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mysteriesofmarcy · 6 years ago

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You know Seddm, it's no secret that you and I see this show differently. Always have. And on that note, I'd like to offer my thoughts on this post.

First of all, I think you're being a little hypocritical. You say that fiction ≠ reality when it relates to other ships, but you want Starco's development to be "realistic." That makes no sense. Either you want this show to be realistic or you don't. Pick one.

Second: I do agree with you that Kellco is forced. However, Kellco is not a thing. Yes, they kissed, and we can't deny that they both enjoyed it. But I think they intend to be breakup buddies and not boyfriend/girlfriend. Just like Star and Marco did kiss, and I can't deny that they both enjoyed it, but intend to be best friends and not boyfriend/girlfriend. In this show, kisses do not necessarily mean a relationship, whereas in real life, they usually do. Oh, see there, now I'm being a hypocrite about the whole fiction vs reality thing. I guess it's easier than I thought.

I get the feeling that the writers don't care about Jackie even as much as you do. Like I've said before, they will likely give her nothing more than a glorified cameo, and even then, it will just be in an attempt to satisfy those of us who love her and feel that she was treated horribly after Sophomore Slump. As much as I hate to admit it, the writers probably don't see Jackie as anything more than a plot device. Jarco ended making my favorite character look like a throwaway rag and I hate it.

When I read your point about "The Other Ships vs Starco," I thought "Finally! No criticisms or counterpoints here." Enjoy it while it lasts.

I think that the April episodes through Easter will follow up on Star handing over the reigns to Eclipsa, and making her as self-sufficient as she can. Then the earth episodes will have Star coming to terms with her new role as "not a princess" and looking for a new life on earth. This is where that moment that Adam talked about will come into play. She will have to stop, look around, and notice that the one person who has been by her side through it all, through thick and thin, is Marco. I believe this moment (where Star is fully sure of what she wants) will happen in Beach Day or Britta's Tacos. Doop-Doop will be the "return to earth, get everything settled back in, and by the way Marco is a big brother now" episode, and Britta's Tacos will include another lunch date (a la Star vs Echo Creek) at the titular restaurant. They could use this to show how much our dorks have changed since then. It could also be used to set up Beach Day.

You're absolutely right that the Severing Stone destroyed the memory of the new dance because it was the first moment they fell truly in love. Now, I want to talk about how I originally thought the Severing Stone works. In Relicore's example, he severed his soul from his wife's, and lost the moment they fell in love. But I thought it would work by removing the Blood Moon memory from Star and Marco, even though that's not when they actually fell in love, because that is where their souls were bound together. So the opposite of bind is severe. (Or, the opposite of cleave is cleave, but that's a topic for another discussion.)

I'm not the biggest fan of how Tom's development has been handled either, but, as with just about everything else, my reason is different. I don't particularly like it because I feel they should have taken a similar route with Jackie (i.e. getting over it by talking things out and keeping up her friendship with both Star and Marco). But I get why they didn't go that route because when only one person moves to another dimension, it becomes pretty hard to keep up a friendship. But they managed it with Janna, who is considerably meaner to Marco, so I don't see why they couldn't do the same with Jackie.

One week later

I think that this time, despite the magnitude of what happened in the show, managed to have a mostly non-kneejerk reaction to it, but a week (and a looot of thinking) later, I think I got a better understanding about how and why I feel about this episode, S4 so far, and the show’s future as a whole. Going to make this a bullet-point style list because making a single conversation about all of this would be either too long, or end up feeling disconnected at times anyway. Bad things first, then the good ones to close on a positive note, for a change.

THE BAD

- The thing I always loved the most about this show has been its ability to use individual events and interactions between the characters in almost any given segments, even ones more fillery in nature, as a way to slowly advance the growth of the characters from a pre-established Big Event™ to the next one. This always gave the show an aura of strong continuity despite its storyboard driven and episodic nature, and allowed me to claim that even events clearly facilitated by some sort of plot based compulsion (such as the Truth Cube in Sleepover, or the photo booth in Booth Buddies) were still largely natural, just more flashy ways to push the characters in directions they were already taking.

