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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 3 years

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BFCD Reviews by Nesha: Final Space, Season 3

Everybody that know me know that I’m high class #Quillective trash and my main thoughts and feelings go out to Quinn Ergon and Gary Goodspeed - precious Gemini gems, and of course the BABIES: Little Cato, Ash and Fox #NeshaLuhDaKids I had some attachment to Avocato once upon a time, but that n***a got on my LAST nerves this season, so we currently at “Do you, Boo” status by the end of S3, and eventually, yes, I’ma get to why that is.

Disclaimer for somebody who stumbled across this post because of the fandom tags - I am an independent partaker of this content, not “part of the fandom,” and my audience in particular is NOT for everybody. SO: If you may have been criticized in the past for casual racism, tone deafness to Black women’s concerns or accused of misogynoir or antiblackness, leave now.

If you don’t like cussing, AAVE, general ratchetness and mean lesbian energy, you too might wanna go. A bitch can be eloquent, but I type like I talk, at times, so it is what it is and I don’t curate for kids, dudes, or nonblacks. That’s just what that is.

I wanna start with Ash Graven. This season is about Ash more than anybody else, despite the fact that there was a lot of emphasis on Avocato’s toxic ass man pain and growth in Quinn and Gary’s relationship, ULTIMATELY, nobody in the crew did more coming into fruition as Ash did, and I have a lot to say about her, because I have a lot of feelings.

♡ Ash Graven

1. Ash is a kid. Lol. Everybody got very confused because of the unnecessary transformation that Invictus gave her. Ash did not “grow up,” her body was altered. That’s a fuckin kid in a woman’s body. A kid who has previously been living with survivor’s guilt, parental abuse/neglect/exploitation, chronic trauma, and a disastrous superpower that most people could not be trusted to carry. She’s a child having a coming of age moment in this season that is mostly molded in manipulation. If you hate on Ash, go fuck yourself. ESPECIALLY if I’ve caught you stanning other characters who have been shit characters, in this fandom or not. Ash was dealt a shit hand and nobody had her back but her brothers, and she’s done what she could and thought was best to care for them. Anybody that missed that - just don’t have kids, K.

2. Ash has no parental guidance. As far as she knows, the only adults who have ever had her back are dead and the ones that she’s stuck with now, she GAVE a chance to try to trust them. She gave Quinn a chance to try to see some of Nightfall (the only adult that we’ve seen not exploit her) in her. She gave Gary a chance by choosing him over Clarence, when she had to make a choice. She even gave Clarence’s ass another chance - with which he responded by dying to not fail her. Now, she has Gary, who just a few days or weeks ago, idek, forced her to try to summon her powers while she was both injured and also upset over having to leave her brother behind - TO SAVE HIS GIRLFRIEND! And she got snatched away in the process and left behind with the enemy, to be mentally assaulted and returned changed, only to have them not trust her.

I love Quinn too. I love her dearly. But the facts were that she was dying and having an episode that nobody could really help with, and Gary didn’t take the time or consideration to think about the stress that he was putting on Ash by putting her in the position to make her feel like she needed to save Quinn for him. Whether or not she was the only one who could, that is a lot to put on a child, and not only did he do it, but he didn’t even seem to think that hard about it whenever he then left her ass. Sure, he was glad when she was returned, but that was a fucked up situation that yet another adult put her into, and the first thing that he should have wanted to do when seeing her was to apologize and try to make it right. It was a huge miscalculation to treat her as a potential enemy that he and Avocato needed to vet. EVEN IF that’s what she was to them, both of them should have had the sense to assess while still treating her as the kid that they supposedly knew.

3. Most of her trauma has been recent and continuous. She looked up to Nightfall, watched her die, and had a meltdown. The events from Season 2 (with Clarence almost killing Fox and leaving him to die, her leaving his side to help out, seeing that Sheryl was treacherous to her own son, losing Nightfall), and the events that are taking place in Season 3 are only in the span of a few months.

They were only stranded for a month whenever we see them surviving together. That girl has had more happen to her to hurt her than to help her and nobody around her BUT Little Cato has been sensitive to that. And they are all fucking adults.

These things being noted - changing Ash’s design was the absolute worse fucking thing. Aging a girl up to make the bad things that follow more palatable is what that seems to be. Ash is still a kid. And THEN, they allegedly made her a queer kid. I say allegedly, because that “reveal” was so poorly done and subtle and weak that I, an almost 40 year old queer, didn’t realize that that’s what they meant whenever they said that they were gonna reveal somebody as a character who is part of the LGBT community.

So... FS production just gon’ decide not only to transform her body into that of a woman, when her mind is still full on traumatized child and hormonal teenager, but also, she likes girls, and they didn’t even do it in a cohesive way that added to the story. They threw it in, like, “BTW, she likes girls, and also, she’s full grown now.” then immediately went for the “Villain” lever, and bitches just ate that shit up. Fuck y’all, forreal.

& Fox

He didn’t deserve that shit. And, I know a lot of people felt that he was pointless and boring, but his ass was sweet and caring and searching for love and acceptance. As a background character, I liked him. But, he was literally just fodder for Ash’s downfall, which was unfair and problematic, considering that his ass is definitely Black coded. Don’t play. He was voiced by a Black man, spoke with a blaccent, and definitely would be read as Black if you wasn’t looking at him and seeing an alien. They gave him a sacrificial negro trope, the big friendly negro that can kill you but loves everybody trope, and they used his death to just push some narrative forward to set up the one verified queer character as a villain. They got they ass in a vehicle and rolled right over another Black character, and another queer character. Chile...

♡ Little Cato!!!

My precious have not been getting some good for too long, and I have had it. He’s not focused on so much this season as he is in the background of other people’s stories, but a very important takeaway is and will always be that Little Cato, aside from Fox, really was the only one here who consistently treated her like she mattered, so it made a lot of sense that he could be the catalyst for her finally having ENOUGH with these people.

I really wish that he could have found out the truth about his past from Avocato, because that’s really who OWED him that truth, but Ash did the thing that I’d expect and told him, to be honest with him. She even told him that Avocato wanted to tell him and that she took that right away from him, because she didn’t believe he deserved it, and I’m respecting her for that, too. I wish she could see how much it hurt Little Cato for her to try to take him away from his home.

Little Cato has lived before, for a while, and he’s not mature enough to behave as a man, but he at least has a loving foundation to draw from, and having had that support, this is more of his home than it is Ash’s. He doesn’t know how to explain that to her, and she doesn’t know how to understand that for him. Just a tragic situation for two kids with a lot of problems.

♡ Quinn Ergon & Gary Goodspeed

Quinnary notes that might not be featured in the BFCD Reviews by Nesha: (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) rundown -

I've had two favorite parts of this season so far and they're very mediocre things that you wouldn't think would be like my favorite part but they are. One of them was that the first thing Gary does when she wakes up is to ask her about her sister (someone obviously very important to her who he's previously promised to allow to let live through Quinn's memory and says he wants to hear about her when he's trying to keep Quinn from dying). Because... He really did care and wasn't just saying something to keep her.

Quinn's mother fucked her up in a way that is so frustrating because Black mamas really will traumatize you about their younger kids. That shit hurt. You showed your daughter dead bodies to make her think about that in the event that your other daughter might be in battle? Bitch wtf

Whenever we say that Black girls are programmed to put everybody ahead of us, that's unfortunately not just including Society, it's in households too. And Quinn comes from this place where that is her reality... Then she meets Gary and he doesn't even register for her as anything special. He doesn't appear impressive or incredible in any way... But he (admittedly) weirdly locks on to her and shares himself - thinking that he's showing himself to her, and ultimately he DOES. And he wants to see her too, beyond all this, who she is, at her most humane. He wants to know about her sister. About someone who mattered to her enough to have the helm of her trauma when she was out of touch with reality. Very soft. Very sweet.

The other was when they were talking about how they met and stuff and Gary absolutely cringed thinking about how corny he was when he approached this woman. A lot of dudes never do that. The complaint of earlier seasons that Gary was overbearing, obsessive and creepy , if you missed the fact that he has terrible abandonment issues from his father’s death and his mother’s rejection, here we have him, in his adult state, looking back at the way he was and being embarrassed about it, and that’s growth!

A close third is whenever at the beginning of the Season he says "Quinn it's been a month eventually you have to open up to me about what you've been through" and she says "I will in time" and he respects it but he reiterates that he's there whenever she needs him. I don't think that people realize how revolutionary that kind of statement is especially for a character like Quinn to hear - who has always felt like she had to take charge, had to take the lead, had to make the sacrifice.

Even when she realized that she was dying, she didn't want to burden him with the information. Not even like ‘a thing that she knew if that could help prevent it and she didn't want him to have to go after it,’ but... she didn't even want him to have to deal with knowing about it!

Maybe she thought that she would just drop, maybe she didn't realize that he was going to have to see her in that condition. And then once she realized that he was going to have to see her in that condition one of the first things she says is "I should have told you." Girl is on her deathbed wishing she had done it differently, for Gary's benefit.

I saw somebody on Twitter tried to come for her about not going to Gary after he killed Fox (you know, shortly after her surgery to save her from the very brink of death, and listen... Quinn comes to see about Gary when she can. She’s done it several times. In fact, I’ma make a whole POST about Quinn and Gary moments SPECIFICALLY to point out to haters in the main tag - where they got Quinn Ergon, and by extension, me, FUCKED UP.

Stop Playing in Quinn Face

HI! HELLO. ACTUALLY MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS SEASON IS THAT QUINN AND GARY JUST FUCKED. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANKS. OK. Back 2 bidness

See.. after Gary and Quinn got over the humps of Quinn’s Final Space poisoning... everyone got it... nobody told her until Avocato was mad and told her during a lash out, and let me say something about Avocato’s fucking audacity this season...

♡ Avocato (Note: His name is A-V-O-C-A-T-O. Some of y’all be tryna stan and y’all can’t even spell his name.)

I done seent Avacata, Avocata... That’s not that dude name. Be writing whole ass expositions about some other Ventrexian n*gga. Hope this helps:

AVOCATO. Listen, boy. YOU decided to be a traitor to your people and your king and queen. YOU decided to dedicate your cause to the Lord Commander and lied to your son his entire life about killing his parents, raising him, and never talking to him about it.

Yet and STILL - whenever you had the chance to finally tell him, you ain’t do the shit. Lord Commander gave you the perfect ass opportunity - WHEN IT CAME UP, and even then, with that boy looking you dead in the face and being glad that now he knows everything... you ain’t Ventrexian man up.

Then, whenever you were supposed to be checking on Gary after his traumatic murder fight with Fox and Invictus, you turned it around and literally made it about you. attacking him in the process and only after a physical fight did you apologize. (And y’all still didn’t get back to what had happened to Gary, which was no real fault of his own).

Fast forward to after you willingly agreed to stay behind and fight and y’all lost. Now, it was Quinn’s turn to be the center of your blame and you lashed out at her because everybody is dying, despite the fact that y’all agreed to stay behind and fight, nobody even told her that y’all were sick, AND you still wasn’t 100 with Little Cato.

You just had a lot of mothafuckin audacity this season, Avocato, and I personally was not here for the shit. Even when Ash blasted yo ass, your main thought was to threaten to kill her if she took Little Cato, instead of assuring her that despite what you’ve done, Little Cato was safe with you. No, she wouldn’t have listened to you. But, the words you chose tell us about who you are and how you are. You a war mongering killer that don’t ever take responsibility for his shit, and even in those brief moments that you do, its always somebody else’s problem.

I’da thunk that LC getting snatched away would be humbling for you, but I guess you were chosen by the writers for minimal growth. Bye, Avocato. Witcha bitch ass. We is not cool right now, but you do you. Hope you find some growth up there in ya ass, where ya head been. 😁 Can’t believe I mourned yo ass. You coulda stayed dead as hell.

FINALE NOTES:

OK BITCH OK THIS FINALE WAS HYPE!

Let me pull it up so that I can liveblog it for the shit that I need to conclude this journey.

We start out after Ash done took Little Cato and burnt off. Gary and AVOCATO done said they finna go get they son. Chile, I cannot handle Biskit voice. I like that lil’ dude but ya voice, Mane. I can’t with it.

OK OK OK... Whenever Quinn comes up to Gary to talk to him and say potential goodbyes, she look like she wanna say some and that makes me think about whenever she looked like she wanted to say something in season 1 and didn’t. Quinn as grown a lot in her feelings for Gary, but she still has that hard time with talking about her feelings, but I love that you can see them in her face.

Chile... these folk was kinda taking they time gettin started, huh? Knuckas, do y’all remember that everybody finna die of FS poisoning? Lol. Also... why didn’t they start hallucinating and shit? I guess its not until it covers ya face?

NIGHTFALL. 😥 I love you, Sis. I miss you. But, “Because I’m you and WE think of everything...” YES. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT! EVERYBODY EXPECTS QUINN TO THINK OF EVERYTHING AND WHENEVER THEY DON’T THINK OF THE THINGS, SHE GETS BLAMED FOR MAKING THE TOUGH DECISIONS THAT NOBODY ELSE COULD EVEN MAKE. Underappreciated, really. And people still mark Nightfall as a villain, despite the fact that she not only sacrificed herself, but also came specifically to help another Gary. Sidenote - Nightfall didn’t actually pursuit Quinn’s Gary until Quinn was trapped in Final Space and she thought she got a signal from him. So, I’m still salty AF that she been labelled as a villain just because people don’t like her, when her actions have all been to try to help. Here is no difference. She thought of the things that she didn’t think a younger version of her would think of, and left it for Quinn to find. Nightfall be on RNS, and most of y’all didn’t deserve her.

Quinn’s identity crisis is so sad, but I liked that Nightfall EVEN thought about that. And Sheryl... you kinda starting to grow on me. I hate to give shitty mothers who find compassion in old chance a try, but she do seem to really be giving it a go.

Ash is so fucked up that she rushes right into the devil’s arms. This reminds me of when trafficking victims go back to their abusers because they don’t have the resources to adjust in the system. 😪 She REALLY believes what she’s saying. She really feels like Little Cato is safer with Invictus with the Team Squad. That’s sad as fuck, bruh.

THE. ACTING. AND. ARTWORK. IN. THIS. CONFRONTATION. SCENE.

Avocato... I’m proud of you for FINALLY taking responsibility ad opening up about it. Little Cato’s reaction is precisely how kids in the system are, as well. They wanna be at home with their parents, no matter who their parents are or what they’ve done. and Avocato meant what he said and did what I referred to earlier as “Ventraxian man up.”

“I’m sorry we failed you,” from Gary was so important. Because, they technically did fail her. Had Ash seen the same amount of love from Gary as she’s seen him give to others, she might have been more receptive to the truth and less susceptible to lies. But, as she had just said earlier, it was too late for kind words. She’s currently beyond accepting them from him. For a brief moment, it breaks through, but without that ability to know love from an adult properly, she can’t accept that apology right now.

