#where we hate monarchy and chosen ones and people who are born special

[sagesilentfire]

(Reposting this because I don't want to take over @dumblemonchickenwing's post, and also I'm going off on a single enormous tangent. Their post really got me thinking, but in a way that’s only tangentially related to the main point!)

(A little background: I'm autistic and nonbinary, and because of that I've always identified with those who are othered by society, especially monsters and creatures no one thinks are intelligent or capable of feeling. That being said, I'm also very white, so I can't judge the racism metaphor from that angle.)

This is a really interesting Watsonian analysis, but from a Doylist perspective I don't think this version of "realistic" should have been what was sought for in the show.

I do have four nitpicks re: your analysis: 1. A deliberately heartless villain who defined himself by his emotionlessness wouldn't use kindness as a weapon to recruit Ludo's monsters. 2. Someone like you described wouldn't walk away from his enemies after they were defeated, he'd just kill them. 3. Adult Toffee isn't any more arrogant than Star is, or at least doesn’t let it get in his way, and despite what MorningMark would have you think it's not really something I got from his canon current-timeline portrayal. And 4. Toffee could easily form relationships with other long-lived Septarians; there's nothing to indicate in canon that he's special for his species.

But let’s assume that your analysis is true. The problem is that all that victimhood and tragedy is subtext. Not explicit. Toffee isn't an explicitly tragic victim or even a knight templar, he's explicitly an obstacle for Star to knock over so she can move on to the real tragic victims: the colonizers.

See, there's two huge differences between Toffee and everyone who came after him. (Meteora, Mina, Moon, and Solaria) The first is that they're all supporting Mewni's colonization. Yes, even Meteora. Far more blatant than any hints of Toffee's personality is the fact that most students of Saint O's are monsters. Even if Heinous turned out to be a monster herself, she was still a very active part of suppressing their personalities and turning them into "one of a million rubber stamps," i.e. very Mewman princesses.

Secondly, despite their crimes being much more, heh, heinous than anything Toffee ever did (threatening genocide, causing a temporary genocide, actually committing genocide), they are all portrayed as tragic, misguided, and pitiful people and are rendered powerless and let go with a slap on the wrist. Or they're Solaria, and they get a tender and totally unrealistic (she wanted to MURDER EVERY SINGLE MONSTER ARE YOU KIDDING ME) moment with their daughter and granddaughter before fading peacefully into the great beyond.

But not Toffee. Toffee has no sympathetic backstory. Star never tries to reason with him or make up for what her family has done to him like she did for Meteora. She doesn't let him walk away powerless like Mina. She doesn't forgive like she did with Moon, or accept him like she did with Solaria, or even revert him back to a baby so he can live a better life like Meteora again.

No. She BURNS HIM ALIVE AND SMILES WHILE SHE DOES IT.

And, and I cannot emphasize this enough, she's never portrayed as being in the wrong for this.

And that's the difference. The colonizer villains are explicitly sympathetic and forgivable, the colonized villain is an obstacle to knock over in one of the most horrific ways to die that I know of, with only subtext and scraps to piece together even a solid personality.

And you know what's worse? Toffee is the only monster who is active in pursuing monster freedom. The rest are just passive dolls there to support Star's initiatives for their equality. We never see a single monster who's actively participating in the fight, just Star (or sometimes Eclipsa) saying "monsters should be allowed to do this/to go here" and then the monsters are there, doing that. Buff Frog is just a yes-man for Star's plans, Tom knows nothing about what other monsters actually experience from his ivory tower, Rasticore may as well not exist, Seth is Schrodinger's raptor and never mentioned in the show, Globgor is Eclipsa's Buff Frog: totally passive and a non-presence even after he's freed, and... wait, are there any more named monster characters in the last two seasons? Ludo, the puppet king for the Butterflys, who the script forgets about almost completely? ...no, that doesn't help the show's case at all... uh... ... uh…

I’m no expert, but, while I’m sure the writers have plenty of Watsonian reasons for this, no matter how you parse it... this is a Bad Look. The show really really fucked up its racism metaphor, is what I'm saying, and it was bad writing all the way down.

It honestly reminds me of Sia's movie Music, where the autistic girl is just a prop to further the character development of the actual main character, who is neurotypical. Or the recent crop of superhero movies where the villain addresses a real-life problem that affects millions, but in, like, a bad, violent way that Needs to be Stopped. Neither of these comparisons are complimentary.

Also, the way Star fixes The Racism forever is genocide, but we don't have time to unpack all of that.

Tl;dr: It makes sense that Toffee is the way he is, but it undermines the whole point the show was going for.