#tales of arcadia critical

[theographos]

They all became what everyone said they couldn't be. All except Toby that is...

Once again i'm sharing my Trollhunter propaganda onto my loved ones, and by that I mean trapping them in the same room as me and forcing them to watch the show. (with consent) And this time, it's my bestie who has to go through that. And as I rewatch the show, I think about what I see and compare it to the rest of the franchise.

Jim, despite everyone and himself telling him he couldn't, became the Trollhunter in his very own way.

Claire, despite Morgana saying otherwise, became the new owner of the Shadowstaff in her very own way.

Blinky, despite Vendell and overall the whole Troll market telling him otherwise, became the mentor of a brilliant Trollhunter in his very own way.

AAARRRGGHH!!!, despite the Gumms Gumms and Queen Ursuna saying otherwise, became a fighter for the right cause and left his role as Gunmar's spawn for good. Or in other words, he learned how to be a fighter in his very own way

Toby, despite the plot telling him otherwise, became a hero fitting the common standards of heroism in medias and a hero fitting the Tales of Arcadia's standards.

But wait... Toby's character development doesn't really make sense with the rest of the main characters now, does it ?

No it has nothing to do with the fact that Toby is a "fleshbag"

So I already discussed on how the screenwriters could have given a more interesting role for Toby in another post, but I didn't deeply explained why in terms of storytelling.

First and foremost, no I do not think that Tobias would have been better if he wasn't a human, this post is more because I believe that Aliens and Toby lack "plot important" features (except for the movie) (waiting a whole franchise to give that kind of feature to a character or an important specie in your story isn't something we should acclaim). So I thought of ways to kill one bird with two stone, and give plot-interesting features to both the race and the character. Plus I think it's more interesting to think of solutions that fits the already established universe, and then think of solutions that fits my way of writing stories.

Second of all, yes the human bestfriend of a character can be wonderfully done, like in Teen Wolf for example. From the start we meet Scott McCall, the main character, and his bestfriend Stiles Stilinski. Throughout the whole show they are exposed to supernatural phenomenon, the entirety of the cast becomes linked to the supernatural world either by being hunters or by being a supernatural being. Everyone except Stiles.

And despite being human and a comic relief character, he is relevant to the plot. He is the "detective" of the group, he is always the one noticing strange things and finding a solution to the current threat they're dealing with. He is also incredibly funny, voluntarily or not, and the screenwriters take their sweet times showing how hard the plot is taking a toll on the characters through Stiles. Which means we see him having panic attacks, doubts, nightmares, etc.

And guess what ? He is the fan's favorite character ! In the last season, when Stiles's actor couldn't be more present due to an injury, it showed. You could feel the lack of Stiles in most the scenes, and the bestest parts were the scenes in which he appeared, also because they came up with an excuse to explain why Stiles isn't as much present as before.

But that excuse is so well done that when you see Stiles again, you're not only relieved to see him well, but also very interested because suddenly the plot drives forward so quickly. If you take away Stiles, the plot isn't going anywhere (because he was the one investigating most of the supernatural threats), and even the serie isn't that interesting anymore : it's less funny, less human and even.

Heck, the plot wouldn't even exist without Stiles ! In the beginning of the show Stiles takes the main character in the woods because they're looking for a dead body (dumb teenager idea)(his dad is the sheriff so it's not that weird). And in those woods, the main character ends up lost, gets bitten by a werewolf and the story starts.

So yes, a human bestfriend can be interesting in the story in an emotional point of view, he can be relevant to the plot and have an interesting dynamic within the main group.

Dreamworks isn't good with "bestfriend" characters

Trollhunters is in many ways similar to How to Train your Dragon. While Hiccup is trying to protect dragons following his own morals even if they differs from the rest of his village, Jim is trying to protect trolls following his own morals even if differs with the rules of Trollhunting. Of course both franchise have their own identity, and not everything is similar to the other. But they do share the fact that they're both animated by Dreamworks.

