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obsidianstrawberrymilk · 2 years

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Naruto hot takes part 3: can I PLEASE get a waffle?

1) Kushina and Minato’s relationship was so fucked up. Like seriously she was a genocide survivor and he was a literal war criminal who killed thousands of people. 2) Also the fucking power imbalance - Minato was a prodigy, chosen young to be the Third Hokage’s successor, had close ties to the three Sannin aka the most powerful ninja in Konoha, and seemed to have some connection to the Second Hokage. Kushina may have been a Jinjuuriki, but she was also a refugee without a family or connections. 3) Also Minato was probably a psychopath lmao. He literally doesn’t care about anyone’s problems unless they’re shoved in his face, has no reaction to two of his students literally dying, and puts the third one - as a traumatized child - in murder corps. 4) Yk if he was alive he probably would have been a dad in a similar way as Principal Asano from Assassination Classroom. 5) Konoha probably had a part to play in Ushizo’s demise and it’s why no one ever mentions them despite that the literal Hokage was married to an Uzumaki. 6) Sasuke isn’t the amazing radical savior his fandom think he is lol. 7) Yeah, he was the closest to a radical character throughout the series, but the second he found out why Itachi decided killing his whole clan was a good idea he immediately sided with him and never questioned any of his decisions. When he did claim to want a revolution, his ideas were a) becoming a dictator (Kage) or b) killing everyone in Konoha. 8) He has every right to be mad and you could probably make him an actual revolutionary easily, but still lol. 9) Shikaku was a kind of bad dad based on what hints we get of Shikamaru’s home life. 10) Literally everyone’s characterization - Sakura included - was more interesting, well rounded, and had more potential in Part 1 than Part 2. 11) Sakura should have been a ROOT agent. It makes a lot of sense, especially in Part 1. 12) For how interesting Sai’s backstory was there was very little point to his character. The only reason he was there was to be Sasuke’s replacement. 13) The fact that he could have and should have been more is true, but he wasn’t. 14) Tsunade had a shit ton of privilege as both a Senju and the granddaughter of the First Hokage and that really should have been explored. 15) Both Jiraiya and Orochimaru give me pedophile vibes and I do not like it. 16) There was literally no reason why basically all of the Rookie 9 had to be clan heirs. It makes no sense. 17) Sarutobi Hiruzen was probably senile and should probably never be seen ever again. Please someone destroy his face on that stupid Hokage Wall or whatever it’s called. 18) Hashirama wasn’t the happy-go-lucky guy everyone seems to think he is lol. He was manipulative as hell and probably killed a shit ton of people. 19) The Last is a really stupid movie that showcases all of Studio Perriot’s fetishes in like two hours. 20) The one thing that is realistic is Hinata caring more about knitting a scarf for ‘N-naruto kun’ than her sister being kidnapped. 21) Both Sakura and Hinata are shittily written characters who’s entire arcs in-story revolve around guys. The difference is Hinata is a slave owner and Sakura knows jack shit about politics because no one tells her anything. 22) Hey Kishimoto give your main heroine an actual fucking thematic and plot relevant role that makes her equal to her male teammates as she’s literally supposed to be as their deuteragonist challenge. 23) Oh yeah Rin being a ROOT agent also makes a lot of sense. 24) Please sort out Naruto’s backstory. Did he have no friends or were Shikamaru, Kiba, and Chouji his friends? Did he not give a shit about Hinata or did he save her from a copy-pasted version of Sakura’s backstory? Please. 25) Naruto isn’t empathetic at all he just trauma dumps on everyone and expects them to gush over his oh-so-sad backstory because he had it the worst out of everyone, awwww. 26) And the worst part is it works lmaoo. 27) Kakashi has white man energy. 28) The whole reincarnation plotline was stupid and added absolutely nothing other than making Naruto’s whole thing about being an ‘underdog’ even more obsolete as he was literally destined for power. 29) Honestly if the ramen girl (Ayame?) was younger I probably would have shipped her and Naruto. It would’ve been cute. 30) Fugaku wasn’t abusive lol. Yeah, he wasn’t a perfect dad, but he did care about his kids and didn’t purposefully hurt them. The only reason people make him out to be Sasuke’s abuser is so they can make Itachi into this uwu savior instead of a nationalist responsible for a genocide.