The first episodes of S4, up to Curse of the Blood Moon, didn’t really do this. They felt heavily more compartmentalized than the usual: S3 ended in an explosive way that seemingly set up all the characters for immediate changes or payoff, but then this current season kinda ignored that. Not completely, because both Moon Remembers and Ransomgram has Marco tell Star things like “rip the bandaid off” and “own up to your mistakes”, which could be clearly applied to the “Tell Tom about the kiss” situation (never mind that she didn’t do that, it was still relevant and her going the wrong way about it was part of the point), but between an increased focus on plot and plot exclusively, and a two parter season premiere that chose to focus exclusively on finding Moon (reasonable decision, really, but it ended up making 40 minutes of show feel a bit empty on the emotions side, in my very subjective opinion), Curse of the Blood Moon seemed to happen a bit out of the blue, especially considering that Star and Marco’s feelings were apparently so strong and so intrusive to justify even Tom being able to see them in the former case, and Eclipsa’s comfort and counseling having been needed multiple times offscreen in the latter. Things that we didn’t see at all in the first 7 episodes, with the exception of Star never reacting to Tom telling her that he knew the kiss with Marco didn’t really mean anything. It’s not a necessarily tragic scenario, especially if the show purposefully wanted to wait for Curse to kick start a new chapter in the shipping of the show, but this bridging between seasons taking one third of the last one felt a bit excessive and largely devoid of sufficient build up to me.

- Kelly / Kellco. Anyone who’s familiar with my blog should know that I always struggle to never insult ships, characters or elements from the show that other people might like. And even now I don’t want to cheapen the value of personal preferences at all, nor tell anyone “No, you can’t ship this!”. But at the same time I have to say that, in the context of the show, these new Kellco developments look (ready to eat back my words in the future, as usual) extremely pointless, and handled badly. Kelly feelings something for Marco, kinda unilaterally liking him, that’s something the fandom has been speculating ever since Lava Lake Beach. They shared an emotional moment over heart break, and then clearly developed a friendship from there, and hanged out more. Kelly’s lines in The Ponyhead Show then confirmed without doubt that she felt something from Marco, but that he seemed to be largely unaware and oblivious about it. Just like you’d expect Marco to be, especially a Marco who spent the previous season focusing on how strong and intrusive his feelings for Star were.

