#svtfoe character analysis

[holiday-7]

Songs that I feel give off the vibes of one of the Mewman queens. Part 1

(BTW: this series isn't based off of whether or not they would like the song. it's based off of what kind of vibes I feel like the queens give off from the song. Also, I will explain why that song gives off a certain queen of Mewni vibe. Well, most times. If I'm not really feeling it that day, then I'll just post the queen and song.)

My sources for this post are: The SVTFOE Spell Book ($20 on Amazon) and Genius (no money whatsoever, you just need some wifi). The show will not be a source for this post because everything in the show is also in the spellbook when it comes to her.

Queen: Festivia Butterfly

Song: The Red Means I Love You by Madds Buckley

Aight Imma try to do an analysis with this one. Just know that I'm super duper bad at explaining things. And, now that I know that it is about Toga from MHA, it's super hard for me to try and associate the song with anyone else. So if it's super disorganized, that's why.

So, The Red Means I Love You is about Himiko Toga from MHA and her quirk of drinking other people's blood to look and sound like them. But it can also be interpreted as many other things. Such as someone having a crush on another person, or a one sided relationship, or a forbidden love. But for today, I'm gonna use this song to analyze (as good as I can) Festivia's life + what she must have been thinking when she most likely found out in the afterlife that her whole life was a lie. Anyways, let's start with verse 1.

"Unusual. They say strange fascination, infatuation." could be her longing for her "parents" and wanting to meet them. It could also be her wanting to end the war (or more bluntly, push it into the background) between the Mewmans and Monsters.

"A lunatic" could be talking about The Host-Me Spell. Where basically, she uses magic to hide how she feels on the inside.

"And I've always heard it's what's inside that counts" could be referring to Festivia's naïveté and ignorance and just being a wholehearted and trusting person. But not realizing that not everyone has that good of intentions. And this could also be her living in denial about her life being a lie, trying to rationalize the MHC's actions.

"Cause my insides are red, and yours are too. And the red on my face is matching you" could describe how Festivia is Pie Folk, not nessecarily Mewman. And she is just like the Pie Folk (especially with her love for pie (sorry if I've said pie too much)) But if the MHC was able to trick the entire kingdom for years that she was Mewman, she in a way, is just like them. Just not from the same kingdom.

"You're down and you're pleading, my head is just reeling" can describe how Festivia may have felt if she ever found out that her life was a lie. She may have felt like she was going crazy and she was 100% living in denial or at least defiantly upset and angry. Mostly at the MHC for lying to her and using her because of her prejudice and as a tool for anti-monster conspiracy. But I bet she would also feel anger and resentment towards herself for believing them and being so naive to even believe them to begin with. Or maybe I'm just looking too deep into this, idk.

"The red means I love you" could be Festivia romanticizing the MHC in her head and just ignoring all the red flags in each and every one of them. Because the MHC is full of terrible people. And Festivia doesn't want to admit that they used her for their own benefit.

"Unfortunate. They say such a shame, I turned out this way" would be her finding out that she isn't apart of the Butterfly family. And that compared to other queens, it feels like she just did nothing (I personally feel like she didn't do nothing, but she really just did the bare minimum by not speaking for the people).

"Well, yeah, I get manic when I cause a panic" could mean that she probably had an extisential crisis when she found out the truth and tried telling herself that she is a Butterfly and that she is lying to herself. No, she probably never believed herself. Yes, she probably looked crazy to all the other queens.

"And of course I'm excited when I see you around" defiantly describes her enthusiastic personality. Or it could be her being sarcastic to everyone else because they all probably knew and they just didn't care enough to tell her. Or on the flip side, it could be how she forces a smile and pretends to be happy when really, she's miserable on the inside.

"You leave me high and dry" could be the MHC using Festivia as a tool for anti-monster conspiracy and was just a replacement for Eclipsa's daughter. But then not even thinking about her when she died.

"A rush comes to my mind" could go hand in hand with the first line and be Festivia's reaction to the MHC forgetting about her. And she was most likely flabbergasted with how the MHC treated her. She would've defiantly gone into a spiral about it.

"At the drops of blood you leave behind. Run as you might" is Festivia remembering her time with the MHC and metaphorically running from the truth.

"My love will never, ever stop" would mean that even though the MHC betrayed her, she still does love them even if it's so little now that she knows the truth.

Aight y'all thank you for your time. Super duper sorry if it sounds like I'm constantly repeating myself or if it's super disorganized. This is my first time doing this and it's probably gonna get better as I keep going along with this series. What queen/song do you guys want me to do next? Reblog, ask me, message me, or leave it in the comments. Also, if anyone wants me to do this kind of series but with characters from tv and movie characters in general, pls tell me. Part 2 will most likely be up tomorrow. Anyways here's some fan art of her (go the Kiramice's insta, I linked it under the pic) and an image of Festivia's wand. :)

[dappercritter]

@full-moon-phoenix This might have the answer we're looking for!

Altho I would like to add that while, yeah, Marco probably came off rude and immature there, Toffee DID kinda kidnap him after a fight with Star

I wouldn't care about manners either if some thugs kidnapped me and stuck me in a chair to lure out my friend for a probably evil scheme

“You’re a Disappointment,” An Analysis

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Seven years. Seven. Years. And it only just now finally hit me what Toffee truly meant when he called Marco a disappointment in Storm the Castle, and I feel pretty silly for not realizing it before.

Before Storm the Castle, Toffee has only seen Marco on two significant (canonical) occasions, Fortune Cookies and Mewnipendance Day. (As you may remember, Marco was MIA during Marco Grows a Beard, considering he was… physically trapped in that bathroom as his beard overwhelmed the house)

Fortune Cookies:

The entire plot of the episode, besides the ever enjoyable introduction to our favorite lizard, is Star once again being amazed by another Earth oddity: fortune cookies. She believes that the fortunes are genuine predictions of the future and are infallible and to be relied on for all of her future decisions (not helped by Marco who did influence this misconception by messing with her). This immediately establishes in Toffee’s mind— after learning from Buff Frog that she believes the messages in the messages in her cookies are fortunes— that she’s naive, impulsive, easy to stray, and immature. Of course, he very quickly learns about her impulsivity, fighting prowess, and stubborn will, but her naivety is what sticks out to him in this moment, and it’s what he takes full advantage of. (Note: I don’t think he actually looks down on her for these traits alone and expects her to be mature at all, I think he sees those traits going hand and hand with her age. She’s only 14, after all. Nevertheless, they are still traits he can use to his advantage to further his goals.)

This is something that Star has in common with the monsters Toffee has found himself within the company of. The only difference here? These are grown adults who he expects to have a bit more dignity under their belt, ESPECIALLY Ludo. While I’m sure he’s grateful that Ludo was naive enough to hire him with clever wordplay alone— overall assisting to further his goals— he can’t help but feel annoyed by the plain stupid amount of immaturity he possesses.

I think this is less so with Ludo’s army. Even if they share very similar traits, he knows they’ve been living under Ludo’s childish tyranny, and probably has a bit more faith that they can be molded into proper soldiers. Though, his patience is still worn extremely thin by their shenanigans.

Toffee takes advantage of this by planting a fortune in her bag, “Love is Always the Answer.” While I personally believe there’s a deeper meaning, it’s not relevant right now. But anywho, the core purpose is to let Star’s guard down enough so Ludo can gain ownership of the wand.

While Star believes the message hook, line, and sinker, Marco immediately sees past the ridiculousness of the fortune in such a dire situation. “What? Not in this case! Fighting is!”

“Really? Now??”

He immediately sees past the fortune, relying on logic to reason that such a simple trick is just that: a trick. Clearly Star’s pacifism isn’t working, and they need to make the rational decision to fight. He’s immediately proves himself to be the level headed one of the duo, the one who keeps his head on straight and is clearly the maturer of the two.

Marco saw right through the trap and displayed common sense and logic. And he was later vindicated when it was revealed to Star that the fortune cookie was a trap.

And I can guarantee you Toffee noticed this, and it was only further cemented in the next time Toffee sees him again.

Mewnipendance Day:

In this episode, Star is celebrating what she knows as “Mewnipendance Day”, also known as the Great Monster Massacre, where the first Queen of Mewni attempted to wipe out monsters from the face of the planet, an attempted genocide of innocent people who lived on the land she stole from them.

Star explains the entire story from the Mewman’s propagandized perspective, going through a pop-up storybook to demonstrate the beginning and the end of the massacre. She gives an explanation of the beginnings, skips past the actual genocide and fighting itself, and ends with “And the Mewmans won!”

And guess who’s the only person who notices and brings attention to it? Marco Diaz himself.

“Wait, but you just blew past all the important stuff.”

Once again, Marco is the one who’s calling out important things, looking deeper and more critically at the situation, opposed to everyone else who just goes along with it. He shows very clear and obvious signs that he’s more mature than his peers.

And let’s not forget, Ludo and Toffee are watching all of this through the surveillance device (the “all seeing eye”). Sure, Toffee is a tad distracted by the book he’s reading, but with how intelligent he is I’m almost positive that he’s multitasking here.

And Marco only proceeds to exceed expectations, actually going through the book and starting to see, at least in part, the true reality of the situation, calling it out and bringing it to Star’s attention.

“Star, I know the monsters are bad and all, but this seems… unfair.”

Marco demonstrates that he is willing to see past biases and to see reason. He sees past the blatant propaganda and revisionist history, at least in part.