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ranboo5 · 2 years

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If you have any thoughts on that:

How does the Person somebody watches the most/only/first influence there perspective on lore?

SORRY I DIDN'T GET TO THIS YESTERDAY... you know how it is

Anyway

I do have thoughts on this... nothing super revolutionary but

I do think that this is smth that affects how one reads the story but I think frequently ppl don't go far enough with that yk. Like it doesn't just affect how you see motivations and such. Bc there is not one story bc the SMP is a Sandboxxxx

And when you have characters interacting with a world and each POV track is functionally a different guy interacting w/ their world and the ppl in it, just like irl, you get Different Values

This is where I think the primary divergence is b/w the SMP and standard media is and while people talk about this I don't think it ever gets nailed down, like, what the multiPOV thing actually means. Bc what it means is that every character runs up against different conflicts, and since they interact with the world differently what those conflicts are and how overcoming them looks is different for all of them. And like . The values of a story are created by the tension in it yk? They're defined by the conflict. And we'll all of these conflicts are different they're not united as one single approach to conflict like a centralized piece of media would have, or at best would have many angles of

It means that what the values and significant things in the story are varies depending on what story you're following, much like how irl a philosophical system that can be extremely good for one person can fail for another, and that causes a lot of Discourse I think. Like the thematic win conditions (for lack of a better term) of all these characters don't always line up I don't think they're mutually exclusive necessarily but they're not harmonious and they can disagree on different things because they interact with conflicts DIFFERENTLYYY so different stakes r at play...

I think the biggest mud pit for this is the issue of attachments like . For some stories in this sandbox their value and the beauty of assigning significance to smth is a driving theme but for others the troubles of prioritizing ideals over people is one and that causes all this thematic mud when these things conflict and I think that's not just a feature not a bug but smth that makes the SMP so fucking interesting and more nuanced than standard media can be... like neither of these are wrong but they end up clashing bc it essentially is, when simplified to fiction terms, "sentimental attachments are something valuable" and "nothing is valuable enough to deny someone personhood" and the reason that they exist is bc the stories tht have these respective values are stories with Different Conflicts around the concept of sentimental/ideal attachments!! And neither Of These Ideas Are Wrong but the problem is when you're following a story about one of these ideas bringing up the other one feels like irrelevant + frivolous whataboutism BC IN THE SCOPE OF A SINGLE STORY IT IS..

But the SMP isn't a story. It's a world. And that world has conflicting problems. So that whataboutism is if you want a holistic view of the SMP like . A genuinely just difficult question! Like it is irl! And that's so fucking cool 2 me...

#This is also why the SMP cannot be adapted in full btw

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aimmyarrowshigh · 3 years

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Dark Greetings this Spooky Season Ms. V. Can we get a list of your favorite Halloween movies and specials? I know you have seen *everything* and I am trying to go beyond my usual rewatches this holiday month.

V. AIMMYARROWSHIGH’S CRITERIA FOR HALLOWEEN EPISODES

Does the Halloween element combine convincingly with the usual universe of the show (ex: Lizzie McGuire 2x09 “Those Freaky McGuires” is not good as a Halloween episode because it changes the rules of the Lizzie McGuire universe, whereas Community 2x06 “Epidemiology” is a GREAT Halloween episode because it manages to logically introduce zombies to the regular Community universe)?

Does the Halloween element advance the plot of the episode/series (ex: the reason Boy Meets World 5x17 “And Then There Was Shawn” is literally the best Halloween episode ever made is that it uses the horror movie tropes it satirizes to provide a CRUCIAL turning-point to the plot of the show)?

Is the Halloween episode in the forefront enough that it’s clearly a holiday episode (ex: HAVING ONE JACK-O’LANTERN ON A DESK DOES NOT A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL MAKE, LAW & ORDER 16x03 “GHOSTS”! You gotta go ALL-IN, like Bob’s Burgers 3x02 “Full Bars”!)?

