#like don't get me wrong i never expected them to have a ton of screentime but

[stormyoceans]

did Guy and Podd appear in HA? what about their storyline? did they kiss?

I MEAN..... i can't say they didn't appear in the show because they did......... for around 5 minutes of screentime combined in which they only share 3 scenes together and if you removed their characters from the plot altogether nothing would change ;;;;;;;

to sum it up for you [SPOILERS FOR HIDDEN AGENDA FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T SEEN IT], wave (podd's character) is zo's (dunk's character) senior in the debate club, while trin (guy's character) owns the bar where joke (joong's character) works as a part-time singer in the evenings. in episode 2, after learning from joke that zo is wave's junior, trin warns him to be careful about people in the debate club, which hints about him and wave having history with each other

then they barely show up until episode 10, where zo asks wave why he dislikes joke so much and we find out through a flashback that wave and trin did use to be friends. one night, while they were out, wave got drunk and trin helped him back to his room, but when trin tried to take his shirt off wave misinterpreted it and thought trin was taking advantage of him. trin did admit to like wave, but wave said he didn't like trin and punched him, then they punched each other, which caused wave to miss out on the debate club competition. wave has blamed trin for that for years and is now afraid that joke is gonna cost zo the competition too, but zo basically reads him for filth

today, in the last episode, we got one final scene where wave shows up at trin's bar and they end up drinking together, hinting at a reconciliation, and.. that's it ;;;;;;;;

WHEN I TELL YOU IT PROBABLY TAKES LONGER TO READ THIS THAN ACTUALLY WATCHING ALL THEIR SCENES ;;;;;;;;;

so yeah, tl;dr: they do appear very briefly in the show but they hardly have a storyline to begin with, and while there are one-sided (??) feelings involved they're not together, so there's no kiss

IN CONCLUSION: GMMTV PLEASE GIVE US A PROPER BL WITH THESE TWO AS MAINS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

[korkiekenobiconfirmed]

Sidelines are for sports games, not characters of color

I want to address the somewhat awful job ST has done with its POC characters not just in Vol 2, but over the course of the show. I've done a similar post talking about the queer rep in the show if you want to check that out.

I'm gonna start with Lucas, who's been sidelined from the beginning. I get this is rural Indiana in the 80's and you wouldn't expect a whole ton of POC characters fine fine fine whatever. But if you're going to include exactly one (1) POC main, you better hope to god you do a good job with that character. Look at S1 -- Will was central to the plot in a major way (duh), Mike was huge in pushing everyone to find Will and was well-defined by his close relationship with him, and Dustin's intelligence set him apart even in a group full of so-called nerds. What did Lucas get to distinguish him in any particular way? Nothing much. Even moving into S2 his character remained distinctly less fleshed out than the others

One part of S1 I did very much like, however, was this scene. I thought it was a great way to address the kind of casual racism that people who grow up with privilege can often display, even unintentionally.

Mike and Lucas had both showed up to school dressed as the ghostbuster Venkman and Mike tried to argue that Lucas should be Winston Zeddemore. Lucas pointed out that Mike only said that because Zeddemore was black, and he didn't want to be Zeddemore because he, like so many black characters in film, wasn't as interesting or influential as many of the white mains.

Ironically, a similar fate ended up befalling Lucas. He began to be drawn more into the spotlight in S2 and S3, but it was more in reference to his relationship with Max than anything else. Listen, I love Lumax (their relationship outclasses Mileven by a mile, argue with the wall) but Lucas needing a relationship with a white character in order to gain real traction within the show and the fandom is pretty fucking shitty.

S4 finally put Lucas' character on par with the others in terms of screentime, lines, and fandom attention, and the Duffers managed this oh-so-impressive feat through the power of... basketball. Come on, I mean really?

Yes, from what we've seen basketball is the fastest path to popularity in Hawkins High (Steve, Billy, Tommy H, Jason) but to make the only black character suddenly a basketball star when he's shown zero interest or athletic ability up until now... it doesn't sit right with me, let's put it that way.

Erica falls into similar black stereotyping as Lucas. We see little development for her over the seasons and from the first moment she's on-screen she's very much the Sassy Black Girl. There's nothing wrong with characters displaying stereotyped traits as long as you can give them other characteristics that define them beyond the typical fallbacks. If your character is essentially reduced to that stereotype, however, it's a problem. All we know of Erica, beyond her never-ending supply of clapbacks and sarcasm, is that she likes DND and My Little Pony. 90% of her lines are full of sass, no matter who she's talking to, and while it's entertaining at times (her calling Murray a bald bastard was funny as hell lmaoo) it can quickly get old. Erica's not the worst black rep I've ever seen, not by a long shot, but the Duffers definitely could've done better with her.

[Having the only black female character also be a staunchly avowed capitalist feels a little weird to me, but I honestly don't have a way to properly articulate why so I'm not going to go into that rn. Maybe in a later post.]

Watching Vol 2 was a crazy fucking experience for a lot of reasons, but watching Jason and his little basketball cult fully beat up black kids significantly younger than them was... really something. A mostly-grown guy full on rugby tackling a middle school girl with aggression that far outweighed the situation...