Yet I see one major problem that the HTTYD franchise had who's also present in ToA : The bestfriend character has nothing more than a "helping hand" kind of role. Astrid is interesting and has plot relevance, just like Claire, but they're more the love interest kind of person. Stoik, Valka and sometimes Gobber have plot relevance as Hiccup's parent figures and/or mentor, kind of like Blinky, Strickler and Barbara. I think I could compare AAARRRGGHH!!! with the dragons in some way. He has a link with the main bad guys of the show, just like the dragons (dragons and dragon hunters) he has that loveable side like the dragons and big fighting skills like them. (I'm not saying that AAARRRGGHH!!! is similar to an animal, i'm saying that his role plot-wise is similar in some ways to the role of the dragons in HTTYD)

But when we take a look at Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut and Fishlegs, even if they have distinctive character traits from one another and some sort of character development in some episodes of the shows, in terms of plot their role are basically "well the main character cannot do everything on his own, plus we need humor". Some episodes are based around them, just like for Toby, but no villains are directly linked to them, no plot points are directly linked to them. They're only in the plot because they are the friends of the one who's relevant to the story, whether it's the dragons, Hiccup or the rest of the Trollhunter team.

Toby, just like Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut and Fishlegs is a supporting character. Yes he has helped a lot but more because they needed a third hand more than because they needed his specific competences. And no Warhammer isn't what I can call a competence, since Jim's status as a trollhunter works with and without his weapon, and Claire's shadow magic has been awaken by the shadowstaff and even when it ends up being broken into pieces, she is still relevant without her weapon.

Warhammer was something that Toby wanted a lot, couldn't use, so they put a curse on it to kill two bird with one stone. The biggest competence that he had so far in Trollhunter was his dental problems. Without that, they wouldn't have meet Gladys the changeling or they wouldn't have found the Janus order. Because the rest of the time it's just luck. Luck isn't a competence, it's literally just luck.

In terms of a fighting team, Toby doesn't have a distinctive role.

Jim is the front fighter. He is the one that is going to go straight to the enemy.

Claire is the mage, even if she knows how to fight, her main feature in combat scenes is her magic.

AAARRRGGHH!!! is a tank. He is strong and big, and is able to take on bigger enemies and take a lot of damage upon him.

Blinky is a councellor, he might not be the best at fighting but he will be able to come up with a strategy based off his knowledge as an historian, and also serve as some sort of therapist and moral compass, giving back faith and the will to fight to his comrades.

I have a hard time understanding Toby's role is this team (combat-wise) other than "the helping hand". The moral compass is already occupied by Blinky, he is hardly a tank since AAARRRGGHH!!! can take upon the offensive and defensive aspects of that role. He cannot be the "troll-nerd" one who knows everything about troll culture since Claire and Blinky already take upon that role. The best I could come up with is either the one who deals with humans, even if when it happens it's always more or less accidental and he is not comfortable in those situations (or not good, like when they had to exchange the formula with Vendell's staff), or again a helping hand, a sort of plus one in case there are a lot of ennemies or everyone else has a task and that problem must be taken care of right now.

That's why I proposed that he could be a healer. Not a very good one, since that would just make the team invicible (most of the times their difficulty comes from injuries or being tired, if you have a character that can fully help those problems there is not a lot of hardships).

Truthfully I have a hard time thinking of an actual role he could have within the team. Because being the "plus one" is already the role of the Creepslayerz.

It has to fit with the serie's message

Like I said in the introduction a recurring theme for the main characters is that people around them do not believe they are fit to become what they're supposed to be or what they want to be. A some sort "against all odds they managed to become [insert role]" if you'd like.

As I have established before Tobias is more of a "helping hand" kind of role, and no one has ever kept Toby from being a helping hand other than him. (Meanwhile every other main characters in Trollhunters doubt themselves because of everyone telling them to do so.)

The only thing he has been kept from doing by other characters (especially the villain) is to be the hero. He is only a human with nothing else, he can help but he can't make a difference on his own. But if we continue to follow the story's theme, he would need to become a hero in his very own way. To claim that title and to use it in a way that is most definetly his, whether with his own competence or his own moral compass.

Toby doesn't have that, since he became trollhunter after Jim, after Jim proved that humans can be trollhunters. He would only be repeating Jim's story with some differences, but the struggles would be the exact same. Meanwhile Claire is having her very own difficulty because she has her very own role as a hero. Her struggles are similar, but not completely the same.

See, when I talked about alien!toby it was because it was easy to tell yourself that aliens might not recognize Toby as one of their own, which could create some sort of "you want to be like us but you'll never be, you're just a human/too bad at it". It's also easy to imagine Toby having trouble with that part of him, either physically or mentally. After all he always thought he was a human, learning that you're part alien is a whole pre-written identity crisis.

