#LEARN TO ACTUALLY ANALYZE A FUCKING STORY

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[bulbabutt]

okay. lets bite the bullet and talk about 2012. lets talk about child abuse, familial abuse, generational abuse, toxic family units, whatever you wanna call it. lets talk about it and whether it exists in this show. i actually encourage you to read this no matter what your take is, just to hear it out. let me be FUCKING clear: i love this show, but i get scared to talk about it seriously. everyone on every side is defensive all the time but i love every turtles show to no end.

this post is going to go over so well and not controversially at all.

precursor: every splinter is some level of shitty dad. he always has been. the fucking bare bones of the character is that he raised his children to kill the man who killed his own father. thats inherently fucked up. every splinter has some level of fucked up about him. maybe hes inattentive, or neglectful, or strict, or secretive, maybe hes just not very good at dealing with his kids. splinter is supposed to be far from perfect. thats what makes him splinter. maybe he grows over the course of a series, maybe he doesnt. maybe hes supposed to be shitty his whole life, maybe hes not. thats just splinter. each is adapted differently depending on the story being told.

and 2012 has a very interesting tone to its story.

lets start at the beginning, back in japan. this is season 3, was this story what they intended when they started writing the show back in season 1? probably not, theres probably things they would have written differently had they known this was where splinter's story started. thats kind of the way tv works, you add the details later. but for our sake of analyzing the character of splinter as a whole, it seems best to start here as if its all intentional.

hamato yoshi is a member of the hamato clan. theyre a very traditional old ninja clan in the modern world, they have old feuds and theyre trying to keep their culture alive. they're literally the last of a clan of ninjas like this, having (supposedly) defeated the foot clan (their generational enemies) back when yoshi was a baby. hes set out to lead next, and its very important to him. and yet hes married to a woman who works in the city, a modern woman who doesnt live the life he does. she even moved to be with him. i feel the need to compare this to how men in the real world who want traditional wives never go for women who are willing to be their housewives, always try to break down the independent ones. splinter seems unconcerned with how his wife wants to live. with how she wants their daughter to be raised.

im not necessarily saying this is how this comes off in the show, but i find it interesting to think about. this is absolutely the most rounded version of tang shen as a character (thus far) it stops her being just a name on a page "hamato yoshi's love and the object of his enemies affections who died" and turns her into a woman who has a stake in the story. gives her more agency.

its very interesting that this show implies an actual relationship between tang shen and oroku saki, albeit a one-sided one that didnt work out, but they do seem to have parted on equal ground. the pair of them discuss yoshi's inattentive duties as a husband and father, that he's too obsessed with the tradition and lineage of his clan. honestly, if this woman just took her baby and left no one would blame her! he has his priorities set, and it leaves no room for her and their newborn baby. if she ran away with saki at this point, the story would make just as much sense.

but then disaster strikes, saki learns the truth about his family, that he was actually a child of the foot clan (honestly i wish we saw this play out instead of jumping ahead in the story but thats not what this post is about) and he kills he and yoshi's father. revenge for him having killed his. cycles of abuse and revenge that never end. the pair of them were raised in this society that values lineage like this, that would kill for it. its no wonder they both grew up this way.

anyway, tang shen is killed by a blow meant for yoshi, and saki takes their child and raises her. based on splinter's lack of desire to be a father so far in the story, its honestly not one you can blame him for. its fucked up, but it makes sense. saki does to miwa exactly what his father did to him. cycles of abuse and revenge.

yoshi loses everything, and moves to america. he's turned into splinter the mutant rat, and gains four turtle sons.

so as established, he's not exactly grown up with a stable family life. he obviously, while human, wasnt acting as a stable father for the child he intended to have. so how good is he at this?

ive talked before about how the 2003 show treats the turtles as kind of one whole unit. they don't have individual relationship arcs, they dont have overarching storylines where they grow apart or closer, they're always in each other's corner.

2012 makes this more dynamic. here we see that 15 years seeing no one but each other, growing under this splinter has come with its own quirks. these brothers dont understand each other that well. they get jealous of each others treatment, some are left out, some are misunderstood. raph resents leo, none of them appreciate what donnie does, mikey bothers everyone else for attention, etc. it creates a really good starting place for this show.

(the issue i have with this show is more that they never really open or close any of these beats, at least not in ways that last. but boy does it make for some good dramatic scenes)

we see over the course of this first season that splinter treats his children just as he was, as little ninjas more so than sons. he raises them to follow his traditions, the ones tang shen never cared for. but this is all he knows how to be! you cant really blame him.

most people bring up mikey as the quintessential example when they talk about this, i dont want to do that cuz i know you've all heard it. while i think his father does disrespect him and i think it is paid forward and his brothers do too, i'd rather talk about raph for a change.

in one episode, raph loses his temper. to teach him a lesson, splinter makes his brothers pelt him in training while insulting him any way they can, and tells him to just... not lose his temper. this is a terrible lesson in general. instead of trying to coax out why he might be angry, it just plays up that if he loses his temper bad things happen.

splinter in this episode basically encourages bullying. this comes up a lot when it comes to raph. to compare, in 2003 when raph loses his temper, hes told to blow off steam which he does. his brothers don't blame him for having emotional outbursts, they know thats just how he is so they know how he needs to cope with it. he's given the physical space to let it out.

im not saying this show needs to be like that show, im just saying thats a version of this story where the outcome is better for raph as a whole. since this outcome is not as good for him emotionally, you can tell why he's still got these emotional issues. splinter never helps him more than that. thats more why this raph differs from that one, if that makes sense. one has his family in his corner more than the other.

speaking of. raph has a pet turtle. this turtle is the only one he can talk to about how he feels. why might that be? it's the only thing hes kind and gentle to, and he refuses to let his brothers make him feel weak for being kind to it. where did he learn to be ashamed of being kind and gentle? thats a learned behaviour. in a house full of other men... yeah, that would happen. but whos values start that?

when this turtle gets some mutagen spilled on it, it tries to get revenge on his family. there is such a resentment going on here, its extremely juicy. the show chalks this up to "post mutation insanity", but its just as easy to think that everything raph has experienced has made him seem angry and resentful and perhaps scared to his pet, and that former pet wants raph to himself so they can be free. the frustrated venting of a child complaining about how no one understands him in such a big way turns slash into a vengeful monster, cuz thats all he's ever heard. it makes sense, he went from a little turtle to a fully cognizant adult aged being in an instant. emotionally no one would handle that well, and definitely not someone whos only ever heard the worst about people.

he comes around later. notably by being on his own, away from the hamatos.

again, im not saying the show is writing this intentionally, but i think tonally its in the zone where you could see this analysis as being canon. that these little pieces of narrative fit the worldview of a toxic family unit that isnt dealing with its problems in a healthy way.

there's other small aspects. leo slaps mikey early on, having seen it on his favourite show be used as a way of getting someone to calm down. mikey questions this behaviour, leo seems to feel bad about it when questioned. if we know that that behaviour was bad, what other things might he emulate in a similar way?

there's things like donnie's predatory behaviour towards april. in a world where all they ever knew was splinter's stories of the outside world (and perhaps television from decades earlier), hearing splinter's story of his love for tang shen, his rivalry with his own brother over her, you could actually see why he would behave the way he does, why he claims her the way he does. not as an excuse, but as a reason he learned the behaviour. and there's multiple opportunities for his father to tell him off. he never does. why would he? he knows no better.

this splinter, unlike every other, is not old or disabled. he doesnt require a cane (at the start, but also was never a good cane) and its interesting that despite being like... a 40 year old man in the peak of his life he does not accompany his sons on missions. he sits around doing nothing and disproves of his sons heroic actions. april literally calls him out for this at one point. the show is actually telling us some of this man's behaviour is wrong.

one of the more upsetting things that happens in this household is a lot of physical hitting. "theyre training" you might say. understandable. but when you see a lot of hitting come from the father in this show, played for a laugh, when you see splinter play the "drunk master" bit it makes you think. is that okay? isnt that a bit much?

the end of the muckman episode is a freeze frame of splinter (after having knocked out all of his sons to punish them for leaving while grounded) turning his anger on april and her running away. idk thats just not funny to me. this is a bit of the dating of the show, 2012 was a time where character's in shows were meaner, less affectionate, more bullying in nature. that was the sense of humour at the time. that isnt me making a judgment, it's just kind of the era. a pre steven universe world, if that makes sense. so many of the jokes that end in a hit aren't funny in 2024. especially not when they come from a parent.

when this splinter speaks about his kids to their brothers he often ends up insulting them. "you should be like mikey, he never overthinks because he doesn't think", this would be a big reason the boys speak about each other the way they do to their faces. puts forward a bit more of that bullying thing i mentioned earlier. if their own father talks about them like this, of course their brothers do too. so of course they join in and give payback.

