#can you say that theyre probably trying to create moments that can go into compilations and feed into the shipping | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dukeofonions · 3 years

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hi so i.found ur blog and its honestly like a breath of fresh air to look at so if its ok i might just fuckin,,vent here.

so. ik a lot of other people have been talking abt how pof was really straining to watch and i am.very late to the party but i need to talk abt it bcz holy fuck. when i first watched it i was in a way better place mwntally, also the general excitement of wow,content kinda overrode the headache and the eye hurty and the just. bad. but i was rewatching it recently because i was basing a fic off it and i just. i couldnt finish it because all of it was just so much and there was no fuckin warning?? so that was pog ig

next thing because i have. a lot of thoughts. ive been in the fandom for not-very-long, i joined in the middle of 2019 or something.and it just kinda sucks because im only still here for the fandom. i love the series but i can only watch dwit and compilations of logan/roman being sad so much before i can basically recite them off the top of my head. but i reallyreally love writing for the fandom!! it makes me so happy to do the writing, its just the fact that im not as invested with the series that makes me feel,,idk man guilty ig?? anyway thats too deep for a rant so im.a move on

god so tw me not liking post aa virgil and me talking abt toxic friends but hoooly fuck man. i just. pre aa virgil was fun because he was snarky and sarcastic and i could actually stand the nagst because his character made sense?? he was the 'bad guy' and he wasnt as woobified back then and he was honestly a solid vibe. but post aa virgil gives off the vibe of that one friend who fuckin, gets angry at you when you bring up any of your mental health issues and then blames their outburst on their mental health issuea and its like?? no i hate that character dynamic. people say bad things when the feel bad, sure, ik i have, but its the vibe of 'im gonna threaten you and then blame it on my mental health but if you so much as look at me wrong while ur having sensory overload or something i will smite you with the force of one thousand suns' and i am just.so tired. also ithink someone else said this but we should just call the series 'virgil sanders and the rest' because thats what it is now ksbdjqkbsq

also (all ofthese are my opinions btw and im not trying to say im rigbt im just tired honestly) the way. in pof the way patton's whole thing is 'you need empathy' is not funky fresh for both people with low empathy and high empathy 😎 bcz ppl with too much/too little empathy are always told theyre 'cold' or that theyre 'oversensitive', the whole 'there is an average amount of empathy and if u dont have that fuck you actually' is icky and bad and gross. i do think patton's character is really well done in the series but that episode jjust personally. ick.

and finally the moment uve not been waiting for bcz this is probably really tiring to read but the moment youve been waiting for-fwsa.just. why. its cute and stuff and i love nico. nico is a vibe. also bathroom man john is great. but shouldnt roman still be on shit terms with thomas?? like lk we're just gonna sweep away the whole 'i thought i wad ur hero' shizz? cool cool, glad to know romans arc still aint happening. also i get it, we needed to cement that virgil is a light side now. but like..did we?? actually bcz this is so long im gonna send in a second ask (im sososorry if this clogs up ur ask box if u tell me to stop i will i just. many thoughts) abt how even though i hate virgil, his arc should have been done. so differently. just gonna put like,, a mushroom emoji here so u can put the 2 asks together if u want 🍄

You’re always free to vent here! Sorry it took so long to respond but life has a cruel habit of getting in the way of things I need to do.

So for starters, the POF problem should be talked about more so I can assure you that you’re not late to the party. It never really got the amount of attention it deserved so I am more than willing to bring that back up and trust me, you’re not alone.

And again, you’re not alone in this either! Plenty of people still enjoy creating content for these characters. You don’t have to feel guilty for not finding the actual series interesting because honestly, I’m kinda losing interest too. But I still love these characters and I love that the fandom is still creating stories with them through different mediums.

Honestly I agree with just about everything you said about Virgil and I do eventually plan on tackling a lot of this in a future post. You know, if I ever force myself to just sit down and write the dang thing...

Oh my gosh I’ve been waiting for someone to talk about this because that whole thing about empathy in POF really ticked me off because you’re absolutely right, not everyone is 100% empathetic, and some people can be empathetic to a point where it hurts themselves. Like I get what they were trying to say but it came across as, well, like you said. “If you’re don’t have this exact level of empathy then eff you I guess you’re a bad person.” Maybe that actually wasn’t their intention but it sure came across that way and maybe I’ll go into it a little more in another post because now that I’ve been reminded of it again I kinda wanna talk about it more.

Okay yes, FWSA on its own is a good episode. Heck, it’s one of my favorites. It feels closer to a season one episode than ATHD that’s for sure. The problem with this episode isn’t the quality but the fact that it comes right after POF. And I’ve basically gone over this in my “Problem With Asides” post and how it affects both Roman and Virgil’s current arcs so I won’t go into much more detail here but just know that I pretty much agree with all of this.