H.U.E. with his big robot, Lord Commander...EYE. There’s so much happening right now bitch processing has left the room girl. Biskit did so damn much this episode. And it was good to see everybody on the team have a moment to help things, instead of like one person having to handle the bulk of things.

Quinn’s begging voice... its such a contrast from whenever she sent out the SOS in season 1 and was afraid and angry. Like... the desperation here shows her softness.

Ash’s RAGE Bitch...

Gary’s “I love you...” She looked so happy! And then she just sat with it. I feel like she definitely loves him too, but she doesn’t communicate that way. But, her FACE. She was just... did she think that he didn’t before, or was she just speechless because she didn’t expect to hear it? Because, we gotta be real... Sis probably has not ever heard those words from anybody before. And that first time, when it’s really there is a DOOZIE. She had an abusive mother, a seemingly jealous or competitive sister, and we saw how nobody in the Infinity Guard respected her ass when she was serving them the real. I think this is the first time she’s been in love or felt it and when Gary said it, she had to collect herself. The way she ran to him and jumped into his arms??? SHIPPING CRACK. And Mooncake was a part of their hug too. I have a lot of feelings about this dynamic since Quinn and Mooncake are the only characters that we’ve seen Gary have these “love at first sight” reactions to and Mooncake is the first character that I recall Quinn being nice to in S1.

So.. my heart was very full when they ripped it from my chest moments later. Mooncake has been watching Team Squad members be self sacrificing for a little while now, and he loves his family and Gary so much that he rushes straight towards danger. (Sure, I don’t think that he estimated how powerful Ash could be at this moment), but he had to at least consider that he might be caught or left behind.

Bitch, Ash is GONE. She said, “Fuck all y’all!” Not knowing whether or not Mooncake is destroyed makes it very hard for me to know how much I can stand this, but I also want to hope that he is gonna survive. Quinn having to make the decision to lightfold is hella sad, but even though Gary is destroyed, he has to know that this is exactly how Ash must’ve felt whenever he had to make the call to leave Fox behind. She hated to do that to Gary. She even seemed more regretful about it than Gary did whenever he had to leave Fox and when he left Ash. Sure, its because she loves him more than he loved Fox and Ash, but its a terrible position to be in to have to hurt somebody you love like that. On the other hand, they gave her hella shit for them not escaping when could have the first time, so naturally, she was going to make this decision.

It very much sucks that Invictus is free and my brain can’t eeem FATHOM what that means for everything and everybody, but the Final Space poisoning left the Team Squad’s system, so maybe there is a rejuvenation of some sort in Invictus’ power? Or does Final Space poisoning leave your system as soon as you leave Final Space? I don’t think that was clarified.

Anyways, I still don’t hate Ash. Y’all can say whatever about it, but I see sad white boys get forgiven all day every day on this site, and I’m upset, but I’m not letting my baby go. I’m not cheering her on, but unless she dies, I’m gonna hope for the best for her, like I said here.

DAMN this season was some shit. Ionknow if I’m emotionally capable of watching another season of Final Space in progress. If they make it back for another season, I will most likely just wait until the end to dive in and let them shock my senses all at once instead of on a weekly goddamn basis, because GODDAMN GODDAMN GODDDAMN!

@andromidagalaxie @daintyurbanprincess @shslargue @space-finally The Quinnary Moments Masterlist probably won’t be ready by Quinn’s birthday, since her birthday is the day before Juneteenth, but I’ve started on a little fic that I might have the first installment of posted by then. We shall see.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Here is my JOURNEY during my first watch of the first two seasons of the show. (I watched Season 3 in progress and waited until it was over to write up this review) and my probably incoherent tag of whenever I do me a lil’ liveblogging: Nesha Watches Final Space, and here is my review on Quinnary: BFCD Reviews by Nesha: (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) FINAL SPACE

#Final Space #BFCD Reviews by Nesha #Nesha Watches Final Space #Nesha Watches #Quinn Ergon #Quinn Ergon commentary #Final Space season 3 #Final Space spoilers #long post

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blankd · 3 years

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Thoughts on The Mitchells vs the Machines

I watched it a while ago and kept forgetting to post my thoughts on it, but some posts here on tumblr recently reminded me.

I disagree with the majority takeaways I see but is that not the spice of life?

As a standalone movie its inoffensive and the writing of it will likely exit my brain in a few months. However I can appreciate that the visual style was different from the typical fare and the mixture of 2d elements for visual embellishments were mostly enjoyable and well-suited for Katie as the POV character.

It's a bit "hyper" for my liking, but that's fine, it's likely intended for an audience that's accustomed to the flood that is the current norm of the internet. It was probably made with GIFable moments in mind and that is the most frequent content that is shared about it, so it certainly succeeded in that regard.

My more critical take is that jokes are delivered at the expense of what could be more authentic themes. Quips are made that draw attention to character flaws or undercut questions the movie should try to answer, but inevitably they are ignored to move onto the next joke or story beat.

The rest would fall more into spoiler territory, so read more for that.

--"They Were Both In the Wrong"

I personally disagree heavily with the thrust of how "both sides" were wrong when the degrees are disproportionate.

I've seen claims that Katie was "as in the wrong" as her father, but she's incredibly patient to the man who does her material harm.

I've yet to have seen someone say specifically what Katie did *wrong* to her father that is at all on par with the *years* he at best hasn't been able to interact with her or worse, actively refused to engage with her interests.

I would generously venture that her flaw was that she was more willing to communicate her feelings to strangers, but she easily talks to her mother and brother- her brother even helps her with her movies and she happily engages him with his own interests, which pivots the point back to how her father is physically/emotionally unavailable and led to the erosion and distance between the two of them.

Due to this, MvM comes across more as Kaite having to do so much more to guide her father rather than a more mutual learning experience for the both of them.

--"Technology that [Dis]Connects"

It's probably beyond the scope and intent of the film, but I was surprised there was no examination about why technology can be more alluring than interacting with physically present people.

For better or worse, the internet can be used as a means of supplementing the validation and acceptance of family. It can also lead to no longer connecting to people around them because of the validation high of appealing to a constantly 'awake' sea of strangers- the spotlight is warmer than the cold reality that they are not the internet image they have cultivated.

For example, the rival 'perfect' family was never revealed to be a carefully constructed highlight reel that Mrs. Mitchell envies, they really were actually that perfect- because that provides an easier punchline than an examination or acknowledgement of how the internet can create unhealthy expectations.

I also can't expect MvM to acknowledge the reality that LGBTA+ people who are rejected by their family resort to seeking a new one through the internet because it would be much harder to redeem/rehabilitate a man defined by being tethered to "old values" if he was homophobic instead of "overprotective" and apprehensive at his daughter's departure from home and her dubious art career.

But hey we got that quick line at the end that Katie likes a girl, so that's a diversity win or something.

(To be clear I'm not expecting a whole parade or even an A or B-plot dedicated to it, but I think it should be acknowledged that this kind of "surprise inclusion" is very easily erased with a change of audio and would be completely unsurprised if this were the case for countries that are homophobic. People can be happy about it, but it is dishonest to pretend that this is a bolder statement than it is.)

In that sense, I do and don't hold MvM to taking a "safer" route about how family always has your back, but this still feels like an important omission considering the focus on technology and its dynamic with the Mitchells.

I will also say that it was also bizarre, to me at least, that the obvious route that her father sees the value of home videos didn't become an active point between him and Katie. Or that Mr. Mitchell's carpentry never really amounts to anything despite having a sentimental wooden moose.

Lastly, I think it's an unintentional, but it's interesting that Katie going to college to pursue her passion is viewed as a Terrible Thing by her father even though if he had his way, he'd be ostensibly living in the woods away from everyone else except his wife.

This isn't a problem, people are a collection of contradictions, but It's fascinating to see what the *narrative* treats as a difficult sacrifice while simultaneously pulling at heartstrings when PAL cites how children ignore their mothers. There's an unexamined comedy that Mr. Mitchell's losing out on his 'passion' to live in the woods away from people is treated as tragic despite the movie's insistence on staying connected with your blood family.

--"The Inconsistent Personhood of AI"

PAL is rightfully angry at being discarded for something new; it's provided as a glimpse of what Katie will do when she finds 'her people' at college.

This in of itself is a good hook, because there is no one universal answer to when a flawed relationship should be mended with compromise or if it's better off being broken for the wellbeing of the ones involved. Family and relationships are not programming, it's a choice and a gamble for whatever it brings but is nonetheless something that must be mutually worked upon.

Initially I thought that PAL was being set up as an exaggerated parallel to Mr. Mitchell. PAL and Mr. Mitchell did their best to provide for their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell are in different stages of being 'discarded' by their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell both retaliate at their lack of power in the scenario by using the power granted by their roles to infringe on the autonomy of others for selfish reasons.

PAL even gives a 'chance' for her plan to be halted with, I had assumed this was being set up as the thesis of the movie, about humanity and the value of family, relationships, etc. being used to help someone who is already hurting.

But despite Katie looking at the camera and explaining herself, it is never actually directly resolved or challenged because a punchline was deemed more desirable for this narrative climax.

This begs the question of why PAL bothered with the pretense that she could be reasoned with, especially since this is not some question leveled at all of humanity, just two people.

I'm curious how the writers came to the conclusion that this was the best execution of the scene or if Katie's speech was considered immune to any challenge from PAL. Would anyone have accepted this outcome if PAL were not an AI but instead a person?

It's not necessarily bad writing they went this route, but I doubt anyone would consider this good writing either.

By the end of the movie, PAL is no longer a 'person' who was betrayed and is lashing out, she is an object to be destroyed because the movie has to wrap up. No compassion or chances are spared to this AI that did literally everything asked of her except take being discarded quietly.

Did PAL deserve a redemption arc? For this length of movie, probably not. But it could have concluded with a commitment to doing no further harm. Instead it is an accidental glimpse at how easily the pretense of compassion can be quickly discarded and mostly unexamined with the right framing.

A likely unintentional example is the conditional humanity given to Eric and Deborahbot who are adopted as "family" while the rest of the robots are mowed down without another thought. Some are even beaten and broken while begging for mercy, because again, it is a funnier punchline.

Far be it for me to advocate that the murderbots needed 'a second chance uvu' but for a movie whose conceit rests on 'sticking by family' and 'giving chances', the writers certainly made a choice in deciding which AI get honorary humanity and spared violent death- perhaps PAL had a point about humanity's callousness after all. Bad robots are discarded, good robots get to live.

Even the CEO who realizes he enabled this mess (easily the most unrealistic part of the movie, honestly) is given another chance and he manages to take away a completely wrong lesson.

Speaking of-

--"Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used Tech Like This"

There's a particular image/gif set posted about MvM with the CEO apologizing for the machine uprising, attributing it to unchecked technology and monopolies. I've always seen it accompanied by people congratulating the scene as if any of this is at all relevant to the movie.

Charitably, these are people who haven't watched the movie and don't know that PAL is a phone AI single-handedly doing this, but most take the stance that this scene is proof the movie is not saying technology is bad, only corporations are.

The speech isn't technically wrong but it is so utterly divorced from what happens in the movie that it's surreal to see people congratulate it as anything but a moment of soapboxing.

None of the datagrabbing was used at all as part of the takeover. It's all magical kid-friendly terminators with no relevance to what anyone's browsing history is. If the company was one that produced robot assistants instead of a being a super tech monopoly, there would be no narrative difference.

The closest to a predatory tactic that is used in MvM is the offer of free wifi which is used to lure most people into their cells which they happily comply with. Curiously this... commentary of people’s mindless addiction to technology is not acknowledged by the Tumblr Court with the same intensity as the CEO’s speech.

But more constructively, I do feel it’s a missed opportunity that Katie who's supposed to be an extremely online person apparently never said any bad things about her family or made any petty vent films for PAL to weaponize. Instead an in-media audio at one of the outskirt locations was used to accomplish its Traitor Revealed moment.

IN CONCLUSION

MvM is a movie that involves topics that ought to be touched on and explored properly in media and chickens out on all of it due to possible concerns with age-appropriate handling or because it was more committed to its comedy than whatever it has to say about family, change and how technology affects people.

It also reminded me that I hope media will finally graduate from the trope that if you spec into any ‘outdoorsy’ hobby you are incurably afraid of technology.

#the mitchells vs the machines #let me ramble to you #text post #hot takes probably

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rachelbethhines · 3 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

We’ve finally made to season three and the entire reason why I made this review series. This season features some of the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a television program. And this season kicks off with the third worst episode of the whole series. Rapunzel’s Return is the iceberg that sinks this show and manages to assassinate everyone’s character.

Everyone’s.

Summary: Inside the House of Yesterday's Tomorrow (as seen off screen in "Rapunzeltopia"), Cassandra is greeted by the Enchanted Girl, a spirit who reveals that Cassandra is the biological daughter of the late Mother Gothel, who abandoned her on the night she kidnapped infant Rapunzel. Enraged that Rapunzel has been (unknowingly) overshadowing her for the entirety of her life, and that she will always be unfairly overlooked, Cassandra snatches the Moonstone Opal, absorbs it, and declared Rapunzel's destiny as her own. She manages to escape from the group and cuts all ties with them, with Rapunzel unable to wrap her head around the entire situation. The group returns to Corona and find that it has been taken over by Varian, who has aligned himself with Andrew and the Separatists of Saporia to erase the King and Queen's memories and enslave Corona's citizens.

Plot Hole Number One: Why Would Cassandra Just Blindly Follow A Ghost While Trapped Inside a Haunted House?

Outside of that one snarky remark, Cassandra never stops to question the literal ghost who is bossing her around. The ghost she met in a creepy haunted house. A haunted house that she was already suspicious of before ever going in and that has tried to kill her and her friends many times now.

Cassandra, the most distrusting and cautious of of individuals in the show thus far, just suddenly decides to leave her brain behind from this point forward for no given reason whatsoever.

If you have to dumb down your main character and have them behave OOC in order to get your plot rolling along, then you haven’t a good plot.

Plot Hole Number Two: Cassandra Sees for Herself How Awful Gothel Was to Her Here, So Why Would She Obsess Over the Woman?

Forgetting for a moment that Cass very well knows that Gothel treated her best friend like shit and tried to murder her other friend, Eugene, as evidenced by Quest for Varian; Cassandra can see for herself right here that Gothel is a crap person who never treated her right.

I mean there’s denial, and then there’s flat out stupidity. Cass being hurt by the this reveal is one thing. Cass believing that Gothel really loved her and blaming everyone else for her death is totally another and not based in any kind of sensible logic.

Plot Hole Number Three: Why Would Gothel Even Have a Child to Begin With?

Look, I’ll accept that the flower can deage Gothel enough for her to get laid and bare a kid, but that only brings up the question of why she would keep said kid?

She kept Rapunzel cause she needed her powers in order to stay alive, but Cass? What reason would she want to have Cassandra around? A baby can’t do chores for you and it's a hell of a lot of work to raise one. Plus the show repeatedly tells us over and over again that Gothel doesn’t really love her or even likes having her daugther around so... yeah, what is the point of this? Why didn’t she just drop Cass off at an orphanage to begin with?

