Big Huge Irritated Rant About The Latest COTL Update's Story Choices and the Implications
So the lore drop in the new Cult of the Lamb update, Unholy Alliance, pisses me off. The writer's confirmation of what that lore drop means pisses me off more.
Why? Because it's unnecessary recontextualization that was made pretty obviously in favor in one character in particular, and somehow in that process makes that very same character way less interesting. I think it's incredibly detrimental to the story and I will Explain Why in a second.
But before I do, I just want to put this out there: Prior to this update, my opinions on the Bishops and Narinder and that entire plotline were pretty neutral. I'm an NPC enjoyer, I spend my time thinking about that moth with two lines of dialogue. I did not previously have strong opinions on Narinder or Shamura outside of mild dislike for fandom treatment. So I'm not coming from a place of bias here (or at the very least I'm not trying to be).
I genuinely, wholeheartedly, 100% believe this writing decision was unnecessary and the Wrong one to make, and I think it severely undercuts the original plotline because this was a retcon and one that sucks pretty bad.
Ok we're on the same page here? Ok awesome. Long rant ahead, and obvs spoilers for the Unholy Alliance update
So first, what the hell am I talking about? What part of the update do I not like? Let's clarify that first.
It's Shamura's dialogue. Like, all of it. For ease of understanding, here is all the dialogue I will be talking about:
"Ah... we gathered here, the four of us, a council of war and I the general. I have not forgot.
I did not tell them that chains to bind a God must be forged of Godly matters.
What matter of Gods? What matters of Gods? I have not forgot.
The betrayal of kin, the breaking of spirits, blood spilled, his and ours.
...the sacrifice of what we had sacrificed so much for...
...shaped into shackles for our own brother. And our wounds always to weep. Such sharp claws..."
--
"He sought to break nature's own laws. Death was his, yet he placed his sacred duty in peril. His experiments...
Experiments I encouraged. I am not... blameless. My soul, stained... yet I do not...
Ah, The story. Yes the story...
He wanted to open the doors between Life and Death, to... to allow their return. Those mere... mortals.
Even though he knew their sacrifices, their faith, their fears sustain us.
Death must be the end. Otherwise, what use would they have for Gods?
They began to flock to him. What he promised, we could not match. He swelled with devotion... while we waned.
Would he have let us perish? I could not take... the risk... the hunger...
You are lucky there are none left to force such a choice on you. Hail, Lamb. Last God... lonely God...
Ah... I feel... unburdened..."
And for fun, before anyone tells me I'm misinterpreting any of this or that it's left up to interpretation or is intentionally vague, Word of God (the writer of CoTL):
And it's this being Word of God that's spurred me into making this post to begin with. Because prior to this, I just seethed about this dialogue's implications in my server and hoped I was wrong. But now it's been confirmed what this means, and I'm . Disgruntled, to say the least!
And since I've started writing this post, there's been another addition made to further clarify parts of this. But I'm going to go over that addition more towards the end, because it also irritates me for separate reasons.
So, let's get this straight.
Prior to this update, the specifics of what happens between Narinder and the Bishops were pretty vague. We were told Narinder was "gluttonous in his ambition," per Shamura's previous dialogue, and that they "introduced him to ideas of change" but "Death cannot flow backward." Heket somewhat elaborates on this by saying he preached "heresy" and "noxious ideals" that would not be tolerated. Heket also notably refers to Narinder as a flat-out "monster."
Narinder attacked his siblings and left them each with a big, symbolic wound. Then he was chained by the four of them, with Shamura the one to lead it (in their own words).
There's a lot of talk of betrayal, but before this update, it was unclear if the betrayal was meant to just be Narinder's experimenting with death (which even then was pretty heavily suggested to be resurrections) or the wounds inflicted upon his siblings. There's also a lot of talk of sacrifice, i.e. from Leshy if you kill Heket before him: "After everything we did. After everything we sacrificed. He will not be satiated."
Regardless, the picture this painted was of Narinder being this ambitious, evil, violent God that even his fellow Gods (Kallamar) feared and felt needed controlling. The idea that the wounds could have been in the nail in the coffin to this entire ordeal made sense; as they were obviously planned by Narinder to some extent (otherwise why be so intentional about who got what wound?) and a fair reaction to Being Mutilated would of course be to chain him.
