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harlequinmoss · 3 years

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How would you rewrite season 3 so it would be more coherent? I'm not talking about a full on rewrite of the entire episodes, I just mean how to make the plot lines and development flow better or changing them to be satisfying for all the characters.

Okay this is a really good question. I was going to say to make it more centered on FOWL but going back and reading the episode titles, it already kinda is. Like there's not that many episodes that don't tie into the finale in some way. I do have tweaks here and there that would help with plot and character development throughout the season. This ended up being a lot longer than I thought so here's a page break lol

Going in a linear format, Steelbeak should have made himself smart in Double-O-Duck instead of making the ray to make everyone else dumb. He'd be a more competent villain and more in line with his character in the original DWD. Maybe he could have even played a roll in LGD. It also would have avoided both him and Launchpad being mostly comic relief characters. I think there's too many jokes at Launchpad's expense about him being dumb. If he went back to his "normal" level of intelligence at the end, he could have told the family about FOWL without jeprodizing the search for the rest of the season. All they'll know is that FOWL is trying to take down the family and where the secret headquarters is. There's still the search for the leader and why FOWL is doing what they're doing. This makes it so that Huey has more to do and accomplish in what is supposed to be his season.

Next, The Rumble For Ragnorok. I'm just going off of memory here. I don't think that this episode did very much in the way of developing characters. Or at all. It was a forgettable filler episode where Dewey learned a lesson about humility or something and then it didn't come into play ever again. This episode could have been removed entirely to make room for an episode after LGD to give the Mallard-McQuack family more screen time and development. A general plot of this episode could be: Huey is helping Fenton and the other adults search the other realities for Gosalyn's missing grandpa. They end up finding him but he's either dead/a totally different person with different memories that doesn't remember Gosalyn at all. This event causes Gosalyn to give up the search and accept that her family is gone. Dewey has an emotional moment with her aside where he comforts her and relates the situation back to his mom and talks about found family while looking back at Launchpad and Drake. (Not really integrating this into any of my other points but if Della died on the moon in season 2 and the kids knew about this, it would make the interaction more impactful) At the end of the episode, its shown that Gosalyn has her own room, either in the lair or in a house similar to the original DWD, and Drake tucks her in while singing her lullaby.

The Phantom and the Sorceress. Oh God, what a mess. There's way too much wrong with this episode. Soup-Du-Silence had a good idea on how to fix it from Lena's perspective, which you can read about here. As for Gladstone, he could have still lost his powers and come to the mansion for help. But instead of him asking literal children, its Della and Donald (and maybe Fethry is there too) and then its a cousins adventure! Donald revels in Gladstone being unlucky but still wants to help. Gladstone doesn't seem so pathetic and played for comic relief. They track down the Blot together after Lena and her family fight him out of the Saberwing house, or they're about to find him when the Blot's gauntlet breaks and Gladstone magically gets his luck back for seemingly no reason, much to Donald's dismay. It might have to be two different episodes because cutting back and forth between the two plot lines would detract time from each and make the episode harder to follow. Idk but there's so many things they could have done that would have made the episode actually good and coherent

Let's Get Dangerous. It was good but it felt rushed. It needed to be longer. The timeline was hard to follow. Instead of the cheap shot at the end were Heron picks Bradford up in a FOWL helicopter, have the triplets being suspicious of him and figuring it out for themselves. Maybe they're all wary for different reasons and talking about it in a group huddle and Huey connects the dots in a dramatic reveal. They confront Bradford who does an evil villain slow clap congratulating them on figuring it out, but before anything else can happen, he's able to escape.

How Santa Stole Christmas. I don't think we needed this backstory. Instead, give us the opportunity to see bonding between characters. Its Della and Donald's first Christmas back together. Let us see that. Give us an interaction about the sweater. "You still have that sweater?" "Of course, wear it every year." And then they hug or something. That's literally all they had to do. Instead of following a Santa storyline that ends in Scrooge leaving an impoverished child alone in a house with nothing but a lump of coal when he could have given a tiny portion of his wealth to help her, let Scrooge learn the true meaning of Christmas through his family. Or even better yet, let him throw a party, inviting over recurring characters, and have it double as a brain storming session on how to defeat FOWL. Show them coming up with the plan for Webby's birthday party. Give us interactions with characters who haven't been there all season. Penumbra can help. Where has she been? She was building a ship back to the moon before, right? Give a conclusion to that. If she's decided to stay on Earth like it seemed in the end of her episode, all we really need is a short two second clip of her hanging out with the other Moonlanders, having their own form of Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever else.

As for the last few episodes leading up to the finale, I get what they were going for. Give each of the triplets one last centric episode. However, I think that the messages fell short in the Dewey and Louie episodes. I think they should have taken more of a Beaks in the Shell approach where the selected triplet still gets to shine, while also setting up high stakes for the finale. Don't be adding new characters so late in the game, be wrapping up storylines with already established ones. There wasn't really a point in adding Kit or Poe, other than the writers wanting to make reference to as many characters as possible. Same with April May and June.

Now for the finale. My main thing: don't make Webby a clone. It messes too much with all the dynamics in the show and ruins the found family message they've had this entire time. It would have been a lot better if Webby's parents were FOWL agents who had a change of heart after having their child and got killed by Bradford or Heron when trying to leave the organization. That's ample reason for Beakley not wanting Webby to know. I think the finale did a pretty good job of wrapping things up outside of that, honestly. Again, there wasn't really enough time to give all the characters a proper ending, like Gene who just disappeared once he was saved, never to be seen again, but if time was managed better in the episodes leading up to the finale, it would have made it so that more characters could have accomplished what they needed to. And what was with Bradford getting turned into a real buzzard at the end? You really going to just undomesticate him like that? Give him some poetic justice, push him into the void that makes people cease to exist.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Thanks for the ask! It was fun to go through everything and think about what could have been done better

#ducktales #ducktales season 3 #dt season 3 #ducktales critical #ducktales criticism #dt criticism #dt critical

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peepingtoad · 4 years

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OKAY SO.

It’s not that often that I talk about what I really think about Jiraiya, and I guess I mean more how I feel about him, since I always try to write my ‘deeper’ headcanons/metas from a more... idk, trying not to get too emotional about it point of view. Basically it’s because I know how controversial he is, and I pretty much ritually avoid a lot of takes because I don’t want to get irritated about something that really doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme, because we’re all entitled to our opinions and I largely get my say through the act of writing and developing him how I see fit.

Which is enough for me, mostly, but for the purpose of reinforcing/building upon how I see my muse’s plight, working through some of my Sannin-feels and also to dip my toes into why I find blindly judgemental/single-faceted takes of him, his priorities and the Sannin’s bond so exasperating, I kinda feel like rambling my thoughts (feelings) anyway!

Politely sticks this stream-of-consciousness mess under a cut.

So sometimes I do think about the fact that Jiraiya kinda, lmao, forgot about Everything Else in the world because of Orochimaru and his (frankly) obsession with him/them. And the fact that a ridiculously significant portion of bad shit that happened is down to his actions/inaction. And the fact that he really did go and leave the likes of Naruto (and maybe to a degree Kakashi, although there’s zero actual evidence he didn’t get involved given the strong indications of a great rapport in the canon), just because he was so hellbent on pursuing Orochimaru, who was not even shown to be affectionate towards him at the best of times. When I think about it in terms of Jiraiya being gone and the main reason we’re given for it, things suck for a number of people, and quite largely because of potentially unrequited/horribly communicated/obsessive JiraOro pursuits, in essence :’)

(And for all it’s still quite the rarepair, Jiraiya does express on accounts that he was destroyed when Oro left. I mean... this is the guy who rarely acknowledges his sadness so... It’s not my bias at all I sware)

Of course JiraTsu is very real in my eyes too, albeit a very different kinda tragic, as is OroTsu. And the messy poly ship? Ohohoho, even better, but... yeah. Tsunade does at least go her own way for a long time, as messed up as that is in itself, for reasons including the fact she seems to pointedly not heal or move on from her grief. And given the absolute debacle that was her and Jiraiya reuniting... and both her and Oro even discussing a possibility of sacrificing him... and just, them in general for that whole arc :’))) yeah. They are without a doubt messy and troubled, but even despite how fraught things become I genuinely think all the furtive expressions and the undercurrents of longing and the evasion of their past exhibits a history much deeper and full of lost love compared to many other team dynamics we get (otherwise the Three Way Divorce wouldn’t have been quite so horrible on them, would it? That and they’d probably have split up after Team Hiruzen was no more, if they really hated each other/just tolerated each other out of familiarity like I sometimes see speculated).