And yes even his sacrifice at the end of RotT doesn't really fit the story's themes. Yes Toby saved the world in his own way, but what I don't like about it is the fact that he is considered a hero because he sacrificed himself.

He is not a hero because of who he is, he is a hero because of what he has lost. This is a one time kind of heroism, because as you might guess you do not come back from the dead every so often. I am not saying that he shouldn't have sacrificed himself, i'm saying that every main character became a hero before trying to sacrifice themselves. You saw a big part of their competences before that, but like I said Toby doesn't have particular competences in the show.

It still fits the theme "don't think, become" of the show, but if we look on the plot from afar it means that Jim had to fight to become a hero, Claire had to fight to become a hero, same for AAARRRGGHH!!!, Blinky had to lead to become a hero and Toby had to die.

This is quite a horrible thought don't you think ? That the only way for one of the main character to be fully recognized as a hero in the plot is to die. It worked in some shows, especially for morally grey characters, but throughout this whole post I showed you how Toby had nothing meaningful given to him, and the only thing he always had was ripped from him.

This is not something carefully planned, it's just that they did not cared.

Nothing in the whole franchise justify the tragedy that is Tobias's character arc. Changelings became heroes, Gumm gumms can be heroes, humans too, except for Toby.

Toby is left with crumbs. No magical ancient weapon, just a warhammer that doesn't even have a story worth mentionning in the show. No cool and original duty, just the one that his bestfriend had and who decided to give it to him to make him happy. A big act of heroism, that only Jim will ever remember because this happened in another timeline.

His role as trollhunter, his warhammer, his role as "protector of arcadia" at the end of Trollhunters, even his dynamic in the group is merely a pat on the head in hopes that it will make him shut up and comply. And while some characters are beautiful tragedies, Tobias is not an intentional one. If it was one, you would have seen it coming. If it truly was meant to be a tragedy, the writers would have dropped signs, they would have portrayed it in a particular way.

Even if they lacked time in the later seasons of Trollhunters and Wizards, they had time in 3Below. They had 2 seasons to give anything to Toby, whether tragical or magical.

But they didn't, so nothing shows that they intentionally did it. I even think that they did realize what they had done at some point, and their only way to arrange things was to make him die so that he could finally be a hero.

A hero that only one character will ever remember in the show, because they couldn't even give him that glory, it had to be reaped away from him in one way or another. Because at the end of RotT, in terms of timeline, it never happened, or at least it didn't happen yet.

In conclusion to all of that, I will repeat what I have said a thousand times in this post : Toby wasn't done justice with this movie. He didn't have the ending he deserved, and his story arc in my opinion isn't really a story arc. It's more like him complying and shutting up about his situation because he was given something that looks shiny, but holds no real importance nor deep meaning (or some twisted meaning).

The writers did not want to include Toby in the plot for most of the franchise, and when they did it was in the only way they knew of : something that looks shiny and cool but is in reality just a way to shut everyone up and move on.

[jajanvm-imbi]

Hey remember when I said that this was the most frustrating thing about being a Helluva Boss enjoyer?

Yeah I was wrong.

The most frustrating thing about being a Helluva Boss enjoyer is explicitly stating multiple times that I like show and then get called an anti and homophobic and media illiterate when I complain about the direction it has taken.

I LIKE the comedy

I LIKE the animation and artstyle

I LIKE the more serious plotlines like the government agents plot and the Cherubs plot

I LIKE the themes of friendship and found family

I even like most of the songs!

And ofc the voice cast slays every time

But just because your show has angst and tears and drama and sad music doesn't automatically make it "good".

Just because your characters are queer doesn't automatically make them good or well written characters

This fandom is so frustrating to deal with when you want to express your more nuanced takes of it

This is probably gonna be the last post I make about this subject and about Helluva Boss in general, this shit is too stupid to deal with

[plaidonsad]

Watching Critical Role last night I saw something that couldn't be unseen, something that reminded me of a joke from the Trollhunters fandom, so I must ask...

Just a couple of regular guys, standing between an evil wizard and the end of the world, with nothing but a sword and their friends.

Official art below the cut.

Yes I picked the level 10 art because they're in the same pose.

[best-fictional-cat]

Round 1 Group 13

Frumpkin (Critical Role) vs Archie (Tales of Arcadia)

[arcadialedger]

I love my friends because I can ask them “what do these two duos have in common?” and they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

[elizabethemerald]

Pride Prompts!

