#I know a lot of people like and are invested in the grooming subplot of TBC. But. I think it was executed AWFULLY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willel · 8 months

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Since I've been getting a few asks about it btw, I wanted to make my position clear. I don't discuss relationships in the show a lot and you probably only see me speak negatively about some aspects so some clarification might help.

I'm not against the general idea of romance in shows.

When done right, I think a romantic subplot in a show or movie or game can be really good. It can tie together all the themes while not distracting from the main plot. Sometimes even when it's distracting from the main plot, it makes sense and is worthwhile and adds to the main plot.

If you've known my blog for a long time, you'll know I'm not exactly an avid tv show watcher. I still want to provide an example of what I mean though so I'll reference one of the manga I've been reading since I was a teenager.

It's called Skip Beat! I honestly don't know if it's considered popular or niche but I'll give you a general synopsis. The main character, Kyouko Mogami was a girl from the countryside who was basically a glorified maid for her childhood friend, Sho Fuwa. Due to her harsh family circumstances, she grew up in Sho's home and from what we know about their lives, she was being trained (groomed???) to be his future wife. She was fine with it because she loved him.

But Sho wanted to be a star, so against his parents wishes, he took Kyouko with him to the big city to make it big. Which he did and it gave him a bigger head than he already had. He tossed her aside in favor of his new life in a pretty cruel way.

Kyouko vowed vengeance upon him. She would become an even bigger star than him and run him out of town. She vowed to never fall in love again and closed herself off. I know I'm writing this as if it's a sob story, but when I say it's a vengeance plot I mean that literally.

From there, the plot revolves around how far she'll go just for her vengeance. But, as the plot moves along, you can start to see how her icy heart is melting for someone else and how much anguish that brings her. The main plot is about her becoming a star, but the part where she learns to love again (someone else mind you) is a crucial part in all that.

I would suggest you read it butttttt it's the slowest burn in the history of all histories so you might suffer just as much as I have.

I really appreciate how this story might have a big romantic sub plot but it ties in nicely with her goals of self improvement and wanting to be a star, moving on from all her pain and being happy.

When it comes to Stranger Things...... I just do NOT feel that way at all.

Skip Beat! has a love triangle. Honestly at this point, it's more like an octagon and yet it doesn't bother me. There is a lot of "Will they won't they" but it still doesn't bother me.

It may be that Skip Beat! just has a more interesting subplot so the little baby half baked romantic drama in Stranger Things is just boring for me?

Maybe it's that I feel like the romantic drama and tension in Skip Beat! is actually leading somewhere and leads to character development while the romantic drama in Stranger Things feels played up for audience reaction and fandom discourse?

Like sure, Skip Beat! has some fandom discourse but everyone is pretty much on the same page or can, for the most part, respectfully discuss their preferences. With Stranger Things, if you so much as comment on a ship in the wrong way you'll have a gaggle of people harassing you over fictional characters.

To summarize,

I think romantic stuff in tv shows and movies and all that can be really fun, interesting, heartbreaking, all the entertaining things one could want.

I, personally, feel none of that when romantic stuff is happening in Stranger Things. Maybe in the first and second season but beyond that...? For example, while I wouldn't exactly call myself a shipper, I am and was rooting for Jopper from the getgo. (I say that because I think a shipper would be much more invested in the pair. Like fanart, fanfiction, following dedicated blogs etc. I don't really do that)

If the show writers decided to reintroduce Lonnie into the plot and then acted like he had a legitimate chance to get back with Joyce because she starts wavering between Hopper and Lonnie.... do you really expect me to freakin' care? Am I really supposed to care about this love triangle introduced? You actually expect me to get invested in such lazy writing? I just cannot.

My interest in Jopper would probably be eradicated to be honest because they just wasted time with a love triangle instead of developing them as a couple. All that wasted time could've been spent developing the main plot which in turn would've given them more opportunities to write them a s couple working together, protecting each other, etc. You know, substance.