Overall, he is actively more mature than the others with common sense that aids in critical thinking skills and nuance beyond what’d Toffee would expect at his age, especially contrasted against Star. And I think taking off rose colored glasses and seeing the monster massacre for what it really is (again at least in part) really helps with Toffee’s perception of Marco as some levity amongst the childish people he’s been surrounded with.

That is, until their third interaction in Storm the Castle.

Storm the Castle:

Toffee clearly sees Marco as a competent fighter, considering the double imprisonment with not only the chair that confines him but the crystal box prison too. He knows Marco is more competent and mature than most people in his vicinity

At least. He did.

During Storm the Castle while Marco is imprisoned, he takes on the traits seen with Ludo, his soldiers, and Star. He’s acting immature, he’s being impulsive, and he’s talking back with what he assumes is witty dialogue. He’s trying to act all tough guy, which clearly doesn’t work with Toffee. Toffee humors him a little bit during the sandwich dialogue, releasing him from the chair, and Marco immediately takes an impulsive swing at him, leaving him to punch the crystal and immediately writhe in pain at the impact. Marco then immediately throws away Toffee’s genuine attempt at offering him a meal. Toffee is a monster, and being a monster in Mewni means that food, especially good food, is invaluable, because it’s so hard to come by. Seeing Marco waste and make a mess of it without a second thought is probably the nail in the coffin.

Marco isn’t the slightly more mature young boy Toffee assumed he was. He had witnessed from afar Marco’s knack for nuance and critical thinking, a breath of fresh air amongst incompetence.

But as soon as they get one on one all of that is immediately washed away.

Marco is acting like everyone else he’s come across lately, openly defying the nuanced maturity Toffee had witnessed previously. He’s just like the others. He’s being childish. He isn’t special.

“You’re a disappointment”

It’s not some profound statement, there’s no weight behind it. Toffee had no expectations for Marco and wasn’t planning on using him for his goals. Marco just genuinely was not who Toffee assumed he was by his previous actions. Toffee was mildly genuinely disappointed to learn just how kiddish Marco really is. He really expected better.

I also think this explains why Toffee didn’t bother to put him back in the chair restraints. He really didn’t need to go that far with trapping him in the first place.

I don’t think Toffee is surprised, or even phased by it, Marco is a 14 year old child after all. I don’t even think Toffee’s expectations for his maturity were big, period, just the slightest bit of relief that Marco was a breath of fresh air amongst the sea of incompetence. But no. He wasn’t, as far as Toffee concludes at least. This one interaction completely killed any hope Toffee might have carried, and he would just roll his eyes for even allowing himself to put even a little faith in someone.

“Well, that’s unfortunate. Anyways…”

I know there were tons of theories on this, but the actual answer, as far as I’ve figured, is incredibly simple lol. And now that I’ve finally realized what that line really meant, I think it’s important to share.

[weaselbeaselpants]

One of my pointless, made-for-just-myself fandom dissertations is gonna be about "endgame" philosophy and how fans assume creator's are swayed into bad decisions and writing by their fans. To give you a brief preshow of that, my thesis basically amounts to

"ya'll have fan brain; Lily Orchard has legit poisoned the well of media analysis with her bad understanding of production issues"

So many of you cartoon fans, criticals ect need to unlearn the term "creator's pet" as a term for important character in the narrative that you don't like and who's development isn't written well.

You owe it to yourself to STOP looking at ships that were always gonna be a thing and try and steer the conversation into "the show sucked cuz you all cared more about shipping; creators though x-couple was ungame and now it's ruined!!!"

Starco was inevitable since season 2 of SVTFOE made it clear they were going there. No, I don't like that choice either, but that's the choice the writer's had. Fucking cope. That's what fanfiction's for.

"The creator's didn't think of this twist until fan's started theory-ing about it-" NOPE. Fans just guessed the possible twist and different creators found different ways of hiding, denying or changing how their stories were gonna go because of that.

There is real criticism, hang ups, controversy and anger to be had over bad writing and decisions made in shows. You all have to stop complaining when creators do something you don't like vs something they shouldn't have done. I mean it when I say that, for all possible circumstances where creators' did take advantage of fan hype/ideas and then ruined their shows because of it (Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Star Wars) there are hundreds of examples of series just being bad* on their own and I really wish people would stop throwing around those "endgame", "creator pet" and "fan service" around so willy nilly.

And then I remember VivziePop....

[puppy--jam]

Eclipsa SVTFOE analysis/headcanon

Remember, these are only my thoughts and opinion.

When I watched the series for the first time, I had no feelings, positive or negative, towards this character.

Now it's the same, but the scales are tipping towards the negative side. Why? That Eclipsa could have been Glossaryck's pawn. Let us remember that she was (actually is) the only person who did not question Glossaryca's teachings.

The negative side of Eclipsa:

- Dark art. I don't mean any spells like spider web (I don't want to google its name), but more something like darkest spell.

The fact that she drew the source of her spells from black magic is nothing, especially since some spells did not cause any harm, but a total annihilation spell or darkest spell was like using avada kedavra.

- Desecration of corpses. The episode where Eclipsa made herself a guitar out of bones. Someone's bones (I'm not sure, I follow the script). Yes, this guitar looks cool, but that doesn't change the fact that it is (could be) someone's corpse.

It would be different if they were just false bones. Then okay. Eclipsa didn't say, hey, those aren't real bones, but it's just cool. This suggests (at least to me) that Eclipsa made her guitar from someone else's corpse.

- Resettlement (I hope I'm using the right term). Okay, it's a good initiative for those (monsters) who lost their houses/grouds to get them back. But what about the displaced people? They should get some other ground in return. But no, Eclipsa was like: Fuck you mewmen, get lost.

My theory (or even headcanon):

Eclipsa became Glosaryck's ideal student, which means she followed the path of chaos. Her behavior is an example of this:

- obsession with sweets (although Solaria may have been the cause)

- acting on different fronts (once together with the mewmen, once on the side of the monsters, until I don't care)

- Black Velvet Inferno spell (this will be a longer statement about how she wanted to get her family back and how she also regained her throne)

This made me wonder. I wanted to find some meaning in this spell. Overall, this spell resembles the darkest spell because from the picture below it looks as if it was supposed to completely destroy the victim.

So why didn't Eclipsa use the darkest spell?

Indeed, Black Velvet Inferno is black magic. Instead of destroying the target, it erases all of their previous memories and returns them to the beginning of their life. But! This was probably not his original goal. I think Eclipsa created this spell 'quickly' and wasn't entirely sure of its effects. Why did she do it? Simple answer. She didn't want to kill her child.

This is her reaction when the Meteora 'disappeared':

She probably didn't expect the effect that Meteora would disappear (she thought so because she hadn't seen or heard her yet).

We don't know what her face is when she says this. She's probably sad about what she did, but still hopes that Meteora could have survived it (since the intent of the spell wasn't to kill).

And now… Eclipsa's plan (right after being released from the crystal) was as follows: find her daughter, free her husband. And that's it. Eclipsa had not considered returning to the throne, so she was surprised when the star gave her her wand and throne. (She is surprised by this fact.)

And then it turns out that Meteora is alive. Of course, Eclipsa as a mother is happy about this fact, but she is also happy because her spell worked.

In contrast, Star, who is shocked (and Eclipsa only happy):

Eclipsa wasn't shocked at all when she took Meteora into her arms. I believe this was her plan, which is why she wasn't surprised to see her baby alive. And then she could move on to the second stage of her plan, i.e. freeing Globgor. And the wand (and throne) were a nice addition she got.

How this Glossaryck pissed me off. I've been trying to tell you about this (that Eclipsa wants to free Globgor) for several months. Damn, if you said it normally, everyone would understand! And here's another thing. No one knew what Globgor meant (as Glossaryck repeated it over and over). However, Eclipsa knew (because he was her husband), but did she tell about it when she met Star in the garden. NO. Why? Maybe this was part of her plan? Or is it the result of Glossaryck's teaching?

To summarize: Eclipsa generally has good intentions, caring for her family (and later defending her subordinates), but she achieves this in a not-so-good way.

[sagesilentfire]

it's so weird I personally never saw/considered toffee as evil???? and had no idea that people hated him??????? I thought it was universally agreed he was the best and most tragic thing to happen in the series?????????

even after the rollercoaster that was comet I'm more inclined to believe he DIDN'T murder her (tbf she had it coming)

Oh, I agree with you. I don't think he's evil. But unfortunately, that doesn't erase how the writers, and a section of the fans, treated him. Maybe they were a vocal minority, but if so they were extremely vocal. Here's the breakdown:

The writers: I've explained at length how the writers screwed over Toffee. They change his motives from petty to deep depending on who they're talking to, they ignore all the mystery boxes they created regarding him, and if there's any way they want us to feel about his pointless, horrible death, it's either relief or a dull sadness that the magic wasn't destroyed right then. Not horror or righteous indignation. He isn't explicitly a tragic victim, he's barely even mentioned after, and never in a way that implies Star should feel guilty for murdering him. Explicitly, he's a faceless obstacle to be knocked over by Star after she levels up, and it's totally fine she literally melted him, it's fine! We shouldn't question the morality of our white savior protagonist, it's fine!

