#because I think it lacks both context and payoff | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chronicler-of-narrative · 8 months ago

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*Insert obvious flashing spoiler warning for Edgerunners*

Ok, its only been like less than a month since i finished Edgrunners and I have not had the chance to play the game and only know things about it from a couple youtube videos and cultural osmosis so...Im gonna tell you my theory (thats definitely not just my hidden copium) and *how* David survived the ending of Edgerunners and why I think the story of the anime isn't done.

Disclaimer: this was written late at night and while tired. So take my assessment with a grain of salt and be sure to correct me in the notes

Ill start off by mentioning a pattern ive noticed that may be completely wrong but may also be invaluable to understanding the storytelling of Edgerunners and probably Cyberpunk as a whole: Death as an ending.

Now, that is a very obvious storytelling trope. Character finished their arc? Kill them, and all that. But imo death in Cyberpunk IS the end of a characters arc. David's mom dies moments after completely explaining her hopes for David? End of her arc because it serves to set a baseline, a goal David had pushed onto him that then serves as a payoff later on the series. Same applies to the gang, and while my memories of the middle few episodes are admittedly fuzzy, it is my belief that they all died in some way befitting their character: For example Rebecca and Pillar, characters who are very obviously crazy and to some exend hedonistic, don't die in some glamorous way, but rather are both killed by one, violent and most importantly empty action. A complete rejection of their flair, an anticlimactic end. The point im trying to make here is that death, in Cyberpunk, is played off as a subversion of ones goals but simultaneously as a fulfilment of their arc/purpose.

Now David's death seemingly fills that niche, right? In one way or another, he fulfilled the expectations set on him by everyone around him and himself. He saved Lucy, made it to the top of Arasaka Tower, right? And yet, curiously, to borrow a detail spotted by a probably fairly well known theory video on the idea that David did survive, but we never get to see David die. We see him being aimed at by Smasher in a moment reminscent of the first shot with the washing machine, and then we get a bloody transition. We dont see his corpse. Now, even if i personally do subscribe to this theory, i wanna mention the parallel that caught my eye during the scene: Why exactly is it, and frankly why do we even start, with the washing machine? I feel like the answer is fairly simple, actually: It shows us how David is bent to wills of the corporations. From being denied his clean uniform by the washing machine to getting stared down by Arasaka's most prized asset, he starts and ends in submission to the corporate rule of Night City. Now, if I may stretch this out even further, what if in a way, his death represents the washing cycle of his uniform?

Now, this sounds batshit insane, and it probably is, but hear me out. What if the reason its a washing machine is because it shows the beginning of David's cycle of being 'cleaned' into a corpo, the one that ends up interrupted by the lack of funds. And what if, despite how he apparently dies, that shot might be representing his cycle being...complete?

So, to kinda cut down on all of this yapping, let me make my main thesis clear: the protagonist of Cyberpunk Edgerunners did die, but it was not David Martinez that died, but rather, *David*.

What I mean by this is what if his death was real...But metaphorical? What if he didn't die physically, but the part of him that opposed Arasaka, the punk that didn't fit into the academy, died?

Now, at the end of the series, Adam Smasher is alive and well, and yet in 2077, we kill him. Now, I don't know the context on his dynamic with V and how narratively his death happens, but I do known hes dead. This to me, creates a vacuum. A vacuum that, a game with a clear message about the futility of trying to change the rule of the corpos, should logistically be filled right? And while yes, I am suggest David will take Adam Smashers place, I do wanna explain why it happens.

Now, one thing about David is that he's special. Its a very reccuring motif im the entire show, and one that seemingly doesnt go anywhere since he ends up getting destroyed by the even more special Smasher. But what if, hear me out, that idea of being special had a different use: What if it is used as a framing device (especially given David and Ripperdoc have a conversation ABOUT Smasher) that means to frame David as being similar to Smasher. As being his equal in specialness. What if thats the whole reason its not Max-Tak that ends up killing the cyberpsychosis afflicted David, but Smasher. A sort of "you and me are not so different" moment that supposedly shows Smasher triumphing over David. Now, it could just be that David was enough of a threat to Arasaka that called in the big guns, but then again, if he was, why would Smasher wipe the floor with him? If David was as much of a problem as he's made out to be, wouldn't he be able to hold his own against Smasher, even for a little bit? But no, Smasher demolishes him, completely and utterly. And thus I believe this was all Arasakas plan. To see how suitable of a replacement David is for Smasher. And the reason we only hear whispers of David in 2077? Because hes locked away in some Arasaka facility, being worked on to surpass Smasher and potentially even become a threat to V, considering they seemingly have no issue with killing this supposedly super strong cyborg.

So yea, Tldr: David only died metaphorically, he could potentially come back as a Smasher 2.0 in a sequel to either the game or the anime.

If i got this all completely wrong, do not hesistate to roast me in the notes. If I think of any additions the next time im online, ill make sure to add it as a reblog.

#cyberpunk edgerunners #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk: edgerunners #adam smasher #david martinez #theory #speculation

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zalrb · 1 year ago

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Hey i’m back!

Saw your post about choreographed/uncomfortable sex scenes and you mentioned Jax x Tara in 1x07.

Maggie and Charlie obviously had amazing chemistry otherwise Jax and Tara wouldn’t work so it confused me a little (though I do sort of agree for that scene specifically)

Was wondering if you could go into detail/do an analysis on their sexual intimacy and scenes and when it worked or didn’t work.

And why despite nudity and NSFW sex scenes being big on SOA we never really saw that with them. And maybe why we didn’t see their last time together at all.

So, I think you're new to my blog, right? I have a few posts discussing how people can have great chemistry everywhere else but have no physical chemistry. Or have great physical chemistry but not chemistry anywhere else.

So other examples I use are: Klaroline. I think Jo and Candice have great chemistry where they vibe, they feed off each other's energy, they have great gazes

and have no physical chemistry, their sex scene was entirely underwhelming.

I also bring up Will and Alicia and how every time they kiss, their passion and their heat and their intensity kind of extinguishes

I liked Alicia and Will but their physical chemistry extinguished what I thought was great tension, the pay off never felt quite right, like this:

with that charge and that electricity is great

but then it gets to this?

not a satisfying payoff for me, it just brings down the heightened energy of what they were doing before.

Like I believed them getting turned on/being turned on if they weren’t kissing

because when they did it just got … awkward

Maggie and Charlie are the same, they have great emotional chemistry, they have great gazes, I believe their passion for each other, I believe how happy they are together

and they're not awkward when they have to meld into each other and lay together

but with sex scenes, physically, it's awkward

it seems uncoordinated and like both of them are trying too hard and yet not hard enough

I would show their love scene in 1x07 but tumblr blocks the post any time I do but with 1x07, you don't necessarily have to show movement in order for a sex scene to not be awkward but the physicality of it is awkward because Charlie kinda tries to show that there meant to be movement by like extending his neck and Maggie's expression is supposed something like this

but it's this and it doesn't have the same affect

like, when there are scenes like Micasher where all they're doing is kissing and it's like WHOA (yes different contexts but this is about physicality)

so, they just, they didn't do sex scenes well, it was better off when there was a clear implication and fade to black like this

In terms of their sex scenes or lack of sex scenes, I just wonder if Maggie wasn't comfortable doing certain things and so they didn't have many scenes and that when they did have scenes, it wasn't like what Charlie would do with other scene partners

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gayofthefae · 2 years ago

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I can’t wait for Mike to bring up spending the rest of his life with Will. I feel like two kind of just emphasizes to the audience and kind of feels like it’s for the audience but a trio of Mike saying it judgmentally and Will agreeing, Will saying it himself for the first time, Mike saying it genuinely would be a really sweet payoff and growth. Just the first too feels both like maybe trying to just repeat the first one as if the audience didn’t hear it or it’s incomplete.

I just can’t wait for Mike to bring it up himself. Maybe (hopefully) in a similar context to the movie theatre thing. Like maybe they’re stressing out or something and he just mentions “so what are we gonna do when we survive...” to lighten things up a bit and provide an ounce of that normalcy. I not only want Will to hear it too but I also want Mike to say it. I want to hear that Mike has dreams - goals for his future. I understand the lack of mention, he’s still only 14 which is also why the others haven’t, much unlike Jonathan and Nancy’s talk of college and their past job pursuits, but I also think there could be some part fear that they won’t make it that far. And even with queerness it changes things. You might not want to think of the future because it doesn’t look good. So, like with Will, his future dream is essentially for things to stay the same. To simplify it, his dream for the future is for it not to come. But Mike saying the same thing would actually validate that and make it feel like a more accessible future that could happen in the future. Like it’s not just nostalgia but an agreed upon goal to maintain what they’ve had and done in the past. And just thinking about the future during the end of the world always sends me into tears.