You can't tell me there wasn't racial motivation there, but the situation really wasn't handled that way on-screen. It wasn't filmed to really make the audience think about the kind of aggressions (micro or otherwise) that black kids in bumfuck Indiana would experience. It wasn't addressed as racially-motivated. It wasn't addressed at all, actually. Thanks to the racist implications of that moment (and, in fact, the racist implications of Jason's entire attitude towards Lucas & Erica) never being addressed ever, the whole scene came across as more gratuitous violence than anything. I'm not saying the show needs to hold the audience's hand and look in their eyes and spell out J-A-S-O-N = R-A-C-I-S-T, but the S1 Zeddemore scene proved there are ways to intertwine talks about racism into the script, ways to address problems like xenophobia without making it stilted or shoehorned in.

When you show the brutal beating of black children and then move on too quickly for the audience to fully process what happened, it takes away from the heavier implications of such violence.

Moving on from the Sinclairs, we have Kali.

I liked her character very much, I'm going to be honest. The way she embodied El's angrier, more violent inner voices, with El's return to Hawkins representing her turning her back on that side of her while never truly facing up to it, made her an excellent lens for the audience to see more of El than what we got in S1.

But brown women in media too-often fall into one of two categories.

the docile, meek woman who comes from a patriarchal culture and will always defer to the men in her life, even when it goes against her own desires and dreams

The angry, probably violent woman who rages against the world because she has been wronged in the past

Again, a brown character being one of these two things isn't necessarily bad, but when we're left room for little else around all the resentment Kali's built up? When there's almost no middle ground between the two extremes?? Let's not rely on the old stereotypes over and over and over again, please.

...

...Did someone say stereotypes? Oh hang on wait it looks like we have another one. I once again feel the need to establish that this is not hate on the character himself, Argyle was legitimately one of the best parts of the California group and I love him with my whole entire heart (& also Eduardo Franco deserves so much better from this shitty fandom).

But the first Latine character on the show being a stoner? That's the best y'all could come up with?? Argyle was funny, he was useful to the plot, and he was a nice foil for the often-serious characters he's surrounded by, but all that being said, I couldn't quite get rid of the nagging irk in the back of my mind every time he was on screen because the stoner Latine character??? At this point, all the blatantly stereotyped characters just make this shit boring and predictable. I don't even have anything new to say about Argyle because it's nothing I didn't just address in terms of Erica, Lucas & Kali.

I feel like the treatment of ST's queer and POC characters is definitely different. We see constant abuse and mistreatment of queer characters without getting any outwardly, happily-queer endings for them; with the POC characters it strikes me more as the typical sidelining and stereotyping that we see in a lot of mainstream media. I'm not going to sit here and argue over which is worse or which is more harmful to audiences, they're both shitty and I'm tired of it all.

Do better.

[curedeity]

for the character bingooo i don't remember what character you already did but I'm curious about Kenta and also Masamune

How do you guess so well characters id like to talk about arti???

Anyway lets start with masamune

I have so many thoughts about masamune which is probably a surprise since hes normally more in the background in my team dungeon fics. I think its just because he fits so well into team dungeon.

I absolutely hated masamunes ass in the beginning of metal masters. I was furious he got yu (my favorite character)'s screentime and spot. He was also just annoying yknow.

But as the series progresses he actually grows. I, as a viewer, became attached to his growth.

He struggles to improve and really manages ti bring out some of the funner, more exhausted sides of characters. He forces the team to grow.

I think they make a few mistakes with him, like having his arc end in the battle against nile and kyoya only to lose against klaus and never get another meaningful win. Really felt like they just didnt know how to properly and satisfyingly balance the power of their characters.

So at this point im totally attached to him, reluctantly, and then Hades Inc arc starts and is legit the best arc in all of beyblade.

Zeo and Masamunes plot is so much more interesting than anything i thought beyblade could pull off. Two friends disconnected from each other because they both expected different things out of the friendship. I watch the show and sympathize with both of them, neither was the person the other needed in this crisis and they didnt know how to be that person, at their most fundamental character level. My only regret is that toby doesnt get more to do but i think his role as mediator is also important as showing neither of the paths taken by his friends as inherently wrong. He understands masamunes journey and appreciates zeo staying.

And then the conflict escalates until all the sides are just screaming at each other and its such a good character moment for all three of team dungeon at the time. You get to see their friendship and the mkst base aspects of their characters.

And its the final arc. Masamune is so important to the season that the final arc basically revolves around his decision (at the start of the season) to challenge gingka. Its such a full circle arc and absolutely blows me away every time i watch zeo, masamune and toby interact.

I think especially bc like, i think most of us can relate to miscommunicating with a friend. To having completely different paths we want to take and not understanding why the other isnt following us. And the emotional vulnerability of that comes out so well in this arc.

The hades inc arc made masamune in my opinion. A character cannot just be made by their traits, but by the story around them, and beyblade weaved both of these together perfectly in masamunes hades inc arc.

Not gonna talk about him in metal fury though he kinda just... exists then.

Now kenta!

Kenta is also a character i have a ton if thoughts on, story wise, but not a lot of emotional attachment to tbh. Its weird to say that a main character "didnt get enough screentime" but i think my thing is that kenta didnt get proper screentime.

Kenta works best when he has a mentor or a rival. Metal fury does him right in this and gives him a great arc with ryuga. But before that hell have decent arcs and episodes that feel forgotten later on.

Kenta shouldve had a long running rivalry with hikaru. Kenta shouldve beaten reiji. Kenta shouldve gotten so much but the authors just throw ideas at kenta and dont let them stick.

Then he has a character identity crisis in metal fury, interrogates his kwn plotlines, and comes out as one of the strongest characters in the show.

I like kenta, hes a sweet kid and fun on screen. I wish theyd let him do more and let a plot with him stick before metal fury