You can’t make this type of reveal and have it go against the what we fundamentally know about the characters without explaining why they would partake in such actions.

This is Manipulative Writing

But of course the real reason why this flashback and “twist” exists is just to manipulate the audience into feeling sorry for Cass. It’s not here to actually enhance the story, further the characters, nor answer any mysteries in any real way. That’s why it’s such a poor plot point.

It’s setting up the viewers to have a bias so that they’ll more readily forgive Cassandra for her irreprehensible actions later. In short, it’s the same bullshit that the writers pulled for Frederic back in season one. Only it makes even less narrative sense here because this ‘tragic backstory’ is so divorced from later events in the story.

It’s also flat out lazy because all it’s doing it slapping Rapunzel’s backstory onto Cass instead of letting Cassandra be her own character with her own battles and character development to have.

And before you say, “well that’s the point”, then let me tell you it’s a stupid point. One that makes zero sense for the character and is insulting to the audience’s intelligence.

Plot Hole Number Four: Why Didn’t Gothel Just Stay Hidden Till the Soldiers Left?

Hell, why did Gothel even come back here? We already established that she doesn’t really care about Cass and it’s a plot point that’ll only be further reiterated as the season goes on, so why? Why would Gothel behave like this? How does this help her in her goal? Gothel’s suppose to be smart remember?

Plot Hole Number Five: How Does Any of This Logically Help Zhan Tiri?

So Zhan Tiri is the blue ghost girl and while the series tries to keep it a secret reveal for later, it’s pretty obvious from the get go, so I’ll just be calling the character by her name.

Anyways, Zhan Tiri’s plan is to show Cassandra her past, in order to make Cass angry enough to steal the moonstone and fight Rapunzel, so that the two powers fighting each other will then release her from her interdimensional prison.

Now ignoring how literally none of that was set up nor previously established, and ignoring that Zhan Tiri’s disciples were trying previously to stop the sundrop and her friends from getting to the moonstone, thereby undermining their master’s plan; just how exactly is any of this suppose to work?

Why would showing Cassandra how her mother was a shitty person somehow make Cass angry at Rapunzel, angry enough to try and kill her even, and somehow keep her angry for months on end, in order to fulfill this clearly illogical action that holds no personal benefit to herself?

I don’t mind Cassandra becoming a villain; I just want it to make sense.

This does not make sense.

Not only does it require incredible leaps of logic and Cassandra acting out of character to work, it also depends far to much upon conquincidence and things playing out just in exactly the right way to benefit Zhan Tiri and her poorly laid out plan.

Would it not have made more sense for this “evil master manipulating worlock” to just, you know, lie?

Like shouldn’t she be trying to make Gothel look good? Shouldn’t she be trying to make it all seem like Frederic’s fault (which it mostly is anyways)? If you want Cass to attack Corona and turn against Rapunzel, then why not lie about their involvement or tell some half truth?

Or better yet why not make Gothel and actual complex figure for real?

Ugh... I got to move on from this point, but believe me, we will be back to this dumbfuckery in later episodes.

Plot Hole Number Six: You Can’t Just Ignore that Cap Exists and Is the One Who Raised Cassandra for Most of Her Life

Like I’m sure finding out that you mom was a piece of crap who abandon you hurts, but that doesn’t automatically erase the fact that Cass’s dad was there for her, raised her, and loved her for the majority of her life. I’m not saying that Cap is perfect, but he at least tried to do right by her (and is consequently the best parent in the show) and Cassandra is old enough to recognize that fact. Pretending otherwise is a disservice to everyone. It’s a disservice to the Captain, to Cassandra, to Rapunzel, to Gothel, and to the viewers watching along with this BS.

Trauma Doesn’t Make You Suddenly Stupid

Look, I’m not downplaying Cass’s trauma here. She is allowed to feel upset and yes trauma is painful and effects us all in different ways. Also yes, past trauma can carry on through into adulthood and still harm you.

However that’s not an excuse for hurting others. Cass’s trauma isn’t any less traumatic than any of the other characters’, but neither is it somehow more important than any of theirs. She doesn’t get a free past to step on people just because she was sad once.

Cassandra is, once again, old enough to know this and more importantly smart enough to realize that what happened in the past, if even true, has nothing to do with what she is currently dealing with right now.

Like why is she believing any of this? Why is she still listening to the suspicious ghost that she met in a magical house that’s tricked her and her friends numerous times before? Why would finding out her mom was shit make her turn that anger against her best friend? What does any of this have to do with her current struggles with trying to build up her career or staying friends with Raps?

Remembering past trauma does not make your brain shut off. Even having a mental breakdown or panic attack still does not render you completely senseless and anything done under extreme pressure like that is temporary. You don’t wind up acting bananas constantly for over a year.

As a woman who suffers from complex-PTSD and is an abuse survivor myself, Cassandra’s story is deeply offensive to me. Not the least of which because it actively dumps her down.

This Is the Point Where Cassandra’s Character Gets Assassinated

Like I said in the opening, everyone’s character gets assassinated in this story. Cassandra just happens to be the first to die and it’s right here with this line.

Not only is this line incredibly cringy and poorly worded, and I have to just feel sorry for the VA here cause there’s no way to make this much stupid sound good, but it’s also completely divorced from what’s going on.

Cassandra is suppose to be explaining to her friends why she’s stealing the moonstone and her answer is “I’m this dead bitch’s daughter”? Like oookaaay, and that has what to do with it exactly?

Did Gothel have any connection to the moonstone? Does stealing the moonstone somehow bring her back or fulfil her revenge? What does grabbing the moonstone actually gain Cass and what does that have to do with her dead abusive mom?

The reason why Cass doesn’t work as a villain because she has no goal nor reason for doing what she does. She just lurches from plot point to plot point with no idea of what she is doing nor why she is doing it.

But watch as the show keeps digging in its heels and keeps insisting that Cassandra’s connection to Gothel is totally a sympathetic motive even as it makes less and less sense every damn time it's brought up.

What Does Destiny Even Fucking Mean Any More???

What Destiny?!

There is no damn destiny. There is no prophecy to fulfil, no world to save, no consequence for just having everyone sitting on their asses for two whole seasons. And even if there was a destiny to even steal; why would Cass even want it? What does actually she gain from any of this? And how does any of it connect back to Gothel?

This Should Have Been the Point of Resolution Not the Inciting Incident for Their Break Up

Look no idea is without merit. You can make the stupidest sounding idea engaging if you present it right.

This was not presented right.

If Cassandra being Gothel’s daughter was to hold any meaning to the story, then it needed to be what brought her and Raps back together again, not what broke them apart.

Rapunzel says it right here. Logically this should be common ground for the two of them. There’s no real reason for Cass to direct her anger at Rapunzel over this.

But this show doesn’t care about logic, reason, or treating it’s audience with intelligence. It’s just flashy bullshit “drama” that pretends to be deep but is really a shallow puddle once you stop to think about it for two seconds.

Let’s Talk About “Sisters”

Cass’s face just says it all doesn’t it?

The creator, Chris, wanted to make a story about two “sisters”, because he has two daughters and he thought that would be inspiring and speak to little girls everywhere.

It’s a nice sentiment. Shame he’s so utterly incompetent at it.

There was no build up to them being sisters. Instead all we got was a bunch of meaningless parallels and a very toxic friendship. Even with the Gothel reveal the connection to them being siblings is tenuous at best because there’s no biological relation and more importantly, they weren’t raised together.

Chris is basically trying to rip off the likes of Frozen or Guardians of the Galaxy here with Raps and Cass’s relationship but it doesn’t work when the two siblings in question didn’t actually grow up together. There’s no reason for Cassandra to project her anger at their abusive parent on to Raps because that parent wasn’t the one to actually raise her. And on top of that, said abuser is dead, and both her and Raps have separate guardians in their lives, so the jealousy angle doesn’t work either.

And to make it all the more confusing, Chris failed to inform his crew of this brilliant plot twist, so we now have two seasons of gay baiting put in by the storyboard artists hitting that Cass is in love with her “sister”, And because the hardcore Cazzpunzel stans are the only fanbase that hasn’t given Chris the boot, there’s still even more gay baiting to come.

Why are We Victim Blaming a Baby?

Seriously, Cass? You are twenty four and have a brain. Why are you blaming someone for being kidnapped as a baby? What kind of sense does this make?

Worse, there’s plenty of real shit Cass could get angry at Rapunzel over and this is what you go with show?

If anything Rapunzel should be the one who is pissed here. Cass got to escape and lead a normal life with a loving father all because she got kidnapped as baby. And now said bitch is trying to gaslight her while stealing the very thing she’s been risking her life to grab for a year now.

No You Haven’t Cass

Once again, you got to live a normal life with a loving Dad. You had plenty of chances to build relationships and further your career for 18 years while Rapunzel was trapped in a dang tower, and Rapunzel returning from said tower didn’t cut you off from anything. In fact Rapunzel being rescued from the tower actually presented more opportunities for you and you spent all of season one climbing up the ranks.

There’s Nothing In the Show to Back Up This Statement

Nothing is at stake. There’s no threat here other than Cassandra herself. Cassandra is dranger to the world here not the moonstone. If you wanted it to be the other way around then you should have kept the rocks active during season two.

So Why Didn’t We Go With the Original Set Up From Season Two?

As said before, there are real reasons that were set up during season two that could have motivated Cass.

Rapunzel is irresponsible and can’t be trusted to save the world

Rapunzel is a shit friend and Cass is better off going her own way and leaving everyone high and dry.

Cass’s hand was injured by Raps and the moonstone might be able to heal it

Cass sees the injustice in the class system and wants to fight back against the royals in order to help everyone, not just herself.

Cass might believe she’s stopping Zhan Tiri and not realize she’s being manipulated by her instead

Or is playing along with Zhan Tiri under the idea that she can stall for time figure out how to stop her.

Cass wants to play her and use the power of the rocks to save people only for it to go wrong later.

Possession (which was the original idea in the concept stage)

Like I said, there were plenty of ways to make this work. In fact some are so dang obvious that you’ll hear Cass fans try to claim that a few of those are what her real motivation was despite the the show clearly going against them later. The “fighting against the class system” is a real popular one despite the fact that Cass herself attacks a bunch of poor people repeatedly and doesn’t seem concerned about anyone but herself.

But I digress.

The real reason why we have this bullshit is cause Chris doesn’t want to hold his favs accountable. Rapunzel’s flaws can’t be called out in any meaningful way and Cass gets a convenient scapegoat in Zhan Tiri.

In short both Cassandra and Rapunzel have their agency stolen away from them by the narrative, while still trying to pretend that they’re “strong independent women”. Even though those two things aren’t compatible at all.

What Exactly Have You Been Denied Cass?

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Lance, Eugene, and Lady Caine were all denied physiological and safety needs while growing up in an orphanage and then later on the streets as a thieves.

Rapunzel was denied psychological needs while being raised by her abuser.

Varian was denied everything on that dang list.

Cassandra tho?

Trauma or no trauma, Cass was still raised in a safe and loving environment for the majority of her life. She, at best, has been denied “self-fulfillment” needs and even then that’s a stretch cause throughout season one we see her time and time again gaining what it was she wanted.

Cassandra isn’t anything special. She’s not suffered any more than anybody else in the show and in fact has lived a pretty cushy life when all is said and done, especially when compared to other characters in the show.

The worst that she has to complain about is working a crappy job for a little while and having a shit mom that she can barely remember. Boo Fucking Hoo.

Note How Easy It Is For Cass to Control the Rocks Here

The show can’t even keep Cassandra’s powers consistent. Like everything else about the character, Cass’s powers come and go as is convenient for the narrative with little explanation as to why.

This Song Doesn’t Work Because It was Cut In Half Due to Time

I’ve talked about the problems with this song before in my songs from TTS ranking list. It’s choppy and consistent. Yet it only feels that way because it was cut down. It’s missing a full other verse, second chorus, and a bridge.

Which is inexcusable because there’s so much dang filler in this show!

We could have had time for the full song if they had just cut one of the non-essential episodes and made all of this a full episode on it’s own. Just save the Corona and Varian stuff for later if need be.

The management of this show is just atrocious.

Why Wasn’t This the Cliffhanger for Season Two?

Speaking of making all of the Cassandra stuff it’s own episode... Everything we just seen should have been in season two.

It’s more connected to what happened last season, it flows better, it would have had more time to breathe, and it would have given us more time in the Dark Kingdom. Given as that this is what season two was building up too, it would have been more satisfying there.

And if the writers still wanted a cliffhanger to end the season in order to draw crowds then this right here was it.

So We We Spent A Whole Season Getting Here and We’re Just Going to Leave Now?

The Dark Kingdom is Wasted!!!!

And because the Dark Kingdom is a bust, the entirety of season two now feels even more pointless.

Chris said he cut the Dark Kingdom stuff because it didn’t interest him.

Chris is a fucking fool.

Ignoring that different people will gravitate towards different things and you need to keep that in mind when writing for mass audiences; you don’t spend valuable time setting things up just to drop them later.

If you didn’t like that particular plot thread then you needed to just not bring it up to begin with. Once you’ve put it in there you need to commit to it.

Behold the Only Thing Useful Shorty Does This Whole Season

There is less Shorty overall this season which is ultimately a good thing, but it does highlight what a stupid decision it was to bring him along to begin with.

I mean did we really drag him around for a whole season just for this? Couldn’t some other Pub Thung or townsperson have found them? One that could talk.

Adria Gets Put on a Bus

Adria doesn’t get assassinated like some of the other characters, but she does get unceremoniously shoved off without any real closure. The character will return later in the season, but brainwashed and without any lines. Which is doubly insulting to the VA who voices her.

And Here Is Where Lance Gets Assassinated

Lance is drastically dumbed down in season three. Even more so than in past seasons. You could call it flanderization specifically, more so than assassination, but the effect is the same. Lance’s character is effectively dead from this point onwards.

Also this should have ended the Lance & Adria ship in the show for good. She flat out rejects him here, but nope.

Eugene is the Only Person Acting Like a Real Human Being This Episode Thus Far

Edmund spent his whole life protecting the moonstone. He lost everything to it. He was convinced that letting Rapunzel take it would be best only for her to lose it right afterwards. And what does he do? Immediately become the “comedicly bad dad” in show oversaturated with both comedic foils and poor father figures.

Meanwhile Eugene is the only one properly responding to what is going on. Don't expect that to last.

I Thought You Left Cass?

Remember that foreshadowing with Quirin way back in the pilot?

This is just that, but dumber.

There’s no reason for Cass to hang around out of sight only to stare menacingly at Rapunzel and company as they leave. It’s just a lazy hook to get viewers to believe that there might be more going on with Cass then what we’ve been told. There’s not.

So This Map Proves That the Dark Kingdom Is North East of Corona

Continuity and worldbuilding in this show is utterly garbage, so I’ll latch on to any little scrape of info that we get.