But the big one, and the one you were likely referring to, is the fandom. And when I made that analysis, I do admit to one cop-out: the fandom isn't like that now. Nowadays it's mostly dead, with the odd stubborn holdout (like me) posting in the tag now and then. A lot of us are Toffee fans, still posting because we liked the potential the show had and so we're imagining him as a character and not the plot equivalent of a bowling pin. But Back In The Day, when the show was still running, people celebrated Toffee's death. It was so cool that Star Vs. had the guts to graphically murder a character onscreen! Star was so cool, and here you thought this show was for kids! Her butterfly form is so cool! Yeah, so much better than that loser Steven Universe, who just talks about his feelings to the villains and solves problems with love and friendship! Never mind that there's a reason other shows don't do this, and that's because it sends a horrible message. Star should've taken a page out of Steven's book honestly.

But surely after the shock of this super cool and edgy death wore out, people started to see the tragedy inherent in Toffee's character? Nope! I mean, there were some popular analysis posts and such, but the fandom mostly forgot about Toffee, along with the writers. And while we were forgetting about that, Morningmark happened. I've talked about him before, but he's always been both a good barometer for the fandom's opinion of a character as well as a shaper of it. When he rarely goes against the fandom's majority opinion, the fandom seems to bend over backwards to make his headcanon everyone's headcanon. Even when it involves dubious characterization. I have already talked about why Morningmark is overrated, but... he just does not get Toffee, even after the show ended with Toffee kind of acknowledged as being right, even after the fandom slowly began to die. In his urge to make everything haha funny he just made it really flat and made Toffee stupid, boring, and evul, and since his comics were the only thing getting notes in the quickly-dying fandom, it made it very annoying to be a fan of depth and tragedy in svtfoe. Then he stopped making svtfoe comics and moved to making Belos stupid and other The Owl House-related crimes, and at least I don't have to worry about his dreadful takes on Toffee anymore, so that's great. 

And from there it was a short hop to the fandom we have today, where only people who got something important out of svtfoe still make content. Now, and only now, do we have the majority thinking Toffee's story, or at least what we saw of it, was the best thing to come out of svtfoe. 

Also, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Mina killed Comet and blamed Toffee. That would be a much better twist than the whole Moon bs.

[seddm]

Have you watched “the ghost and Molly McGee”? If not, I think you should watch it, just to give it a try. The reason that I bring this show up to you it’s because lately, there have been people hating the “ relationship” between the main character, Molly and her “love interest”, Ollie. Some people have been hating the hell out of the character of Ollie, and the reasons people give are ridiculous to say the least. Most of the people are just mad that their personal ships sink after the character of Ollie debuted on season 2 which premiered not too long ago, or they claim that the character of Ollie hasn’t been developed properly “which I disagree completely I think he’s development has been great. This reminds me of all the svtfoe shipping battles back in the old days and made me remember your deep analysis of the show back then, and I thought “huh I wonder how Seddm would analyze this how”. I’m just so curious as to what your opinion would be on all of this. It would be great if you would check it out, I WILL say tho that the show it’s pretty different from STVFOE . It’s mainly “episodic” rather than following an actual storyline but I will say that in season 2, the show does start following a storyline, at least much more than in season1 season it’s still pretty good, just that season 2 it’s a bit better. A little bit more “deep” regarding storyline. You’ll understand what I mean if you see it yourself. Anyways, thank you for reading this. I hope I explained my self well. It’s fine if you don’t like it too. I personally find it very wholesome haha. And again, I find the direction they’re taking with the show in the new season pretty interesting. 😄

I watched S1 of the show, and eventually I'll probably check out S2 as well, and while it was entertaining - I especially enjoy how over the top the facial expressions are, I'm going to be brutally honest: it didn't catch my attention and interest enough for me to form any kind of "analysis" opinion beyond a very surface level entertainment. Might change once I start S2, but as things are right now, I don't have the drive to look at it with the kind of fandom-eye needed to form opinions. Sorry! But I did see something of what was going around the internet when the first leak involving Ollie appeared, and I thing I can understand what you mean. Shippers are gonna ship, after all. Had I been a, don't know, Molly x Libby shipper, I too would have been miffed at sudden competition appearing. Even more since, in this specific case, the former had (so far?) absolutely no romantic undertones, while the latter was presented as a crush from the get go.

[holdingontodust]

Man, your Toffee analysis was what I needed to read and listen to. And honestly, I feel bad for how Toffee was treated. And while I'm not a fan of Moon/Toffee (or Heinous aka Meteora/Rasticore either), your analysis on Toffee is quite impressive as much as @sageoftheuniverse had done. But I digress...since you analyzed Toffee's character well, what are your thoughts on the likes of Rasticore? Me and my friend, @wildtige429 are both fans of the character and we're somewhat more of the "fans of the underrated characters" kind of thing, so we were wondering what your thoughts on Rasticore were. Please let us know when you

I've had this ask sitting in my drafts for a while trying to think of something interesting to say, but after so many weeks I'm afraid I have to say I don't have much to say on Rasticore, which sucks because I enjoy him, but he really doesn't have enough to work with in canon to write a full analysis on.

Also most of his episodes take place in a part of the series I don’t really care to watch again but, I’ll write up some quick thoughts based on what I have watched recently and remember from my original watch.

First of all, I’m sorry you don’t care for Rasticore x Heinous/Meteroa, because I think that’s one of the most interesting and fun parts of his character. The show really did itself dirty by not exploring the other characters more in favor of trying to stay the Star and Marco show (while also ruining even that with all the teenage romance drama), but in particular they really missed out on what could have been some really hilarious scenes of Gemni being the third wheel to an almost perfect Villains in Love dynamic. I am doing a (slow) rewatch of svtfoe at the moment, and don’t intend to fully rewatch after Battle of Mewni but might rewatch a few episodes just for Rasticore and Meteora while I lament what should could have been.

I just fucking love shipping the Lizards with the Butterflies don’t judge me

Looking specifically at Rasticore, though, like I said, there really isn't much to go on with him in canon. He somehow went from a scared teen to fighting in the war to a bounty hunter/assassin with no explanation of how he went from point A to point C and no exploration of his motives which makes it feel like there wasn't any actual plan for him, and he was only featured in some of his scenes just to fill up space so they wouldn't have to design a whole other background character.

The scene from Meteora's Lesson (I actually despise as anyone following me on twitter may have figured out), Rasticore could have been swapped with any other Septarian youth in the gathering and it wouldn't have made a difference, since we don't see how Rasticore actually develops from this absolute wreck to the confident soldier seen in Moon the Undaunted.

The only take away we really get from this is that Toffee and Rasticore have known each other since they were teens, and it's popular to assume that they were friends since he is the only Septarian from this scene that sticks around into the series proper- but this is not actually confirmed anywhere I don't think?

They knew each other in their teens and served in the monster army together but they might not have been friends after all or they had a big falling out after Rasticore abandoned Toffee when Moon blew off his finger, because they aren't working together anymore during svtfoe's run.

Or are they?

Unfortunately, since we don't know what the entirety of Toffee's plan was or where he was going when he walked away after returning from the Realm of Magic, there's no way to confirm this...But I find it really convenient that one of Toffee's old war buddies just happened to be in close with the True Heir to the Butterfly Kingdom, implied to be dating/have dated her (and presumably had sex with her) to notice she was half monster.

So...What if the real reason Rasticore broke up with her so awkwardly and tried to leave was because he was planning on reporting to Toffee and receive his new orders, unaware of Toffee's demise?

[sleepy-bebby]

Just binged watch all of SVTFOE. Tl;dr S01-02 good, S03 meh, S04 bleghh. And yes, I’m aware this show ended a couple of years ago. This is mostly a Tom-deserves-better post.

Also, I find it funny that Tom is apparently based off the creator’s evil exes but ends up being the best character of the show. He shows genuine character growth, is loyal to the detriment of his own well-being, and proved time and time again that him wanting to be a better being was not just lip service.

And of course because he is the best character but not the main character, the creators treat him like shit by:

1. having Star and Marco cheat with the kiss.

2. Then he was told about it not by his GIRLFRIEND, but by Marco, his best guy friend who backstabbed him by kissing Star. Also it really broke my heart that Tom still came back and sacrificed himself for Marco, because he couldn’t believe his best friend and his girlfriend would do that to him. He genuinely wanted to believe the best in them and was betrayed like that.

3. THEN Star gets mad at Tom about it when it is suppose to be the other way round?? Am I living in crazy town?? She thinks she has the right to be mad??

4. Then she strings him along when they were suppose to go on a planned trip together until he finally dumps her after going on that trip alone to do some soul searching. And she has the audacity to act like a victim when she cheated lol. Then tries to love-bomb him with food and a rare cat.

5. And then they go to the realm of magic where they straight up forget poor Tom (even after they’ve regained sanity) and leave him there to be corrupted by Dark Millhorse until he is fed pudding. They straight up forgot he exists even though he was one of the oldest and supposedly closest friends in the group.

God I hate what the writers did to both Star and Marco’s characters. And honestly, by the end they’ve become shitty enough that Star and Marco deserve each other with how they acted in the last season. Mama Lucitor was right in being wary of Star. Tom deserves way better, and she should’ve stomped out the asshole when she had a chance.

[heravenueexpert-blog]

Battle of Mewni Spoilers

I really like the uncanny similarities between Moon and Star but at the same time, the stark contrast.

Not just the looks! Both of them are fighting the same enemy, both used the dark magics from Eclipsa’s chapters, and both had dark sides of their magic.

