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appleb18 · 4 years

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Cartoons Relationships Are Terrible

Back in the day of cartoons, the romantic subplots were simple and yet very heartwarming to see such as

Katara and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Phineas and Isabella from Phineas and Ferb

But now, modern cartoons are taking romantic subplots into heavier territories that something that some live-action shows would do. While it does sound interesting that making relationships more realistic and complex but the way that has been written in the previous decade is pretty bad. The writers try to make romance relatable to the audience but fail on doing so such as making likable characters to really cringy and awful people, shoving down our throats of how cute it is and having the romantic subplot more focus than the actual plot.

Adventure Time and Regular Show

So you must be wondering why I put Adventure Time and Regular Show together instead of separate categories. The thing about these two shows is they used to have bad romantic subplots but as the show progresses, they really did it well and I have to say it did better than most cartoons that failed to do which I’ll talk about later.

For Adventure Time, Finn and Flame Princess broke up in “Frost and Fire” due to him deceiving her by having FP fight Ice King/Simon Petrikov for his amusement

After their break, he tries to rekindle his romantic feelings for Princess Bubblegum and thinks age is just a number in “Too Old”. However, it doesn’t end up too well that she has people to watch over and that’s when he realized that he really did donk up with Flame Princess.

Although he apologized to FP in “Earth and Fire” to her it didn’t fully restore their relationship and Finn still had romantic feelings for her and Princess Bubblegum.

Thankfully, Finn matures in later seasons.

Finn realized it’s better for him to be friends with Princess Bubblegum

He then fully apologized and realized what he has done wrong to Flame Princess and she tells him that he really matured and hang out by playing guess who and rapping in “Bun Bun”

and Princess Bubblegum, and Marceline. They both finally reconcile at the end of “Varmints” and start to hang out more which develops their relationship from being platonic to romance.

For Regular Show, in “Steak Me Amadeus' ' Mordecai asked Margaret to be his girlfriend and although she would like that, she can’t because she got accepted into college which broke his heart.

It didn’t last when he’s been reunited with CJ in “New Years Kiss”.

As the show progresses, the two become a couple but then things get complicated when Margret returns. It made things awkward between CJ, Mordecai, and Marget like CJ always gets jealous and runs away when she sees Mordecai and Margret together.

By the end of season 6, he dumps CJ in front of everyone in Muscle Man's wedding.

Like Adventure Time, Mordecai and Margret hangout and realized they should stay as friends in “Just Friends”

While Eileen and Rigby become a couple.

Now it’s time to talk about other cartoons shows and their romantic subplot problem

Steven Universe

Steven Universe relationships can sometimes be well written but most of the time can handle poorly.

Such as Lars and Sadie were starting to develop their relationship in “Joking Victim” however it repeats itself throughout three seasons until the end of season 4 where Lars develops. Then there’s Sadie trapping him and Steven on the island in “Island Adventure” so he won’t have to leave and they don’t resolve and don’t even mention it ever again in later seasons. All they show was Sadie scar and that’s it

In “Steven Universe: Future”, Sadie and Lars didn’t get together and she’s now with Shep and they did it off-screen. So throughout the whole thing with Lars and Sadie, they don’t get together. The show kept teasing it and they might get together in the future but the writers just said screw it, let's have her date a nonbinary while Lars goes on a space adventure. It feels like a waste of seeing those two characters that the show keeps showing them together and not have them become a couple. Unlike SvTFoE, Shep just came out of nowhere with no proper introduction and doesn’t establish they and Sadie's relationship and it’s really bothersome!

Connie and Steven's relationship was good for the first four seasons. It was really had good chemistry and she was a good partner for him

then season 5 came in and it kinda got ruins by after Steven escape from Gem Homeworld and coming back to Earth, it starts off with Connie leaving Steven with lion and never to be seen for a month according to “Keven Party”. The Steven and Connie arc was really bad like why was it dragged for five episodes? The whole thing could’ve been resolved in one episode by having them talk about their feelings like how “Mindful Education” and “Full Disclosure” did by they talk about their emotions instead of running away.

Then in “Gemcation”, Steven the most important thing to him is Connie's relationship than worrying about Lars and the Off Colours' safety. That has to be the dumbest thing I’ve heard in my life and I can’t believe Rebecca and the Crewniverse have written it like that.

Then there’s Ruby and Sapphire. I’ll be honest, the relationship feels like old Disney love stories like Cinderella, Seven Dwarfs, and Sleeping Beauty and that’s not a compliment. In “The Answer”, after they accidentally fused, they escape and wander Earth that caused them to fall in love which kinda contradicts what Garnet said to Jamie about love, at first sight, isn’t good in “Love Letter”.

In “Pink Diamond” Arc, the plot came to hold to make room for Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding.

While it is revolutionary that they show an LGBT wedding live on television but as a narrative standpoint, it feels rushed. The reason for that is after that Blue and Yellow came in after the wedding. They were no build-up or anything, they just came.The reason why they did it so some countries can’t take it down due it the main story which is stupid. It’s nice they represent LGBT but why in the middle of a major story arc, that’s just sloppy.

Voltron

So Voltron has a reputation of queerbaiting the audience that Shiro is gay and he has a boyfriend. The writers keep telling us on Twitter that they’ll show his boyfriend in season 7 but when it finally aired. It was terrible

The first time we saw Adam was a flashback but it was nothing, it was more friendship than romance.

When he finally shows up in the present he dies. Shiro goes to the memorial and signs than that’s it.

The writers really made a dumb move of hyping it up but they let us down by having him die. They try to make it up by having Shiro marrying some guy who has a very little screen in the final season. Similar to Regular Show with Mordecai marrying a batgirl but not dumb while Voltron trying to get brownie points for having LGBT rep.

Lance and Allura were really forced. For six seasons, Allura was never interested in Lance and only saw him as a friend but in season 8, the two confessed their love for each even though there wasn’t any chemistry nor sign that they truly love each other and they insensitively become a couple for one date. I would’ve supported if their relationship was established back in season 2

The Legend of Korra

The love triangle between was handled so poorly with bad timing, making characters look terrible, making things force and having it engage more than the plot.

