#why diversify the main characters when you can make replacements that will get hate for being replacements?

[headfullofdolls]

If i have to see one more post about g3 Lagoona being nothing but an aggressive, violent, and threatening Latina stereotype, eye am going to become an aggressive Latina stereotype.

Say you haven't watched the show without saying you haven't watched the show. I know she calls herself "spicy" in the music video. Yes I had a problem with that. No I don't think it's an accurate representation of her entire actual character to keep pointing to that one line like some kinda "gotcha."

[hawker-rawr-is-watching-you]

I was wondering about that.

So this is going to be long, I hope you don't mind.

One of the main issues that I saw in AFAC was mainly the overwhelming number of the cast. I see that the comic started with Frisk and the main characters from undertale, that was fine, more than fine, it was just enough. The introduction with some of the OCs was not bad, Frisk's siblings an example of that. Then it started to add more, and more, and more characters. Not counting side characters, there's over 20 recurrent characters in the comic, not counting side characters or all the OCs. Let that sink in, some of the characters introduced are never seen again in the comic, or forgotten. Undertale's cast is already huge, trying to add lots of OCs into the mix won't make the comic more engaging or easier to read. You need to keep up with more people, the author needs to keep up with more people. That would either cause the comic to drag on for too long trying to develop a character or just rush arcs and sequences, wasting the potential of said characters whether it's fanon or OC. This would be more tolerable in an original story, but OCs taking over the canon in a fanwork is really frown upon because you're taking away the character's spotlight..and..there's no point, it feels like these people have no porpuse. Like I remember one of the character's motivations to join an anti monster group was because their ex hooked up with a monster? like..what? No political issues behind it? like actual concerns from the human side? Like I dunno just throwing ideas out there, Monsters not integrating into society, or Humans feeling forced to give monsters land at the expense of their own land and money.  If it were to make the world richer sure, but there's a point where you need to go back to the original source material. If you need OCs so badly, make an original comic. 

  Chara and them as a CHARActer. From what I've seen, at first, Chara just seemed kinda bland to me. Just your typical evil Chara trying to ruin everyone's lives cause genocide run, which when they were introduced it was very common in a lot of fan stories to do so. So I didn't bother reading the comic because of it until after the crossover. That said, their change was really sudden. I was kinda expecting a little more of a gradual change? that's the idea that I got cause again, on paper it sounded great! I was really excited to see afac Chara change. I really was!

My problem with them being a skeleton, besides the fact that to me it doens't make a lot of sense for them to turn into a monster, the fact that Chara, a HUMAN, something that they HATE turns into a monster. We know very little about canon Chara, hell there isn't a canon Chara thats why there are so many interpretation, but there's one thing we all know: Chara hated humans. Being a human themselves, it's kind of easy to assume that Chara would hate themselves. Them turning into a monster means that no longer they need to bear the feeling of being human, the very thing that they hate. Why? they're a monster, why bother anymore? Not only that but again, it feels undeserved. I heard people say that Chara in the comic did very little to earn their redemption, I kinda of agree with that. At first they were shown as this evil being, not able to feel empathy, just one side of the coin, and suddenly you flip the other side with very little done about it. It felt unnatural, and them turning into a monster doesn't solve their problems with humanity. You could say"well maybe they stopped hating humans?", but even if that was the case, it feels rushed that suddenly they don't.  Sure they act more like a non evil Chara now, but the transition from A to B was faster than Anakin's shift to the dark side. 

  Frisk, I liked their Frisk at first. Until the part of their trauma came up, I don't know, as someone who was abused in the past, the scene of the pokemon cards just made me not take it seriously anymore. It also feels like you can never disagree with the kid, like ever. Frisk is always right, they are perfect.

  Wall text- Show don't tell rule.  A lot of writers suffer from this a lot, it's a common mistake to give just exposition and no actual story, not actual events, or replace things that can be self explained by character's dialogue through personality and actions. So I'm not extending myself on this, it's pretty self explanatory. We all do it by mistake, the best we can do is learn from it and try not to do it as frequent as humanly possible.

  Forced diversity, this is something that's been bugging me on a personal level. You do know that my Frisk and Chara are nonbinary, but guess what? Their personalities are not being nonbinary, or Asriel's personality being asexual. Nothing bothers me more than trying to shove to everybody's throat diversity just for the sake of it....especially when the comic gets preachy about it and makes all the fallen children non binary. Sure, getting your characters genders wrong is annoying, I know that on first hand and made jokes about it. But I am never coming off as the morality police educating about these kinds of stuff.

ESPECIALLY when you don't do your research when you try to diversify your cast and you say nonsense such as MEXICAN being a race. I give TQ kudos for giving the fallen children personality, but again we just go back to this thing again with the forced diversity, there's a major risk of falling into tokenism even. People are much more than their gender, their sexualities, their race, their etchnicity and so on. Yes, people like these exist, but don't make them the core part of who they are. The bisexual supposely non white woman from the third world is telling you this. Again, that's more of a subjective opinion and that goes to even ideological realms.

  So yeah those are the things that come to the top of my head atm, I think most of the issues with the Comic is basically how big the cast is. You get less time to work on all these characters, characters get less development or too much development, dialogue is affected, and so on and so forth.