#mike wheeler #byler speculation #stranger things #byler dreams trio

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7abwis · 2 years ago

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ok time for my book journaling, yes spoilers included. this time for the Long Way to a Small Angry Plxnet by Becky Chxmbers

i personally really enjoyed it - s/o to zoe for reccing it to me. it’s one of those that’s very introspective about the human condition even if done through alien means. one of the biggest themes of the book is being good and loving one another is a choice, and one that’s worth it, and y’know im a sucker for that. it gives you that perspective through the eyes of many and the different ways people stick to that. and it also offers you different perspectives on many other different things that we wouldn’t think twice about.

like sissix and the whole aandrisks not getting attached at all to the babies bc so many of them die, and the babies and children not seen as people. and it’s interesting to see her perspective vs the perspective of the human crew who would obviously reflect our views, and how it’s even stated most of the GC doesn’t fall in line with that. and then sissix hits you with the well yeah why would i love something that barely has any thoughts when i could give all my love to someone with full fledged experiences with friends and family who love them and all. and in the context of a fictional reptilian alien species who, like many reptilian species, very few of them survive into adulthood, you get where she’s coming from - or you don’t - regardless it’s your choice, but obviously in an irl human context that's called You’re A Horrible Fucking Parent. but it’s interesting to rotate in a fictional space with her as an adaptation to how her species works, especially since once visiting her home planet you know the children are likely well taken care of and how aandrisks have a lot of care and love for each other (culturally speaking. barring things like what happened to the old lady at the market who was a metaphor for communities ostracizing aneurotypical people). and you know sissix herself throughout the book as a very loving person but that was just one example - and it was interesting to see other examples throughout the book of taking specific things that are just How We As People Work, turning it on it’s head and recontextualizing it within this scifi world with so many aliens with so many different ways of working. makes you think about how humans work and why we do as we do - both condemnation for our wars and violence and appreciation for all the good things we can do. and neutrality for some of the things we do too that just Are. though granted funny some things like the “humans are so modest with all their clothes!” taken as a universal human thing which is just a part of the author’s own biases (not a dig at them, biases will always exist and they stated their worldbuilding for humans as a hodgepodge of cultures stitched together after a mass loss of human culture and knowledge through a planet-extinction event caused by a more advanced stage of what’s happening today) just yknow as someone who some of my ancestors didn’t wear a lot of clothes, and because there’s so many people who don’t adhere to wxstern chrxstian standards of modesty, it’s funny to read as an absolute. found out a lot of people complained about the lack of buildup and payoff, and personally im not mad about that. felt very much like a you’re along for the ride and the journey’s what you’re here for more than the destination. i enjoyed every step of the worldbuilding and the interpersonal relationships of the characters, and that’s what made it worthwhile to me. feels like;;; i guess the closest thing i can attribute it to is how the studio ghibli movies like my neighbor totoro are. it’s not the typical plot of buildup climax, build down or whatever the actual words for it are, but the ride is wonderful nonetheless. rather than the Big Events happening in story and being given a lot of time, you’re more walked through in the aftermath about how the characters feel about it and how it’s affected them going forward, and i liked that. it’s fresh. also was in the library grinning like a madman that chapter when rosemary got that alien pussy bc it was _so_ funny going through sissix’s pov bc she had to actively think to try to parse out rosemary’s advances. like god that whole bit where sissix was like ?? ok something’s different??? she’s dressing in slightly different clothes and her neckline is a lot lower i guess??? and she’s looking at me in a way she doesn’t usually??? ohhHH!!!! OH!!!! let me make sure you’re into this and we’re on the same page actually bc i know how you guys work and i want to make sure you’re ok.... OK YEAH LETS GO. it was so fucking funny. one thing that i found interesting and would have liked a little more indepth for was corbin’s deal after basically violating ohan’s bodily autonomy and separating him from the whisperer. without the indepthness it’s fine bc it’s hinted that corbin dealt with a lot of ostracization afterwards and in the end it seemed like ohan and corbin were implied to have formed a friendship or at least continuously talked in a way that neither of them did before, but i would have liked to seen how the author went about a bit more of it - especially bc it’s such an interesting scenario of of course you should never violate someone’s bodily autonomy but this is in a completely fictional scifi setting where this species of super monkey people are infected with some virus that gives them super knowledge but also are maybe driven to think the virus is its own sentient species that is much akin to a holy being, and this virus drives them to an early death which corbin was trying to save ohan from. wild but at the very least i think fitting for the crewmembers with the least screentime and with the least social personalities. but at the same time i will admit, leaving it less detailed is fitting for it bc it’s such a gray situation to begin with, and leaving so many details unspoken lends to that scenario. also funny in the last bits when rosemary was saying all that shit in the meeting room with the temeri there i was like bitch!!! i thought you read those emails that were sent to you!!!! those bitches can hear you!!!!!! granted there might have been an ‘unread’ in the file somewhere there but idr. but interesting that rosemary’s introduction started with her begging not to fuck this up this time, the themes of her having been inexperienced but having growned and learned, and then at the end her carelessness (or just the timing that she didn’t get to read the email) did jumpstart something that killed one of their crew. but at the end of the day it wasn’t her fault and none of them will know, bc it was strictly that one temeri dude’s fault for being Like That and if it wasn’t then it would’ve been some other time. but all you can think in the book is it happened, and there’s no going back, and all they can do is move forward bc it just truly wasn’t her fault for someone else’s violence. but anyways, good book, once i get through my queue i’ll look into the second one.

#zabs book club

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skoulsons · 2 years ago

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TLOU2 thoughts if I may add to the pile…

I’m not a game player but I’ve watched both games and read a lot about the mechanics of both. I strongly prefer 1, BUT the more I sit with it, the more I appreciate TLOU2 as a thing that gave me a measure of context and a lot to think about.. At the heart of it that’s what I love about the franchise. It inspires a lot of conversation and conflicting feelings to work through.

I definitely think certain things could have been specifically handled better and I hope there’s some manner of epilogue or part 3 that provides some payoff for some of that because that’s my main critique of TLOU2 - it lacks the payoff of the first game, which after such a trauma-swamp is a little cruel to the player.

you have GOT to be the same person bro ain’t no way like sixteen different people come in here all in one day

That’s a really good way of looking at it. I have my gripes with it, as I’ve said, but there are some parts of it that I do like and understand about the story. But you’re right, it does (and has) inspired a lot of conversation and feelings, even three years after the release

But I agree with you there. I really don’t have much to add bc you’re just right and I agree :)

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firsttarotreader · 2 years ago

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Was it Pedro or Lena who ended things? What do the cards say?

Hello! Well, I think you probably have noticed Lena liked Pedro’s TLOU poster from yesterday after over a year of not liking any of his posts, right? 😅😅 So as you might know, their readings are always intense and heartbreaking and this one wasn’t different. First, I loosely asked who ended things and the card was the Knight of Spears.

This one is the brave and rational knight who is willing to face any challenge and do what has to be done, and it’s also a common card for Pedro, so I would risk saying he was the one who ended things. But I asked for more information and the first cards were The Tower, 6 of Flowers and 5 of Hedgehogs.

Well, The Tower in this context does show once again there was an ending of some sorts, a breakup, a falling out, but something definitely crumbled. With the 6 of Flowers, we can see it was amazing while it lasted, so good you could even brag about it, but then the 5 of Hedgehogs shows us someone (or both) didn’t have anything else to give, there was an emptiness, a loss, a lack of something.

The next cards were Page of Teacups, The Chariot and 10 of Hedgehogs. Page of Teacups in this context means there were feelings involved, someone could have been in love, in a very loyal and pure way, and The Chariot is telling us things moved fast, forward, and they (or the Page at least) went with the flow. 10 of Hedgehogs means this person possibly wanted it all, a relationship, they wanted to go all the way, they wanted the “ultimate success”.

