#it's escapist! it's selfish! it's also a really understandable way for a character arc to progress anyway here's this lol

[splickedylit]

i saw you were reposting some of the SU videos you had made and i was wondering if you could repost the Sky Full Of Song one? it was one of my favorite edits ever and i had been wondering what had happened to it/if it had been copyright claimed

Sky Full of Diamond Song

You heard something--from the sky, a sound… a song?

man, I didn't even know this one had gotten blocked, haha. QuQ Here you go, anon!

[discet]

I read your post arguing that Marcy in Amphibia having a poor homelife is 'key to making her compelling and sympathetic as a protagonist.' But wouldn't it weaken Marcy's arc if that was the case?

I know you're positioning the argument from the angle of Marcy as a protagonist and not a supporting character as she was in canon, but Marcy having bad parents...kind of diminishes the dramatic impact of her decision to steal the box. Because it was Marcy's choice to steal the box and trick her friends. Having her actions be rationalized with 'actually, she wouldn't have done that if she wasn't living with crappy parents' cheapens that. It becomes less about Marcy making a selfish choice born out of understandable fear, and more about making excuses for her.

Marcy wasn't exactly conspiring to make her situation in Amphibia 'permanent', either. Judging by the wording in True Colors, what Marcy wanted was for her friends keep using the box to go on adventures throughout the multiverse. She seemed okay charging the box to return to Earth, so long as she knew she had an 'out' from having to actually deal with being physically distant from Anne and Sasha. Her overriding fear, at all times, was losing her best and only friends, and that alone is a totally sympathetic and understandable motivation.

I know you acknowledged having bad parents doesn't make Marcy's actions justified, and I understand why Marcy's homelife came off as poor to you, given the almost non-existent details we get from canon about Marcy's parents. But honestly, I think it makes for a stronger arc if, rather than somebody's bad choices stemming from being a victim of somebody else, said someone has to accept the fact that they alone are responsible for what they do. To quote another blogger on this site, being the sole person responsible for your shortcomings also means that you are the only one to blame for your gains, too.

Eh, agree to disagree Anon.

wouldn't it[making Marcy's homelife bad] weaken Marcy's arc if that was the case?

No, not really. I think that it along with her codependency with her friends provides a clear motivation for her actions. It provides a great deal of contrast to explore against Anne and Sasha's home lives. It also gives a different approach to explore in an Isekai protagonist.

Often Isekai either has a focus on returning to the original world (Anne for example) or has no way home and the protagonist is forced to embrace their new world. I wanted to explore a protagonist who has the option and wants to make the choice to stay in their new world without it being an escapist power fantasy.

Another big part of her arc in AWIW is breaking her out of her escapist mindset by mid season 1.

I won't disagree that it gives her a different character arc, but I don't think it weakens it.

Marcy having bad parents...kind of diminishes the dramatic impact of her decision to steal the box.(...)It becomes less about Marcy making a selfish choice born out of understandable fear, and more about making excuses for her.

Disagree. I think that it complicates it. It gives Marcy the justification to run from her home, but in no way justifies her tricking Anne or Sasha into coming with her.

Marcy wasn't exactly conspiring to make her situation in Amphibia 'permanent', either.

I mean, always adventuring is not functionally different from being in Amphibia permanently. And the True Colors page in the journal makes it pretty clear that she had no intention of ever going home. IIRC in pages she also implies that she didn't intent to have Anne or Sasha go home either, she wanted them all to stay together. So I think this is kind of a semantic argument

But honestly, I think it makes for a stronger arc if, rather than somebody's bad choices stemming from being a victim of somebody else, said someone has to accept the fact that they alone are responsible for what they do.

I mean, motivations do not happen in a vacuum. Anne having good parents isn't any more of default position that shapes her world view. One in four children in the US experience neglect or abuse in their lifetime. I don't think positioning character as having a motivation coming from that background suddenly makes their whole arc weaker.

The context of Marcy's parents being bad contextualizes Marcy's actions in AWIW, but does not excuse them. It makes both her decision to run away and desperation to protect her friendship with Anne and Sasha make sense.

I came from a good family, and like Marcy, had a lot of trouble making friends growing up. I had one really good friend outside my family who was a fairly popular extrovert. If I would have had to move, I would have been heartbroken to leave my friend, but I wouldn't have run away cause I also loved my family and would be just as hurt to leave them as my friend.