At this point essentially everyone, me included, expected for Kelly’s World to be used as a way to bring up Marco’s unrequited (as far as he knew) feelings once again, to introduce Curse of the Blood Moon. I expected Marco to either go something like “Sorry Kelly but I’m not ready to give up on my feelings for Star” or, at worst, a frustrated Marco who’d have thought and reflected about Kelly’s feelings for him. Instead, out of the extreme blue, we got a Marco who was uncharacteristically all too aware of the situation, going “I don’t want these feelings for Star they’re getting in the way of other feelings“ while being all blushy and then being more than receptive to Kelly’s emotionally confused flirting. Now, if this was reality, there would be absolutely nothing weird in a kid like Marco being dual in his feelings, really liking Star while also being tired about all the pain those feelings have been bringing him for the better part of a year and being receptive to another girl being ready to jump his bones. But this is not reality, and these events absolutely lacked any form of proper build up, they were (wow, I can finally use the word Starco haters have been throwing around for years!) forced. Not entirely, but for a great deal. Jarco had Sleepover and Naysaya providing a strong buildup to the ship revolving around Marco overcoming some personal hurdles; even Tomstar didn’t immediately go for the ship after the well-timed dance in Club Snubbed, but first had Demoncism, giving some sort of basis to the exes getting back together, and Tom and Star had a pre-established relationship and we both knew that Tom still wanted Star, and that Star still had hung up feelings for Tom, if just physical attractions ones (from her behavior in Blood Moon Ball and Mr. Candle Cares, very spread out over the show, I admit). Meanwhile Kellco went from “ok they shared an important moment one season ago and Janna teased Kelly in a holiday special episode but after that their interactions have been nothing but background ones” to “Marco and Kelly lose track of time reading about fighting on a bench, then as the warm hues of the sunset wash over them they fight hand in hand, as one body and one spirit, and the fireworks and music happen and there’s more blushing in a single scene that there has been in the whole show and in all the kisses in it so far”. That’s… very, very, very heavy handed. Very “manipulative”. Especially since Kelly and Marco aren’t even properly together yet I guess, since Marco might have gotten over his feelings for Star (hahaha yeah as if), but as far as we know Kelly still isn’t completely over Tad. So where is this relationship going to go from now? Why does it exist? In what ways it doesn’t shit on what Jarco already taught Marco? How is it going to “end” once Marco inevitably realizes he still feels thing for Star without making Kelly look like a throwaway rag? Obviously I don’t have the arrogance to assume I know how things are going to play out from here on, so who knows, maybe Kellco is going to be part of an important arc, but from where I’m standing, from what I know now, it’s hard not to see it as a hamfisted attempt at going “Haaaa these confused teens, it’s only fair that they get their share of experiences!”. Which is ok, sure, fine, but FICTION ≠ REALITY and things need some kind of build up and reason to happen. If it’s just supposed to be padding to keep the situation in a status quo for a while, “Marco is with Kelly and Tom is with Star and everything is right in the world and they don’t have to think about their feelings anymore” then… bleah.

- This is tangentially connected to both the previous points, and it’s not really THAT bad, just me being a bit nitpicky about a still legitimate direction the show decided to take: by having this constant comparison between THE OTHER SHIPS and STARCO, now stronger than ever after Curse, the former being very casual but also ultimately unrewarding, “we hold hands we blush a little and we are ready to kiss and be a couple”, while the latter being “dozens of life changing events are needed to progress the ship even by little; NOTHING BUT PAIN can ever come out of Starco for the people involved until it’s officially recognized as being completely and utterly full, pure, complete, mature and life lasting love”, can kinda give a wrong message about relationships and teen love, or an annoying one at least. “Hey kids, don’t try to actually have fun or be happy with romance, because that’s not how True Love™ works. If you actually find it kind of easy to be happy with your significant other, that isn’t love!” [quote by @ngame989]. Obviously I’m using a hyperbole for the sake of clarity, and it’s clear that Star and Marco’s relationship is based on finding it easy to have fun together, always. But if we talk strictly about romance and the way the show approaches to it, it’s kinda undeniable that Starco has been nothing but a source of sadness so far, and the only genuine moment of happiness, this one, lasted about three seconds and overlapped with a realization of True Love.

By now I have fully accepted that the show is not going for an early Starco relationship to then show it growing and changing as the two make the first steps together, but that they’re waiting for a “ok we’re both completely sure this is what we want”, and it’s a completely fair direction for the show to take, but it also contributes to this “fetishization” of true love. Still, execution matters way more than the larger brush strokes in this case, so we’ll see.

- The timing. I’m going to talk about why this incoming arc can actually be a very good thing in a moment, but at the same time introducing the idea that the Blood Moon might have forced feelings now, 30% through the last season, when absolutely nothing before that ever referenced of foreshadowed it, and with essentially no references to the Ball throughout the show (last direct one was in Naysaya and it was Tom throwing shade at Marco…), feels kinda jarring to me.

- This is a bit more of a personal note, but not entirely: Star and Marco enter a dance in their memories with the specific goal of “destroying their feelings”. One minute into spending time together having fun without any kind of distraction for the first time in forever, they literally fall in love. Not crush, love. The whole setup of the Severing Stone’s function literally confirms that. What kind of tension can Kellco and Tomstar deliver now that we know that Star and Marco can and will fall in love with each other if given a moment to truly think about nothing but each other and themselves? The endgame was kinda clear before as well, but now it has officially ruined any chance at making other ships feel worthwhile - beyond their value for the growth of the characters involved, obviously. I mean their intrinsic value as a ship / source of romantic drama.