And then the Ace of Teacups reversed, 5 of Teacups and 9 of Spears. From the Ace of Teacups reversed, one of them wasn’t in it, they couldn’t give what the other wanted because there were simply no feelings or the feelings were messy. Potentially unrequited love. 5 of Teacups shows the great disappointment and hurt that this has caused. A full on heartbreak because things didn’t go according to plan, like hope that didn’t go anywhere, a wait with no payoff. This disappointment led to the 9 of Spears, a lot of anxiety and worries. It led them or one of them to stay up at night thinking of it.

In the end, I asked if it was really Pedro who ended things, whatever these “things” were, and the card was the 10 of Spears. Oh, fuck. ☠️☠️ This is literally the card of the painful endings, something that has to end even if painfully. Well, I think it’s a yes, it was Pedro who ended things.

As I told you, their readings are always this heartbreaking mess! But one thing you can count on when it comes to their readings: there was an ending and a painful one, of whatever they had. Also, if you read my first readings of them, the cards pointing to one of them not giving what the other wanted and not being fully there were already present.

#lena headey #relationship #Readings

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nightmarewing · 1 year ago

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I don't think that Lawful Drug/Drug & Drop rates especially highly among CLAMP's work. It's too mired in CLAMP-being-CLAMP-ism, in addition to being repeatedly dropped like a hot potato after the success of Tsubasa/xxxHolic. Maybe there's something more interesting there than absent women and homoeroticism without payoff, butI we still feel like we really don't have enough of the story to even properly gauge it. Doesn't help that there's your standard early 00s casual homophobia suffused throughout. It's nothing new or shocking if you read these types of works, but it rankles, especially alongside more overt gayness than CLAMP usually indulges in.

All that said, I have a soft spot for it. The supernatural mysteries are fun, and I appreciate Kakei and Saiga a lot. I've been thinking about Kakei, both how much I generally love him as a character and how much more I love him knowing that (major spoilers for both LD/D&D and Wish here) he's actually Hisui.

I really need to read Wish (it's already on my shelf), but it's probably the first piece of media I can recall encountering that had genderless angels (or genderless anything). CCS would technically be the first, but I didn't learn about that until much later. Anyway, Tokyopop's Wish translation was controversial when it came out because it chose feminine pronouns for Kohaku. It made enough of a splash that even at 12-13 I caught wind of it. I don't know exactly how it treats gender and genderlessness as a whole, but I have enough grasp of CLAMP that I can probably imagine.

Which makes it feel kind of refreshing to me that Kakei has a decidedly masculine presentation. Yes, I love nonhuman nonbinary characters, the ones that exist wholly outside of the gender binary (I do, every time). I don't love that their lack of human sexual organs is usually presented as the sum total explanation for their gender or their lack of gender. It paints being nonbinary or agender as an experience outside of humanity's (even moreso because the humans around them always seem to be cis). It often implies that gender is biological and reproductive, that there's no need or conception of it outside those things, that it doesn't matter (and inversely that, when those things are present, gender follows). That's the vibe CLAMP angels have for sure.

Then, Kakei happened. If one compares Hisui to Kakei, Kakei is absolutely more masculine. Yes, it's a disguise, and yes, it was necessary to pull off the twist even if people had theorized it anyway, and yes, the ulterior motive is fujobait. But still... I like that that's the direction that Kakei chose to go in, and that he's obviously so much happier that way. I like that he's living a fulfilling life affecting gender and that it is (ultimately) a life he chose. He's there to be with Kokuyou and watch over Kohaku first and foremost, but he clearly doesn't mind being "that pretty sadist guy who runs Green Drug." He's having a ball. Like love, gender is a part of humanity that Kakei has chosen to experience, indulge, and enjoy.

More of this, I guess? Maybe in less fraught contexts, lol. But more of nonhuman characters embracing a broad spectrum of gender even though their biology isn't one end of the binary or the other. More gender being presented as a thing you can just do because you want to and it feels right, even if you don't have to do it, because it's a thing that exists within our sense of self. If a character has a mind that can support that, they can have a more complicated relationship with gender than just "not applicable."

#I have no idea what to tag this I don't know if Lawful Drug fans want my self indulgent 4 AM meta

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youknowwhoiamassbutt · 2 years ago

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My problem with 2017 MSM’s Harry and Peter (Spoilers ahead)

As much as I’m constantly praising MSM for their portrayal of Peter and Harry’s relationship, I do have one major issue with the show in the context of Peter and Harry (and many more in the grand scheme of the show if I disregard the platonic and romantic parksborn content). There is a huge lack of payoff. Let me explain:

The show hinted that Harry may have been sick like his mother, or at the very least, he was struggling with his health. All of his energy would occasionally, suddenly drain, and Harry would pass out. The show used this as a plot device, but once season 1 was over, it was forgotten, brushed aside as Harry not adjusting to the superhero lifestyle. But this was a throw-away line that Harry used to keep Peter from worrying, those symptoms were extremely concerning and would have made for a great storyline.

There are two storylines I could see happening, the first one is the shortest of the two. If the showrunners wanted to keep the plot short, they could have explained this through Norman. Norman was using Harry’s ill health to manipulate and gaslight him, therefor, it wouldn’t be illogical to place the blame on him. While a dark idea, it could have been possible that Norman was drugging his son to worsen his health for the reasons just listed. This would have, not only, explained what I view as a major hole in the storytelling, but also added to the overarching plot of Norman being a terrible father and a terrible person.

The second possible fix that I can think of, simply off the top of my head, is the one with the most emotional payoff. If the show had waited, if they had kept the storyline going throughout the seasons, it would have given us so much payoff when they finally decided to address it.

The first season of any show is the basic blueprint for what the entire show should be at it’s core; therefor, from that blueprint, we learned to expect Harry to be a staple. The first season was not a story about Peter Parker, not even Spiderman. The show was about Peter Parker and Harry Osborn, both together and separately, it was about their journeys and how life continued to bring them together. In season 2, the show threw Harry aside the moment they were done with the big bad’s storyline, his father’s storyline. He simply disappeared to “Europe” for half a season, no explanation for his ailment. While I don’t necessarily hate this concept, many people, including myself, isolate during rough emotional times, he should have never been forgotten.

If the show wanted Harry to isolate to continue his father’s work, they should have shown us that. We didn’t need a mid-season reveal. I felt that that took away from the show immensely. Personally, I’ve seen Spiderman tv shows, and MSM is nothing special there. What drew me to the show was the depth that they gave the supporting characters. I exclusively watch the episodes with Harry Osborn, because I’ve seen Spiderman before, I haven’t seen Harry Osborn like this. The show should have continued Harry’s storyline separate from Peter, that way, the emotional payoff, when Harry’s actions and motives are finally revealed to Peter instead of the audience, would have been intense.

Finally, if the show wanted to pit Harry against Peter in a major showdown at the end of the show, (obviously keeping Harry redeemable, because we all stan a hurt but not evil Harry Osborn) it would have been the first on-screen adaptation of their relationship to truly, successfully, pull the green goblin storyline off. Raimi-verse did it well, but MSM could have done it perfectly if they set themselves up for it.

At the end of the show, Peter could learn that Harry has been sick, and with the seasons of setup, it would have been heartbreaking. The reveal would be the thing that enables Peter to understand where Harry’s motives have been, and it would be the thing that could save him from the dark path he was going down.

Even if the show wanted to avoid any more Harry-Peter conflict, it would have been gut-wrenching to discover after seasons of build-up that Harry has been secretly sick, even if the ailment isn’t life-threatening and only life-altering.

The moral of this story is, the show needed more consistency and a larger, more long-term plan for the show, because the best shows, regardless of the target audience, are the shows that plan their entire series out and don’t leave plotlines hanging with no explicit or implied explanations. Avatar the Last Airbender is the perfect example of a kid’s show that will remain legendary because of the consistent and thoroughly developed and explored plot.

#parksborn #msm parksborn #msm spiderman #harry osborn #peter parker #spiderman

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iamanartichoke · 3 years ago

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I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

#loki spoilers #loki series negativity #loki tv series spoilers #loki series spoilers #long post

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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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Lovely write-up. I think what struck me is not only the strange emotional indifference, but the how often emotions are misplaced. If I may put my hat in the ring? Yang and Ruby are meant to be sisters, and while siblings should be allowed to argue in media, after their split in volume 8, Yang is concerned about Blake over her own sister that she argued with. It frustrates me. Her lack of worry and her obsession over Blake in that moment is almost inhuman to me (bias being the eldest of 4 kids).

