gloombeaches · 8 months ago
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ngl all the "cankle" complaints about the tv show's style or things that are being done differently for g3's continuity is giving off serious "trukk not munky" vibes
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life-in-the-monster-haus · 2 years ago
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In Defense of Gillington “Gil” Webber Part 3
After a small hiatus I am back with the same mission of clearing Gil Webber's good name! but now with EXTRA motivation!
We last left our lovelorn lovers at the end of Welcome to Skull Shores in Part 2 of the media analysis. Let's jump back into the Webisodes shall we?
In Episode 94 "Defending your Lagoona" we get an episode all about Gil standing up to his racist parents on Lagoona's behalf. All this labor I have done to explain that Gil is a loving boyfriend to Lagoona could have been summed up just by this episode alone HOWEVER, I've never been a fan of doing things the easy way and brevity is not one of my strengths. But it's all said in the title now isn't it?
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Gil is at home getting ready for a date with Lagoona. Gil seems to live in a decommissioned submarine. Seeing where the kids live is something I loved in G1! it was very rare when we got it but it was always a good time! however with G2 and G3 both choosing to go the boarding school route we lose this unique glimpse into our monsters lives. pity, I loved this!
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We find him gong through his closet looking for something to wear to impress Lagoona, this is the first time we see one of the boys do this as it's usually the ghouls who are always looking for the right outfit. Just has he's about ready to leave his parents stop him.
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These are Gil's parents!? the big bad bigots we've been hearing about all this time!? Obviously it's not ALL of them, just a tentacle. but still! ah ha ha! what makes them more hilarious is they don't speak English they communicate via a series of bubbles, gurgles and gibberish that only Gil understands. Is this River Monster? their native tongue? Now I am very sad we never once got a frustrated Gil going off in this language. I come from an English as a second language household and when my mother cannot find the words to express herself in English she will usually fly off into Spanish.
I'm sad we did not get a pair of faces to attach to Gil's parent's in the web series but a fan artist @sarahsota-artpopp did a banging interpretation of The Webbers.
Before Gil leaves for his date his parents get on his case for once again, dating Lagoona. They remind him that she is a Salt water monster and what their people say about her kind.
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it's cute that he has pictures of Lagoona on his wall.
He tells his parents (his dad? mostly) That "Lagoona isn't like that, she's wonderful!" I don't like that he phrases it this way, it reeks of "She's one of the good ones" which is rhetoric I'm not a fan of as we discussed in my review of Skull Shores. But if we look at Gil and understand the home he is coming from, his phrasing makes sense. This is baby's first escape from a racist household, he is going to carry some of those prejudices with him and prejudice is different from racism. Gil's parents bubble something and Gil replies "She IS different! you always said that Sea Creatures were mean, spiteful monsters! but Lagoona is the sweetest most sensitive ghoul I've ever met!" A lot of this episode is just a clip show of things I've already gone over so I'm going to focus mostly on the things Gil says and his parents say back. "You told me that Sea Monsters were disloyal and treacherous but Lagoona is the most faithful, true and protective friend that anybody ever had"
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Gil has nothing but nice things to say about Lagoona. His parents start spurting out ink in anger. After this his Dad (?) says something and Gil gets upset. "You're still clinging to those worn out old prejudices!?" Gil looks very angry by this point.
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They gurgle something and Gil says "You're wrong about this! I'm not going to stop seeing her! so you're both just going to have to deal with that!"
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Gil turns his back on them, gives them a dismissive hand wave and walks away.
Y'all wanted to see Gil go toe to toe with his parents well, here it is! this is the throw down you've been waiting for! This is 100% genuine as it's just him and his parents, Lagoona isn't here this time like she was in Episode 45 so you know this isn't performative, this is how Gil genuinely feels.
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Gil returns after his storm off because he forgot the flowers he was going to give to Lagoona. Gil you ditz. However, despite the fact he was just cross with his parents, he still says bye and tells them he will be home early. Still the attentive son even while angry.
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The episode ends with Gil's parents frothing with rage and inking up the screen, fading to black.
Now, Because this is a cartoon we can accept the fade to black as the ending, but in an actual situation? one or both of his parents would have snatched him in the water and been like "You're not going anywhere!" and threw him back into the sub, grounding him, beating his ass or even eating him. Look at them! they're huge compared to him! I'm surprised they haven't eaten him already, he's been so disobedient.