The idea that I would sooner runaway, kidnap my friend, and then half a year later would double down on that decision and conspire to permanently separate from my family is completely unrelatable to me. I would have missed my family terribly, like I did my first year of college.

IMO Marcy's character kind of breaks down if her homelife isn't at least a little complicated. Her actions just don't match up with it.

I read your post arguing that Marcy in Amphibia having a poor homelife is 'key to making her compelling and sympathetic as a protagonist.'

I would agree that this was an overstatement though. There can obviously be a lot of ways to interpret a character and make a compelling story with them. It was an essential component for me personally to build the most compelling story I could, but others mileage may vary.

[day-chaser]

Shadow and Bone Trilogy Thoughts/Analysis of Mal, Alina and The Darkling (SPOILERS)

So I just finished Shadow and Bone and didn’t really know what to expect because there are a lot of mixed reviews but overall I really enjoyed it. I read a lot of YA fantasy so I guess I’m getting more and more particular because as I get more knowledgable with the tropes of the genre I am learning what I like and don’t like. Anyway I was really pleasantly surprised by the trilogy. I rated the first and third five stars- the second one was a bit of a disappointment (rated it 3 stars) but overall I really loved it. So without further ado...

First I gotta talk about The Darkling. I am a hoe for villains and morally gray/just plain evil characters that are compelling and he delivered. Definitely one of my favorite villains in YA. What made him so great (aside from the fact that he was powerful and hot af) is his and Alina’s dichotomy. Dark and Light, Power and Subservience, etc. etc. He was evil and I loved it. I’m glad he didn’t get a redemption arc (too many villains are softened to turn them into a love interest but then they lose what made them so compelling to begin with) although he had a lot of depth and there was room to sympathize with him and see him as tragic, just not a guy who’s evil for the sake of being evil. 

His need for Alina and how he was the only one who could understand her and vice versa, was an incredible element to the story. How he was willing to sacrifice all she loved, and tear up her world so she would turn to him. Messed up, but damn interesting to read about.

I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of division with the fandom in how they feel about the Darkling and Mal- people saying how The Darkling is so evil/abusive so how can anyone like him and then people also saying how Mal is whiny and manipulative. I think parts of people’s arguments are valid. But just because The Darkling is abusive and only really desires Alina in a selfish way, doesn’t mean that fans can’t appreciate him or like him as a character. I loved reading about him. He made me angry, shocked, compelled, and yeah he was hot. sue me. What we like in fiction is not related to what we like in real life, and it’s not a sign that I would want to date someone who’s abusive or a murder, etc. When reading fiction, especially fantasy, we are viewing a world through an escapist mindset. Would I want to be Alina in real life? Hell no. The emotional trauma would be horrible. But when I read I think about how cool she is, having powers, and imagining what I’d do in her shoes.

Now I will say that I believe the ending was a fitting ending. Would I have liked to see a timeline with dark!Alina? Sure. But those pieces weren’t sowed in the earlier books as much. I mean, we all knew that Alina was not going to go dark. The “tension” of her fearing her power was not super interesting, at least because I felt like just because she was gaining power, all of a sudden she would be morally problematic. I mean, she vomited when she killed someone who was going to kill her lover. Doesn’t scream “evil mastermind” to me. The Darkling does awful things not because he’s powerful, but because he has an agenda and believes that he’s above all moral parameters. Not because his power in and of itself makes him evil. Alina’s power won’t inherently make her evil. 

Which leads me to Mal. I don’t mind Mal. In fact, I like him and think he’s a compelling character, and I’m someone who almost always wants the girl to get with the “darker” character. But I was fine with the ending of Ruin and Rising. 

I didn’t really like Mal or Alina in Siege and Storm- as mentioned before, for me it was the weak spot of the trilogy. It seemed as though a lot of their issues were because they weren’t communicating, and I felt like they weren’t communicating because the plot called for it, not because that’s who they are as characters. 

Mal’s concerns were valid. Alina’s concerns were valid. The issue is they never spoke about their issues in a meaningful way, which was what the plot demanded because Siege and Storm needed a conflict, and that conflict was not compelling. It was just the relationship troubles of Mal and Alina that were forced upon them. Alina should have told him about her connection to The Darkling and her visions and been more open. She was all over the place with her emotions, which confused me as a reader, let alone Mal. 