Then of course there's the idea that the wounds were given while he was being chained and in self-defense, which only seems possible if you think Narinder could take on all four of his siblings at once like that and only manage to lose his claws in the ordeal (which was only revealed in this update to be something he's implied to have lost thru the relic). I thought this at first too, but realized it seems pretty impractical for that to have been the case if the wounds were also purposeful in who got what. I mean, sure, they could all be coincidentally symbolically appropriate for each Bishop, but I have doouuubts?
but now we're here, with this update, and all has been revealed.
And what's been revealed exactly?
Narinder's thing he was doing was indeed resurrections (we knew that)
Shamura encouraged him to do it (we also already knew this)
It seems like he did literally nothing else outside of that
His siblings got pissy about this because it made their domains purposeless and got all their followers to flock to him
"Would he let us perish? I could not take the risk" - Implies they literally did not even ask him
Shamura knew that in order to forge chains that could keep Narinder down, it would require a sacrifice of their bonds AND their flesh
They DID NOT tell the other Bishops this
Their wounds were requirements to chain him. They had to get the wounds they bear now in order to chain him. ONLY Shamura knew this. That means they allowed their siblings (and themself) to get attacked knowing full well what would happen. They may have even encouraged it, perhaps provoked Narinder into it, seeing as they knew the wounds were necessary to have him chained.
(Or they just knew he would retaliate. Which, like. Yeah. They're condemning him after he went down a path they encouraged and, as far as we can tell, nothing else.)
And for... what?
In this version of the story, Narinder was experimenting with resurrections, and Shamura told him to keep doing that. Then he was successful, mortals turned to him, and his siblings (including Shamura, the one who told him to do it) got mad.
That's it. That's their reasoning for chaining him. There's nothing else given.
"Would they perish?" We have no idea. Is that how it works? Seems like Shamura doesn't know either. Or at the very least doesn't know if Narinder intended for that at all. Gives the vibe that literally no effort was made to talk to him and figure this out.
They don't even really go down the "it puts nature out of balance!" path, which would at least have some merit, maybe. It's literally just "we are no longer sustained. What's the point of Gods in this world?" <- idk babe you had all the other ones slaughtered. So you tell me
And then Shamura just took it into their own hands, leading their siblings to their shared wounds (WITHOUT consulting them) and their inevitable destruction because of........... reasons, I guess.
(I mean, if you think about it really hard, they probably also already knew what would happen following all this. With the lamb genocide and Narinder's resurfacing and etc. And they had their siblings wounded anyway. For no god damn reason)
And now why does this make me mad?
Because, honestly, in and of itself, there's not anything necessarily wrong with this added context. It's not contradicting anything in the main game. Shamura knowing what was needed makes sense, after all.
But it's... unnecessary. It screws up the motives and makes them more shallow, less nuanced, more... petty. Making gods petty is cool and all, I love doing that honestly, but in this case it just feels like a waste of potential.
But beyond all that. But most importantly.
This entire recontextualization of events REEKS of being made specifically to absolve Narinder.
I mean, come on. He's made out to be the victim, here. Shamura knew what he would do, knew what he would become, and knew exactly what would happen to their siblings if they sought to chain him (without doing so much as talking to him beforehand), and yet they encouraged it.
All blame is being shifted on Shamura. All Narinder did specifically against his siblings was inflict the wounds, which at this point seems to be hinted as self defense or a retaliation against threat or insult (assuming he was provoked into attacking, somehow). Because the wounds were part of the process.
And almost equally irritating, this seeks to arbitrarily absolve Leshy, Kallamar, and Heket as well, as they had no idea what the plan was and were just strung along.
Which is just kinda worse, right? As far as they are aware, Narinder did just randomly attack them for no reason, and this wasn't foreseen, and surely couldn't have been stopped. All because Shamura didn't tell them any of it.
Shamura is being made into the big bad. Shamura is at fault for everything, for all of it. Narinder is a victim of Shamura encouraging him down a path they later condemn him for, their siblings are victims of Shamura and Narinder both (the latter of which could have been resolved at any point prior), and now any possible intrigue about Narinder being this big bad guy who tore apart his siblings due to his own ambition getting the best of him is ERASED.
It's GONE. All in favor of making him more sympathetic.