Time for my favorite June tradition! Send me some Pride prompts! Send me a character and I'll write something gay for them! Maybe how they figured out their gender or sexual identity, how they came out to their loved ones, what them attending a Pride parade would entail, or maybe just a sweet date! All June you can send me Prompts!

I'm tagging all my fandoms so feel free to send prompts for any of them!

[pinkytoothlesso11]

Hi Pinky. You remember that spell Strickler and Angor used to tie Strickler's life to Barabra so Jim couldn't kill him?

What if Jim had been the one tied to Strickler's life instead of his mom? How much of Canon do you think would change?

How Strickler and Angor Rot would be able to manage something like that is up to you.

Well, first of all that would sort of make killing Jim impossible, not like Strickler ever truly wanted Jim dead, or at least not completely, but still, what would the point of Angor Rot be other than to delay Strickler having to make a decision on what to actually do.

But it still works in keeping Jim from harming or killing him. (I don't think Jim would have killed Strickler for all his threats, but that's beside my point). Only now Jim has a reason to abuse the binding spell in ways to minorly inconvenience Strickler. Probably Strickler ends up equally petty.

Angor Rot probably wants to kill them both anyway, things still backfire, but with the difference of Strickler and Jim bonding faster and I think Strickler would make sure the spell was not incomplete. Obviously Barbara would be mad still, and not lose her memories, but it might mean Strickler stays in Arcadia. And then there would be a slow burn enemies to friends to lovers Stricklake that can actually have enough time for Strickler to apologise and actually make amends. Always thought Strickler leaving at the end of season 1 and coming back season 3 and Barbara losing her memories still season 3 was a bit too convenient. The writers should have forced Barbara, Strickler and Jim to work through differences and become a close knit family on screen and in a less rushed time frame.

[childofaura]

All right, it seems like I’ve got a lot of understanding and rational people who responded to my earlier inquiry about making a Claire criticism post. So I’m gonna go ahead and do it, since this is something that’s sat in my mind every time a new installment of the ToA series came out.

SO BIG DISCLAIMER BECAUSE I WANT EVERYONE TO READ THIS BEFORE ANYONE GETS MAD AT ME:

THIS IS ALL MY SUBJECTIVE OPINION. I MIGHT BE PHRASING THIS POST LIKE IT’S AN ABSOLUTE, BUT IT’S NOT, IT’S ALL ISSUES I PERSONALLY FEEL WITH CLAIRE’S CHARACTER. SO IF YOU LIKE CLAIRE, THIS IS NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK OR ME TELLING YOU YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING/CAN’T LIKE CLAIRE.

Now that I think I’ve got that out of the way, I wanna jump into the actual post of why I’ve never really liked Claire’s character.

If we’re being really really REALLY honest... I think the issue is mostly based off of “The writers didn’t know how to write Claire”. I’ve felt like every character in Trollhunters (specifically Trollhunters, we don’t talk about 3Below and while Wizards was pretty positive overall, that was also a lot of hit or miss, and that series plays even more into why I don’t like Claire) was executed pretty well to fulfill their roles as characters or to be compelling and pretty easy to grasp their personalities.

Except Claire.

Personality issues:

Her character’s inconsistent and flip-flops. To start off, her intro in the series is just “pretty girl that Jim likes”. We get the promising sense that she has some non-conforming interests at first, as she’s advertising try-outs for the play, but that’s just lifted from the Trollhunters book and we never see any interest in theater arts from Claire ever again after that. Her hair (and I’m sorry but I hate her hair with all the stupid hairclips in the front, it’s so distracting and it looks dumb) with the streak in it and the skull shirt she wears makes you assume she’s somewhat rebellious, maybe kind of punk, but she’s a straight-A trouble-free student who’s apparently popular with everyone, and helps her mom out with campaigning for her political career. There’s really nothing to her personality that shows itself consistently, besides the Papa Skull interest.

And then there’s how badly her character and personality was executed at first; When Steve’s about to beat up Jim, she tries to step in but gets shoved back. Great! She has a sense of right and wrong and she’ll stand up for others. But then later on, she scolds Jim for the crime of... standing up for himself? Which sends a really bad message that she’d have rather had Jim publicly humiliate himself and/or possibly get beat up. Then later she’s willing to go to a Papa Skull concert with the same guy who shoved her. That’s incredibly weak character right there.