But the stark differences are that Moon is more of a defensive fighter who will only snap when pushed to the corner with no way out while Star is more aggressive who will fight right away at the sign of danger. Moon’s dark magic is used as a final trump card against her enemies while Star’s dark magic is her whimsical side of magic that is usually unintended and makes her fail. And the most important contrast to me is that . . .

When it comes to their most crucial moments. . .

Moon uses her Dark Magic. . .

While Star uses her Light Magic. . .

[holiday-7]

Hey everyone I'm doing a whole series where basically, I'm explaining why certain songs fit certain queens of Mewni. I'm currently working on Festivia. Who do y'all want me to do after her? And what songs do y'all wanna see? Either ask me, message me, or leave it in the comments of this and the next post. Also just know that it's probably gonna take me quite some time to do each of the requests because I gotta get the ELA teacher out of me. And I also sometimes have to listen to the songs. If you guys want me to do a series like this but with tv show/movie characters in general, pls leave a comment/reblog. So yeah, that's all I wanna say. See u when I post part 1 (maybe). Also, if y'all could give me a new name for my profile, that'd be great too.

[kyotosummer]

SVTFOE & Sailor Moon Analysis: Star Butterfly

There’s been a bit of a discussion lately about Star vs the Forces of Evil, Sailor Moon, and some Roman mythology. I put my two cents in at one point and had been asked to do a more detailed analysis on how much Sailor Moon is invested in Star’s DNA. Honestly, I feel like one post about this topic would be as long as a book, so I’m going to do one theme at a time, starting with the characters.

So, in my earlier theory post, I pointed out that many of the characters in Star vs The Forces of Evil actually share similar traits with 2 or more characters in the Sailor Moon verse, and that analyzing these similarities may actually help understand the show’s undertones and foreshadowing, as well as support/deny theories in the community. To start this series off, we’re going to analyze the main magical girl in the franchise- Star Butterfly:

Now, at first glance, any Moonie will tell you that her look is CLEARLY based on Sailor Venus. Blonde hair down to her waist, blue eyes, and the red hair band could be a creative substitute for Venus’s signature red bow:

However, the similarities don't end there. In the series, Venus was known as the official leader of the Sailor Scouts before the reincarnation, is either equal or barely coming in second to Moon in being the biggest goofball of the group, and is infamous for her energy and bad grades. Star’s looks, energy, and grades  give her a personality that is along the lines of Venus on 3 cappuccinos all at once. However, her actual story is more reminiscent of a different Sailor Scout:

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Once upon a time, there was a young princess who was the daughter of a VERY powerful queen. A rambunctious child, the event that led to gaining her own powers caused a great deal of destruction. Her parents, unable to properly train their daughter themselves, sent her to Earth/the past as a way to train to become a proper lady, soldier, and future queen.

I don't know about Japan, but in the U.S., there was a joke that Chibi-Moon’s hairstyle looks more like devil horns than rabbit ears. This joke may actually explain why Star wears her devil headband, and helps combine her outfit into both Venus and Chibi-Moon themes.

FYI, because her Japanese names are annoying to type, I will sometimes call Chibi-Moon/Chibiusa by her 90′s English dub name of Rini. 

Personality-wise, Star is much more of a Venus than Chibi-Moon. Rini is much more serious about her role. She WANTS to be a proper Lady and future queen. Star’s similarity to Rini comes down to their insecurities. Star and Rini both don't feel like they match up to their mothers, and are not sure if they’ll be able to fulfill the role they were born into. Star openly admits that she’s tackling her issues by either ignoring them or by giving a middle finger to tradition and doing things her own way. Rini handles her insecurities in a more subconscious manner at first. She’s terrified of growing up, so she stays a little kid for over 900 years. She’s only able to start growing up when her selfish actions cause a loved one to (kinda) die, and she unlocks her true powers. Star is also refusing to grow up, but in a “I want to party all night and ignore responsibilities” way. She only starts taking up responsibility when she realizes people she cares about could actually get hurt if she keeps ignoring her role.

Okay. We’ve done the general comparisons. Let’s dive deeper and look at some possible theories.

Now, many fans believe that Star may actually turn dark. She’s tapped into dark magic before, and her power level has often been compared to Queen Eclipsa, the dark queen. Honestly, I don't believe Star would go dark on her own. She has a lot of friends that could get hurt, and she cares about Mewni. She’s shown to have a good conscience several times, and going evil/dark would be pretty OOC for her at this point in her development. HOWEVER, brainwashing may be an option:

During her introductory arc, Rini is eventually caught by Nemesis and brainwashed to believe that no one loves her and her insecurities are actually the truth. He gives her a chance to grow up and have powers- which awaken Wicked Lady/Black Lady. The rest of the arc involves the Sailor Soldiers trying to stop Wicked Lady from getting the Silver Crystal of the past and future, as combining the two would destroy the universe. Should Star actually go dark, I believe that it would be a similar scenario. I mean, season 2 ends with Star feeling guilty about loosing her spell book and Glossarick, as well as admitting her crush to Marco while acknowledging he doesn't feel the same and leaving Earth forever. She’s emotionally vulnerable, andToffee or Eclipsa could get into her head somehow and convince her that her insecurities and fears are what’s actually going on. They could pretend to offer more power and control over her current situation, and Star could be infected by their magic and turn into a dark princess. Honestly, if SVTFOE were to turn their main character, I’d be more willing to bet this would be the route they’d take.

I have an order these comparisons are going to go in, but if you have a character you want me to focus on, let me know and I may rearrange my order.

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

Y’know, now that I think about it, Eclipsa seems to swap between three different ways of behaving. They’re all her, of course, but I think she focuses on a particular aspect of her personality around various people.

To the people of Mewni, Eclipsa is mysterious and distant. Granted, much of that is just rumors and hearsay, but the Magic High Commission barely seem to know her. She very purposefully kept to herself.

With people younger than her, she turns more into a mentor. She listens when Star comes ranting, be it about Marco or her butterfly form. She even offers advice, though the advice doesn’t usually end up being the best (with Deep Dive sending Star into the realm of magic, and her earlier advice simply being a reminder that, as princess, Star can basically do whatever, even make Marco her squire.)

She did it to young Moon, as well. She empathized with her losing her mother, and warned her before telling her the spell. When Moon showed concern about letting her out, Eclipsa rushed to make it sound like not a big deal, comforting her while also furthering her goals to get out.

And now, with older Moon, Eclipsa showed her more silly side. She seemed to take almost none of their journey seriously, despite it being about getting info that could be used in her trial- not to mention find out what happened to her daughter, who she clearly cares about.

Eclipsa molds the more favorable aspects of herself to be more glaring when she’s around certain people. She wanted young Moon and Star both to view her as someone to rely on and tell their troubles to.  She may have wanted Mewni to see her as strong and impersonal. And now, with older Moon, she showed she has a lot of quirks similar to Star, something that would assuredly endear her more to the queen.

Eclipsa may just be manipulating without even lying.

[originalwinnercheesecake]

King Clawthorne, his possible Ansestery. I have connected the Dots

So it has been almost two weeks since Edge Of The World, and in about 30 hours a new episode will come that may prove me completely wrong.... or be irrelevant, or even right.But I have been sitting on some thoughts about King since Edge of the world and now I finally have the time to post them.

King is a baby TItan! Way back at the shows beginning people threw around “what if King is the titan?” as a crack pot theory, and now its true! Alright now lets get into what this means for his story, and no I am not talking about him possibly freeing the collector (not his fault) or how he could use some of his blood to send Luz home (wouldn’t take all that much, a tiny stain of century old stale blood on the single finger of a glove got her almost the whole way). No I am talking about King’s story. For all of season 2, ever since he remembered hearing his father’s voice call him Son when he was still in his egg he has wanted to see him again... Now some people are theorizing that King’s dad was the titan that the characters live on... But as time went on more people have been saying that with how old that particular titan’s remains are it is more likely that they are a distant grand parent than King’s dad. In Eda’s Requiem we all see Tarak for the first time and we all believed he was King’s family (not necissarly his dad but maybe an uncle or older brother) Tarak’s actions for the rest of 2a supported this. But in Edge of the world we learn Tarak’s people “the titan trappers” have, under the collector, who Belos is also in league with, hunted King’s people almost to extinction.

The “oldest and wisest” Titan Trapper Bill (the name Bill will never again be a good guy in cartoons) told Luz that there was one titan left and he had seen it. The flag for the hunt showed an egg like Kings (given the size of their helmets babies are probably who the trappers primarily hunted) But he talks about the last Titan roaring at him and running, and vanishing. I believe that was Kings father. He managed to lead the trappers away from his nest, but couldn’t come back... at least not until King had already hatched. More on that later.

Now I want to stop and praise The Owl house for one thing it has done better than any cartoon I have seen in a long time. Better than SU, SVTFOE, Amphibia, even better than Gravity Falls. Connect its separate characters and plots together. The portal between the two realm is in an abandoned house on Luz’s street because she lives in the same town the Wittebane brothers lived in. Given how far apart houses were and how much land people owned back then she might have grown up on their old property. We have seen hints that Wittebro married a witch who given Dell and Eda’s resemblance was most likely a Clawthorne, So Belos, Hunter, and the Clawthorne sisters are all distantly related to each other. Darius is a rebel because of inspiration he gt from a past grimwalker clone of wittebro/hunters old life. Darius and Amity’s parents (top underground arms dealers) had a friendship in the past and tweets hint that he could still persuade her father to support the rebel side. Belos pretends to talk to the titan, but is actually talking to the collector who is also the god for the titan trappers. And King apposing Belos directly calls him out as a liar. Everybody fits and connects together... So far everybody except for one very important character (not Hooty)...