According to the map shown here, the balloon is heading Southwest back to Corona. That means the Dark Kingdom is Northeast.

So if Corona is somewhere in Northern mainland Europe that means the Dark Kingdom is either in a Nordic country (Norway,Sweden,Finland, ect) or Russia.

Meta Jokes About Being a Bad Writer Doesn’t Excuse Bad Writing

Get use to this. Season three is full of meansprited meta jokes that try to defend against the quite frankly valid criticism that the show has received. Or more specifically the criticism Chris had received.

Most of season three was written during the hiatus of season two back when Chris was seeing backlash from the fans due to his PR fiasco and that’s not even taking into account the crew walkout after season one.

Not only is that too late to be writing your final season, but it’s also reflective of how Chris can’t handle critique with grace nor listen to other ideas as jokes like this are in poor taste.

Everyone Acts Shocked Here but Honestly this Fits King Frederic’s MMO

This is the same guy who prosecuted poor people for eighteen years with his crack down on crime, and thrented the life an orphaned teen. Is anybody really surprised by this?

I Thought Your Real Name was Hubert?

I guess he just prefers the name Andrew. I don’t know. But what do know is that “the devil is in the details” is a thing my animation teacher in college use to say repeatedly, and no one working on this show seems capable of remembering or keeping up with details.

Why Are There Only Five Saporains?

Saporia was set up as an entire race of people who’d been displaced from their homeland for generations. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries according to season two. Why are there only five of them in this episode?

How did they overthrow a kingdom with only five people? How do they maintain hold of it with only five? How do they expect to further their bloodline and culture with only only five of them?

Why did we waste money on a bunch of one off villians that we sent packing in season two and not built more Saporian models instead?

Like you could have had the core five here, as like leaders, and then imply that there are more of them with background citizens and guards ect.

NO!!!

WE DO NOT IMPLY THAT A 15 YEAR OLD BOY WAS LOCKED IN A JAIL CELL WITH A GROWN MAN FOR NEARLY A YEAR!!!!!

I.... What?!

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea to put in a children’s show?

Did no one behind the scenes stop to think, “Hun, maybe we shouldn’t suggest that a teenager was trapped inside a small enclosed space with no way out twenty for hours a day with an adult who attempted to murder his girlfriend when lying to her stopped working. Perhaps someone might get the wrong impression.”?

Like I hate censors as much as the next person, but editors work in the business for a reason, and that reason is to pull the artists aside sometimes and go “Hey, that shit don't fly with normal folk.”

What’s worse is I don’t think the writers were even trying to be shocking and edgy here. I just think they were careless. They needed a quick exposition dumb to explain how Varian and Andrew know each other, and didn’t think through the implications of that line nor considered how Varian’s age changes the context of his situation.

Which is beyond inexcusable because it’s so damn lazy!

You wouldn’t need rushed exposition had you actually took the time to set up this plot point back in season two. Heck, you wouldn’t have needed to even set this plot point up had you not cut Varian’s original story out at the last minute. Finally, you should care enough about your characters to at least take their age into consideration when writing their development.

There’s also the fact that it makes most of the ‘heroes’ look like assholes.

We’ve seen these dungeons several times throughout the show. We know of their poor conditions. There’s little light, the food is slop, there’s no way to stay clean or use the restroom, prisons are never let out for exercise, ect. Like these are medieval style dungeons that are considered inhumane my modern audiences.

Just because the show tries to play off the horribleness of it for laughs doesn’t mean the audience is going to find it funny that they traumatized a fifthteen year old with it.... again!

Moreover Frederic had promised last time we saw him that he would give Varian help. He idea of ‘helping” Varian is supposedly to throw him into a nasty jail cell with a violent criminal? WTF? And there’s no indication that he tried anything to save Quirin either.

Not to mention that none of the mains act surprised by this revelation, nor comment about how awful Varian’s treatment is. As usual for them.

It’s just sicking and most of the atempts to explain away this line by the fans have been super pathetic.

“Frederic was giving him therapy while in jail” - there’s nothing to indicate therapy exists in this world and even if this were true it would be undermined by stupidly throwing him in a cell with Andrew.

“It’s not literal, Varian was in a separate cell” - once again there’s nothing to back this up and even if that were the case it’s not that much better because it’s still a dungeon cell with zero privacy and Varian would still be close enough to Andrew to talk to him thus invading his personal space to some degree or other.

“Well he tried to help but Varian wasn’t cooperative” - still not an excuse and there’s nothing on screen to back up this headcanon.

“It’s someone else’s fault.” - Who’s? Frederic is in charge of everything. The buck stops with him. If a guard did this without his knowledge then that means Frederic neglected his duties and his promise anyways.

“Well maybe it’s true, but Varian did a bad thing and teens who do really bad things get sent to prison in the real world too” - Not an argument. Teens aren’t typically jailed with adults and the conditions for modern jails are at least somewhat better than those in Corona. Plus kids being sent to jail in any form is major topic of controversy in today's time. I’ve already covered why trying teens as adults is a vile abuse of power in the real world; I shouldn’t have to mention that the current government throwing children in cages is a bad thing as well!

“Well that’s just part of the time period” - Doesn’t make it right, and sadly it’s not something in the distant past either. It’s currently happening right now in the US. It was happening when this episode and season was being written. The writers unthinkingly threw in a very real thing that affects hundreds of thousands of children and didn’t bother to follow up on it or comment about how wrong it is.

There’s just no excuse for the way Frederic and Rapunzel treat Varian in this show. There’s just not, and some of y’all really need to stop trying to do so cause it means you’re inadvertently condoning real life abuses of power.

You can like a character and except that they’ve done wrong. That’s a thing that you can do, you know.

Let’s Talk about Character Design

For the most part the art direction in the show is top notch. It really is the best looking animated show on tv today, and the character design is usually of this same quality. But they really dropped the ball with Varian’s design here.

The structural bones of it isn’t bad. Taken on it’s own it would be fine, but good character design is supposed to give context and enhance the story and this doesn’t do that.

We’ve haven’t seen Varian in a year, but instead of visually showcasing the passage of time by having him physically age we just get season one’s design but in bargain bin hot topic clothes and a drawn on barcode.

Even the color palette is wrong.

Varian’s is suppose to feature blues and earthy browns to go with his eyes and hair but instead we get bright reds, neon chimballs, and sharp contrasts with blacks and whites that just clashes with his base colors.

And what does any of this tell the audience? How does it add to the story? What can we glean from his new design about what transpired in the last year?

Nothing.

At best it just reinforces that villian Varian is a try hard edge lord, but we already knew that. We would have known it even without the villain arc cause he’s a teenager. Not that he looks it. The boy is supposed to be either 16 or soon to be 16 and he still looks fucking 12.

What’s more they spent money on this. They made not one, but two new models with two new outfits, but they couldn’t be arsed just to make him a little taller? And no, he’s not actually any taller in season three. He was always Rapunzel’s height regardless of animation errors and squash and stretch techniques.

It’s a waste. Just like nearly everything in season three.

This Is Such a Cop-out

Speaking of things being a waste. Wiping Frederic’s and Arianna’s memories is taking the cowards way out. It’s them escaping any sort of meaningful consequence for their past actions and robs them of the chance to grow and develop as characters. All cause Chris didn’t want to deal with people pointing out the bullshit his self insert caused.

Well guess what, I’m still pointing out Frederic’s BS, only now I’m extra angry cause I was robbed of a genuine character arc, so fuck you!

Was Varian Actually Needed for This Plot?

No really. What does Varian even do here? The wand of oblivium is Saporian magic and they could and apparently did wipe the king’s and queen’s memories without Varian’s mindwipe concoction. That alone apparently gives them the power to run the kingdom.

All Varian does is give them some alchemy based weapons and a bomb he accidentally invents. Both are things that the Saporians could have made themselves given how they know apothecary according to Rapunzel Day One.

I’m currently in the middle of writing an AU fanfiction where Varian winds up in another world before the events of this episode, and let me tell you it is incredibly easy to write him out of the majority of season three without changing the plot much.

Given how Varian is meant to be a main character this season, that’s not a good thing.

So How Come None Of the “Heroes” Give a Shit?

Like I said above, none of the protagonists show the least bit of concern for what Varian is going through. Even though ignoring his needs is precisely what lead to this mess in the first place. It not only makes them look heartless, but it also makes them look plain stupid as well.

Why is it so hard to just even pretend to care about the fact he’s been orphaned? Half of them are orphans themselves for fucks sake!

Varian’s Not the One in Charge Here Rapunzel

I know Varian is the bigger threat and has more of a personal connection to Raps, but it’s pretty clear that Andrew is the mastermind behind this coup. What good does shouting at Varian do? What makes Rapunzel think that any of the Saporians would listen to him even if he did change his mind? What makes her think ordering Varian around after she helped ruin his life would get him to change his mind. Like, my gosh is Rapunzel dumb!

Why Are We Victim Blaming a Child Soldier?

That’s what he is at this point. He’s a weapons specialist for a rival kingdom fighting for control of the government. A government that has abused its own people leading to such an uprising.

A teenager may not be as blameless as a baby but it's still beyond callous and cruel to blame kids and young teens who join extremist groups in war torn lands out of desperation.

Is This Suppose to Be the Inciting Incident for Varian’s Redemption, Cause If So, That Makes No Sense

This look of regret is the only indication that Varian is questioning where he stands before his redemption in part two. Except there he points out that he’s been thinking about it for while now, even before Raps showed up. Only there’s nothing to suggest why Varian would suddenly change his view point and motives. So the audience is still in the dark about his thought process even with this “hint” and I use that word loosely.

Conclusion

So that’s the end of part one. I hope to have part two up before the week is out.

#tangled #anti-rapunzel #anti-cassandra #anti-tangled #varian #tangled the series #rapunzles tangled adventure

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nigiyakapepper · 3 years

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i might get ridiculed for this post but i want to put it out there anyway hoping there’s people who feel the same as i do

(spoilers & “reading the back cover” talk for Hades, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Say No More, Everhood, Spiritfarer, Oneshot & Castlevania)

by all means, i would love for Toby to be able to create the story he wants to and get it out there. i admittedly don’t play a lot of games. i've played undertale & deltarune. i'm amazed that barely a week has passed and a lot of people have wildly different but all valid takeaways from various decisions that this game took to be what it is.

i've read how kris’ panic attack after the spamtron neo fight is because it’s put their feelings about us/the player controlling them into terrifying perspective. i've read how each dark world might be a manifestation of each character’s struggle & insight as to how they’ll overcome it. i’ve read a lot about how undertale & deltarune are brilliant subversions of various things we’ve come to accept in video games, about a game character’s agency & the consequences of our choices as players.

these games have a story to tell, i know. these kinds of stories have a right to be told, have a place to be told, i know. they've inspired people in various, life-changing ways, they’ve made us think. and think and think. how we approach video games, how we approach storytelling, i know. Toby for sure wants to tell a story in a way he can be more than satisfied with, i get that, i really do.

but, i'm old. i’ve witnessed media i love crash & burn because of executive meddling, behind the scenes problems we aren’t privy to, because …i dunno, producers were angry? annoyed? that fans could predict what happens (as decent storytelling would be able to let you) and decided to what, shoot themselves in the foot to one-up them? i've seen stories that choose grittier, darker endings become so forgotten, scorned even, while stories so bloody, gory & seemingly tragic to give happy endings for every. single. person. and that payoff felt incredible.

tl;dr, while (badly succinctly put) commentary on video games, character agency, player’s choices is good, i want to be able to help these people we’ve come to know and love.

these are sad games. lonely games. at 23 years old, i wanted nothing more than to let Asriel’s parents know they could talk to their son one last time. at 26, i wanted to help Kris & anyone else that have found themselves caught up in all this. at 29, i'm wondering if they’re having fun, that even if Kris is in a difficult situation, i'm helping them have fun at least.

i don’t want to be blamed for having been forced into having to make choices. i think it’s why players are generally encouraged to make good ones (unless we’re hunting for story/lore which is fine. it’s valid.) at the end of the day, it’s a video game. but that’s the thing, right? by nature, video games are meant to be played & if we’re heading toward some…moral lecture-y type of realization that the people in games we’re playing are better off without us being able to fuck them over by having been presented with a choice to be a dick, then…that sucks.

it's like that post about laminating tissue paper…vaguely. the tissue paper lasts, but is useless because you can’t use it as a tissue paper—BUT I’M DIGRESSING

look

the brilliance in the story of Hades is that you, as the player, have been given the feeling of having helped fix things, bringing lovers together, easing an eternal damnation, helping Hades be a little bit happier by encouraging Persephone to return home.

the payoffs of Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Say No More & Everhood are, well they’re fun in their own ways. there's a portion of them that’s serious, that are conversations that you need to have (i.e. Say No More & boundaries, Everhood & their take on Buddhism that isn’t cheesed to hell & back like other more typical ways religious themes appear in games) BUT the way these games resolve makes you feel good. Satisfied. that you had fun playing the fun video game.

(i haven’t finished playing Spiritfarer yet but i know that game will gut me. it’s the nicest way of engaging w a life lived & coming to terms with Death i've seen portrayed any media.)

the gargantuan emotional payoff in Oneshot is you, as the player, quite literally helps a child that is stuck in a video game world RETURN HOME. i'm not going to spoil what Niko does but he gets to go home. WE THE PLAYER HELP HIM GET HOME.

all this talk of going “does anything even matter anymore” after finding out you are trapped in a video game neatly addressed with other characters explicitly saying “well, didn’t you have fun with people here? didn't they make choices that the code couldn’t predict? isn’t having had fun w people you met here worth saving their world anyway?” and succeeding. WE HELP SAVE THE WORLD AND GET THE PROTAG HOME.

whatever story Toby chooses to tell, i hope…i dunno, that it’s not just commentary? with how his worlds are, i hope that we, as the player, aren’t just…accuse first, prove innocence second? Like, I WANT TO HELP. let the lore hunters & dataminers & “i will immediately play dark routes next” do their thing. it's a valid thing to do! by nature of programming in a choice, there is the expectation of people venturing down that choice, as dark as it can get. you want people to see what you put in a thing or else there’s no reason to put it! (most of the time.)

but i want a happy ending. for everyone. because i'm playing this medium – these video games – i as a player want to help brings those happy endings about.

it's free to hope, i know. people need sad, dark, lonely stories, i know. but god, i'm tired. i want to be able to help get these kids, all these people to their happy endings. Please, Toby.

i’m not complaining about undertale or deltarune. all i’m saying is what is my point as the person who plays the video game if i can’t help these people get to have good & happy lives after all they’ve been through.

we’re doing that, i know. WE’RE TRYING TO. to some extent we’ve done that. but we left two dead kids in undertale. you can’t tell me we can’t find a way to give them happy endings to. alive, even. with their parents & friends. heck, if Castlevania was able to give EVERYONE a happy ending after everything, what on earth is stopping other media from doing the same thing.