And sure, about a million different excuses could be made for Shamura, or could be used to headcanon whatever you want about exactly what happened. But with what we're given right now, just from the source, no attempt as made to stop Narinder before it got to this point. It is literally suggested they didn't even talk to him.
"Maybe they were too scared" - For the other three, maybe. Shamura is the eldest and clearly the most respected one, by Narinder as well (he holds some amount of respect for them even STILL. After EVERYTHING). They at any point could have stopped this.
"Narinder could still have been a bad guy outside of the attacks" - Sure, but we're given little to nothing on that front. In the old dialogue, literally all that's mentioned is the resurrection stuff and the wounds. Shamura is the one who said his ambition made a glutton of him, by the way. And hell, this isn't even touching the very real possibility that all of the Bishops (Narinder included!) are unreliable as hell.
"But Kallamar feared him even before his chaining, that suggests he was still a bad guy beforehand" - Sure, it could! But that's about all we get! And hell, in this new update, Kallamar's fears are fucked with, too. He states:
"Once, long ago, Followers would worship at my altar just to glimpse the beauty of my temple… of course, it could not last forever. Perhaps my siblings did not understand this, but I have always known. It did not make me less afraid. Cowardly Kallamar, ha…"
Here, it seems Kallamar's fears have been changed to be more about the decline of his temple and the loss of his followers, which was happening because of Narinder. He refers to Narinder's plans as "foolish" as opposed to... idk, horrifying, or threatening, or whatever.
He also fully takes on the 'cowardly' title, giving the impression that his fears were somehow unfounded, which wouldn't make a lick of sense if Narinder indeed sucked ass outside of the wounds.
Not to mention he "didn't want to hear it" when Shamura "revealed the plan," but we know because of Shamura that they didn't mention anything about the wounds, so Kallamar didn't want to hear that they... had to chain Narinder? That's literally all he could've been told about the plan. Why wouldn't he want to chain Narinder if he was scared of him up until that point?? Doesn't make any sense!!!
EDIT AFTER I POSTED: On reconsideration this might just be referring the lamb genocide plan, but that's hardly better, because now this update absolves Narinder, Leshy, AND Kallamar by making them blameless in everything (both Leshy and Kallamar expressed not fully understanding the plan for the slaughter or, in this case, not wanting part in it). What's up with THAT. Why is Shamura getting the blame for LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
Anyway, my point is
This was a story decision made to make Narinder sympathetic. It's so blatant. And it's so, so irritating. It gets rid of so many potential cool flaws of Narinder and replaces it with "Actually, Shamura was the bad guy the whole time! Huzzah!"
And honestly, had the entire game come out like this to begin with, released at the start how it is right now, I don't think I'd care this much. But being added now, as an afterthought, after the fandom and devs alike have grown to favor Narinder above all others, it just...
It reeks of favoritism. It smells of revising the story to make Narinder more likeable. It's just erasure.
And for what. Like, I don't want to be That Guy, but I cannot help but notice that one of two nonbinary characters (outside of the Lamb/Goat themselves) is being this heavily demonized in favor of absolving a Man of his crimes. What's, uh. What's up with that.
Oh, and that addition by the writer I mentioned was made while I was writing this.
This was made after Jojo was questioned whether this was a retcon as to who caused the wounds, as this whole thing could also certainly be read as Shamura being the one to directly wound their siblings (which I didn't think was the case, but still).
"I don't know if they thought it would be so severe" - How do I put this in a nice way.
This feels like a weaseling out answer. This feels like giving Shamura an out only after being questioned on this writing choice.
How could they possibly not know how severe it would be. This spider is Knowledge. This spider has Foresight of some kind.
And how do you not know what they thought. You are the Writer. If you want to clarify something like this you gotta say it with your full chest.
Not to mention a good portion of the fandom probably won't even see these tweets, so this context is all missing from the story presented in the game. This is Tacked On Context on top of already Tacked On Context. It's unnecessary retconning all the way down.
Anyway. I realize the fandom at large will not care about this, because (and I mean this in the nicest way I can manage) the Narinder favoritism in this fandom is already impenetrable, but for me personally? This retconning that was so clearly done out of that favoritism?
It ruined Narinder's character for me. More than the fandom possibly could have. I mean, if it's fanon, it can be ignored. But this was canonized. Because Narinder is the dev team's favorite guy.
