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Labes for days posted:
 If Hordak isn't wearing pants then that means he's basically wearing a slit dress with knee high boots. The fashion icon we deserve tbh.
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Aug 9, 2019 14:15
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Eh this show is alittle odd. I feel like theirs too many characters but the only one that is compelling is you guessed it catra. I wonder how much is somewhat janky writing and the other budget issues the hordak just breaking character to explain stuff was weird and he just doesnt come off as a threat how does he keep the frightzone in line? Still look forward to see what happens next.
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Aug 9, 2019 15:08
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Ups_rail posted:Eh this show is alittle odd. I feel like theirs too many characters but the only one that is compelling is you guessed it catra. He's opening up because he's finally got someone who will understand what he's talking about. The entire core of Hordak's character is that he is lonely as gently caress. As for how he keeps the Fright Zone functioning, it's the same reason he's so lonely - he's the only person who understands how all the immensely advanced, deadly technology he's built works. Also, Imp is a really good spy.
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Aug 9, 2019 15:23
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CuwiKhons posted:
I wonder if he’s still wearing furry panties a la 80s Hordak. Personally I don’t find the hero characters very compelling but holy poo poo the Entrapta/Hordak relationship and its growth has blown me away. I found them both generic and boring in the first season, warmed up to them (together) in the second, and felt genuine Feelings over it in the third. I don’t have a problem with the writing at all and they keep throwing in these visual touches that only deepen it. (Hordak’s hair going from slicked back when you first see him to increasingly messy and in his eyes when he thinks Entrapta betrayed him, the crystal on his new armor saying “LUVD” in First One, etc) I am a total sucker for reparative relationships and also insecure villains so thank you Noelle and Co; I am sorry I ever doubted you. Catra‘s a compelling character too, but she’s also a lovely kitty and I hate her.
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Aug 9, 2019 15:40
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Ups_rail posted:Eh this show is alittle odd. I feel like theirs too many characters but the only one that is compelling is you guessed it catra. I'd say Scorpia and the main heroes are tropey yet enjoyable and have potential, Catra, Entrapta, and surprisingly Hordak are legit interesting, and the Princess Alliance feels like a leftover element of the show that gets increasingly pushed into the background to make room for the two trios that actually matter.
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Aug 9, 2019 16:44
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Labes for days posted:Catra‘s a compelling character too, but she’s also a lovely kitty and I hate her. The look She-Ra gave her clearly communicated Catra's ex is completely, utterly over her. Either it'll finally get through to her that she's lost her unhinged revenge campaign, or she triples down on the batshit and is beyond reaching. I still have hope she'll ultimately be saved by the love of a good arachnid 
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Aug 9, 2019 18:34
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Is the prevailing message that Catra should get a happy ending because she was a victim too? Trauma or not, causing the death of people isnt something that gets wiped off the slate because of regret. I would hope its not some 80s cartoon fairy tale ending where Glimmer goes "got my mom,killed, nbd we all know SW was cruel to you" SW getting 'accepted' into the friend group is pretty dumb but thats clearly a set up for her to influence the cause in nefarious ways and hurt more people. I binged all of Voltron after the series finished and felt it did a good job of bring more complexity and nuance to a "good vs evil" dynamic. Some people had happy endings, some had bittersweet, some bad guys didn't get their just desserts etc. I'm expecting the same from this. pentyne fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 9, 2019 |
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Aug 9, 2019 18:44
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pentyne posted:Is the prevailing message that Catra should get a happy ending because she was a victim too? Angella got imprisoned between dimensions in a wormhole that we as the audience know is going to get reopened at some point (so Horde Prime can drop by and say hi). She very specifically did not die. Catra, meanwhile, is a character in a kids' show about surviving and moving past parental abuse, and there are going to be kids in the audience who will identify with her. The writing team aren't going to say 'nope, sorry, Susan, your mother broke you forever and you're beyond redemption'.