She starts to show some more positive character when after getting mad at Jim for trashing the house, she puts two and two together and realizes something’s off, but then she just... sneaks into his house like a weirdo, even though nothing about her character suggests that she’d do something like that and she has no real reason besides “Jim wasn’t straightforward about the party”; it’s not something a normal person would do or what SHE would do given her current character development. And then this one’s a smaller gripe, but I hated her scoff in Wizards when the tournament was going on and the guards didn’t let her in, she goes “Ugh, boys’ club!”. UH HELLO, YOU IDIOT. THERE WERE FEMALE GUARDS CLEARLY EMPLOYED IN ARTHUR’S SERVICE. HELL, THE GUARD THAT BULLAR ATE WAS A FEMALE GUARD. GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND STOP PRETENDING LIKE YOU’RE BEING SLIGHTED BECAUSE YOU’RE A GIRL. YOU WERE CONSIDERED A CIVILIAN TRYING TO ENTER A TOURNAMENT FOR TRAINED KNIGHTS.

Now past all the character inconsistencies in those first thirteen-ish episodes, the second issue I have with Claire’s character is that she teeters pretty dangerously into Mary Sue territory. Everyone (I was almost gonna say “who isn’t a major villain” but EVEN MORGANA ends up liking her. So MOSTLY everyone) who isn’t a main antagonist ends up liking Claire in some way. Steve the bully? Tries to date her. Mary, whom she said she wasn’t really close friends with? Is friends with her and even has her number. Freaking VENDEL, the grumpiest character in the show, only has to hear her talk in Troll and he immediately likes her without her having to earn his trust (which also she just... never uses Troll again. Sure is convenient that she learned to speak fluent Troll just for one scene and one character to like her). Morgana takes a liking to her. Compare that to how hard Jim had to work to gain the trust of others: His bond with Draal, learning to prove himself to Vendel, engaging with Nomura in prison and befriending her. She too easily assimilates with other characters; I’d have less issues if she had to work like Jim did, but the only time she does is with NotEnrique.

Skills and abilities don’t feel earned or consistent:

And then the whole thing with her powers and her physical abilities. It was never explained in the show how she actually obtained innate magic powers not connected to the Shadow Staff itself (And no, if you have to explain it on Twitter as a writer, that’s not good writing, that’s forcing your audience to play detective). She’s just all of a sudden doing awfully-convenient high-level magic in the first two episodes (or maybe three, whenever she created that shadow-cover for Jim and the others to escape.) without explaining HOW she had got those powers, and then she performs it perfectly whenever the plot needs it (She’s literally shown to be more powerful than Merlin, how stupid is that?). Remember in the movie where everyone was like “Oh no Claire, don’t use your powers because it could hurt you!” and she does anyways and she faints for like three seconds and then has no other physical repercussions? Or how she’s somehow MORE capable than Jim when it comes to fighting, like how in the Chinese Trollmarket she manages to swipe one of the other troll’s weapons, which has an entirely different weight and size to her shadow staff and probably required extensive training, and she just uses it flawlessly to fight? The only times Claire really fails are when the plot calls for it.

Plot can’t happen without her:

And finally, she hijacks the plot constantly, more than her character should, and has more importance placed on her role in the story than anyone else. Even Blinky. She even took over the plot for Wizards, which was supposed to be Douxie’s story and Douxie’s character-focus. The poor guy took a backseat to his own story because the plot relied on Claire to move forward, literally nothing could be done without her. And I mentioned it before but even though Douxie’s character still managed to get enough development, it was hardly enough because Claire hogged up so much screen-time focusing on HER and HER magic development and HER relationship with Morgana over Douxie and HIS magic development and HIS relationship with Merlin.

And also the fact that it’s Claire who ends up either saving the day or taking priority over the others. Who was the one who defeated Morgana in Trollhunters? Claire. Who brought Jim back to life as a human, despite the fact that even Merlin stated it was impossible for him to make Jim a human again? Claire. Who was it that Jim made sure to establish his relationship with, but not anyone else? CLAIRE. That ending in the movie where he doesn’t seem to care about his relationship with Blinky, Draal, Strickler, etc, but oh we’ve GOTTA have his girlfriend!