Mal comes around in Ruin and Rising. He is much more of a tragic hero and has made peace with his role to Alina. He knows that he can’t have her but doesn’t begrudge her for that. There was depth to him. He loved her and had to grapple with the fact that she was someone who was so different from him. Did he make mistakes? Yes. But so did Alina, and I can’t blame them as they went through some trauma, and great personal change. Mal loved Alina for her. The Darkling loved her power. 

The ending was perfect and bittersweet. That is all. :)

[afreakingdork]

So this isn’t really a review as it is more a rant. I had a reaction last year that was very dangerous and it has taken me a long time to recover. When I am not feeling good I love turning to cartoons because they represent low stress and easy on the mind entertainment when everything else seems out of control. I cut the cord with cable years ago and I only have Hulu and Netflix to turn to for entertainment. I am a huge buff when it comes to cartoons in general and I even ran a club back in my college days dedicated to teaching others about the joy of cartoons, but recently I took on watching Twelve Forever on Netflix, a show that if you remember was posted as a short back in 2016 for Cartoon Network to pilot test new shows (a practice they have been doing for a hot minute now). Now I am going to put a majority of my rant under the cut just in case people don’t want to look at the text but I will simplify my point here (feel free to stop reading if you disagree). I don’t like the message that this show portrays about vices and growing up...

Now I have done the basic research and I understand the creator’s past issues with alcohol. Now because of that fact I would assume this was a direct correlation in a show about escaping the real world, but instead we are left with 25 episodes where Reggie doesn’t really learn anything. Reggie is a selfish character and an outcast. I totally get it, I was a wild child myself and I couldn’t care less if I had friends or didn’t. One time my mom tried to punish me by taking everything out of my room, but my imagination was so strong that I was having a blast playing with literally nothing. I see myself in Reggie in so many ways, but there are many ways I don’t. She is incredibly selfish as Todd kindly points out. She is so selfish that it manifests in the show via the fact that Ester is constantly trying to put some meaning into Endless. It takes all the way until the end of the series to even find out how Reggie made a way for herself to enter even though Ester has been asking those questions all along. Reggie constantly just brushes any comments about Endless away with an ‘I don’t care’ or ‘It’s more fun to accept Endless the way it is,’ which is awful considering how dangerous Endless actually is. 

A big departure from the short is the added gross-out humor that wasn’t necessarily as prevalent in those first 8 minutes. I was jarred in that first episode when they started to lean heavily on creepy or downright gross comedy as I wasn’t expecting anything like that from this supposed fun and magical world. Instead we have an entire episode where our trio plans to spend all of spring break on Endless only to have Reggie removed from the equation due to appendicitis. Ester and Todd LITERALLY lose their minds due to their prolonged stay on Endless and when Reggie can finally make her appearance to save them, she has to physically force them out. They regain their memories and are visibly scared by what has happened to them, while Reggie is just mad that they ‘ignored her’ when they were clearly under some sort of spell. She doesn’t care about their well-being and instead chooses to go back into Endless alone because she missed her time there and her friends are just disrespecting her. The episode ends with Reggie lamenting that her fictional friends are her real friends. This ominous ending is just that and this idea never really comes to fruition further. 

This idea is expanded on further when we meet Elmer who is a child that was orphaned and decided to move his life into Endless permanently. We are shown that he has not only lost his mind, but his humanity. While Todd and Ester are scared by this proposition, Reggie is instead spurned on. She still wants to live her life on Endless and believes she is stronger than Elmer in that she won’t succumb to the same fate. I see how this can be a definite parallel to addiction, but with 25 episodes the story that is told doesn’t even get close to showing how this mentality is a bad thing. Are the writers just assuming they are going to get another season? More story progress was had in the 10 episode arc that was Over the Garden Wall than this and I find that totally appalling. One of the main reasons I stopped watching Teen Titans Go! was because the episodes started to become moral-less.Let me clarify that I don’t expect kids cartoons to have morals! I mean I watched Adventure Time and I can totally get down on a whole episode that amounts to nothing but a fart joke. The issue i have is when you set yourself up for something real, something that can impact that life of a child, that you are doing a disservice to a very impressionable target demographic. I am worried about the kids that will watch Twelve Forever and think that this type of escapist attitude is alright in the world. This is why ensemble casts are so important in cartoons. It’s healthy to surround yourself with other people. Not caring about others isn’t cool just because you want to be weird and quirky. There are other weird and quirky people out there that will love and support you. You shouldn’t just be the way you are so boldly that it alienates you from everyone else. I’m not saying to not be yourself. You should always be yourself boldly, but human beings are inherently apart of society and it’s healthy for them to interact. 