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Aug 9, 2019 18:52
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It's a hard line to walk. Ultimately it IS a kid's show and yea the more ways to say 'listen, little kid watching this, if you feel you've been forever ruined by something bad others did to you, you aren't' the better, but at the same time I do think contrasting her with Adora's overcoming an abusive background can also teach a message of 'sometimes you can't save everyone and sometimes you have to cut that rope before you get pulled down too' which is...also kinda an important thing to teach... The problem is, yea, when you have a lot of people identifying with that character you really have a hard time saying 'welp she's hosed', even if you weren't in the framing of a kid's show.
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Aug 9, 2019 22:17
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Catra has gone from S1: Enemy rising through the ranks toppling her teacher and causing havoc S2: Clashing with Adora on missions, struggling to learn to lead, making mistakes and lying to cover it up S3: Running away from a environment of happiness, tasering the crap out of her friend and getting them imprisoned on false charges, threatening someone who loves her with the same consequence, attempt to destroy everything cause mayhem and madness just because Adora got SW attention again. Extremes I assume for some overall story growth and development, but still pretty messed up behavior. The ability to sympathise with someone tends to drop off rapidly as they start being just as bad as the "real" villains.
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Aug 9, 2019 22:37
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pentyne posted:Catra has gone from ehn so she blew up the world, they fixed it, nbd 
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Aug 9, 2019 22:58
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sexpig by night posted:It's a hard line to walk. Ultimately it IS a kid's show and yea the more ways to say 'listen, little kid watching this, if you feel you've been forever ruined by something bad others did to you, you aren't' the better, but at the same time I do think contrasting her with Adora's overcoming an abusive background can also teach a message of 'sometimes you can't save everyone and sometimes you have to cut that rope before you get pulled down too' which is...also kinda an important thing to teach... It really seems like a similar discussion as the one that happened earlier this year with Steven Universe. Will the Diamonds get redeemed or not? Of course they got redeemed because for all its complexity and depth it's still a show for kids, and teaching hard truths about the world is not the show's mission statement. "Some acts place a sympathetic character beyond redemption" is a hard message to package in a show that's all about love and acceptance, especially one that goes out of its way to show a sympathetic side to every character. She-Ra is also shaping up to be that kind of show.
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Aug 9, 2019 23:02
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AlternateNu posted:See, I got the impression that Imp was one of the Hordak's failed attempts to clone himself a body. But he kept Imp around because he's clearly sentient and relatively intelligent. I'm pretty sure that was the original intention, but he's handling it wildly different than Horde Prime would. Labes for days posted:
drat straight.
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Aug 9, 2019 23:10
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Plus the overall message isn’t that Catra is a sociopath. She (wrongly) blames Adora leaving for her life going to poo poo even though she couldn’t overcome her built in prejudices and go with her. Shadow Weaver ramps up the abuse because she’s left with the red headed stepchild instead of the darling all star, Hordak is making GBS threads all over her and threatening her with death daily, and her ex is adored and loved by the whole world. Eventually her attempts to get control of everything and punish the ones who hurt her gets so extreme she turns into the crack ping cat meme from cspam, loses her poo poo, and blows up the world. Adora finally going “done, get out” may be the wake up call she needs next season to realize her way isn’t working. Or maybe she’ll want to kill everyone extra hard! Who knows! She absolutely is a broken person inside but there are clear steps along the way that got her here and they weren’t all her fault. Why am I typing this much about a kids show 
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Aug 9, 2019 23:12
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Yea, I mean this is a topic big HBO drama stuff struggles with, I won't really hold it against a Netflix kids show for taking the option of 'everyone can be redeemed'.
