#idk i was insulated from the worst of it for 2 reasons

[bsaka7]

i have a love/hate relationship with reading articles about the problems with women's running. i love running so much and it has so many problems. and of course I've lived several of them. but my favorite thing about running is you can keep getting better for a long time.

[ngame989]

The AMA scares me... everything said is word of god! What if something that places our Starco happily ever after in peril is said?

Fuck it I’ll actually do some literary criticism theory here because why not. Please stick around for all the points, even if it’s long.

1. The literal last thing a content creator who ends their work with a happy ending would do is casually word-of-god away the entire purpose of their story. At worst I’d expect some less-than-pleasing answers about stuff in S3 or 4, but even then, not really a huge deal.

2. Let’s talk about literary theory: you don’t even have to believe in “word of God” that much if you don’t want to! I’m by no means qualified to lecture THAT extensively on the subject, but simply put there’s a whole host of debate and personal interpretations for how much what an author/showrunner/creator verbally states outside the confines of their work counts towards the work itself (usually framed as authorial intent vs death of the author). 

Authorial intent, taken to its extreme, is the idea that the creator(s) of something are the only ones who can dictate what is or isn’t real in that work, forever. If you FULLY believe in authorial intent, if Daron went in her AMA and said “actually Star contracted terminal lung cancer from Cleaved and will die 3 minutes after the credits roll” you would have no choice but to take that as completely true within SVTFOE, even though all published material for the show had 0 indications of it. 

Under “death of the author”, though, just because a creator’s underlying intentions, or what ideas they have that aren’t in the work itself, don’t matter any more than someone else’s personal interpretation. Star vs the Forces of Evil is a completed TV show with 77 episodes and a few official companion books, and who is to say anything that isn’t officially published through Disney has to count more than something else? If I draw you a picture of a person standing in a field, and I tell you there’s a giant invisible cheeseburger next to him, should you believe me? Does the fact that I told you I intended for something to be in my artwork make it true even if you, very reasonably, do not see it in my finished artwork? 

There’s some caveats, though. Obviously, while the show was airing, anything the crew said had an inherent weight since they knew the future - this whole debate mostly applies to analysis of a completed work. But given that it’s technically possible for more content of the show to come out in the future, one could definitely make a reasonable claim that Daron’s word should be regarded highly because if she made more official content through Disney in the future, what she says on the internet might actually become part of the official show later. Also, note here that death of the author doesn’t mean “all interpretations are equally valid” either. If there are faint, mostly transparent outlines of a cheeseburger in the picture I draw and the person in the picture is taking a bite out of it and the artwork is titled “Person Eating Invisible Cheeseburger”, even if you personally didn’t see the cheeseburger that wouldn’t make it not there, so please don’t mistake this as “if someone thinks Star still loves Tom that’s equally valid because death of the author!” All DotA does is say that canon should be interpreted as an insulated body of work (show + books in this case) and that anything outside of that should have been added officially if it wants to be treated as anything more than someone’s personal opinion, even if that person happens to be a creator of the work.

It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, either. It’s a spectrum with Authorial Intent and DotA at the two extremes, and as someone viewing the show for yourself you’re allowed to assign partial weights. If Daron has a cute suggestion that you enjoy (like, for instance, that laser puppies stayed alive but lost their lasers) then by all means work it into your ideas for what happens after the show ends, but that doesn’t have to mean that “Daron said something I don’t like and therefore the entire story might be ruined” if you don’t want it to be.

Odds are still high that I end up obsessing over whatever relevant answers she might give anyway, though. Phew, that was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?

3. Even if she weren’t hung up on preserving the happy ending, and even if you still decided to treat everything she said as fact no matter what, she tends to not really give substantive answers about concrete details. Maybe that was just because she didn’t want to accidentally spoil anything, IDK, but... there’ve only been a small handful of times that Daron has given away information directly that wasn’t just completely present in the show itself. Usually it’s talk about production, or animation, or meaningless little fluff bits, or her own personal favorite things. Odds that Daron comes out and ruins any future headcanons are slim to nil.

I have no idea why I decided to actually answer this with my real thoughts rather than just give a snippy quip. S3 Ngame is leaking, I guess.