again. splinter wasnt raised in a normal family. he was raised in a ninja commune with a bunch of murderers. he wasn't great with his wife and baby daughter. its not surprising that he's bad at this.

so, ive just said a bunch of things about what's wrong with this household as a whole. i think ive explained why the family unit behaves the way it does: generational teachings of feuds and traditional values. i dont think this makes the show bad! i, in fact, wish there was more of it. i think theres so much low hanging fruit that the show kind of wants to play with, but cant fully bring itself to.

specific example: during the space arc on a planet thats driving all the characters emotions against each other we get this amazing scene where raph screams at leo for being splinter's favourite. leo responds by hugging him. its really well done!

however its never brought up again, never actually getting into the nitty gritty of why raph feels like that is exactly what i think makes this show resonate with so many people

its dark! it pulls at your heart strings! it makes people feel seen! we go in mikey's head at one point and see such splintered (lol) personalities in his head. he has a huge anger problem (much like raph) in there. he retreats into imagination land when stressed. the show kind of toys with "these kids are fucked up!" but never lets those character moments go anywhere. i love how fucked up this family is. its so complex, it feels real. at least real to me. i wish it went that little step further and let the characters talk about these things a little more.

maybe you have a different experience, and thats fine! but i wouldnt brush off people like me who look at 2012 and say "these dynamics make me uncomfortable". to excuse it by saying "my family is like that and we're fine" sometimes i just wanna say... <:/ are you? have you talked about that? and if that's your read on it is that its fine, thats great. but some people notice patterns and those patterns can make them uncomfortable. i hope ive explained the patterns here.

i think thats why the fandom is as big as it is. this show would lead to the most amazing deep introspective fan-works youve ever seen, it lays the pieces out so perfectly for you to draw your own conclusions about why they are this way. you cant really blame people for talking about it as if its got a way higher rating than it does. it feels like it does.

i should say, i dont even know if i blame the show on its own for leaving those pieces laying there, it was on nickelodeon. i sense studio meddling in the tone. i mean, given that the show wanted to end with the big mutant apocalypse storyline, and yet the network wanted to end it with the big 87 crossover..... yeah i think its safe to say nick would rather they keep it light.

which is funny, because i think the most controversial thing i can say is i personally love the finale arc as the mutant apocalypse. it so encapsulates my favorite part of this show. to end this show in the darkest timeline and say "even though these characters are so far removed from who they used to be and even though the entire world is over they still have each other in the end" and i find that so perfect.

so. i understand that this is always a touchy topic. i know people want to brush it off as "people say the 12 brothers are abusive to mikey but mikey is fine", and i think thats a really skewed version of it from both sides. first of all. mikey is not fine, look in that boys head. look how he copes. he's not. but also, mikey is not the only victim. they all are. these turtles are victims of their upbringing, victims of generational war. of men who didnt know how to be good fathers in the first place. and thats good writing! it feels deep! it connects!

for more context: any fucked up way you can think of karai being raised by shredder? its probably the same way here. splinter and shredder were raised the same way.

i guess i think about this a lot, cuz i always see things like "oh, rise fans write crossovers where the rise boys love each other and have to teach the 12 boys how to be nice cuz they dont like 2012!" and i just think to myself:

guys. do you understand why a person might do that? why would someone (likely a teenager) want 2012 mikey to be treated nicely by a kinder more openly affectionate version of his own family? do i need to spell that out for you? why do we connect with media at all, why do we write our own stories about it?

if you genuinely dont. i mean, im glad for you. but sometimes you wanna imagine a world in which your own family is more openly affectionate with you. where they hug and tell you theyre proud and love you and you never have to question it, never have to look elsewhere for that kind of approval. its less that they're idolizing rise, and more that they're looking at the two families and saying "this one is emotionally mature and in touch with their feelings more than that one. how would that play out?"

doctor feelings ass response.

look, im not saying everyone understands 2012, that everyone likes or needs to like it. im just trying to say that i think these fucked up parts of 2012 are all around my favourite parts of the show. its an inspiring story about this fucked up little family that has no one but each other, and they're not great about it. they try, but they don't always get it right. i just wish the show would have talked about that part more. but i think that since it doesnt people get to fill in those blanks themselves, and they do it so beautifully. and i really wish people on the internet would be more kind to one another when they wanted to discuss these darker themes they find in it.

these are the reasons i love this show. i think its so very interesting that splinter dies this fucked up father figure who never really apologized for his behaviour. i like that raph needs to be held to stop punching his brothers. that leo doesnt have a good grip on what it is to be a leader, that he tries bad ways of doing it. i like that no one copes well! i like that their relationships are so complex! this show is messy! its good! i wish it was more messy!

and id love if we could be more honest about these things and how they make us feel instead of just brushing each other off as "likes the show" or "doesnt like the show". the things that make me uncomfortable are why i love this show and i'm pretty sure i'm not alone there.

[misteria247]

So I'm going to ramble a bit cuz I've been noticing that there's a lot of split opinions on Timmy Turner that rage from people adoring him flaws and all to people thinking that he's a little shit. So I decided to throw in my thoughts cuz it's been awhile since I've analyzed a character and I've got some thoughts fam lol. Please don't take this personally cuz this is just my opinion.

I think one of the main reasons why Timmy gets such a mixed reaction from fans is because a lot of his actual story is played like a sitcom. It's not placed in a more serious way, though there are moments where it is, it's quickly glossed over. If you take away the sitcom setting and the attempts of comedy and whatnot you actually get a rather horrible reality for this 10 year old boy. And with it suddenly a lot of his actions and attitude makes a lot more sense.

Timmy when introduced is a 10 year old. He's a child but he's also old enough to know the basics of right and wrong. Much like any kid. He gets his fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda because he was deemed to be a child in need of help. This whole scenario is played for laughs and whatnot but like, Timmy's life is actually horrid. He's abused by his babysitter, is tormented by school bullies, is essentially harassed by his teacher and is neglected by his own parents. This is his every day life, from the moment he was old enough to understand this was what he was exposed to and forced to accept. In a way Timmy was forced to grow up a bit faster because of it but not to a point where he completely lost the magic of childhood. When you think about this in a more serious way, things start to click together more.

Timmy's behavior when he gets snappy or creates mischief is a way to get attention from his parents. It's not a good kind but it's something. Or when he acts cold and selfishly, while it could be chalked up to being a kid, I could also argue that he might have actually learned it. Cause who else in his life puts their wants and desires before others? Who else doesn't think about the consequences of their actions and how it'd effect others? Who else ignores other people's thoughts and feelings when it comes to things?

His parents.

Timmy's parents do this shit constantly. From leaving him with abusive babysitters, to not really interacting with him, to making jabs about how their dreams died when he was born to a bunch of other shitty things. They forget to feed him and always criticize him, they're always jumping at the chance to essentially get away from him. All these things are things Timmy's witnessed and has been on the receiving end of for a decade. And never once does his parents really suffer any consequences. It's a known fact that children watch their parents and absorb information from it. Timmy's behaviors can very well be behaviors he unintentionally learned from them. Which is so sad because whenever Timmy's not acting like this, it's quite clear that he's actually incredibly different.

It becomes clear that Timmy's actually incredibly kind.

There's so many moments where he shows his kindness. From lending Cosmo and Wanda to Tootie, to helping fairies in Fairy World to literally giving his fairies the baby they always wanted to saving the whole world several times with little hesitation. Timmy at his core is a kind boy, but due to his home life and its constant reminders of the people in his life not wanting him. (Hell there was a whole ass episode about the world being better if he hadn't been born, like can you imagine that, it's fucking awful-). So in a way Timmy hides that kindness and rarely shows it because of these things.

Which is why Cosmo and Wanda and eventually Peri are so fucking important.

Cosmo and Wanda from the very beginning where different from everyone else. These fairies while granting some reckless and dangerous wishes, have always had Timmy's best interests in mind. Cosmo and Wanda are the positive influences that Timmy desperately needs, the adults that he actually needs to help encourage and push him towards the right direction. Cosmo and Wanda are always in Timmy's corner, even when he's made a mistake, and are always there to catch him and remind him that he's loved and wanted. In one episode where Timmy sneaks into his godparents castle, at the end when they're putting the picture of Maryann back into the hall of infamy, Timmy's first reaction is to apologize and believe that because he'd made this one mistake that he'd end up there with the other bad kids. Only to immediately be told no, baffling Wanda and Cosmo with the very idea of it.

It's things like this that help Timmy grow and feel comfortable with making mistakes. Cuz what he thought isn't exactly a normal thing. They help Timmy in so many ways and grow to love him as their very own cuz when Timmy allows himself to be well himself he's a rather endearing kid. It's no surprise they get so attached.

There's a lot of other things that I've got in my noggin but I just wanted to say these things for the time being. Maybe I'll update on this later lol.

[legobiwan]

We need to talk about this. And I'm going to start right off with a contentious claim:

Ford was willing to gamble the fate of his entire dimension to feed his ego and insecurities and Bill had him pegged from Square One.