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Aug 9, 2019 23:14
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sexpig by night posted:Yea, I mean this is a topic big HBO drama stuff struggles with, I won't really hold it against a Netflix kids show for taking the option of 'everyone can be redeemed'. Joining Horde Prime is probably the moral event horizon here. Either that, straight murder, or doing something really awful to Scorpia. Until then I maintain she’s redeemable
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Aug 9, 2019 23:32
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xeria posted:That's not what I said. I don't think she's MORE evil now than she was previously, when she was, say, invading Brightmoon or throwing Adora to her death. She's always been this exceptionally manipulative and selfish (and broken and desperately craving any kind of parental approval, etc.). She's irredeemable in Adora's eyes now, but I don't see how everything she's done up until now is merely light villainy vs a newfound maximum evil. Choosing to destroy the whole world is worse, objectively, than choosing to destroy one kingdom, but the headspace that led Catra to make those decisions is exactly the same. If anything, it shows that maybe Entrapta isn't too far gone because she's the one who pulled back on the "open a portal" plan at the last minute. Oh right. My apologies for misunderstanding your post so. The only thing I'd disagree with in that case is that I think you could plausibly argue that Catra was willing to drat the whole world even in season one, when she was invading Brightmoon. After Entrapta examined the machine, she told Catra that using it could gently caress with the world's natural balance of magic, and Catra had no hesitation in activating it and attempting to make the effect permanent. The machine might not have destroyed the actual planet, but it certainly looked capable of causing enough chaos to irrevocably damage the environment and make things miserable for anyone who survived. Android Blues posted:Entrapta just has a sense of self-preservation. It doesn't mean she's more moral than Catra necessarily (although she probably is just by virtue of the fact that she's kind to Hordak), she just doesn't want the world to blow up because that would kill her and stop her from doing cool science experiments. It's not just Hordak she's kind to; she's kind to pretty much everyone. She's just so weird and obsessed with technology that most people can't understand her and find her off-putting. She even treats Emily kindly, and Emily is, or at least was, a non-sentient machine. The main reason she's even in the Fright Zone is because she went back to help Emily when she was caught. She's also treated Scorpia well while she's been in the Fright Zone, was nice to all the other princesses when she was in the Princess Alliance and treats all of them like friends whenever she encounters them despite being their apparent enemy. Darth Walrus posted:He's opening up because he's finally got someone who will understand what he's talking about. The entire core of Hordak's character is that he is lonely as gently caress. As for how he keeps the Fright Zone functioning, it's the same reason he's so lonely - he's the only person who understands how all the immensely advanced, deadly technology he's built works. Also, Imp is a really good spy. Catra was pretty much bang on the money when she called him out as being a lonely nerd, stuck in his lab because he has no idea how to actually lead or interact with anyone. He doesn't actually keep the Fright Zone working; that's why he has a major domo like Shadow Weaver and Catra. Their job is basically to run the Fright Zone and keep things going, so he can continue to work in his lab. Both because he's obsessed with getting a perfect body and opening a portal to show his brother he has worth, and because he'd have no idea how to run things even if he left. Chokes McGee posted:Shadow Weaver ramps up the abuse because she’s left with the red headed stepchild instead of the darling all star, I must re-watch season one at some point, but my memory of Shadow Weaver in season one is that she barely interacted with Catra and was mostly obsessed with getting Adora back; only interacting with Catra in season two because Catra constantly visited her in jail. She mostly seems happy to ignore Catra. Which I suppose is a form of abuse on it's own, but it's not really something you can ramp up, given it seemed to be her default attitude to Catra in the first place. Chokes McGee posted:Joining Horde Prime is probably the moral event horizon here. She's almost certainly going to join Horde Prime, just because Hordak himself is becoming sympathetic and Horde Prime is probably not going to be all to happy with him. Hordak seems to have much the same relationship with Horde Prime that Catra has with Shadow Weaver, so Hordak is probably going to rebel against his brother at some point in the future. In which case, the show will need someone on that team that viewers are familiar with and who's been around a while. Catra has also not had any kind of reason to give up or turn away from her ambition at the moment, and Horde Prime is basically the top rung on that ladder so far as we can see. If she's going to be redeemed, it'll probably only be after joining Horde Prime after alienating Scorpia rather than before it. tsob fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 00:08
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Chokes McGee posted:Doing something really awful to Scorpia. That applies to every character, except Scorpia.
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Aug 10, 2019 00:09
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:That applies to every character, except Scorpia. Scorpia would never be mean to Scorpia. She likes her too much! 
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Aug 10, 2019 00:45
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Yeah, there are two characters in the show who are almost certainly irredeemable - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime - for the exact same reason that Catra will likely never be completely beyond hope. This is a kids' show, and it's not the responsibility of kids to redeem the adults abusing and manipulating them.