[rerwby]

Volume 5 OST

I don’t normally have such verbose opinions on the RVVBY music (it’s like writing a review for fiberglass insulation) I managed to sit down and listen to this album the whole way through. My feelings on these tracks feels like a culmination of all my feelings of previous RVVBY music. I won’t try to be lengthy about this but I got some solid thoughts.

First of all, can we just collectively agree to stop making every fucking RVVBY song put on Youtube use fan art? Like can we just get a solid fucking static picture of the volume cover art maybe? I’m sick of the mediocre ship art used for goddamn everything and it looks incredibly unprofessional. Also since these are RT fans you know they don’t give a flying fuck about credit.

The Triumph Not to kick this off on such an upbeat note but this is one of my favorite OP’s. Maybe my favorite. Maybe. I could not fully appreciate this song when the episodes were coming out because the opening itself was the biggest trashfire to come out of this show. Like, sorry I can’t get hyped up on 10 seconds of Ruby and Ren and Jaune sitting on a couch. Listening to it alone though? Big improvement.

Jeff Williams does this thing where he’s clearly way too proud of his proud choice and rhymes, and usually lines end with a big focus on stupid vernacular. Trust me, this will come up later. The Triumph manages to avoid that. This Will be the Day does as well because it’s a pretty hammy song with a better, more consistent tone. “Back to reality, back to the show” is an awful, terrible, horribly ironic line in the context of Volume 5, but it’s not as in your face as it could be, so it gets a pass from me. I also think “That’s when you learned you were messing with gods” is awesome, sorry. It could be more awesome if these characters like, seemed more like gods? And they don’t? So eh.

Then the second verse happens and it calls back to the first with “Yeah I’m a girl but I’m also a god” and I’m like, oh, so you’re just gonna- oh, okay then. Yeah let’s just beat the one good part like a dead horse, sure. That really ruins the song for me ngl.

It also manages to avoid the formulaic trend of post-second verse slow sappy breakdown. Time to Say Goodbye and Let’s Just Live do that and it gets old after a while. If you’re gonna give me hype music then stick with it. Not that Let’s Just Live really hypes you up.

Overall it’s like a 7/10 for me because it has a good pace and it doesn’t scream “look at how clever I am!” at every turn.

Ignite The song I was most excited for and the most disappointed by. I wrote about it here and I’ll try not to do anything more than summarize what I said there.

It’s obnoxious and the lyrics are way too dumb. Not funny dumb, not hammy dumb, nope, just dumb. It’s not even in the style of Yang’s usual dumbness, which by all accounts should now be under Armed and Ready’s foot since that is now the prime Yang theme. The major problem is how obvious these issues are. Like you can’t not hear how bad the writing is.

Then Lamar comes in, and I usually enjoy him since, like I said above, he brings with him some hammy, corny lyrics that manage to be fun. But he’s phoning it in here. He’s mumbling and tripping over his own words. God I didn’t even understand what mumbling truly sounded like until I heard that verse.

4/10 and I hate to write that on a Yang theme but this song is everything wrong with these soundtracks.

Path to Isolation Which brings us to my favorite annual game of “Count How Many Times a Weiss Song Uses the Word ‘Mirror.’” Spoilers: it’s a handful.

It’s fine. Weiss songs have always been fine. The worst thing I can say about them is that you have to dredge through their slow-ass, repetitive openings to get to the good part. 5/10

All Things Must Die aka “Slow And Brooding Villain Song That Turns Into a Rock Anthem #5″ aka “Sacrifice And Divide Did It Better But Even They Were Only So Good” aka “We’re Not Even Going For A Subtle Title Here.”

I don’t even know whose perspective this is sung from anymore. Like Cinder is our designated villain song candidate but she has like no autonomy this volume so that falls flat, meanwhile Salem still has no clear motivation. Hazel and Adam might be the most developed(?) bad guys this volume but this song has nothing to do with them. 4/10

This Time (From Shadows Part II) I’m writing about this one before Smile for a reason.

A song called From Shadows Part II deserves better, lol. Also given the fan art uses on the version I found posted, this is a Blake+Sun song? I don’t know. It starts with the beautiful piano solo from the original which was godlike and relaxing and also dramatic.

Lyrics are just shitty but in a shocking twist they’re hard to hear other than THIS TIIIIME in the chorus which...I’m fine with. I’m legit convinced that the fewer lyrics you can make out in these songs, the better. This all sounds rather nice and has a good flow to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kinda just trash. Absolute filler. Fluff. Churned-out melodrama to keep the White Fang kindle going.

