#they have completely turned buttercup into an obnoxious tomboy Mary Sue in the reboot

[gch1995]

OMG! I’m watching the 2016 PPG reboot on reboot to make fun of its awfulness by comparing it to the far superior OG cartoon from 98’-05 version, and I just got finished watching the atrocious episode “Musclecup.” I know the girls are supposed to be very precocious for kindergarteners-first graders, and I know that Buttercup is the “toughest fighter.” However, I still am in awe at the sheer stupidity of the writers of this episode, who thought it would be a “genius” idea to write a storyline in which Buttercup, a super-powered little girl in the first grade, actually gets addicted to steroids because she wants to bulk up her muscles!

First of all, Buttercup is a child, so this storyline feels gross and unnecessary, even if she is the “toughest fighter?”

Secondly, it doesn’t even make any sense as to why Buttercup thinks she needs to bulk up her muscles to a beef-cake level since she was born with superhuman strength that easily allows her to overpower the average person, anyway.

Thirdly, it’s annoying that Blossom and Bubbles are yet again rendered to be completely helpless and ineffectual by the writers together against one villain together without Buttercup, the brash and brawny tomboy, there to swoop in and save them. I know I’ve complained about Buttercup occasionally getting the short end of the stick when she had centrics the OG cartoon in which she was either getting into trouble, getting punished, getting double standards, and/or suffering exceedingly and/or unfairly with the world getting turned against her, sometimes to the point of needlessly mean-spirited overkill of character derailment for either her and/or other characters in the episode she cared about. Yeah, the writers not knowing how to write Buttercup centrics where she was framed in a positive light, being treated fairly, and/or granted the same individual compassion and emotional support of her loved ones that she normally had otherwise, and that her sisters were granted individually in their centrics when they were in the wrong or feeling down, was an occasionally recurring flaw in the writing on an overall great show that started showing up sometime in her centrics in S2.

However, in the 2016 reboot, the writers seemed to have overcorrected the writing flaw of Buttercup’s occasional designated butt-monkey status in the OG cartoon by turning her into the main character Mary Sue of the show, who gets the most centrics, and who does all the saving by herself without the other two girls most of the time. In the reboot, this now has created a new problem of diminishing Blossom’s and Bubbles’ individual strengths and relevance in the story.

Not to mention the fact that reboot!Buttercup’s personality is pretty shitty. In the OG cartoon, she was generally portrayed as a jerk with a heart of gold. Here in the reboot, she’s been flanderdized into an openly arrogant, crude, exceedingly aggressive, disrespectful, loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, obnoxious, petty, nonchalant, and selfish brat. She disrespects Ms. Keane and mocks her when she’s teaching a grammar lesson to be a class clown in “Painbow.” In “Professor-Proofed” she gets her dad hurt by causing him to lose focus, sneeze, and get hurt when he’s working in his lab with a dangerous chemical by peppering her pancakes right in front of him, then doesn’t ever apologize to him for it, and even ends the episode doing it again with an evil smirk on her face right in front of him, causing him to get hurt all over again after sneezing when the pepper goes up his nose. She tries to steal one of Bubbles pigtails in an attempt to catch a crawdad in “ClawDad,” and didn’t apologize. In “Little Octi-Lost,” she steals Octi from Bubbles in the dead of night when they are all asleep to “teach her a lesson” for being so into it, which isn’t a good reason at all, then realizes she wants to go play with Octi herself, takes him to a state fair, and then tries to cover it up when she loses him, rather than tell the truth. In the episode “Man Up” she violently blows up in an aggressive rage, recklessly destroys an entire state fair, and accidentally gives Bubbles a black eye all because a villain calls her “princess,” and she hates being called that. The moral of the episode was supposed to be learning to temper her aggression, but unlike in the OG Buttercup centric, “Makes Zen To Me,” the lesson doesn’t actually end up sticking with Buttercup at all, and she ends the episode reverting back to being an overly aggressive and obnoxious jerk because “status quo is comedy gold.”

Granted, out of the three girls in the OG cartoon, Buttercup did have the greatest tendency to be the most aggressive fighter with the greatest instigator and rebel tendencies, and she had some ooc instances of suddenly being a very uncharacteristically greedy, sadistic, and remorseless jerk than usual to fit certain contrived plots in bad episodes, such as “Moral Decay,” though almost everyone in the fandom despises that segment the most of the OG series and pretends it never happened because it was such ridiculously out of character and mean-spirited derailing writing for both Buttercup and her entire family in order to turn her into the villain and punish her harshly in ways that didn’t feel fair or make any sense.

However, generally, og Buttercup genuinely did have the heart of a hero and love her family more than anything. While she did have trouble apologizing to Elmer for teasing him in “Paste Makes Waste,” she genuinely did still feel bad about it, even if she had some trouble apologizing for it, and she did learn to swallow her pride and do it at the end. She and Blossom tended to argue a lot because they both were very stubborn people, who had trouble making compromises, and admitting to it when they were wrong, and she liked to mess with Bubbles the most. However, she generally hated seeing either of her sisters getting hurt, and she was always quick to defend them in battles against threats. She generally felt bad about hurting her sisters, and apologized all the time.

Buttercup occasionally got irritated when the Professor became a doting, sentimental, and overprotective Dad™️ with her and/or her sisters in the OG cartoon in episodes like “Uh Oh, Dynamo,” “Mr. Mojo’s Rising,” “PowerProf.,” and “Oops I Did It Again,” especially because she didn’t like to be doted on. She got in trouble with the Professor more than her sisters, partially because she was genuinely caught being disobedient, making bad choices, or instigating fights with her sisters by him more often than they were, but also partly because the writers dealt her an unfair hand in the world in her centrics since they liked turning her into the designated butt monkey when she got in trouble in them in a couple of instances, such as “Moral Decay” and “Down ‘n’ Dirty.” However, even at her worst and most OOC, she would never have tried to deliberately hurt her dad for shits and giggles like she did in reboot episode “Professor-Proofed.” She and her sisters also never would have deliberately sabotaged one of the Professor’s romances for their own benefit because they wanted him to be happy in the OG cartoon.

Fourthly, I know he’s not in the episode, but if the girls are this irresponsible and stupid in the reboot, then why would Professor Utonium ever think to trust them to stay at home alone, while he goes to work for the day? Oh, right...It’s because he’s also been reduced to an idiotic, incompetent, irresponsible, neglectful, reckless, and selfish parent 9 out of ten times in the reboot, who has little to no knowledge of how to actually be a good parent at all, and usually only appears to make things worse whenever he does appear anyway by being a cliche and mostly unfunny bumbling bad sitcom dad. In the OG cartoon, it’s different because the girls are mature enough to handle staying by themselves for a few hours, even while he’s out at work, though he got babysitters for them when he was out at night to be safe, but in this reboot version, the girls shouldn’t be trusted to stay at home alone by him.

Finally, that’s the other issue in the reboot. All of the adults are morons who have no common sense most of the time. The writers really expect me to believe that an adult would be totally okay with giving a little girl steroids without any thought to just how gross and unethical that is? Yeah, I know it’s a cartoon, and even in the OG cartoon, the city of Townsville were complete idiots at times to fit certain plots, but I don’t believe any of them would actually ever be stupid and unethical enough to give steroids to a little girl with superpowers to help her bulk up her muscles, especially not without warning her first about how it could be dangerous.