See what I mean? I just... cannot care about Stranger Things ships. It's great if you can though, there are so many reasons to watch a show. Maybe for you, love triangles are the bees knees and the best thing since sliced bread so you'd be eating up another triangle like nobody's business. But that's not me.

I would much rather they focus moving the plot forward, which would naturally create moments between the characters we all care about.

Fandom behavior factors into a bit of this as well of course. Kinda hard to care about or get invested in a relationship if all you see all day is people arguing about canon (which at the end of the day doesn't matter) while also doxxing and harassing each other. Not to mention taking the worst possible interpretation of characters possible just because you think they're in the way of your ship. Dunno how anyone can care about or enjoy a shipping fandom like that.

SO yeah. That's it. Romance is stuff is fine and all, but I just don't jive with how Stranger Things rolled out it's romance stuff so I prefer to think about other things.

#stranger things

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asagi-s-garden · 3 years

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WB is the worst when it comes to DC. It's no coindence that Constantine is leaving 'Legends of Tomorrow" in the wake of the upcoming HBO Max show. And this pandemic ruined a lot of plans. As you said "BL" wasn't meant to be in the Arrowverse put when it happened they were all gung-ho for it. They had plans for Jeff to visit Central City and for Anissa and Grave to chill in Gotham. But then the pandemic and whatever BTS drama that got "BL" canned. Like *something* happened. It got an early renewal in Jan then it was cancelled in Nov. And CW didn't even bother to have proper trailers for new episodes. Don't tell me somebody on the show didn't rub the network the wrong way to result in that level of pettiness

Yeah, WB isn't just the worst with DC, but really the worst with favoritism in my personal opinion

They tried so hard to make the DC streaming service a huge success but as soon as they saw it wasn't going to be they got rid of everything like it was on fire, HBO Max is the new golden child so they're cutting their own throats in other areas to make it succeed- IE: Theaters

My poor Suicide Squad 2 ;_; no I won't say "my THE Suicide Squad" it won't roll off the tongue it was a sacrificial lamb to the damn streaming service :(

I know it's an unpopular opinion to not be all over streaming but they're really clearly cutting way more than just corners in order to feed that specific beast and try to make it compete with Disney+, that's why they're starting to draw the string on the Arrowverse :/ The same thing happened, I think, with the DC streaming service though, when they saw that the biggest success of DC was the Arrowverse, they decided to pull their dying streaming service as well as the DCEU into it to pump the Arrowverse up more, now that the Arrowverse is starting to go under- with three shows being gone, Batwoman being in questionable territory, and the two biggest successes of the year being largely disjointed from it (Superman and Stargirl), I think they're going to try to scramble it like eggs :/ They're doing the same with the DCEU to a degree though, by having loosely connected stories that do more universe hopping and tone changes (IE: Joker coming out just months before Birds Of Prey and having been preceeded by Shazam!) I think since they're seeing more promise in that approach right now for the movies, they might be trying to do the same for TV- or they're just trying to let the Arrowverse die of neglect so they can pump up HBO Max like you said

Ofcourse now that WB has been bought by Discovery, we might get some big changes to this; Discovery already said they wanted to pour seven BILLION dollars into DC properties specifically in the first year alone, and I know the rumor is that they're only going to try to gloss up DC so that they can sell the assets to the highest bidders once their "probation" period ends but like.... seven billion is a hell of alot of gloss..... and if they can start pulling in more numbers like Joker, Superman & Lois, and The Suicide Squad (wich may have not been a huge hit at the box office but wich reportedly smashed the HBO Max numbers enough that WB is circling James Gunn like a starving shark), then I have a hard time believing they'd be wanting to get rid of it, especially when, let's face it, DC is easily the most well known and most marketable asset Discovery has ever had and probably ever will have purely because of Superman alone, you can't find a person anywhere who hasn't atleast heard of Superman, regardless of how much the film properties are hit-and-miss financially, I have a hard time believing anyone would just throw that kind of name power to the wolves....