Please.

#deltarune #deltarune spoilers #deltarune meta #i guess

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galacticnova3 · 3 years

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i want to hear 👀👀👀 it upsets me a ton when people treat nova like he’s evil hhhhghgh

I HAVE BEEN ENABLED.

OK SO. First of all, we don’t have any kind of indication of Nova’s moral leaning… in regular Super Star. HOWEVER, Super Star Ultra does give us an idea if you pay attention to Nova after Meta Knight makes his wish. Nova makes a very surprised expression, and one that I also wouldn’t say is a stretch to interpret as simultaneously worried. The latter point in particular is because of how you can see the white of his eyes, which generally represents a fear or concern sort of surprise vs just something unexpected. I mean look at him, if this doesn’t look like “are you sure? like really are you absolutely sure that’s what you want???” then I don’t know what does.

This is contrary to what an evil being would most likely do; obviously if you’re an asshole you’d want to just sit back and watch this evidently entitled blue bitch get his ass handed to him on his silver platter of a mask. After all, assuming Nova is evil also assumes he acts of his own accord in some way, and considering his level of power, it’s not like he’d have to be worried about his own safety in that situation we’re that the case. Basically, he had literally no reason to react like that if he didn’t care about someone’s safety besides his own.

Now, my second point is a bit more vague due to not being supported by dialogue or visuals but instead just understanding/connecting dots. Nova is, obviously, a clockwork star, and it can be assumed all/most clockwork stars function similarly. The only other one we see in the games is Star Dream… aka the Access Ark, considering they’re separate, but Star Dream is the sentient part, hence me referring to them in this case. Star Dream doesn’t seem capable of acting on their own originally; not until they take Haltmann’s soul and begin acting on their own perception of what would grant his wish to give his company prosperity. Even then, though, they’re still seemingly “locked in” to trying to complete that wish, even though they’ve not only become sentient, but can recognize that it puts them directly at risk.

Now, we’ve seen that exact same thing play out with Nova, in that he was still trying to grant Marx’s wish even though Kirby was killing him from the inside. Once again, to say Nova is evil implies he is in control of his own actions; if that were the case and he was just threatening Popstar because he’s a jerk and intentionally interpreted the wish that way, why not stop and interpret it a different way? After all the entire basis of this kind of morality requires him putting his own mean-spirited spin on the wish being made, so it’s not like he wouldn’t already have been just finding a way to bend it. Obviously an all-powerful asshole would not be able to continue being like that if they can’t also act in self-preservation when things go wrong.

That leads into my third point; based on what we’ve seen of Nova, he is at the very least not just self-centered(as he showed concern), and he evidently isn’t acting based on his own decisions, but rather his programming or equivalent. The latter point makes it difficult to realistically make him out to be evil, seeing as we haven’t seen him do anything evil that was his own choice. That’d be like saying a gun is evil because it was used to shoot someone. Both of those points do lend themselves to the neutral spectrum very easily; he does what he’s told, and doesn’t question it. If you want to be boring this is where you can easily ignore his obvious reaction and go “he’s not sentient”, and if you do that you get the bonus of knowing you have greatly disappointed at least one person. Also tbh the same goes for the evil interpretation imo; there’s literally so many characters like that already, ‘jackass genies’ is literally a trope. Why not do something new and interesting?

On that note, the first point also allows the argument that he could be on the good spectrum(not chaotic tho) if you squint really hard and overthink his one moment of expressed emotion. It’s a pretty tragic concept that I am admittedly extremely biased towards for reasons, but what if Nova is good, yet can’t refuse to grant bad wishes even if he wants to? Sure, he can be used for good as well, but someone like him would most certainly meet many more selfish people in his time(such as a certain jester) than good folks. It’s a lot easier to wish for money or power than for peace or comfort. It’d be like being a pacifist sword, to be honest; sure, maybe one guy would use you to make watermelon slices for kids or something, but most people would use you to do harm, and you have no control over that.

I’m sure that would get exhausting… Might explain his eternally tired look. Just waiting for the next summoning and hoping whoever gathers the stars isn’t doing so for nefarious reasons, but having no say either way. Finally some guy shows up and seems the noble sort, and then he makes the most dangerous wish imaginable. Despite how he’s become so accustomed to disappointment that he doesn’t even react anymore, because yeah yeah ok planet dominator #5018 it would be my luck that I meet someone else like you this summoning, he doesn’t hide his shock. Like damn this guy might straight up have his face impaled by a lance in the next two minutes, he knows that right? But no matter what happens, Nova can’t do anything about it.

Anyways because I want to try and reel this in somewhat, my last tiny point is that Nova is never fought directly. Star Dream Soul OS(the Access Ark part) has a whole external battle, an internal one with the pillars, and then the heart also attacks you directly. Nova? Nothing. He’s got some separate internal defenses that he probably doesn’t control (patas, volms, and dacoogas), but other than that you literally just break all of this old man’s ribs and subsequently induce a heart attack and paralysis. Nova never attacks or directly fights back, and Kirby never fights him face-to-face. I personally interpret this as Nova using what little control he does have to make himself easier to stop, even at the cost of his own life, because he never wanted to do something evil in the first place.

Actually I just thought of one other potential point. It’s at least sorta implied Nova was the one used to seal Galacta Knight. If that’s the case, why would he have been trusted to do so if he twisted wishes in purposely bad ways? Like that’s just an obviously terrible idea. Sure let’s leave someone who enjoys the suffering of others to keep this dangerous guy locked up, I’m sure nothing bad could come of that. Famous last words right there.

#asks #rambling #my headcanons #maybe I should make a rant tag tbh

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Amphibia Weekly Reviews: New Wartwood and Friend or Frobo?

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to another week’s worth of Amphibia reviews! And we got two standout episodes today as Marcy tries to home improvement her way into people’s hearts, and Polly makes friends with a destructive but endearing robot. Find out what I thought about in full under the cut!

New Wartwood: Marcy episode! Wu-hoo! And true to the show’s current status quo, and I do love how it evolves, it’s her first day in Wartwood and she’s pumped. And true to the awkward, probably autistic like yours truly, nerd we’re dealing with.. she does not make a great impression or intergrate herself to the naturally suspcious of outsiders tow. So when questioned by Anne how her day went she gets into how the town’s carefully built on a swamp.. and how the townsfolk hate her, complete with Angry Mob. Anne disperses it but it’s still the funniest moment of the episode to me, both in how a small one sprouted up so quick.. and how polly’s there despite LIKING Marcy (”I go where the mob goes anne!”). ALso i’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Anne just.. casually blushing while talking to Marcy. There’s no catalyist or any reason she would for any other reason than being sweet on her.

So Marcy, after fixing a statue she knocked over, decides she can earn their love faster as she dosen’t want to wait. This does get to one of Marcy’s core issues.. while she has many, like any of us, it ties back to the fact she has trouble getting this isn’t a video game. I mean she does get the diffrence between real life and a game on an objective level, but she can’t get real life dosen’t WORK like fiction, something i’ve also struggled with and can massively relate to. So she assumes helping them, via fixing up the town a bit, will make them like her. It makes them warm up a little but they still don’t.

So naturally, who should come in by blimp to give her a tempting offer that will end badly but Mayor Toadstool! He also has a blimp now but it keeps escaping... I think I know where it went.

So THAT’S how he can afford those things. Naturally seeing how nice Marcy made things he has a plan to exploit the hell out of her gifts with masonry to pretty up the town as a tourist attraction to make him more money. Anne talks her out of it.. but she ends up caving in the middle of the night. I also love the touch of her staying in the Fwagon, not forgetting the plantars bought it and finding a practical use for it in and out of story now i’ts no longer needed. I also love the little signs she has on it.

The next morning the town awakes to marble pillars in front of all of the shops to make them look fancy and Marcy and the Mayor promoting the town’s new effort,s including a golden founderss tatue and a horrifying golden clock of toadstool, with Anne warry of her girlfriend’s antics. Mostly becaue you can’t force people to like you or bribe them to. Otherwise you cause the entire town to sink into the water bellow... like now. But while Marcy is now convinced the town will never accept her she still dosen’t want them all to die, and summons Joe Sparrow.. who continues to be the best thing ever added to this cast I swear to god as he helps her save the day, removing the various new things to reduce weight, saving some villiagers from a pillar (as Croaker points out their frogs ending up in the water isn’t that deadly), and getting rid of the gold monstrosities.

So the end result is that the town is rightfully liviid, though she does genuinely appologize.. and suprisingly.. TOADSTOOL actually tries to take all the blame. The town rightfully dosen’t let him, but it’s clear he’s somehow growing as a person. Even if anne’s assement of him as “What would happen if the Monopoly Man had a Baby with a PIece of Fried Chicken” is still 100% accurate. They do agree they’ll like her with time, just like Anne, and if supscious, will gladly give her another shot. So Marcy’s learned her lesson.. always listen to your girlfriend. And while she literally fixes her damage.. the mascot toadstool hired explodes as it’s full of bugs.

Final Thoughts on New Wartwood: This was a fun episode. A fairly simple and predictable one, but sometimes that works perfectly and this one was just damn funny, charming and full of good character stuff. Top notch.

Friend or Frobo?:

I have a confession to make: I fricking love robots. It’s something that really HASN’T come up before, but I love a good robot. There’s just tons of good stories to be had with artifical beings, their struggles to be recongized for who they are, their cool powers, their awkward but endearing attempts to fit in with us less than deserving humans. And ficton’s had TONS and TONS of awesome ones: The Vision (in both 616 and MCU flavors), who is one of my faviorite heroes period, Red Tornado, Jenny Wakeman, Shard the Metal Sonic, BOYD, Aya, Data, Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy, Growler, Robo, Grimlock. the list really DOES go on into infinity for me.

WEirdly though I didn’t pay much mind to Frobo before this episode.. but with no real personality other than endearlingly running into the same obstacle for hours, and no real background yet, I didn’t really have anything to attach to other than “Cool anne’s either going to nearly get killed by a robot or get one”. But this episode changed that using the oldest trick in the book: having a child befriend it. We’ve seen it before with Sentinels, Badniks, Autobots and Iron Giants. Now we get it again with largeish frog robot. And it is pretty damn good.

This is a Polly episode. It’s Hop Pop’s faviorite day: Seed Store Day! Naturally Marcy has come along and naturlaly she’s just as geeked out about seeds as he is because she’s precious and I must protect her from the horrible trauma her trusted father figure is about to inflict on her. Polly naturally wants to get into some shenanigans but suprisingly.. Anne and Sprig don’t wanna anymore. THey’ve learned their lesson and decide to just play video games. So polly does the resonable thing.. and blames them for some shenanigans on her part and goes out to get into more shneanigans only to find it’s lonely without a friend.

Enter Frobo, named that because he looks like a frog and she heard the term robo from anne’s game. And despite very limited programming... Frobo is VERY loveable. As Polly notes he’s essentially a baby: he starts by mimicing her, including his horrifying but endearing laugh, and even doing her spin dash she gained a few episodes back I didn’t mention because I forgot. That one’s on me. Sprig also did the Yooka Laylee thing on top of her spin dash then so there’s that.

Point is it’s all fun, games and heartwarming bonding till Frobo accidently floods the city and gets mobbed and one of the mobbs makes the terrible mistake of accidently kicking polly.

He goes into Red Eye Iron Giant HOmage mode and starts fighting everybody.. including Anne and Sprig who show up to contain things, but eventually Polly wins everyone over with a heartwarming speech as she stops him, pointing out it was her fault and while he is weird, he’s just an innocent> The town.. decides why not. As the mayor points out “We already have two freaks what’s a third”. And given Marcy nearly killed them all yesterday and they begrudginly acepted her and anne did it WAY more than once and they see her as one of them, yeah they give up.

Naturally once they get back Marcy is an easy sell. Now she can do chrono trigger cosplay! Hop Pop is a bit till it’s shown that frobo can farm super fast, and he’s part of the family now. Sprig and Anne shrug off him having come from the factory, and this surely won’t backfire on them surely.

Final Thoughts on Friend or Frobo:

This one was excellent. The idea of Polly having to learn repsonsiblity was a nice idea, and Frobo is as I said endearing: he’s simply an innocent being who knows nothing and is slowly learning and his friendship with polly is really fucking cute. And giving him an emotional attachment to the plantars means whatevers going on with him gets higher stakes.. and given how robots are treated in fiction i’m just counting the minutes till he tragically gets blowed up real good. But until then this episode was a standout for the season. While as I made clear the “Kid befriends death machine” trope is not NEW, the baby concept made it feel fresh. It also as usual had some good jokes.

So all in all a top notch week, really great stuff and i’ts only going to get better next time!

Nexttime: Mayor Toadstool is tempted to leave. Kay. But more importantly MADDIE EPISODE AGAIN BITCHES. AND IT HAS MARCY IT. I’M READY.

Next On This Blog: Final Space Yo! Quinn and Gary visit earth and Tribore leaves.. again. Be here or be... elsewhere I guess

If you liked this review, follow for more, join my patreon, and comission your own review if you want via my askbox, discord and dms. See you at the next rainbow.

#amphibia #annarcy #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #frobo #polly plantar #hopidiah plantar #sprig plantar #mayor toadstool

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maerambles · 2 years

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Chapter One

Keeper of the Lost Cities - Shannon Messenger (October 2, 2012)

Buckle up, folks, this is going to be a long one.

“Have you decided that you’re too smart to pay attention to this information?” [Mr. Sweeny, Sophie’s High School Teacher] (Ch.1, p. 3)

“Since you’ve decided you’re above the lecture, why don’t you give it?” [Mr. Sweeny, Sophie’s High School Teacher] (Ch.1, p. 5)

Mr. Sweeny grumbled something that sounded like “know-it-all” as he stalked off to the exhibit in the next room over. [Mr. Sweeny, Sophie’s High School Teacher] (Ch.1, p. 5)

What kind of teacher speaks to a 12 year-old like this? Mr. Sweeny should reconsider jobs if he his going to chastise his smartest student like this. From my experience, the smarter students like Sophie were always favored by the teacher, and I’m sure they would have ADORED Sophie for being able to not only keep up with high school level students, but to beat them. Mr. Sweeny has no reason to be bullying a literal child.

Also, why is Sophie being grouped in with a bunch of 17/18 year olds? There are special programs for highly advanced kids! San Diego is a city of 1.41 million people, and if my town of 80 thousand can have programs for kids like this, I’m sure San Diego does as well. I was 12 when this book came out and I had friends in these gifted programs. Not sure when this book takes place, but it’s from the iPod era so she should be in a program. I guess more tragic back story for Sophie, amirite?

He didn’t seem to realize that unless the giant dinosaur replicas came to life and started eating people, no one cared. (Ch.1, p.4).

What a sad group of high schoolers, the kids in my class would have loved this! But the school that I went to was so underfunded we didn’t even get field trips, so to each their own.