He must be their only son but I'm sure the desire to eat his disobedient ass is ever present.
Speaking of eating people I have a theory that this is how G3 is going to finally put an end to the whole Lagoona can't date Gil because his parents are racist drama. Gil is going to introduce Lagoona to his parents, they call her a filthy ocean dweller and she's just going to unhinge her jaw like a snake and eat them and that will be that, That is how we're going to deal with The Webbers racism in G3, Lagoona fucking eats them, the end.
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Eat your local racist 2k23.
Anyways "Defending your Lagoona" is one of my favorite episodes because it is irrefutable proof that Gil loves Lagoona, Gil stands up for Lagoona and Gil does not agree with his racist parents.
However this episode does have one major flaw, it's just a re-hash of stuff we already know, that is the nature of clip show types of episodes but this is the first time we revisit the same fight of "Gil's parents are racist against Lagoona" and I think this is what annoyed many fans, we have this same fight over and over for the next 3 years after this. I think this is where the writing starts to fall apart and Gil's character suffers because of it. doesn't matter if Gil didn't do anything wrong, fans were sick of hearing about the fight by this point. it was very nice of the animators to put all this info into one episode for us, but we've heard this fight before.
We don't see Gil again until Episode 101, "No Ghouls Allowed" Where the boys are all ditching their ghoulfriends and lie about it, Gil's lie was the boys were going to his house to work on their rap album.
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Clawd: "Rap Album!?"
Gil: "Sorry, I'm a terrible liar"
He's right, this entire review has been Gil being punished by his compulsive need to tell the truth. Gil would have a lot less problems if he just lied better, like what are his parent's gonna do if he told them Lagoona was fresh water? DNA test her? Poor sweet honest soul.
The rest of the episode is the ghouls spying on the boys to find out what they are actually doing and a lot of what they find is very aggressive.
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Cleo assumes this means they are going to fight but the reality of the situation is they are just a bunch of nerds who are playing D&D.
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This doesn't really have anything to do with Gil's love life, I just wanted to showcase him being a fuckin' dork.
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*Pew Pew!*
In Episode 107 "Flowers for Slo-Mo" Lagoona helps Slo-Mo to be worthy of Ghoulia, long story short: Slo-Mo knows Ghoulia is a genius and worries he's not smart enough for her. He takes a potion from Cleo that makes him hyper intelligent, but it also makes him a pompous windbag.
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This new self important attitude pushes Ghoulia away.
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Slo-Mo goes to talk to Lagoona and she tells him Ghoulia doesn't like what he has become.
Lagoona: "Rude, Full of yourself"
Slo-Mo: "But I'm an absolute genius! that's what she wanted!"
Lagoona: "That's what you said she wanted! She liked who you were before. if you were really a genius you'd know that."
... I don't know why people keep going to Lagoona for relationship advice when she is the least qualified to give it. She is being a huge hypocrite here, getting mad at Slo-Mo for assuming what's best for Ghoulia when she did the exact same thing to Gil! she wanted him to tell his racist parents he was dating a sea water ghoul, Gil didn't want to do that Gil wanted to hide the relationship.
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Where was this same understanding for Gil, Lagoona? why is it always "Tell your parents about me!" and never ' You like me and that is enough." hmm? huh? hmmhuhhmmhuhhmm?
Anyways the episode ends with Slo-Mo becoming less smart again and Ghoulia likes him just as he is. I only brought up this episode to shine a spotlight on to Lagoona's dating advice. She really should practice what she preaches.
Volume 3 of the Webisodes technically ends after Episode 118 "Playing the Boos" HOWEVER! a DVD Came with 6 bonus episodes that are the official end of Volume 3! Which DVD this was Wikipedia does not say, but I have the "Scaremester Collection" bonus DVD that came with 18 Webisodes and none of these are on there, they MIGHT be on the "Best of the Ghouls Collection" DVD which I also have but unfortunately that DVD doesn't include an episode guide and I just got done watching 118 Monster High Webisodes, I'm not gonna sit though another 32, 26 of which being ones I've already seen. I'm dedicated but I have limits, ya feel me?
Because these Episodes are DVD exclusives they are not all on Monster High's official YouTube, the links I will be posting were uploaded by third parties so the quality may have suffered a wee bit...Any-who... in Episode 119 "Department of Monster Vehicles" We see something VERY interesting! Everyone is trying to help Frankie prepare to take their road test. Gil offers to help by offering a video game for Frankie to play and...oh ho ho!
