#go team future btw

[somedancingdoodles]

the splatfest mood

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)

I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.

I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.

I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.

For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.

I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:

the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship

Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.

In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.

While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.

This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.

I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!

Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.

Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.

In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.

You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?

Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):

Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)

Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.

Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.

This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:

[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)

What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."

Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.

[ghost--castle]

HAPPY GRAND FEST EVERYONE! (tumblr killed the quality of this but i think clicking on the image will fix it)

[shalomniscient]

[significant-narratives]

the fact that medical malpractice is just an accepted part of nhl player management is insane btw

[secondpersonpoetry]

you’ve probably already read it before, but the poem Party by Kim Addonizio really got me tonight. first thought was “oh man. yeah” and then my second thought was “how can i make this about my hockey guys somehow………..”anyway! have a good one! 

oh. oh.

​

[x1tadpole1x]

grand festival splatfest results spoilers below (just in case anybody hasn't seen them)!!

CONGRATS TEAM PAST and good game to everybody!! this finalfest was a blast!!

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 2

Translation notes:

The map in the first page is not the one seen in the final game, but the early version released during development. More info on my pre-release page as usual.

The enemies in that page are also enemies announced early before release: Rune Knights, Dark Priests, Dark Dwarves, Goblins, and the scrapped Mimic of course! That's fun to see.

Save for Lowe's odd age here, the training with Varios is very similar with how it goes in the actual game, with Lowe singing praises of how Max is on par with the knight captain. If none of that sounded familiar to you, you are welcome to hate the localization as much as I do.

Like, you think we're done with this? No way baby, Max's speech on memories is also a reference to a NPC in the start of the game! I legit got angry while doing the comparison on that one, it's a very iconic line that matches both Max's amnesia plot and the series' whole theme of forgotten evils resurfacing, it did not deserve to be replaced by generic slop. I'm glad I get to bring it back here and that it gets space in the manga as well.

Nova seems to have ears instead of horns in his brief cameo during the castle audience scene. Could be an old design, or the manga artist taking liberties or misunderstanding things. I find it curious though, because in the final version he's classified as dragonewt, however the GBA version will notoriously declare Elliot the last dragonewt on earth instead. This would make sense if Nova was intended to be something else at some point, and the GBA version tried to restore that, though it was nonetheless very badly explained.

Let's talk a bit about Max's speech patterns. In the original game, he obviously doesn't speak much, but the ending still shows him using the formal pronoun "watashi" for himself, and speaking casually to Adam, while more politely to the stranger they meet there. This continues in Final Conflict, where he's pretty casual to the team but sticks using watashi at the same time. This changed in the GBA version, where he switches between the more casual and masculine pronouns "boku" (softer) and "ore" (rougher) depending on who he's speaking to. I'm not knowledgeable enough to discuss this in depth but I do get the feeling that the choice of "watashi" for him in the original was a bit unusual. In any case, this manga just makes him use "ore" constantly. At the same time, he's pretty much always polite, even to his teammates. So he definitely doesn't come off as rough.

As example of this politeness, Max here also uses the usual "-san" honorific for basically everyone except Lowe, a literal child. I usually ignore those since they don't flow very naturally in english (at least for dialogue between friends/close teammates), but I did keep a couple instances when he has barely met Tao and Hans, because it felt fitting for a first meeting, especially with him being so notably polite in this version.

Let's talk about the rest of the team now! I've translated their in-game introductions in case you're not aware of how their personalities differs from the english version.

Hans was announced since the early coverage of the game, so every design difference you see here is the artist's choice. At no point was his personality touched upon however. So could it be that we were meant to have edgy rival Hans at some point? I find it unlikely given Hans' cute face, but my theory is that Hans had zero official personality at this point, so the manga artist just threw some elf stereotypes in and tweaked the design to fit that. It's hard to not associate Hans' attitude here with Mae's in the final game though. There's a lot of evidence in the pre-release page I keep linking to for Mae and the other centaurs' prejudice against Max to have been added late in development. So could it be that at some point elves were supposed to be the arrogant ones? Maybe! Could it be that the artist just shoved Mae's personality on Hans instead to erase her instead? Also possible! It should be clear already that the guy is not decent about female characters, and mild spoilers but, Mae is simply not gonna be around for this one save for small background cameos, which is mind boggling when she was clearly the main female character at this point in development. But could it be this has nothing to do with Hans and it's just a coincidence that his personality matches hers here? Also maybe! If it's not obvious I'm just rambling ideas at this point. To close the topic on Hans, he would eventually be confirmed as a noble in Shining Force Gaiden, as his son is mentioned to come from a noble family in the manuals. Though this is just the standard background for most characters in this game.

Tao is a curious case. She is seen in screenshots since the game's announcement, but it took longer until her art and profile were revealed. Said profile also says nothing on her personality, so my take on her here is the same as Hans. I doubt she was meant as the spunky girl we see here, but it's possible that the artist isn't warping her final personality, and she was just a blank state at this point. But it's hard to tell for certain.

Ken, on the other hand, was announced from day one to admire Max, which is probably why he's very much the same as his game version here.

Luke is the only one of the starting team to not be seen in early screenshots, and there's some evidence that Gort was meant to be the first warrior of the team instead. So the manga here gives us a better idea of when Luke was worked on during development.

The fighting tournament Ken mentions is brought up in the ASCII guide book as a tradition of Guardiana. Always fun to see little worldbuilding tidbits like this were planned from the start. And while nowhere else mentions this as the place where Ken first saw Max, it makes a lot of sense.

Finally, the battle at the Gate taking place on the inside, so dark it needs to be illuminated by torches? That's how the place looked in early builds as well.

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

This is the cutest thing this adorable wonderful moron has ever said. I love him so much. Look at his beautiful smile as he says this. Look at who he's saying it too. Paradox and Aporia get to show their friendship in this game and it's so wholesome. Paradox you are so cute, I cannot take this-

[wickedhawtwexler]

ready to have the most humiliating day of my life 🤘

[nyamcot]

Ohhh I had a thought.

[alltimefail-sims]

Sooooo round walls are buggy as heck?! There's no way the the Sims team isn't aware of this.

Worst part is that their asses are going to try and sell the medieval kit people voted on even though round walls are quintessential to those builds and they do. not. work!!!!

[girly0128]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

*inhale*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Get ready to celebrate the two-year anniversary of Splatoon 3 with the biggest Splatfest ever, Grand Festival! The festivities begin September 12th!

[eggmeralda]

[gingergari]

i honestly do not think i will be able to draw all of these guys in time so here are my main splat ocs and their team alignments!

maybe i’ll draw the winning team members 🤞🏽

[ru-bwee]

splatfest is tomorrow make sure to rep team present. if you are not team present or future (im chill with the future guys) then i will have to beat you with hammers for 72 hours unfortunately