THE GOOD

- Even if I’m not a fan of the timing, I can see a lot of potential in an arc revolving around the question “Are these feelings genuine? Is Marco/Star the person I truly love and want to be with?”. Now, obviously we know that the feeling were genuine and that the Curse didn’t force anything, so it’s not really the answer to the question that matters. What’s important is how they’re going to get to that: by having Star and Marco more or less directly tackle this question in a context where there is apparently no sadness and pain brought from unwanted feelings, some positivity can FINALLY be associated with Starco as a romantic relationship. Obviously we don’t know how things are going to play out now, but if both dorks are now convinced that they are only friends (something that didn’t happen at the same time since early S2) they can enjoy their relationship to its absolute fullest, and see along the way, together this time, that they both want more. I don’t know if one or both of them lied about not having feelings anymore, or if it’s placebo effect, or if the Severing Stone has some lingering after effects. What I know is that these two now feel like they can be completely comfortable around each other once again, while still having all the feelings of friendship that were the base for the romance once already,

and that the last time they had a moment to truly be together with each other and enjoy their feelings to their fullest, they fell in love, like love for real, certified by the Severing Stone taking that moment away as a price.

So yes, we all know the answer to this question already (articulated a bit better by the show’s composer in this post),

- Curse of the Blood Moon as an episode itself is far from being without merits: it opens with a wonderful display of one of the many sides that make Star and Marco’s relationship so adorable, with the duo having a secret cereal date at night without waking up Meteora; shows how in sync and how well they understand each other (yes, this was a set up for the scene but you can’t tell me it’s the curse’s fault, that’s bullshit); it literally had Marco tell us that he likes every single thing about Star and her personality (again, not the curse’s fault. That’s bullshit.), and the dance itself was utterly perfect and pristine and had Starco fun, Starco flirting, and Starco love all happening the moment they could focus on each other and forget about the rest. Also, while I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of Tom having achieved “good boy status” simply by getting slightly better with each episode instead of taking some affirmative action on the nature of his relationship with Star, I don’t mind seeing him helping his friends, at all. Sure, this can contributed to making him feel more “pathetic”, with scenes like the spat on the elevator apparently underlying a lack of compatibility between him and Star compared to her and Marco, as many other scenes before, and that’s the part I don’t particularly enjoy, but the overall journey he went through, that’s good. It should have featured more defining moments of change in my opinion, rather than a simple “little by little always better and gets points for trying”, but it’s still vastly preferable to a world where we can’t get some Tomco bromance moments, and this kind of relaxed situation, as infuriating as it can be at times, could potentially contribute to what I said in the first point, give Star and Marco the chance to understand what they feel for the other in a completely or almost completely positive way.

- This is connected to the first point and not necessarily an objectively good one on its own, more like something that further contributes to feeling like there’s potential for things to develop nicely from her on: the brunt of the romance in Starco fell on Marco for most of S3, at this point Star was less of an active player than him when it came to liking each other. But Star is the Main Main Character, we can’t have that happen. With this new turn of events, with things being “reset” into New Game +, the spotlight moves once again on Star and this time we can finally have the Main Main Character answer the question “do we love each other?”. Obviously Marco is surely going to have a role as well, he’s still a protagonist, but it’s Star’s story before anything else, and this “Free Will and Choices” arc can easily tie Eclipsa / ruling Mewni to Love, and strongly relate to the blonde (ex) princess.

