#tl;dr some good well-paced seasonal fun (but it's no k project)

[crehador]

at its halfway mark, ayaka has basically solidified itself as a) not gora's best work imo but b) perfectly watchable and reasonably entertaining

(pls show us more of brother lipstick and brother priest)

though it's a little early to tell for sure, and will depend on how the rest of the series unfolds, i feel like pacing is where ayaka really shines. to me it's never felt too rushed or too slow, taking its time to introduce the characters, their dynamics, and the world setting

just hoping the final six episodes will be enough for them to wrap everything up in a satisfying manner (unless it plans on having a second season/cour, which i certainly wouldn't mind)

the other remarkable thing about ayaka is it's done a damn good job of tackling one of the greatest challenges in fiction: writing a fourteen-year-old

(THIS IS AN ANGEL)

maybe the bar for this is so low it's buried underground, but genuinely i think yukito (who is actually fifteen but close enough) is just so well-written. they give him a downer of a past without making him a complete downer of a character, and he exhibits a mixture of hope and insecurity that feels incredibly real

i think with yukito at the center of the cast, it's easy to care about both the mundane and the magical. the mysteries of the past, the threat of the ara-mitama, and yukito's wish to make friends all feel like stakes i'm invested in—no one thing heavily outweighs the others

balance seems to be a main theme in the story itself as well, so it's quite neat that the series does balance so well from a craft standpoint too

looking forward to the second half!

[bubleboobo]

I still think there was something incomprehensibly wrong with the vld fandom. Like a lot of shows have had absolute shit writing and disaster endings. They don’t all randomly and suddenly decide there was some massive conspiracy to edit the last season into something entirely different. Like I’m sure behind the scenes was a wreck but I also think maybe the show was just bad

this is long because fuck voltron, i have a lot to say.

i haven’t been in that many fandoms, so i can only speak from my experience as the lonely 16 year old i was back then, but i do know that the show sold itself as being inclusive, claimed it’d handle it’s characters of color with respect and promised they’d give them proper development over and over again (hunk was nothing but a joke, lance’s development never happened, allura was tossed around as a love interest and got killed off), and baited its audience (broadly comprised of lgbt teens) with the inclusion of lgbt characters.

from teasing the possibility of pidge being trans (she wasn’t), to being vague about making popular ships canon (they didn’t), to straight up announcing and hyping up a main character being gay and having a fiancé (and killing him after less than a minute of screentime)

by this point, it’s a known fact that the behind the scenes was a w r e c k, and the executive producers did absoultely nothing to actually try and deliver the show they promised or at least portray their characters respectfully (and were awful at planning and making sure the show had any cohesion at all)

DreamWorks, Joaquim Dos Santos, and Lauren Montgomery, after claiming to make content “as inclusive as possible,” failed to follow basic best practices on handling diverse characters respectfully, ignored clear warnings that their depictions were harmful, and attempted to blame external partners to hide their studio’s mistakes.

when that’s ^ pretty much the entire basis on which you sell your product, and then fail to deliver any of it, (and on top of that have AWFUL writing, plot holes, lack  any form of pacing, and fail to follow basic plotlines) it’s no surprise the audience grew more bitter with each season, up to the breaking point that was s8. (and there was the whole anti v sh*ladin divide which is absulutely not exculsive to the vld fandom, but was the first time i personally saw it, brought the worst out of everyone, had some people sending insults and death threats, had young fans arguing over very heavy and serious topics constantly, and made everyone involved in the constant discourse tired, angry and upset)

then you have the part of the fandom that refused to listen to criticism of other fans and claimed that ‘no, the show is great, actually’ just because it the bad writing didn’t include the characters they cared about, or they thought licking the boots of the showrunners would get them what they wanted in the end. there were people that insisted, all the way up to s7, that the show was good and the fans that were bitter were just being childish and entitled. but then, when in the last season the show failed to deliver what they had convinced themselves the story was building up to (two brothers marrying each other apparently), they raged like the rest of us (albeit for different reasons), and some were still in denial about it. so there obviously MUST be a secret s8 that they’re hiding from us. they tried to make it look like they were insulted at the protrayal of shiro’s sexuality, when some were actively cheering when they found out adam died, cause i guess he got in the way of the real, good lgbt representation

looking back, i don’t think any of this is exclusive to the voltron fandom. it’s not like each fandom has its own exclusive set of people. fandoms are the same bunch of people getting into a bunch of different shows and repeating the same behaviours there, good or bad. 

at the end of the day, i believe it was the promising, well thought-of, diverse characters + deplorable writing + disrespectful handling of its characters of color and queerbaiting + fandom tension that made the fandom so incomprehensibly unbearable.

i dont regret joining the fandom, since i met wonderful important people that are now part of my life, i got to produce content and have fun and join fan projects with people that loved the characters as much as i did. but i also feel exhausted just thinking about it. it was draining spending years of my older teens constantly being let down by something i had so much hope and love for. 

now i’m a bit older, and know how to interact with media in a healthier way, i’d like to think, i can look back and see what made this show the absolute trainwreck it was. it’s a good worst case scenario example when writing for kids animation imo. my goal is to be a professional storyteller and animator someday, so it’s interesting to think back to what made the show so awful as a learning experience. and i do still love the characters themselves, separate from the actual narrative of the show. other than that tho…

tl;dr: fuck voltron, that was wild huh