The owl beast. I theorize that the owl beast is King’s father. We saw in Knock Knock Knocking on Hooty’s Door that rather than being a mere curse the owl beast is actually a sentient creature that once roamed the boiling sea before being sealed away, and that when Lilith attempted to curse Eda she unknowingly combined her sister and the owl beast Naruto style. After careful analysis of the owl beast I have determined that it can only be a titan, and even found proof that it at lest knew of King. Walk with me

FIrst off when the owl beast was a free ranged creature it was caught and sealed away by the collector. The same collector who had issues with the titans and started a cult to collect them. The collector also dropped it in the sea sinstead of trying to keep it... The same sea they store titan carcasses in.

Secondly lets remeber what Bill said about Identifying Titans: They are always hungry, act like monarchs, and say Weh.

Also in Knock Kncok Knocking on Hooty’s Door we see Eda offer the small version of he owl beast a little bit of potion and it eats. The potions are not antibodies that render it to weak to posses her. They are food. The owl beast acts up when hungered and then calms down and sleeps once food offerings have been made.

Secondly they act like monarchs. Now at first this one stumped me because we haven’t seen enough of the owl beast to know if it acts like a monarch. It can be territorial, and flat out refused to change Eda back into a harpy when she tried to boss it into doing so, but nothing about it acting like a monarch. Then i realized that I did not need to look at just the owl beast, and could also look at Eda.

Eda’s first time rejecting and opposing the Emperor happens at her witches dual right before the “curse” takes effect; when she throws the match and declares she will never join a coven. Now it says she was mostly joining for Lilith, and obviously wouldn’t want to fight her for the position. But she kinda goes against her character here too. Lilith is Kid Eda’s only friend, and she is kinda over attached to her. She starts bawling as a kid when she trips, but stops when Lilith runs back to her, showing that it wasn’t so much hat her cut hurt, but that Lilith was getting away. When Eda starts school she joins the potion track that Lilith is already in, and joins the school grudgby team that Lilith is captain of. IN “thems the breaks kids” she tells Raine that she only stays at hexside is to go to school with Lilith. She drops out once Lilith leaves... her dropping out is played like a sudden reveal, like something she just decided. Also not only will she not be trying out for the Emperors coven today that she never will, then she turns to Lilith and does something truly out of character she tells her sister “good bye and asks her to just remember her in the future.”

Being who Eda is she never would have fought Lilith then... But given her attachment to her its out of character for her to close the door entirely on them being in he EC together. t would make more sense for her to say “Take Lilith now, put me on the waiting list for the next opening. I will see you soon sis”. But she didn’t and every time Lilith tried to telling her about an opening, all the supposed benefits, and how it could be like when they were kids again (something Eda is revealed in season  to still badly want) Eda always said no, said she refused to follow someone elses direction... event though she was more a follower as a kid, because something inside her did not want to listen to orders anymore, particularly from the “Emperor”. Somethig urged her away from it all.

Lastly Bill said that titans go Weh. I listened to the owl beasts screams and it sounds a little like Weh. Not exact, but about as close, more animalistic than just weh, but about as close as a person saying “tweet’ or “chirp” sounds like an actual bird. t didn’t sound anything like King, but you have to remember that King’s voice is still that of a little kids. It’s just beginning to change. The owl beast is older and makes thicker more raspy sounds, like an adults voice.

IF that is not a enough for you lets bring up the new theory about how the Owl beast has been shown to at times give Eda an advantage against Belos’s gones and has gotten rid of coven members sigils. I do not think we ever say Lilith’s wrists in season 1 , but we do in season  after she split the curse with Eda and she oddly enough doesn’t have one despite being in the emperors coven for 30 years. Darius and Eberwolf do not seem to have hem either, and while the artisits haven’t exactly been careful about remembering to draw sigils each time they should  the more fun theory is that Darius and Eberwolfs burned off during this

which wold work for the story, because then they could broadcast Eda and Raine playing together over the isles and save everyone from their sigils. This would also prove without a doubt that this powerful being is a cure for Beos’s corruption and pain. A being as powerful and godlike as the Titans.

All of this proves that the Owl beast is a titan, but not that it is King’s father. There could be other titans. After all the owl best doesn’t look much like King. TO which I say its basically already cannon that titans, particularly this one, can change forums and Kings powers aren't fully developed yet. But I have proof for that too.

First its been a few years since i watched 1x10 (which FYI is my least favorite episode of the owl house, it is so boring) but if I remember when Eda transforms into the Owl beast around just King it doesn’t try to hurt him. It walks around, interacts with him in a way he decides he can control it, then goes with him to the park to settle a dispute with a kid who wouldn’t let King on the slide. Parenting kinda

Secondly, and much more impressive, King’s Island is ancient and almost impossible to find unless you are or are with a titan, and Eda was by herself “looking for a place to hide from the coven scouts” when she found King. lets think about that for a second. Belos’s scouts are only on the bones burrow titan, Eda has many many hiding places in the night market or woods close by her house, and instead she just so happened to go to a uncharted island several hours flight away from all that looking for a hiding place from people she left in the dust. Then she went home immediately after finding King. No The owl beast is King’s father. He realized his son had recently hatched and would be at a stage where John Luke couldn’t keep him shut up in the castle anymore, so he took Eda to go get King.

My last reason for thinking this. It means King has been with his dad and mom the whole time, and that if he plays catch with Eda in her harpy form he is playing with both his parents together. I want this for him

[starcology-blog]

Battle for Mewni: The evolution of Marco Diaz

Hello my gems!

Thank you guys so much for the positive feedback on my Star post which can be found here, if you haven’t seen it. Today I wanted to talk about Marco Diaz! I have to be honest and say that I’m Starco trash, so I apologize to anyone reading this who isn’t a fan. But I felt Marco really went through it during Battle for Mewni and it all had to do with Star. His story line was my favorite in these episodes. If you guys would like an analysis of anyone else, let me know! I think I might do one on Moon and maybe even Ludo! Anyway, enough of my blabbering let’s get started!

We start the episode with Marco clearly being upset in Star’s absence. It’s 3 AM and he is just sulking. In the background, we can faintly hear some music and someone very nicely translated the lyrics and I will link that post here. This was done on purpose, this song is meant to mean something and tell us how Marco is really feeling.

Don’t get me wrong I would be pretty devastated if my best friend suddenly left without much of an explanation, but I certainly would not be listening to “lost love” songs. This is important even if Marco himself doesn’t realize it yet. I truly believe that he has feelings for Star and I’m not saying he doesn’t like or have feelings for Jackie. I think he does, but I think his feelings for Star were put into a box because Marco has had this idea of who he thinks his crush should be. His actions speak much louder than his words.

He can hardly eat, he isn’t sleeping and the poor guy won’t let his parents take down the decorations because he wants everything to be the same. And this is what is very telling about Marco and his character. Everyone should know by now that he is always fighting change. He wants to go on more adventures he says, but he won’t unless Star drags him into it (actions.)  He isn’t safe he says, but he continues to help Star not run into danger in the pilot. Again, what he says VS what he does. 

The next time we see Marco in Battle for Mewni is when he goes to The Butterfly Castle. He is hoping to find Star there, but he doesn’t. The poor heartbroken guy came with a box of cereal for her. That was his excuse to see her and it’s very sweet. Marco’s whole world has been turned upside down and the only person on his mind right now is Star and everything that’s important to her.  When my best friend and I were discussing the episode she was saying that when someone tells you they like you-- usually you have to sit back and kind of go over everything. Marco didn’t have time to think about it and rationalize anything.

 He needs things to feel normal for him again so he tries to go find answers. I believe Marco is of the mindset that if he can just get Star back then he can stuff this all away. In other words, he can begin to rationalize again.

Also, this subtle foreshadowing of River handing Marco the crown has me living. Well, I can’t guarantee that it’s foreshadowing, but I’m hoping it is. Anyway, side note over.

Marco consoles River after everything and helps him see that he could turn things around. It’s very similar to how he usually helps Star realize something. River even makes a point to mention that Marco sounds just like Moon. 

“You sound just like my wife and that’s just what I need.”  

I think it’s funny how they pointed this out specifically.They could have simply had River say “Thanks, Marco, that’s just what I needed to hear.” Or any other phrase really, but they picked that out. 

Why?

Because in this instance River highlights the bond he shares with his wife that Starco shares with each other. It isn’t a one sided thing. In the flashback, we see that River supports Moon when everyone else is trying to make decisions for her; he believes in her. Just like Moon believes in River. It’s the same way Starco believes in each other and this was a very subtle way of highlighting that.

While they are in the dungeon Marco manages to break free because of the butter and decides that he wants to fight for the Kingdom. River even tells him that he should just go because this isn’t his fight, but he doesn’t listen. He is a hero like Star and just like she has learned things from him-- he has learned from her too. He is willing to fight for her home and more importantly, he wants to do that for Star. He even mentioned it earlier when talking to River. While I do think Marco genuinely wanted to make River feel better because he cares about him-- I think his underlying motivation comes back to Star. He wants her to have a place to come back to and he wants her to know that she can come back to their home on Earth too. It’s that motivation that is driving his fight right now and making him forget about being “safe”.

