It really is strange how Edelstans simultaneously dig hard into people that don't agree with their specific interpretation of 3H to the point of being happy they manage to drive those people away... and be so upset and baffled that people become generally disinterested/actively hostile towards 3H content.
If folks get repeatedly driven out of a fandom, and that group of people repeatedly calls anyone who disagrees with their specific interpretation of 3H stupid/illiterate/"acting in bad faith"/sexist/racist/homophobic/etc., and it is repeatedly done by a group of people who insist that 3H's fandom problem is a "both sides" thing, with all of this being dragged into spaces that have nothing to do with 3H, well... obviously people are then going to start to dislike interacting with either 3H in general or its fandom in particular?
Edelstans are the ones spreading the idea that 3H's fandom in totality is shit. They keep trying to make their hands look cleaner than they are by claiming that everyone else's hands are just dirty as/even dirtier than theirs. Of course people who are unaware of everything are going to then assume that everyone's hands are dirty, thus making people not exactly want to shake hands with anyone.
Like, really now. What did they think was going to happen when they directly go after fanartists/fanfic writers who create/say things that go against the Approved Edelstan Status Quo, to the point that a non-zero amount of these creators just up and leave social media entirely? Or after they nitpick every single Disapproved Post and then lie about the post's OP? Or after it becomes a consistent pattern that people who even remotely disagree with Edelstans' opinions are always, without fail, buried with insulting and harassing anons? Or after they're shown time and time again to defend their worst actors with "well their/our victims deserved it because they said a 3H opinion we didn't agree with"? Or when they say that everyone does this shit in 3H's fandom except for them (which is either not believed because it's demonstrably untrue or is actually believed and now those people think the overwhelming majority of 3H's fandom is filled with shit)? Or when they drag 3H discourse into literally actually everything no matter how unrelated?
That with less fandom creators within the fandom space they'd get more content? That harassing and insulting people and accusing them of being this-and-that bigot is going to magically "correct" their minds into seeing The One Truth about 3H? That people are going to just look over all the shit they did just because they allocate the blame of their action on all of 3H's fandom? That people would like 3H more if they constantly remind people of the inarguable worst thing to come from 3H? That this would help 3H's general perception?
Fuckin' no, of course that's just going to make everyone fuck off from 3H. And would you look at that, a shit ton of people have fucked off from 3H since everything has been swept under a "well it'sth a bolth thides ithue tho what can ya do?" rug. And it's been swept under that rug by pretty much the only people who are pulling this shit, who then get shocked - utterly gobsmacked! - that that made them look bad too. That crying "both sides!" included themselves too and not just the people they've been harassing. That saying that the entire fandom is bad everywhere made the entire fandom look bad everywhere.
If Edelstans are really so upset that no one talks about 3H positively anymore, then maybe they should stop being the reason no one likes 3H anymore. Just a thought
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anyways i think if i was currently in school and a teacher said "write an essay about literally anything" i'd for once get at least a B on an essay because my autism would grab hold of my keyboard and write a 50 page dissertation on slay the princess
50 page because i'd jump from how it portrays various sorts of love (romantic, platonic, mutually destructive, toxic, etc.), to how the voices connect to each of their princesses (including chapter 3 voices), to the parallels between certain princesses (ex. the damsel and the prisoner), to the general metaphorical and spiritual connection between the long quiet and the shifting mound, to the LITERAL connection formed with the wild and how close she had come to understanding the truth, to-
anyways if i was more confident i'd still write this
but confident about personal analysis towards interests i am not
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I remember you saying you had some thoughts on Morro being a less effective version of Tai Lung from the Kung Fu Panda movie. Do you have any more thoughts on that :o
Quick introduction, both Morro and Tai Lung are students who turned evil much to the of their old teachers (Wu and Shifu respectively). If you watched Kung Fu Panda 609 times as a child like me, you probably caught on that Morro's character was taken whole cloth from Tai Lung.
Now let's get into the details!
So Tai Lung and Morro have two parts to their character: the threat/villain aspects, and the tragic relationship/falling out with their mentor.
As a villain, Morro works pretty well. Possessing Lloyd establishes him as a threat both emotionally and power wise, since he's taken someone the ninja care for deeply and robbed them of their most powerful member in one swoop. I always kind of thought of him as the dark version of Lloyd, but he’s really more of a “What season 1 Kai could've been”, further supported by Kai's unyielding determination to protect Lloyd this season, contrasted against Morro literally using Lloyd as an actual meat puppet and casually threatening to kill Lloyd to get what he wants.
He’s threatening, hateable, and thematically appropriate as a villain.
As for his “tragic” relationship with Wu, well…despite general fandom opinion, it's actually pretty weak.
Tai Lung's screen time is dedicated to building up how powerful of a threat he is, outside of two key scenes that establish and build on his relationship with Shifu. The first is a flashback that happens somewhere around the half point of the movie. Reveling that Tai Lung was groomed to work his entire life for a role he ends up being denied point-blank recontextualizes the audience's feelings about Tai Lung. Up to that point he was presented as just some dangerously power-hungry villain, but now that the audience knows that Shifu has a personal connection to Tai Lung, and that changes their feelings on both of them.