For the first season, there was a love diamond. Bolin liked Korra, Korra likes Mako and Mako liked Asami and those two go out. Korra and Mako kissed which broke Bolin’s heart but he got over it but when Asami finds out when Korra was missing, she gets jealous. I understand that she was concerned about her relationship with Mako but during when Korra, the avatar that is missing while Equalis are on the move? That’s not the right moment to get jealous when Republic City is gonna be under attack but of course, Mako and Asami break and Korra gets in with Mako.

In season 2, things get worse when the happy couple keep nagging and they break up

Which he tries again with Asami

After Korra got her memories back but forgot breaking up with Mako, she asked him if it was bad however though he lied and everyone judged him for that dick move, especially Asami who started to have feelings for him again. Thankfully they broke up because that was just an awful way to get someone back by having their mind erased.

Also, Bolin was with Eska and it was abusive. Forcing him to be her man, changed his whole entire to match with hers and she forced him to marry her.

What’s worst about it is no one is concerned about him being with her and instead they just laugh like it’s supposed to be funny. Being in an abusive relationship isn’t funny and I hate how the show treats it so. By the end, they just forgot the whole thing that ever happened and moved on with their lives.

Season 3 and 4 kept the romance to a minimum with Bolin x Opal and Jinora x Kai but there was one romantic relationship that had to happen with no hints or build up and it’s Korra x Asami. By the end of the series, they decided to go to the spirit together while holding hands and having their eyes glazed toward each other and they become a couple.

While many of you may say that they hinted it since season 3, however, it looks like friendship. Blushing and writing to her isn’t enough to say they have feelings towards each other. That is what best friends do too. The creators even have to confirm that they are a couple and the comics showing their love while it’s nice and all but it would’ve been a lot better to show it either on streaming service or live television than buying volumes to see more of their pairing, it’s balderdash. Now it’s time to talk about a cartoon that has one of the worst romance I’ve ever seen in my entire life of watching shows.

Star vs The Forces of Evil

Star vs The Forces of Evil has one of the WORST romantic subplots I’ve ever watched, it is even worse than CW’s Arrowverse romance and that’s saying something. The romantic subplot makes Star and Marco look like terrible people that only care about each other more than other characters.

Jarco

Out of all ships in SvTFoE, Jarco has the most establishment than most others. Marco liked Jackie when he was little and it was bound to happen that those two will date. Ever since season 1, the relationship has been growing to platonic to a romantic couple in season 2.

Their chemistry together worked well but then “Sophomore Slump”. When Marco finally went back to Earth, he was obsessed with Mewni and Star and he won’t stop talking about and he still wears the cape. When Jackie told him to stop obsessing over Mewni which he tries to do but it got the better to him by he still wears the cape when he was on his date with Jackie. It’s really BS when Marco said to Jackie “You’re my best friend” which ruined everything that it established since season 1 and this, of course, caused them to break up.

Then he left Earth to go to Mewni the day after their break up. It’s a real shame that building up their relationship and giving Jacie character got shoved aside for Starco. Although she returns and meets up with him again I can’t help feeling that it just for fan service and being inclusive for Jackie being Bi

Tomstar

Before the show started, Star and Tom were a couple but broke up due to him getting angry very easily and he wanted her back for the past two seasons luckily he stopped trying in “Mr. Candles Cares”. Their relationship becomes healthier when Tom gives Star space and that causes them to get back together and not have feelings for Marco anymore.

Tom went through a lot of development for Star and it was a Mewni x Monster romance which is similar to Eclipsa and Globglor and it fits season 3. After rewatching it, it was pretty good. However, like Jarco, it was doomed from the start due to fans wanting Starco to be canon even though Tomstar was getting good. Also, Star was a terrible girlfriend to him.

Star never told him she kissed him, Marco did and when Tom confronted her about it, she got mad and tried to walk away.

She mistreats him by nagging somethings, blowing on his face and angrily ask translate

She declined on going on a vacation with him so she can be with Marco.

Even his mom was afraid that she might break his heart again and her response “Everybody breaks up. That’s what teenagers do! Teenagers are dumb”. He went through so much development, changed his character and gave her so much but she never returned the favor. What an awful girlfriend

Kellco

With Tom and Star getting together (for now) it left Marco feels devastated that she’s dating someone and can’t get rid of his feelings for her while Kelly doesn’t want to be with Tad which she broke up with him. They both have something in common and start to hangout and their relationship has developed throughout season 3 and he’s with her more than Star.

They became officially a couple as “breakup buddies” in “Kelly’s World” and it also when they did a perfect synchronization between two partners.

So they’re pretty much a good pair but everything changed when the episode “A Boy and His DC-700XE” and did an off-screen break up. I don’t care who or what you write but never, ever a major plot point or character development offscreen. Kelly finds happiness when she leaves Tad but they break up with no explanation. It was glossed over like for five seconds and Marco doesn’t even care about their break up, what an a*hole.

This relationship feels like a real waste of time and serves nothing to the plot nor character development, it was just there to waste time.

Starco

Before I talk about Starco, I used to ship it and I thought they were enjoyable characters. They would've worked in a relationship if things were written better and would have been the next Phineas and Isabella but sadly the writers messed up probably the easiest romance to write.

Season 1, Star and Marco became best friends. Although there weren't many romantic moments they still look pretty good together

Season 2, As Star was happy for Marco that she’s finally dating Jackie, the girl he has had a crush on since preschool,

on the other hand, she started to have feelings for him and she has trouble expressing it.

In season 3, Marco started to have feelings for Star which caused him and Jackie to break up. Star told him that he wants nothing to do with him romantically in “Lint Catcher” and Tad told him that he does have feelings for her in “Lava Lake Beach” and he wasn't happy to find out about it at all. Then in Booth Buddies, they were held hostage by some freak until they kiss and they were completely in denial about having feelings for each other

Then season 4 is when Starco becomes really sour. Star and Marco always keep saying that they don’t want to have feelings for each other and yet the writers have several episodes before the end of the series

. They never showed any romantic interest until “Mama Star” where he confessed his feelings to her and then they kissed in the second last episode. By the finale, instead of either of them going back to their dimensions they went back to the World of Magic and held each other. It would’ve been more meaningful if they got together before the end of the show.