And I can't stand it.
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so howd you like it what are your thoughts
Anon, I hope you don't mind it but I'm going to use this ask as an excuse to do my Full On Rambling post about my honest thoughts. I'll try to keep is as coherent as possible, but I can't actually guarantee it :')
Also putting it under a cut because some of it is going to sound negative (as I said, I want to exorcise any critiques I have so I can go back to Vibing asap) and I know many people (undestandibly!!) won't want to read that, and I don't want to burst anyone's happy bubble :) . And also because of s3 spoilers. Bear in mind that it's not a rant post, I still had tons of fun with the season. But since I'm going to be talking about the things I enjoyed forevermore and gonna try to keep all my 'didn't really like this :/'s contained in this post, it may come out sounding like I enjoyed it less than I truly did. Here we go, get ready for some Thoughts
-> Content
Okay, listen. This season was fun. I had a nice time watching the newest shenanigans. New characters (with one notable exception) were a joy to watch (yes, even the thing. We're in a toxic situationship) and I was greatly amused by their adventures; most of them kept me on the edge of my seat.
(ok, here's where the negativity begins. Please don't take me for someone who wanted everything to be done for Their Specific Standards or who thinks they know more than the professional and extremely skilled team that was behind the series. I'm just throwing around thoughts about how I feel, but in the end, the only thing that matters is that Luke Pearson and the team got to tell the story they wanted to. If that was achieved, I'm happy regardless)
However, I couldn't help but think that some of it felt... like it was "thrown" at us, in a way? To be fair, I think most of the negative points I'll discuss in this post are a consequence of this season being 6 epsidoes short of what the writers originally planned because, as I've mentioned before, I do think the show's writing is great and that the team puts their heart and soul into making this the best cartoon possible. Anyway, what I mean is that at times I thought the episodes seemed so worried with delivering all the information they could that a lot was left behind and some stuff didn't really tie together with the rest.
For example; I still cannot understand why aunt Astrid and Anders had to be these big surprises that had never been mentioned before if Hilda, the character who we see this world through, already knew about them? Don't misunderstand me, I am well aware that these nitpicks of mine are subjective and only my personal opinions that may very well simply be a consequence of not understanding what the writers were trying to achieve. I just feel like Johanna's family and Hilda's father are topics that have been discussed so at lenght in the fandom, precisely because they'd been so carefully skirted around in the previous seasons, that the reveal that nothing really dramatic had happened (between Johanna/Astrid and Johanna/Anders, at least) feels anticlimatic to me. It just feels (again, to me, personal opinion) that if this was going to be the case all along they could have mentioned these characters before, and it would have made the narrative make a little more sense.
(This is especially true to me in Anders' case. Bc it felt to me like they had been trying to highlight how irrelevant Hilda's dad was to the story in the first seasons by not bringing him up at all, by not even pointing out his abscence. But I can't really see the point in that if you're gonna bring out the man either way)
Ironically, at the same time I felt like some of the arcs were a tad overachieving, especially the Johanna's parents one. I just felt like it was Too Much Too Quickly, which once again is likely because of the season having been shortened. I feel like if they really wanted to do that arc, and that way, it would have been helpful to cut some other storylines so they could begin fleshing out this one earlier. They way it was done I just personally (can you tell I'm terrified of being taken as a hater?) felt like there was no time at all to get either used to the idea of Johanna being half faerie nor to get attatched to her parents. Like. I know the episode was the season's emotional peak, but it just didn't hit me the way I know it should.
Not sure if this was a me problem, but I felt like the audience wasn't given enough time to process what had even happened when they got stuck in the fairie island, nor to even consider that they'd truly be stuck there forever, much less to fully process the sacrifice Johanna was making when she left it with Hilda. I didn't get to get attached to Johanna's parents or to the dynamic they have with their daughter. I didn't suffer the way I wanted to when I saw them having to part ways, because I couldn't become invested in their bond when I was still trying to wrap my head around what their backstory even was and pay attention to the action heavy scenes that were to come.
What I'm gonna say here is way meaner than the people behind the show's writing deserve and I know, I can absolutely tell it isn't the case because you can see some of the foreshadowing once you have the benefit of hindsight, but it felt to me like some of Johanna's backstory was written for shock value alone. Which, considering the previous components of the season that I have already mentioned felt underwhelming, was even more jarring.
