Tag: rant

Sylvanas Rant

I want to like Sylvanas. I really do. I normally love villains especially if they have a gothic theme a about them. Plus, I love archery. A gothic themed undead archer with villainous tendencies? In theory, Sylvanas should be everything I could ever dream or ask for. But that’s not the case. I want to like Sylvanas, I really do, but she is so unbelievably bland and badly handled.

Sylvanas is possibly one of the weakest and least dynamic major lore characters of the Warcraft franchise, and it is a WASTE. I want to say they would take this opportunity in BfA to rectify it and give her actual growth as a character but given their track record, that’s probably not going to happen.

Sylvanas has been put time and time again in what should be character developing events, but she has nothing to show for it. She has shown no growth, and doesn’t doesn’t learn or change throughout WoW. Not even the events of Wrath of the effing LICH KING did anything for her character. She got like one short story about it and a quest, I think? That entire expansion following Sylvanas just screamed wasted opportunity. She’s still the same bland two dimensional character she was since Vanilla trying to give the illusion of being a three dimensional character. It’s frustrating. The only time I’ve ever seen her display actual growth was in WCIII. God I miss WCIII Sylvanas.

Her entire character really just feels so shallow. Like she relies mostly on her gothic themed aesthetic, PTSD and the occasional sneer for a personality. Even when she’s shown in the books or comics to have some thoughts and emotions that show some sign that she’s capable of thinking beyond herself, she never expresses it or shares those thoughts with another which means that they just exist in a vacuum playing absolutely no part in her actual story except to pry some artificial sympathy from the reader. It begs the question, if Sylvanas has a sympathetic thought, but no one is around to hear it, did it really happen? You could take all of those moments out of her entire story and absolutely nothing would change. It makes her seem robotic. Like a one-track mind she’s not capable of venturing beyond.

Now they have the opportunity to make her a compelling villain but the development seems to be surrounding Nathanos of all freaking people, and given how they absolutely wasted her potential in Wrath which was supposed to be a golden opportunity to develop her, I’m afraid they’re just going to axe her like Vol’jin and Garrosh.

toontowntourist:

Steven Universe is beginning to get that same hype backlash that mlp started getting during/after season 3. I should know. I used to be a brony. With a show that gets praised to the heavens like this I was kind of expecting it.

But it’s absurd how many people are doing it to themselves. 

Let’s start with Lion 4. I don’t care if I spoil it somewhat by saying, cause people need to know this- there is no involvement of the season’s overarching plot here. But y’all shouldn’t have expected it. None of the other lion episodes had story development, rather development of steven’s character. You should have expected this instead of going off y’all’s own hype that had no confirmation at all.

Room for Ruby finally subverted the “gem defeated and joins by Naruto-style talk no jutsu” thing that’s been happening to enemy gems. And I’m glad we had a competent bad guy since… well since a while. For once there’s a gem that I feel like punching in the face, instead of some douchey teenager. And it was because they acted like a legitimate conniving frustrating villain. We can’t just keep taking in these gems like lost puppies, else SU won’t have a credible villain to its name.

Tiger Philanthropist gave us some much needed closure on Amethyst’s character development, much like how Pearl’s has been getting. I’m really not sure how that’s bad.

Storm in the Room: Everyone keeps saying that Steven quickly forgives his Mom, but I heard him do nothing of the sort. If anything he still seems upset by his mom’s antics by the end of the episode. Regardless, it finally made Steven open up about how stressful everyone’s expectations and his mom’s mistakes are. Also, more info on Pink Diamond so soon after the Zoo arc? I think not. In fact, that’s an almost laughable thought.

Ronaldo’s fucking name was in the goddamn title of Rocknaldo. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU EVER THINK IT WOULD BE ABOUT A NEW GEM WHEN RONALDO WAS INVOLVED?!

And I get it. With the long waits, you guys have been getting anxious to see how the main story goes on, but you all seem to be coincidentally forgetting how SU plants groups of “slice of life” or character development episodes in the middle of different story arcs.

Just stop making dangerous hype that has no base to it already. Creating that kind of hype only sets your own selves up to fall hard- and apparently also sets you up to point your finger at the crewniverse when things don’t go your way.