Also don’t worry about cluttering up my inbox. It’s here for people to share their thoughts and that’s exactly what you’re doing! Hope to see your part two soon mushroom anon!

#dukeofasks #ts criticism #virgil criticism #pofaffair

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ot3 · 5 years

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i’d love to hear you talk about SU’s problems if you have any more thoughts on it? some of the concepts from the show are brilliant and original, but i can never put my finger on what makes the “daily lives” ones so boring to watch. especially when they’re supposed to enhance the show’s themes and establish the backstory of what the main cast’s fighting for

@steakbatter I am SO sorry it took me over a month to answer this. It took a LOT of thinking to come up with anything. So here’s my main thesis: Adventure Time is primarily a slice of life show, and moreso than anything else I feel like the intent of most of their episodes is to create a Feeling. The specifics of what happens in your average adventure time episode don’t matter - most of them have what I’d almost call a monster of the week type format.

By contrast, Steven Universe is a show that has no footing without it’s overarching plot. Steven Universe has somewhere it’s going from the very beginning well established, whereas adventure time just sort of shambles mindlessly towards storyline. And this makes a HUGE difference because it’s the precedent for tone.

In Burning Low (S4E16) we see Finn have a huge confrontation with bubblegum, and he and flame princess get badly injured, and almost die. The episode that immediately follows it - BMO Noire (S4E17) is about BMO roleplaying as a detective to find Finn’s missing sock. This doesn’t bother me at all because the precedent of Adventure Time is a slow build - smaller bits of character development slipping out from between the cracks of their kooky worldbuilding, rather than being the show’s central focus. Adventure time, as a series, is built more like a mosaic or a puzzle - as long as you know your general framework, you can fill in the pieces in any order and end up with a full picture.

By contrast, Steven Universe, which is absolutely a vessel for telling a story more than it is a vessel for worldbuilding or character development. It’s built more like a tower - you have to start at point A and work your way to point B. Then there’s the matter of the slice of life aspects that do exist in the SU lineup. I think the absolute Peak example of SU’s misuse of slice of life is The Good Lars (S4E23) The central conflict of this episode is that Lars gets invited to a potluck by the cool kids, and want to bring an ube roll cake. Lars is sensitive about his baking (a la high school musical) and decides to ditch the whole thing, throwing his homemade cake in the garbage.

I say this episode exemplifies where SU goes wrong because it didn’t show us anything new. We’ve known that Lars is aggressive because he is masking deep insecurities. We know that Steven wants to encourage him to be more friendly and outgoing. We know Sadie wants the same. We establish nothing new about the character’s personalities, their relationships to each other, the larger plot of the show, or the worlbuilding.

Now, once again, obviously most Adventure Time episodes don’t establish a ton of these things either, but it’s not because they’re doing it poorly - it’s because the adventure time oneshots have a fundamentally different purpose than Steven Universe oneshots.

Another thing hat happens in The Good Lars: Steven refers to his mother, Verbatim, as a war criminal. Technically correct, but also incredibly tonally bizarre in the episode. It doesn’t feel like a natural way of integrating the harsher reality of Steven’s world to the mundane life in the rest of beach city; it feels like theyre just saying ‘Hey, don’t worry, we’re still going somewhere with this. Now watch Lars mope more.

So lets take a look at an Adventure Time oneshot episode. I’m going to try and pick one that follows an equally mundane set of events as The Good Lars to make sure it’s a fair comparison. In Video Makers (S2E23) Finn and Jake just spent the whole time trying to film a movie, because they woefully misunderstand pre-apocalyptic copyright law. They then spend the rest of the episode fighting about whether it’s a romance movie or an action movie, shooting a bunch of terrible footage. BMO compiles the movie and in the end it’s a movie about Finn and Jake being friends and why they shouldn’t fight.

Equally as unsubstantial as the steven universe episode. Equally as banal and saccharine. And yet, whereas The Good Lars is probably my least favorite ep of SU besides the racist uncle episode, I really really like Video Makers. And it’s because we don’t need to see character growth or plot growth in every episode of adventure time. Adventure time keeps itself open to, lets call it, ‘horizontal storytelling’ where we’re just given snapshots of moments within a world, as opposed to a straight narrative. Steven universe has, by contrast, ‘vertical storytelling’ where the process of going from point A to point B is the show’s frame.

This is so long i’m so sorry

#Adventure time #steven universe #I DON'T HATE STEVEN UNIVERSE #LET ME JUST SAY THAT HERE #i have a lot of critiques about it #but mainly because it had so much POTENTIAL that i don't think it ever reached #steakbatter

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