It’d been her secret - her burden - since she fell and hit her head when she was five years old. (Ch. 1, p. 4)

I know Sophie is ~different~ but wouldn’t it be natural for her to mention this to her parents? When I was younger I had a friend who got really bad headaches as a kid (same age as Sophie), and spoke to her parents about it so she could get the proper medication and examination about it. It’s pretty clear that hearing the thoughts of others is not only bothersome to Sophie, but painful, so painful to the point that she has to listen to music to block out the noise.

I don’t believe for a second that a five year old would keep this to themselves, and surprised (at least to my knowledge, maybe this gets explained later in the books) that her overprotective parents never did anything about this. This constant pain makes me feel sorry for Sophie, because chronic distress is not something pleasant.

She’d glanced at it when they entered the museum, and her photographic memory recorded every detail. (Ch. 1, p. 5)

I’ll probably make a bigger rant about this when I analyze her character (because it’s a big part of who she is), but it bothers me how Sophie just... gets her powers triggered and than just has them at their fullest extent? The concept of triggering powers is cool, but once we get past 2 or 3 powers it feels like the character isn’t working for it at all. Sure, any normal human won’t ever be telepathic or have a photographic memory, but we can understand her struggles through the hard work she gets to master them.

Imagine if you were reading a book of a completely different character, one outside of fantasy, and they just woke up one day and knew how to sing all the right notes perfectly, knew how to swing the perfect serve in Tennis just by watching Serena Williams do one once on T.V., or could cook a perfect batch of cookies without burning a single one in the first try. Sure, MAYBE that could be interesting within the first few pages but constantly having to see them get, well essentially gifted with these cool powers can not only get boring but frustrating. Where’s the fun in just being good at things the first try? What if Sophie could only hear the thoughts of kids at first, and then as she focused harder and got older she could start hearing the thoughts of adults?

Sorry for the long rant, but expect it to come up every time Sophie has a new ability because I feel like she never works for any of the abilities she has. She’s reliant on abilities that she can barely use or understand because she didn’t take the time to fully develop them, fully feel the excitement of finally reading a particular hard-headed person’s mind or figure out why her photographic memory had trouble projecting correctly the stars in the night sky. There’s no... development. It’s even more frustrating knowing Sophie is arguably the most powerful elf to exist but doesn’t know how to use those powers. I would blame the black swan, but this feels like something Shannon Messenger did to get certain plot points rolling faster.

“Nice job, superfreak.” Garwin Chan - a boy wearing a T-shirt that said BACK OFF! I’M GONNA FART - sneered as he shoved past her to join their classmates. (Ch. 1, p. 5)

Garwin was still bitter Yale had offered her a full-time scholarship . His rejection letter had arrived a few weeks before. (Ch. 1, p. 5)

No offense to Garwin, but unless you’re wearing that shirt ironically I highly doubt Yale is the best fit for you, buddy.

So she’d be attending the much closer, much smaller San Diego City College next year - a fact some annoying reporter found newsworthy enough to post in the local paper the day before - CHILD PRODIGY CHOOSES CITY COLLEGE OVER IVY LEAGUE - complete with her senior photo. Her parents freaked when they found out. (Ch. 1, p. 6)

They’d even called the newspaper to complain. (Ch. 1, p. 6)

The editor seemed as unhappy as they were. (Ch. 1, p. 6)

This is illegal. As someone who is studying law, the act of publishing a news article without the consent or knowledge of the subject/person is illegal. Especially of a minor! Since the article was officially published and had a picture attached, Mr. and Mrs. Foster not only have a case, they have a GOOD one. What are they doing complaining to the editor?

He was probably fifteen, and by far the cutest boy she’d ever seen. (Ch. 1, p. 7)

Stupid, but the fact that she’s 12 and he’s 15 makes me uncomfortable? In retrospect they’re not too far off in age but it just makes me uncomfortable because she’d be a 7th grader and he’d be a Sophomore in High School. Technically.

And she couldn’t place his accent. Kind of British, but different somehow. Crisper? (Ch. 1, p. 7)

The fact that Fitz is supposed to be British is SO adorable. Like of course he would be.

She wasn’t used to talking to boys - especially cute boys - and it made her brain a little mushy. (Ch. 1, p. 7)

This isn’t a problem necessarily with KOTLC in particular, but I’ve noticed that almost every single female led book I’ve read the love interest (or one of) is always introduced in the first chapter. This is something that I personally don’t like, as it isn’t equal to the books I’ve read with male leads in it. HP, PJO, and TMR all have their female love interest introduced SEVERAL chapters in and in HP’s case, SEVERAL books in. I’m sure Harry x Hermione shippers would disagree, but they’re relationship isn’t describe as anything other than platonic until much later in the series because they’re so young when the series starts.

Kids thoughts were like stinging, high-pitched needles - and so many at once was like an angry porcupine attacking her brain. (Ch. 1, p. 8)

TELEPATH LORE!! Please Shannon, what are the minds like for older people? Babies? Can Sophie even read the minds of babies? They can’t formulate words, so I don’t imagine Sophie will hear them. I know that later in the series she does read animal and ogre minds, but I want more information!

Fitz? What kind of name was Fitz? (Ch. 1, p. 9)

It’s not an unusual name, lol. Sophie really doesn’t go out much, huh.

The smoke from the fires burned her lungs and white bits of ash flew in her face, but she ignored them. (Ch. 1, p. 10)

If it’s this dangerous outside why are they on a field trip? Wouldn’t it be postponed? It sounds dangerous if you can’t even go outside for fresh air! I don’t know what the adults in these books are thinking, even the human ones.

She was going to die. (Ch. 1, p. 11)

Woah, what an end to the FIRST chapter!

Sorry if I was a bit too negative, it’s just that there so much in this story that just doesn’t make sense? And a lot of it can be fixed. She can still be bullied by kids her own age, she doesn’t specifically need to go to high school. Sometimes I wish that authors didn’t try so hard to make the characters likable by giving them dead parents or having them be bullied, like sure, that defiantly happens to people and it’s sad but I think it’s a cheap way in books to get us to feel sorry for the main characters. I think this is done as to say, “oh look, this character has a shitty life so it evens out when later in the series they get everything they’ve ever dreamed of” sort of thing.

But overall this chapter was good! It didn’t have a lot of information overload but we still got introduced to important elements of Sophie’s life. And Sophie and Fitz both seem like cute characters so far! I can really see them being fleshed out well in the future, that is, if Shannon Messenger is up to the challenge.

Like I said, if I critiqued something that gets explained later in the books, please let me know! As long as it doesn’t spoil the books, though. I’ve only ever read the first four and on top of that I don’t even remember those very well.

Anyways, until the next one! (Also, I promise that my reviews won’t always be this long!).

Also, to whoever read all of this, I give you an imaginary badge of honor! You deserve it, champ.

#KOTLC #Keeper of the Lost Cities #Reviews #Book Reviews

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gizkasparadise · 4 years

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cdrama rec/review: go ahead

KDRAMA AND CDRAMA MASTER LIST OF REVIEWS

Series: go ahead Episodes: 40 Genres: family, healing/melodrama, slice of life, romance Spoilers in the Rec: for the first 20% ish/set-up If You Like, You’ll Like: reply 1988, le coup de foudre, find yourself (same production company/main male actor), rain or shine/just between lovers, found family stories, meet again stories

Rank: 10/10** (see Drawbacks section)

PREMISE

widower hai chao and his 6 year old daughter jian jian live happily above his noodle restaurant despite the recent, tragic death of his wife. one day, dysfunction junction a married couple (he ping, a police officer, and chen ting, a real piece of work) move into the same building with their 7 year old son, ling xiao. immediately, jian jian attaches herself to ling xiao, who is unexpectedly grim for a small child.

because ling xiao’s family is less-than-healthily grieving the loss of their youngest child, ling xiao’s sister who died in a terrible accident. The Apartment of Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms eventually implodes, ending with chen ting abandoning her husband and son. he ping, suddenly a single father, and hai chao come to a friendly partnership that is clearly alluding to gay marriage where they co-raise both of their kids--hai chao as the primary caregiver, and he ping supporting them financially through his job as a policeman.

meanwhile, the neighborhood busybody is dead-set on getting hia chao remarried. eventually she introduces him to a divorced single mother, he mei, and her son zi qiu, who is ling xiao’s age. they sort of start to date, but it culminates in he mei skipping town and leaving zi qiu behind. hai chao, man with a heart of gold, informally adopts him and zi qiu becomes jianjian’s foster brother.

from there, the trio grow up happily and become inseparable. but once zi qiu and ling xiao graduate high school, the bullshit parade their respective childhood skeletons reappear in their lives. circumstances lead to the boys moving overseas, leaving jianjian and their fathers behind.

they reunite after 9 years, when the boys return to a home where they hope to pick things back up from where they left off. things are more complicated than that, as jianjian finds herself in a new life and surrounded by new people.

MAIN CHARACTERS

li jian jian

hai chao’s daughter and the only girl in the family. she attended the required short-hair-low-grades training program required of all cdrama youth female leads. super positive and outgoing, as well as the youngest of the three pseudo-siblings, jian jian grows up spoiled and over protected by her father and brothers, and as a result is completely devastated once her family falls apart. it’s so sad.

after the time skip, she’s an on-the-verge successful artist who makes woodcarvings, and exudes big art bro energy. inhales sugar like it’s nobody’s business. she inherited her father’s disease called caring too much, and it’s incurable!!

ling xiao

the eldest brother and resident fun police. ling xiao comes from a seriously toxic home that finally seems to improve once his mother leaves. but then she comes back. fucking great. introverted to the point of being withdrawn to anyone but his chosen family, ling xiao’s had to carry a lot of emotional weight that takes a larger and larger toll on him as the series progresses. please get this boy some therapy.

becomes a dentist because jian jian needs one. wears a lot of monochromatic outfits with low necklines because heavy angst but make it fashion. has been in love with jian jian since high school and is still carrying that torch 9 years later.

he zi qiu

the middle child who grows up in hai chao and jian jian’s home, and is her foster brother in all but paperwork. hotheaded, zi qiu and jian jian basically share two brain cells that ling xiao routinely takes from them for safekeeping. he spoils jian jian, sneaking her snacks and junk food and wants to become a pastry chef so he can open a sweet shop for her!!

my favorite character. just wants to be wanted 8( him and hai chao’s relationship is my favorite dynamic in the series. will sob while driving a pink moped. is too proud to beg

li hai chao (left) and ling he ping (right)

the greatest (hai chao) and okayest (he ping) dads in the world! noodle dad/hai chao has never done anything wrong in his life, ever, and we know this and we love him. he ping isn’t a bad person, but demonstrates pretty classic absentee parenting/isn’t as emotionally present in his son’s life as hai chao. hai chao is the heart of the family, and would do anything for his kids 8(

SOME SUPPORT CHARACTERS

tang can (left) and qiu ming yue (right)

jian jian’s #GirlGang and roommates. they, like literally everyone in this drama, have some severe mom issue hang-ups. tang can (left) is a former child actress who is struggling with her lack of success as an adult and gives well-meaning but absolutely terrible advice on the regular.

ming yue (right) is jian jian’s best friend since childhood and as an adult is trying to break free from her mother’s controlling nature--she’s also had a thing for ling xiao for the last 9 years. raises fish for symbolism purposes.

chen ting

ling xiao’s mom and certified garbage human. unable to cope with the death of her daughter that was her fault lbr, she abandons her family and disappears for ten years. she forces her way back into ling xiao’s life when he turns 18, where it’s revealed that she’s remarried and ling xiao has a younger half-sister chengzi (”little orange”). shit goes down, and soon ling xiao is forced to move back to singapore to serve as primary caregiver to both his mother who abandoned him and the half sister he barely knows.

emotionally abusive and basically hits every single square on the toxic parent bingo card. i just. i just hate her. even typing this out is making me mad.

he mei

zi qiu’s mother. after a few dates with hai chao, she ends up ditching her kid and disappearing for unknown reasons. is a slightly better parent than chen ting but that’s like saying some poison kills you slower. the show tries to bring us around on her but it didnt work for me.

SOME OTHERS

zhuang bei, zi qiu’s best friend growing up who i would like a lot less if he wasn’t played by the same actor who played my beloved dachuan

zheng shuran, jian jian’s first boyfriend and fellow artist who’s got a weird thing for women’s waists and pretentious artists’ statements

du juan, jian jian’s friend who co-owns their woodworking studio. has absolute trash taste in men

chengzi, ling xiao’s half-sister who can be a brat but dear god does she need to be protected/saved

**DRAWBACKS

so this is a weird one for me. what i didn’t like i really didn’t like, but what i loved i really loved. ultimately, the factors/uniqueness of this show and the loveability of the main characters outweighed the negatives and it’s one of my favorite dramas.

THAT SAID. i got some #thoughts on this one.

first, there are literally no positive mother figures in this show. not a damn one. they are all negligent or controlling at best or down right abusive at worst. no woman over 30 is portrayed positively and that’s a big No from me.

the last 10 eps have some pacing issues and focus on the wrong people. spending the remaining episodes focused on one of the most universally hated characters vs. the main family was a bad move

the show tried to redeem or make us sympathize with characters that were, to me, completely irredeemable. one case is worse than the other, but both of them were terrible people that deserved to be cut out of the main family’s lives.

REASONS TO WATCH

the main family. the characters are so wonderful and nuanced, and their dynamics with one another were amazing. you’ll fall in love with hai chao aka noodle dad and the trio. they go through so many trials but they still stick together and it’s ultimately a healing drama and i loved it very much.

the central romance was less in focus, but the pining is enough to make jane austen emerge from the grave. i loved the leads together, and while LOL ling xiao’s attachment to jian jian was not always healthy, they supported each other and it made me smile. i love me a tortured pining dude.

#Acting. everyone played their parts to perfection. the child actors in particular were so well-cast (esp baby zi qiu)

the soundtrack lmao. you watch the opening credits and know you’ll need to buckle up

idk it’s a very unique show, and i haven’t seen one like it. reply 1988 comes close, but it doesn’t tackle the same issues and it was all just very real and earnest.

Final Thoughts.

GOODNIGHT, GOOODBYYYYYE MY CHILDREEEEEEEN

#go ahead #song weilong #zhang xincheng #tan songyun #cdrama #gizka does kdrama

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raeloganthesonic06fangirl · 3 years

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I know you didn't ask, but I think the reason Bushroot is so popular is because he's one of very few villains that can be honestly described as "Sweet when not actively homicidal" which is a fun character type.