But yeah, back to our main man. Jiraiya’s intense (and frankly very Scorpio of him) love for our first series Big Bad kinda did ruin him and what he was setting out to do in some ways, to the degree that the actual story of Naruto wouldn’t be very much without him in terms of drama. I mean, he always loved a good story, right? So art imitates life, and innit just pathetic poetic.

And in so many ways it is incredibly tragic and pitiable that he’s Just Like That. Idealistic and warping everything terrible, no matter how bad, into adventure in his mind! As growth! As pain that makes you TOUGH and makes you a stronger man! As something to be pushed aside while you just keep on truckin’! Whatever anyone you love throws at you, it’s Totally Fine!

After so long narrating through his personal lens, I’ve come to realise he truly is so convinced that everything bad that happens, is sort of just... something he has to deal with and feel big and guilty and feelsy for while spinning it in ways that enable him to keep going. He just loads it on himself and sorta holds it. The fact he’s so sad and filled with sickly pining grief that he has to try and exorcise it with impulsive bouts of decadence? Fine. And it’s not abnormal at all, how he approaches things with such broad scope and just kinda... thoughtlessly wrecking-balls his way through everything he thinks is a great idea at the time. He experiences the fallout of these things and simultaneously feels the entire ravages of it acutely while compartmentalising it ever so neatly away. The crazy thing, too, is that he’s exceptionally convincing at making everything he does and how he handles things seem so grand and noble and romantic and tragic... but in a humorously self-deprecating and still ultimately very hopeful way, to the degree that I as a mun get caught up in his relentless optimism and forget he actually is a sad and heartbroken guy wrapped up in all this grandiosity.

Sometimes I do step back and look and I just think yeah, fuck, he really is a total disaster! He’s a walking disaster and he’s been so damaging to himself and others in so many ways, all because of acting on emotions and impulses without really thinking about the impact! He really did kinda give up on those who needed him and for what? A love that will never love him or prioritise him back?

A wonderfully tragic theme that I do love with him, don’t get me wrong.

But then at the same time, there’s always more nuance to be had than just ‘he is a disaster and made bad choices, as tragic and romantic as it is, he was actually just selfish and kinda sucked in the end, pathetically whipped by his friends and unable to let go of what they had’. There’s more nuance to be had than reducing him to a purely romantically-inclined character, who just snubs everyone else for a doomed love... because in the end, I think a huge part of JiraOro’s demise in particular was that Oro felt immensely snubbed by Jiraiya when he stayed in Ame, when his loyalty to Konoha (as a place and people, not necessarily a system) and of course loyalty to his own ideals was prioritised over Oro.

To an extent, I feel like Tsunade could have been a similar case, were she not preoccupied with already having lost so much, and besides I really do think she and Jiraiya were quite firmly in best friend zone at that point. With Tsunade not being able to get comfortable around Jiraiya or to pursue any underlying affection for him because of the dumbass way he always behaved (understandably of her tbh), probably until she got with Dan, by which point I reckon Jiraiya started to really come through by showing how he valued her for her, where we see by them having each other’s backs so closely in the second war. Not to mention him generally respecting that his feelings for her have no place by the time he gets her back to Konoha.

In terms of that first split in Ame, Jiraiya, I feel, simply didn’t think him leaving was going to be a big deal, because the three were always fiercely headstrong people who had their own shit going on (simultaneously independent while also being, perhaps not to their knowledge, So Very Codependent). Not only that, but his overly affectionate ways and incessant jolliness were probably considered such a joke that he was basically like ‘they’ll be fine without me’. I certainly don’t think he felt needed by them, which I don’t think is their fault or a point of angst and ‘waaah poor blameless Jiraiya’, because quite honestly, the strain on their relationship was something I fully believe even he didn’t realise he needed out of at the time. His one-track mind was just on ‘save kids, teach kids, this is right, must seize opportunity to be the change I was told I’d be, not continue with this godforsaken war’

Selfish? Maybe. Well-intentioned? Certainly. Intended to hurt anyone or imply he stopped caring? No.

In essence, when it comes to why in the end Jiraiya seemed to be so horrendously bad at being around at the worst of times, at being responsible, whatever else (and I’m not even going to go into scenes intended to be comedic because, they are comedic)... I’ve got to look at it from more than just one view. It’s easy to say ‘he’s ridiculous and terrible because he pretty much flaked on what was important based on his whims/a doomed love/his dick’ (which I have seen said lmao) but there are so many other things at play here.

So I’m thinking, while he was shirking duties (godfatherly mainly)... did he actually consider that his most important duty? Was it anyone’s place to tell him it was? Minato didn’t, as I recall, and when he sacrificed himself he specifically left it to the Third because he (presumably) respected what his teacher was about and knew he wasn’t for staying put. Did Jiraiya not consider his primary duty to be to the prophecy, and in a more general sense fixing the big wrongs and trying to foil big dangers to his home? Were these things not pretty much what he existed for (as much as his faith wavered and went off the rails at times)? Was that not the main source of any real purpose he ever had, being a kid who showed practically no ambition before? Did he not pretty much redesign himself as being ‘from Mt. Myōboku’ rather than Konoha after two devastating wars, and thus is it not understandable for him not to focus solely on Konoha—not outright destroying it, still ultimately loyal to his home and not about to let anyone destroy it, but seeing that the world is in fact so much bigger than just his little town? Is that really something that’s so bad and wrong of him, in a story where the main cast’s country has a pretty fucking nasty system and is established to do so very early on? Is he not pretty revolutionary in his own brand of not blindly serving, but not going on a destroy-it-all frenzy either?

Also, was he not the only one who actually bothered to investigate Akatsuki and the forces that would see Naruto dead, in time? For all he did help bring Akatsuki into existence in ways, it was inevitable from before he even met the orphans that they were going to be groomed/moulded into what they became, regardless of whether Jiraiya came onto the scene. Jiraiya leaving them was just a different kind of suffering to what they were inevitably going to suffer anyway, and hell, with his influence at least there was a time where they might’ve stood a chance of going totally against Madara/Obito’s path, especially while Yahiko was still around. Jiraiya didn’t know that the whole thing with the Ame orphans was, by a design out of his control, doomed to end horribly. So while he felt personally responsible not knowing this, and it’s taken as a given that he was... actually, was he, when there was a master manipulator at play? Was it wrong to want to give some kids a chance?

With regards to all those things I see people say he should have stayed and fixed, that he should have been there, he should have done x y z... Is it not the responsibility of everyone not satisfied with their lot to step up to the plate and make where they live better? Jiraiya wasn’t the only adult. Tsunade, and I absolutely love her, does seem overwhelmingly to be absolved of leaving Konoha because... ??? Kicker is that she too is related to Naruto, of course.

So... was she not also needed for the very material ways she could’ve helped at numerous points? Was she not also placing her grief and lost love before everything else? Are some reasons inherently more ok than others to ditch? As Kakashi’s generation grew up, was it not also then up to them to decide whether they’d change the status quo? Were Minato’s own generation, presumably his own peer group, not complicit in Naruto’s ostracisation? We got a slight taste of rebellion with Asuma, Hiruzen’s own son, but the fact is many Konoha-nin were overwhelmingly complacent with how things were. And yet never get demonised at all for it. Because it’s Jiraiya’s fault for... not staying and giving it all up to be a guardian who could well be depressed and unfit to raise a child... or just being a flaky as hell one that’s never there anyway because he has shit to do? (and in doing the former would let too many things go unchecked by a completely tuned-out Hokage, not gathering all that spicy useful intel, y’know... essentially he wouldn’t have ended up largely doing his job along with the personal shit in between).