[pilotheather]

aye, really starting to loathe the “yaz kills either graham/ryan whilst under the dalek influence” like-

1. first of all. hate this presumption that graham/ryan have to die. personally, im fine with companions dying - clara’s penultimate exit in face the raven was done beautifully, i think, and i will FOREVER resent them not leaving it like that. however with graham and ryan? literally, i just feel like... it’s so cheap. it offers nothing, babes! and it’s just infinitely LESS interesting than if you just kept them alive.

all the companions, in my opinions, still lack development. i do love them! i really am warming to them. but we’re two seasons in, and the fact of the matter remains they just... haven’t gelled too well with the show proper and they aren’t as fully realised as they should be by this point. and frankly, its not one singular problem moreso it’s an interwoven web of issues (hence it’s hard to really unpick that, without unravelling the whole mess) that have affected the show completely. the point is, despite being here so long, they just still feel so unexplored as people and a little unknown to us and idk!!! i think killing them, wouldn’t offer much in the way of anything interesting - other than, like i said, a very cheap way to instigate tragedy, and springboard some trauma-induced development for yaz&13 - because we aren’t really gaining more than we’re losing here, man.

clara’s exit in face the raven WORKED because it had been building up to it all season. i also dont like amy/rory’s exits (but that’s v potentially my own biases) but theoretically, i can see the vision for that- and the reason why that would be so tragic, is BECAUSE amy&rory are so fully formed at tht point that that loss hits. im not sayin graham&ryan dying would NOT be sad, but it’s... just too soon, still, for me. and when, narratively speaking, they’ve been setting up them thinking about leaving anyway? at least, ryan has? just doesn’t feel quite right at all and just like i said: a pointless attempt, at taking their exits, and doing weird tragedy shit with it for the sake of it.

especially when the ALTERNATIVE is they can stay on in the same way martha did: on earth, totally fine, and with the opportunity to reappear in later seasons. they can progress offscreen in ways that can be satisfying, in the way martha did. she moved on; she became someone different; and yet that change was still guided by what we had seen. same can be done with ryan and graham, finishing their stories and making them all the more satisfying.

2. piggybacking off of that. literally, this scenario of yaz killing them: what would that DO for yaz exactly? like.. what big payoff are u expecting from her? you’re just... horrifically traumatising her. and im wondering, like- where would that leave her in s13?  because she’s supposed to still be here, then, and supposedly travelling with the doctor. and again it just feels so damn cheap: because yaz really does still feel like she’s at the beginning of her story, despite being here for two years (and god am i a little mad abt that; it’s so, so sad that she really could be replaced with a cardboard cutout for most of s11). explore what we HAVE of her, first, before trying to go so damn dark with her. it’s not going to have the payoff you want. you have to work a bit more, to do something like that first. using some fucked up shit like that, just as a springboard for character development it just- it feels so damn lazy to me...  and again, i do not feasibly see how this could properly segue into s13 on that damn note. like the conse

3. and just... god in general. i just. okay again with chibbers and his writing. literally i dont want to sound so negative abt chibnall bc like SOME ppl really do just fucking attack . KILL. over every damn thing, without a breath and its like... okay babe. okay. and i mean, granted i can be a little like tht with moffat tbh - and so  i get ppl do get a little FERVENT when it comes to shit they dont like but- BUT MY POINT IS. i really dont hate-hate this era of who. s7 will still be my least favourite, even if i do still regard this all as bottom of the pile stuff- and that is frustrating, because it really does have potential! but anyway god. what was my fucking point. oh yeah. chibnall. if this was the case.... if this really did fucking happen. god no offence but fucking hell i do not trust chibnall to treat such a heavy scene well enough. not with the way s11 and s12 have been. and its just because... again this is all the WEB OF ISSUES with these seasons... but all of it just boils down to: every single script really needed a second or third pass over. ITS LIKE, things are kinda right, but its always jsut...wrong and its soi many things that just dont quite work and  instead all work in tandem to bring this ship down.

too many companions, leading to a bloated tardis; leading to none of them getting enough focus; leading to weaker characters whose dynamics with each other aren’t always hitting. there’s swathes of s12, where the doctor is just completely disconnected from the companions altogether. she just doesnt talk to them. and there’s a difference between her being detached, and her just.... LITERALLT FORGETTING THEY EXIST. i remember- was it ryan who disappears at one poimt, and she JUST DOESNT NOTICE? and then all of them disappear in fugitive? like its just so... the companion-docgtor relationship is so INTEGRAL to the whole show!!! it makes story beats less effective; not even that, the whole energy is brought down, because they just don’t TALK properly (and the dialogue... good god, is it stiff: and whilst i hated 11′s era of mutated LOL THAT’S SO RANDOM. THE HORSE IS NAMED SUSAN. BOWTIES FEZ FEZ HOW MANY MARKETABLE RANDOM SHIT CAN WE THROW AT THE PAAAGE it felt like characters were bouncing off each other... there’s now these long pauses, places where it should have been snappier, awkward remarks thrown in there and then) . it, again, bloats EVERYTHING bc half the time you have to just give stuff for these ppl to do and its like man, why! why ! its all so.... sloppy in a way that’s sad bc it was ALMOST right. things are ALMOST right here but it doesnt QUITE work and it needs pulling together into something neater, tighter.  AND GIVEN ALL OF THAT. i do not think, with the way he’s been handling things, this man would ever be capable of pulling off something as fucked up like that in a way that has any weight even disregarding the two above points

4 lastly. just fucking dont kill ryan man. c’mon. how many main, black characters have we had? hmm, let’s see. martha, mickey, danny, bill. we’re going at a 50% survival rate, with the other two facing pretty poor treatment in the writing room in general. no, im not letting it go: you cant literally refer to mickey, who was the first, like, leading black character on the show, as a fucking DOG repeatedly.  if you’re gonna decide to diversify the tardis, pay your dues; dont fucking axe him for what, again, really just feels like empty emotional tortureporn. ryan deserves better.