Full disclosure, but I always thought Bushroot's design was pretty cool when I was a kid, like, the guy has a creatively unique style that has a very recognizable profile and silhouette, as well as his VA, the late Tino Insana, had a very recognizable and iconic vocal quality (seriously, if you've ever seen any cartoon with that guy lending his voice, you're going to remember that series somehow, if not only because you remember that voice. I really think this is why Barnyard never left our conscious thoughts)

Bushroot himself is such an interesting member to the Fearsome, in which he has the tendency to flip between sides or just be on the fence whenever he's involved. He can be a ruthless villain, a tragic victim, or just be there because it's fun to include him (one of my favorite episodes is "A Star is Scorned", where Bushroot gets the spotlight as the star of the show, and he goes full insufferable diva just to mess with Darkwing, and I love it. Bushroot in animal print clothes, ascot, oversized sunglasses, in a limo is one of the greatest things I've seen)

I get the feeling that perhaps another reason why we gravitate towards sympathizing with him before we really step back and remember that he's not an UwU Cinnamon Bun is that his origin story makes it a point that he was bullied by his peers, who also kept sabotaging his experiments and taking credit for his work, which I can imagine would tug at our hearts on account of how absolutely real that sort of situation is

Like, geeze, as a person who was bullied a lot in school for my wierd quirks and tendency to hyperfixate on things people thinks is, and I quote, "stupid garbage", and literally having my stuff pulled out of my hands and thrown into trees that I've had to retrieve despite not being coordinated enough for that task, I can tell you that situations like these being done to characters really manipulate me into being more sympathic for them than I probably should be

So right out of the gate, we are presented with Bushroot pre-mutation and seeing how much his life just sucks.

Then there's that whole kind of icky thing where he's just a bit of a creep when it comes to trying to find true love or whatever, and I swear I cannot feel sympathy on that mark for a guy who is willing to kidnap a girl and force her to undergo experimental exposure to change her molecular structure to make her a plant monster like him against her will, and when that didn't work, he just tried to grow a wife from scratch and ended up with a potato and decided that was good enough anyway even though he's technically said potato's father and she's barely a few minutes old, so yeah...

Bushroot kind of gives off stalker vibes in this regard, and it's really weird that he's such a soft spoken, docile guy when he's not provoked. Like, a ticking time bomb, and he's willing to latch onto anything that shows him an ounce of positive interaction, even if it's just Darkwing saying: "We're going to have to team up right now"

((Maybe the real friends he needed were the people he tried to mulch with a lawnmower along the way...))

But, yeah, I think what makes Bushroot such a popular character is that he's honestly really well designed, his character history is clear and understandable, he's endearing at times, he's got some cool powers, he's pro-environmental, the franchise makes it clear that there's a reason why he's a villain, and he's constantly shown that, if given the opportunity, he has no qualms about helping the heroes because he's just happy to have some social activity

Also, he's practically immortal

He can been shredded down to a mere cutting of plant, and regenerate from that.

That opens up so many possibilities of situations and potential for him. He can grow plants on command, he can bring a forest to life, the guy has a pet venus-flytrap that acts like a dog and that's really cool, I just love Spike

And also, in the rare times Liquidator is actually used in the series, he has a good chemistry with him

I think what really helped with Bushroot being one of the most popular in the series is partly due to his early episodes happening early on in the series, him having some solid solo episode outings, the overall energy he gives off, how easy it is to market him as a feature, his instantly recognizable design immediately pinpointing him as a product of the DWD cartoon that sets him aside from other Duck themed characters in the overall Duck-verse, and I also have a feeling that Posion Ivy might also be marginally responsible for some of this solidifying, on account of "Batman: The Animated Series" being released around the same time and the 90s was very much Pro-Take-Care-Of-The-Planet-Before-Nature-Kills-You with its programming selection and overall themes in kids media

Also

youtube

He's so socially stunted, it's almost adorable. 😅

((Still not going to forget that he kidnapped his coworker with the intent to make her fall in love with him, tho. Bushroot be as crazy as Jervis Tetch, yikes))

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marahope-things · 3 years

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I think the similarities that people are finding between Adora/Catra and Mara/Light Hope are less to do with the relationships being the same internally (as in, in terms of the dynamics between the two characters) and more to do with the fact that their stories deal with a lot of the major themes of the show, because the two pairings embody a LOT of the major themes of the show between them.

I don’t think it’s an accident or any kind of misrepresentation that the two relationships have parallels, but as someone who enjoys Mara/Light Hope A Whole Lot, while being pleased but more or less happy with how Catradora is presented in the show and not feeling a need to go beyond that, I want to unpick why, and what some of those differences are.

Partly because I think people make broad, thematic-level arguments about why a pairing is attractive to them, and for me, there are a lot of intra-relationship or interpersonal dynamic elements that have more bearing on why I like a ship. And it’s hard to frame in a positive light, but with Catradora, they already engage with some relationship dynamics that I’m a huge fan of (namely, rivalmancy, childhood-friends-to-lovers, and enemies-to-lovers).

The big similarities I see people picking up on are: The mind-control thing, and the "you deserve love too"/"you’re more than what you can give to other people" exchange.

And these are extremely valid parallels! They touch on two Extremely Core messages of the show! They’re very real! And you’re correct—those parallels do mean something about Mara and Light Hope, about their importance to the show and its message. Mara and Light Hope embody many of the show’s core themes, and I am glad people are starting to write about that!

But I find myself sometimes feeling like that’s… not quite the reason why I like the pairing. Y’know?

So, with the caveat that this is just my feelings about the pairing, and probably literally everyone who ships either Catradora or Marahope has a different opinion than me in some way or other, I want to discuss the major differences between Catradora and Mara/Light Hope as I see them.

Because we started liking these ships before we saw the themes that they’d be used to embody in the end, right?

Breaking it down

What Adora and Catra have is a rivalmancy, essentially—especially when they’re first introduced.

Even when they’re on the same side, they have a competitiveness to their dynamic, and part of what drives their split is that Catra, on some level, resents Adora for getting all of the things that she wants, but can’t have, because of (basically) Shadow Weaver—and then abandoning both it and her. It’s a rivalry between peers, fellow soldiers, and there’s a colossal amount of abandonment issues and emotional trauma involved as well. They’re also both close to the same age.

And they were raised together. They spent their formative years extremely close, and their split has a lot in common (probably intentionally) with painful adolescent splits that happen as people grow up, change, grow apart, and (sometimes) come back together. It’s quite moving!

Mara and Light Hope aren’t peers in the same sense; you get the sense that they started out more like co-workers, and their eventual split only happens because Light Hope has their mind wiped and their ability to choose taken away from them (Catra, on the other hand, makes a lot of choices that put her and Adora at odds, often intentionally). The two of them work together and depend on each other, and they become friends, and their roles are complementary. Literally neither of them could do the other’s job, and they depend on each other’s skillset and resources to stay safe and fulfill their own duties effectively.

So they meet as fully-formed (relatively) people in a professional context and become closer, rather than being together for those formative years and undergoing a separation as they change and discover they don’t fit the same way they used to.

There’s also an implication that Light Hope may have trained other She-Ras in the past. I don’t know how long Mara expected her tenure as She-Ra to be, but it seems like that could be a lifelong commitment, once she’s been chosen. If so, then that could imply that Light Hope’s "age" (though I don’t know if that’s something anyone would even keep track of for an AI, because they weren’t supposed to change and “grow” like a person) is on the scale of centuries by the time she meets Mara.

And even if you headcanon them traveling to Etheria together immediately after Light Hope was minted, they’re still not really anything like Catra and Adora in their dynamic. The development of their relationship has a lot more in common with interspecies or human-AI relationships in sci-fi—Terminator, Andromeda, and Killjoys come immediately to mind.

I’m also intentionally including platonic relationships here, like John Connor and Uncle Bob in Judgement Day, too, because this is such an established trope, and touches on some of those Core Sci-Fi Questions that exist in the genre—about the nature of life, consciousness, sentience, individuality, and choice. It’s not just in a romantic context that you see humans and AIs ruminating to each other about what beauty is, why people find flowers “pretty”, what it means to have free will, to feel emotions, or to be an individual. Hell, you can even include Data from Star Trek in that list.

But it is also something of a trope for AIs to "fall in love" or develop special bonds with humans that they work particularly closely with, or for humans to fall in love with AIs (sometimes they go more Pygmalion with the latter and cast the human as the AI’s creator).

Which brings me to the core trope being engaged in Mara and Light Hope’s relationship, one that Noelle has actually alluded to in their remarks during the "Exit Interviews" streams:

Relationship makes Light Hope more than their intended purpose.

Memory and programming

In one of the streams, Noelle states that the writers’ room made the decision that something about Etheria "broke" the people who have tried to conquer it, and kind of made them part of itself (God this show has Star Wars all over it). He uses several examples, including Hordak.

Hordak, however you feel about him, develops a sense of individuality that makes his re-assimilation into the greater Horde impossible. Like Light Hope, he remembers things he isn’t supposed to, and on being presented with a physical reminder of Entrapta and his relationship with her, Horde Prime’s conditioning begins to break down.

Over the course of her arc, Mara comes to realize that being She-Ra means something more than her superiors have told her, and on realizing what her superiors are doing to Etheria, concludes that She-Ra, and all of Etheria, are being exploited and need to be protected from the First Ones. So, by betraying the First Ones (breaking her oath to them), Mara fulfills her role as She-Ra.

And Light Hope falls in love with Mara, something she was never supposed to be able to do. In the end, it is the memory of Mara that allows Light Hope to break through her programming long enough to allow Adora to destroy the Sword.

I know I brought up how AIs gaining sentience and self-will is a trope within sci-fi, but the best recent example that I can think of off the top of my head (and the reason I was able to articulate this at all) is actually The Good Place, with Janet.

In The Good Place, successive reboots are the in-universe mechanism that allows Janet to grow and change—but it’s her relationship with the other core characters that shapes who she becomes and what she believes. In fact, if she hadn’t been stolen and rebooted so many times in the first place, she never would have become who she did at all.

So: Like the rest of the cast, relationship makes Janet more than she was originally intended to be. Relationship makes Janet whole and fully alive. Light Hope’s story is, um, a bit more tragic, but I think the comparison works.

Catra and Adora, on the other hand, are dealing with a separate problem(/s): Catra’s pain and abandonment (and Adora’s self-abandonment) as a result of what they endured growing up, and the angst of childhood friends growing up and growing apart. It fits very squarely within the parameters of She-Ra as a kids’ TV show.

To boil it all the way down, their relationship *is* the problem. And it takes the whole show to fix it.

What’s suggested by the (sparse) textual evidence on Mara and Light Hope is that their relationship followed a more well-worn sci-fi path: By becoming friends with Mara, Light Hope learns how to be in relationship with another person, how to make her own choices, go against her programming as needed—how to have fun and appreciate beauty and being. Her falling in love with Mara is, metaphorically, her learning how to be alive in the world. Through loving Mara, she gets a glimpse of a world beyond being someone’s instrument, someone’s tool.

That’s part of what’s so heartbreaking and beautiful about them: In the midst of a situation that’s that’s built on deception, concealment, and coercion, where both of them appear to have been lied to or denied the entire truth by their superiors, where Mara, Light Hope, and the entire planet of Etheria are considered expendable by their superiors as long as they get their shiny weapon, Mara (who seems to understand that there’s more to life than duty and heroism) creates a space for Light Hope that is free from the constraints of her programming, to a degree. And as a result, Light Hope changes.

If Light Hope is a villain for her role in all of this (and this is complicated by the fact that she’s a programmatic being created for a particular purpose), then loving Mara is part of what makes her redemption possible. Her relationship with Mara makes her more than a weapon. In fact, it breaks her as a weapon.

And there’s certainly elements of that in Catra and Adora’s relationship, but it’s not the throughline that it is for Light Hope and Mara until you get to season 5—a full three quarters of the way through the show.

Love also doesn’t play as positive of a role in Catra’s redemption arc, really (where her parallels to Light Hope would be the most obvious), both because her villainy is something she explicitly chooses, and because her internal conflict and pain regarding her feelings for Adora are so much a part of her villainy. It only becomes redemptive in Adora’s struggle with the Failsafe—i.e. when we get back into the world of the First Ones, where most of the themes of "destiny" live.

So yeah. That’s the breakdown. I want to get into the individual tropes, but I’m going to have to save that for another day.

#marahope #meta #spop

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yourwakingnightmares · 3 years

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Scott Summers Character Study

Okay, does anyone else have those characters that they don’t follow full-time, but they always come back to? Kind of like that old sweatshirt you keep: sure, you have new ones, and they’re great, but that old one is just comfortable, and perfect.

Scott Summers has always been that character for me; like, sometimes I might go months, or years without writing, or looking up anything Scott Summers related... Then something happens, and boom. There it goes, I’m on a roll again. And so... Here we are with my rant of the day.

Buckle in folks, this is gonna be a long one.

I think a lot of people have dismissed Scott as a character, saying that he’s ‘flat’, or ‘one-dimensional’. And if you only periodically glance at comics, or peruse through the movies, I can see how you’d come to that conclusion.

Because unlike Logan (who I do enjoy, this isn’t an anti-Logan post), whose story is easy to follow, easy to understand, Scott’s story is nuanced; it’s something developed over time, with small hints and glimpses thrown in.

For example... what we find out is that Scott is the way he is, because Xavier made him that way. Xavier needed a leader, but he was stuck with Scott: a boy who had lost his parents. A boy who’d suffered from a horrific brain injury. A boy who’d been experimented on, and mind-raped by Nathaniel Essex, also known as Mr. Sinister for Scott’s formative years following his brain injury. A boy who escaped a sadistic telepath, only to end up in the hands of an abusive criminal.

So what does Xavier do? Well, he smooths out those edges; he puts subtle compulsions to turn Scott into the leader he needs him to be. He takes the edge off of the worst memories, and turns them into something distant; something that Scott can look at like a movie starring someone else as the traumatized kid.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: Scott was a brilliant leader. He had the tactical ability, the logistical knowledge to be a leader, even without Xavier. Which is what makes what Xavier did that much worse.

Because what that means is that Scott could’ve gotten there on his own; he could’ve been that leader without Xavier screwing with his head.

Xavier took a kid who needed a home, who needed stability, who needed therapy, and said, “Aha! I know a quicker route! Screw that other stuff; that’ll take years to be effectual! I’ll just do a bit of mental landscaping, and wall off the emotions he felt; I’ll just take the edge off those memories! Surely, nothing can go wrong!”

Looking at Scott’s relationship with Jean from this perspective also sheds new light on it: Scott’s mind had been violated by three telepaths, all of whom had only their own goals in mind. Mr. Sinister, Jack Winters, and Charles Xavier all were concerned more with Scott as means to an end, than they were with Scott himself.

Enter Jean Grey. A young girl, who is a freak even by mutant standards. She struggled to keep her telepathy under control, and we’re frequently shown in comics, books, and even the movies, that she picked up stray thoughts from almost everyone, leading to some very embarrassing moments for everyone. She was an outcast among outcasts.

Not to Scott though. When everyone else is worried about keeping their thoughts locked up tight around Jean, when everyone else is avoiding her so she doesn’t accidentally read their minds... Scott embraces her. He falls in love with her.

And I don’t think we truly ever look at why. Because here was a kid who had every justifiable reason to hate Jean -he’d spent roughly half his life being a plaything for telepaths, people who plucked out things they didn’t like, or added things they wanted. Out of everyone at the Mansion, Scott truly had the best reason to fear and/or hate Jean; out of all of them, Scott best knows the dangers of having a telepath rooting around in other people’s minds. But he doesn’t. Instead, he falls in love with her.