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Some intriguing developments at Gil's house! this window in his bedroom turns into a TV screen! they're playing "Extreme Graveyard Derby" which is some Monster world version of Grand Theft Auto by the looks of it. The first time we saw Gil's room I assumed that box with the lifesavers on it was his bed, but upon closer inspection it's probably a footlocker trunk and he might sleep in the hammock that's behind everyone. RIP Gil's spine.
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I'm highlighting this episode because Lagoona is in Gil's house! so either his parents suddenly got cool with a lot of stuff very quickly... which we know didn't happen... or they are more than likely not home, which is why he feels safe having his friends (and girlfriend) over. it's kinda sad that Gil only feels comfortable bringing his friends around when his parents aren't there but that is the sacrifice you gotta make when you have bigoted parents.
In Episode 124 "Monster-morphoseas" Lagoona is trippin' She bites off Heath's head, is apathetic in Mr. Rotter's class and overly aggressive at her swim meet. Cleo immediately blames Gil which... might be where everyone gets it from. But Gil promises to do a "loud crazy gesture" to show Lagoona how much she means to him.
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After a few failed attempts to cheer Lagoona up the ghouls find her sitting by the ocean just enjoying the sounds it makes, She then explains the reason shes been such an emotional roller coaster is because "Every 100 years the Ocean goes through a magnetic reversal, causing all of us sea creatures to go though a Monster-Morphsis" Frankie wants to know how they can fix it and Lagoona tells them "You can't fix it, it's part of who I am." Frankie understands this and asks what they can do for her. Lagoona continues. "Be there for me, Be my friends, Listen to me... and Right this second? be quiet" Lagoona just wants silence so she can listen to the waves and they are silent for about a second (Because... 2:33 run time) before Lagoona speaks again "I'm kind of glad Gil isn't with you. This is so hard to explain, especially to a freshwater boy" Basically what I'm getting from this is Lagoona is going through sea creature PMS and all her ghouls are there for her... But nobody had any time to tell Gil that she wanted peace and quiet. Soooooo...
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Gil went and threw Lagoona a parade to cheer her up.
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Gil found dead in Miami.
In all seriousness no wonder people think Gil is a bad boyfriend, some of his best moments praising Lagoona are either in a clip show episode (which nobody watches) or like in THIS episode "This is one of the three webisodes first released as an extra on the "Frights, Camera, Action!" UK DVD on March 17, 2014" which is a DVD exclusive I'm not sure anyone outside the UK saw, I know I didn't.
But the episode ends and with it so does Volume 3 officially which is still a good Volume despite not being one long ongoing plot like Volume 2 was. But Gil's characterization is the same, this boy is wiling to bend over backwards to make Lagoona happy and y'all just wanna throw him to the sharks.
I've been asking people on Twitter why they dislike Gil and the answers vary but the two biggest ones are "He's ugly" to which....Yea, Sure, Okay... and that he is racist. But I'm looking at this content really, Really, REALLY hard and I am just not seeing it.
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I am actively looking for the racism and I am not finding any! which is actually pretty hard to do because racism is everywhere but even so, not finding it. Has he said some off color things? Of course he has, He's 16 and dumb and comes from a racist household he's gonna say some prejudiced things that he may not even know are prejudiced (it's important to note in Skull Shores he did apologize after saying something bigoted to Lagoona). But look at his actions! He treats Lagoona with so much care, attention and affection! at her command I have no doubt our boy would walk across a bed of nails if it pleased her. He finds out she is kinda bummed and throws her a parade. Even when she isn't around? He goes to blows with his racist parents to defend her honor. These are not the actions of a racist or a bad boyfriend. These are the makings of a great boyfriend and a great person in general.
Gil could have let his parents racist ways taint him, it's so easy to just go with the flow isn't it? do what the family wants, date a nice freshwater girl to appease Mama and Papa Webber, But he didn't.
In the face of adversity Gil chose love.
And that is where I am going to end this part of my media analysis, not because I'm out of space but because this feels like a good place to end, Volume 4 went on hiatus after this and we're diving back into movie lore in the next part, yes there will be another part, I'm gonna keep doing this until I run out of content or I get bored with it. If you've come with me so far on this journey I hope you are not too tired yet, we still have much to discuss!
Part 1 + Part 2 + Part 3 + Part 4
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