be learned as such. 





I believe you have to promote this first. A requisite that must exist before. Or else you'll just have movies glorifying something that doesn't really exist for many of the people watching them, yet.

[Virtue]

The power of a duo should not be underrated; BAP has spent years emphasizing how many great deeds have been accomplished by two men who have each other's back. And it's not even unseen: in shonen anime, in buddy cop films, in high fantasy, there is often a masculine duo as the main characters. Yet, this duo never appears in films with anti-social themes.

Why? It's because they are afraid of it. They only show duos in pro-social contexts, as a friendship used to maintain the status quo. But to have the divine twins, the archetype of Castor and Pollux, fighting against the status quo is too dangerous for Hollywood to even play with. They want to hit a balance with disillusioned men by lying to them and giving them a false dichotomy: lashing out impotently alone or finding peace through the Longhouse. What they don't want is to inspire what will ACTUALLY make a difference, which is through the power of a brotherhood, which can be as big as a whole team but even as small as a duo.

I believe who instilled this fear in them were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, a duo everyone is familiar with. They really give a good example of how two people can work together to harm others, although their shooting only killed a dozen or so people despite aiming to kill hundreds, they managed to inspire a number of inferior copycat shooters, it isn't like they had time to contemplate retrospectively but I don't think they had any regrets. They certainly were anti-social, as in they were against society completely, but they weren't really awkard or autistic or it is hard to describe them as such, they maintained a social presence until the day they made the attack and knew how their actions would negatively affect people dear to them but despite all these things society put in order to make them docile, their desire to simulate DOOM in real life triumphed. Because DOOM is better than mere life. And co-op is superior to singleplayer.

Eric was more online relative to Dylan and made DOOM WADs during his spare time and I thought it would be appropriate if I spent my time today playing the DOOM WADs Eric Harris made before trying to initiate this discussion about an infamous duo and was just thinking about what is in front of me and the individual who made these maps, I must say I was quite surprised because it had some novel ideas especially his singleplayer map UACLABS, I am not much familiar with the DOOM modding scene and how great WADs could be but frankly I enjoyed playing these two levels first one having a very interesting ending, which forced me to ditch the fighting and run for the exit and the latter being very dark, dark in a way that ancient games can be, frustrating to traverse. A memorable WAD. The other one which intrigued me the most was STATION, which was designed as a deathmatch map. It has a very aesthetically pleasing skybox, a dark blue space and it seems that the entire map was designed around this aesthetic of being in a space station, some hallways have partially-open ceilings, which give this unique skybox prominence and there is this surreal area where you can walk on space. He had some nice aesthetic sensibilities which appealed to me, even a WAD meant to be experienced around the mode of deathmatch is enjoyable as a leisurely walk, this is a difficult thing to do and I commend him for managing to do this. 



Dylan Klebold, as a character is not as interesting as Eric, but he looks more cooler and intimidating when geared up, thanks to his tall stature.



Here we see what the actual appeal of a duo is, two people get together and take on a single task as August mentioned, this makes it so that their bond  becoming stronger is not a choice but a necessity, the first thing they did to make their bond doesn't matter, it could have been a trivial encounter which results in the seeds of friendship being sown or a more profound one, being brought up together since childhood (The case of Achilles and Patroclus). Once again we're face to face with Philia, as we were when talking about pederasty. Do you see now how dangerous Philia could be if it is mobilized in an anti-social way and how it is necessary for every endeavor that demands more than one person? And once they've spent enough time and dealt with trouble together the only conclusion an outsider can come to is, a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

[Unformed Golem]

Maybe some pairings that look like "hero and sidekick" from the outside feel more like "Castor and Pollux duos" from the inside. But more often it's probably just what it looks like.

I'll confess I'm very doubtful about this vs. the positive portrayal of small groups which, of course, have some sort of leader. Castor and Pollux are twins, and being a twin is unusual. In order for a duo not to produce a miniaturized dominance hierarchy the two members would have to be truly Equal, which would be a freak occurrence/divine Providence. It would at best be a sort of talent or gift, like being tall.

Just because something is unusual doesn't mean there's no point in forming narratives about it though. For the reasons stated in the OP, excessive fixation on the Sigma Loner type is counterproductive. The sheer difficulty of portraying this type correctly and compellingly should make it attractive to storytellers trying to avoid excessive formula, if nothing else.