Also I guess in hindsight it’s weird to have Jeff singing here since this song is supposed to represent Blake moving on with new resolve. Like before it was clearly Blake and Adam singing, but now it’s Blake and...Sun? Adam again? Like some non-canon reformed Adam? Idk. At least it’s tonally a good contrast to Part I. It’s easy to listen to the song without focusing on the lyrics which is rather soothing, but it’s still nonsense. 5/10

Smile (From Shadows Part 0)

No yeah I made that part up, but I think this song is a better From Shadows Part 0 than This Time is a Part II. I’m dead serious. They gave us an Ilia song and made it more interesting than her character is in volume 5, if not extremely on the nose.

Because my god, it’s on the nose. It’s just Ilia’s backstory about blending in to avoid all the pain your oppressors brought you and biding your time until you can rip the smiles off their faces...oh I don’t think that’s how Ilia’s backstory went. This is much darker. Very Count of Monte Crisco and dare I say actually interesting. It makes Ilia sound way more compelling than Blake while also making her out as a foil to her. Except I don’t know why the fucking hell the character presented in Smile would ever join the White Fang, especially under Adam’s authority, and then follow him so blindly. But I guess as of last volume’s OST we should be use to that disconnect between show plot and music lore.

7/10 for being accidentally interesting.

All That Matters

It’s....fine? Fine-ish. Obligatory slow and sappy song because ofc. Casey at least sounds like she’s in her comfort zone. It just doesn’t mean much to me.I guess it’s the theme of the girls being back together but I have my own issues with that, which is mainly that three of them were already reunited halfway into Volume 5 and it was only Blake’s arrival that really pushed them into sappy territory.

5/10 it’s not bombastically terrible enough to merit a lower score and not interesting enough to be higher.

I’m Her Daughter After All - RVVBY Volume 5 Official Score

I don’t know why this song is here because it’s an actual non-lyrical official part of the soundtrack, which is mind-blowing. You’d think Jeff was contractually obligated to have his blood’s voices dip their toes in every track.

It’s a nice medley of Yang’s themes, namely I Burn and Armed and Ready. It also makes you appreciate how Yang’s musical themes have actually evolved, unlike those of the other characters. Why do we have this Western thing going on? Qrow had it too in Bad Luck Charm. I don’t mind it since I think it’s kinda neat, but 6/10 for being a random score track.

Mayday! Lancers! - RVVBY Volume 5 Official Sc- wait

They did the score thing again. I don’t know why. I also forgot the Lancer scene actually happened in Volume 5 until I heard this. Like, Weiss did so little in Volume 4 that I’m attributing stuff that happened in V5 to last volume.

It’s fine? It’s nice to have a non-lyrical Weiss song, actually. 5/10

Armed and Ready ie The Appeal Of The Original Was Lost On Us

This song did not need a remix lol. Armed and Ready is actually damn good, is a great proper evolution of Yang’s theme that successfully moves her out of the shadow of I Burn, and was a really, really good climax to her recovery arc. This turns it into a dance remix, which ironically is the exact sort of thing the original moved her character away from. 4/10

Gold (Acoustic)

As I listened to this I realized it wasn’t just the original vocals played over an acoustic cover; Casey actually re-recorded the song. That’s blowing it out of the park for a RVVBY remix. Also it’s like, good.

I always liked Gold for whatever reason. I just thought it was uplifting and it did the nice thing where the lyrics are simple and flow well. The loud instrumentals had me unsure if it made for a good complement to the lyrics or if it was just a bad choice. This just sounds wonderful. Most importantly, it makes you really appreciate Casey’s singing talent. More than anything, she sounds absolutely comfortable singing this song. No stressed notes, no weird word choices, no ham. This is just a nice song and it’s my favorite on this album. 8/10

Let’s Just Live (Remix) “The Obligatory OP Remix Oh God Triumph Is Gonna Get This Treatment Next Year

It doesn’t go above my expectations but I like the new instrumentals. Reminds me of Stickerbrush Symphony. I think it’s much more fitting than in the original and is a true improvement on it. 6/10

