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rachelbethhines · 3 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - “Rapunzel Knows Best!” ( A first half of S3 Recap)

So I decided to place the recap after Be Very Afraid for several reasons. For starters it’s where the season three hiatus took place. It’s also framed like a cliffhanger episode the same as The Great Tree and Queen for a Day; so while Cassandra’s Revenge is technically the midseason finale, Be Very Afraid functionally servers this narrative purpose better. Finally I want to keep the Cassandra heavy stuff contained in it’s own recap later same as I did for Varian’s arc in season one.

Also keep in mind, everything I discussed in previous recaps still apply here. Nothings changed and you could argue that the issues I bring up now could have also apply to past seasons; they just happen to be at their worst here.

Here are the past recaps

To Filler or Not to Filler

Hey, What Ever Happened to That Varitas, Guy?

What Is the Point?

‘Whatta Twist’

And here are the episodes that’s covered in this recap

Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

Rapunzel’s Return Part 2

Return of the King

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

The Lost Treasure of Herz Der Sonne

No Time Like the Past

Beginnings

The King and Queen of Hearts

Day of the Animals

Be Very Afraid

Poorly Defined Conflicts

I’m not just talking about Cassandra’s lack of goals here either, though that is a part of it. I mean in several episodes the central conflict isn’t laid out clearly enough before being resolved. We flip from one set up to the next without ever resolving the first; like in Rapunzel’s Return when Cass and Varian fight for screen time or whenever Rapunzel is suppose to learn one lesson only for someone else to learn a completely different lesson in every other episode. And to this day I don’t know what Rapunzel and Feldspar’s subplot in Lost Treasure was suppose to be about.

There’s also of course the ill-defined overall conflict; which at this point has become convoluted and nonsensical to the extreme, and will only grow more aggravatingly stupid as the season progresses. The main villains lack clear goals, their motivations don’t align with previously stated facts, and the actual interesting conflict involving the threat of the rocks and their destruction of people’s lives and homes is just shoved under the rug and forgotten about.

There is no story without conflict. Having the conflict be all over the place is not only confusing but makes it harder for the audience to invest in what’s going on.

Failed Narrative Promises

Tying in with the above statement regarding conflicts, we have failed narrative promises. Rapunzel is repeatedly told to that she needs to learn something in several episodes only for her not to learn it at all. She either learns some unrelated ‘lesson’ that wasn’t established, (like in Rapunzel’s Return with her pervious goal about ‘opening up to others’ being switched out for a generic ‘responsibility’ lesson that at the last minute, where she doesn’t even do anything responsible,) or she winds up ‘teaching’ the opposite lesson to a different character thereby rewarding her for her bad behavior.

And that’s just within the induvial episodes themselves; there’s also broken narrative promises through out the overall story arc; like...

no justice/redemption for Lady Caine,

no acknowledgment that the Saporians are the victims of colonization

no conclusion regarding Corona’s murky past

no satisfying ending to Varian’s plot that sees everyone in involve grow

a poor copout of an explanation for Cassandra’s face/heel turn

The Dark Prince reveal going nowhere

The Brotherhood being put on a bus

King Frederic, or any royal, not being held accountable for their past actions

Lance’s new found responsibilities just being thrown away for the tenth time

The Disciples plot being being dropped

next to nothing in season two winds up being relevant

And Rapunzel, the protagonist of a coming of age story, fails to learn anything at all

I could probably go on but you get the gist. Tangled is incredibly frustrating show to watch because doesn’t deliver what it promises. You’re not being clever by ‘subverting audiences expectations’ unless you can justify your narrative decisions with previous set up. Tangled is too lazy to build proper set ups so it’s ‘twists’ leave you wanting to punch things rather then impressing you.

Character Assassinations

Every single character in Tangled the Series gets thrown under a bus, driven off a cliff, and then allowed to drown in the ocean of their completely unaware self-congratulatory smugness.

Rapunzel is turned into a bully

Cassandra is given the idiot ball to hold permanently

The King and Queen are lobotomized

Quinin gets replaced by a robot

The rest of the Brotherhood are pale shadows of what they could have been

Edmund is transformed from tragic complex figure into a dumb jerkoff who abuses his kid for a laugh

Zhan Tiri, once an ancient demon warlock, is reduced to a floating impotent ghost girl

The Saporians become poor hipster parodies

Cap is put on a bus

Any villain who isn’t Cass is gets ignored

Lance is infantilized to the point of absurdity

Eugene becomes a doormat

and poor Varian is forced to become a complacent victim to his abusers as oppose to being allowed to keeping his dignity

I think the only person who escapes this mass murder of characterization is freaking Calliope, and she’s hasn’t even appeared yet! (Well okay her and Trevor, maybe)

This all ties back into the poorly defined conflict and failed narrative promises. Rather than let the characters drive the story, they’ve become puppets to the plot, and plot is really stupid and forced, and circles back in on itself and is full of contradictions.