This sounds like a harsh statement. It kind of is. When we first meet Ford in the show, all we end up learning from him is that restarting the Portal was dangerous and could (and did) create a rift that would open the door for Bill and his gang to end the world. And Ford pins this entirely on Stanley, excoriating him for not listening to his warnings in the journals and doing whatever he wanted, like a set of monkeys flinging shit at walls until he happened to get it correct.

Ford is a highly unreliable narrator. After all, as Stan rightfully said, who built the portal in the first place?

But we need to go deeper.

In Journal 3, Ford speaks to the necessity of hiding his journals, which he - to be quite honest - does a crappy job of. Why keep two out of the three journals in Gravity Falls, a mere hair's breath from the actual Portal, which for some mysterious reason, Ford has declined to - you know - actually destroy? Why bury the Journals near an elementary school with children - children who tend to be curious creatures and can and will find a way to discover what they shouldn't? Why call on your estranged brother who you claim to despise as an absolute last resort? Ford's narrative, if you really start to analyze it, makes zero sense. And it makes zero sense because it's an edifice, a personal mythology meant to be a bulwark against the horrible truth of Ford's motivations.

"I've stared at the fire, journals in hand, for hours. I just can't do it. The knowledge in here could be a gift to mankind, the portal's potential limitless. Am I really going to destroy it all just out of spite? No, I won't give HIM the satisfaction. Instead of destroying my work, I'll find a way to DESTROY BILL INSTEAD. If Cipher has a weakness, I'll find it. I'll outsmart the devil yet! He may be a god, but I am a scientist."

Ford could have ended this thirty years ago if his ego hadn't gotten in the way. All he had to do was burn the journals and destroy the portal, just like every other human Bill tried to con over the years. How much did Ford actually care about the end of the world as much as he cared about Bill's betrayal and losing his earth-shattering (quite literally) research?

He didn't. And given this, is it a surprise that Bill, when he finally was able to breach dimensions and start Weirdmaggedon, still placed bets that Ford would join him in the end? The man who said, "Fuck the universe, I need everyone to know I was right."

This isn't about the possible apocalypse. Ford doesn't make one, single mention of that here, doesn't seem to give one fuck if the world burns, as long as he can prove himself to be better than Bill and better than everyone who doubted him for all his life.

And this is why, I am certain, that when Bill perused Ford's possible futures, a large majority ended up with Ford turning to the dark side, as it were.

There's a reason Ford pulled these journal pages. They don't fit his self-constructed narrative of the heroic martyr who wants to save the world. Ford edits his own story again and again, pushing everyone away so they won't see just how insecure and absolutely desperate for validation he is.

Sound like someone we know? Maybe a yellow triangle who literally outlines the steps to denial in his teenage angst journal?

Bill, in essence, promised Ford the universe. Yes, literally, but also the universe in terms of what Ford always wanted - recognition and revenge. Ford, by not destroying the Portal or his journals, didn't 100% reject this proposal, even if that equivocation was subconscious. It's why - I think - Bill feels Ford's just put him "on read" after he fell through the Portal (according to Alex Hirsch).

Ford's going to have to come to terms with this. Maybe he did during his time in the Portal. We have no idea how much Ford did or didn't mellow while being stuck on the other side of the universe, although we do know a) he still holds a massive grudge against his brother and b) Bill is still able to play him like a lyre when he asks about the equation to pop the bubble around Gravity Falls. (And I do not for one second believe that Ford was trying to buy time when he admits that "Of course, a simple equation could collapse the barrier," when Bill questions him about it. Ford needs to prove that he knows the answer, that he figured it out, that he's a scientist and outsmarted a god. Again, if the kids and Stan hadn't come to Ford's rescue, it's very hard to say where Ford would have landed in the end).

The thing is, there's a part of Ford that realizes he's being an ass, that he needs someone. We see this with Bill, obviously, with Fiddleford in the ways Ford runs so incredibly hot and cold with the man (I need you, no I don't need you) - with Stan, who is a last resort but the only person Ford trusts enough to summon to Oregon. Because Ford didn't need Stan to destroy the journals or the portal - but he needed someone, maybe he needed a dollar-store Bill in his life, maybe he just needed someone to reach out like that. Ford fucks it up, wildly, as he can't let his ego go and allow Stan (who is being extremely practical, if bitter) to burn the journals like Ford should have weeks previous.

And well, we all know how that turned out.

What I'm curious about - and what I think needs to be covered more in fandom - is how Ford deals with all of this post-Weirdmaggedon. He's obviously in contrition mode at this point, swinging wildly to this penitent, self-abusing figure who will claim fault for the tiniest infraction.

That's not going to last him long. The type of change and self-reflection Ford needs is not going to come overnight. At some point, his uglier tendencies are going to rear their head on the Stan O'War and Stan is going to have to weather the blowback (or just throw his brother overboard). One might say Ford himself needs a little time the Theraprism, as he nearly consigned his own reality to damnation just like Bill did.

I love Ford. I adore Ford. He is so, so, so complicated. But ohhh boi, Fordsy, do you have issues with a Capital "I".

[inbabylontheywept]

Following back on the recent fusionposting to run a very technically unqualified intuition I have by you

When talking about baseload power generation, the conversation inevitably turns to nuclear, with a common narrative that certain countries are irrationally afraid of nuclear for not copying the successful policies of their neighbours (usually it's about Germany or Austria needing to emulate France)

What I've wanted to run by you is this viewpoint I've had for a while - that the economics of nuclear power are different from other sources, and that that may better explain the choices of policymakers:

The procurement of nuclear power seems much closer to military procurement in my eyes, with costs stemming from the management of standards, supply chains being inflexible and project/nation-dependent, and the costs of maintaining regional expertise overshadowing the costs that build physical capital.

Can you confirm/disconfirm any of these impressions?

I'm only slightly more qualified than you, unfortunately. I haven't work in the nuclear power sector. I have coworkers that have, and their stories do seem to check out with your descriptions.

Like, in a military style contract, parts might cost 4 times as much as a civilian part, because the military tests the parts much, much more stringently. You don't test the screws at home depot to make sure they match the metal composition, or that their sheer strength matches X, or on and on. You have a baseline level of trust that comes from market forces. But military supplies don't have market forces to work with - there isn't exactly a market for, say, F-35s. So they have to try and catch this manually instead of via crowdsourcing, and the results are painful.

That's military procurement, and I work with that enough to know why it exists. Even if it hurts.

Now, that sound very similar to nuclear power, which also analyzes everything to the T because the cost of failure is so ridiculously high. The coworker I mentioned before that worked for reactor said her first year learn-the-ropes project was doing a report on the safety consequences of swapping the lights from fluorescent to LED in the main office buildings. It was a 200+ page thing going over how the new lights would affect the backup power duration stats, hazards of the new lights vs the old ones (LEDs are less tolereant of undervoltage than fluorescents), things like that. I would imagine that in that case, they probably spent at least 4 or 5 times as much analyzing the impact of the lighting than they actually spent on the lighting.

This drives efficiency oriented people kind of crazy, but the whole point of these systems is not to be efficient. It is to be extremely resistant to failure. Ludicrously, insanely, painfully resistant. Because in the military case, a bad batch of bolts normally worth $40 could make a $35 million plane crash, and in the nuclear case, a meltdown could literally cause trillions of dollars of damage. The Fukushima meltdown is estimated to have caused $200 billion worth of damage, and it was not even close to a worst case scenario.

Anyway, I'm rambling a little, but your intuition seems good to me. I love nuclear power, but people suggesting that we "slash all the red tape around it" scare the shit out of me. They have no idea what they're fucking with, and if we're all very, very lucky, they never will.

[tealvenetianmask]

I rewatched the Helluva Boss trailer today and tried something different. Instead of looking for upcoming details or clues about what might happen, I looked for a narrative. I tried to imagine what the editors were thinking as they chose clips (both visual and audio) to include, and why.

I thought that MAYBE in light of having seen two of the episodes (and weeped over them, and analyzed them into the ground) most heavily featured in the trailer, I might learn something from doing this.

My conclusion is *drumroll* that the clips were chosen to introduce problems. AND NOT TELL US ANY OF THE OUTCOMES SO WE WOULD FUCKING SUFFER. Not too different from a movie trailer really.

So there are four main problems set up. Each of them are set up to make us ask questions.

Villains: Oh, what an array. Cherubs, Dhorks, new John Waters villain, Andrealphus, shadowy figures in hoods, Mammon flipping off the camera, etc. We're given very little information about how any of these confrontations will go. We just know there will be conflict/danger.