- On the same note of “elements that makes one hopeful about the show’s potential but still don’t really confirm anything about what’s going to happen”, we have this quote from one of Adam’s interviews:

Adam describes Star as someone who is “all over the place” in terms of life as compared to Marco who unlike Star has yet to outwardly reveal his feelings. “But, she’s one of those people who so much stuff is going on for that she doesn’t necessarily, in my opinion, she doesn’t really have time for a romantic relationship. She’s too busy. She’s got a lot of things going on her plate,” he explains. “But, she’s one of those people who, in my opinion–I’m not saying this happens, I’m just saying this is why I like them–I feel like she’s going to be one of those people who is gonna stop one day and have a second to breathe and then dust is gonna settle and she’s gonna look and see through all the settling dust and fog that someone has been there with her the entire time and she’s gonna see Marco,”

and while there’s absolutely no way to confirm this, especially since everything Adam says is always nebulous PR talk that has to be taken with eighty grains of salt, looking at list of episode post-mid season finale suggests that this “dust settling down” might happen sooner than later, the second half(ish) of the season having way more episodes with titles suggesting either Earth things, or a generic downtime for the teens to focus a bit more on their own lives, and a little less of Eclipsa. Obviously there’s still necessarily going to be plot happening, but I can also see how they could be going (strong emphasis on the could) for a journey that allows Starco to finally happen in the series finale in an explosive way, with both Star and Marco being utterly sure that this is what they truly want, and that they love each other, not just like or crush.

Cornonation Doop-Doop / Britta’s Tacos Beach Day / Gone Baby Gone Sad Teen Hotline / Jannanigans Mama Star / Ready, Aim, Fire The Right Way / Here to Help Pizza Party / The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse Cleaved

To conclude and sum up, my greatest issues so far are with the way S4 handled romance and relationships in its first 7 episodes, rather than with the new arc Curse of the Blood Moon apparently set out, or with the idea that the show is almost certainly going for series finale Starco (still kinda hoping for just a little something before that though, with the finale being the true celebration of what they have). It’s not the show I’d have liked the most, but it’s still one that has all the potential, so far, to honor the kind of build up Starco had, and the amazing characters Star and Marco are. But this first third personally disappointed me in a number of ways, and it kinda hinders my ability to fully trust this potential to actually become the reality of a good execution. But “hinders” doesn’t mean I completely lost any hope, and there are certainly dozens of ways to properly pull this off. We’ll see.

#star vs the forces of evil #star vs. the forces of evil #svtfoe #svtfoe4 #starco #jarco #starco vs jarco #stom #Starco vs Stom #svtfoe season 4 #svtfoe spoilers

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mysteriesofmarcy · 5 years ago

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How would Star vs. the Forces of Evil have ended if you'd written the show?

I LOVE this question, anon. And sorry this is a few weeks late, but I wanted to finish writing my episode reviews before I wrote this answer. And I took a few days to type it because I wanted to make sure to give you the best answer I can.

For starters, I would not have (gasp!) forced Starco to happen. I said from the beginning that I would only be into Starco if it was done well, and I think even some hardcore shippers would agree that it was not. Like Marco said, the whole thing in Here to Help was kind of random, to the point where I couldn’t even remember which part of the finale it happened in. I probably would not have made it happen at all but, as a concession to the shippers, I would have left the door open for the future in which they could get together romantically (probably far into the future, similar to Phineas and Isabella if Act Your Age hadn’t happened).

If my co-writers somehow convinced me to make Starco happen during the show, I would have made it happen earlier and probably devoted a whole episode to it, probably in or around The Knight Shift. Then I would explore the relationship a little more in episodes after that. Maybe a kiss here, hand holding there, and I would also add at least one more episode solely focused on them. If I had to give up an episode to do this, it would be either Doop-Doop or Ready, Aim, Fire. (The Ponyhead Show at least had a good ending, unlike the Star show. Otherwise that would be my first choice.)

