#”is she a sixth ranger or just a macguffin?”

[raspberrydaisieschlb]

Just saw the trailer for HSPC.

Anyone else really excited but extremely confused?

[petquestthemovie]

Tropes

Adaptation Title Change: PetQuest is inspired by the novel Kingdoms of Light.

Adult Fear: Your neighbor unexpectedly dies, and his pets you were looking after disappear.

Animal Talk: The pets can understand each other just fine even when they’re not in human form.

Bad Boss: Zoulack’s first response to any setback whatsoever is to strangle Dimitri, whether it’s his fault or not.

Baleful Polymorph: In the end, the heroes are captured by Zoulack and turned back into animals. That doesn’t stop them from saving the world, however.

Earlier, Chip, Pippo and Mochi are transformed into Fabergé eggs, but are saved by Rico and Thalia.

Ball of Light Transformation: Freesia first appears as a bright light that looks like a star before taking the form of a beautiful fairy girl.

Balloonacy: Not balloons, but Pippo can be carried through the air supported by a cluster of butterflies.

Big Good: Freesia Starglow, the fairy who turns the pets human.

Fairbeard can be seen as this as well.

Butt-Monkey: Dimitri is always getting abused by the other henchmen, swatted at, strangled by Zoulack, and things tend to fall on his head.

Canine Companion: Rico was this before his master kicked the bucket.

Cardboard Prison: The prison of Nonfooling, which has a switch that opens up an entire wall to allow people to freely walk out.

Chekhov’s Gun: The hardboiled egg.

Deadpan Snarker: Thalia, to an extent. It helps that she’s a cat.

Disney Death: Heroic Sacrifice necessary? No worries. Chopper willingly risks his life — and loses it — to distract Zoulack while the heroes retrieve the Egg; subverted when Rico wishes Chopper Back from the Dead.

Disproportionate Retribution: After Chip is conned out of his of his gold pieces and tries to report the scam, he and his friends are instead arrested and sentenced to a Longer Than Life Sentence. Thank goodness that The Guards Must Be Crazy is in play.

Earn Your Happy Ending: The pets suffer and struggle at every turn before Zoulack is defeated.

Evil Tower of Ominousness: Zoulack makes his lair in a castle that qualifies.

Evil Plan: Zoulack has a good ol’ Take Over the World plot but he needs the Egg of Fate to make it happen.

Five-Man Band:

The Hero: Rico

The Lancer/Team Mom: Thalia

The Smart Guy: Pippo

The Big Guy: Chip

The Chick: Mochi

Sixth Ranger: Chopper

Gotta Catch Them All: The Fabergé eggs that Chip, Pippo and Mochi have been turned into, as well as the Egg of Fate.

The Guards Must Be Crazy: Sheriff Hoppsmann is known for handing down Longer Than Life Sentences, but can’t be bothered to enforce them, since he leaves the prison right afterwards. All he does is take people to jail and lock them in through the entry point. They only stay until they figure out they can just walk out through a door at the bottom.

Happily Ever After

Heaven Above: Word of God says that in Aligia, people pray to the stars, where the Star Fairies live. One of these fairies, Freesia Starglow, descends from her home in the heavens only when Lovegrove prays up to the sky in his petition for his pets to be safe and for Zoulack to meet his downfall (which the warlock does, literally).

Heroic Dog: Rico.

Humanity Ensues: The pets are transformed into human kids and sent on The Quest. Needless to say, with a puppy, a kitten, a rabbit, a canary and a python all turned human, things get a little… odd.

Light Is Not Good: The egg room is brightly lit and filled with beautiful Fabergé eggs. And if you guess wrong, you end up there… forever.

Longer-Than-Life Sentence: Sheriff Hoppsmann sentences offenders to prison terms of millions of years. Subverted in that he’s not good at keeping track of time, and thus assumes that anyone who escapes his town’s Cardboard Prison has already served out his or her sentence. (That, and it’s a Cardboard Prison that can be exited just by walking out the door.)

Lovable Lizard: Mochi is a good-natured snake, who was rescued by Lovegrove and she is friends with Rico and the other pets and never eats any of them.