Thank you, anon! <3

Yes, to me it feels less like the emotion is misplaced—since there’s nothing wrong with also being worried for your maybe girlfriend—but rather that characters aren’t allowed to experience more than one emotion at a time. Yang can be worried for Blake or Ruby, not both. The emotional indifference in that part of Volume 8 (Jaune doesn’t experience fear, Ren has completely gotten over his problems with the group’s choices, he’s then able to tell the Ace Ops what they feel and think so that they too can presumably get over it) hits Yang in that she’s simply not allowed to deal with the complexity of being worried for two different loved ones for two different reasons. So that’s a problem all on its own but, as you say, anon, we have the secondary problem of the story choosing the wrong character to turn Yang’s limited focus on. And in the context of the story, I do think it’s an objectively wrong choice because it involves dropping plot threads and picking up new ones that, until now, never existed. Yang drops her status as Ruby’s canonical older sister to focus on the non-canonical status of being Blake’s girlfriend. Yang drops the canonical fight with Ruby to instead pick up the non-existent fight with Blake. It’s a scene that acknowledges the audience’s expectations because Jaune also assumes that of course Yang is worried for her sister, only to reveal that—gotcha!—she doesn’t care about any of the things we’ve established that she would care about. That moment, intentionally or not, pokes fun at the viewer for assuming that RWBY will be internally consistent. We, like Jaune, think Yang would be worried for Ruby since she’s been established as a loving older sister since Volume 1 and literally just parted after a massive disagreement. And the show responds, "Why would you think that?"

Making characters choose just one (1) person to focus their emotions on is already a terrible idea when this is a cast of 10+. That’s how we’ve wound up with moments that the writers clearly wanted to be impactful, but aren’t because these characters never formed a relationship despite existing together for 8 volumes: Why is Blake claiming she looks up to Ruby? Who is Yang to tell Ren what’s okay to be upset over? Why is Jaune the one to kill Penny? In a bid to answer the criticism of, “Why don’t these characters ever interact with anyone else?” the writers went straight to Big Moments for new duos, missing that we needed foundational work first to create payoff here. But even beyond that, this singular focus means that when the story does wake up and realize that Character A should interact with someone other than Character B, that relationship feels like it has been lost while this new relationship is (kinda) formed. Because the story is incapable of writing the characters caring about both. So when Yang is playing the part of a girlfriend, we’ve lost her status as an older sister. When Weiss is playing the part of a sister, we’ve lost her status as Ruby’s BFF. When Nora is playing the part of Penny’s short-term friend, we’ve lost her status as Ren’s partner—kinda literally now that she’s decided she wants to discover who she is without him. Notably, that moment comes after Ren says, “I love you.” In order for a character to start developing a new relationship (even with themselves), they have to temporarily drop the last one, resulting in fans understandably getting upset that a core part of their characterization has been put on the back-burner for an indefinite number of Volumes. I personally think Yang and Blake need to get some distance after everything we’ve seen since Volume 6, but that doesn’t mean I want the story to straight up ignore their relationship for a couple of years before deciding it’s relevant again (especially when we’re still waiting for that queer rep). What fans want is an organically written, ensemble cast where everyone has different types of relationships with everyone else, consistently, forwarded both by small, everyday exchanges and larger arcs to develop specific pairings or trios… but RWBY doesn’t seem capable of giving us that. The size of the cast has proved too much for the writers to keep up with, resulting in unnatural interactions where characters focus on one person and one person only, even when that’s contrary to what we’d expect of them in that moment.

Does anyone remember how much fans loved that two second scene between Blake and Oscar in Volume 6? When they’re at the farm waiting on the bike, talking about how much they want breakfast but nope, I’m not gonna be the one to cook it? Those are the sort of interactions we should be getting constantly. It resonated because it’s rare in RWBY to see two characters outside of their designated duos talking with one another, specifically about something other than the plot. Small as it is, it helps develop both their relationship and the team’s dynamic as a whole…

…but now, two and a half Volumes later, Blake hasn’t said a word to Oscar since.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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smokeonshadows · 3 years ago

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We need to talk about the Bobbseys

Strap in, kids. This is going to be...a lot.

To put it bluntly, the way the Bobbseys were handled was messy, unnecessary, and probably the worst thing about an otherwise great season.

It's really disappointing because the Nancy Drew writers have already proven themselves to be not only good writers, but also socially conscious writers. They actively and publicly aim to be inclusive in their storytelling, so I think it's fair to hold them to that standard.

There was a lot of potential in the Bobbseys–they're a morally ambiguous brother-sister team of codependent twins from a rough/tragic past who sometimes lie, cheat, and steal in order to make ends meet. This is interesting, this is full of possibilities as to how they could fit in with the Drew Crew, and, most of all, this was a great opportunity to have complex representation of the south asian community that subverts popular stereotypes (model minority, traditional upbringing, perpetual foreigner, etc.). Amanda and Gil would've been great characters in their own rights...but instead they were used as nothing more than cannon fodder for an unnecessary, half-baked love square with low key racist undertones.

Problematic elements

I've already talked about the racist undertones in previous posts, but in a nutshell, Gil is portrayed as being controlling/aggressive/domineering (particularly towards Nancy and Amanda) and it's a stereotype that south asian men (and I'd say black and brown men in general) are misogynistic, aggressive, and otherwise abusive towards women. This portrayal is made even worse because he's meant to be a foil for Ace, a soft/gentle/sensitive/emotionally stable white guy who Nancy is obviously meant to be with. And for Amanda, she's also portrayed in line with the stereotype of asian women being very submissive (particularly to their male counterparts). I don't think any of this was intentional, but it's just not a good look.

This problem could've at least been somewhat alleviated if Gil and Amanda had been written as fully fleshed out characters who were going on their own journeys and were consequential to the story, but that didn't happen.

Stereotypes aside, another problematic aspect of the Bobbseys is that they both fall into the unfortunately common trope of being the character of color that the white character has a superficial relationship with and leads white character to realizing that they should actually be with this other white character who's been there all along.

Even when they have roles in the episode apart from being superficial love interests, oftentimes they don't do much aside from being useful for getting the Crew from point A to point B of a mystery.

Underdeveloped relationships

Was I the only one who found the resolution of the Nancy x Gil relationship in the season finale to be a bit abrupt?

While I appreciate that they showed how seemingly small transgressions within relationships can actually be red flags and that a situation doesn't need to escalate to full-on physical abuse in order to count as domestic violence, I found that the moment when Nancy has this realization and then breaks up with Gil lacked the emotional weight befitting that situation. I think this was the case because Nancy and Gil barely had a relationship. There was attraction and sexual tension, they hooked up a few times, but it was never shown to be a real relationship. It's not just that we didn't often see them together, but with or without him, Nancy didn't think much about Gil or what he thought of her and, more importantly wrt the breakup, we aren't shown all the ways that his treatment of her affected her sense of self or the way she operated. Nancy's relationship with Gil was inconsequential, so the stakes were low.

And yes, casual hookup situations can also turn abusive, but from a narrative standpoint, the way this particular situation was portrayed, it was given both more and less weight than it should've been given. It felt like the writers wanted the breakup to be big and impactful but they not only didn't work for that payoff, they also wanted to resolve it quickly so they could move onto more important plot points (the breakup was at the beginning episode and Nancy never mentions it or even hints at any emotional fallout from it ever again).

(Amanda was done dirty)

Actually, if anything, the big dramatic breakup should've been between Amanda and Gil. Even with her severely limited screentime, almost every time we do see Amanda, we are reminded of how close she is with Gil, how badly he treats her, how much she values his opinion, and how smothered she feels by him. And it sucks that we never actually get to see Amanda make the realization, stand up for herself, and confront Gil. All we see is Ace encouraging her to break away and then cut to her living her best life post-sibling breakup.

In the end, it's as if Amanda's pain and suffering was made to be less about her and more about Nancy/being evidence that Gil is not good for Nancy. Again, not a good look.