But onto Black Lightning, I actually have a pretty strong theory about that one

I'm almost certain that China Anne McClain is why the show was canned

And do not get me wrong, I don't mean that in a snippy way, but China quit Black Lightning pretty urgently- to the point that she only wanted to do limited episodes for the final season

Backing up a moment here though, let me explain why I think this was the nail-in-the-coffin

Black Lightning was very quickly becoming centered around Lightning specifically

That doesn't mean to say that it wasn't still Jefferson's story and that Anissa wasn't still important, but Jennifer was getting set up to be The Powerhouse of the show, with the bulk of the drama probably surrounding her and the thought of her potentially taking on her father's mantel

It seemed like the idea of Black Lightning retiring or atleast putting on the suit a little less was starting to become a thing, and with Jefferson firmly accepting his daughters as part of the world of Metas at that point, that would have lead to Anissa and Jennifer taking much more of the spotlight than they had in the beginning- that's a natural progression of things, and although I actually prefer Anissa's storyline (it's just more my personal cup of tea), I will readily admit that Jennifer was the one who had the ability to carry an entire season's worth of story on her shoulders.... not so much Anissa, who has her wife (so romantic subplots are pretty toned down), her powers are developed and stable (nothing quite like the learning curves Jennifer was facing), she has a stable job and a stable superhero identity- two, in fact-, so no literal schoolyard drama or issues with "Am I in my father's shadow? Is this how the world sees me and do I want them to see me this way?" much like what Jennifer was starting to experience in the end of the show either

TLDR Anissa mostly had her shit together, wich is great for her, but it doesn't lend to being able to carry the most dramatic storylines like it does with Jennifer, who's still figuring out pretty much everything

I think Jennifer was already starting to take a very large amount of the story as of the last season and even starting to steal the spotlight before that, if they were to come back for more I feel like she would have been in a place of being much more obviously groomed to take on the main charector status wile Jefferson stepped back just a little bit to be more supportive to her journey instead of the other way around

And the show could still exist very much as Jefferson's story wile that story happened to center on Jennifer

.....Buuuuuuuuuuuuut that's where the problem comes in

China said before the show was cancelled that she was going to step down from playing Lightning because she wanted to focus on her faith more and be removed from anything that wasn't "in service to God", wich is totally fine for her, but it does put Black Lightning in a bit of a difficult position because the charector they were gearing up to make their breakout star was suddenly going to either have to pull a Winn and just... be.... gone.... or have to get recast

To be entirely honest, I'm not sure why they didn't stick with the recasting instead, I thought Laura Karuki did a fantastic job as Jennifer and the "Am I Jennifer or am I JJ?" story would have been a great thing to explore for an entire season, but if I had to guess, they maybe just didn't want to mess with it?

Black Lightning had good numbers but it wasn't in the top five or anything to my recollection, not since it's premiere season anyway, and it could have been a compound decision of "We weren't going to keep this up much longer anyway so let's just take this as a sign to wrap it up", although I think that the way the recast was done could have presented a stable option for them if they had decided to give it a go for a full season, although maybe that's just my opinion and they initially made the recast so that the people behind the curtain could see if Laura would work well enough as Jennifer and when they decided that the vibe wasn't right they went on ahead and pulled the plug rather than risk getting the same um... resistance.... than Batwoman met over their recasting choices

Although I could go on for days about why that situation is different (to be clear: I do like Ryan quite alot but I don't think the Batwoman situation was nearly as seamless as Black Lightning's in terms of recasts, but that's another story for another day)

TLDR I think if China had stayed aboard they would have gone on for atleast another season or two, but there are some shows where members of an ensemble cast are so essential that their leaving is too big of a blow to stay through

It's much like when Dylan O'Brien had to bow out of Teen Wolf for a little wile, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a fan who absolutely loved season six, and even before that people were having a hard time staying with a lack of Tyler Hoechlin, with some even stepping away when Crystal Reed left, even though- at both of those points- most of the core cast was still there and at no point did the titular main ever leave, I feel like Black Lightning's situation is very similar, people were just too invested in Jennifer

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