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Aug 10, 2019 00:59
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Chokes McGee posted:Scorpia would never be mean to Scorpia. She likes her too much! Entrapta and Scorpia are the best characters on the show. Entrapta because she's always so upbeat about anything and everything even with the specter of death often looming overhead, and Scorpia because she's a lawful evil eternal optimist.
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Aug 10, 2019 01:00
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tsob posted:I must re-watch season one at some point, but my memory of Shadow Weaver in season one is that she barely interacted with Catra and was mostly obsessed with getting Adora back; only interacting with Catra in season two because Catra constantly visited her in jail. She mostly seems happy to ignore Catra. Which I suppose is a form of abuse on it's own, but it's not really something you can ramp up, given it seemed to be her default attitude to Catra in the first place. SW's interactions with Catra in season 1 were mostly her negging the poo poo out of Catra at every opportunity, because (in SW's eyes) Catra is such a gently caress-up that she let the good daughter Adora escape. IIRC she redirected Catra at least once away from doing something that might've benefit the Horde directly in favor of chasing down Adora, and Catra's the one who basically got SW deposed and thrown in fright zone jail by the end of the season.
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Aug 10, 2019 01:16
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Nah, I reckon Catra's too far gone. You can excuse a lot of lovely behaviour thanks to her poor frame of reference, inability to trust, emotional instability, internalised abusive behaviours etc. but that only justifies her actions up to a point. Catra passed that point a long time ago. Her mother issues don't justify leading a fascist army. They don't justify her attempted genocide. She had numerous outs and refused to take them. She's betrayed loyal friends. Life is just harder for abused kids, not just because of the abuse, but because of how much more work it takes to overcome it -- and because, at the end of the day, abused kids just don't have the support networks to pull them out of the poo poo. Friends (Scorpia, Entrapta) can help them, but only so far. But they have to want to get better. The finale makes it clear that Catra knows she's doing the wrong thing, and she just doesn't care. Catra's not interested in doing the work, and all the sad stories in the world don't justify planetary annihilation.
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Aug 10, 2019 01:34
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Look we need to stop all this petty bickering and focus on the real enemy here Etheria’s great monster: Kyle
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Aug 10, 2019 01:54
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I was sad Kyle didn't defect
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Aug 10, 2019 02:01
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Chokes McGee posted:Look we need to stop all this petty bickering and focus on the real enemy here That's no way to talk about the future He-Man.
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Aug 10, 2019 02:31
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I find it kind of sad that even Bow treated Kyle lovely, and had no interest in him even when he was stuck in jail and Kyle was the only one showing a modicum of kindness to him. Poor Kyle. Maybe he's the real abuse survivor in all this?
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Aug 10, 2019 02:38
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Don't feel to bad for Kyle, he's dating a giant handsome lizard so his life isn't all terrible.
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Aug 10, 2019 03:06
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I don't feel bad for Kyle, so much as I feel disappointed in Bow. You'd think he'd be the one most likely to sympathize, if nothing else. Plus, it's just depressing to see Bow be kind of a dick.
tsob fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 03:13
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The Bee posted:I'd say Scorpia and the main heroes are tropey yet enjoyable and have potential, Catra, Entrapta, and surprisingly Hordak are legit interesting, and the Princess Alliance feels like a leftover element of the show that gets increasingly pushed into the background to make room for the two trios that actually matter. You make a good point now that we know hordak s back story. I think the setting would fit better if you had less of a resistance hold out. and more a waring states political set up with conquered states and collaborators. Hell Shadow weaver, Scorpia, Entrapta all kinda fit that description. But gently caress I am 40 year old goons and its a kids cartoon. Also its interesting that Adora/She-ra are not that interesting.
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Aug 10, 2019 03:29
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I'm on episode four of season three. This show is weird with things like Entrapta's growing friendship with a warlord but I'm just writing it off as the show being aimed at kids. A really gay show aimed at kids.