“Guys look I’m not a soldier either, but there’s a time when you have to get off the sidelines and get involved. And if the four of us work together we can save the true king of Mewni.”

He is brave enough to go down there and try to get the key from Ludo himself. This is part of his personal growth. I don’t think that Marco has grown as much as Star over the course of the two seasons mainly because he didn’t need to. He has been coming out of his own shell slowly but surely which is a great thing. Even though Marco has always been the “Safe Kid”, he always jumps in to help Star out. He even did this in the pilot when Ludo first attacked her.

But what I like about this is that he has confidence in his voice, a true confidence which is not something that we get often from Marco. Normally, he needs Star around to be there to have his back in a fight, but right now he is doing it on his own.

And one of best scenes in my opinion. Marco and Star finally see each other again. You can see the smile come beaming onto his face and you can tell he’s truly present in the moment He starts to babble about how he thought he was never going to see her again. If Star hadn’t cut him off with a hug I wonder what he would have said. I think for once his words would have aligned with his actions. But we will never know!  Curse you, Daron! 

Either way, the hug alone is very sweet and I love that there isn’t any awkwardness here. Marco isn’t putting his foot in his mouth or telling Star something like “Oh I totally missed you, friend.” Or mentioning Jackie. I think that’s because as I said this caused a shift in Marco. He was forced to confront everything that he feels for Star and while there hasn’t been time to process it-- it’s still there via his actions.

I love the little smile he gets here when Star calls him cute. It’s very bashful and honestly too adorable for words. I think it shows how comfortable he subconsciously is with this idea. I just really love it. I’m trash, okay?

This isn’t really a big deal, but I thought it was kind of cute that he wanted his beret back. Hmmm, liking it when Star calls you cute, huh Marco? I see you.

Buffrog and Moon luckily come to bail him out. (Also, lol bless petty Marco leaving them there.) But anyway, he becomes very worried for Star and tells Moon they have to get to her. He wants to make sure that she’s safe and his expression is kind of heartbreaking. Earlier he was laughing at Ludo and now he’s actually scared for her. 

When they get to Star and see she is using the “Whispering Spell” it is clear that Marco is obviously very worried for her. I’m sure he is standing there wondering how they’re going to find her and wondering why she is talking from inside Ludo. There are a million questions, but at least in this moment, he knew she was okay and safe.

It isn’t until Toffee comes back right before his eyes and crushes the rest of the wand. Shock is apparent on all of their faces and it’s heart-wrenching to see. I think in this moment that Marco is forced to confront those feelings. It’s hard not to when you think that person is gone and a million emotions are flying through him.

The shock and pain that is captured in his expression are great and it’s almost like you’re watching him relive every moment that they’ve ever had together. He’s seeing just how much Star has always meant to him. He’s young so I can still even say that he might not exactly be saying he loves her-- but he at least has to realize by this point that he has feelings for her.

The feelings all bubble to the surface as he punches a hole THROUGH Toffee. A great parallel to earlier when he punched the shackle and couldn’t break it-- but now overcome with all these emotions he is able to punch through someone. Are you getting it? Through someone’s body!? He was about to commit murder! It’s probably one of the best if not the best Marco moment.

Of all the places he could punch Toffee though he picks the place where his heart should be. (Great symbolism btw to show how cold Toffee really is.) That’s probably how Marco feels right now like his insides are melted into goo and like there is a permanent hole there without Star. And what makes it worse is that his efforts are for nothing. Toffee heals and throws him into a wall. Neither he or Moon could make a difference and Toffee’s just walking away victorious. I can’t even begin to imagine how that must feel and nor do I want to. Marco is going through the unimaginable (casual Hamilton reference.)

Anyway, Buffrog wakes Marco so he can help Moon. This is so pure because yes, Marco is consoling her, but I think he too is hoping. He doesn’t know how all that magic stuff works and even though the logical side of him is telling him that Star is gone-- he can’t let that be true. Instead, he chooses to hope with Moon.

When Star comes back they’re standing there in complete awe of her and I’m sure more emotions are flooding through Marco. He’s overjoyed, confused and probably very happy that magic actually exists.

They all run over to Star and I love the way he says “Hi” to her. There is so much love in his tone and I can hear him the best out of anyone. I think this was done on purpose. We should now know that everything is different even more different than it was when Star confessed her feelings. While Marco, of course, hasn’t confessed his feelings verbally, I think his actions have spoken a lot louder than any words ever could.

But, because Marco is who he is I don’t think this will stick around for long. Now that Star is okay the dust will settle and I think we will see Marco fighting his feelings. If he hasn’t realized yet that he likes her at least on a subconscious level, then I don’t think he ever will. But fret not Staco fans, I do think he has realized that by his actions throughout this whole arc. For any people who like Jackie ( I like her myself)  don’t worry, I have full faith in Daron and the team. I don’t think Jackie will be treated terribly. I do think Marco will go through a lot of confusion, but I think ultimately that it will all turn out okay.

 I’m excited to see where they do take his journey from here. As I said if I had to guess I think he will go back to denial and that things might get slightly awkward-- but I think overall it will lead to a great story. Marco, in the beginning, wanted so badly for nothing to change. But, it has and now he has to come face to face with it all-- no matter how much he might want to push it all away.

P.S. I love how throughout this whole thing. Neither Star nor Marco refers to each other as a friend or a best friend. They both used to do that all the time in plenty of other episodes, but this time all the walls are down and feelings were totally, totally, totally, present.

So, buckle up Starco fans, it’s about to get a little weird and a little wild for season three. And I can’t wait!

[agwic]

ok. it's time. time for me to post my opinions on the svtfoe finale. and svtfoe as a whole but that's kind of a given considering that it's the finale.

so, where to start? I think I'm gonna start by explaining what svtfoe is. it's an animated disney show which parodies both magical girl and disney princess tropes, as well as being a reverse isekai which is always nice. great premise, though its execution in season 1 is meh at best, but honestly that's just personal taste and season 1 does a great job introducing us to the three core characters so I see no reason to complain. really the only reason to point out that season 1 was kinda meh is to counter people implying that the show declined as it went on, when in fact it was always of ultimately very mixed quality, with most of the worst episodes being in the first half of the show, such as banagic incident, lobster claws, and pizza thing.

anyways, for most of season 1, svtfoe was a thoroughly unremarkable kids show, so who cares. however, throughout seasons 1 and 2, a nice little plot about a genuinely threatening gooey man is the real highlight of the show, rather than the supposed premise of the show, which was a parody isekai. this is irrelevant to my analysis of the finale, but I felt it necessary to point out that centaurworld appears to have stolen svtfoe season 1 and 2's premise. anyways, halfway through season 2, the part of the show I like starts, where the show starts parodizing the fantasy genre in its plot, not just in the mediocre one-off episodes which are more of a magical girl parody than a general parody of the fantasy genre.

this shift completes with the show shifting from reverse isekai to regular isekai, with the show's secondary protagonist, "normal" earth "boy", marco diaz, going to the magical kingdom the show's main protagonist, star comes from. many people mark this as when the show starts getting worse, but like, the show was really not good at doing the reverse isekai stuff, and all of its best episodes function as just a normal isekai, so I feel like this was inevitable. however, another reason people say this is when the show gets worse is that it happens a few episodes after genuinely threatening goo man is defeated, and everyone agrees genuinely threatening goo man is the best villain. I agree that he's the most threatening and well-written, but ultimately all he represents is pure evil, which isn't all that exciting from a thematic perspective, so I actually disagree on this point. the next villain after him is the rightful heir of the monarchy which star is the false heir to, as it is revealed in season 3 that a random peasant was actually placed on the throne a few hundred years ago because some deific entities didn't like the rightful heir being half-monster. I think that this is a very interesting villain thematically, and they manage it well, by portraying her as being more a victim of the MHC(aforementioned deific entities) than as a villain in her own right, and she is defeated by making her into a baby again instead of killing her because she was really only a villain because of her fucked up upbringing. solidly good themes going on here. questioning the validity of the monarchy, showing how many problems bigotry causes, showing the MHC to be just as incompetent as the rest of us, it's good.

the last villain is an actual fascist propped up by the MHC. like, I am not exaggerating, her stated goal in the story is genocide. also she was introduced as a gag character in season 1 where she already showed off her insane authoritarian tendencies so overall I think she was set up very well. I will also note that in this final season, with a a bunch of fascists as the main antagonists, the show had a very rushed production schedule. you may be getting SU flashbacks. anyways, this time they solve the fascism by killing the MHC who are responsible for it, and abolishing the monarchy which allowed it to fester, which sounds to me like exactly what fans would want, considering how they reacted to the SU finale. and, to be fair, I liked both this and the SU finale, because SU is a show about redemption so of course the fascists would get redeemed and also the fascists were just a metaphor for other less reprehensible stuff but this is not a post about the SU finale because the SU finale was actually mediocre and I don't care if people hate it. anyways, the response to the svtfoe finale was actually worse than the SU finale. but to explain why, I need to explain several things which were going on in the background of the show, for context.