Basically when I see claims saying that Jiraiya as an individual should have done pretty much everything better, and somehow been there for everyone that needed him at any given time, and that (mostly Naruto’s) suffering was a failing on Just His part because of his selfish whims... I feel like the point of his tragedy is absolutely missed. That tragedy being that barrelling through things alone is definitely a failing and harmful in numerous ways, as we see with Itachi shouldering everything alone too, and we see them both miss out on Naruto and Sasuke as a result... but at the same time, is just settling down and leaving everything else to chance not also a huge failing, when there are so many other circumstances and enemies acting against you, when you do have the power to change tides, and when so many other people refuse to or can’t seize their own agency? Jiraiya does put his faith in a lot of people too, and a lot of people fail. Don’t fail him, but in a general sense many, like Minato, fail to make the change they wanted to. That’s life in this world, it’s tragic, and after losing a lot of loved ones yeah, he retreats and goes at it alone.

But how can he win? How does he do what’s right, other than by chasing what he thinks he can do to actually help the world, which happens to be bigger and not centred on individuals, even those he cares about?

(and remember, nobody knows Naruto is special-reincarnation-prophecy-boi, which is why I tend not to blame-game any characters for him being treated like so many orphans were because... while it’s not morally right or nice at all, it’s tone deaf to how the world is, to the fact all characters having different degrees of knowledge and priorities, and it’s insensitive of the fact most the characters had their own struggles and were just doing their best with a bad lot gdi).

Hell though, Jiraiya even does put Oro, his big obsessive wild goose chase that whisks him away into selfish pining hopelessly devoted land, on the back burner at points. Maybe not in a lasting way, particularly by the last databook where he’s inspired anew by Naruto, but he does prioritise other shit on numerous occasions. And there’s a lot of shit to try and prioritise.

What I’m trying to say is, Jiraiya can’t solely be held responsible for people. Sure, he’s a character whose decisions were pivotal to events, but what of every other character in the story? Why are they not held to the same crazy high standard of doing and protecting and preventing and somehow doing everything ‘right’ that would have also meant him fitting neatly into the Konoha mould? Would other characters really have been that much better in the position of The Big Guide/Martyr/Tragic Hero/Force For Change character? And also is having a tragic Chaotic Good bastard of a hero not a sign of a damn good and interesting character, that at the very least tried where so many others didn’t? Would Naruto not have been a boring as hell story, whose main protag didn’t really have much conflict to make him compelling, without Jiraiya (among others) being a mess with the best intentions? Without so many other characters having failed him, for him to overcome it and still be able to love and inspire change (albeit through sometimes-clumsy talk-no-jutsu)? Was I missing the point of the story?

............. Hmm!

No longer sure where else I’m going with this now, so.... here, I guess, ends my ode to why character hate (especially that reduces them to One Thing) is dumb, why demonising truly well-meaning characters doesn’t feel particularly woke to me in a cast full of flawed characters and horrible circumstance, and why I’ll defend this poor bastard with far too damn much hinging on him to the end I guess :’)

TL;DR HE’S A DUMBASS AND HE TRIED, OKAY?!

#i feel like this is like... about as bold as i'll get with this subject #{ooc}#{memoirs(headcanons)}#not sure about it being a headcanon as such but it does include some of mine so.... for now it can be #{long post}#{meta&analysis}

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hrbumga · 4 years

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Review: Deathless, Cathrynne M. Valente

Overall Rating: 2.5/5 stars.

This review contains heckin’ spoilers. I had about as mixed feelings as you could have about this book. On one hand, I can see where it gets it’s hype—a lot of the descriptions are beautiful, Valente manages to weave a rich tapestry of images and situations so that each page dazzles you anew. The thing is, I think I liked this book. Think. To be honest, I’m not totally sure. While rewritten fairytales for adults is a genre I’m drawn to, I think there were a lot of issues I had with this book, and furthermore some of the strangest things about Deathless actually didn’t take place within its pages at all. Let’s put a pin in that.

Structural Integrity

I can’t tell if the structure was the thing I took the most issue with, or if it was just the first thing I noticed. I’m mostly going to focus on the prologue and parts 1 and 2, since that’s where I have the issue.

The prologue opens with a boy (when I say boy I mean little kid, I think he was like 9 or 10) standing trial for not being available to fight in The War(TM). One of the people trying him is Marya Morevna, our protagonist. In a moment of kindness, she tells the boy to turn, run, and never look back, letting him escape punishment. Are we going to remember this? Of course, it’s the prologue, an introduction to the core of the story. Does it come up again? Kinda. In part 6, we loop back around to it, which makes me think part 6 should’ve been more of an epilogue to pair with the prologue.

So anyway, all we really derive from that is Marya is either a traitor to whatever war she’s a part of or is sympathetic to children. Or both. Which, okay, having a prologue mainly focused on the character we’ll be following makes sense. We either see who she is or who she was, and we get a sense that this Marya is/was a strong yet kind hearted character. Put a pin in that.

Part 1 is Marya’s upbringing, taking place either right before or during the Bolshevik Revolution. There’s a lovely, fairytale-esque portion in the beginning where as a little girl, she watches from her window as birds hop down from the tree outside, transform into handsome, wealthy men ask to marry the girl in the window and in turn, each of Marya’s three older sisters are married off. She waits for her turn and is teased by schoolmates for believing in magic. As time goes on, more families move into her cramped home for communal living and she visits the house elves that live between the walls, who tell her that Papa Koschei, the Tsar of Life (a kind of god/demigod figure in folklore from what I can gather), will come for her soon. She visits a creepy widow next door who turns out to be the Tsaritsa of the Hour who tells her pretty much the same.

Finally, on cue, a handsome young man named Koschei, who is in fact an ancient, old, old man comes to the door to take her away from this life of poverty and be his fiancée. Marya is roughly sixteen at this point. The part ends with him grooming her while spiriting her away to the magic land of Buyan. When I say grooming, I mean he’s literally taking her willpower away as though it’s an object, slowly, over time. Part 1 ends with Marya disobeying his order not to speak (literally all she says is she’s feeling a little better after being violently ill all journey) and he punishes her by biting her tongue til she bleeds.

Then part 2 kicks off! The beginning of part 2 begins with Zemlehyed the leshy and Naganya the vintovnik bickering. Classic them! Then Madame Lebedeva hops off her horse from a firebird hunt.

If you just said, “wait, back up, who are these people? What’s a leshy?” you are not alone! Oh, eventually Marya turns up too. Yeah, turns out there’s been a major time skip from the point where Marya was a starving, impoverished child to a magical being’s bride-to-be, who’s dressed in jewels and gold, has three whimsical pals that are framed as though we’ve already been endeared to them, and is super into her kinky BDSM lifestyle with her ancient groom. This transition has taken a year. Mind you, Marya isn’t just our protagonist, she’s the one the narration follows, so any internal monologue with her grappling with whateverthehell happened in that year is just something the reader doesn’t get.

Sure, her and her whimsical folktale fae friends have snappy dialogue and seem close, but we see literally nothing of how they get there. It’s a neck-snapping tonal whiplash from part 1 and frankly, had this not been a book club pick I would have DNF’d at the beginning of part 2 so quickly.

That’s a big issue I have with this. The parts don’t have much of a narrative through line, not really. The time jumps are janky and messy, we’re tossed in the deep end constantly. I think if the book had begun with part 2, I wouldn’t have minded the deep-endedness, that’s how books are at first. Have part 1 be a prologue or split up in flashbacks. But no, you read part 1, get accustomed to what the book is, and then quick as a whip you’re in a completely different novel altogether. It doesn’t read as cute or clever, but rather awkward and annoying.

While the beginning of part 2 has flimsy explanations of what leshy and vintovik are, as well as other Russian creatures and characters, it’s all missile launched at you so quickly you don’t have time to actually absorb any of it.

The Book Doesn’t Breathe

Boy howdy, for a story with Buyan, where the buildings literally have flesh and blood, it sure doesn’t leave space for air. Like I mentioned before, it often tosses unfamiliar terminology, stories, archetypes, and situations at you all at once without a moment’s notice. If the book is trying to cater to a new adult demographic in America, it doesn’t do an adequate job of hosting the reader in this new strange world. It’s a shame, really, because Valente describes things incredibly vividly and beautifully. Description in this book? Great. However, it feels as though character and plot development were sacrificed in the process. You’re yanked from one cast to the next, and Marya has very little impact on anything at all.

Okay, so, Naganya is this spunky steampunk-like troll creature. One of the main (thus, new) characters in part 2. She’s introduced as a close friend of Marya’s, which, okay. Moving on. They go on a wacky adventure! You see their relationship organically. While you’re still frustrated there was no build, you’re kinda on board. Okay, great. End of part 2? Naganya’s murdered. Slaughtered, in fact, pretty brutally. Gone, dead. Didn’t matter. Moving on to part 3’s cast!