And Amanda and Ace's relationship is also underdeveloped compared to the impact that the writers seem to want it to have. Like, I don't understand why Ace would give her a pseudo-ultimatum ("I'll prioritize you if you prioritize me") at this stage of their relationship. Yes, they do seem to be more of a relationship than Nancy x Gil, but it always felt like they were very much in the budding romance stage. While he does talk about her when they're apart, we still rarely saw them interact with each other outside of the context of Ace needing to use Amanda's connection at the hotel or to her father or brother in order to help solve the mystery. And we don't learn more about or see a different side either character through their relationship with each other.

Poorly executed, unnecessary love triangles

The whole point of having a love triangle is to raise the emotional stakes.

It's always been my belief that if you're going to have a love triangle, you need to commit to it. That means making both legs of the triangle equally viable, developing both romantic options and both relationships equally.

As noted in the sections above, this was not the case with either love triangle, which makes the whole thing feel cheap and unsatisfying. Like I said in a previous post, I think it would've been more powerful if Nancy had two really great options, but in the end chose Ace because that’s what her heart really wants no matter how great the other guy is.

Anyone with a healthy understanding of love and relationships would choose Ace over Gil. It's no contest, no real choice, so it adds nothing to the conversation, it says nothing about Nancy or her feelings for Ace. It's inconsequential, the emotional stakes are practically nonexistent.

Literally, I feel like if you took the Bobbsey love triangles out of this season, Ace and Nancy would still end up in pretty much the same place wrt their feelings for each other. I mean, yes, the whole jealousy/green eyed epiphany thing did play a role, but the relationships with the Bobbseys featured so little and were so underdeveloped that it would be more or less the same as one of them flirting with a background character every once in a while.

And Nace still didn't end up together after all that! It's hinted that for some reason, Ace will be stringing Amanda along next season while he pines for Nancy. Which is exhausting.

This is really what we sacrificed two perfectly interesting characters of color for. I'm upset.

#nancy drew cw #gil bobbsey #amanda bobbsey

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hamliet · 4 years ago

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when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt.

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful.

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also,��Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through.

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense.

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding.

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this.

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all.

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help.

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story.

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.

#ask hamliet #writing stuff #Anonymous

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ihatetaxes99 · 3 years ago

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A Brief Retrospective Look At MVA (In The Anime)

Well. Here we are. Every end of the time is another begun. After what has felt like years of anticipation (mostly because it actually has been years), My Villain Academia has been fully animated. Well, "fully" may be the wrong word here, but that's something I'll get into later.

To honour the end of the arc, I decided to do two things: One, I re-read the entirety of the arc in the manga all in one sitting; Two, I rewatched all five episodes of the anime's adaptation back to back once again. My life is pain and I know not of sleep. Anyway, the reason I did this is because of a little project I proposed to myself back just before the first episode aired; Once MVA was done and dusted, I would go back and give my own retrospective on the whole thing. Because why the hell not, sounds like fun. This will also hopefully be less emotional than my thoughts I shared as the episodes were still airing, but who knows?

So, let's begin. And I wish to start by stating that My Villain Academia is my absolute favourite arc in the manga. It did a lot of things right. It focused entirely on my favourite faction, the villains. It offers a glimpse into their lives and goes a long way in humanising them, particularly Spinner and Shigaraki. It sets up key points for others too, such as Mr. Compress' habit of thinking more about the bigger picture than the others, which would factor into his major reveal during the Paranormal Liberation War and of course the formation of the Front itself. It introduced us to Rikiya Yotsubashi, one of my favourite characters in the manga, even if he honestly peaked in this arc and was never as good again. And it gave us a large-scale, grueling fight for supremacy in which I found myself actively rooting for the League. It is, in my mind, the very best of BNHA, the only arc I would want them to do well in the anime. They could screw up literally everything else and I would be happy if MVA was even just as good as the manga, it didn't even need to be better. I would have been delighted to have an excuse to experience the arc all over again, seeing my favourite moments with the sublime soundtrack and voice acting.

Yeah…

But before I get to that, let us take a little trip of sorts down memory lane to see the road to MVA, what led to it. So, 2021 rolls around. What a fun year. It's just 2020 without the excitement of everything being so uncertain, and frankly it's been really fucking boring as a year. However, BNHA Season Five was announced. In February, we get the first trailer for the upcoming season. It's... It's fine. Obviously, it focuses heavily on the Joint Training Arc (in fact, that is all it shows) and although I despise that arc with a passion, it's not too bad. I had not watched the anime since Overhaul ended, so my plan was I just wouldn't watch JTA and would wait until the big attraction, MVA. And so, Joint Training starts. And it goes on. And on. And on. I checked back almost two months later to discover it still wasn't over yet. Now I found this odd. Joint Training Arc was horrible for many reasons, but the big one was that it dragged on for so long as a result of Horikoshi's health complications, which is by no means his fault. But, surely the anime, which would consistently release on a weekly basis, wouldn't have the issues associated with this. Episodes of BNHA have always encompassed around three to five chapters, and Joint Training's were shorter than usual, so why was it taking more than ten episodes to adapt it?

Very strange, but I didn't question it much. Then, the key visuals released, confirming that MVA was at the very least happening. Great, wonderful. I love it. We've got the whole gang there, seeming like they're in Deika, looks pretty good.

Wait, did I say whole gang? Yeah, my bad, there was someone missing. Spinner. Now, I am not the biggest Spinner fan so I wasn't prepared to riot over his exclusion like I would have been if Compress wasn't in it. But this was starting to get strange. Spinner was the main narrator of MVA. Even if his importance was not on the level of Shigaraki, Twice and Toga, it was certainly more than Dabi and Compress, who did both appear in the art. Why was he excluded? Obviously, I bet you're all having a good old chuckle to yourselves right now because in retrospect, this makes perfect sense now.

Alright, then. I heard from a friend around June time that Joint Training was finally over. Awesome, great, time for the good stuff- why is there a Christmas episode here?

Yes, this was probably what really started to get the alarm bells in my mind going. The Christmas episode- in June. Very, very strange. Also, absolutely no mention of Rikiya, which even if they were reshuffling things, I would have expected him to appear in the episode of Bakugo and Todoroki getting their licenses, since it directly ties in. Concern levels rising, I shrugged it off and waited for next week.

Bam. Major reshuffling. Now, Endeavour Agency comes first, fuck you if you want context for who the hell the PLF are or the significance of Destro's memoirs. This was really starting to worry me now. I told myself that the key visual meant that MVA had to be happening, but it was starting to seem like the villains were being shafted. A fact not helped by the new OP.

Look, I'm sorry. I don't mean to complain or whine, but season five's second OP is just bad. The music is fine, I have no problem there. But the visuals are just awful. Not only is there an extended focus on that stupid bloody trio of Midoriya, Bakugo and Todoroki, not only is there more screentime given to characters who don't appear in MVA or EA than the main cast of the former, but the animation itself is just so stiff and lacking. It had potential, but the visuals are the worst out of any recent anime opening I've seen in a good few years and this was what got me really panicking.

Boom, a beach episode smack in the middle of Endeavour Agency to promote the upcoming movie. Boom, adapting two chapters per episode during EA. Boom, the Shirakumo episode, which I always thought was part of the War Arc and not EA. But finally, mercifully, the title leaks came and it was revealed that episode 20 of season five would be the start of MVA.

20. Out of 25. And it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to end the season with MVA, so really, up to 24. Ohhh no…

But hey, I'm an optimist sometimes. I was excited to just finally be clear of all this nonsense and get to the real good stuff. Hell, in preparation, I watched the entirety of the season up to that point. I finally realised why JTA took so long and it's one of the most depressing things I've ever learned, in a bad way. Were all those flashbacks really necessary? EA was okay, as someone who as a manga reader, already had the necessary context for the PLF stuff. The beach episode, I watched half of, got too bored and skipped the rest of. And you know what, I liked the Shirakumo chapters. They weren't as good in the anime, but it was nice to see.

And then, finally, in comes episode one of My Villain Academia, on a cold, dark August morning. I even bought Crunchyroll Premium to watch it as soon as possible, I was excited. All the messing around, all the crap, it was finally over and the time had come to enjoy what this season was really all about.

I can now safely say why Bones kept pushing back MVA, because if I was them, I would be embarrassed to show this.