2. Blitz vs. self: "you always take from those around you . . ." "do you feel any kind of remorse for what you do?" "I make everyone's lives worse." "I don't want to be this way, not forever." One could argue that we've already seen tremendous growth with that last quote appearing in Apology Tour. I think that if I saw this group of quotes together without the context of the episodes so far, I would have assumed it would come last. But I think it's the beginning of a journey. We haven't heard all of these lines yet. And the ones we haven't heard might get closer to the self-loathing Blitz is dealing with than anything we've seen yet. These lines are telling us about a problem- again, the outcome is left blank. How will Blitz transform once he discovers that he wants to change and starts confronting the truly scary things living inside of him.

3. Stolitz: Okay so ALMOST everything in the trailer that has to do with their relationship is from either The Full Moon or Apology Tour. And in retrospect, it was pretty spoiler heavy. Maybe this is my shipper delulu speaking, but I think the writers/editors were okay with the trailer giving this much away from these two episodes BECAUSE these episodes set up the problems with their relationship and do not reveal the outcome.

The problems are ones we knew existed but have now seen tear them apart: Stolas wanting someone to care and Blitz wanting to be respected, the fact that they both love each other and want to be together but each think they're not wanted. Then there's the cruel as fuck framing where the trailer puts together Blitz looking at Stolas in awe and Stolas smiling as if they're in the same moment, only for us to find out in the actual episode that someone else is making Stolas smile.

Anyway, this is all to say that yes, I think that narratively they will get together at or near the end of the season. The trailer tells us that they both love each other despite the problems that are laid out. The solution IS for them to come back together somehow. And the trailer gives us that split second clip of Blitz defending Stolas to . . . I don't know . . . stop heartbroken shippers from rage quitting the show altogether after Apology Tour.

4. Stolas and Octavia: when it comes to the first two episodes in this group, this one has been visible in the show only through Octavia's absence . . . But if we look at the trailer as setting up problems, the problem is clear. "You never loved mother and you don't love me. You love him." Shit is going to hit the fan. And again, we have no idea what the outcome is going to be.

So conclusions?

Trailers are a cool art-form. They have to be narratively cohesive without giving away any outcomes. They have to make us want to see more. They can scare us but they can't be so depressing that they make us give up.

We didn't get random parts of the upcoming story. We got the earlier parts. At least, the earlier parts of each conflict (likely to be spread out somewhat), but please notice that the trailer has told us VERY LITTLE about Mastermind and Sinsmas.

There's very little reassurance in the trailer. It's supposed to be that way. But we do have hints that stolitz will be okay. Trust.

[roach-works]

for all its (apparently many?) flaws, i really enjoyed the fallout show, and i'm ride or die for maximus, obviously. but one of the things i enjoyed about lucy's arc isn't that she wasn't necessarily proved RIGHT or WRONG about her own moral code, she didn't learn that either kindness is its own reward or that niceness is suicidal in a fight for survival.

what she learned, i am pretty sure, is that context matters. you can't actually help people if you don't know anything about them. you can't enact justice if you don't know what the case on trial is. you can't come in out of nowhere and make snap decisions and be anything more than one more complication in a situation that was fucked up long before you were born.

that's what we see over and over: she comes in out of nowhere, she makes an attempt to help based on her immediate assumption of what's going on, and then everything continues to be dangerous and complicated and fucked up. she doesn't let the stoners explain that some ghouls will genuinely try to eat you the minute they get the chance, and she pays for it. she jumps to the wrong conclusion in vault 4 because not everyone who looks like a monster IS a monster, and she pays for it. yeah a lot of the time cooper is abusing her for his own satisfaction, but when she's a free agent she's a loose canon and it's not because the show is punishing her for TRYING to do the right thing. it's because the show is punishing her for jumping to conclusions.

this show gets a lot of laughs from Fish Out Of Water situations, but i think that even though cooper explicitly says "you'll change up here and not for the better, you'll become corrupted and selfish just to survive" that's not the real message. what lucy learns is how important it is to hear people out, meet them where they're at, and get the full story.

that's why the final confrontation with her father is so important. she hears everyone out. she gets the full story. she listens to all of it. and then she acts with full knowledge of situation. that's what the wasteland taught her: not to be cruel, not to be selfish, but that taking the time to understand what's actually going on really matters.

this is a show that's incredibly concerned with truth and lies. everyone is lying to each other and themselves. scenes change over and over as they're recontextualized. love and hate and grief and hope are just motives in a million interconnected shell games, not redeeming justifications. maximus's many compounded falsehoods are approved of by his own superior, who finds a corrupt pawn more useful than an honorable one. cooper finds out his wife has her own private agenda and this betrayal keeps him going for centuries. lucy's entire society is artificial and from the moment they find out they're not safe and maybe never have been, all the vault dwellers are scrambling to deal with that.

ANYWAY. i just think it's neat. sci fi is a lens to analyze our present through a hypothetical future, and i think it's pretty significant for this current age we live in, where we're all grappling with misinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and deepfakes, there's a huge anxiety over how hard it can be to find the truth out about anything. i think the show suggests that it's always worth the work to try.

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[pipsqueakparker]

everyone & their mother has analyzed the images from blitz’s memories atp in comparison to the moments in the show but

i’d just like to throw in my observation that the m&m moments, they’re so much closer in blitz’s memory than they actually were in the moment

i think the memories were so fucking cool to add as a story element because there’s so much to draw from them, we learn so much about blitz’s perspective & how he’s been seeing things and it’s just cool as hell to me when visual media finds a cool ass way to let you into a character’s head like that

[hms-no-fun]

Tell us about Dill and Alexander! I kinda picture them in my head as Kermit and that blue eagle Muppet but gay and gamer/greasy mechanic. Is that where you got the idea? Is sburb's frog fascination gonna play into the story of these boyos?

oh what's that? you want to be the captive audience for a lore dump about my very special guys? completely unprompted and with total investment in everything i might have to say? well well, don't mind if i do!

SO, Dill Croaker and Alexander Falcon are members of a now-defunct group called The Falconers. they are modeled after Star Fox (the team) from Star Fox (the video games). we haven't seen Alex on screen yet, but here's @girlpillz's rendering of Dill for B1 verse 1, where Lenore Lehart shows off her sick bouncy ball skills for Dana Straten to get the attention of Dill.

Alex being a blue falcon, i imagine he looks legally distinct from Falco Lombardi from Star Fox (the video games; the team) albeit less cocky and attitudinous.

there are technical reasons for The Falconers' existence. going into 3.2B, i knew i wanted a secondary supporting cast in the margins capable of handling dirtywork off-screen. for instance, they're decrypting and analyzing Lenore's stolen witch data so the main cast doesn't have to worry about it, leaving us more time to luxuriate in what we're actually here for: feelings.

Star Fox 64 is my favorite game, so when it came time to come up with that supporting cast, the possibilities of a knockoff Star Fox team immediately sold me on the idea (especially since this is the only story where i will ever reasonably be able to get away with such a blatant act of self-indulgence. you wouldn't believe it from looking, but i don't actually do a lot of indulging myself with Godfeels. i try very hard to never throw things in without serious calculation. The Falconers are pretty much the only thing i've introduced that came as an inorganic external mandate of my own selfish making, and even then i've worked very hard to integrate them naturally). as a broken up four-person crew, they mirror the Upsilons-- and so, them helping the Falconers reunite in order to find Alphi and Edie gives these guys some juice. their backstory is a shadow of the Upsilons', and a useful point of comparison as the narrative plugs along. i could've made a girl Star Fox team, but frankly Godfeels is just so women-centered, so female-focused, so tgirl-transfixed that i figured it was about time to throw the boylikers a bone.

The Falconers are balanced as a calculated twist on the Star Fox team. the most immediate difference is that here, Alexander Falcon fills the role of Fox McCloud. he's the charismatic team leader, a little surly (especially these days) but good at his job and deeply committed to the care of his team. Dill Croaker is, obviously, only about five runs through the dryer away from Slippy Toad, and fills the same role. my reason for this is that everyone is mean to Slippy and they're wrong. Slippy is a brilliant engineer and programmer, why do you expect him to be an ace fighter pilot too? that's YOUR job, hotshot! Nintendo themselves have been all over the map with Slippy in terms of characterization, pretty much never getting him quite as right as he felt in 64. so, yeah, Dill is my take on Slippy: a clueless gamer frog who plays with a lot of edgelords but is himself impervious to their venom. he never cusses because he's a good boy, and he respects women.