While Naganya’s ghost is referenced and Marya’s like, “F in the chat, that was a bummer dude,” that’s about all we get. Again, there’s no insight into whether she gives a damn. She uses sentences like “I loved my friends, them being dead is a downer” but it’s extremely tell-don’t-show. The thing is, in part 3, it’s ten years later and Marya is a hardened war general in her late 20s who simply doesn’t have the time or emotional energy to deal with that stuff.

Marya, Paperdoll Protagonist

I was watching a video essay where the essayist mentioned that Disney princesses in the Disney Renaissance were passive protagonists. Even if they were the main character, the story wasn’t about their growth and development, but rather it was about them being a free spirited teen who eventually settles down with a man. The heroes get the emotional arcs, not the heroines. Nearly all princesses from this era were more just placed in a setting and waded through it as things happened around them. Flat, unchanging, stagnant, like dolls.

Marya is like that.

Our protagonist never has any agency in the book. She’s groomed as a child, pushed around by Baba Yaga in part 2, pushed around by her husbands in part 3, and so on. She literally is just rolling with the punches. At a couple points she mentions wanting to free a bunch of sweatshop workers, but the narrative doesn’t budge, but rather tells her “no,” and railroads her forward in the predestined plot line like a bad D&D Dungeon Master.

Now, real quick, I don’t necessarily think this is inherently a bad thing as a narrative. Highlighting Marya’s lack of agency could be interesting and lead to a story that’s satisfying to read. It might not be how I would want a heroine to be treated but hey, different strokes. Here’s the problem: some Russian readers and reviewers have pointed out that this is absolutely antithetical to who Marya was in original Russian folklore. She was a warrior queen. She didn’t have to beg and cajole her way to power, she had it all along. Subverting traditional fairytales is also not inherently bad, though it’s been pointed out that this subversion in particular does a disservice to the character. Not to mention that Valente isn’t Russian herself, didn’t grow up listening to these tales, but rather seems to have appropriated them for her own gain. I’m not Russian, I can’t speak to whether or not Valente mistreated original texts, but I encourage readers to look into reviews written by Russian people who’ve read and reacted to the book. (Note: in the interest of attempting to be balanced, there is a review from a Russian who really liked Valente’s treatment, so there’s also that.)

Here are some of the more critical reviews:

Nastassja’s Review

Kogiopsis’s Review (which links to a couple others as well)

Liz’s Review

Did I cherry-pick these reviews because they aligned with my feelings? Yeah, admittedly, I did, and I encourage anyone to read through all of the reviews at their leisure if they’re really interested in potentially reading, because most of the reviews are good ones.

The Diptych Conspiracy: A Space Opera

The strangest thing I found while reading Deathless actually has nothing to do with the text itself, but rather the metatextual… idk, nature? of the book. As of now, and seemingly since very early after Deathless was published in 2011, it’s been marketed as part of a series called the Leningrad Diptych.

Valente announced on her personal blog that there would be a companion book of sorts that didn’t follow the same storyline as Deathless, but was made to act as a spiritual parallel.

She announced that Deathless would have a twin, Matryoshka, which was picked up by Tor, the same publisher who published Deathless, to be released in 2015. That’s where things get sticky.

If you google “matryoshka valente,” you get a couple of hits. When you click those hits, they take you to webpages that allegedly are selling Matryoshka according to titles and headers on the page. However, the book listed was published in 2019, not 2015. And the book’s description has nothing about Russian folklore or historical fiction, but something about a metagalactic space empire. And also, the book cover says it’s called Space Opera.

???????????????????

I wasn’t alone in my confusion though, thanks to this gem of a comment on Goodreads:

Apparently, at some point, the twin in the Leningrad Diptych was listed as an entry on Goodreads at one point. It was unnamed at the time, perhaps the title wasn’t announced for publishing yet. Then, inexplicably, Valente (who is a Goodreads author and therefore is able to edit her profile and her book entries) overwrote the entry entirely. Apparently, Matryoshka has been “postponed indefinitely.” I can’t find official word on this, but nothing has been mentioned about this book since 2013, so I have to assume that’s correct.

Okay, then why overwrite the entry? Why transform Matryoshka into Space Opera, this confusing some auto-updated websites and more importantly confusing me, 7 years later, at 2am when I have COVID and can’t sleep?

I have absolutely no basis for this, but I have a theory. Valente announces Matryoshka and creates a listing on Goodreads for the upcoming book (was the book actually okayed for publishing? Could she have announced it before it was played so her following pushed the publisher into okaying it? Probably not likely and I don’t know, but that’s besides the point). Anyway, she gets all this hype up about this new book, and Goodreads users add it to their to-read lists.

Then, something happens. The book is trunked, writer’s block happens, 30-50 feral hogs destroy all the existing copies, the publisher cancels it, whatever. It’s a bummer (no, really, I know I dumped on Deathless earlier but I’d be interested in the companion novel). Life goes on, Valente writes a new novel, sci-fi this time. That’s a completely different genre though, and fans might be antsy if you announce Space Opera while Matryoshka is theoretically still on the table.

So you simply overwrite the entry. Wipe Matryoshka from Goodreads, swap it with Space Opera when no one is looking.

Now, a bunch of people have your new sci-fi book on their to-read list and are none the wiser. When the book is finally released in 2019, they all get notifications that the book they want is ready, hooray! Most don’t bat an eye, maybe reserve a copy. Some might go, “oh, I don’t remember saving this book, but here it is. And it’s an author I like, so I must’ve done it.” Plus, everyone on their friends list gets a lil nudge in their algorithms that’s like “hey, Sue marked Space Opera as want-to-read. I’ll bet you’d like it too.” Your unknown sci-fi novel is suddenly in front of a lot of eyeballs and on a lot of wishlists, while the previous book is quietly swept under the rug. Success. You never mention the other book again. Matryoshka, who?

But again, I’m looking waaaaay too far into this. As of first writing this It’s 2am, I’m on day three of COVID-aligned symptoms, still waiting for my test results which is scary, therefore I can’t sleep. Also I’m a little bored.

Anyway, Deathless was alright I guess.

#deathless #catherynne m valente #review

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laiqart · 4 years

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The Untamed vs MDZS Anime: Which is better?

Going to japan now. Currently in the plane. The in flight tv is broken. So... ive been watching mdzs on youtube!

Hot damn the animation is beautiful. Every frame is a work of art. How the hell. Its so beautiful. I mean they use 3D a lot for the backgrounds and boats but its still gorgeous and not too jarring. The lighting is so realistic, scenery too. All the fighting choreography is beautiful. The way the swords swing in the air looks so fluid, and when swords clash its in flashes of light the color of their sword. Such a tasteful yet stylistic choice. Everyone's, esp wwx, hair is so flowy, so detailed every strand sways in the wind. The waves reflect light and move smoothly. How the hell did they do that. How. I was thinking of doing those screencap redraw thingy with the scene when wwx whacks lwj's boat. (they also emphasised how far lwj's boat was sinking into the water, which makes it more convincing how wwx can deduce that theres something underneath vs the live action where lwj's boat looked normal..) it was damn beautiful. The thing is, the point of these redraws is that the animation looks simple, so the redraw would enhance the scene. But for mdzs, everything is already in peak quality, redrawing it will only look worse. Its like writing fanfiction of books. The original writing is so damn beautiful, fan fiction ends up being such a stark difference that the reader cant help but compare the 2.

Drama, as everyone says, shows better facial expressions due to the live actors, so emotions hit harder. But anime def LOOKs way better in all action scenes. Angles that follow the characters are used to emphasise scale between enemy and chracters, and all the movements feel so dynamic, and i love how when they use talisman spell thingies they got a circle of light in an intricate pattern thats super beautiful. In the drama, its just a piece of paper.