The second relationship-focused scene is the penultimate fight between Tai Lung and Shifu. Before the combat, the two of them have a conversation that is just loaded with tension, and that tension stays prominent for the rest of the fight. The audience obviously doesn’t want Tai Lung to win, but watching Shifu attempt to take down the child he raised with his whole heart doesn’t exactly feel all sunshiny. Everything from the dialogue to the dark and rainy atmosphere (later heavily contrasted against Po’s triumphant fight in the rising sun) is meant to emphasize the heaviness and tragedy of the fight, building the flashback and Shifu's character growth to twist the knife in the audience's heart.
On the surface, Morro works similarly, spending the majority of his screen time being built up as someone that needs to be stopped, outside of two scenes that focus on his relationship with Wu. While Tai Lung's flashback happens in the middle of the movie, Morro's is told in the second episode of the season. Changing the timing of the flashback changes the effect it has on the audience. Instead of establishing an evil scary guy and then going ‘oh wait, there’s also this other important aspect to him’, we see the more human (literally) side of Morro almost straight away and then spend the remaining 80% of the season showing how evil he is. If Morro’s backstory garnered any sympathy from the audience, it will inevitably be overshadowed by the proceding 8 episodes of Morro doing nothing but make selfish choices. Doing Morro's flashback earlier has the exact opposite effect that Tai Lung's flashback had on his story.
Also worth noting that while a large part of Shifu’s characterization comes from his hand in Tai Lung’s fall (his cold relationship with his new students, his need for control, etc), Ninjago shifts the fault more so onto Morro as a person:
Wu: After I told him he could be the Green Ninja, there was a hunger unmatched.
Morro: (He kicks some of the other trainees, making them fall. Aggressively) Get up. Get up!
Wu: Enough.
Morro: But Sensei, I'm gonna be the Green Ninja. I need greater tests.
Wu: I said, enough!
Kung Fu Panda meanwhile feels no need to shy away from the idea of Tai Lung's actions being the result of Shifu's failure as a teacher. In fact, it embraces it:
Tai Lung: Not your fault!? Who filled my head with dreams? Who drove me to train until my bones cracked? Who denied me my destiny!?
...
Shifu: I...I have always been...proud of you. From the first moment I've been proud of you. And it was my pride...that blinded me. I loved you too much too see what you were becoming...what I was turning you into...I'm s-...I'm sorry...
Ninjago doesn’t completely kill the vibes, it’s still understandable that Wu would be sad a student of his didn’t turn out well, but lessening the responsibility Wu’s bears for the way Morro turned out gives their relationship a lot less weight than Shifu and Tai Lung’s, and lessens the impact their relationship had on Wu’s character compared to Shifu’s. They do retroactively imply Morro's reaction was the reason Wu never told his new students about the green ninja prophecy, which is kind of neat, but Wu doesn't really seem to be affected by his relationship with Morro beyond that.
They're not showcasing Wu being affected by the soured relationship, or building up any kind of emotional conflict about having to oppose his old student. The fact that this season's antagonist is Morro doesn't make Wu behave any differently than he would with any other run-of-the-mill Ninjago villain.
Shifu's character, as I mentioned earlier, is felt in pretty much every moment he's on screen. You can feel his fear of history repeating itself in everything from how frugal he is with praise for his students, to the sheer panic in his voice anytime he and Oogway talk about Tai Lung returning.
In fairness to Ninjago, Shifu was a character made entirely for that movie and nothing else, so his character was built from the ground up with his relationship with his student in mind for the whole process, while Wu is an already existing character in an establised franchise (that's also on a much smaller budget than a Dreamworks movie *ahem*), but they aren't really trying to build up the relationship between Wu and Morro outside over the course of Posession at all, outside of the two specific scenes I mentioned.
Speaking of, there’s the final scene between mentor and student that both charaters share. For Tai Lung, this was a fight, and for Morro, it's a redemption, and I don't think the writers considered how that key difference would affect Morro's story very deeply. Morro and Tai Lung follow the same structure of building up how evil and threatening they are until their ultimate defeat, and since Tai Lung’s story wasn’t building towards redemption, neither does Morro’s. This is fine for Tai Lung, because the emotional climax of his story is acceptance of the tragedy that his and Shifu’s shattered relationship is completely and totally beyond mending. Not only that, but it mainly takes place over a fight. It makes sense to just continuously ramp up Tai Lung’s threat level.
Morro on the other hand, completely switches sides at the last possible second of both his life and the season. With no buildup, his redemption feels very sudden and insincere. This guy who’s been plotting around the same obsession he had as a child for decades, kidnapped and possessed a child, put in the work to literally rewrite destiny, and made deals with satan/hell herself just decided “Actually I’m good now okay byeeeeeee!” in the space of two seconds?
Tai Lung and Shifu’s fight crushes your soul a little. Morro’s redemption just leaves you going “I guess that happened?”
They ripped off Tai Lung and only got him half-right.
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