Overall, even typing this, I don’t think it’s her fault even though I hate her character; it’s the writers’ fault for doing such a sloppy and inconsistent job because she’s boiled down to just a “girl empowerment”. Because in the book, Claire Fontaine is AWESOME. She’s a Scot descended from a warrior lineage which actually explains why she has weapon capabilities, she’s explained that she’s not really a “popular girl” but she’s super confident in herself and doesn’t really care what others think, and that’s what Jim finds charming about her, and she rips Steve a new one after hearing that he’s just trying to charm her to piss off Jim.

But Claire Nunez is a mess of a poorly executed character. And again, I blame the writers because I think Claire could have been great if they knew what they were doing with her and made her balanced.

[gh99st]

As daylight dies

Heads up if you don't like dark angsty stuff, contains blood and takes place in a bathroom and depending on how you take it, themes of suicide

-simply, if rott went for a darker sort of tone and toby didn't get the amulet (Because HELLO! unbecoming?)

Deep red blood swirls down the porcaline sink with the help of tap water, it falls like an everlasting stream from his gaping maw as he gasps in pain. Occasionally the addition of salty tears drips into the monsoon of swirling blood.

He doesnt look into the mirror, even if he could see through the barrage of tears he still wouldn't, he just grasps the sides of the sink firmly

He remembers looking into this mirror many a time, as a happy child brushing his teeth, as a hurried 10 year old late for baseball, and a halfway terrified 15 year old with two huge trolls hiding in his shower

Flashes of forgotten memories cling to him, they strangle the last morsel of hope in his eyes as that too drains away

The distant hum of static grows louder and louder, what should be a soft metalic ticking is gone, what should be a gentle blue glow is replaced with pitch black

Like the pitch black of that awful elixir, like the pitch black of the cavernous dimension it sucked him into, Like the pitch black of his insides as they twisted and clenched in pain and like the infamous darklands that he spent two hellish weeks in

The static grows louder and louder. Whispered voices trickle into his ears. His eyes clamps shut

'shut up!' he wills it away, he does not prevail

More blood pours out of his mouth as he chokes on rising bile, the tears just keep coming. Scalding his stone cold face

God forbid if his mom heard him, she's in the next room. She would worry so much..

But why is it him, why choose him, why curse him, out of all people in this world why poison him with knowledge only he remembers

(Becaue as per his own words "I can't do this alone")

High pitched ringing flooded into his ears, it brings out a burning, pulsing, bleeding, stabbing headache. The static seems to get louder, overwhelmingly so, so loud that he opened his eyes and could see it

He was so tired, if he dared look in the mirror he would see black circles that would never truly fade.

he carried the worlds weight and it was breaking his back. Crushing him ever so slowly until he couldn't see the path that was lay for him

He knows he can make this burden go away, make this pain stop forever but he can't

There will always be other trollhunters, but never another one of him... Never one who remebers the way to fix things, it would never even work anyways. He is the amulet's champion and if Draal inherited the amulet after he died he would never forgive himself

But can he do this again.... For the third time? He bearly did it once, but on the other hand he's been back for a few weeks now, everything's according to plan, the school trip to the museum is in a few days where Toby will loose his chubby tracker and could die as they faces the goblin hoard

his hand shake, a whiney sob escapes him

He almost wants to run away

But he can't let his fear overtake him, what would happen if he leaves? Who will save everyone? what consequences would take place? who would suffer because he isn't...

Who would answer the call? only he truly knows how to save the world! he can't let his manic thoughts win

Fear is the precursor to valor, let fear overtake him and he can't take himself to greater heights, to become again

To move on from lingering thoughts and prevail in the face of darkness, he can't tell anyone about his little escapades with the time stone

It's too much of a risk, too much to go wrong, too much to lose.

With an iron grip now latched into a fist James Lake junior turns off the tap and quietly storms off, into his room and onto his bed

God he was such a mess

[rule-number-3]

3Below feels like it started as someone’s oc-heavy fanfic that accidentally took on such a life of its own that it’s barely recognizable as a derivative of another work save for few callbacks and character that are honestly so different, they hardly even matter.

Wizards feels like a timetravel au written by someone who hadn’t seen the show in a while and just didn’t care enough to so much as check the series wikipedia. They just remembered a few names and ideas and went with whatever their heart said.

RoTT reads like a fanfic written by someone who was so upset by the canon ending that they did everything they could to justify the creation of an entire au where everything is perfect and fine and their faves WILL NOT die this time because one person is around to make sure everything goes the right way. The author was too emotionally distraught to double check their writing, but they’re fixing it all anyway, so it’s ok.