However, i prefer drama's lwj. Maybe cos wyb looks so young, its more believable when he freaks out over the adult book that wwx gives him in the library scene. In the anime, he looks 20+-30+. Its a bit hard to believe that he'd be worried over that. Idk theres a kind of innocence and naivety that leads to the stubborn refusal to express emotion that young lwj is plagued with that we have in the untamed (was this intentional on wyb's part or is it because the teenage lwj wig made his eyes look floaty, so he seems more like a teenager and naive, less experienced as a cultivator vs lwj 13 years later? Dk but it works!). In the anime, he looks like an adult thats calm and level headed already from the get-go. Idk maybe i just havent watched enough (only seen up til the water demons in caiyi town). In both anime and drama, everyone and i mean EVERYONE besides the fricking babies looks the same 13/16 years later. It doesn't feel like time has passed at all. I wish they would have maybe a change in costume, or hairstyle in the anime. The drama at least changes their costumes a little and neatens the hairstyle of jiang cheng and lwj to indicate maturity.

Btw i love that in the anime for the water demons section they had wwx and jc casually chatting (though its a blatant cornetto ad which is fricking weird. How can there be frozen treats back in those days), then wwx beautifully catapulting himself onto a boat and rowing away showing the unique and romantic af mode of transport in caiyi town, then smoothly transitioning to the lan bros on the bridge right above them with lwj asking why lxc decided to bring them along. Its just tying together so many scenes, quickening the plot along and yet doing it so naturally and seamlessly compared with the novel and drama.

Though i like that the drama involved wn and wq and have wwx save wn, and makes way more sense why wn would want to risk his life to help wwx recover his parents fricking corpse illegally right under the nose of wen chao and wen zhuliu.

The anime removed the entire mystery plot of a yan and the fairy goddess statue and thats honestly the best best best choice to make. In the drama, it was one of the worse sections ever cos i didnt understand who all these random ass characters were (it was one of the first mysteries in the drama) and yet it didnt go into detail like they did in the novel, so not only did i not know what was going on, i also didnt give a single shit about the characters. When i saw that they completely did away with the random passer bys who screwed around with the fairy statue, i was thoroughly impressed.

I liked that the drama let nhs have his own trouble making moments tho, like having him sneak a live bird into class. It makes it more convincing that wwx would be friends with him because they both have a mischievous side that they can both appreciate in each other. In the anime, nhs just looks like a loser nerd thats weak in swordplay and does wwx's homework for him, without a will of his own. It doesnt make sense why wwx would keep him around. Then again, maybe itll make the reveal that nhs is a conniving mastermind more impactful for the anime, oh well only time will tell.

I liked that lxc and lwj look similar in the anime. Its more convincing when people call them the twin jades of the lan clan. In the drama, they hardly looked like brothers. Lxc looks more like lwj's mentor or teacher rather than an older brother. In the anime, they look more siblingy.

I miss drama wen ning. I rmb when he looked so fierce and terrifying in his first appearance. I was legit intimidated. Oh how hes changed! Hes so fluffy now. In the anime hes equally menacing. His fight scene with the statue goddess was so beautiful. Doesnt it take a long time to animate the chains moving so fluidly yet dynamically yet somehow looks like it can disintegrate rock in an instant? The lighting on it too, how it reflected the fire of the forest around them. Have i mentioned how beautiful having that fight scene at night was? It was dark and ominous looking, yet the fire cast an epic looking light over the scene with warm orange glows. And the animators had that fiery light reflected in anything they could find: eyes, chains, swords.

Ooh but jiang cheng's whip looked prettier in the drama than in the anime, which is kind of weird given they were both cgi-ed. Somehow the lighting of the whip in the drama was brighter, looked more like real lightning vs the whip in the anime looking a little dull, like they colored it then added a gray filter. This is kinda bizarre given the laughably bad effects of the effects for everything else in the drama. Visuals for non human things is not the drama's strong suit, so it makes u wonder what happened for the anime whip. Maybe in the dark, the lightning would have to look hella bright and reflect on the surroundings (tedious to color) more so than in the day, hence why it looked worse in anime vs drama. Oh well.

As for lan sizhui, its weird that his voice is so deep in the anime (and audio drama!). Ive always seen him as a kiddo thanks to the live action, so hearing him sound mature is kinda off-putting. He sounds like a leader, and gives off lwj vibes vs in the live action where he gives a goody two shoes studious nerd vibe, whos just trying his best. Maybe this is better, he feels way more like a lwj-raised child(serious and business-like) which makes more sense. Live action lsz feels like a wwx(optimistic and intelligent) AND lwj(well-behaved and sensible)-raised child. Anime lsz looks like hes got his shit together. Jinling is fairly similar in both, maybe less prideful in the anime (in live action theres the scene where im pretty sure he indirectly kills one of his men by wishing for the fairy goddess statue to come to life. That was a hella asshole move. This was omitted in the anime.) Jingyi in the anime somehow looks snarkier. Maybe cos he straight up duels with jinling and kicks him down a dark cave. Ive been wondering why all the tumblr posts depict ljy as this sassy ass short tempered kid when he was quite tame (though sassy by lan standards) in the live action. Now i know.

The costumes for the drama is better, more detailed though thats expected i guess. I just love that they have little white gusu lan clan uniforms that wwx jc and friendos are required to wear. Its so cute and such a cool detail. In anime, theyre all in their usual garb, and they just look like random people who decided to turn up at lan qirens class. In the drama, it looks more like a school that they have to attend for half a year and it feels characteristic that gusu lan clan would require their students to have a uniform, given their incredibly strict regime type. It also serves to separate the happy carefree school days from all the other tragic af events in wwx's life. His costume starts out white showing innocence and purity of his naiive teenage years who had yet to experience hardship and still feels invincible as a youth. After school, he wears dark blue, as he goes on an adventure with lanzhan and experience how important the yin iron is (gives up the joking light hearted nature as a teenager by realizing the gravity of situation if the wen clan gets their hands on it) and maybe that hes not truly part of the jiang clan who wears purple. Then his costume eventually becomes black as he experiences his first life and death situation that he isnt sure he can handle. That child like assurance that "oh the seniors will let me off" or "im sure jiang fengmian will come to my rescue" gets demolished when he undergoes cruel indoctrination at the wen clans. This visual development may be a bit on the nose, but personally i love subtle representations.

Overall, the anime does do a better of job of explaining the world's mechanics, which is quite important. The drama is quite faithful to the book, at times even more so than the anime, so it irks me that this is the one thing they decide to skim on. The god damn premise, the first thing the audience needs: why the hell is wwx alive again and what is mo xuanyu doing?? I guess the drama thought that it explains itself but it doesnt really. It was really confusing. The anime, though somehow faster than the drama, still has the time to properly explain mxy. A technique ive noticed is that they do exposition during the fight scenes, which is so ingenius. Its visually appealing, as always, so its not boring, the viewers gets to understand whats going on AND it gives the sense that the characters are so skilled that they carry causal conversations while fighting supposedly weak enemies like zombies and water ghosts, which is accurate seeing how wwx and lwj and friends are supposed to be one of the most powerful cultivators.

TL;DR both are good lol

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan zhan #lan jingyi #lan xichen #lan wangji #jiang cheng #nie huaisang #lan sizhui #wei ying #jin ling #analysis #rant #thoughts #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo xuanyu

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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoldretired · 4 years

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some p!g-drv3 theories (spoilers obvi)

First of all I think people demonize the pg versions wayyy too much because its a good way to be le sexy in like fanfictions. And i get it, villains are hot or whatever. and also hs is a horny age to be. But even the edgiest and horniest of teens aren’t like. that sexual/monstrous. its kind of insane the portrayals people are placing

maybe this could also be like me being older bc when i was early hs i was like yea its fair to place these super mature portrayals on a 18-22 year old they are like adults but young and now im that age and im like woah there pardner. might be an age/maturity thing.

also like its normal for people to relate to and portray characters their same age in a similar fashion, but when adults write more sexual content about the dg kids i get hella fucking sus

idk where i was going with that first comment i guess its like a preface and in the end i think its important when characters especially teenage characters are morally grey not because they’re mature and dark/brooding but because they are still young and learning. fuck im older than like most of them, but im still young and learning. its good to be in turmoil and confused, especially the drv3 cast. they are more confused than anything.

which i think is a reason why people would join dr because if you are completely loss and in turmoil, it is appealing to be given a purpose in life and amazing talents/abilities. despite the morals of danganronpa, it is a simple reality to be told who you are and what to do

OK ONTO HEADCANONS (not doing all bc i dont have thoughts about all)

first of all i understand changing stories but i think, deep down, you can’t change fundamental personalities/values. so while the backstories might be different i think, in the end, a baseline is always the same

SHUICHI being a Bad Boy is like canon obviously but i dont think he’s as manipulative as people make him out to be. i think he falls in the more the bully role that like. mae borowski or tf2′s scout filled before they grew up. rough background, bad anger issues, lots of emotional turmoil, and the only way he knows how to deal with shit is by committing crimes and beating the shit out of people. and, similar to those characters, drv3 represents an older, more emotionally sober yet equally confused version of himself. the urges are still there as foreshadowed in the dialogue. i think he struggles with guilt, mostly survivors, but there is still a lasting impact of guilt of what he did in his past, even if he can’t remember.