No, that's not fair. I promised I wouldn't get too snarky, so let's reek things back in. As a whole, MVA has been… fine. Just fine. Not good enough to justify the bullshit, but not horrendous (mostly.) In fact, right now, I'll give a ranking of the episodes, my worst to best:

5) Episode One

4) Episode Two

3) Episode Three

2) Episode Five

1) Episode Four

Yeah. So, there's a clear pattern here, that things more or less got better as time went on. From just straight up bad, to still not great, to alright, to the final two episodes being what I would comfortably call good. This is not a good look. I'm sorry, but Episode One, an episode that I just called bad, is still one of the season's best in spite of that. That spells out awful things for this season as a whole. But what exactly made this such a disaster?

Well, cut content is the big thing. MVA in the anime cuts out:

The League's battle with the CRC

Their struggle with poverty

The sushi joke setup

All of Spinner's character

All of Rikiya's character, including most mentions of Detnerat and Miyashita

Fairly integral pieces of Skeptic's character

Most of Giran's integrity and bravery

This doesn't look too bad at first. It could be far worse. We got basically everything else from the arc, so what? Well, I would already be annoyed about all of these cuts, but the issue is that they cause a knock on effect. Without the establishment of the League's poverty, the payoff of Toga's duffle coat now makes no sense. Without the setup of Spinner's characterisation, his battle with Hanabata now feels hollow. Rikiya's surrender to the League now makes even less sense, as his love of human life and desire to cause no more death is completely non-existent. The first time Rikiya being a CEO is mentioned is in the closing minutes of the arc. The sushi scene is hamfisted into a two second flashback just so that the payoff makes some sort of sense, but again, it is hollow without it being at the start (this is also the first mention of the League's poverty and it literally happens just as they are freed from it.) Can you see how these little seemingly unimportant cuts spiral into bigger problems? I would have been pissed even if they hadn't caused some tremendous cascades, but the fact that they did just makes this from a subjective issue to an objective one.

Yes. They did some things well. Toga's backstory is mostly intact, SMP is just as satisfying as the manga, Tenko's backstory is one of the best things the anime has ever done, the awakening is very well done, I adore the PLF formation as much as I did in the manga. Everything important is intact, but as I keep saying, you cannot just keep the bare minimum and expect it to work. How about in the next arc, they decide to cut everything involving Bakugo out, and only keep him jumping in front of Midoriya because it's the only absolutely necessary thing he does in the arc? People would be pissed, and it's the same thing that's happening here. It's a problem, it's not just a bad adaptation, it leads to bad storytelling in general.

The animation. Now, I do not believe this is a be all, end all. BNHA's anime is never going to look as gorgeous as Horikoshi's art, that is a fact and I do not begrudge them for that. They have a week to draw hundreds upon hundreds of frames, it's not a process that lends itself well to good looks and the animators and artists do their best with what they have. This does not change the fact that it is extremely hit or miss. Some things, Tenko's backstory in particular, look fantastic. Other things, mostly every action scene, make me laugh at how bad they can look and some things, particularly Twice and Re-Destro's hideous designs in the anime, make me cringe. The lighting is also an issue. Garaki's lab looked fantastic, but every other scene is just boring mid-afternoon with dull, basic lighting. I don't expect huge detail, but sometimes, it fails to achieve competency and as an extremely popular show, I don't think that's okay. I don't blame the animators, I blame the higher ups. And while I wouldn't mind the poor animation and art in an MVA that at least has all the story content, this does not have that and so I am even harsher than I would have been.

MVA was rushed. That's not up for debate. It took forever to get to it and once it came, things moved so quickly that they gave me whiplash, with no time to think or lament. Now, this could be attributed to the story structure of the arc, which is essentially a series of big fights, and it just isn't as bad in the manga because I can stop at any time to catch my breath. But I think it's worth noting that the anime at least highlights these issues. Curious dies in the same episode where she first appears, really driving home how pointless she was in the end. Episode Two alone tries to cover everything from the journey to Deika up until Jin finding Toga's body. That's a lot of content to fit in one twenty minute period and it was bound to feel messy in the end. I will say that, much like everything aside from the animation, this did get better as time went on, with episodes three, four and five adapting more reasonable amounts of content, compared to one giving us almost nothing and two giving us too much.

At the end of the day, that was it. The show's over. MVA has been closed in the anime. It will never be given a chance to improve, to go from just fine to anything even close to the manga. Why did this happen? I don't think we'll ever truly know. Some blame the new movie, others the studio's lack of faith in the villains, and there are those who say that it's just how fate turned out. I personally think it's a combination of all of these things. Without the movie, that beach episode wouldn't exist, giving more time to MVA, without the studio's hesitation, we'd perhaps get stuff like an actual good OP and perhaps some more general hype for it (I mean, MVA didn't even get a trailer.) Whatever the reason is, we got what we got. My verdict is something that's very overplayed as of late, but seriously, just read the manga with the fantastic soundtrack playing in the background. The anime's adaptation of MVA is not worth the time investment, when you could read the manga in roughly the same length of time and get more content, a more coherent plot and beautiful artwork.

So, what may come next for Season Six? I don't know. Season Five has definitely been one of the most unpopular seasons in the anime, with a lot of people speaking out against it, but this mostly seems to come from the Western fanbase, so it's up in the air if Bones will learn from their mistakes. Since they'll have a full season to do presumably the War and Rouge Deku arcs, then I feel like they'll put on a better show. But we just don't know. Spinner had his spotlight stolen this time around, will Compress suffer the same fate in Season Six? Dabi and Toga will probably be handled well, since they have inexplicably high amounts of popularity, but with his own lack of recognition rivalling Spinner's, I can see Sako ending up much the same way. Time will tell, I suppose.

#my villain academia #mva #league of villains #Meta Liberation Army #studio bones #bnha season 5

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Star Vs The Forces of Evil: Is Another Mystery (Prince of Wishful Thinking) or Wasted Potetial

Happy Valentine’s Day Lucifans! And while I originally intended to cover this along with the much worse Booth Buddies I had too much to say about both to try and clown car both together so here we are. And just in times for V-Day we have a StarTom episode.. that isn’t as focused on thier relationship as I thought because I hadn’t seen this in a while because every time I think of things in this series I think of all the wasted potetial and it gives me a migrane. I’d also like to thank @jess-the-vampire for talking this one over with me as usual, and helping me think through some stuff. And as with last time we’re picking up about where we left off, so no real exposition to get through. Join me under the cut as we solve a mystery and marvel at HOW much potential from this episode the show squandered.

We open with Marco chasing Glossaryck.. and it’s only now I realize I have not talked about this subplot at all. Or Glossaryck really. As you probably know Glossaryck is the tiny man who lives in the big book of spells, created the magical high comission and is a colossasl assshat whose likeablity plumted this season. For starters his voice actor Jeffery Tambour was outed as a massive creep, making him harder to stomach even if the show had reduced him to stock footage of one line. Speaking of which he came back from the dead... and despite it being revealed he was fully sapient the whole time and just saying Eclipsa’s husbands name without context a twist coming up int he finale that i’ll give out about here as while clever when you first hear it. makes NO sense in hindsight, as Eclipsa might of mentioned it before now especially since Glossaryck was around her quite a few times, had no reason not to, and you’d THINK Star, Marco or Moon, especially the latter two, would be curious why he can only say that and has seemingly been reduced to an infant. It’s an annoying subplot tha’ts just casually part of the series and no one seems to care about despite Glossaryck being a big deal and the spellbook revealing there IS a way to make copies, one that would be used next season.

But what really just made me HATE him.. is how he contributed to how bad things on Mewni are, by doing nothing. Being omnicent and powerful does not mean you do nothing.. it just means you have to be VERY careful. Power is a responsivity not an excuse to say “Wheelp my kids were a mistake going to just let them overthrow the government, become far more entriched in mewni politics, and boss me around without EVER questioning them or trying to replace them”. His apathy is never really called out by anyone but Marco, and he’s treated with all this undue importance despite not doing anything but train the queens, which even then i’ts questionable how good he was at that. Just an asshole, not the worst character in the series, he’s coming up in a few episodes, but just wholly unlikeable. And I get he’s supposed to be comically douchey but after what we learn about eclipsa it just passes into unforgivable and it’s never brought up or talked about. Which is a trend for this series and I don’t know why i’m even bothering being annoyed at this point when I could easily COUNT the number of potential plot threads the series half finished, dropped or wasted and it’d probably hit 50+.