[honeyxmonkey]

Person: Oh, so you identify as-

Douxie: I don't identify as genderfluid. I am genderfluid. I identify as a BITCH.

[theographos]

Why Aliens feels off in Tales of Arcadia

Don't get me wrong, I really like Aja, Krel and Varvatos. I even think that 3Below was quite good, even if i'm not a sci-fi fan at all (i even managed to fall asleep in front of every Star Wars ever, and not with any other movie). But good doesn't mean good in terms of storytelling. Because after all 3Below is set in the Tales of Arcadia franchise, and let's just say they don't 100% fit in it.

So why is that ?

1. Trollhunters is based on a book, and the book doesn't contain any aliens.

Well from what I have researched the book doesn't contain any trace of wizards too. I will also add that I haven't read the original book, I just made some researches about its content on the internet.

For those who don't know, Trollhunters : Tales of Arcadia is a loose adaptation of a book written by Guillermo Del Toro and Daniel Kraus, called Trollhunters. It's an adaptation similar to How to Train Your Dragon : The characters are present, the surnatural/fantasy aspect of the book is also present but everything else is changed. I even saw that Steve dies in the book, so glad they didn't take that route.

And i'm not part of the people who screams and cry everytime there is any changes from a book to a movie, To be deeply honest with you all I studied Cinema and English litterature in highschool and my final projet for those two subjects was to talk about how some changes in book adaptations are a good idea.

But it just shows that writer did not have any basic material for it. They had to create it all from scraps, and I feel like the first season of Trollhunters was already out when they thought of aliens, so they decided to connect it howerver they could. Which leads us to our second point.

2. Aliens don't really have any deep connections with humans, trolls or wizards.

Wizards and trolls fought against Gumm gumms, wizards have created many magical relics that Trolls uses, and as we saw with Hisirdoux wizards have an habit of dealing with trolls species. The interactions are already present, they have a deep history between them, shares problems and common knowledge.

Aliens apparently shook hands long time ago on Earth and were gone for the rest of the time, so except an old memory forgotten by almost everyone, they don't really have a pre existing history tying them to the different races in the story.

Trolls and wizards are based on things we already know off. I mean we have countless myths and legends about them already, but there is a bit more to that.

Horseshoe are items to uncover if someone is a changeling, trolls love to eat socks, which ties into the forever myth of "why am I always missing a sock", you think that racoons made your trashcan fall but it could have been gobelins, is that a black cat or just a small dragon etc. You really have the aspect that you interact with the "underworld" on a day to day basis without being actually aware of, and that goes deeper than just "oh this random person is just a troll in disguise".

Aliens don't really have that, like no one except the army used alien technology before 3Below, and still it was in secret so we can't really copy that to our everyday life as easily as the previous examples that I made.

Earth is about Trolls, humans, demi-gods and wizards. And it also happened to have aliens once in a while, but nothing much about it. And that leads us to our last point.

3. The plot has no space for Aliens.

Since the whole story is about earth and the fate of earth, we don't really have space for Aliens in the plot (no puns intended). We can literally see that with the 3Below plot : gumm gumms are something completly unrelated to the plot, it just happens in the back while the main plot is happening. 3Below is more of a spin-off or a "What If?" kind of show than a continuation of the main plot.

3Below is an interlude, an easter egg for the fans. You barely see the main cast, the main cast barely acknowledge the presence of the trio in their own show.

See I wouldn't be criticizing it if it was considered as such in the franchise. A side-story that doesn't impact the plot, but for fan service it will appear in the final movie so that everyone has their conclusion.

But it's not the case, it is seen as an important part of the story by the studio. It has never been advertised as something else than an active part of Tales of Arcadia.

If they truly wanted something about aliens, it should have been as a side story, a spin off.

But as a major part of the franchise, it doesn't deserve its spot and you can feel it.

[dearest-sparksandstars]

If I had a nickel for every time a character was chosen for something but then couldn’t take off their armor I would have two nickels but it’s weird that it happened twice right

[zmichelle1234]

Wrote a Tales of Arcadia fic about the Trollhunters, creepslayerz and wizards running into each other in the middle of the night.

