#and badass warrior princess willow is so cool

[daydreams-and-honeybees]

Been thinking about Atlantis: The Lost Empire lately so what if Milo x Kida but Huntlow

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown, round 1, bracket three

Propaganda:

For Jade:

A badass lady in love with a badass princess. Damn RIGHT!

For Amaya:

Badass super strong disabled lesbian general who can and will take you out. Doesn't need a sword to punch you into next week, but will use one anyway.

She’s married to another sword gay and she’s also disabled so I love her very much 

First deaf character I saw in any cartoon, she's very badass and protects her kingdom's border, later falls in love with an elf warrior princess she once fought. In the new season, they're planning their wedding while trying to navigate political tensions between the elf society and humans. Some of the elves aren't super into the idea of a human marrying one of them, which isn't for homophobic reasons but still (I believe) meant to mirror real world conservatives (really liked a scene with Janai's brother telling Amaya she's fine as a girlfriend for Janai but actually *marrying* her is too controversial and political. Whoever wrote this did a really good job).

She’s currently engaged to another lady, she uses a sword, is a general badass.

General Amaya is a standard sword lesbian with a cool shield and some funny "lines" example: "This bread is...." *bashes bread on table with no damage to the bread* "Weapons grade"

[comicaurora]

Have you seen the new Willow show? It’s vibe reminded me about of Aurora since it’s a high fantasy show that doesn’t try to be super serious or edgy and actually has fun

I got most of the way through the first two episodes and might try and pick it back up. It's fun in places, but in others it feels a little shaky and the pacing's kinda weird. I can't decide if it's comfortably tropey or just a little too comfortable with its tropes. I laughed out loud when the old mentor guy got one-shotted literally seconds after crossing the barrier.

The characters also sort of oscillate between being too cool for school and bathos-ing up all their emotional moments, and being weirdly non-genre-savvy when it's convenient for them to be immersed in the plot. For instance, absolutely nobody reacted to the mentor dying in any way and the characters were quipping seconds later, making them seem Very Rad and Uninvested. But then when it comes to the frankly extremely tedious second episode where the entire premise is Elora sucking at magic, nobody points out the seemingly crucial detail that she passed through the giant magic barrier that keeps the entire kingdom safe. The rest of the gang know she didn't cross through the gate with them but don't seem to question how she got out, and she knows she moved through the barrier, so it feels very weird that the entire episode is spent with her constantly repeating that she can't be magic, she can't be the chosen one, she's just on this trip to rescue her boyfriend she's been dating since yesterday tops, etc etc. Sitting around waiting for the characters to acknowledge or accept or figure out something very obvious is tedious, especially when they have no reason not to.

Kit also stands out to me, because she's quite an interesting mass of contradictions, though I'm not sure if that's intentional characterization or indicative of the same inconsistent writing. She's introduced defeating Jade in a fight, who is herself a clearly extremely talented knight if the royal guard are willing to make an exception to accept her - and Kit says she wins because she's got skill and talent and that's what makes her better than Jade, which characterizes her as arrogant, but perhaps justifiably so considering her ability - after all, she is introduced as a better ass-kicked than the story's designated ass-kicker. Then Kit plans to literally run away to escape her arranged marriage, abandoning her role as heir to the throne because she feels trapped in her life - which totally tracks, that's all consistent. She's a spunky warrior princess who doesn't wanna marry some rando for political reasons, that's a very classic tale as old as time. But then as soon as the squad of bad guys show up and storm the castle, Kit is shown panicking and handling herself much worse than Jade, who also doesn't do particularly well in that fight - which is another stock story beat, the equivalent of the "home village gets torched by BBEG" event. This makes it seem like Kit, despite being prepared to win a sparring session, is not actually ready for a real fight. That's a good angle on this character, and it makes sense for a sheltered princess longing for adventure; she's trained, but that doesn't mean she's ready. She's arrogant, not because she's experienced, but because she's the big fish in her small pond. Okay, that's fair. Different than her introduction and not really highlighted in-story, but still workably consistent. It indicates that Kit will have an arc about becoming a more badass fighter through experience, maybe a bit less arrogant as she accepts that the "talent" she boasted about literally means nothing in a very dangerous world - maybe Jade will get more opportunities to shine as an actually experienced warrior who's seen more combat than her talented princess. Jade has also clearly had a less sheltered life than Kit, so that might be a good dynamic to explore as character foils now that they're experiencing a fraught adventure that is clearly much harsher than Kit was ready for. Then as soon as Elora is revealed to be the real magical chosen one this story is all about, Kit shifts to being the cranky lancer complaining about how Elora sucks and isn't important and probably isn't really the chosen one anyway and shouldn't they be focusing on charging straight at the main bad guy right now. She also calls out Elora on having never been in a real fight, which is either a very interesting bit of hypocrisy from one sheltered princess to another, or a bit of inconsistent character writing caused by Kit being suddenly recast as the lancer to Elora's de facto protagonist status. It also highlights another inconsistency, because if Elora is who Willow thinks she is - the chosen one savior one true queen who'll rule the kingdom - then Kit is free from that royal responsibility she demonstrably hates.

So either this is the messy behavior of a complicated, imperfect heroine suddenly experiencing a large amount of very stressful things at once - or it's inconsistent character writing. Schroedinger's storytelling.

There's a few other things that threw me. Some of the editing in the first episode feels really weird, especially during the aforementioned Bad Guy Invasion - which itself smacked of rough choreography, shot in a dark and foggy environment with a lot of camera-shake to seemingly compensate for a lot of very wide swings with swords and spears.

It was an interesting watch, and I might go back to it because of the bits that are rough around the edges. Seeing the parts that weren't working for me helped me identify the parts that were working and why. The show's certainly not awful, and there's a lot of solid stuff in it; it's just the shaky parts that are interesting to me, because they're the parts you can learn the most from.