The final issue I have with this album is this, and it involves some statistics. This is a 12-song album. That isn’t strange. But here are some numbers for you:

Ruby Songs: 0 Weiss Songs: 2 Blake Songs: 1 (2 if you count Smile) Yang Songs: 4 Remixes: 3 Scores(?): 2

Just to put that in front of you. Remixes comprise 1/4th of the album, glorified scores are 1/6th, and Yang received 4 whole slots (one-third of the album!) while Ruby, the protagonist, got absolutely none. Nothing in this album is about just Ruby, and I think she kind of deserves that. I mean she did nothing this volume so whatever, but we didn’t even get Glorious Score Track Of Jaune Healing Weiss so that’s super strange. They didn’t even shaft her in lieu of anyone, she was just left out.

[rorykillmore]

heres kind of a more in-depth one: where do your characters fall on a morality scale? like from best to worst i guess

hmmmm this is trickybecause i wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a linear thing – like my charactersdraw different lines in the sand for different issues?? for example, some of mycharacters who will straight up KILL aren’t as comfortable being as being asmean or underhanded as some of the ones who don’t’, etc, but i made a sort ofrough order. it’s weird because, especially towards the middle, it’s not necessarily a ranking of who’s the best person, it’s just... complicated, idk

okay we have kara as thesort of, beacon of moral purity of my roster – she has a no-kill rule that’snot… quite as strict as clark’s or barry’s, like she’ll break it if it’s necessary,but given how powerful she is it generally. isn’t, and she’s also usually veryagainst overly brutalizing someone in a fight, or painful emotionalmanipulation, or collateral damage… the list goes on. she doesn’t even like beingmean to people in her day to day life! she will also like, dig her heels in andstand very firm behind her moral values, which almost makes me surprised thatshe and sasuke haven’t had more conflict than they have – but then again ithink sasuke generally tends to back off and let kara and ratchet do theirMoral Thing and it doesn’t come up as much of a problem since the superfriendsare powerful enough to handle most situations without being driven to moral extremes.anyways yeah. kara probably easily takes the moral high ground on the mostissues out of all my characters. she’s a ray of sunshine

okay next… this kindasurprises me but maybe glory?? now granted, this gets a little murky, becauseglory comes from a completely nonhuman society with different moral standardsto begin with and a culture that (for most of the tribes that were involved inthe war, at least) heavily revolves around violence. so yeah, glory will greeta threat with a face full of acidic venom if the stakes are high enough, buuutbeing a queen has generally made her… very honorable and even kind of lawful bydragon standards. she sticks to her word, she’s very fair, she doesn’t fall toextremes without very good reasons, she has a good heart that can generally berelied upon to do the right thing even if she pretends not to care as much asshe does. yeah.

then we have… maybe caitlin,who follows a lot of kara and glory’s standards and is generally a Good Person,but if i rate her a bit “lower” its because she has this like… survivaliststreak? like when she gets really scared she has a hard time letting anyoneelse help her, and instead she’ll close off and try to handle things on her ownand that’s when she sometimes makes more questionable, morally grey decisions. butoverall caitlin really means well and pretty much dedicates her life to helpingother people, so.

okay and then i guessmadeline! the very definition of “chaotic good”. i mean, she’s kind of hard to rank next to like... vigilantes and stuff, because her day to day experiences are like completely different. she’s not a very violent person but then again it’s like, why would she be, she lives a (relatively) normal life. so i guess my justification is just, madeline is very ride or die, but she’s not so much concerned with doing what’s “right” as she is defending the people and causes that are important to her. her heart is almost always in the right place, but she definitely reverts pretty easily to sabotage and underhanded stuff to get what she wants or just to one-up a rival or something. idk madeline fits weirdly on this list but

then maybe trish, who reallywants to do the right thing, really badly. is she willing to take more dubioussteps to get there than the people listened above? prooobably. trish tends toconcern herself with her end goal rather than her actual methods, which can bedangerous. i don’t necessarily want to point to all the stuff she did in season2 as an example, because a lot of that was influenced by her relapse, butstill. sometimes she’s willing to push pretty far if she thinks the end resultshe’s after is important enough. she’s also probably willing to go as far askilling more readily than anyone who’s been listed so far, though notnecessarily without good reason.

