The Ideal-ist: Episode 17 (the Wolf)

Welcome back to The Ideal-ist, the YouTube Shorts companion series to The Autistic Mile.

In this series, Shane Gaffney explores the characters, games, shows, and stories that resonate with him on a personal level—not simply because they’re entertaining, but because they can bring uncomfortable emotions and complicated truths to the surface in ways that are worth examining.

In this episode, Shane turns his attention to the Wolf from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and the messy but recognizable appeal behind watching arrogance finally meet consequences.

When someone appears ungrateful for the advantages they’ve been given, dismissive of hardship, or convinced they’re somehow untouchable, it can be surprisingly satisfying to watch reality knock them down a peg. That reaction has a name: schadenfreude, the pleasure or relief someone may feel at another person’s misfortune.

That doesn’t make the Wolf a hero. Far from it. But his relentless pursuit of Puss brings that emotional phenomenon to the forefront by forcing a famously fearless, boastful character to confront vulnerability, mortality, and the value of what he had previously taken for granted.

Shane explores why that kind of downfall can feel cathartic to people who are intimately familiar with struggle—especially when they’ve watched others casually dismiss hardships they themselves never had the luxury of avoiding. Sometimes the satisfaction isn’t rooted in cruelty so much as a frustrated desire to see the scales of fairness balance themselves, even briefly.

Having those feelings doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person. Sometimes it simply reveals the gap between how fair we believe the world should be and how arbitrary it can actually feel.

Georgia Dow video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHpVic9iVug

#TheIdealist #TheAutisticMile #PussInBootsTheLastWish #TheWolf #Death #Schadenfreude #Karma #Justice #Autism #ActuallyAutistic #AutisticPerspective #CharacterAnalysis #Psychology #Fairness #StoryAnalysis #DreamWorks #YouTubeShorts