Another thing is that I feel like a lot was sacrificed in order to do these overachieving arcs. This maaay just be the side character lover and change hater in me, but I do feel like in order to present to us all these new concepts that would be necessary for the backstory to make sense, we were deprived of some elements in Hilda The Series that are arguably what the show does best. It felt like they all but scratched all of their previous stories, characters and components to switch them up for new ones. Pikablob has said it better than me, tbh.
However. I do feel like saying that none of the fears I had for the season came true. No character feels ooc, no one was left with an incomplete arc, and though I can't see how Anders contributes to the story, if he had to be there I feel like the way that was it done was the right one.
-> Pacing
Frenetic. Run for the hills kind of thing sometimes. Which, once again, I can't bring myself to believe was the writers' fault, not when they had other 6 episodes planned that they didn't get to do. I absolutely understand that they had to condense everything they wanted to show us into half the runtime. But it did become an issue (to me) when instead of the trademark Hilda Idyllic Tranquility I usually feel while watching (even plot and action heavy content like TMK), I felt like I was watching a completely different cartoon. Carmen Sandiego, or something like that (please note that I do also love Carmen Sandiego). Many times it just felt like there was no breathing space, which isn't necessarily bad when done well, but I hadn't gone into the season prepared for that.
It wasn't a problem that was all around present, though. I do want to point out that imo "The Giant Slayer", "The Laughing Merman", "Strange Frequencies" and even "The Forgotten Lake" still felt like Hilda to me. Which is where I realize what the main issue I had with the season was. That a lot of it just felt like a different show.
-> ~ vibes ~
I am bringing back the disclaimer that if the team told the story they wanted to, then good for them, I'm pleased as can be. I do enjoy that the series played with some different concepts. The musicality and colours in The Laughing Merman, for example, were absolutely delightful to me. Seriously, I want an entire Hilda musical now.
But some things I just couldn't help but feel were so disconnected from the previous feel of the show that it felt to me like they didn't belong. You can sum the rest of this post up by saying that season 3 would have been one of my favourite ever cartoons if it had been its own thing. But it's not, so I can't help but compare it and try to understand how all of the installments work when together.
The faeries, for example. I was so excited when I saw the trailer and knew it was going to be one of the plots, because I thought it was going to be another adventure of the day type of thing that would span over three episodes max. And listen, I've talked about how much I love Celtic folklore, and maybe this is just my consistency loving brain being annoying, but it felt a bit... clashing? that this season was based on tales and creatures and treaditions that weren't the scandinavian ones that inspired the rest of the series. It just felt like a major shift in tone that I don't really understand (once again, me problem, may very well be a skill issue on my part & I'm not saying they shouldn't have ventured so far just bc I didn't quite vibe with it). It just feels a bit off to me, knowing that Johanna's backstory was likely planned from the start, that there wasn't any celtic lore at all in previous seasons to make this sudden detachment from nordic folklore feel less out of the blue.
You know that joke that Disney movies like Aladdin and Raya take concepts from different cultures and smash them together like they're not completely different? I felt to some extent (bc OF COURSE Hilda is much better researched and has a lot better quality than that /gen) like they did that this season. But with white people. Which, fair, I can appreciate the irony.
Back to the topic of bold storylines, I understand what the Hilda team did with all the Johanna backstory. I understand that it's something that everyone wanted to see soo bad and they wanted it to be great (and it was). The thing I got stuck on is just that it ended up changing the vibe of the show to me. Whereas previous seasons feel like "slice of life in a magical place", I felt like this time I was watching a magic centered fantasy. Especially when they got into trying to explain the origin of magic and everything. Which is ironic, because I enjoyed the concept a lot and will explore it in the future, but it still felt like something that I wouldn't have expected Hilda the Series to tackle. Like there was a giant shift from folkloric to fantastic that isn't bad, but it is different and I hadn't been prepared for that lol.
God, I feel like I just wrote all of that and just to be A Bitch. I just wanted to get these thoughts out but I don't expect you guys to agree or anything. I genuinely liked watching this season, and I will continue to reiterate this in the future. And even if it doesn't beat s1 or s2 in my heart, I'm still grateful we got a final season at all, and everyone who was involved in it deserves all the praise <3
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