KOKICHI is a child. a piece of shit motherfucker child but a child. I really do think he’s like one of the youngest people in the cast. he reminds me a lot of when my brother doesn’t take his adhd medicine and takes jokes way too far and does mean and cruel things because he thinks its funny and that its just a fun joke, but is hurting people. he desperately wants approval, which is why his leader role is so interesting because in the dr narrative he has the approval he craves and so he is satisfied. still, he does try to impress characters like rantaro and values his opinions a lot, even developing a brotherly relationship in the time they knew each other. this being said, its established kokichi was bullied before, but i dont think he’s like. the wimp people make him out to be. i think he’s more of like the class clown who desperately uses humor to make people like him, and ends up resorting to be the butt of most of his jokes. you don’t just develop a good sense of humor out of a brainwash, and that’s not something you can program in. i think that was a remnant of before, and he’s so good at bullying people and coming up with roasts - i just think that in p!g the roasts were about him.

KAEDE is baby but her p!g personality seriously reminds me of any ~quirky/edgy~ girl in a teen coming of age story who tries to be edgy and cool and act like she doesn’t care but deep down, she really does. if she didn’t have an empathetic personality, she wouldn’t want to end the game. i also think she has that self-identifying QuIrKy personality because its like she lives in her own narrative, practically announcing this story is about her and she is the protagonist. i know i used to self narrate like that and distinguish how i was different when i was like. 15-16. she has a tumblr.

I really like the theory where KAITO is a make-a-wish kid who was better when he was younger but relapses later in teens. he never used his wish before, so he decides to use it now to be on danganronpa and become the hero he always wanted to be. i also think he might have joined as a way to raise awareness about adolescent healthcare. definitely the type who puts on a “heroic” character to make everyone else feel better about the fact he is literally dying of a terminal illness, and keeps that act up till the end.

i think KOREKIYO is still a serial killer. i think honestly a reason why he mightve auditioned for danganronpa is because he is a serial killer. maybe his sister found out and he felt so much shame that’s why he auditioned. he probably mentioned why in his interview because duh, tell them im a serial killer and then only reason im coming clean is my sister found out and im ashamed, that is like a guarantee to get on the show. i LOVE the theory that his sister is still alive, however, and has to watch her brother go insane because they wrote her into the story as the villain. because technically, she brought on this guilt, and is the reason why he auditioned - as a way to cause despair, twist it around so she’s the one to blame for his insanity. also, because its pretty accepted DR members become celebrities, kork’s sister is totally bombarded with paparazzi and is demonized in the media. she might end up writing a tell-all memoir about kork’s actual childhood and personality. quiet kid, thoughtful, interested in anthropology, she never thought he’d hurt a fly. watching her brother go insane probably destroyed her.

I also think, timeline wise, kork is probably one of the oldest members along with rantaro. tbh i think kork actually graduated hs and went on a gap year doing the whole “hitchhike around the world to discover myself thing” which is where he began killing people. he was getting ready to go to college when his sister found out about what he did. this is when he decided to go on danganronpa instead of university. this would help explain why he knows so much about other cultures/travel/been so many places with so many memories/killed/is knowledgable on a level most other students are not. this would place him at like, 20-21, where everyone else is like 15-18.

ok so there’s two p!g RANTARO, p!g before 53 and p!p!g before 52. i’d like to establish now i think rantaro is the oldest of the characters, seeing as though he was already pretty old to begin with in 52, it takes time between television seasons, and he was in another game. so im placing him like 21-23, similar to yasuhiro in d1 being so much older than everyone else. i do think, in all iterations, rantaro was pretty much raising his sisters, though i don’t think he had twelve like the story (i think that’s an exaggeration, his sisters mean a lot to him, lets make him have a TON and then lose them all and feel GUILTY) rantaro joined the first game, partially to get money for his family and hopefully establish them as celebrities and let them have a comfy lifestyle, even if he doesn’t live...and also to finally ahve some sort of experience without his siblings tagging along. if he’s been raising his sisters all his life, he’s never had like something that’s JUST his. that’s his adventure. 52 is his ULTIMATE adventure. ahaha. mostly for money, kind of dreading it, still a tiny bit excited

ok p!g rantaro between 52 and 53 probably came back broken. he did the signings and appearances, but mostly wanted to spend time with his family and make sure they were set up. i think he knew the whole like few months between seasons he had to go on another show, but he did’t tell his sisters. his family found out when they saw a billboard with his face plastered on it hyping up the return of a fan favorite. yikes!

ok i get it a lot of people hate HIMIKO but i think she’s not nearly as similar as other “useless” characters in other games. its like, pretty clear she’s depressed, and the only thing she’s holding onto with dear life is magic. lack of hygiene, lack of personal care, constantly tired, social interaction exhausts - she has depression, but she’s not an UWU depressed character. so people find her depressive traits (which are some of the most realistic portrayals of mental health in the series) SUPER annoygin. she joined dr because she was completely lost and needed some sort of direction in her life, even if she’ll die for it. the thing is, even with direction, her mental state didn’t change because she wasn’t getting legitimate help. it’s like that one SNL skit that’s like. same sad you from before but in a new place. i also think she knows the magic is not real, because how could she not. i think she’s so adamant that it IS real, less as a way to convince others, and more of a way to convince herself. it’s like really super cruel that team danganronpa took a girl who is desperate for meaning and gave her literally a meaningless, fake talent.

i also kin himiko and find her a comfort character because i feel seen by her, replacing her useless talent of magic with mine of like shitty film making and comedy. i am seen.

related i don’t think she’s nearly as ugly as everyone says she is, i think she’s probably just depressed and takes absolutely no care of her hygiene and sleep and looks like sick and greasy all the time. same queen.

honest to god i think RYOMA’s backstory, tennis and all, is like 100% real and he’s the only one who keeps all of his memories except for the fact this is a tv show. i think he rolled up, a hot fucking mess, and the danganronpa team were like damn. we cannot improve upon this.

#ryoma hoshi #himiko yumeno #rantaro amami #korekiyo shinguji #kaito momota #kaede akamatsu #shuichi saihara #kokichi ouma #drv3 #killing harmony #pg dr #pre!game danganronpa #danganronpa #theories #danganronpa spoilers

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shima-draws · 4 years

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Okay listen I really really enjoyed The Wonderland/Birthday Wonderland a LOT but there’s definitely like. Huge chunks of stuff that are missing from the plot that I would have loved to see;; SPOILERS AHEAD BEWARE

First of all let me say that this movie definitely would have worked better as a TV series. Why? Because the world itself is MASSIVE. There’s so much worldbuilding shit going on that they only got to touch a little bit of each section, and left so many things open ended. And then there’s the fact of the plot itself that leaves a lot of holes behind and unanswered questions.

Rest is under the cut so ya’ll can avoid spoilers if you so desire:

What the fuck happened with the sweater contest? They make it out to be such an enormous, important part of the plot that literally ends the moment Akane hands the sweater over. We see her protectively guarding it the entire journey to the city, and yet it’s never even touched upon if the sweater wins the contest or not. What happened bruh?? I want to know if it won, a lot of unnecessary screentime went into the development and story of that sweater! Don’t leave me hanging!

“Our world is dying”, Hippocrates says, as the majority of the land is still thriving pretty okay from the looks of it. Aight. There’s lots of gorgeous visuals in this film that are made clear through the gift of water that they’re living--and apparently there isn’t even enough water to go around for humans to drink. At that point literally everything else would be dried up, right? There is literally a giant pond--GIANT! With koi fish right outside the city. They just gotta learn to distribute their water better;; it’s a shitty system tbh lmao I mean there’s plenty to go around. They just don’t bother to try spreading it evenly, which is why some places are flourishing while others are not. They really should have spent more time showing how people are suffering from this rather than showing the remaining gorgeous parts of the land--that would have made the impact of saving that world that much stronger, made the stakes so much higher. If Akane had seen how bad it really got without water, maybe that would have driven her character development earlier on, and made it more significant.