Dill and Alex have lived together on Crime Planet for a long time. are they fucking? no, i don't believe they are. Dill strikes me as something of an ace king, and anyway i don't think he's Alex's type. mostly they work together in the shop and hang out doing bro stuff. maybe Alex lifts weights while Dill plays shitty space MOBAs. but all this begs the question: who is Alex's type?

as of the B1 solo we've learned a little bit about the other two Falconers. first there is Erol [last name unknown], the oldest member of the crew who's likely analogous to Peppy Hare. which leaves us with Yolo Sionnach. a lot of information can be implied about him from this exchange:

yes, a lot of information indeed. but as much as i would love to enumerate the implications, i must hold my tongue. i mean, i would type it all out, but i can't, because i'm literally using my fingers to hold my tongue in place so that i can't say the spoilers out loud

anyway, i like the muppet comparison. that wasn't what i had in mind at all, but now i'm imagining the Falconers as the puppets Nintendo used to advertise Star Fox Zero and........ ohhhh scope creep you saucy temptress

the Slippy slander is rampant! and that's to say nothing of the ad where muppet versions of Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Reggie Fils-Aime slowly transform into Peppy, Fox, and Falco respectively.

i can't say that Sburb/the Universe Engine have much to do with The Falconers' story. they're not godtier, they don't know anything about the UE, they are literally just space mercenary furries. they come from the Lemurian Star System, trained at the Academy on Lemuria, and worked in the Lemurian Sky Corps until starting their own independent outfit as contractors (which i imagine is a fairly common career path in a region racked by interplanetary war and rampant espionage). age-wise, they're in their mid 30s.

thank you for this wonderful question. no one ever asks about the other guys, and i am always dying to talk about the other guys.

[moongothic]

Re-analyzing Crocodile in Marineford

So when I started falling down the Crocodad rabbithole, I did start by rereading Marineford to doublecheck the claims about whether or not Crocodile's behaviour truly was odd during the arc. And I did go into it with a good amount of scepticism, trying to find holes in the theory after having just learned about it. Well, it's been like a year now. I do feel like I've formed a strong idea of the Crocodad theory in my head, what we need to assume for it to be a viable theory, what supports it and where its weaknesses lie.

The thing about storytelling though is that you can read into things in truly wild ways if you want to find a way to support a theory, while also failing to understand/forgetting the pre-existing lore and what we know about certain characters.

So I want to reread Marineford again, but this time, having an understanding of the theory, I want to rethink how the Crocodad theory actually applies to this arc, and compare it to a more neutral reading, based on what we know about The Man of the Hour and what Oda actually (probably) wanted us to take away from the events of the story. So we're re-analyzing Crocodile in Marineford, but from two angles. The Normie Neutral Angle and the Crocodad Propaganda Angle.

Is this partially because I want to just prove to myself that I am actually delusional about Crocodad and been reading into things in the completely wrong way? So that when Oda finally debunks the theory I will be emotionally ready for it because otherwise the disappoinment will shatter my heart into a million pieces? Yes. Yes, that is why this post exists. But also I have wanted to do this for a while now because I did think it would be fun to return to this arc now that I'm MORE than familiar with the theory. Point is, I'm not here trying to ruin the fun for my Fellow Crocodad Truthers. I'm here to lower my own expectations and give myself a reality check.

So immidiately after arriving in Marineford in Chapter 558 Crocodile makes his way to Moby Dick to kill Whitebeard. Luffy forces him to back off for a second so the two can have a chat before he storms off to get to Ace. At this point, Sengoku gives everyone orders to kill Luffy because he is Dragon's son, making sure everyone on the battlefield knows too

Propaganda: The lack of Crocodile's reaction here is incredibly suspicious. So much so I wrote a whole metapost about that subject on its own.

The lack of Crocodile's reaction however could be just chalked up as his reaction not being important in this moment. Crocodile doesn't care about Luffy, he's only here to get Whitebeard's head and thus has more important things to worry about in this moment than that rubbery idiot.

Next time we see Crocodile is in Chapter 560. He's been blown away and off the Moby Dick. And while he is trying to get back on the ship so he can fight Whitebeard, he is failing miserably at it (being hindranced by mere goons) and is clearly fucking annoyed about it

Propaganda: His gloomy expression and hidden eyes are suspicious, considdering this is soon after hearing Sengoku's announcement. If Crocodile just learned Luffy is his son, then in the past few minutes we haven't seen him he has gone from learning that truth, to realizing he nearly killed his own son with his own hand (three times), to knowing Luffy has ran off straight into the lion's den and most likely certain doom, and understanding that even if he wanted to help Luffy, Luffy fucking hates his guts and wouldn't want his help anyway (+Luffy wouldn't know about their blood relation, now would not be the time to break the news, if ever). Luffy does have help in the form of the rest of the WB Pirates, Jinbei and Ivankov, so it may be for the best to Crocodile to try to focus on what he came to Marineford to begin with; getting his petty revenge and taking WB's head. But still, that shocking revelation could be getting under his skin, he might be having a bad time digesting everything.

Croc's petty revenge gets distracted by Jozu blasting Crocodile off and Doflamingo joining the fun by annoying Crocodile even more, until Crocodile sends the pink bastard flying out of his sight. He seems to continue trying to reach Whitebeard without any progress until WB gets stabbed by Squard, which causes Crocodile to burst out with a shocking amount of emotion

We know Crocodile has trust issues. We don't know what caused them, though a likely assumption might be that he may have been betrayed by someone (if not multiple people) in the past. Although impossible to confirm, if that is the case then watching Whitebeard get betrayed by one of his own could be a bad reminder of what may have happened to him in the past, not helped by Whitebeard immidiately choosing to forgive his son, something Crocodile might not be able to accept as easily.

Additionally, we know that Crocodile lost to Whitebeard when WB was in his prime. In this moment Croc would realize and have to face the fact that Whitebeard is an old man, he's not the same as the Primebeard who crushed Croc so long ago. Meaning, whatever catharsis Crocodile may have yearned for, he would not be able to actually get. There is no satisfaction to killing a weak, dying man.

Propaganda: This moment may have forced Crocodile to reflect on his weird relationship with his extranged son. Whitebeard forgave his foolish son for stabbing him, and while Crocodile may have no lingering grudge against Luffy for thwarting his plans in Alabasta... would Luffy ever forgive him for all the things he did? Could Luffy forgive him?

Crocodile then proceeds to stop Ace's premature execution attempt, and when confronted about it by Doflamingo, Crocodile confirms he has not taken Whitebeard's side.

This reinforces our understanding that Crocodile loathes the World Goverment so much he'd rather spare one of Whitebeard's own than let the WG get what they want. This is not a pro-WB move, this is just an anti-WG move

Propaganda: For one, Croc's hate of the WG could support to the idea he may have been involved with the Rev Army at some point, even if just temporarily. But most importantly, indeed, he did NOT spare Ace for Whitebeard's sake, which leaves us with only two other options; he did it for his own sake (=spite against the WG), or for Luffy's sake. He has seen the desperation and the efforts Luffy will go to for his loved ones, so Crocodile could only imagine the heart break Luffy would go through if he lost someone dear to him. So, even if his son hates him, he can't just sit by and watch Luffy get shattered right in front of him

As he is rushing to reach Ace, Luffy uses his Conqueror's Haki by accident to stop another execution attempt, which leads Whitebeard to order all his men to back up Luffy. As he runs, Luffy is almost cut down by Mihawk, only slowed down by Daz Bones and then finally stopped by Crocodile

Considdering Mihawk's earlier comments about Luffy's terrifying power of bringing people together to follow him, this is meant to be just a call back to that; not even Sir Crocodile is immune to Luffy's draw, much to Croc's own annoyance. Which isn't great, considdering he's already in a horrendous mood over Whitebeard, who had just now given his approval and acknowledge'd Luffy's value on the battlefield (after having ignored Crocodile nearly this entire time)

Propaganda: If Luffy is Croc's son then of course he would not let Mihawk kill him right in front of his face. Crocodile's foul mood and solemn expression is also explained by the realizations that hit him after Sengoku's announcement (as I explained earlier)

The war continues, Ace is freed and then killed by Akainu, causing Luffy's brain to shut down out of shock. Crocodile seems to watch Whitebeard's final stand though where he is and what he's doing exactly is vague during this time.

Jimbei however announces he has chosen protect Luffy with his life and is on the run with Luffy in his arms, while Akainu pursues them, eventually catching them and wounding both, severely.

Crocodile jumps in at last second, cutting Akainu in half and blasting Jimbei+Luffy out of his reach, allowing the two to finally escape.

Crocodile's comments here are calling back to two things. The latter is about his hatred of the World Government and not wanting them to have what they want, especially after WB finally kicked the bucket and they took Ace's life. Not wanting the WG to get the third bird with the same stone, Croc is making it his personal duty to be the biggest thorn in the WG's side right now. But the former, "if you want do protect something, do it right" calls back to Alabasta. Crocodile made it clear then and there that weakness is a sin, and only the strong can afford to have idealistic views (like Vivi wanting to save her people and her country). Crocodile berating Jimbei here is a lecture; if Jimbei claims he's going to protect Luffy with his own life, then actually put your money where your mouth is and do it. Jimbei, a (former) Warlord just like Crocodile, should be able to do better than this.

Propaganda: Crocodile''s comments at Jimbei are a confession; he has someone he wants to protect no matter what (and that's his son). Also, the phrase "love is always a hurricane" has been repeated over this Saga numerous times, and while it has been in reference to romantic love... What did Crocodile save Luffy's life with if not a sand twister, a hurricane?