MacGuffin: The Egg of Fate.

Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Amelie Traum.

Needle in a Stack of Needles: The scene where they have to find the real Egg of Fate — in a large room filled with various Fabergé eggs. The trick is to pick the simplest of the bunch.

Objectshifting: The group are roped into playing a guessing game to find the true Egg of Fate, but losing will result in them being transformed into another egg.

Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The main characters are quite the diverse bunch—a puppy, a kitten, a rabbit, a canary and a green tree python. And they’re all turned into human children.

Scenery Porn: The animation is just beautiful.

Selfless Wish: The pets are very willing to make one. Rather than wish to get their master back like they originally wanted, they wish Chopper back to life.

Spotting the Thread: The egg chamber is absolutely packed with Fabergé eggs, each one varying in appearance. As such, it seems like determining the right one to pick comes down to sheer luck… until Rico and Thalia use their animal instincts. Sure enough, the Egg of Fate is the simplest-looking one in the room.

Take Over the World: Zoulack’s goal.

The Quest: Played straight; they even have a parchment map!

Uplifted Animal: Done somewhat, in that the pets are given the ability to switch between their human and animal forms in the end.

Villainous Breakdown: Zoulack goes through this in the climax.

Wicked Witch: The pets compare Amelie to one. Subverted in that she’s not at all wicked. Gruff, yes, but also good-hearted.

[fallintosanity]

@shaonharryandpannisim in response to this post!

(WARNING FOR EVERYONE ELSE: EXTREME DEAN AND SHOW NEGATIVITY AHEAD. This is something I’ve been frustrated about for a while, so it’s very ranty, because it would be so fucking easy for the writers to fix it but they don’t because Status Quo Is God. If you don’t want to read a very bitter critique of both Dean’s character and the show’s writing, here’s a subreddit full of cute things you can look at instead.)

Sure, Dean likes to hear that he did good things. Everyone does. But the only person who’s ever praised Cas is Sam, and no one’s genuinely praised Sam on the show that I can think of.

Sam and Dean broke exactly the same number of seals on Lucifer’s Cage. Sam is the only one ever blamed for it, except one manipulative line by Dean in S5. Otherwise, Dean is either the one doing the blaming or standing silent while others do.

Dean gets the credit for saving the world, even though it was Sam who did it. Dean helped, sure, but Sam was the one who overcame Lucifer and dragged two archangels into the Cage. No one on the show has given him credit for this - when the subject comes up, Dean gets the praise. Charlie thanks Dean for saving the world, and says to Sam, “Sorry your girlfriends die a lot.” Even Chuck, who should know better than anyone what exactly happened in Stull Cemetery, gives Dean the credit and praises him for being the one to save the world all the time.

As for who’s done more bad stuff, what counts as “bad” depends entirely on what’s beneficial for Dean:

It’s bad to sell yourself to a demon to save someone you love (John saving Dean via a deal with Azazel), except when Dean does it (selling his soul to bring Sam back).

It’s bad to befriend a demon who’s gone out of her way to help you at great personal sacrifice (Sam and Ruby in S4), except when Dean does it with a demon who openly admits to hating the Winchesters and only being in it to save his own skin (Dean and Crowley in S5).

It’s bad to befriend a monster and let her live when she kills only criminal lowlifes to save her son (Sam and Amy), except when Dean befriends a monster and brings him back from the dead when the monster freely admits to killing humans for fun and food (Dean and Benny).

It’s bad to leave your brother (believed) dead and in Heaven and try to continue living after even when that’s what you and your brother agreed on (Sam and Amelia), except when Dean leaves his brother alive and being tortured for eternity by two archangels in Hell because that’s what they agreed on (Dean and Lisa).

It’s bad to possess a human and use their body against their will (every demon on the show and a lot of angels) except when Dean tricks Sam into being possessed because he can’t stand the thought of living without him (Gadreel).

It’s bad when an external force is causing you to be not yourself and to harm others and it’s wrong for those endangered others to take action to restore you safely (Dean and the Mark of Cain) except when it’s Dean who wants to do the restoring even if it’ll kill you (Soulless Sam).