I’m more of a beginner writer so I welcome criticism

[chlothequeen]

I hate that some streaming services are slowly starting to order 8 episode seasons instead of 10

[youngersiblingstournament]

Younger Siblings Tournament Bracket Reveal

A few things I want to mention before I reveal the bracket (and make the post really long because all the matchups will be listed in text):

Seeding of fictional characters in tumblr polls is inherently subjective. I did try to make it so that more popular characters/media would (most likely) face off against each other in later rounds, but I may be overestimating or underestimating the popularity of some characters/media, especially ones I'm not familiar with. There are some round 1 matchups that are probably a closer match but none of them are between the strongest candidates... I think.

The more niche characters will probably get obliterated in the first round as per Squimbus' Law. This is a tumblr poll and I do fully expect more popular characters to sweep, but that doesn't mean you can't encourage your friends to give your niche faves a fighting chance.

Also there are some matchups I literally just thought would be funny. Please don't take this too seriously.

I'm sorry BNHA fans.

(Preliminary Patch Notes 3/14: Swapped brackets 2 and 3, and brackets 19 and 21.)

[Image description: A 64-person tournament bracket labeled "younger siblings tournament" with a smiley face. The top-left quarter is labeled "quarter A" and color-coded red, the bottom-left quarter is labeled "quarter B" and color-coded green, the top-right quarter is labeled "quarter C" and color-coded purple, and the bottom-right quarter is labeled "quarter D" and color-coded gold. The starting brackets are labeled 1-32 and are as listed below. End ID]

Quarter A:

Ritsu Kageyama (Mob Psycho 100) vs. Ame (Wolf Children)

Malo (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) vs. Cat Valentine (Victorious)

Danny Fenton (Danny Phantom) vs. Fern (Adventure Time)

Skeletor (Masters of the Universe) vs. Shuri (Marvel)

Ryotaro Nogami (Kamen Rider Den-O) vs. Princess Luna (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

Lilo Pelekai (Lilo & Stitch) vs. Sir Agravain (Arthurian Legend)

Dewey Wilkerson (Malcolm in the Middle) vs. Siobhan "Shiv" Roy (Succession)

Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto) vs. Razputin Aquato (Psychonauts)

Quarter B:

(9) Maya Fey (Ace Attorney) vs. Louie Duck (DuckTales)

(10) Falin Touden (Dungeon Meshi) vs. Saburo Yamada (Hypnosis Mic)

(11) Noelle Holiday (Deltarune) vs. Krel Tarron (Tales of Arcadia)

(12) Melinoë (Hades) vs. Han Yoohyun (The S-Classes That I Raised)

(13) Abel (The Bible) vs. Hiro Hamada (Big Hero 6)

(14) Lisa Simpson (The Simpsons) vs. Greg (Over the Garden Wall)

(15) Dante (Devil May Cry) vs. Alisaie Leveilleur (Final Fantasy XIV)

(16) Shoto Todoroki (My Hero Academia) vs. Kofuku (Real Life)

Quarter C:

(17) Luigi (Super Mario) vs. Genji Shimada (Overwatch)

(18) Yukio Okumura (Blue Exorcist) vs. Saki Tenma (Project Sekai)

(19) Fleabag (Fleabag) vs. Emerald Haywood (Nope)

(20) Sam Winchester (Supernatural) vs. Jiang Cheng (The Untamed)

(21) Nico Di Angelo (Percy Jackson) vs. Gaz Membrane (Invader Zim)

(22) Manny Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) vs. Jimmy "Saul Goodman" McGill (Better Call Saul)

(23) Sunny Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events) vs. Sunny (Omori)

(24) Miles "Tails" Prower (Sonic the Hedgehog) vs. Mugman (Cuphead)

Quarter D:

(25) Michelangelo Hamato (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) vs. The Knight (Hollow Knight)

(26) Vash the Stampede (Trigun) vs. Ruby Rose (RWBY)

(27) Sensei Wu (Lego Ninjago) vs. King Clawthorne (The Owl House)

(28) Dawn Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) vs. Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

(29) Jinx (Arcane) vs. Caduceus Clay (Critical Role)

(30) Damian Wayne (DC) vs. Alluka Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)

(31) Hop (Pokémon Sword and Shield) vs. Mirabel Madrigal (Encanto)

(32) Rhyme Bito (The World Ends With You) vs. Alphonse Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Round 1 is ongoing! Matchups are linked (or if you prefer to scroll through the matchup posts, go to the "younger siblings tournament" tag on my blog)