Manipulating the Audience’s Empathy to Do the Work for the Writers

The reason why the creators believe they can get away with such poor characterization and lazy writing is because they expect the audience to do all the heavy lifting for them.

Cass isn’t given an on screen reason for what she does because they’re hoping her fans will just automatically excuse her because they like her/relate to her and not, you know, get mad at the writers for dumbing her down. And after all who doesn’t love the creator’s pet? Meanies! That’s who!

No one calls out Rapunzel’s bullshit on screen, because if everyone likes her, then you, viewing audience, should too. Because if you have any sort of independent critical thinking abilities and a sense of right and wrong then clearly you’re ‘just a hater’.

Everyone should just shut up and be satisfied that Varian is even on screen now and be grateful for the scraps that they get cause he’s not the real point of the show and according to Chris ‘Varian fans aren’t real fans’. Even though they make up most of his viewing audience.

I could go on, but it’s just variations of the above. The writing in this series is very fond of gaslighting the audience and trying to trick them into justifying the absolute worst behaviors while desperately hoping they doesn’t noticed the continued downgrading and dismissal of characters they do like or once liked.

And the sad thing is, it’s worked. There are people to this day that still try to justify this show’s shitty morals and bend over backwards to excuse the likes of Rapunzel, Frederic, Cassandra, and Edmund. Worst, there are loud sections of the fandom, (usually on twitter) who think bullying is okay and follow in Chris and his characters footsteps. Most of them young impressionable girls who are now ripe for TREFS to indoctrinate because they use the same bullying tactics and excuses for authoritarianism.

Media does effect reality, but not in the way purists and antis would have you believe. No one is going to become a violent manic from playing a video game nor a sex offender because they read a smut fic. But they very much will conform to toxic beliefs if it’s repeated enough at them by authorities they ‘trust’; like say the world wide leading company known for family entertainment and children’s media, and the ‘friends’ they find within the fandom for said company...

I’m not saying you can’t enjoy Tangled the series or that you’re some how wrong for liking it’s characters, nor do you have to engage with every or any criticism thrown it’s way. But yes you need to think about the media you consume on some level and valid criticism is very much important to the fandom experience for precisely the above reasons.

Conclusion

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of what’s wrong with this show, but it is most of its biggest problems laid bare. Anything that haven’t covered here or in the past recaps will be explored in the final recap. Cause this is it folks; the last leg of the journey for this retrospective. When come back, hopefully next week, we’ll tackle Pascal’s Dragon.

#tangled #anti-tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tts #rta

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criticallyalexandrite · 5 years