It’s very odd that they risk their lives for a relationship that just started. However, for some miracle, both of their worlds collide and become one with no explanation of what so ever.

Starco could’ve been a lovely ship but the writers have to keep messing around with it till the very end.

Conclusion

Whenever a show presents a romance, I don’t mind as long it either fits with the narrative of the story it be fun but 2010s romantic subplots have been written very terribly by having it the main focus but sacrifice pacing and quality of the story, forcing characters to become a couple without establishing it enough in the show, and having characters go off for the sake of drama. Romantic stories can be simple and cute like Kim x Ron from Kim Possible, Suki x Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Starfire x Robin from Teen Titans and that’s all right. I do hope that this generation will fix what the previous decade of cartoons has failed to do.

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scoobydoogenre · 3 years

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Allura and the political mascot-ing of dark skin/Black women

(btw I'm super dyslexic, I make a ton of mistakes but you'll have to live with it.)

I wasn't that much into voltron after a few seasons, but Allura was mine and a lot of people's favorite. And of course like most people, I was upset when she had to die. And did that feel necessary to her arc as a character? literally no.

The reason for this problem isn't as simple as "They didn't know how to write a dark skin character." While that's true there's even more to it. It's relates how Black women (in this case I will use Black cuz that's how people in the fandom and crew saw her and connected her experiences even tho she wasn't human. e.i. the image above) are often expected by society to be saviors and educator, even at the expense of their own lives.

Allura was depicted as a white, blonde hair, and blue eyed alien princess in the original and every other adaptation before Legendary defender. For viewers of those series there was never a problem with that, and how she was depicted because she was a default. White/ ambiguous light skinned characters are inherently raceless, their experiences are never tied to be race or ethnicity. Well you why, as art media, and practically everything has featured white people as the subject, their likeness and standards then became the default setting of society. which is why people don't even consider whiteness to be racialized. Because people of color don't fit into that supposed default of "whitness", they become "the other". The moment that Allura became dark skin, or Black, her existence becomes viewed as racialized in conjunction to what was a "white" or "default" setting.

Often times fans don't quite know who to deal with character's whose race is stated in some sort of explicit manner. Even creators may not know who to deal the nuances creating characters of color. because for most white fans and creators lives they lived in world world where their race was never a defining factor to who they are as people. In spaces like fandoms that are predominantly white, characters of color then either stands out or left completely ignored because of their racialized existence. In this case Allura (even the other poc in voltron) stood at as being the first since the original and adaptions to deviate from was the "norm".

Media is the closing this some non-Black will have to understanding the experiences of Black people. and it's damaging when the only thing they see is color first then a person. an even more damaging when they only see black death rather than life. So how does Allura fit into this? because she became racialized she is then aligned and then stuck in hole where they can only fight against race, talk about race and have trauma due to race. or in Allura's case the galra. because that is what the experience is thought to be. And that is unfortunately what people this Black characters are good for, race and politics. Allura was the face of the revolution against the galra, and stopped at nothing to bring peace even at the expense of her life.

Im not saying people can't revolutionaries, lol, racism is real, and activist fight for what right in our best interest. What is tiring is the fact there's the constant use of race trauma and allegory for the entertaining non-Black people. Remember once again, Allura is an ALIEN, but she is aligned and racialized to be Black (remember the image above). Falling into the trope of the strong black women, serving others in disregard to her own best interest. Even adultified because it's was difficult for fans to see her a teenager. Much of the burden of revolution and war fell on Allura, just as it falls to many Black women today.

Black women became the face of left-leaning politics, trendy a caricature, to prove a point. The Black women became a single face and monolith rather that diverse individuals with different experiences. It's quite rare, especially in tv animation to see more than one type of black women feeling and expression all types of emotion and challenges compared to their white counterparts. They may exist some where, but in the modern zeitgeist especially in fandoms there not as popular.

Was the face of revolution, and had to die in order become a savoir. The death of her individuality for the sake of these issues, of saving the entire world, despite her own interest because it so desperately was on her shoulders.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #allura #this is an essay im not sorry #im choosing violence today #:)

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lilflowerpot · 4 years

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What do you think each of the Paladins + Lotor’s Hogwarts houses would be? I think Lotor is a Ravenclaw who was forced to act like a Slytherin by the circumstances in his life but if you have a different opinion I would love to hear it.

Buckle up my loves, I am about to take you on a journey.

So I’m not one for placing people between Hogwarts houses, because no one fits a single house perfectly so of course you could argue that “____ is X house with Y tendencies”, but that’s really not the point. I am, however, a huge fan of overlapping one’s Hogwarts House with Ilvermorny, due to these two house systems representing different aspects of the self: Hogwarts sorts students by what traits they value (what they want), whereas Ilvermorny sorts them by their general disposition (who they are). For those of you not intimately familiar with these two systems, a very basic understanding would be:

Gryffindor - Bravery // Hufflepuff - Loyalty // Ravenclaw - Curiosity // Slytherin - AmbitionHorned Serpent - Scholars // Pukwudgie - Healers // Thunderbird - Adventurers // Wampus - Warriors

The best post I’ve seen on this can be found here, and it’s the one I’m going to be referencing as it offers a really comprehensive dissection of what each individual Hogwarts/Ilvermorny combination might typically look like, which I love, but for ease of understanding (and because my brain likes nice neat visual aides) I mocked up an alignment chart:

Lotor: The Architect - Slytherin / Horned Serpent

While I absolutely see where you’re coming from, as Lotor does embody certain ravenclaw traits, he’s ultimately ambitious in a way that I feel tips him over into slytherin, with his general disposition still being very much a curious one as he strives to completely rebuild the Empire from its very foundations.

Keith: The Revolutionary - Gryffindor / Thunderbird

Keith has both a fierce temper and fiercer moral compass; he cannot abide injustice when he sees it, but at the same time he has a deeper and more complex understanding of “the greater good” than a lot of team Voltron, as demonstrated in s01 when he argued that they should leave Allura with Zarkon rather than risk the universe’s only hope. He’ll do what he feels needs to be done, even if external forces disagree.