So Marco is chasing after Glossarcyk and ends up in Buff Frog’s office. Buff Frog was Ludo’s former second in command, who reformed, and became close with Star and Marco, and who Star gave a position as Royal Monster Expert in order to have an ACTUAL MONSTER doing their job since the previous person was a crazy lady who thought of htem as less than sapient and tried to drown them all for reasons I don’t quite remember. This.. has not come up since and this is the first time we’ve seen his office since and it’s empty.

Marco finds a note for star but accidently reads it before he can get it to her, and we do get a glimpse of the old Marco as he’s disgraught over “reading someone’s mail without their permission!” I missed this.. I think I blocked out the GOOD times with marco in my brain behind a butter-like wall of all the stupid shit he did this season and the next and the whole resolution to the starco thing that left a taste in my mouth not unlike sardine juice mixed with vinegar, aka what causes Mitch Mconnel’s face to look like delfated and to sound like the ghost of Michgian J Frogs Condederate Uncle.

Meanwhile Star is with Tom and is distruaght after finding our her life is a lie and feels there’s no one she feels she can talk to about this, and Tom’s face when she says this just...

You can tell the poor guy is just hurt. HIs girlfirend is hurting.. and she dosen’t even CONSIDER talking to him about this or think she can trust him despite him being RIGHT THERE. This expression is only on screen for half a second but it says so much. And another thing it says is that he dosen’t know HOW to help her, as evidenced by the fact his offering to is very awkward and sitlted, that he’s clearly HURT she dosen’t think she can confide in him, but is so awkward in general and out of his depth her ehe dosen’t know how to help he just wants to. But while Star eventually seems receptive.. Marco busts in and we get a seen of EVERYONE involved being a canoe filed with dicks and old vhs copies of biodome. After of course Marco tells Star, Buff Frog is gone. To wit

Star: Immediately plans to take off with Marco and only Marco despite tom being right there, that he could help even if he has no stake in it, and the fact that cloudy can both grow, and Tom can you know.. FLY. That’s a thing we’ve seen him do a lot. So space isn’t an issue, sh’es just forgetting tom exists. Which WOULD work if it was an intentional issue but is sadly the beggining of Star being a pretty terrible girlfriend to tom. This example is lighter since you know , one of her closest friends and his small children are missing, and this is the day after her entire world got flip turned upside down, so I can forgive her a bit since she’s probably not thinking clearly.. but it’s the start of a LONG pattern fo her forgetting tom exists when it’s not coinvent and not thinking about his feelings.

Marco: When Tom asks to take Marco’s place, Marco says, not that he’s buff frog’s friend or he’s worried again about the fact he has kids that could be in danger but “I’m her squire it’s my job”... BEFORE you know the fact his friend WITH YOUNG CHLIDRNE WHO COULD BE DEAD VIA HATE CRIME, is missing.

Seriously it says something about how far Marco has fallen by this ponit that even in an episode wher eh’es largely his old self.. he STILL make this about him and star to her boyfriend’s face. HiS FRIEND’S FACE. There will be worse from Marco soon enough, and far worse we won’t be covering, but it does say something that they did him so wrong this season that THIS is minor in comparison to some of the other shit he pulls.

Tom: The only INTEITONAL one of these, as Star’s neglect feels like it was an accident, as he insists on coming along as her boyfriend despite this being a fairly serious situation and him clearly just wanting alone time.

OH and if you thought the writers you know ACTUALLY cared about STar’s anguish over finding out her whole life was a lie, her newly found grandma who actually relates to her and treats her with respect unlike her mother isn’t biologically related (Not that blood relation matters but I can see why finding out the one family member besides your dad who was anything like you in recent memory.. isn’t related to you would hurt)..

This highlights the show’s biggest flaw, and yes folks it’s bigger than the ending with the accidental genocide and the horrible implications. That was bad.. but what really tripped the show up long before that.. is the lack of payoff. Now sure some plots get payoffs, especially the Metora one, it’s one of the series best arcs.. but TONS of other threads are just outright ignored, casually dropped or never really pulled. Look I know that every show has things we wished they’d done more with, and most of the greats of this generation have stuff they dropped the ball on by dropping it or never really getting into it: She Ra never really had any closure with Catra and Scorpia, despite Catra hurting her the most out of anyone and that could’ve been a good thing for her character developent and Scorpia’s own character development. Ducktales had NO intention of going into Della’s reaction to Scrooge and Donald’s feud and quitely ignored or retconned the fact Scrooge clearly erased Della’s long history from the web and wherever else he could, as why else would the kids have never known. Did they just not use google? Steven Universe, if partially by design as it turns out, skipped over a LOT of things and ignored a lot of intresting characters human and gem. It’s the nature of writing seralized teleivsion: Sometimes you just forget to take care of something or simply don’t have the space to. That is fine. The problem is star does this.. for major plot points that really CAN’T be ignored. Starting with this season they flat out ignore Star telling Marco how she felt for pretty much the entire season. They only deal with it in booth buddies.... THREE EPISODES before the season finale two parter. Despite it having massive impliciations, doing so IN FRONT OF JACKIE, who was her friend, and Jann who is both Jackie and Star’s friend and is not subtle. We never get any fallout from this and the show weirdly acts like Marco can’t easily visit home. I mean yes he’s star’s squire but she’s not a heartless monster> The DIazes were her parents for a while too. And that’s not even getting into Marco Junior... “Shudders”. But that part of the cliffhanger was just the start after that the pile just kept getting larger. Before it was basically JUST the monster arm and it possibly being involved with the blood moon. So to prove my point i’m making a list of EVERY dropped plot point or storyline from the series, most of which are from season 3 onward. And naturally I asked jess for help with this after the first 25.. and the list DOUBLED. One or two of these are nitpicky.. but the fact the vast majority AREN’T .. yeah.

1. Jackie’s reactoin to Star’s feelings for Marco 2. Janna’s Reaction to Star’s feelings for Marco 3. Buff Frog being head monster expert 4. Buff Frog and Co fleeing this dimension and where they WENT exactly 5. Tom being a Monster 6. Star not being a Butterfly by blood 7. Moon’s reaction to not being a butterfly by blood 8. Rhombulus feeling guilty 9. Marco’s reaction to hekapoo being a terrible person 10. Marco and Kelly’s Relationship (Technically resovled but done poorly) 11. Tad not being over Kelly 12. Hornanne never getting a horn (I know minor but it bothers me a lot) 13. Eclipsa having to win over the other kingdoms 14. Related, the Johnasons being the hardest one of those to overcome 15. Related to 13 again: Why Tom’s Parent’s didn’t suppport eclipsa 16. What the Jaggy Mountains are or are like at all 17. WHy Glossaryck was worried about Globgor 18. Why Glossaryck faked being feral for a season 19. How Star had a piece of the spell book 20. What Mr. Candle’s Deal is 21. The Pie Folk knowing the true lineage of the queen 22. Was the commission conspiracy ever made public. 23. Meteora possibly having memories from her previous self 24. Lobster Claws 25. River’s reaction to moon’s betrayal 26. Toffee’s Past and Motivations 27. Marco’s Cheekmarks 28. Any reaction by Star and Janna to said cheekmarks 29. The kingdom’s reaction to the book being stolen is never brought up again 30. The Past Queens (Never brought up in show itself, but Jess feels there was supposed to be more there and I agree) 31. The Septarian Painting in ST.O’s (While i’ts a hint at who meteora is WHY it’s there and why ST. O would even allow it and why it’s of septarians is never explained) 32. Monster Arm 33. Relicor’s Wife 34. Why the dance memory was different 35. How do people in other dimensions get dimensional scissors? 36. How Did Toffee Know of the Whipsering Spell? 37. Where did Toffe, Ludo and Rasticore’s dimensonal scissors/chainsaw come from? 38. Toffee’s Damage to Mewni (Never gets brought up aagain after silver bell) 39. Why Globgor eating Shastacan was “Complicated” 40. Upwards Waterfall Unicorn 41. Star spying on Marco and Jackie 42. Any Explination for Green Magic 43. The photo’s of star and marco’s kiss (To quote jess, into the void they go) 44. How Metora Learned Soulsucking and why she can do that 45. Metora taking Rasticores arm with her. 46. The Neverzone’s weird time dialation 47. Star’s Neglect of Tom 48. The Spiderbites reaction to globgor being freed 49. The “Big Surge of Dark Magic” 50. Eclipsa “gets into your head 51. Star learning wandless magic with no effort 52. Where did Brian Go? 53. Star and Marco Never apologize for the kiss on screen 54. “I know how this all ends 55. Why Lekmet was never Replaced and why reynadlo didsn’t replace him