How would I have handled Kellco? First of all, let me reiterate that KELLCO IS NOT A SHIP. IT NEVER WAS. Kelly said that being breakup buddies simply meant that they would help each other with their respective breakups (even though Marco hadn’t broken up with anyone since coming to Mewni). To my (admittedly weak) romantic senses, the show seemed to imply that they were just “friends with benefits.” I probably wouldn’t have even hinted at there being anything there except friendship. The last thing we needed was another pointless love triangle situation.

Now about Stom/Tomstar. Obviously the way they broke up in the show’s canon was… pretty bad, to say the least. I mean, once Tom cleaned up his act and became a good character (sometime late in season 3), I couldn’t help but think that he deserved Star. The guy made a conscious effort to improve himself. Not only did he try, but he actually succeeded in that, and in getting the girl he wanted! That is how their relationship should have ended (in the scope of the show). Maybe later they could decide “Eh, we’re not really a great fit for each other” but that would be much later. But the show just decided to flush all that down the toilet because Starco Starco Starco!

On a similar note, I would not have made Jackie gay. I would have let Chloe stay, but no way is she dating Jackie. I’m… not really sure what I would do with them. I could see a few possibilities here, including, but not limited to: Jackie x Marco 2.0, Chloe x Marco, Chloe is weird enough to like Ferguson or Alfonso (or even Oskar), or “everyone just comes back together as friends”.

I would also have to seriously rework Cleaved, especially Star’s decision to destroy magic. There is no way that destroying all magic was the correct solution. That honestly sounds like communist propaganda. It’s almost like saying “Only certain people have guns; therefore, let’s take all the guns away from everybody.” (I say almost because while magic is an innate ability in Star’s universe, guns are a thing any upstanding citizen can buy in the US.) The fact that this action saved the monsters’ lives is irrelevant compared to all the untold damage it caused. I can see why Star’s “chaotic good” nature would lead her to believe this was the solution, but I would have had her just present this as an idea, rather than actually go through with it. They could have even used a version of this idea, concentrated in some way to destroy the magic within Mina. Kind of mirroring what Star did to Ludo at the end of Toffee.

The earth episodes would also get an overhaul. Namely, they would start a lot earlier in the season and there would be more of them. This would not only allow time to give all the earth characters proper conclusions, but would also allow us to explore their reactions to Marco’s time on Mewni in a little more depth. We could have had at least one episode to deal with each other earth character or plotline instead of just trying to cram them all into the Britta’s Tacos episode.

I would have to seriously rework the antagonists too. It seemed like Moon was slowly but surely accepting that most of the monsters are good too, but then she came out of nowhere and worked with the final boss. While I can understand the twist, it was just a poor decision to actually make it happen, especially with absolutely NO WARNING WHATSOEVER. We should have at least been shown more of Moon’s internal struggle over whether to hold on to her old habits, or accept the new way of doing things. Then, whatever decision she made would be more believable. My thought is that because of the conflict within herself, Moon’s attitude would be along the lines of “I am going to stay out of it, but please don’t hurt my daughter.”

Mina’s arc would have to have a little more substance to be totally believable. Yeah, she was introduced in season 2 as Star’s idol who had gone bananas, but I hardly call that a setup for her being the main villain of the finale. As recently as the middle of season 4, I remember there being debate over who the final villain would be and what exactly the conflict would be about. If we could have gotten an episode or even a longer flashback to explain Mina’s backstory, it would have been better.

Just a couple more isolated thoughts: It seems to me that most of the prominent female characters were written poorly in the final season and especially the finale, but all the prominent male characters were written well. And this isn’t me being sexist; the strength of the show as a whole is more based on its females. But Tom, Globgor, River, and Marco were the best characters this season and I think we can agree on that.

So that’s how I would have written the ending to Star vs the Forces of Evil. But if I couldn’t change the content of the episodes, I would have ended it at Toffee. Like I said in its episode review, it would have made the perfect ending to the series.

#star vs. the forces of evil #star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #svtfoe season 4 #svtfoe finale #i love this ask #i really had to think through my response #and that's why it took so long #thank you

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