so, the elephant in the room is the thing svtfoe was most infamous for prior to the finale. the love polyhedron. some people call it marco's harem, but it technically had two focal points in both star and marco, and polyhedron is a funny word, so I call it the love polyhedron. ever since season 1, it was blatantly obvious that the female lead, star, and the "male" lead, marco, would get together by the end of the show, and acting like this was every possible to not happen is wishful thinking, mainly because disney wouldn't allow it. also, unlike most "take the male lead and female lead and push them together" ships, starco appears to have had some actual chemistry(I can't tell, my criterion for shipping things is if it would spite people I dislike), to the point where it was actually one of the more popular ships for the show. however, because this trope is stupid, they obviously can't just have them mutually fall in love early on and then start dating in season 1 and not have any issues for the rest of the show. no, we need rivals! first rival: tom, star's ex, who is flirting with marco 90% of the time he's on screen and is pretty much the third main character to the show and a romantic rival and potential love interest to both of them. I think this is funny. second rival: jackie, marco's childhood crush who he starts dating, but it doesn't work out and also she is dating a girl in the last season so there are implications there. honestly, I think it was well done, but I do think jackie probably deserved more screen time since she's the most emotionally intelligent character in the show. other rivals: heckapoo, who really isn't treated as a rival and actually belongs in like two other sections of this post so I'll discuss her later. janna, who is also not treated like a rival but she does pretend to have a crush on marco(it actually is canon that her crush on marco is fake) and also flirts with star sometimes so I'm counting her here, and she's not actually that important other than that everyone loves her and is correct to do so. kelly, who marco briefly dates, and also she has an ex of her own and honestly there's not much to say about her other than what the fuck were they thinking when they wrote goblin dogs. I think that's everyone. anyways, the point is, this was stupid.

next elephant in the room is the fact that marco is written with a lot of subtext implying he's trans(which was intentional, one of the storyboards features him wearing a trans flag dress which uh couldn't actually be more intentional). like, he regularly dresses up as a girl, and likes doing so, which means nothing. however, when dressed as a girl, he uses she/her pronouns most of the time, and also refers to himself as a girl, and also, once again, likes doing this. personally I headcanon him has genderfluid, because of the neverzone, a dimension where he is in his 30s and looks like an over-the-top action movie protagonist and is dating hekapoo. like, you could argue that was overcompensating, but he seems genuinely distraught when he loses his abs and genuinely enjoys it whenever he goes to the neverzone so I think he also likes the idea of being a manly man so genderfluid it is. and like, I'm pretty sure they could not have included more subtext implying that he's trans without disney striking it down. like disney would not allow the male lead of one of their shows have his gender transed. so, I count this as a win.

next up, back to the love polyhedron, focusing on the non-stupid parts of it: star, marco, and tom. well also jackie wasn't stupid, but not relevant to this subject. first, let's talk about marco and tom. they're constantly flirting, and their relationship is consistently framed as romantic. I could provide evidence for this, but I don't need to, because if you've watched the show, you know this to be the case. next, let's talk about star and tom. tom is introduced as star's ex, and kind of a jerk. however, for stupid reasons, they start dating again in early season 3. he goes through a character arc, and stops being a jerk, and ultimately his relationship with star is perfectly fine, with him just being a bit clingy at times. when they break up, it's on perfectly amiable terms, and the reason is basically because tom knows that starco is inevitable and star obviously can't have two boyfriends. now I shall present the following screenshot from the show, which takes place while star and tom are dating:

next up, we need to talk about starco. like, there is more to their relationship than "she's a girl, disney is somehow under the impression that he's a boy, so they kinda have to get together". to start off with, the two have really good chemistry in season 1, and do start to develop feelings for each other, and honestly it works perfectly fine. then tom shows up, and tries to use some ancient magic thing to make him and star fated to fall in love, but marco ends up making the magic target him and star instead. this, if never addressed again, would make this ship the stupidest thing imaginable. however, it is addressed again. after three seasons of love polyhedron shenanigans, they finally realize that this whole stupid disaster of a situation is because they're both in love, and in fact that all their previous relationships may have in fact been ruined by that stupid ancient magic making them fated to fall in love. so, naturally, the find a way to undo the magic, and it works. tada! no longer fated to fall in love in-universe. this is actually very good thematically, as it makes clear that being "fated to fall in love", if it were real, would be a bad thing and a very stupid reason to start dating. of course, they still both had mutual feelings for each other, and at this point have already dated and broken up with all other potential partners(well tom's still there but he's chill and breaks up so that star can have her disney-enforced maximum of one boyfriend), so in the finale, star and marco start dating, and it's chill, and everyone liked it.

just kidding, this is probably the most objectional part of the finale! like, people have worse complaints, but this is the worst complaint people have about the finale which actually makes sense, which is why I devoted so much time to it, and also am addressing it first. like yeah, in a perfect world, tom, marco, and star would all be dating, and marco would be even more canonically trans than he already is, but we don't live in a perfect world so unfortunately we're just left with a giant pile of subtext, which we're gonna have to settle with. though honestly, I think that if svtfoe had aired a few years later, stomco would be treated as canon, similar to how sashannarcy is in the amphibia fandom. but alas, the svtfoe finale killed the fandom a couple years too early for polyamorous ships to become mainstream. so, anyways, the point is, sure it was annoying to have canon starco in the finale, but starco was fine, and tom is still there so he can just pop in as soon as canon ends and solve the issue. so, overall, biggest issue with the finale, but not that big of an issue. now let's get into with the issues with the finale which caused the fandom to die, and are all incredibly stupid.

so, I know that implied I wouldn't get into another tangent, but I would like to establish something important before I get into the next part: star's spells don't count as people. because if they did, star would have major moral issues long before the finale. like, at absolute best, star would be doing the moral equivalent of harry potter's house elves, if her spells are people, and I think most people here can agree that is not a morally enviable position. there are two ways to think of the spell episodes then, that are consistent with this premise. the first is that they are non-canon, which is fine, other episodes are also probably non-canon. the second explanation is that the spells are just extensions of star, which also works, considering that she created them, and they all kind of act like her. both of these make significantly more sense than the spells being people who deserve to be treated fairly by star, since she does not ever treat them fairly, and is never implied to have to treat them fairly.

now it's time to get back to the finale, and explain what happened in it, specifically. star destroyed "the magic". this very obviously is not all magic in the multiverse, as pony head is still floating, tom is still a demon, dragoncycles still exist, etc. this refers specifically to the magic of glossaryck, and his creations, the MHC, and the royal magic wand. also, a few horses that were lying around in the realm of magic. anyways, in this show, magic is very clearly a metaphor for authoritarianism. the royal magic wand is the sign of the monarchy, and the MHC prop up a fascist for basically no reason. glossaryck is harder to fit into this metaphor, but he does cooperate with toffee so I don't think it's reasonable to call him morally righteous. so, when star destroys the magic, she kills like half a dozen people, most of whom were actively supporting a genocide, and a few horses. and yet, most fans of svtfoe call this a magic genocide, and cite it as the main reason the finale is awful. they argue that all magical creatures are dead, which is provably false, pony head is alive and well. they argue that star killed the spells, but star was already using the spells as living weapons so if you care about the rights of spells, there were issues before this. the horses dying is sad, but the horses were already dying because the evil horse was killing them, and also I think that we can all agree that killing a few horses to stop a literal genocide is acceptable. and sure, people argue that star could have defeated mina(the fascist propped up the MHC) and her solarian warriors without destroying the magic, but the show does all but say "no, the only way to stop her is to destroy the magic". like, literally the entire supporting cast of the show get an uncurable death curse in an attempt to defeat just one solarian warrior, and mina has hundreds of them. and even if you do think that it would be worth waging a hopeless war to stop them, it wouldn't even stop the genocide, becuase the show went and said "hey, the solarian warriors have all the monsters right here. they are currently pushing them off a cliff. if you do not stop them in the next 10 minutes they are going to commit genocide" which was kind of blunt but apparently necessary since some people still don't get that destroying the magic was clearly set up as the only solution to this.

furthermore, destroying the magic was a thematically appropriate way to resolve an antagonist who represented fascism. like, the alternative would probably have been dealing with all the solarians somehow, and sticking marco and star as king and queen since moon obviously fucked up, or alternatively eclipsa and globgor since they're the rightful rulers and also represent unity between monsters and mewmans, the former of which is obviously stupid, and the latter of which is literally what caused this mess and also it would imply the monarchy is legitimate, which is literally the same argument the solarian warriors were making, and one which has been thoroughly disproven by the show. like, I feel like we can all agree that the solution to fascism is not removing the "bad guys" in charge of the authoritarian system and replacing them with "good guys"(also something refuted by svtfoe with moon, the supposed "good guy" also helping prop up the fascist), it's to dismantle the authoritarian system entirely. and magic is a metaphor for that system in svtfoe. so yeah, svtfoe did good on that front. and some people do argue that moon didn't face enough consequences for her actions, but firstly, she did in fact get deposed from the throne and lost what little respect her daughter had for her, which is solidly something, and secondly, a kids tv show can't have the main character kill her own mother. honestly killing the rest of the MHC, many of whom were likable characters, was already kinda pushing it. oh, and thirdly, retributive justice is bad actually. the MHC had to die because they were actively causing genocide. the genocide attempt has been thwarted now, so no need to kill anyone else. not to mention that moon wasn't really on board with genocide, she just thought the people calling for genocide wouldn't really do genocide, which sounds stupid until you look into literally any real-world politics. many people argue that the show should have actually shown the consequences of all this instead of just showing the fascists running off and then ending the show, but like, that wouldn't be interesting, even if done correctly, and significantly more likely than doing it correctly would be them propping up a consitutional monarchy with star/marco or eclipsa/globgor as the rulers and that would be really stupid.