Does the Halloween theme balance well between spooky and warm-n-fuzzy (ex: Criminal Minds 11x21 “Mr. Scratch” is too fucking bleak, but Criminal Minds 12x06 “Elliott’s Pond” has a joyous/celebratory tone to the ending despite being a genuinely scary episode)?

Is it generally a well-written, acted, and designed episode of television (ex: Saved by the Bell! 3x26 “Mystery Weekend” is seriously, not exaggerating, the worst thing I’ve ever watched in my life; Psych 1x15 “Scary Sherry, Or Bianca’s Toast” is a triumph of the medium)?

THE BEST, bar none, Halloween special ever made is Boy Meets World 5x17, “And Then There Was Shawn.” Period. There can be no argument, except MAYBE Community 3x06, “Epidemiology,” but I like “And Then There Was Shawn” better because the parody and homage as less… biting? And because I think it continues and addresses the emotional core of the regular BMW season better than “Epidemiology” does for Community s3. “Epi” DOES plant the seed (…heh) for the Season 3B major plot arc of Shirley’s pregnancy and Chang Deciding To Murder, but it gets some major minus points for mocking Yvette Nicole Brown’s weight with other characters’ responses to her costume, tbh. And “And Then There Was Shawn” is just fucking iconic. It is THE Halloween episode manual, IMO, if there were to be a textbook on how to write a perfect Halloween episode for your sitcom.

HOWEVER, I also have to give major props to Bob’s Burgers and Psych, as complete series, for their CONSISTENTLY excellent Halloween episodes. A lot of series that have multiple Halloween eps really phone it in after one or two, because they don’t have any more ideas for how to incorporate Halloween pastiches while maintaining the overall feeling of the series (tbh B99, while the Halloween Heists are excellent in general, is/has been coming very close to this line, and I think that if they HADN’T had to switch out the Heist to Cinco de Mayo in s6, they would have jumped their Heist Shark [and I think they know it, too, because it was lampshaded in the episode itself]) or they just straight-up don’t have any more ideas for what or how to have the characters they’re bound to parody or pay homage to a Halloween thing after they’ve already done one or two. And let’s be real: those one or two have probably been either The Shining or Rear Window, because those are pretty much the two that every show starts with.

Bob’s manages to make every Halloween episode feel very fresh and organic to the series, which I think they do have some leeway to do because of the nature of cartoons keeping the Belchers living a kind of loop of never aging, yk, but amazingly they’ve only done the “Tina feels too old to trick or treat, maybe? Nope, she’s not 14 yet, so there’s still time!” thing in a way that felt tropey once (in 3x02 Full Bars). They’ve been able to address Tina being 13/in 8th grade, and worrying about it being almost too late for her to keep trick or treating, in ways that were in-character and added to the overall episode in 4x02 Fort Night, 5x02 Tina and the Real Ghost, and 9x04 Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street, without me rolling my eyes at the screen and going “TINA, EVERY SINGLE SHOW WITH A TWEEN IN IT HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THE AGE AT WHICH YOU MUST STOP TRICK OR TREATING IS FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, COME ON NOW” which… at this point, is a Feat. Because like, I’ve POSTED over a thousand Halloween episodes, right? But I’ve watched and screencapped ::checks folder:: 3,905 Halloween episodes since 2014. Which is, um, a. lot. The ACTUAL BEST Bob’s Burgers Halloween episode is 6x03, “The Hauntening,” which is just… achingly perfect television. I know I’ve posted about it before (probably a couple times tbh) but the way that it aired originally back-to-back with The Simpsons 27x04, “Halloween of Horror,” so that the evening of Sunday cartoons juxtaposed eight-year-old Louise whose family worked so hard to scare her like she wanted with nine-year-old Lisa’s family working so hard to keep her from being too scared and make sure that she felt safe… reader, I FUCKIN CRIED. Little girls being deeply loved while also Spoopy Things!!!!!! IS WHAT HALLOWEEN SPECIALS ARE!!! FUCKIN!!!!!! ABOUT!!!!!!!