I disagree completely. The show can very easily incorporate character development into plot episodes and vice versa, and the pacing is getting too slow. Just because you like the cartoon doesn’t mean you can’t criticize it and that’s exactly what I’ll do.

These character development episodes are getting redundant, too. We literally JUST saw an episode establishing Steven was insecure and unsure about his existence in Storm in the Room. The Audience isn’t stupid, we don’t need it repeated with another filler (yes, FILLER) episode. And that closure with Amethyst’s development arc, Tiger Philanthropist? We could have VERY easily established her development with a plot episode. We don’t need to follow Amethyst and Steven around for 15 minutes to show how “confident and secure” Amethyst is. We could just as easily demonstrate that by watching her kick some homeworld ass for a single scene. We just watched Pearl punch Peridot in the face, go to a music show and get a girl’s number, get involved in a car chase, and offer some snark to Holly Blue Agate (very high commanding gem). Do we REALLY need to follow her around for 15 minutes just to establish how much more ~developed~ she is? The show is breaking a very important rule; “Show, don’t tell”. We don’t need an entire episode with a plot revolving all around how ~developed a character is~. Why not demonstrate it with the main plot?

I MUCH preferred the story telling style of Avatar the Last Airbender, just as an example. Filler episodes (yes FILLER, because that’s what these SU episodes fucking are) that did not contribute to the plot and focused on characters were peppered in like flavor, not used as an artificial means to drag out mysteries in the world. The majority of episodes got right down to the meat of the show (you know, the whole point of following a story to begin with)? Further more, the majority of all character progression was seen in PLOT BUILDING EPISODES. Like when Aang spent an episode learning to be more assertive in order to earthbend, or the episode when Zuko begs Iroh for forgiveness in that prison right before he returns to Team Avatar, or how about that episode where Azula has those hallucinations about her mother right before she battled against Zuko. Wooooow. It’s like you don’t have to commit an entire episode to only a single thing

Here’s another thing. The whole point for following a story is for the plot. We didn’t just open up a Harry Potter book to read about a bunch of magical students gossiping in the commons about their personal lives. We read it for the PLOT and the CONFLICT between Harry and Voldemort. Sure it was nice to see or hear of some of the home lives of the characters, but I really don’t want to read an entire chapter about Harry lamenting his homelife with the Durselys. We can very easily establish Harry doesn’t like living in a broom closet, come to our own conclusions about his relationship with the Durselys, and move the fuck on.

So when a story loses focus on the primary reason for its existence, what motivation do we have to give a damn about the characters? I can only watch Lapis and Peridot banter back and forth with no contribution to the plot for so long. Yes, Peridot likes Earth now, yes Lapis is depressed, we get it. Can they do something now? Maybe Peridot can offer some useful information on homeworld culture or gem anatomy? Maybe Lapis can offer more information on the Gem War? SOMETHING. But when they don’t contribute ANYTHING to the story, I lose focus and stop caring to see them on screen.

Furthermore, the show is only focusing on characters, but not developing any of its other elements. World building is just, if not more, important than character building. How long has it been? And we still know little to nothing about gem culture? How do they live when they’re not conquering planets? How many planets they’ve conquered? Were did they come from? Where is White Diamond? Do gems of different cuts affect the gem in any way? How is a gem given sentience? What separates them from ordinary rocks? Why does SU earth look different from our earth? Was Pink Diamond made on earth? What’s with that big crater in the middle of Russia? How was human history affected by the Crystal gems? How does human history in the SU universe differ from our own in the real world? Did humans fight in the gem war? Were there any recorded important human figures from that time? Do humans even learn about the gem war in schools? Has Connie ever heard anything about the gem war in her history class?

And honestly, with this show’s ungodly long and frequent hiatuses (like 5 episodes every 6 months), they really don’t have the luxury of filler. Half a year is long enough to create a healthy dose of suspension. I don’t want to wade through 10 pointless episodes before I find any plot or world building elements to look at. I’ve stopped watching a lot of the episodes and started only tuning in when I hear the upcoming episode is suppose to contribute to the plot. I don’t have the patience for this goose chase. Give me the story or don’t.