now, there's one last thing which the svtfoe finale does that people have problems with. you see, svtfoe takes place in a multiverse. and the only way of travelling between dimensions is through dimensional scissors, which work via hekapoo, a member of MHC, and thus would stop working with the destruction of magic. this is an issue for obvious reasons. sure, they could have just said "haha fuck you none of the characters can ever see each other again" like most isekais do when they end, but that sucks, even when thematically appropriate, and this is not a case where that is thematically appropriate. so, there are several solutions to this. one is to just have the scissors keep working. this would have been stupid, as it contradicts pre-established lore, but ultimately would have been fine. another is to have hekapoo live, since she was solidly the most sympathetic member of the MHC, and neverzone-marco's girlfriend. however, that would both contradict the pre-established lore, and also soften the blow of everything, since even if hekapoo may have been the nicest of the MHC, and wasn't fully on board with plan "prop up a fascist for no reason", she also didn't really try to stop that plan, and also she was fully on board with dying, since she was there when star came up with the plan to destroy the magic. however, they instead did a solution I think is actually good. they made it so when magic was destroyed, all the dimensions got cleaved together, merging into one super-dimension. I know WoG says it was just earth and mewni, but the dragoncycles actively disprove this. WoG also says it was the power of love that did this, and it's implied that it was, and honestly that's a fine solution even if the power of love hasn't existed in this magic system thus far since 1. starco's love for each other was pretty well established and 2. there were presumably other people in love who would have been separated across dimensions. like, it's a perfectly workable solution when the magic system dug the show into a corner regarding this. people often are like "oh no but merging all the dimensions would cause so much chaos and so many people would die" but like, once again, there was not a better solution here. and not that many people would die, pretty much all dimensions we've been shown except earth are very used to having contact to other dimensions, and could handle it. as for earth, well, I'm sure they can adapt to the new circumstances. like, yeah, I wish they could have had a nice little epilogue showing society adapting to the new circumstances, but the production of the last season was very rushed, so I'm fine with them leaving that up to audience interpretation, especially since, once again, they would have done that badly considering that disney has opinions on the monarchy. and the only reason leaving what they didn't have time to put in the show to the audience's interpretation didn't work out is because the audience went ahead and assumed the worst at every possible junction.

now, while I am done defending the finale itself, I feel like it would be remiss for me not to use this as an opportunity to express my theory as to how the cosmology of the svtfoe universe works. so, let's circle back to how the power of love was a stupid explanation for the dimensions getting cleaved together. because you see, "cleave" is a funny word. you can cleave something together, but you can also cleave something apart. this is something pointed out by glossaryck, the most powerful character in svtfoe, a while before the events of the finale, which is, by the way, titled "Cleaved". now, glossaryck is implied to have created magic, and canonically stated to have created hekapoo, who allows for travel between dimensions. this means that prior to glossaryck, there was no travel between dimensions. however, as previously mentioned, most dimensions not only are used to multiversal travel, but rely on it. like, quest buy is an entire dimension which is just a store, that obviously can't work unless there's people coming from outside the store to buy stuff. same basic idea for the bounce lounge, and other party dimensions. now, one explanation is obviously that these dimensions were empty, or otherwise had something else in them, until they were made into what they now are after the advent of dimensional scissors, but my theory feels more elegant than that. before I reveal my theory, I would like to give one more piece of evidence. the realm of magic, which was created by glossaryck, seems to have a portal to every dimension. my theory is that when glossaryck created magic, there was only one dimension, which he cleaved apart, creating the realm of magic in the gaps between the dimensions. and thus, of course all the dimensions would be cleaved back together when magic is destroyed.

oh one last thing, shout out to @xidnaf's anarchist reading of the finale, which is what got me to consider that maybe the reddit hivemind was wrong about the finale being bad, and also where I borrowed a lot of my stuff about how destroying magic is cool and good thematically from, and also this one random youtube video which I found on accident which also makes some bad points but it is where I got a lot of stuff on how the show presents destroying magic as being the only solution from.

ok i think that's everything

[aleatar]

Oh yeah, I remember Wander. And yes, you're right, he's happy outgoing guy with positive approach and helps people to be positive as well and brings the best of them. And that's still a work to do - it also can be defined as "working on yourself", except he doesn't work on himself, but on others. So there are, even if not literally, some obstacles for him to overcome.

Also (I've read about it a lil bit, ngl), flat character arc usually contains a "test" that opposes the "truth that has been already figured out in the beginning" of the protagonist. And in case of Wander Over Yonder we can see that example - if I remember correctly, there's an empire ruled by some guy-tyrant (forgot the name), who wants to conquer the universe (figures), and, ofc, his "subjects" don't have a great time under his control, meaning that's a "test", an opposition to Wander's happy-go-lucky approach, as in the "truth". So yeah, I can definitely see that as an obstacle for Wander to overcome as well.

About The Owl House - guess, I have to watch that now. But I really doubt that anything can reach the level of Gravity Falls - it's one of a kind. *chef's kiss* Star vs the forces of evil kinda gave the similar vibes as GF at the beginning, but then... The ending was kinda rushed and crumpled, to say the least, meh.

My issue with Luz Noceda (The Owl House)

For those who have followed me for a while may already know that i like talking about The Owl House. It isn´t a show i talked about a lot but it’s still one in enjoy analysing. 

Now,while The Owl House it’s a series i think is great there is one issue i have with the protagonist Luz Noceda: Her lack of real character flaws.

You see, Luz is a character that find enjoyable. She is funny, cute and a good person. She delivers some nice moments in the series and it’s hard to hate her. She has had decent character development since the Season One like opening up to other kids and learning to be more responsible.

My issue with her is that she appears to lack depth in comparison to the rest of the characters: King has his huge ego and insecurities, Amity has problems with her family, Willow lacked confidence, Eda and Lilith had their own conflict. What i mean is that Luz is overshadowed by the rest of the cast,who usually have more interesting conflicts going on than her.

I get it. Luz is the protagonist, that means that she has to be a good person and help everyone since she supposed to be the heroine. She is supposed to be easy for the audience to identify with.

Or does she have to be written this way?

This is when i talk about one of my favourite character protagonists, Rex Salazar from Generator Rex

For those who don’t know: Generator Rex was a series that aired in the early 2010´s. It was created by the company Man of Action. They are known for creating Ben 10 franchise too.

Generator Rex its set in a post-apocalyptic world were nanobots have invaded every living organism on Earth. A person is capable of turning into a mutant (E.V.O.) whenever they least expect. That´s when Providence comes in: They are in charge of controlling these dangerous mutants to protect the human population.

Rex Salazar is a human hybrid EVO that is capable of controlling the nanobots in his body to create gigantic metal robot body parts. He can also cure people or animals that have turn into EVO´s too.

Much like Luz Noceda, Rex Salazar is latino. He is both Mexican and Argentinian. His culture it´s important for his arc because he doesn´t have memories from where he came from and who his family is.

He is a very caring and selfless guy. He does what he does because he wants to help people. He is an empathic and nice guy.

But, on the other hand. he can be arrogant, very reckless, impulsive, doesn´t like following orders, can be a jerk and doesn´t think things through. He struggles a lot his not knowing his past. That makes him do certain risky choices to learn more about it.

Being a EVO hybrid, he stuck in this conflict between the EVO’s and humans. As the story goes on, Rex learns that EVO´s aren´t all bad and humans aren´t completely good either. There tons of episodes in the series that make Rex gain a new perspective on this conflict, understanding that its more complex that it seems.

What i´m trying to say it´s that Rex has a real character flaws. He changes a lot through out the series and does questionable things. He is a very interesting character. In comparison, Luz Noceda feels like she lacks this complexity that Rex has.

I could go a bit further and talk about other character i really like: Lilo Pelekai from Lilo and Stitich.

Lilo Pelekai lives in Hawaii. She isn´t latinx like Luz Noceda or Rex Salazar. I want to focus on her because she shares similarities with Luz Noceda: Both being POC girl characters protagonists of their own story and both are usually headcanoned to be neurodivergent by their respective fandom. They both have issues with fitting in with other kids too.

The difference is that Lilo struggles with understanding how Nani, her older sister, is trying to take care of her in the film and she sometimes does bad stuff like hitting Myrtle (its understable why she got angry at her) or not listening to Nani. She shows having PTSD symptoms that come from her parents´ death and she misses them a lot.

In Lilo and Stitch the series (yes,there is a series) Lilo sometimes does bad things to impress others. Like many kids at her age she can be reckless, selfish and impulsive. I think she is allowed to have more flaws than Luz has while still being a very nice girl. 

In conclusion: Luz Noceda´s main problem is that she lacks real flaws unlike other The Owl House characters. This isn´t exclusive of Luz, some animated shows struggle with having interesting main protagonists too. I compare her to other characters (POC) that i think have more depth than she has. 

The Owl House isn´t over yet, there is chance this may change in future episodes. We haven´t seen Luz confronting Camila about having lied to her and getting stuck in the Boiling Isles. There is hope for her character yet.

Note: If anyone wants to make a response to this post with another post talking about Luz Noceda´s character flaws and her development, you can tag me in your post and i´ll read it.