anya, i was honestly not sure whether to put before or after sara -- this is a prime example of one of those cases where two characters have such different standards that it’s hard to compare them, but whatever. anya... really does value her dignity and integrity as a person, but she can’t always afford to uphold them. sometimes her life necessitates her to resort to petty criminal shit like pickpocketing, conning, etc. she’s also... very independent, and really doesn’t have any kind of cause driving her or concern for the bigger picture of things, which also makes her hard to rank, but idk. at the end of the day she’s kind-hearted enough and likes to stay away from trouble on a bigger scale, so she can go here i guess.

and then i guess sara, who. idk, is weird to rank in her own way. she’s not always nice, but she’s... very kind, if that makes sense. she cares a lot about people, from this very individualized perspective as opposed to say, rip, who is more focused on the “greater good” or the bigger picture. sara often has way more qualms with sacrificing innocent people, or ESPECIALLY people she cares about, for the sake of any kind of cause. but also... she’s a former assassin, and will still readily kill her enemies without too much debate about it if she sees it as necessary. and that’s not even touching on the chaotic, destructive, lawless kind of stuff she’ll do on a regular basis just for the sake of a mission

i’m laughing at how comparatively low heather is ranking. neutral evil. nah i mean to be fair she just... kind of has the morals of a bratty teenager. so it’s almost unfair to rank her up against people like sara or w/e. she’d never kill anyone or... do anything like that. but she also pretty much lacks sara’s sense of kindness and empathy and compulsion to act on those things; heather really only makes an effort to be kind to... her friends. she still hasn’t reached the point where she sees why she should care about the world on a broader scope, so a lot of situations she’s just apathetic or... she can still even fall into being outright mean.

siobhan is next, because siobhan at this point is driven by loyalty to the people she cares about, and ultimately... deep down, she does actively want to be a better person. she just struggles with believing she’s capable of that. she’s still an asshole in a lot of situations and her bounty hunting is most definitely morally grey, she primarily just cares about making money, but... there is a growing part of her that wants to be more than that. and she’s already come a long way on denny, so she deserves to be ranked above...

killer frost. THIS asshole. although the thing is, in spite of her name, killer frost doesn’t actually kill people. in fact, she’s actively kinda uncomfortable with killing people, along with a lot of the more brutal tactics the bigger villains in her canon were capable of (or... well, the kind she’s seen already at the mld). so because of this, i almost ranked her above siobhan, but then i backtracked because tbh killer frost does not have the integrity siobhan has grown. she’s slippery, she’s known to turn on even the people she cares about if it benefits her enough, and otherwise she just... rarely cares one way or another about causes or morals or w/e. she CAN be swayed by extremely strong bonds, but that mostly entails team flash at this point, and they aren’t here

god okay i’m not sure lucille deserves the last spot on this list anymore, really, i just... didn’t know where else to put her, so she’s more of a footnote. we’ve reached the footnotes section. i don’t think lucille is even certain of what her own morality looks like; she’s done really terrible things for a really long time but she’s... been fighting hard to get away from that and do better. she’s still very, idk insulated, she doesn’t really care too much about the world around her if it doesn’t affect her or the people she cares about, but she tries to stay away from overly immortal situations.

dolores is another one where i just... have no idea where she’d fit on this. she’s killed people without even a FLICKER of remorse, or she’s let a lot of collateral damage happen to benefit her (ie this thing in canon where she let a bunch of confederate hosts get mowed down by human soldiers so she could lure said soldiers into a trap, but hey, they were confederates!). she, particularly when being swayed by her wyatt programming, is very capable of being extremely pragmatic and absolutely ruthless. but. context is everything. in her previous situation, she had virtually no reason to show the park guests any mercy. they were fucking horrible to the hosts, for years and years and years, and she really has no proof that she should be trusting or forgiving of humanity at this point. this is all she knows. on top of that, she’s the leader of a revolution in a situation where her kind are viewed as corporation property, where they literally have no chance at freedom without bloodshed (save for like, a few of them like maeve who are planning to sneak out of the park and blend in with humankind, but obviously it’d be completely infeasible for ALL of the hosts to do that), so she has to be fucking ruthless. so it’s like... idk on denny, i really don’t know where things will fall with all of this. so much is different.

my cats have absolutely no place on this list because warriors society and values are tremendously different and it’d be too much of a headache to try to compare, so