Allura: The Advocate - Gryffindor / Horned Serpent

Allura is shown to possess a principled and diplomatic nature that draws people in, along with a quick temper when faced with those who stand in complete opposition to everything she champions. Her moral position is absolute, and this is amplified tenfold in the face of adversity.

Shiro: The Paragon - Hufflepuff / Wampus

I was really torn on this one, because Shiro does embody some very typically slytherin traits (to the point that he canonically put his ambitions before both his physical health, and relationship with Adam), but wampus is also defined by fighting for what you want, so… in the end Shiro’s a little too self-sacrificial for his own good, and the description of “the Paragon” was pretty much his entire character in a nutshell.

Lance: The Hero - Gryffindor / Pukwudgie

For Lance, I’m just going to straight up quote the op because they’re ridiculously on-point for this one: “the social nature of Pukwudgie combines with the glory seeking bravado of Gryffindor to make a person who sees themselves as a hero, and is eager to act accordingly […] The Gryffindor is action-oriented and the Pukwudgie is social, creating someone who is outspoken and willing to stick to their emotional decisions to the bitter end.”

Hunk: The Loyalist - Hufflepuff / Pukwudgie

Hunk cares so much and will absolutely ride-or-die for his friends; he has a ferocious sense of loyalty and a wonderfully soft-hearted nature, not to mention his emotional intelligence is through the roof. How can people not love Hunk oh my god.

Pidge: The Visionary - Ravenclaw / Horned Serpent

Pidge is, indisputably, a thinker: perhaps even more so than Lotor. Quick-minded and adaptable, she’s someone who works from a place of logic and intellect at all times, before throwing herself wholeheartedly into whatever it is that she’s deemed the superior approach.

Matt: The Charmer - Slytherin / Pukwudgie

Do not argue with me on this, Matt was not only the youngest member of the Kerberos mission, but he was separated from both Shiro and his father in quick succession, joined the rebellion, went on to exist- nay, thrive in a completely alien environment as the only human around for what must have been at least a year, faked his own death and left behind a coded gravestone for Sam, all before finally crossing paths with Pidge. Matthew Holt is a tenacious, charismatic, force of nature.

Coran: The Traveller - Ravenclaw / Pukwudgie

Coran was another complex one, because he’s a big-hearted intellectual, and I had to take a moment to really consider which way around that was, but ultimately I decided what he wants is knowledge, and who he is is a healer.. ergo, ravenclaw / pukwudgie. He likes to know things almost as much as he likes to share them with the people he cares about!

#Ao3 Little Blade #sa screams back #other aus #...I mean it's not but it could be and I'd genuinely love to read that #hell. I'd love to //write// that #I am very open to discussing this bc it's so interesting and nuanced and ofc there's going to be an overlap in terms of traits #keith kogane #prince lotor #team voltron

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guardianbee · 5 years

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I’ve seen a small uptick in haloforce critique since the last episode and I wanna say: you’re all valid! Haloforce wasn’t written incredibly well and their development was definitely rushed so that the romantic conflict orchestrated by Jace in 3B could apparently have some sort of emotional impact on the viewer. Whether that worked on the audience overall, I’m unsure since outside of tumblr, most viewers enjoy haloforce for what it is.

BUT, while I have my own critiques of haloforce, mainly on a narrative level, I still support it for these two reasons:

Reason #1: dark-skinned WOC do NOT get love interests in cartoons or live-action shows often. Dark-skinned WOC representation is already minimal, but for WOC to be desired in any capacity (especially in interracial relationships) is revolutionary. Then, once Violet came out as non-binary, the relationship shifted to a dark-skinned enby being desired, which is practically unheard of in media at this time. I will always support dark-skinned WOC and enby people being desired and loved, especially when their love interests cherish and adore them.

Reason #2: Violet’s relationship with Brion, outside of their development, is the least problematic part of their character. Once haloforce became canon, Brion is nothing but supportive, tender, charming, sweet, another positive adjective lmao, etc. In most interracial relationships that involve WOC, the WOC (or enby in Violet’s case) is either a “benchmark,” where once they break up, their love interest will ultimately pursue a white woman OR the relationship is marked as toxic or unhealthy in some capacity. In animation alone, there are a LOT of examples, such as Valerie/Danny/Sam in Danny Phantom, Liz/Peter/Gwen in Spectacular Spider-Man, or Kelly/Marco/Star in SVTFOE. WOC do not get the boy and this is specifically true with dark-skinned WOC.

Now, I have a very heavy suspicion that Violet will die by the end of this season, which will fall into another heinous trope that dark-skinned WOC and enby people suffer from: they do not get happy endings. Princess Allura died in Voltron, Princess Yue died in ATLA, Jessica Cruz had to watch her love interest, Starboy, die right before her eyes in Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, Storm is often teased with Wolverine but either plays second fiddle to Jean or Wolverine dies in some asinine way once they do get together (which is hysterical since he has fucking REGENERATION POWERS lmaoo). Even in Young Justice, Jade is arbitrarily shown to dismiss her family and relationship with Will for no other reason than she believes she doesn’t deserve them (when in season 2, SHE was the one who wanted to be a family), allowing an avenue where the writers can create romantic tension between Will and her light-skinned, blonde-haired sister Artemis (who ALSO didn’t get a happy ending with her original love interest).

Given the way Violet/Brion has been represented thus far, I see either Violet sacrificing themself, OR Brion sacrificing himself for Violet. Given the writing and the brutalization of Violet’s character throughout this season, I truly can’t see them receiving a happy ending. This doesn’t even account for Violet possessing a dead Muslim woman’s body, and what will ultimately happen to Gabrielle if Violet sacrifices themself. And because of Violet’s mistreatment in the show and the possibility of a tragic ending WHILE in the face of other bullshit staples when it comes to dark-skinned WOC and enby, I will support the one thing that has consistently made them happy: their relationship with Brion.

Again, I’m not telling anyone to ship or support haloforce. The ship (like almost every other ship on this show) has a lot of development and narrative problems. I just wanted to let you all know why I support it and will continue to do so even if they do not have a happy ending.

#haloforce #briolet #young justice #text post #meta #i guesss

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dragonofyang · 5 years

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From the Sock Puppet’s Mouth

Well folks, good news and bad news.