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Ah fuck it. To make up for me grieving over Scott Cawthon turning out to be a nasty rule 64 artist I’ll just remake that old post about my AU Diamonds right now.. My AU is now officially called Crystal Rebel Nora. I saw another SU crit propose the title of Crystal Rebels for the Crystal Gems and I really liked it. So my AU’s plot uses it. I also came up with the title Crystal Rebel Nora cuz it sounds like it could be a magical girl title. My version of Nora Universe is very much a magical girl. Even if her magic comes from being half alien. Here’s a basic rundown of what to expect from my WIP AU’s version of the Diamonds. The Diamonds are very much slaveowners and space nazis in my AU. This is not toned down even a little bit. Even though my AU Diamonds will have fleshed out personalities, their abusive nature will be made very clear. Their motive in this AU is me attempting to rewrite White’s interesting motive in Change Your Mind. But I plan to take it even further and not use her mindset for her motive of forcing everyone to be like her as a way to garner sympathy. It'll instead be used to show how evil and scary she really is. The Diamonds’ origins in this AU is that they are Gods that come from another plane of existence. Think of the spirit realm because that describes pretty well what their home origin is like. They’re malicious spirits that wanted more power than they started off with. So they found a way to use their powers to transcend out of the spirit realm and become the Diamond Authority/Godhood. All the Diamonds are the same age in this AU so Pink will not be coded as the other Diamonds’ child. Think of their behavior as being like the original folklore for sirens. They have pretty humanoid appearances as a way of luring other species’ into giving up their autonomy and resources. They know how to manipulate their new colonization victims into a false sense of security. Their victims often won’t realize what’s going on until it’s too late. And by that point White will have been able to program them into being robots that repeat whatever she wants. White did this for eons without any remorse. In her mind she justifies it by claiming her actions are driven by the darwinist survival of the fittest mindset. She craves the energy she gets from brainwashing and enslaving new victims. To her that is more immediately beneficial than trying to consider the well beings of her victims. So thus she does not care and if say Nora tried to redeem her the effort would be pointless. The other Diamonds don’t secretly disagree with her plans/methods. They have the same amount of carelessness for “lesser life forms” as her. Think of the Diamonds being almost hivemind-like in nature. To the extent that incubators in Madoka Magica all seem to think just like Kyuubey himself. In fact that’s a good comparison for how White’s mindset works. She sees compassion as a disease that needs to be wiped out because it gets in the way of efficiency. Thus why she labels any gems who her brainwashing efforts don’t work on immediately as defects. Defects that must be either shattered or harvested. And she will just see Nora as another defect once she can stop seeing Nora as a “weird looking Rose Quartz.” Nora will be treated by her like White would treat any other defect gem even if the defect gem was raised on Earth. Since the Diamond Authority in this AU have troops on Earth like the Sea Spire gems and the kindergarten gems and all the other parts of Earth they’ve taken over that have Quartzes/Topazes/Angelites/Lapises/etc guarding them. Here’s a quick summary of my plans for how the CRN AU Diamonds will be characterized. White Diamond the main and first Diamond could represent famine. What happens when a leader focuses too much on gathering resources for the sake of it at the expense of their people. White Diamond is the real reason Homeworld is running low on resources. She uses them for materialistic reasons. Like gem harvesting and making huge impractically designed monuments for “aesthetic.” She also calls for them to be used to colonize every single planet in existence. White Diamond is like that mom that spends over a hundred dollars on her favorite chic designs because they look cool to her. And then remembers last second that she forgot to buy food for her kids. Or that capitalist rich person who steals savings from poor people on the verge of poverty so she can buy a yacht that costs a billion dollars. Yellow Diamond, the second Diamond, represents what happens when military is supported more than is needed. When they essentially get power hungry and start doing inhuman things with their experiments and weapons. To establish this aspect of her, she created things like the cluster, forced fusions and the geodes out of petty revenge reasons against Earth gem rebels. However in this AU she actually makes sure to send out gems regularly to monitor them. Though she seems like a blowhard she genuinely enjoys being an authoritarian military commander. She wouldn’t trade her position for anything else. Yellow Diamond also takes in Jasper after Pink Diamond dies because Jasper’s a soldier. Blue Diamond is the political diplomat that tries to act centrist to make herself seem more emotionally sophisticated to a dangerous fault. When she’s in court sessions she’s harsh and unforgiving with her subjects always. Blue Diamond only shows a bit of lenience to the upper class lower gems. Mainly to make sure to uphold the false idea they’ve made that upper class gems have any power. But aside how mindlessly horrible she seems, she’s a master manipulator. Blue Diamond’s favorite weapon is guilt tripping people into thinking she’s the victim. It’s how she easily gets so many gems to her side. Like in canon she’s obsessed with Pink Diamond but it’s NOT portrayed as a romance to any degree. Pink Diamond is the youngest and last Diamond. Only sadly for the other Diamonds and their still brainwashed slaves, she was the first to die. Though she doesn’t look it, she’s the most violent out of all the Diamonds. In fact that could even be said to be apart of her methods of keeping her subjects in check. She acts like a sugary sweet princess when things are going her way but when they’re not she acts like the christianized version of Satan. The main thing she handles in the Homeworld caste system is adapting their new colonies. She embodies the part of politics that intentionally offensively alters another civilization’s culture. Pink Diamond loves to manipulate her fellow colleague Blue Diamond the most. She sees life as a game and everyone beneath her as toys that can just be tossed away when she breaks them too much. She was the one who came up with the idea of harvesting. Mainly for when even when she learns some of her gems are defective she’s not bored of playing with them yet.. She’ll be portrayed as a deliberate foil to Nora’s optimistic and friendly personality. What happens when you take those traits that could be otherwise good but use them for evli. The parallels between them won’t be used to show Pink is “redeemable” but to show the lesson that just cuz someone is friendly doesn’t mean they’re not abusive. What’s funny is that in terms of design concept her appearance is very similar to what Becky ended up going with for pre evil Spinel. Def not saying Becky was intentionally copying me there though. Just a really weird coincidence. This is everything I feel like sharing about the Diamonds in my AU so far. The post has already gotten pretty long. Feedback is welcome so long as it’s not feedback of people being butthurt that i’m not fixing the Diamond redemption. There’s so many other AU’s to go to that cater to the Diamond redemption. Go to those if you wanna see that so badly.