Psych, though, has the benefit of not really having any, like… central tone to the series? Beyond “friendship” and “having fun with joking,” tbh? So it’s able to do what a lot of series get docked “points” for in my Foolproof Halloween Special Ratings System That Is Completely Subjective To My Tastes And Mood, which is really just run full-tilt into parody and homage without really worrying about overall tonal connection to the rest of the season or series. 1x15, “Scary Sherry, or, Bianca’s Toast,” while it DOES fall victim to the way-too-common Halloween episode trap of making mental hospitals into a Scary Thing (they are a medical normality and a necessary thing for health for many people and should not be feared), is delightful Spooky Fun AND has the benefit of having Shannon Woodward in it.* We all know by now that if an episode of any show has Shannon Woodward as the guest star, it will by default end up being one of the best, if not THE best, episodes of that series. It’s just how having Shannon Woodward as your guest star rolls. I also really like, with Psych’s Halloween episodes, that quite a few of them understand the underlying thematic scope of Horror, which is “The Monstrous Feminine Is A Thing And All Horror Tropes Are Actually About Women’s Interior Lives Because Men Can’t Write Women And Fear Women Always,” yk, in a way that is neither TOO Actual Horror, which I am too afraid of to Do, or too trite and demeaning, which is the other basic trap that Halloween stuff falls into A Lot. Like, Scary Sherry is very much about women villainizing other women, avenging other women, and being in very specifically-female pain, even though Shawn & Gus are still the lens through which we solve the mystery, and so are 4x04 The Devil Is In The Details And The Upstairs Bedroom and 6x03 This Episode Sucks. But they give their Monstrous Females dignity and breadth, which is impressive, ESPECIALLY since they’re one-off guest characters. Also, 3x15 Tuesday the 17th is just plain funny and well-done, like, just give it props for the title alone.

*(Speaking of Shannon Woodward, another amazingly good Halloween episode is Raising Hope 4x07, “Murder, She Hoped,” which is among my very favorite Rear Window homage episodes and has probably the funniest gag in ANY Rear Window ep, in Martha Plimpton floating across the screen in the Grace Kelly silk nightgown and peignoir and announcing that it was on sale at Walmart, can you believe?! and honestly, yes. Perfection.)

Also excellent:

• The Addams Family (1991) + Addams Family Values (1993) • Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WERE GAY FOR SIBELLA AS A CHILD!) • Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE GAY BECAUSE THE HEX GIRLS!) • Halloweentown + Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge • Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire! • Z•O•M•B•I•E•S (to a lesser extent, Z•O•M•B•I•E•S 2) • Clue (1985) • Coraline • Corpse Bride • 6teen 2x00 Dude of the Dead • Arthur 21x00 Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse • Lamb-Chop in the Haunted Studio • Arthur 8x04A Fern-kenstein's Monster • Arthur 10x02 The Squirrels • WandaVision 1x06 The All-New Halloween Spooktacular (I KNOW YOU, SPECIFICALLY, DEAR @plavoptice, HATE MCU!WANDA AND I DON'T BLAME YOU, YOUR REASONS ARE VERY VALID! But this is a good Halloween special so I'm putting it on my list In General.) • Boy Meets World 2x06 Who's Afraid of Cory Wolf? • Ghostbusters (2016) • Gravity Falls 1x12 Summerween • Leverage 4x02 Ten L'il Grifters Job • The Loud House 2x40 Tricked! • Mockingbird Lane 1x00 Unaired Pilot • It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (Classic, etc.)

I'm SURE I'm forgetting some that I'll rewatch this year myself. I'm a big Halloween Baking Championship fan, tbh, which is on Discovery+ now so I recommend that if you like mostly-relaxing nice people baking cakes that look like bats and such.

I'm also IMMENSELY INTENSELY EXCITED for The Muppets' Haunted Mansion on Disney+ next week!!!

#halloween #**halloween

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