Good news: the ABTV interview on March 4th confirmed for us that WEP is the reason for the last-minute changes and that certain things were fought tooth and nail for until they came down and axed it.

Bad news: WEP is still using the EPs as their meat shields to hide behind, and despite not being really able to refuse, Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery still said some fucked up shit in this interview and the one before. And we probably should gird our loins for the next interview with Let’s Voltron!

But Yang, why in the fuck are we not going after the EPs, then?

The answer to that and why this is happening is three little letters, my friends.

NDA.

Non-disclosure agreements.

AKA the bane of your existence. And ours. And almost certainly JDS, LM, voice actors, animators, and literally anybody who has to comply with the season 8 we got back in December and the resulting fallout.

These are fairly standard in lots of situations where you’ll be working with confidential material, stuff like stories, military paperwork, movie production, that sort of thing. They generally tell you that you can’t spill the beans until a certain date when the contract expires, or when the information becomes public knowledge and the need for secrecy is lifted. Pretty standard in the entertainment business, keeps people from getting spoiled to trade secrets or important plotlines and ensures that you can trust your employees with whatever you need done for the project in question.

One other thing that these pesky little pieces of paper do is give your employer (say, the owner of a franchise or a superior officer), the ability to order you what to say just as easily as what not to. Don’t believe me? Look up interviews with the people who were in The Last Airbender (yeah… THAT movie). During production and when it was new, they all said how excited they were to work on the movie and be a part of it, but once those magical dates came by to free them of their legal obligations, they spilled more tea than the American revolutionaries did back in Boston. As soon as they wouldn’t get sued, they changed their tune about working on TLA.

Sometimes you just don’t like a project, sometimes your boss is a dick, whatever, but the fact is, if you sign one of those little things titled “Non-Disclosure Agreement”, you are bound by law to say whatever your boss tells you to. It’s very much a “they say ‘jump’, you say ‘how high’” situation. The only time this sort of shit doesn’t apply is if it implicates you in a crime. So like, your boss can’t embezzle money and then tell you to say you did it, or that you helped, or whatever. If it means you’ll get pressed charges, then you’re free to stand up and say “fuck this noise” and leave.

But JDS and LM aren’t being forced to admit to a crime, as heinous as some of what they’ve said in the past two ABTV interviews was. I’ll admit, I saw red the first time I heard the interviews on February 25 and March 4, but ya know fuckin’ what? That was the goal. Those interviews were meant to be a targeted blow against those of us in the VLD fandom who want the real s8 and for the characters to get their stories told correctly, rather than the slipshod stoic nonsense that ultimately created a story with zero meaning.

WEP/World Events Productions/Bob Koplar holds the Voltron intellectual property. JDS and LM are their puppets right now because unless they’re ordered to admit to a crime or otherwise break the law, they could be ruined legally, financially, and closed off from their trade. Would it be nice if they stuck to the scruples they displayed back when the show first started? Fuck yeah. I’d love it if they said, “screw it, here’s the real s8 with the heroine’s journey and the parallel storylines and the ending you deserved to see and get catharsis with.”

Fact is, they can’t, but we, who have never signed an NDA with WEP, DreamWorks, or Netflix or whoever the fuck else is involved, can.

They’re lying, yes, and they said despicable things that would make anybody’s blood boil, but the fact is they’re just the unfortunate human shields that will let WEP get away scot-free and it sets a very dangerous precedent about what happens when a story is being told and someone up top doesn’t like what they see. The narrative LM and JDS are being told to spin is that when the writers left, they went ham and ruined the story and that the real season 8 would be worse than the concoction we got on December 14. LM and JDS have said awful shit as WEP tries to demoralize fans and chase them off from going after the original season 8 and deflecting blame off where it should be aimed. But why would they have to write a story that’s animated and would have been completed before the writers left? LM said it herself that animation is extremely ahead of schedule compared to releases, and if you’re a fan of HTTYD like myself, you’ll know that the third movie’s release date had to be pushed back multiple times to account for the animation schedule because they failed to accurately project when it would be complete, and so pushed it back as opposed to releasing a shoddy product.

It’s simple enough to realize that the story being spun is just logically fallible and factually untrue, but because so much of what’s been said has been attacking the fandom, it’s easy to believe it. I almost wanted to believe that, too. It’s easy when there’s already a face and a name to blame. It’s harder to dig through stinging nettles, even if you know there’s a pot of gold under it all. Luckily I brought work gloves and have friends who know how to wield gardening shears.

We knew before that there was last minute edits to season 8, and @leakinghate did an excellent breakdown of that here in case you want to settle in for a nice read to see what should have been. But the interview on March 4th confirmed multiple times that the problem with the changes and story didn’t come from the EPs or even Dreamworks. The pushback came from the IP owners. JDS says so right toward the beginning, about 12 minutes in when he’s talking about Adam and Shiro’s romance. JDS and LM both discuss how it was the IP owners who gave the order to change an already-storyboarded and approved plotline for Shiro, which directly negates their tweet on March 1 claiming that the store has no creative control and the letter Bob Koplar wrote to a few fans, also written March 1, which claimed the same thing and seemed intent on absolving him as a responsible party for s8. Sure, the person tweeting and the person handling orders might not have to approve things, but that account and the store are both owned by WEP, which is easily proven if you dial WEP’s number. But the IP holders got discussed multiple times throughout the entire episode, more towards the first half than the second, which is when what they’re saying gets really screwy in terms of logic and what they’ve said before and general bullfuckery. Until JDS and LM are thanking the hosts for the unprecedented two hour interview and JDS says, “I don’t agree with myself” at 43:03, they were thanking the fans and apologizing for what happened and explaining that it wasn’t them or Dreamworks, but rather the IP holders who were pushing back.

Don’t believe me?

Click to 12:10 of the March 4 interview. JDS talks about Adam and Shiro’s relationship and how it was originally meant to be portrayed, and at the 12:50 mark he says that they got pushback about their relationship, not from Dreamworks, but from “other controlling parties with Voltron.”

Click to 18:52, where JDS mentions how they didn’t have the position as being creators of the IP. He also points out that, “We were, for all intents and purposes, like, started as a show for boys 6 to 11 to sell as much toys as possible.”