Akane’s change. It felt...really...anti-climatic. Or maybe just rushed. It was a sudden, minor sort of thing that when I realized I was like “Oh, okay, she’s already come to the conclusion that she can be strong on her own, but I wanted to see that?” They didn’t execute it super well. It feels like we’re missing an entire scene where Akane finally breaks through her fear to gain courage and make her own choices. There was definitely a bit of that right before she made her grand speech to Zangu, but there was nothing that prompted it. The whole movie is a coming of age story for her, building up until the moment where she has her great breakthrough and is able to be confident with herself. But...they don’t show that. We don’t get to see that moment. I don’t know why, because it’s the most important thing of the entire film? They really could have handled that better.

I really wish they touched more on Midori’s involvement;; she was so minor I almost didn’t catch the connection between her and the previous Goddess of the Green Wind. I like that Akane feels closer to her because of this, but we never really get anymore information than that. How did Midori end up in Wonderland so many years ago? Was she a reluctant hero type like Akane, or was she determined to save the world? Did she meet Hippocrates way back then, or was it a different alchemist that lead her on an adventure? Was something wrong with the prince at the time which required her presence in order to make sure the drop rain ceremony went well, just like Akane? I don’t know! I want to know!

The ending was SO abrupt and short. Literally right after Akane and Chii get back that’s it bam roll credits movie over! I’m like. Whiplashed by it. I wanted to see how they were affected by the journey (besides Chii immediately going to take a nap which fandjksad MOOD), and how they’ve changed from their adventures. We obviously see a huge change in Akane at the end, but how does this affect her life in her own world? Does she start treating her friends differently? Does she ever make up with the girl she abandoned in order to be in the popular group (which is another huge thing they never came back to). Is she more determined to do things now, to be confident? Is this a change her mother notices? At least show the impact of what they went through;;

Halfway through the movie we’re introduced to a London-type city that’s really...not so fun looking. Dark, gloomy, and depressing, with obvious signs of poverty, where everyone looks angry all the time. It’s a very very clear outlier in the colorful Wonderland. I’d love to have seen more history on this city...why is it so different from the rest of the world, and so dark? Why do all the people seem so unfriendly, when those outside of its walls are generous and kind? How did this city come to be? It’s such an enormous mystery that they never talk about, besides hinting that this was where the prince had ended up once before he became Zangu.

Speaking of the lovely prince. I know we got kicked in the face with his backstory (and that shit hurted, this poor baby who also kinda deserved it but not to THAT degree), but I would have liked to see even more. Maybe I’m biased because he became my favorite character the instant his identity was revealed, idk. (And, to me, he feels way more fleshed out and rounded as a character regarding his development than Akane does, which is another reason why I like him best.) But while we were given his motivations in becoming Zangu, the personality difference between Zangu and his regular princely self is IMMENSE. I really don’t think the prince would have ever committed such acts--he may be a little shit and have a lot of anger issues (which, valid, I mean his parents died and he suddenly has all these huge expectations on his shoulders and he’s. He’s just a kid man, that HAS to be traumatic) but I really don’t think he would ever strike against his own people or openly threaten them. Sure, he’s definitely shown to be prone to angry outbursts, and is fond of pushing everyone who cares about him away, but he’s not purposefully malicious. And as soon as Akane transforms him back, he calms down immediately and becomes immensely selfless and heroic. So: why the enormous change of heart? I think something that could be canon that they never really mentioned is that, when he was transformed into Zangu, he became sort of a puppet. A lifeless doll without any real empathy, and the only emotions he could feel were a burning anger and a desire for revenge to those that wronged him and made him feel pressured to perform the drop rain ceremony. Being trapped inside a body like that probably just made those feelings escalate, resulting in all of the crimes he committed and all of the people he hurt. (And maybe they did touch on this but I just don’t remember since my memory is garbage lol)

Going off of that, I know this is the type of story where we follow the hero characters, and as soon as Chii and Akane made it home that was it, we weren’t allowed another peek into the Wonderland. But...what if we were granted that opportunity? Could we have gotten the chance to see how things changed after they left? Perhaps the prince began a journey traveling to all of the towns and villages he terrorized, and apologizing to the people. Maybe Ron starts to train under Hippocrates just like Pipo. Maybe the rain washed away all of the sorrow in that lonely city, which caused people to start to change it and make it brighter. Change, change, change! I want to see proof of Akane’s help!

Why the fuck did the other alchemist/sorcerer (I forget his name and there’s no info on him anywhere MDAKMASD I’ll update this when I find out later) do that to the prince?? That was SERIOUSLY fucked up. “Oh yeah, to punish this child for being naughty and angry after his parents died, which is actually perfectly reasonable, let’s turn him into a doll where he can’t MOVE OR SPEAK and let him sit there in absolute torture until I feel like setting him free again, instead of trying to find an alternative way to confront him about his anger issues”. Dude;; No wonder he was so fucking angry and bitter when Ron finally allowed him to speak again. I would be too! Trapping children in naughty doll prison is not the answer!

I’m trying to think of more but I think I covered most of it :’) If ya’ll have anything to add, please do!

Like, overall, the movie was GREAT. It would have been even better if they didn’t shove so much information into it that ended up becoming irrelevant later on. It felt as if they were trying to cram a TV series into a movie, trying to cover all of their bases but failing. There’s just so many things they left open-ended and unanswered;; and you know me, I’m a slut for lore like this so I want to know EVERYTHING. And I only got little bits and pieces of it. I really would kike to know if they just cut out large portions of the movie to fit the time limit and the budget;; because that would make a lot of sense, because it feels as if I was handed a puzzle without all the puzzle pieces.

#Basically Shima goes off about everything she wanted to know about this movie #The Wonderland #Birthday Wonderland #Long post #バースデー・ワンダーランド #Shima speaks #Spoilers

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nostalgic-blood · 7 years

Text

THAT MOVIE THO.

spoilers under the cut of course

Yeah yeah yeah pacing issues, too much cool stuff crammed into a movie with too little time to spare for many characters including AJ and Flutts who unfortunately made no friends and thus, had they not been in the movie nothing would really have affected the plot. They were there for MORAL support okay. Also my favourite gag wouldn’t have worked without Fluttershy. I wish I could watch it again to refresh my memory, but basically they were stowaways on an airship full of pirates, and the pirates find them and threaten them, like eating them or scarring them or SCARRING THEM EMOTIONALLY, and each threat is tailored to a specific pony, and the emotional one focused on Fluttershy. That was great. I loved that gag.

Also the plot was like, simple. EXTREMELY SIMPLE. bad guys show up. Run away from bad guys. search for macguffin that can defeat the bad guys. Bad guys capture good guys anyway. FRIENDSHIP IS POWER THAT CAN DEFEAT--well no, not in the giant rainbow beam smashes into bad guy kind of defeat. The bad guy actually died, and there was a lot of fighting in the climax. Huh.

Well anyway the world building was very good which I normally would never even comment on because when it comes to MLP I usually don’t give two shits about the lore. For instance in season seven they’re introducing a whole bunch of mythical legends that while might be interesting on their own, are presented in a such a way that the episode tends to be a complete bore. What do I learn about Rarity or AJ in an episode where all they do is tell campfire stories? There is no focus on a conflict or any moral lesson (except the small ones in the stories themselves) and little interaction between the main characters. I was so bored by that episode. The Daring Do episode fared even worse and somehow they shoehorned it as Pinkie’s legend (??!!?) despite Pinkie having not read any Daring Do books and having little reason to be on this adventure. (This doesn’t even begin to describe how much Daring Do being real is one of the weakest aspects of the show itself, but I digress)

The only episode that was an interesting way to depict a legend was the Fluttershy episode because figuring out who this historical healer was, was important to curing and preventing the spread of a horrible deadly illness, so that one had great and suspenseful setup with a lot of development for Fluttershy. And frankly I think in terms of legends themselves Fluttershy’s was the least interesting, but because it was framed by a really good episode about Flutters it was the best one.

Oh right I was supposed to talk about the movie.