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Aug 10, 2019 04:54
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Ups_rail posted:You make a good point now that we know hordak s back story. I think the setting would fit better if you had less of a resistance hold out. and more a waring states political set up with conquered states and collaborators. Hell Shadow weaver, Scorpia, Entrapta all kinda fit that description. But gently caress I am 40 year old goons and its a kids cartoon. The personal stakes for the heroes have been interesting when they come up, but usually their arcs are all focused on the mission and main story. And the stakes for that story really aren't that defined. Like, you mention less resistance and more warring states, and I think that's kind of what we already have? The Horde clearly isn't in control of the whole world, considering large regions both civilized (Frosta's kingdom) and wild (the Crimson Wastes) don't care about the conflict. There's plenty of doubt in the Princess Alliance as a unit, and even civilians like Bow's parents don't seem exceptionally concerned about the Horde. It honestly feels less like the Horde controls the entire world, and more like they're a slightly unpleasant kingdom that is kept in check but constantly pushing its luck. Meanwhile, the villains motivations are all deeply tied to their personal goals, and that lets us easily connect to them. And in a further meanwhile, the Princess Alliance doesn't really have any personal goals. Hell, Frosta is pretty much a completely different character between seasons 1 and 2! They get the series title, look really important in the intro and have sizable roles in Season 1, but fall off the radar hard afterwards. They'd already need to compete with Glimmer, Bow, and Catra, for role of deuteragonist, but when we're also expanding roles for Entrapta, Scorpia, Hordak, and even Shadow Weaver? Now the three of them collectively get table scraps. It feels like the show was originally going to be almost like a magical girl team-up show, but shifted gears hard after the fact.
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Aug 10, 2019 04:57
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Weirdest thing for me is the last few episodes in the alternate reality had more non-main characters then before it made the world feel much bigger then the same like 8 people they show constantly.
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Aug 10, 2019 05:22
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I've got two eps to go, but this season feels like a significant jump in quality compared to the last two. The stakes feel real, the drama is great, the character interactions are on point, and it hasn't dragged at all.
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Aug 10, 2019 06:02
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I need to get this out, somewhere. The racoon mask shadows on most of the cast. What the gently caress, it looks horrible. The shadows are just drawing my eye and they look so weird. I'm not the only one who's bothered, right?
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Aug 10, 2019 06:06
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I noticed it too. A lot of the villains have backgrounds that make them sympathetic but not sympathetic enough to make me forget that they're knowingly trying to subjugate the world. And while they've raised the stakes to intergalactic levels, I think more time could be spent developing the world they're on now. As long as the kids love it and learn something from it though then my opinions don't carry much weight. 3/5
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Aug 10, 2019 06:14
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We are doomed
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Aug 10, 2019 06:18
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Edit it to say We're all doomed Though really gently caress the racoon shadow. off-key indie nonsense fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 06:32
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CuwiKhons posted:Catra seems to have taken a hard turn down the Azula line of villainy, which seems increasingly irredeemable. I mean, she basically attempted to destroy the entire world just to get one up over Adora. She's cracked and I don't know how the show is going to fix it or if they even will - which is super interesting because for the first two seasons I had thought it was inevitable that Catra would get a redemption arc. Now I legitimately don't know. Ever since Catra showed she was willing to let Adora fall off a cliff to her death in Season 1, I've felt she wasn't redeemable.
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Aug 10, 2019 06:58
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golden bells posted:Shadow Weaver has that DS9 Cardassian trait of being played by such a superb actress that careless audiences can lose sight of her villainy. And I love her. I can't really see Shadow Weaver as having any villainy at all, she just takes what side will have her. The only reason she's "Shadow Weaver" in the first place is that she attempted to defeat the hoard her own way, and suffered not only disfigurement but exile because of it. Her choice was death or Hordak at that point. Then Hordak has enough of her, she goes and crashes on Glimmer's couch, being useful and not taking up any of several telegraphed opportunities to betray them. You can say that she treats her kids in lovely indefensible ways but I mean yeah, she's a mother, they all do that, it's baseline human behavior. Part of being an adult is deciding which way you pretend it didn't happen to you. That's really Catra's problem. You either repress the memory and keep going around for sunday dinner, or you cut off contact, but here Eternia's top furry is going around destroying the world and poo poo.
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Aug 10, 2019 08:24
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