Does that phrase bother you as much as it bothers me?

Because it should.

Ever since VLD ended and the fans started pushing back against what got published as season 8, the EPs have been silent, at least for the first two-ish months. They didn’t say a word anywhere publicly about the show or if they liked it, because their NDAs probably had an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” clause. Generally, that’s the case because part of your job is to build good PR and hype up your project. Don’t believe me? Look at how they were after literally every other season, they came out immediately saying how much they loved it and how much they hoped the fans would too, and when there was pushback about Lotor’s abuse and the colony plot they were like, “please trust us, we want to do his story justice” even when it probably would have served them better to remain silent.

Not with S8.

Until these interviews, nobody talked. And when they finally did start talking?

They all kept saying the same things.

“This is a show for boys and their dads” and “this is a show meant to sell toys to little boys.”

At no point before this did anybody on the production team say anything even remotely related.

You can look for yourself, but I guarantee you won’t find anything. “Boy toy show” has been the go-to phrase for everybody ever since the silence around season 8 broke, and it’s not their words.

It is, without a doubt, from the IP holder.

We were promised that Lotor’s arc would continue and that “there’s a lot that is at play in his brain and his mind,” in the GeekDad article about him. Narratively, Lotor and Allura were meant to foil Zarkon and Honerva/Haggar. We should’ve gotten an alchemist-versus-alchemist showdown and a cool Lotor and Lance arc. Many things that were built up in seasons 1 through 6 were dropped, and if you refer back to Hate’s meta “Seeking Truth in Darkness”, you’ll find her analysis on what was cut, why, and the plot she pieced together based on the inconsistencies in the details of the season 8 that got released. In the latest interview, JDS said, “We were just trying to break the trope, our own trope. You know what I mean? Like Voltron was its own trope and the sort of little nook that we inhabited was, like, sort of boys toys was its own weird tropey situation.”

And despite all this talk of family and love and complexity and breaking barriers, we received two things from December 14 and on: VLD season 8, and silence.

Complete and utter silence.

The VAs were trotted out to face the wrath of the fans at SAC Anime 2019 and there was nary a word to be heard from the EPs, Dreamworks, WEP, Netflix… Nobody had anything to say about the final season of Voltron. The VAs even commented that there were things they were and weren’t allowed to say. And if they wanted to say anything, their NDAs and general social etiquette prevented them from saying whatever was actually on their mind, because I guarantee you nobody happy about the season would have kept silent. Even when all the season 7 backlash happened, JDS and LM asked us as a fandom to please wait and see, because there would be narrative payoff.

Which is why the latest two interviews with ABTV are all the more rightfully infuriating.

In the February 25 interview, LM specifically says that the initial pitch was to kill everybody, everybody would die and that would be the end of it, and that they had to back off from that. After the broken promises of season 8, that’s pretty damn believable to a fandom who’s rightfully hurting and grieving what could have finished a great show. But then with this March 4 interview, she says that she wanted to go Sailor Moon with it and have Allura come back as a baby after sacrificing herself. Kind of hard for those two stories to mesh when the person LM says would raise Allura would also have been one of the ones to die in the initial pitch.

So what exactly is the truth there?

Frankly, I think neither of those ideas is the truth. At least completely.

Why? A) It sounds like a super early pitch idea and B) because their general behavior disagrees with every interview leading up to season 8. Because if LM and JDS were proud of this product that got released, they would have said so and behaved as normal, if maybe a little more reserved due to fandom backlash. Because they wouldn’t be silent and only coming out with interviews after two months and several of #TeamPurpleLion metas that poke massive holes in what exists of season 8, CallVoltron has been sending letters, and #FREEVLDS8 garnered over 30,000 signatures. WEP has been trying to do damage control ever since we as a fandom started putting two and two together about where these disastrous last-minute changes came from, and only when the petition got updated to include WEP as a point of focus did WEP start trying to discredit the fans and meta writers who were coming too close to the truth. Here is a complete list of everything that’s happened since December 14, to give you an idea of just how wild of a ride this has been.

One main consistent thing throughout everything that’s happened since season 8 dropped is that everybody from the EPs up is lying, whether by omission or outright or through someone else, people have been lying like mad. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they own the IP and have strong input, despite confirming it by liking a tweet on February 13 and how you can be directed to their store if you call WEP’s phone number. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they gave the original season 8 the axe. WEP got scared that we got close and so they trotted out their EPs after two months of silence to try and break those of us hunting for the truth. These two interviews, which, mind you, came after what was scheduled to be the last one.

The official story continues to fall apart with every word of these last two interviews, too. JDS says that they were crafting the epilogue for season 8 during the aftermath of season 7, but according to him they completed season 8 back in June.

Again: which is the truth?

I stand with @leakinghate and the rest of #TeamPurpleLion and think that the original season 8 was completed back in June, but that the backlash from s7 and the general disapproval of a story of empowerment caused the truly-eleventh-hour edits to s8. The EPs are being forced to lie to you due to their contracts, WEP wants to keep hiding and lying and calling their customers liars and mocking them. But the funny thing is that the more intricate the lie, the harder it is to keep it straight versus the truth, as evidenced by how JDS and LM seem to be confusing what was in s8 versus what was pitched versus what they were told to say.

So what’s it all mean, then?

It means you should be watching and writing letters and calling WEP and calling them out publicly whenever WEP and Bob Koplar lie to the consumers and customers that express dissatisfaction with their service and their products.

WEP forgets that there is more to fandom than diehard dads and young boys.

The more they ignore the majority of their consumers, the more money they lose, the more faith they lose, and the less people will want to follow their future projects (like if they decide to do an MFE spinoff). Let’s Voltron is coming up with a new episode with JDS and LM, and they’re hoping to get it up soon. I’d just like to remind y’all that it’s scripted and pre-recorded, it’s not live, and it benefits from being the official Voltron podcast and has to keep good relations with WEP in order to retain that status. So don’t stop calling, write letters, hell just leave a Facebook or Twitter review of the business to express your satisfaction or lack thereof with how WEP treats customers and its show and everything. After all, the road to s8 is paved with honesty.

