#and don't expect compassion or forgiveness from the boy you beat with a stick now that he doesn't need you

[aarcade]

I've spent the last few days watching through Alan Becker's entire youtube channel. you know the experience, everybody knows the experience. the crude but entertaining videos get better and better, quality spikes in ava4, then again in vs minecraft, then oh my GOD ava8.

but the topic of this post is shorts #30, the king. which I was hyped for beyond belief. so it pains me to say that I. kinda hated it. and I can't find anybody talking about this.

spoiler discussion and why I hate fun or whatever under the break

so first thing, why the FUCK didn't I like shorts #30?? it's the best conclusion the story could've possibly had, right? it was cool as hell, the fights went hard, there was emotional depth, maybe you cried at the end (I saved my tears for the wild robot).

it's uh. it's the emotional depth. specifically the way they resolved king Orange and purple.

the backstory for King Orange is fine, sure. it fits him. minecraft ate your son, so you're gonna destroy minecraft. it's not super complex, but he's a villain and he's got aura (pigstep 🔥🔥🔥) so it's fine.

purples's backstory in shorts 29 is an absolutely beautiful setup. his constant seeking of approval, his desensitisation to abuse, how much he clearly enjoys being with the main crew. it's a fantastic inner conflict and his self hatred is really well written. green manages to drag him out of it, reminding him of the people that genuinely enjoy his company.

... so he doesn't need the approval of an abusive father figure anymore, right?

back to shorts 30. king nearly kills purple during the big final fight, sees the parallels between the childlike character he's abusing and the son he lost, and has a change of heart. far too little too late, but it's paying off the setups, so sure. let him have a moment before he gets sucked into the black hole.

it's the aftermath of the black hole that pisses me off. like makes me actually fucking angry. after the storm clears, king shows back up looking all sad, and apologises to the cast. and they (seemingly) forgive him. the child abuser, murderer, slaver, and actual fucking genocider.

this would be fine in earlier avm. it's not that serious, it's a fun animation with good fights where everyone makes friends at the end. hell, it's what happens with the character of Alan himself, and that didn't bother me.

but when you write a complex character arc about abuse, self hatred, inner conflict, you're doing big boy serious writing. you're asking me to engage with the work on a slightly higher level in order to appreciate what you're doing here.

AND THEN YOU HAVE PURPLE DRAMATICALLY HUG KING ORANGE???

whose fucking idea was it to resolve an abused child's arc by having them earn the respect of their second abuser and go off to live with him (assumedly)? purple deserves way better than this. king doesn't deserve this at all. even if we set aside his genocide and enslavement of the minecraft world as being wacky cartoon shit- maybe he didn't realise the mobs were sapient, etc etc etc- even then, he still physically beat purple several times and left him for dead.

why does this character deserve a scrap of sympathy? you wrote your villain too evil and then you tried to shoehorn in a redemption because you were on a friendship is magic kick, I guess.

if you want to write a serious story where emotions have weight, don't forgive and redeem a genocider just because ONE of his sins happened to remind him of something bad that happened to him in the past. and if you want to write a fun light story, maybe have a little less child abuse in there???

I loved these videos up until this point and it breaks my heart to be so angry. but Alan Becker fucking fumbled his most interesting character and had him regress from independence back to parental approval, all in the name of giving the worst fucking guy ever the happy ending he definitely doesn't deserve.