#su critical #su au #crystal rebel nora au #crn su au #abuse tw #implied child abuse tw #slavery tw

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princeescaluswords · 7 years

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Killer Obsession

So I was directed to a great article (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/white-male-serial-killer-obsession-problem) about how Hollywood romanticizes and profits off of our rather creepy obsession with darkness. I came across this gem in that story.

QUOTE: We are continually fed this idea that white male serial killers are charming, debonair characters — that they're just misunderstood, incomprehensibly complex people who also happen to have a strange proclivity for the dark and macabre. And while there's nothing wrong with being curious about what drove them to commit acts of this nature, that curiosity becomes an issue when movie or TV producers opt to completely gloss over the lives of the victims in favor of an easily digestible "outsider" narrative. When we focus so much on the murderer — their neuroses, their troubled pasts — we ignore the fact that the victims of these crimes were also people. By romanticizing the men who committed these crimes, we end up forgetting the victims were actual people who were so much more than some of many body parts found in Dahmer's closet.

After I read the article, I poured myself a celebratory drink. “It’s not just me!” Because there is no greater example of this obsession than Teen Wolf show’s and Teen Wolf fandom’s fascination with turning Peter Hale into the ‘hero’ of the story or at least a ‘hero’ on the same levels of other characters. With one or two sentence changes, I could make the above paragraph completely about him.

For those of you who scream “fiction =/= reality” from the rooftops, answer me this – why are there more biographical films about Jeffrey Dahmer than there are about Hugh Thompson Jr. or Katherine Johnson put together? The choices you make in pursuing fiction have consequences.

Because the only way you can place Peter Hale on the level of any of the other characters in Teen Wolf is if you ignore his victims. Let’s just table the discussion on whether revenge is morally acceptable – let’s eliminate Kate, Garrison Myers, Unger, Reddick, and the video-store clerk from the discussion, because Peter had plenty of other victims we can talk about.

We can talk about Nurse Jennifer, whose body he shoved into a car trunk like so much useless baggage (which he joked about) after she was instrumental in helping him get his revenge. We can talk about the school janitor who he killed for being in the way and then used his body as a prop. We can talk about Adrian Harris, who was moments from being killed because he had the nerve to get drunk into a bar and talk to a pretty woman. The show never talks about the nurse or the janitor again; the fandom pretends that they don’t exist and that Harris ‘deserved it’ for not being a nice person.

Or we can talk about how the fandom talks about Scott McCall, criticizing him for holding a grudge (even though he doesn’t actually hold a grudge in the show) because it shows that he is ungrateful for the ‘gifts’ of the asthma cure and the werewolf powers, which should more than make up for the multiple murder attempts, the mind control, the manipulation, and the extortion. It reminds me of nothing more of people trying to justify imperialism by saying ‘look at all the things that colonization brought!’

Or we can talk about how the show treats Lydia Martin, who was savaged, used, and gaslighted. Of course, Peter though she was strong enough to survive with only a “few years of profoundly disturbing nightmares.” The show resolves this situation with the briefest of confrontations (undermined by a poor music selection) and pointless witty banter in the penultimate episode. Fandom has a better track record than the show, at least acknowledging that what Peter did to Lydia deserves more than a laugh track.

Of course, he was ‘ill’ in Season 1, which doesn’t stop anyone from celebrating him, because the only answer is ‘when did he get better?’ It wasn’t in Season 3a where he manipulated everyone to regain power. It wasn’t in Season 4 where he worked with the person who killed his family in Season 1 in order to kill a child for his own greed. It wasn’t in Season 6, when he spent the time drawing a perfect spiral of revenge on the floor of his cell (super healthy!). Teen Vogue’s article is spot on.

It’s good that at least someone with a voice and reach is addressing Hollywood’s enabling of fan’s unhealthy fascination with deranged killers.

#teen wolf #teen wolf meta #teen wolf fandom problems #peter hale

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