55 in the span of an hour.. and that’s not even getting into the fact Jess was thinking these up off the top of her head and probbaly coudl’ve kept going, but I didn’t want to overtax her since I was asking a favor of her, and fifty goddamn three is more than enough to say ya done fucked up. Just.. holy shit. MARVEL has less dropped plotlines than this, and that at least has the caveat of changing writers and some writers being dipshits who don’t CARE about resolving what happened before. The Star team has an excuse for maybe 10 or 20 of these.. but 55! Fifty Goddamn five! And that’s stopping as we could probably have found more and just tying this paragraph we did, hence 55. How much do you have to NOT care about your audience, your plots and your characters to miss this much? The three I mentioned before all have understandable explinations behind them: She-Ra had a set episode count and only so much space and it made more sense story wise to have scorpia be taken over by the horde. Ducktales is on a kids network and Disney isn’t at all supportive of adult plots to the point a courtroom episode was deemd too confusing for kids... which first off , no, and secondly you see what they were dealing with. and Steven Universe again did this slightly intentionally, with things happening offscreen because that’s how life works, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t.

This is just incompetence on a MASSIVE scale that boggles the goddamn mind. I have seen shows do worse, but i’ve never seen a show flush most of i’t spoteital drama nad character development down a goddamn hole again, and again and again in such a consitent manner. There’s no wonder I didn’t see this at the time. This is a level of messed up you have to see from helicopter view! The show just stopped carring about finishing most of it’s storylines and just brought shit up when it was convient and threw it out on a scale that just... just..

It sucks. It sucks to see a show that had so much potetial squander it, it sucks the show ended up like this, as only a handful of those are from pre season 3, and it sucks that the clock is ticking on how much good I have to say about the show without having to add the button “And then this was never properly resolved.” Good. Fucking. Grief. And Jess wanted to find MORE, and probably could, but I didn’t want her to dedicate her life to this. It’s monuentally frustrating, and saddening to see waht a waste of potetial this series was by the end. All of this is one big list of what if and most of it shoudl’ve been resolved in some way. “Sigh”.... let’s move on.. for my sanity’s sake. I made myself very sad.

So with Marco out of the way Tom and Star start investigating and Tom is a bit of a dick about it, suggesting they abandon the search for her friend and his CHLDREN to go get a corn shake and that the monsters just went out grocery shopping.. the former is just horribly out of character, as even if he would WANT to leave he woudln’t be so cavialer about it when sh’es this upset just a few episodes AFTER monster bash, where he learned you know.. not to do that. The other is just ehhh... like you think he’d react to an entire town being missing and Star’s JUSTIFIED fear mina did it , after she easily swatted both of them aside, with more than “eh maybe their doing pesant stuff I don’t know” Thankfully the “Tom is a huge dick and also star is grossed out by him liking monster food revealing she might still be a touch racist without realizing it, which itself is nver touched on, let’s call that number 54″, portion of the episode ends when dark gets a little something on him

Star gets one in her arm, and the two pass out and wake up with sacks over them. We do get the best part of the episdoe where both try to run around blind, and Tom realizes he’s claustrophbic and starts panicking, which results in him falling around and kicking in a circle, while Star takes a guy out and while she can’t see assumes she did something cool. Eventually we find out their kidnappers are related to the buff frog thing and tell her to stop looking and just to be serious are going to break tom’s horns... before Buff Frog arrives wondering what the fuck their thinking and stopping them, and he and his kids are fine. Turns out he’s leaving Mewni and Katrina, his oldest daughter who has giant legs now, wanted to make sure they got to say goodbye, so she left the note in his name knowing Star would come and find them. Before we get into all of that, just a quick aside.. okay so baiscally these monsters who threatened are either fleeing mewni or running some sort of underground railroad to cover up the monster exodus. Which begs the question... why did they tihnk breaking the horns of a crowned prince of one of their allied states and kidnapping and threatning the princess of mewni, who is PUBLICLY pro monster and thus only makes them look worse, was at all a good idea. I get wanting to hdie this but breaking Tom’s horns is only going to lead to a fight at best and two kingdoms coming down at them with their full might, putting innocent people in the crossfire at worst and most likely

But yes the Monsters are leaving.. and this is part of where the episode misteps as the scale is kind of hard to figure in hindsight. On one hand the montser villiage is abandoned , meaning that the episode implies ALL the monsters are leaving.. but not only are some left, once Eclipsa takes over plenty of monsters come back or may of never left, making nit very vauge just how many actually left, especially since the party leaving that we see is just about 10 monsters not including buff frog’s babies.. where did they come from by the way? Ludo just kinda stole them but from where? Jess brought that up but i’m not sure I got it on the list so 55. The show is entirely too vauge on if this is a mass exodus of eveyr monster at long last or just a large migration of them wanting a better life. Instead of explaining any of this when it’s a very intresting and engrossing idea, the monsters leaving the predjuicde outright, the possible hateful reactoins of the commission given how paranoid they are, how star would combat this, a possible divide in monsterkind with one half going back and the other staying put, WHERE they went exactly.. there’s a lot of great questions and stories here.. but as the list the size of my gut should make clear, none of them get answere dbecause this series just didn’t care about it.. and if so then WHY bring it up. That’s why I brought up the list in the first place.. because this is one of MANY times they bring something up and just.. do nothing with it. Then why did you bring it up in the first fucking place?! As I said I can abide by dropping a plot point for time or beacause Disney is kinda dumb or you just want to get to other good stuff and you had to make a cut. And while a portion of the list is that. i’ts mostly things like this: really fascenating stuff.. that’s ignored because htey just stopped caring.

So before they all can leave despite Star’s best efforts, TOM steps up and calls them cowards.. and admit’s he’s a monster too. And while one.. WEIRD looking guy points out he’s rich, so should he count, Tom counters with the fact that sure he’s rich.. but when he gets in an elevator he’s a monster. He may be part of a diffrent “catageory”.. but to a stranger he’s just the same as them. While it dosen’t feel quite earned by the episode, it is a moral that needs to be taught: prilvage dosen’t insulate you completely from prejudice. You can still be discrminated against no matter how much money you have or how far you get because the system sucks. And once again this is a waste of potetial: tom technically being a monster and being the son of a human and a demon is never brought up again.. despite you know also being a massively powerful monster child of a monster and a mewman.. like a certain someone who’se the big bad for this half of the season. It just never comes up... and I get it’s a categorical bullshit thing, that the comission werne’t worried about a lucitor doing any of this because “Well demons are okay and we have a treaty and stuff”, but the show had no trouble pointing out categorical bullshit before.. why not now?

The ending however is good as Buff Frog.. isn’t convinced. HE admit’s tom’s speech is good.. but he’s been dealing with this stuff for too long. It also works because him leaving the job they never focused on.. isn’t framed as him being ungreatful or anything. He’s genuinely appricative of what Star is trying to do and gets her heart is in the right place.. but she doesn’t have the power to fix this. She’s just a kid, and while she has some power her mother has no real intention of making things better for them. And he has to think of a better life for his kids.. so we get some tearful goodbyes as Buff Frog promises to return when she’s in charge.. even though he does because she’s in charge in the season finale and we never see him , 56, and he has to be talked into coming back in the last season... so they leave but Tom promises her it can work out because their a monster and a mewman and they hug and I sigh a little knowing how this relationship ends and the accidental message it sends.

Final Thoughts: This episode is DECENT on it’s own but in hindsight.. it’s just depressing, bringing up some good ideas.. that end up going nowhere and the ending REALLY isn’t great in hindsight when he leaves star so she can be with another human-type person. Also tom’s charcterization is a bit lopsided starting off worse than ever and being fine in the end, and while that COULD just be that he felt he coudln’t admit he was a monster... it honestly just feels liked they wanted the moral without having to work for it as him being a monster has nothing to do with how he acted earlier. Till the next rainbow... UUGGGGHHHh.

#star vs the forces of evil #star butterfly #tom lucitor #buff frog #marco diaz #disney #disney plus

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