The war ends and we see Crocodile looking solemn over everything that has transpired.

Maybe he is quietly paying his respects to Whitebeard and taking it all in.

Propaganda: The last Crocodile saw of Luffy was the unconcious, wounded boy being taken into a submarine that vanished into the waves, followed by Kizaru and Aokiji's attempts to sink the ship. Crocodile has no idea if the ship survived the attacks or has already sunken, but even if they managed to escape, between the grave wounds Luffy had recieved and the trauma of Ace dying, the boy's survival was not quaranteed. The war could break Luffy, forever. And there'd be nothing Crocodile could do about it. It was out of his hands now.

After taking some time to recover, Luffy, together with Jimbei and Rayleigh go have some fun in Marineford and pay their respects to Whitebeard, ending up on the news that even Crocodile gets to read about.

(Sidenote but Viz's official translation here is a bit off, "The cheeky rascal" isn't about Luffy but is directed at Daz, so it should be "You cheeky rascal")

He has recovered from his wounds and the frustrating disappointment of Whitebeard dying (and not by his hand), but is ready to set out into the New World, Luffy's infectious energy seemingly having inspired him once again to see what the seas have to offer.

Propaganda: Daz's comment here is strange, as he makes it sound like Crocodile had been like... what, moping? Sulking? For the past few weeks after the war? Crocodile's reaction to Daz's comment ("Are you sassing me you little shit") doesn't help either. It certainly makes it sound like Croc had been in the dumps, but considdering he would've had no idea what fate fell upon his son until now, yeah, him being worried and depressed would make sense. As would the way he immidiately perks up after finding out the idiot son is just fine

And that's it, that wraps up Summit War.

It's kind of sad, really, how when you get down to it Crocodad does make perfect sense in all of these scenes (maybe some more than others). But the Crocodile acts during this arc isn't weird when you get down to it, his behaviour is completely reasonable considdering everything else that is going down around him and the little we do know about his view of the world. And that fact makes Crocodad so easy to just brush aside as looking too deep into things when it's not meant to be that deep

But also, Oda is insane, and you can never fucking know when something WAS meant to be that deep from the begining until he gives out the full truth and spills the beans

Did I come here trying to debunk Crocodad for myself? Yes. Did I succeed at doing that? Not really. Did I have fun regardless? Yeah, and I hope this was at least vaguely interesting to some of you

[teeth-cable]

Why Lucifer being a good person is fucking stupid:

So in the show canon Lucifer and Lilith were kicked out because they were dreamers and gave Eve the fruit of knowledge. Based off the lore of Helluva Boss Lucifer 99% is the sin of Pride. In the show Lucifer is just a quirky theatre major who just wants to reconnect with his daughter...

Ok so lets analyze why this does not make sense in the worldbuilding. Lucifer is the King of Hell, a.k.a. a place full of homicidal maniacs and various other people. And since angelic weapons can harm angels (which is stupid btw) and sinners have been stealing weapons left behind by angels... Lucifer logistically cannot be a good person because these people could just decide to try to murder him if he was too weak. He needs the sinners and populace to fear him or respect him. Since Helluva takes place in the same setting Lucifer must have put in the social hierarchy of hell, approved it or doesn't do anything about it. Which means he plays some part in Stolas and Stella being forced to wed and the imps plus hellhounds being treated like garbage.

Then we get into story construction problems. Like if Charlie and Lucifer have a good relationship instantly then almost all the problems in the show can be solved at a snap of a finger because of Lucifer's power level. Its a similar problem with Alastor but worse because Lucifer is stronger. Like Alastor tho is implied to be weakened and forced to do this so there is intrigue storywise and limits on his personality and power. Lucifer is angel and can just like idk zap the Vees. Theres no threat, risk or anything now.

Also this Lucifer may have slept with Eve which either implies he cheated on Lilith or Adam was cheated on twice and Lucifer also agreed with genocide

And what wouldve been better is Lucifer being a shitty dad or person WHICH WE HAD IN THE PILOT. Like Lucifer being awful is actually better for the previous reasons and Charlie's own character. Like Charlie is supposed to be an underdog despite being princess and has an impossible task and if her father doesnt believe in her theres another personal level to then and maybe some of the audience could connect with her. And if Charlie's dad hates her or something you could easily write in and make Charlie struggle more by having him cut off her resources. Heck if her dad is awful then you can write in how Charlie feels about being so morally different. Then slowly build up to when we see Lucifer for the first time and actually have it feel special

This just makes me missed the pilot even more. While it did have it's own problems with the worldbuilding and characters, a majority of its ideas were still believable.

A better angle for Lucifer would be if he was a morally grey character. He can still be a decent father but a terrible ruler. Of course, that angle wouldn't work because everything in this show has to be black and white, where it literally tells you in a song, "Cause the rules are black and white" despite the same show critiquing its Heaven for the same black and white thinking.

I'm not against the idea of Lucifer being a decent father because there are still other ways the show can create conflict between him and Charlie. For example, he does get her the meeting into Heaven but it's at a cost. If she's unable to convinced Heaven, she has to abandon the hotel. Or maybe he is skeptical of Charlie's idea so he makes her overcome the hotel's problems, like the Vees, alone, to prove how strong and passionate she is. Of course, if they hurt Charlie, he can easily kill them, but it can serve as a great character moment for the both of them. Charlie learning Hell is brutal, Lucifer now hating the hotel because it will hurt Charlie, and create a new conflict where Charlie and Lucifer are against each other. Or the fact Lucifer was the one who allowed the exterminations to happened and Charlie has to undo her father's actions.

I'm only focusing on Lucifer being a "good" person through parenting because almost everything else, he's a bad guy. Not only was this the same man who allowed the yearly genocide of the sinners but also he created the classist, racist social hierarchy and system in Hell, and let the pride ring become so awful, the overlords, a group of powerful sinners, are taking advantage of regular sinners daily.

[dalekofchaos]

Vampyr sequel idea

I thought of going the LIS route of having different stories for each story of the franchise. But after carefully analyzing the game, doing my Embrace everyone playthrough and noticing a certain portrait in the Ashbury Castle. I figured out the perfect story and perfect antagonist for Vampyr 2.

Jacob Blackwood.

For those who don't know, let me explain.

In The West End, you meet Carina Billow, a woman who's mind has been destroyed by a powerful Vampire. Manipulated into eating rats to gain immortality. At first I thought it was just the Ascalon Club fucking with a mentally ill woman. But it's worse.

Carina is being mentally manipulated by a powerful vampire, forcing her to do awful things. She will actually beg you to kill her to put her out of her misery, and will thank you for your kindness if you kill her.

Earlier in the game when Jonathan asks Lady Ashbury about the bodies that have been found in the streets and about how someone seems to be following him (before we know its Mary), she seems anxious and has someone in mind. Most likely she fears Jacob Blackwood has been watching Jonathan, taking an interest.

Blackwood only speaks through Carina Billow once, mildy warning Jonathan off his "toy" but he does not seem to care enough about his little game to actually stop her being embraced. Evidence of his presence occurs when you visit the grave of Carina and find he has piled dead rats all over the poor woman's resting place - one last act of disrespect. I tend to think that doing this is both for his own amusement and a message to Jonathan that he has taken notice. Carina Billow's information when she is embraced suggests Blackwood maybe a member of Ascalon, it might have been interesting to meet him there.

And when you get to the very end of the game inside the Ashbury castle, one of the paintings on the wall was of Elisabeth Blackwood (Lady Ashbury) and Jacob Blackwood.

And when you read William Marshall's old tome before you reach the end of the game, you can see that Marshall holds Blackwood in contempt.

Jacob Blackwood is an interesting character and I wish they had given him more space in the story because it fleshes Elisabeth out a bit, gives her a backstory you can learn about as you get to know her and makes her a more rounded person with her own motivations. So when you get the first of the bad endings and she says "you have betrayed me", you get an idea of why she might react that way - rather than a lot of players being confused.

He definitely has the blood of hate. Blackwood was created after Elizabeth was bitten by Marshal and the two ranged across Europe killing for their own amusement. Even if he was created before Elizabeth has the blood of hate, it is highly likely he would have contracted it anyway. There is the possibly that he was always a bastard though. Perhaps not all the frenzied skals in the city came from Harriet Jones, maybe a few came from him returning to London.

There is so much potential in Jacob Blackwood in a hypothetical sequel. Jacob has the blood of hate, while Jonathan and Elisabeth are working for a cure. So much potential.

So a way to go about it is this.

If you chose the Embrace no one path, embrace some or embrace everyone.