But yeah, one thing I REALLY like and thought was a possibility in the MLP universe were sky pirates or at least sky sailors or whatever, and HERE THEY ARE, EXISTING! And BEING PIRATES! AIRSHIPS ARE A THING! They even had one in the newest MLP episode. I knew they existed for a long while (one appeared in a small moment during Rarity’s song in Sweet and Elite back in season two) but they were never really utilized until this movie. I don’t know how i feel about tons of all anthro-looking creatures though. I always assumed the world of MLP was all these quadrupedal creatures and if they did stand on two legs it was because they were hybrids with human-like pieces such as minotaurs. Or dragons, but let’s not talk about them.

But here it’s this anthro-cat, and some anthro-fishmen, and then anthro birds, and the big bad is okay because he looks like a primate of some sort, so it makes sense, but the rest of em... ehhhh. I guess since they went OUTSIDE Equestria it makes sense there are a much larger variety of creatures/races, and maybe Equestria is the just the one with the most four-legged equines, but...

Also I think we almost had enough screentime with these new characters to like them. Almost. I was starting to like them, but it wasn’t to the point that if these characters suddenly decided to help the mane six that it’d be 100% believable. Since there wasn’t much time devoted to each of them, the fact that catman decided to side with them just because Rarity in those few precious seconds fixed the hem of his shirt was a little less realistic or believable as it could have been. I get what they were trying to do, but if more time was devoted to it, it would have had much more impact. The pirates especially I thought maybe they would blame the Mane Six for leading to the destruction of their ship, but they were actually really reasonable for pirates that when we first saw them were about to eat them. They realized straight away that the real reason their ship exploded was because their boss sucked.

I could totally believe the Princess Seapony!Hippogriff thing siding with them though. She was just lonely and wanted friends. There were no ethical issues to get in the way at all like murderous pirates or conmen. The fact that the queen did not join them made sense though, since Twilight royally fucked up.

Speaking of Twilight I see a lot of people complaining she was not very Twilight in this movie, doing things that opposed the message of friendship. It made sense to me that she fell back to her more logical, rational way of life though. As they were journeying to find the Queen of the Hippogriffs, normal singing happy friendship methods to solve problems wasn’t really working. They befriended this cat man but he actually just wanted to sell them and was using them. Then they changed the ways of the pirates, but in doing so led the enemy straight towards them. I can see how Twilight thought this wasn’t like Equestria, the land of the colourful happy pastel ponies and their usual modus operandi wasn’t gonna work here. She was desperate! But due to the amount of time they had they could not spend a lot of time emphasizing this, so it may have come off to some people that Twilight was acting a lot more malicious than she is.

Another thing is this movie is clearly not for some random person to walk into a theatre, sit down, and just start watching like they’d understand the movie if it were just a standalone thing. There isn’t much time used up at all to introduce our characters and to make a blind audience care about them. It only really works if you’re already attached to the characters and know who they are, so it really wasn’t a good movie to attract casual moviegoers or anything like that.

I think another comment complaint is how helpless the ponies are especially when they are outside Equestria. This I thought was odd because we have Twilight who still had her magic which could basically solve anything and do anything if the plot demands in the show. Or Rainbow Dash who is supposedly faster than mach 3 or whatever, but neither of these two used their overpowered abilities effectively throughout the movie, almost like the movie forgot that Twilight could teleport or Rainbow Dash could escape.

But anyway all of that is moot. Why is all the above moot? Because we had a movie with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There were decent songs and a pretty good score. It’d otherwise just be a normal run of the mill 6-7/10.

BUT THAT IS MOOT BECAUSE PINKIE PIE WAS AMAZING IN THIS MOVIE. AND I WATCH MLP FOR PINKIE PIE. SHE IS THE NUMBER ONE REASON I AM INVESTED IN THIS FANDOM AT ALL. AND SHE HAD THE MOST FOCUS OF THE MANE SIX AFTER TWILIGHT.

The biggest issue I always had with adventure episodes which were usually the season premieres and finales of the show was that it was always heavily Twilight focused with the other five on the wayside. I did not want to watch a movie where Twilight solves the problem herself and her friends are hostages, or out of commission, nor not themselves, or otherwise not doing anything that affected the plot. They were just along for the ride. Yes unfortunately this ended up being the case for two of the Mane Six, but that’s just another side-effect of them not making this movie longer or utilizing what time they had effectively. (We could have had less new supporting characters or something, idk)

But luckily for my biased-self it was Pinkie they chose to focus on. When they don’t focus on Pinkie and she isn’t important she’s usually just the mindless comedic relief, which was always a depiction I hated of Pinkie. Equestria Girls Pinkie is exactly this, and that’s why she’s my least favourite in the EG Universe. This is fine if Pinkie’s comedy was actually good, but usually they aim for lolrandom humour when that happens. Pinkie’s comedic moments in the movie were much more often hit than miss. I didn’t really dislike any scene with Pinkie at all! At no point did she seem overly obnoxious. Maybe the time when she was trying to play I Spy, but the rest of the Mane Six were audibly exasperated with her so they were self-aware how obnoxious she can be at times, lol.

Also yes, she did ruin some moments too like a few others. And by ruin I mean, the Mane Six are trying to do something and have a perfectly good plan to do so, but one of the characters do the thing they’d always do and it’d ruin the plan. For Pinkie that was just yelling out loud in the marketplace trying to find help, this led them to being conned by the cat man and almost being captured. Then Rainbow ruined everything when she went overboard trying to turn the pirates by showing off her Sonic Rainboom, which is a very loud and flashy technique catching the bad guys’ attention and ruining their plans. Finally Twilight ruined everything when she straight up tried to steal the pearl. So at least it wasn’t ONLY Pinkie... and all of them to me seemed perfectly in-character or made sense for that specific context anyway.

A good example of an adventure episode where Pinkie isn’t very important but has great comedic moments is the season five premiere. She’s the first to notice the odd smiles and has great expressions and reaction faces to the weird town they’re in, and when the Mane Six are being brainwashed she has some great dry humour as well. Still funny when not even trying to be funny! A good example of an episode where Pinkie is not effective whatsoever at being comedic relief is the season three premiere. Pinkie’s just being really loud and screechy. Even if I did like the flugelhorn bit where she yells “FLUGELHORN” into a flugelhorn while trying to play the flugelhorn.

I think the reason why this movie gave such focus to Pinkie over the other five instead of someone else is that Pinkie is the most popular character among the target audience. All the little girls adore her. She’s definitely not the most popular among the brony community, but I’m glad the little girls have great taste! Also Twilight messes up and SHE gets captured, not all her friends at once! It is her friends who she alienated and ostracized that came to the rescue instead. I like this because even though Twilight is the Princess of Friendship now, it doesn’t mean she’s some flawless individual who is the end-all and be-all to friendship. She is the princess because she has many great friends, and they all complete her. It doesn’t make sense for a princess of friendship to not be doing things with her friends. That’s like Luna with no moon, or Cadance without a husband.

Also while Tempest whatever has a much better backstory than Starlight, I still find it a little annoying that MLP has a habit of infodumping a villain’s (that is meant to be redeemed) backstory blatantly in our face, and now we have to feel sorry for them and completely understand their motivations. I thought her villain song started out strong but fell apart when it just jumped into her backstory like that. Again, if the movie had more runtime we could have explored her backstory and motivations in either much more subtle ways, or with more depth, or not all at once. Still despite her edginess she was one of the more fleshed out new characters, so I’ll give her that.

The movie actually reminds of two fanfics I’ve read that have sky pirates and a world outside Equestria. In one, the villain is trying to find and kidnap the protagonist for their dastardly deeds, just like in the movie trying to kidnap Twilight for power, and the cast runs across faraway lands to escape. The other just has a bunch of sky pirates. I love those sky pirates. I made a sky pirate AU for ponies once that if I weren’t so invested in my RWBY AU powered by 1000% salt I might actually attempt to write. SKY PIRATES!!1!11!!!

It’s like the movie was pandered directly to me. Good Pinkie content and sky pirates. Yay! So, with all that bias included I’d give the movie a solid 8.5/10. But that’s just me personally. If Pinkie ISN’T your favourite character or you enjoy more complicated plots with more unpredictability you might rate it a more objective 6 or 7 out of 10.

8.5 tho. Just for Pinkie. PINKIEEEEE!!

#here i am ranting again ~#i thoroughly enjoyed the movie tho #gr8 movie would r8 again #text!post #rant!post #mlp!shit #spoilers

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