#kingsile CAN right really good characters instead of just references to pop culture

[wlwizard101]

hi i have so many thoughts about polaris + arc 3 as a whole so im just going to rant about them. spoilers for polaris and mirage under the cut. also monsquista in pirate101. also a little bit of emperyea. just a smidge.

polaris is probably my favorite world simply because of its writing and it does something kingsile and honestly a lot of media in general fails to do: how to write a good revolution.

first of all, the revolution has good motives and the writers want us to percieve as good. the penguins (proletariat. yes im doing a semi marxist analysist for a kids game dont @ me) are uprising against the polar bears (the borgeious class). the penguins struggles are seen as real. they do not simply want a return to the status quo or to 'bring back the king that was good' (looking at you mirage) - no, they want change.

and that is so refreshing! in pirate101, that goddamn ape (i literally hate him so much) does a revolution and. simply becomes king. thats it. the revolution itself is started by princesses and disgraced generals, not the people. which is not inherently bad writing, however this is portrayed as good. is the material conditions of the monkeys at all changed? nope! there's just a different king on the throne. its closer to a coup than anything. (i do enjoy the implications of the pirate doing much, much grimier things that the wizard due to them being well, a pirate, but i never thought it was handled all that well).

but back to polaris. there is changed, goddamnit! after overthrowing the monarchy, celebration happens in the central area of polaris. in a paralell to azteca, where everytime you go there you are reminded that everyone here is going to die soon holy shit, in polaris, you are reminded you fucking won. you did it. and this is especially refreshing considering it is based off of the french revolution, one that pop culture always tends to demean. but kingsile (though having napoliguen in pirate101 does have some implications) shows a different view point to the french revolution, one with much more empathy to the peasant class.

and this is where mirage kinda fell flat in comparison. i was half expecting ozy to turn out to be a twist villian, due to the writing competency of the previous world, but nope. hes just the rightful king guys! and now we have to defend against xerxes. who is evil because. uh. yeah. trust us guys!!! (his boss fight was also really underwhelming tbh. middle siblings always get the short end of the stick).

over all, arc 3 differs from the other arcs in that it is not about saving the status quo. in arc 1, you defended the world from malistairs gried. in arc 2, you defended the world from morganthes god complex. but in arc 3? we are shown grandmother raven to be a control freak, who'd rather let the spiral be destroyed than let her ex husband live, and we have grandfather spider, who is destroying the spiral to put everything back to the way it was. in some regards, yes, we are defending the status quo - but i would argue raven is infact that status quo. the gods as they are, under ravens plan, would stay the same. the spiral would soon be destroyed anyways because of the heat death of the universe, why try and change? let it be. we're here to change that! what it going to happen in emperyea i do not know, as i only just got to part 2, but im incredibly excited for it, even if the refrences are a little grating. no spoilers please <3