If Jonathan and Elisabeth travel the world. They hear horror stories throughout Europe. Jonathan thinks it's some Ekon gone mad, but Elisabeth knows the truth. Jacob is back and the potential for another Disaster is strong. Their mission is to kill Jacob and find a cure for the blood of hate

If Jonathan and Elisabeth lock themselves in the castle. They spend years working on a cure and that's when Myrddin appears. He tells Jonathan about Jacob and Elisabeth is horrified. They know what they have to do. End the blood of hate

Jonathan embraces one too many people and Elisabeth dies in the "betrayal" ending. Jonathan locks himself away, that's when Myrddin appears. He warns Jonathan of Elisabeth's loose thread. He is causing atrocities across the land and is on the verge of creating a new Disaster. Jonathan will end the blood of hate once and for all for Elisabeth

Jonathan embraces everyone. Jonathan's bloodlust knows no bounds. Jonathan intends to build an empire on blood and there is one person standing in his way, Jacob Blackwood. It's an all out war between Reid and Blackwood and World War II is their battleground. Reid uses the Allies, while Blackwood uses the Nazis.

Ideally I would set the game during WWII with Jacob taking a position with the Nazis or Vichy France, and he uses the war to commit atrocities and spread the blood of hate like a plague.

I'd also have McCullum return. The Guard is reestablished, but it's clear that Reid and McCullum have to put aside their differences to stop Blackwood. Plus I'd just love the idea of Jonathan and McCullum basically saying "Look we have our differences as a Vampire and Hunter, but we draw the line at fucking Nazis"

As for how the Brotherhood of St Paul would return. If you let Swansea bled out/embraced him, then Usher Talltree would be your main ally from the brotherhood. But if you turned Swansea, Swansea would return and would be a very questionable ally.

aka I just want a game of Jonathan killing Nazis and Jacob Blackwood using Nazis to fulfill his goals but also embracing their ideals.

Bonus points. Jacob wears a Vichy France uniform or SS uniform just to drive home the fact that he's a fucking monster.

[ganondoodle]

Not gonna lie, the "It looks like a Divine Circle but is actually just hundreds of years of superstition & propaganda"-Concept is the coolest fucking thing I didn't know I needed until ten minutes ago. It's a super cool inversion of the classic trope, opens up a million possibilities for stories and arcs and on top of that, in game, you would obviously not know about it form the beginning but slowly have to collect clues and hints that things are not quite as everyone tells you.

So yeah, very cool concept!

Not directly related, but it's probably no surprise that my favorite Ganondorf line is the "I coveted that Wind"-line from the finale of Wind Waker. He doesn't even go into detail, cause he doesn't have to, this line alone instantly humanizes him. Like, its the end of the game, we are about to fight him, there is no way this will not end in a fight, and yet, at that point, that line, just goes so fucking hard. Because you instantly know what he's talking about, that he simply wanted a future for his people, which, you know, is a very human thing to do. It wont stop us from fighting him here and now, way too much has happened for that, but it reminds us, the audience, that he has motives and reasons and thoughts and is an actual character.

So yeah, in case it's not obvious yet, I too despise the extremely flat "I'm evil because evil, waaaaaaaaagh!" Ganondorf from TOTK. Why even include him if you cant be arsed to actually write him?

Anyways, last thing, I'll have to somewhat disagree on the Gameplay vs Story thing, at least partially because I work in the field and have had experiences with this problem myself. Not saying its impossible to have both, but its a lot more difficult than one would expect.

Towards your point, yes a good story can pull people through a game, but so can strong gameplay. Take the Doom games, I dont really care about their story, but the gameplay is great. On the other hand, the gameplay of the average Telltale game would be incredibly boring without the story behind it. There are hybrids, but even they tend to lean one way or the other: The Assassins Creed or Uncharted Series have solid and fun gameplay, but would probably get repetitive or boring if we didn't have strong characters and stories that keep us interested. And all of that is before you consider that there are different player types that gravitate to one or the other and it gets even more complicated. (There's more to this but I my thoughts on the topic could easily be a full bachelors Thesis, so I'll stop here.)

I should add that I dont think that the gameplay over story (or vice versa) argument can or should be used to defend games or design choices. Yes, Nintendo does prefer to focus on Gameplay over Story. Does that mean we shouldn't expect a good story, or are not allowed to criticize a bad one in their games? Hell no! (And if my previous ask sounded like I was doing that, I apologize, that was NOT what I meant to say! I'll happily critique all of TOTKs flaws, both in gameplay & story, otherwise how can we learn from it?)

This argument can be used to understand and analyze or interpret design decisions but it shouldn't ever be used to defend them. Just like the "just for kids" argument, by using such arguments, the person in question basically admits that they are aware of the weaknesses and faults in their story/game/whatever but didn't fix or improve them. So yeah, I do agree with you on that front 100%, hiding behind such arguments is a problem.

Anyway, sorry for leaving another wall of text in your inbox, hope you're having a nice day!

thank you! that 'cycle' concept is also what destiny (zelda comic) is based on, since it takes place before skyward sword you get to see the set up for it, and, in this story, the gods have been trying to achieve it countless times, throughout the story of it its supposed to slowly be revealed- like demise already knowing some parts since hes yet another 'failed' version of that plan (im reusing that concept for the totk rewrite as well bc i am very original wahoo)

oh you work in that field! thats cool!! yeah my opinion on this sort of thing is very much a thing i formed bc i play games, though i still dream of gamedev, i guess i understood your mention of it a little too much into the dismissive argument way (though not as an attack) and its been repeated so so many times i cant help but get a little >_> at it; the point i was trying to make was more like ... they need to find a balance with it, like you can make it all about gameplay, but then dont pretend you have the most epicest story that ever storied, maybe even do it less or more subtle, like the fromsoft game i feel like are very well balanced in that regard, bc their lore and story is very neat and intertwined, but you have to look and think to get it, and the gameplay is strong on its own so much so that it kinda ends up being both soemthing for people that dont care about lore and those that do, more than about the gameplay

zelda feels like it doesnt quite know what to do (even moreso modern zelda), bc they prioritize the gameplay but then still put in a story that they want understood .. so its like, babiefied? like there is a "simple" story and its few points are repeated into your face over and over and over so the people that dont care to read into soemthing GET IT but also annoy them, bc they dont care anyway, and the people who care about lore/story above gameplay are bored bc the narrative isnt engaging enough and they dont care as much about the gameplay

especially so with totk i think, its so weird, botw wasnt like that imo, it wasnt overly complicated either but at least it left you wondering, and let you think, the more you thought about the more interesting it was (at least to me) totk feels like the opposite, it doesnt want you to think, bc the more you think about it the more it falls apart and makes less sense

like theres types of games that focus HARD on one or the other (like slay the princess for example, its like an interactive audio book, there isnt much gameplay but it goes hard on narrative), so obviously the balance of gameplay and story isnt applicable to every game, but for zelda in particular they say they are one but then still want the other part just as much? like the lore in skyward sword isnt great, the characters are strong though, the gameplay isnt that engaging (to me, since that needs to be said) i got through it mostly just bc i wanted to see what comes next and liked the characters, in botw the freedom and world and gameplay were like nothign i ever experienced, exploring was addictive and the story took a bit of a backseat, but it was fitting for the game and lend itself so well to theorize, in totk they .. idk what the focus was, the .. glue? the toys to glue together? nothing fits together there and each part works against another instead of together, somehow, its so weird to me

the thing is, if you do gameplay over story, you need to roll with it? if thats what it is then let the story take a backseat, make it subtle and in the background or vague, dont stuff the game full of unskippable cutscenes where a character you dont care about explains you a thing you already figured out through the gameplay; like the zelda dragon point, let the design of the dragon and its music, what its carrying speak for itself, the way the deku tree is weirded out by the sword moving, maybe a quick subtle voice line once you get the sword fading away like the last parts of her soul being whispered away- but dont mention it in one of the first cutscenes, fail to bury it in 'thats illegal though and irreversible so nono dont you do it' (why mention it then huh) allude to it multiple times, and then just straight up show it (i get people like the scene but man, it would have been way cooler to figure it out yourself)

same goes for the fake zelda thing, the weird way she said the bloodmoon text already alluded to it, have her show up here and there but vanish before you (no "omg thats zelda omg what is she dooooing") , or go even harder and make her an NPC standing around the world interacting with you all nromally but animals react weirldy to her- make the midfight against her (maybe even that she isnt talking so you are unsure if its actually her but controlled by sth else, or talk all normally while literally going for your throat) and then have her dissolve into goop and woa the bloodmoon thing is without her now the zelda you have been talking to has been fake the whole time, its creepy!! leave out the stupid cutscenes of showing it multiple times!! stop monologing at me!!

ppl that dont care about it can go and do a fight and i can think about it! everyone wins yahoo!

(actually ... if you leave out all the cutscenes in totk i feel like it improves the game by alot ...)