It’s bad to put your brother at risk in order to take out a much bigger threat even if you know you can cure him (Soulless Sam letting Dean be turned into a vampire) except when it’s Dean getting ready to murder his brother in cold blood in a way that almost certainly can’t be undone (”Close your eyes, Sammy”).

It’s bad when something awful happens to your brother because of you even if you had no say in the matter and you run away and make reckless decisions that endanger yourself (Sam after Dean is killed by hellhounds) except when it’s Dean who knowingly violated Sam and feels guilty and runs away and makes a reckless decision that endangers the entire world (Dean taking the Mark of Cain)

These are the biggest examples of situations where Dean and the narrative frame Dean’s actions as objectively “good” and “right” and Sam’s identical actions as “bad” and “wrong”. Dean’s praises are sung, he’s the hero, he’s the one who gets the long lingering camera shots of his single man-tears even when it’s Sam doing the heroics, Sam being ignored or blamed by the supporting cast, Sam being physically and mentally assaulted by Dean.

I should note, I don’t mean this as picking on Dean-as-a-person. I used to really like Dean; I found his character fascinating. He saw the world in black and white when everything around him was shades of grey, and his early (S1-3) character arcs as he learned to deal with this were sympathetic and fun to watch.

But, starting in S4 when he became the show’s viewpoint character, the writing sort of forgot that he wasn’t the only protagonist and that Sam wasn’t a semi-villanous Sixth Ranger, MacGuffin Girl, or sexy lamp. And when the show did that, it oriented itself not on a relatively objective moral axis, but around the moral axis of Dean Winchester specifically - aka whatever’s most convenient to make Dean look the most like the Righteous Man at any given point. And starting in S8 (looking at you, Carver), this became the defining feature of both the show and Dean’s personality.

Frankly, it’s lazy writing, and I strongly disagree that it in any way has a message that we can still be good even after making a few disasterous decisions. If anyone shows that, it’s Sam, who remains the kindest, gentlest, most honestly good person on the show despite his bad decisions and despite the entire SPN universe shitting on him constantly. If the show actually dealt with this disparity - if it allowed Sam to acknowledge how unfairly he’s treated and react to it - it would be the source of fantastic drama and angst and tension both in the Winchesters’ relationship with each other and their relationships with other hunters. But the show doesn’t, because that’s hard and chick-flick and maybe if we ignore Sam hard enough he’ll vanish and this can go back to being the Dean Winchester show. (did I mention I’m bitter? >.< )

Dean, on the other hand, feels like an example of how the belief that we can still be good after a bad decision can go spectacularly wrong. Dean believes he’s the Righteous Man still, that he maybe slipped up once or twice and did something slightly less than perfect but he’s still Righteous and Good and the Arbiter of What is Just. But this has led him to spiral further and further down a path of self-centered cruelty in the way he treats others, until - as his actions demonstrate over the seasons - he’s more monstrous than half the literal monsters the Winchesters face.

What I would absolutely love to see, but will probably never get, is someone standing up to Dean, throwing every one of his hypocritical actions back in his face, and utterly tearing him down denial by denial, until he has to face what he’s done to Sam and Cas; accept that not only is he not perfect, but he’s deeply flawed and damaging to the people he cares about; and begin to make a change. He, and the writers, have gotten too committed to the idea that Dean Winchester can do no wrong (and that Sam Winchester can do no right). There aren’t any moral questions any more, there isn’t any introspection, there isn’t any wrestling with inner demons - there’s only what Dean says is right and what Dean says is wrong, and it’s so. boring.

*deep breath*

Okay, so that got even more ranty than I was expecting, but hopefully I haven’t scared you off completely. Like I said above, this frustrates me so much in large part because Dean as a character has so much potential. (Sam does, too, and it’s ignored just as much as Dean’s, but that’s a rant for another time.) But the writers just keep ignoring all that glorious potential for drama and moral questioning and meaty plotlines in favor of doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on the Righteous Man bullshit. The fact that they could do so much more but won’t offends me on a professional, writer-to-writer level as much as it angers me to see characters I love get treated so poorly.