@felixazrael @leakinghate @crystal-rebellion @voltronisruiningmylife

#dragon's ramblings #vld #voltron: legendary defender #TeamPurpleLion #FREEVLDS8 #free vld s8 #vld meta #strafe

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34choco · 5 years

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what’s with the thing where fandoms of shows where everybody is written as redeemable don’t want redemption arcs but everybody watching shows that are in a darker/more realistic universe want characters who have no redeeming qualities to have redemption arcs????

Examples:

Steven Universe: the diamonds were always redeemable, because they were separated from anything that would cause them to think they’re doing wrong. they had never encountered a reason to change (at least not one that made any sense to them) before steven, so him showing them the error of their ways worked. they don’t immediately become perfect and caring, they’re shown to struggle with changing their behavior, but they still put the effort in. the show doesn’t imply that the audience or any of the gems they hurt have to forgive them, but they still try to be better anyway.

RWBY: adam was not redeemable. everything said about him, everything shown of him, and everything in the soundtracks indicated over and over again that even if he had a tragic backstory explaining why he hated humans, he would not have changed his mind about extremism because he was spiteful and self-centered and abusive.

he didn’t actually care about the cause he represented, he only cared about being worshipped as a hero and getting what he believed he deserved. he killed those who questioned him even when they were on his side, and even outside of being a revolutionary, he was a shitty person. he stalked and abused blake, tried to kill everyone she loved, and then tried to kill her when he realized she would never fall for his manipulation again. He was provided multiple reasons and chances to change and passed the line of redeemability so far that the only way for his victims to save themselves was to kill him.

okay, let me give another example, of a show that actually gave the wrong characters redemptions, and suddenly turned around the plotline of characters that should have been redeemed.

Voltron:

Lotor and Allura both should have been redeemed. Allura was treated like she earned redemption, but her actual actions in the show imply that she learned nothing and did not change. Lotor did bad things, but ultimately always had the right goal in mind, and worked to be better until a sudden change of motivations that only made sense if looked at as the crazed ramblings of a brain-poisoned person who was so traumatized that he snapped and said things he didn’t really mean.

Allura started the show with the idea that all Galra were evil by nature. we learn over the course of the show that this isn’t even remotely true. She has the same information the audience was given, but she does not change her views (at least not for long). She finds out one of the people on her hero team was partially Galra all along, and he never even hints at betraying her even once. She works with a group of Galra who have dedicated their entire existence to opposing the Galran Empire, even though they would have everything to gain and nothing to lose by embracing it. She is suspicious of them and rude to them and never changes this behavior.

She meets Lotor, who is the half-galra, exiled prince of the empire, who spent his whole life trying to save her race from being wiped out by the empire. He has to do unethical things while trying to keep enough power to eventually overthrow the power structure in place and start undoing the bad things his father had done, without completely condemning his own people without giving them the opportunity to change. Allura is reasonably wary of him for a long time, and eventually, because he is half the same race as her, comes to trust him.

When she learns he’s done bad things to further his goal of saving everyone, he immediately comes clean to her, he does not lie or manipulate her or even ask for her forgiveness, he only asks for a chance to explain his reasoning. She refuses and attacks him, and after he wakes up from her knocking him out, he’s understandably upset with her, and tries to do things on his own again. She attacks him again, triggers his lifelong trauma by calling him a clone of his abusive father, and in a poison-induced fit, suddenly claims that he would be evil like everyone expected him to be, and kill every galra, creating a new empire of the race he initially saved from genocide. sounds stupid and out of character, right? that’s because it is.

Instead of saving him from the poison and trying to fix things with him, she leaves him to die a slow, painful, lonely death. The show applauds her for this, and when she sacrifices herself to undo damage to the universe that could have been avoided altogether by listening to Lotor and not attacking him in the first place, she is portrayed as the always-righteous hero who deserves an apology from Lotor. What she really is, is a racist murderer who caused the deaths of billions because she could not let go of her hatred. Lotor was a victim of abuse, a survivor of genocide, and always tried to use what little control he had left to make the universe a better place for everyone.

Allura could have been truly redeemed if the writing had allowed her character to grow from her experiences and unlearn her racist views. Lotor had already redeemed himself, because he was always working towards the goal of being better, but was ruined by the sudden and unnecessary decision to write him as a twist villain.

#this is a fucking years worth of reading sORRY but i have FEELINGS about STUFF #long post #wall of text #fandom meta #sheldon watches voltron #sheldon watches rwby #sheldon watches steven universe

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violethowler · 5 years

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The Keystone Army and the Cult of Personality: A Meta on the Galra Empire

While viewers and even a few characters in-universe point to the fight with Lotor in Season 6 as the cause of the empire’s collapse and the near destruction of the Coalition in Season 7. But looking back at the previous seasons, it’s not that clear cut. Leaving aside the variables in the Season 6 battle itself, there’s a lot of issues that point to the Galra Empire being structurally unstable and only really holding together this long because Zarkon was in charge. Although the show relies on show-don’t-tell a little too much, the details are usually still there even when the narrative and the script don’t call attention to them. It was never remarked upon, but Season 1 gave us everything we needed to know about the infrastructure of the Galra Empire:

The Galra Empire invades, conquers, and colonizes planets.

They mine a planet to extract its Quintessence.

The raw Quintessence is taken to secret bases like the one seen in Collection and Extraction

Druids use a bastardized version of Altean alchemy taught to them by Haggar to process the raw Quintessence into fuel.

What made the Komar so revolutionary to the empire (and horrifying to everyone else), was that it circumvented the entire process and allowed the Druids to harvest the Quintessence of a planet all at once and refine it on site rather than drain the planet over the course of years and shuttle the results to hidden fueling stations across the empire’s territory for refinement.

You’ll notice that while the empire can do the first three on their own regardless of who’s in charge, the last step of the process, along with the Komar itself, cannot be replicated without Haggar and her Druids, or else an Altean alchemist who knows how to refine Quintessence from its raw form into the fuel used by the empire. And given that Lotor and Allura don’t mention finding anything when they search her lab in “Bloodlines”, it’s unlikely that Haggar would just leave her notes on the refinement process lying around Central Command when she abandoned the place. So, while Allura did get all kinds of alchemic knowledge from Oriande, how to process Quintessence into imperial fuel does not appear to be part of that package.