(what my point in the previous thing was in the end that you can repeat the same old trope only so many times without changing anything before it gets boring as hell, like what you said here, and the series seems to really be setting itself on fire bc it just wants to do the trope of old so badly and at some point its gonna drag down even the best of gameplays like gameplay over story means (to me) gameplay is prioritized so whatever narrative there is is in the background, subtle and not overtly in your face with big cutscenes etc- but what i feel like its often supposed to mean is "its fine if theres a shitty story that makes no sense pasted on top bc they prioritize gameplay so stop complaining" like to me what it should mean is more gameplay, less story, a measure of quantity not of quality, but what i feel like it often means is better gameplay, bad story, a measure of quality, not quantity )

maybe my problem lies elsewhere and im just projecting it on gameplay > story, that could very much be the case, i could have a fundamental missunderstanding about this here, im still just a guy with opinions in the end and got no knowledge about anything other than i play games sometimes and these are the things i like and dislike and would do differently *puts my head in my hands*

idk if im making sense, im usually not very good at explaining how i feel or think :/ (or i THINK im bad at it, autism be damned)

(sorry this got so long again ......................)

[magicrainbowkitties]

Some of y'all never learned the difference between queerbaiting and queercoding and it really fuckin shows. And even more than that some of y'all will sit there and call something queerbait just because they don't kisskiss.

Characters should not and do not have to actually kiss and/or fuck nasty on screen for a queer and/or romantic reading of their relationship to be valid. Not the least of which reason is that not every relationship such as that involves kissing or sex, but more importantly:

Relationships are more than that. You know this. I know this. We wouldn't be shipping people otherwise, or be so invested in the relationships between these characters we love.

Why is a movie where the characters of the same gender love and care deeply for each other and complete each other's worlds, and yet never kiss or fuck, bait, while the one where the characters are underdeveloped and have no real reason to be together or even like each other than because the plot says so but they kiss and fuck like rabbits NOT bait?

Queerness deserves nuance, it deserves different shit, it deserves messy and toxic shit, it deserves to be scrutinized and analyzed, rather than simply consumed and sanitized.

Would the former film have a kiss/sex scene if the world it existed in didn't force it to be a product in a violently heteronormative society? More than likely. But we can't say for sure.

Queer media has survived since forever thanks to queercoding, which was used to let representation of queerness and queer culture exist AT ALL under homophobic corporations. Queer PEOPLE have survived their actively hostile homes and communities thanks to codes and signals that identified each other and where was and wasn't safe.

That legacy won't go away, even as we gain more acceptance in society. Even if the day comes in my lifetime where queer people all over the world are free to live out our lives in peace and comfort without our very lives and bodies being targets for violence and repression, that tradition STILL wouldn't go away. Because it's INTERESTING and FUN and DYNAMIC and GOOD CHARACTER WRITING.

Not every deeply loving and caring relationship is romantic, just as not every buddy-buddy relationship is platonic. There's so much grey area, so much to look through, to analyze with different lenses, to understand about how we conceptualize relationships.

Queerbaiting is NOT just a stand-in for queercoding you didn't like. And it's not bait just because they didn't kiss or get together or fuck. Queerbait is when something is MARKETED to queer people, but doesn't actually have any queer rep in it at all.

Does that mean some queerbait is queercoding in and of itself? Yes. But not all.

But when it's characters building a deep abiding love for each other over the course of the story, one that changes them and how they see the world, regardless of the fact they don't actually kiss or fuck or say "you are now my partner/spouse..." I'm sorry, that's not bait. That's a love story. And regardless of what kind of love it is, platonic, romantic, sexual, eldritch, whathaveyou, that's what queer stories ARE.

Especially when the characters in question are literally canonically queer, but their relationship isn't made EXPLICITLY romantic. Like guys. Really?

Please read anything at all about the history of queerness in your medium of choice before you start shouting "queerbait" at things that are literally made to be complicated.

[sludgewolf]

We need to talk about the lack of "filler" in series that're been released recently

I just watched a video about ATLA and it's filler or lack there of and, they're right, ATLA doesn't have filler episodes as we define "filler episodes" now. Our understanding of filler is closer to what's used for anime that is, non canon episodes that are made so the anime doesn't catch up with the manga. Applying this to western animation (I say animation bc I graduated in it thus a better understanding and I don't really watch many live action series so I don't have much of a say) we ended up with the impression that it means "episodes that don't move the plot forward"

Which, doesn't make sense with Western animation since most of it isn't a adaptation of something else, or with comic adaptations for ex, they're mostly adaptations of various arcs coming together as a single story. Smt very different from the manga to anime adaptation process

Comparing ATLA who positively doesn't have "filler" and X-men 97 who negatively doesn't have "filler" is a good example of what I'm trying to say.

Not all of ATLA episodes move the "learn the elements and defeat the firelord" plot forward and that's good thank fuck not all episodes are rushing ahead to throwing this 12yo we barely know into a battle with a full grown adult who's perpetrating a war against the rest of the world. Instead we actually get to know the characters, we see them traveling from the South to the North Pole instead of spawning where the plot demands, we see Aang adapt to the world post iceberg nap and learn to be the avatar, we see the effect the 100 year war had in this world. And most of all, the more "filler" episodes contributed to the pacing of the series, when binging the series now I still feel like the Gaang traveled across the whole world and didn't just teleport to the plot.

Opposed to X-men 97, don't get me wrong I'm absolutely loving it but the story is always being racing forward at a breakneck speed. They did try to pace it better inter cutting the main plot with Scott, Jean, Madelyne, Wolverine's whole deal and the "LifeDeath " plot, but if there wasn't the weekly wait for the next episode we would not have any time to breathe and digest what happened in the episodes.

I'm still confused on how Madelyne went from trying to have a normal life outside the x-men to being in Genosha's council. Still on Madelyne, I didn't care that they had to part ways with Nathan, ik he's their baby and all that, but as soon as they named the baby Nathan I knew they were throwing that baby to the future to complete the time loop of him being in the original series. And that's because they never got the chance to try to make us care, the writing team couldn't waste time with that since they only had 8 episodes to tell all these stories, the speed that the plot is being taken makes me believe that when writing this season Disney still hadn't signed on the second season and when they did it was too late to rework the script.

This whole thing is reminding me of Hazbin Hotel's pacing problems, analyzing it as if I didn't watch the pilot, we just met the characters and suddenly had to care that they were going to die in six months, we don't really know Charlie other than 1. she's Lucifer's daughter, 2. daddy issues that aren't rly addressed besides jokes, 3. she's with Vaggie (other character we didn't get to know) and 4. she's the owner of the hotel and wants to rehabilitate the sinners. The worst part of it is, we teleported from the start of the season to 6 months later out of nowhere and suddenly we're at the finale with the big boss battle. Of course HuskDust is a more popular ship than Charlie and Vaggie, we never got the chance to see them being together other than in episodes when the characters are being dragged by the plot while Angel and Husk had an episode where we met them and got the time to see them interact without being pushed by the extermination plot

This is exactly why "filler episodes" are important, we should actually know who these characters are before the big fight at the end so we can actually care about what happens to them. X-men 97 may not suffer that much from it but it's because we already knew most of the characters, but we never got to meet this version of Madelyne, see her going out alone to a world that hates her existence, see her morn having been forced to send her baby off to the future and maybe not being able to see him ever again and finally see never see how did she even end up in Genosha.

Or Storm, sure we got a two parter, but how did she get to fuck knows where to meet Forge in that bar, what did she go through during the time she was traveling alone, it's not as if people wouldn't recognize her as a x-men even if she'd left the team, maybe see more of how the relationship between her and Forge developed, cuz I didn't get why she still wants to be with him even after he basically created the tec that was turned into the weapons used to kill mutants, that's smt one can't just forgive, and yes I'd like to see her as she struggles with not having her powers, smt other than she feeling lonely without the wind (this would work even as just a montage with sad music as she travels to the fuckall haunted desert)

On a rly quick note on Invincible I do think they did a good job with their pacing and character development with the time they had, I'd like to have seen a bit more of Rex's development from complete douche to Lizard Leader homemade lobotomy to where we are now, but on the Grayson family whole thing they did an amazing job at showing how they're dealing with the aftermath of season 1, there was just a little jump from Debbie downing a bottle of wine every day to full bug mom mode but I do think she'd step up to it no doubt.

Maybe just some scenes of her still working through s1 trauma and questioning wtf is wrong w Nolan bc from her perspective he just killed hundreds of ppl on Earth, almost killed Mark, fucked off to space and suddenly there's a purple half bug baby living in her house calling her mom. But I don't think that's strictly necessary since there's always fanfiction to bridge this gap and it's just a minor thing that bothered me

TLDR: Filler in western cartoons isn't really filler, these are just episodes to help develop the world or characters without having to rush with the plot and also episodes that help with the pacing of the story, thus showing the passage of time or great distances being crossed without having the characters spawn at the next plot point. And we do need it specially for shows that are intended for binging, such as most shows now. What determines good filler from bad filler here is good writing