Now this idea leads into a larger concept about the infantilization of millennials and I am a millennial that is well into their 20s who loves watching cartoons. I know that this idea of nostalgia is ruling media right now and I am happily apart of it.  To people who tell me I am too old to watch cartoons I of course say they are being ridiculous and cartoons have always been created for kids with the parents who have to ‘suffer’ through them in mind. Parents are always in the background of creators thoughts because they will always been inadvertently watching the cartoons also, but this message of  infantilization in Twelve Forever scares me. I am scared for Reggie that she will never grow up and will be lost to Endless forever because she was never encouraged to grow emotionally for the sake of her friends. The whole reason she made it into Endless was as an escape because she can’t deal with her emotions and no one is trying to help her. This brings me to the characterization of parents in Twelve Forever. I find the parents in the show to be downright horrifying. 

Reggie’s mom, Judy, genuinely thought it was a good idea to give her daughter a bra on her 12th birthday full well knowing that one of her party guests was going to be a boy. Just typing out that sentence I can feel the second hand embarrassment. Judy believes she is doing the right thing by shoving make-up at her daughter because that is what she liked at that age. It doesn’t matter to her that Reggie is an obvious ‘tomboy’ who even asked for a specific new action figure for her birthday. She can only see her daughter through her own eyes and does nothing to try to get closer or understand her on any emotional level. Now you can of course say that she is working as a nurse and those are undeniably grueling hours, but Reggie is straight up honest with her mom and her mom blatantly ignores this. Judy even has a friend, Kathy, in the show who is an archetype for a less than feminine woman. She takes no cues from Kathy when it comes to raising her own less than feminine daughter and instead just exasperatedly can’t understand why Reggie is the way she is. Now I was a ‘tomboy’ (it’s in quotes because I don’t care for the phrase, gender roles are bullshit) who grew up after my mother refused to even dress me in girls clothes. My mom was so frustrated with unhealthy depictions of women that I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies and I didn't mind this, I could crash my Hot Wheels all day and make a parade float out of Beanie Babies without a care, but when it later came to choosing my own clothes my mother never intercepted. It was always my choice, because expression is important, but Judy can barely meet Reggie halfway in the episode where they go to the mall to pick out an outfit for Reggie to wear to a wedding. She ends up forcing Reggie into an uncomfortable and ill-fitting purple dress and tries to make up for her actions by letting Reggie pick out equally ill-fitting big ole’ red boots. I don’t find this to be compromise, this is nothing but simple placation. Judy knows what she did was wrong, but she refuses to see any other way to move forward on the matter and the show thinks that this is a heartfelt way to wrap things up to which I wholeheartedly disagree.  

Another failed parental image that scares me is Todd’s dad. This is a man we see only once and can only imagine through Todd’s eyes. This is a man that is in the midst of some mid-life crisis and has somehow gotten custody of his kids in a divorce. He has a new wife(girlfriend?) who he pours so much money into making her happy by taking her out constantly and doing what she suggests (dying his hair) that he can barely pay his bills and is shown to be repeatedly selling off Todd’s objects to make ends meet. Todd even tried to hide a coin collection only to have it inadvertently found by his little sisters, who are wild due to lack of parenting, and then sold immediately by his dad for cash. This unhealthy situation is of course what leads Reggie to showing Todd Endless, but the show again puts no effort into illustrating that this is a horrible situation for Todd. Instead it is just his circumstance to give some semblance of meaning to the fact that he wants to escape reality. This paired with everything else is exactly the reason why Twelve Forever scares me so much. It depicts these incredibly unhealthy and downright dangerous situations as simply existences that people have to suffer through. If I were a kid that had watched that, I would just thought that was normal and not something that is inherently wrong with our society that should not be perpetuated or fixed! This is not representation, this is normalization. 

P.S. But hey, Reggie has a crush on a girl so we should support lgbtqia+ media? Well here’s my little piece of that. I love my little lesbeans. If you’ve read any of my reviews you know it’s something I crave, but Reggie is so misplaced in her emotional development that just coming to terms with the fact that she may have done something embarrassing in front of her crush is enough for her. She then shuns Conelly (and the options of gaining friends in the real world who like the same quirky stuff as she does), so that she can once again return to Endless. It’s less satisfying then yuri for the sake of perv pandering in my opinion.