Lotor had grand ideas of solving the empire’s energy problems (the waste of resources on crushing rebellions, the inefficiency of gutting every planet in sight and moving on, etc.), but aside from “gain access to the rift”, he didn’t appear to have any specifics planned long-term. He talked about harvesting Quintessence from the Rift, but he made no mention of how he was going to do it so that the empire’s infrastructure wouldn’t collapse when he eliminated Haggar and the Druids. That’s another way in which he parallels Keith: they both have big goals (stopping Lotor, in Keith’s case, though that goes away while Lotor is allied with Voltron) that they attempt to pursue with single-minded determination to the exclusion of all else.

But even if the events of Season 6 hadn’t happened the way they did and Lotor had remained on the throne, the result would have been the same. With the Druids gone, the empire’s infrastructure crumbles. Lotor hasn’t set up a new system of harvesting and distributing Quintessence, so the Galra now have large quantities of raw Quintessence and no one with the skills to refine it into fuel, and the empire’s fuel supply has now been cut off. Lotor can get Quintessence from the Rift, but without a way to harvest it in large quantities, he can only get as much from the Rift as the two Sincline ships he has can hold. And even if he and Voltron were still on good terms, neither Allura’s wormholes nor the empire’s shipping routes can supply Rift Quintessence to fleets and territories loyal to Lotor fast enough to meet the urgent demand.

Meaning that the fleet commanders and territorial warlords still waiting in line for their shipments of Rift Quintessence start arguing about who deserves to get their supply first, who needs more Quintessence then the other, etc. Commanders start raiding and fighting each other over whatever Druid-processed Quintessence is left. The situation snowballs, and we get the same scenario in Seasons 7 & 8, the only real difference being that Voltron and Lotor are still around and spread way too thin as they scramble to put out all the fires while the empire collapses in on itself, and the Coalition is too busy fending off reprisals from vengeful warlords to assist. By the time Lotor and Voltron figure out a solution, the empire would be a shattered remnant of what it used to be.

We’ve seen throughout the show that even if Lotor had lit the flame of the Kral Zera without the interference of Keith and the Blade, there would still have been sizable factions of the empire that would rebel in protest at a “half-breed” on the throne. An energy crisis driven by the absence of the Druids just made the existing infighting worse by adding a desperate fight for resources on top of arrogant power grabs.

And it’s really Zarkon’s death that kickstarts the whole chain of events. It’s a sharp contrast in how the Galra reacted to the death of their leader 10,000 years ago compared to now: Even aside from the grief of their destroyed planet, the first time Zarkon died his people mourned him. He and Honerva were given respectful funerals (we presume), and his body was returned to his people for whatever burial customs the Galra had. The second time he died, no one really cared.

Within less than a day of his permanent demise, his underlings were scrambling and jockeying to take the throne for themselves. The only person to really treat his death with anything approaching “hey, our sovereign just died, could we maybe have a day of mourning before we start arguing over who’s next in line for the throne?” was the Archivist. We don’t even get to see what happened to his body, but given what Season 8 showed happens to the souls of people Haggar drains of Quintessence, it’s clear that even his own wife had no qualms about defiling his corpse.

And as I’ve noted in another meta about Honerva’s arc throughout the series, the more she remembers of her past, the less of a threat the empire becomes. Because it’s worth noticing that the entire chain of events that leads to her husband’s death starts when she summons Lotor to take command while Zarkon is comatose, something that Zarkon explicitly did not approve of. In other words, the entire chain of events started because Haggar started acting independently of Zarkon. It was only when Haggar started pursuing her own agenda that we began to see rival factions emerging within the empire itself. When husband and wife are operating on the same page, working in tandem as a single unit, the empire is a monolithic force. But when they start working independently of each other and pursuing separate agendas, the empire begins to fracture.

I see a lot of Season 7 and 8 meta arguing that the situation with the collapse of the empire and the Coalition is entirely the Paladins’ fault for what happened with Lotor. But looking at the infrastructure and culture of the empire itself, the state of the empire in Seasons 7 and 8 was inevitable from the moment Zarkon bites the dust for good. From the moment Zarkon breathes his last, the clock started ticking on the empire’s demise, and the Paladins’ fight with Lotor in Season 6 only shaved a few months off the countdown at most.

In a way, it reminds me of Operation Cinder from the new Star Wars Expanded Universe. To summarize: Palpatine had put contingencies in place to ensure that in the event of his death, his empire would die with him. In Palpatine’s words: “If an Empire cannot protect its Emperor then that Empire must be deemed a failure. It collapses not only because its central figure is gone, but because it must not be allowed to remain!” While Zarkon didn’t have the foresight for such vengeful contingencies, the result is the same: the empire didn’t just collapse because the emperor was gone, but because the infrastructure of the modern Galra empire was not designed to survive without its ruling couple at the helm.

When Haggar declared that “the empire has fallen” after the Kral Zera, it was not merely for dramatic effect. The Galra Empire is structurally and politically incapable of functioning in the long term without her husband’s iron will to keep power hungry commanders in line or her research and alchemy to maintain its infrastructure, and she knows it. But with Zarkon dead, maintaining the empire is no longer a priority for her. And so, she lets it wither and rot as she spies on her son, the Druids only maintaining the infrastructure because she has not yet ordered them to stop.

TL;DR: The Galra Empire’s entire infrastructure and cohesion is dependent on Zarkon and Haggar operating in tandem. It’s collapse in Season 7 is not a direct result of Lotor’s removal from power, as characters in-universe assume, but the result of a chain of dominoes triggered by the final battle of Season 2. In other words, the Paladins dealt the fatal blow to the Galra Empire when they defeated Zarkon at the end of the second season, and we’ve been watching it slowly bleed to death ever since.

#voltron meta #vld galra #voltron legendary defender #vld season 7 spoilers #voltron season 7 spoilers #vld analysis #galra empire #star wars spoilers #vld zarkon #vld haggar #vld druids #voltron season 8 spoilers #vld season 8 spoilers

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