Why? Don’t misunderstand me, they had things they loved about each other in their relationship, but how did it even begin? Why was Scott so open and accepting about Jean’s fragile control over her telepathy in their teenage years?

Because he’d never had any say in who played in his head to begin with. To him, Jean’s accidental slip-ups were nothing compared to the other telepaths he’d interacted with. While everyone else saw Jean’s powers for what they were (an invasion of their most sacred thoughts, accidental or not), Scott was so screwed in the head that it wouldn’t have crossed his mind to be angry or upset about it.

This isn’t to malign Jean, or her and Scott’s relationship; after all, Jean hadn’t done anything wrong either. But it casts a rather dark shadow over the beginnings of their relationship.

But why does Scott become so enamored with Jean? To the point where, after her death, he marries a woman who -although he doesn’t know it -is quite literally a clone of her?

Because Jean was the first telepath who didn’t screw with his head; probably the only person who truly knew what was going on in Scott’s head, and didn’t run screaming. Although he would later meet another, for many years, Jean was the only telepath Scott had had in his mind who didn’t remake his mental landscape.

And think about it: how many people would’ve been comfortable having a lover who literally knew what you were thinking, 24/7? That’s not being mean, that’s just pragmatism: we rarely share our innermost thoughts with anyone, and yet we see that Jean was as comfortable in Scott’s head as she was her own.

We see that Jean’s death devastated Scott; for the first time, he went against his programming. For the first time, we start to catch glimpses of Scott beyond what Sinister, Winters, and Xavier created.

Now, what Scott did to Madelyne was wrong; there’s no two ways around it. However, what can we learn from this, when viewed in context with everything else?

Following Jean’s death, Scott acted like a man who’d lost a piece of himself. He starts searching for his past (finding his grandparents in Alaska), where he meets a woman who is practically the physical twin of his soulmate. Within months, Scott proposes, and they get married, eventually having a son (and we won’t even get into the fact that Scott allows Madelyne to name his son after a man who nearly broke him).

As an adult, these actions can only be looked at as selfish, and reprehensible. But what if we look at it through a different lens for a moment.

These actions would be considered ‘normal’ by teenagers, and young adults; hell, most of us went to school with couples whose story emulated Scott and Madelyne’s. Scott’s first and only girlfriend dies tragically, and he decides to try and learn more about his past -for the first time since his parents died. He meets a girl, rebounds hard, and gets married quickly, only to realize what most adults already know: rebounds never work, and never last. Looking at Madelyne was a benefit at the start, but as time went on, it became a knife in his chest: she was the physical twin of Jean, after all, but she wasn’t really Jean -in fact, Madelyne and Jean had very little in common beyond the physical.

Any healthy adult would have understood this; that physically looking like someone doesn’t mean two people are the same. While this doesn’t excuse Scott’s treatment of Madelyne, it at least gives us a reason. He’s acting out, searching for his origins, and falling in love with a girl who looks like the only person who loved him for who he was. Just like a teenage boy would do.

Now, again: this behavior is unacceptable. As a society, we teach boys this, and they learn through experience. It’s a life lesson -however, it’s one that Scott never got to learn. Scott never got to be a teenage boy; he never got the chance to learn, because Xavier had turned him into his perfect little soldier who never questioned him from such a young age (and prior to that, his only consistent interactions were with the men who abused him, mentally and physically).

Later, we see Scott with Emma Frost -a woman most consider to be a villain, a woman who had fought against the X-Men before. Why?

Well, firstly, let’s consider the implications that Scott chooses another relationship with a female telepath. Sure, with Jean, we explained why they ended up together, but by the time Scott meets Emma, he’s older; he’s more experienced. Why does he put himself in a relationship with someone with the same telepathic abilities as the men who nearly destroyed his very sense of self as a child?

We have to remember that, at first, Emma simply offers to telepathically counsel Scott; to try and piece together the shattered void of his mental landscape. Meaning that Emma was the first person at that point to see the emerging Scott Summers -Jean knew the Scott that had been created, manipulated, and ordered around by Xavier, but following Jean’s death, we start to see glimpses of the real Scott. And Emma is the first telepath to get to see inside Scott’s head, as he starts to throw off the remnants of what Xavier had turned him into.

And she starts to fall in love with him. Unlike with Jean, there are no demands or expectations in place; Emma accepts him for who he is. He questions his loyalty to Xavier? Emma’s okay with that. He questions who he actually is? Emma offers to help him find out.

(Please note: this isn’t knocking Jean; she was as much a victim of Xavier as Scott was, in her own way).

But for the first time, we see Scott Summers start to come into his own; we see him making decisions, expressing opinions, expressing wants and desires outside of life as an X-man. We see him show doubt of Xavier, we see him struggling with who he actually is, and who he was made into.

And Emma... Emma just accepts it. She accepts Scott for who he is, with no agenda, no pressure, not expectations.

Moving a head a bit, let’s look at the action that turned Scott into one of the most reviled comic characters: his killing of Charles Xavier, while under the control of the Phoenix Force.

Now, you can look here for my opinions on Xavier, and why I think we should’ve all been celebrating his death. But let’s look at this for a moment.

Most people’s reactions to this were ‘Xavier raised Scott! Scott was like his son! Scott was one of his first students! How could he?!’

I think the better question, when we look at all the events in Scott’s life is... how did he refrain that long? Xavier’s betrayal of him was so much worse than Sinister’s or Winters’ because Xavier did it as a friend. As a parental figure. Sinister just rewrote, erased, or destroyed things in Scott’s head as he pleased, simply for kicks. Winters’ used his -admittedly limited -telepathic abilities to force Scott to help him steal.

But Xavier saved him from that, right? Xavier gave him a safe place to stay. A place with no more experiments, no more mind-control, no more pain. He earned Scott’s trust, gave him a home, a life, and a purpose.

Only... he didn’t. Xavier betrayed Scott, in a way that Sinister and Winters couldn’t have done. Because Scott didn’t trust them. He trusted Xavier, and Xavier fucked with his head just as badly as Sinister had done. Whereas Sinister and Winters had taken a sledgehammer to Scott’s mental landscape... Xavier just chiseled away at it until it became something he wanted.

I’m going to end this here, because really, there wasn’t much of a point to this post, other than to detail out a lot of thoughts that have been kicking around for a while. If you agree, or disagree, I’d love to hear it.

#Scott Summers #x-men #Charles Xavier #Jean Grey #Mr. Sinister #Emma Frost #Character Study

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casualtheoriesandthoughts · 3 years

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The role of memories in Kingdom Hearts

I recently replayed KH Re:CoM and I have to say it’s one of the more brutal entries in the series, with very little light-hearted letup on the action of the main story. Marluxia and Larxene, more so than nearly any other antagonist (even more than Xemnas imo) in KH, are incredibly cruel. Ansem SoD is literally a ghost haunting Riku and taunting him with his grief (and honestly made me think this is why a lot of fans came to support Riku in the first place).

The scene where Larxene flings Riku Replica to the side? Positively gut-wrenching. Sora being uncharacteristically angry? It honestly made me slightly uncomfortable. Naminé accepting her fate to be forgotten by Sora (despite him promising to meet her again) was super tragic.

But more than anything else, I feel like Re:CoM is a somewhat overlooked entry in the series for its influence on the meta-universe of KH (even if it is a bit of a ridiculous game with the card system). Especially since Melody of Memory has been released (spoilers ahead!), I felt the need to revisit Re:CoM for its lore on the role of memories in KH. Memories are an intriguing dimension of what I’m going to start calling the metaphysics of the KH universe. In this post, I’m going to cover things that memories do in Kingdom Hearts, and the implications it has for Melody of Memory and the ending of Re:Mind (last warning: SPOILERS AHEAD).

Re:CoM - Memories and connected feelings shape the heart

As Sora enters Castle Oblivion, we are told that the deterioration of his memories has already begun. Naminé is actively altering the links in his memory to insert her presence therein (all at the behest of Marluxia, who is manipulating her desire to meet Sora and her loneliness). Despite the creation of false memories in Riku Replica and Sora, however, they still induce people to experience very real feelings. Before his final battle with Marluxia, Sora still feels a responsibility and desire to protect Naminé in spite of the fact he has no personal relationship with her in reality and that she manipulated his memories. He also goes out of his way to tell Riku Replica that his own feelings are real, and that even if the memories are false, his experiences are his own and even possesses his own heart. For Sora and Riku Replica, all feelings are genuine even if they arise from false memories.

It’s worth noting the way memories are referred to in Re: CoM, starting with the title: Chain of Memories. A chain can be either shackling or connecting, as Marluxia and Naminé allude to when speaking about Sora’s memories. Marluxia orders Naminé to control Sora by way of his memories, in order for the latter to do his bidding (help him to take over the Organization, that is). Naminé, on the other hand, refers to Sora’s memories as that which tie him to his friends and loved ones, especially Riku and Kairi. His feelings of friendship and love towards others never fade in spite of his memories being changed, and is even willing to allow Naminé to destroy his heart by erasing his memories.

But that’s where it gets complicated. It is highly implied that memories have the ability to shape a heart, but only at this point is it suggested that the erasure of memories can actually destroy a heart. Marluxia states that if Naminé were to erase Sora’s memories, he would become an empty shell incapable of feeling (which coincidentally describes a Nobody). That said, she doesn’t actually do it, and when she destroys Riku Replica’s false memories, his heart does not disappear. This is why Riku Replica is able to return right before Sora fights Marluxia, his heart intact. This seems to indicate that Marluxia was either speaking in hyperbole, or simply did not know the true relationship of memories to hearts.

It may then be more accurate to say that the destruction of memories traumatizes and numbs a heart rather than destroys it. Larxene comments during Reverse/Rebirth that Naminé’s magic almost remade Riku Replica’s heart by changing his memories, but not quite. In the KH universe, memories seem to be inscribed on a heart rather than fundamentally altering it. Yet, memories also bind hearts to the world by giving them meaning.

Remember that as Sora journeyed through Castle Oblivion, people outside apparently forgot about him and remembered him spontaneously when awoke from his pod in Twilight Town. It’s not just the individual memories that make up a person, but the shared memories and experiences which connect hearts together in a “chain” of memories. In the presence of others, characters acquire purpose and senses of self. In Reverse/Rebirth, Riku rediscovers himself after falling to darkness and battles against his insecurities by rekindling his connections to people like Sora, Kairi and Mickey. This is how he maintains the light within, by dwelling on his memories of his bonds to his friends.

In that context, we might see how memories play an important role in giving rise to new hearts later on.

358/2 Days - The case of Xion

Xion is one of the most curious and earliest cases of a heart being generated seemingly out of nowhere in KH (I’d say possibly even before Riku Replica). Just like Riku Replica, Xion in 358/2 Days is derived from the memories of her original persona (in her case, Sora). She is not a true Nobody, though Vexen muses that his replicas are a special kind of Nobody in the Day 23 Report of 358/2 Days’ Secret Reports. In addition Xion, unlike Riku Replica, actively embodies many of Sora’s qualities while being distinctly aware that she is not truly Sora. It is this crisis of identity which eventually leads her to believe that she must return to Sora, and forces Roxas to defeat her.

After that, people cease to remember Xion after she returns to Sora, a fact about which I’ve always wondered. Consider that Riku Replica, upon returning to Riku (or at least residing in his heart), does not fade from Riku’s memory or anyone else’s. Axel repeatedly doesn’t remember Xion even when hints of her come up (such as the fact that Roxas wields two Keyblades, his knowledge of the Replica Program and his many interactions with Kairi, even during KH3). Yet he clearly remembers Riku Replica as evidenced in the Day 194 Secret Reports from the 358/2 Days. This is well after the events of Re: CoM for both Sora and Riku’s stories, as Xion had already met Riku in his Organization XIII coat.

In theory, one might assume that Axel shouldn’t remember either Xion or Riku Replica because they have both returned to their original forms. Yet objects that belong to them or are about them remain in existence (ex. Vexen’s reports about the Replica Program). Even Xion’s personal memories and those attached to her are sealed inside Roxas’ heart. Presumably because Sora never actually met her or Roxas (a crucial difference from Riku and his replica), and Roxas lost his own memories in his fight with Riku, memories of her became doubly compromised when he returned to Sora. So this begs an important question: what do memories do when it comes to having a heart?

I would say that memories, especially independent ones, allow for the arising of new hearts. Riku Replica may have acquired a heart (and therefore a distinct existence) when he decided to defend Naminé and claim his memories of her, even though they’re not real. In contrast, it is not clear whether Xion has a heart at the end of 358/2 Days, and it is implied that she has one by KH3, and essentially confirmed in Re:Mind.

From where, one can only vaguely guess. Let’s look at other KH beings: darkness is the source of Heartless; nothingness of Nobodies; negative emotions (or rather Vanitas) of Unversed; dreams of Nightmares ,Dream Eaters and Spirits. It would seem that hearts arise from light, or perhaps Kingdom Hearts itself (seeing as it appears to be the bedrock of reality). It makes sense since Kingdom Hearts is composed of all hearts that exist. But crucially, it is memories which give hearts their forms. Xion returns to existence when Sora liberates her memories/essence from within Roxas’ heart during Re:Mind.

Memories clearly play some role in generating an existential niche for hearts. They also may very well be the reason that people can be re-completed: Axel recalls his memories as a kid as he spends time with Roxas and Xion (Day 118 Secret Report). He even says that he feels like he has a heart in the presence of Roxas, Xion and Sora (and very critically, is unsure if he in fact doesn’t have one in a conversation with Roxas). Marluxia seems to recall his memories as Lauriam from KH Union Cross, right as he is defeated in KH3. Terra’s memories occasionally surface in Xemnas, and his feelings of loneliness come up as he dies in KH3.

Sora states in KH Re:CoM that he was able to return to being whole after becoming a Heartless by holding on to his memories of Kairi, and her own ability to free him from the darkness. Roxas, Xion and Riku Replica all develop hearts distinct from their original personas as they experience the world and forge new memories. Xion is primarily able to return to the world because people’s memories of her are restored. Her true consciousness becomes freed through Sora’s actions, not unlike the way Sora’s friends and allies suddenly remember him at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2.

From this, we can deduce that memories are critical for three things:

existing as a unique, complete individual

returning from states of incompleteness (such as being a Heartless or Nobody)

verifying that someone actually still exists in a reachable place

The last one is the kicker with Xion, and bears on a working theory of mine about Melody of Memory and Re:Mind’s endings (which I’ll put in another post for clarity). Hope this interests some people, and inspires some discussion about the possible connections between Re:CoM and Melody of Memory!

#khrecom #chain of memories #kingdom hearts #kh #kingdomhearts #khtheories #xion #kairi #sora #namine #kh lore #kh3 #kh2 #kh3 remind #kh meta

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