cartoon kick

[opensummer]

I've been watching lots of cartoons lately because Netflix is doing good work and the world is not a bright place and felt like sharing some feels. Broken up by show to make it easier to clickthrough.
 

She-Ra and the Useless Lesbians 

• So Catra is totally justified and so are the rest of the kids stuck in the evil horde. Adora was their friend/bestie/captain who ran off on them with a) no prior notice and b) not even an attempt to get them back after she got free. 
• One of my biggest frustrations with this show was the while they were happy to portray Adora as an abuse victim, there was a blindness to how the standards were applied. 
  • You, Adora, get to escape your shitty past, abusive fauxmom, and turn into an eight foot magical girl because you're special. But god help you if you fail to subscribe to the standards of your new friends (who incidentally ask you to lie about who you are as a person) or even express concern about your old friends
• It's actually a variation on victim blaming that I feel like I see a lot? in media aimed at women. Character A is the Chosen One which means everything that goes wrong is her fault, and everything that goes right was incidental to her role as the Chosen One. (Buffy is the classic example of this but it appears in Once Upon A Time, Killjoys, W.I.T.C.H., Sailor Moon, etc.)
• Speaking of Buffy I feel like there's a lot of Buffy/Faith parallels between Adora/Catra. One is the chosen one, prone to obsession, has a hard time seeing the forest for the trees, and self flagellating when things go wrong. The other is her complicated friend turned enemy, who hates the first's martyr complex, hypocrisy, and has a gift for finding weak spots. 
• Did i just describe Buffy and Faith or Adora and Catra? 
• Who knows?
• Not me.
• Anyway...
• I just want them to be soft and gay together ok?
• Ok.

Hilda

• Hilda is perfect and lovely and soft and all y'all should watch it. 
• It's got a v consistent color palette which is v soothing, the art style is super charming and the storylines are tightly written. 
• There's literally not a wasted moment in the writing on this show
• Everything adds to the world building, which creates this incredibly detailed, mundanely magical universe
• 10/10 will watch every time i get sick this year. 
• I actually just spent half an hour matching my journal to hilda's color palette

The Dragon Prince AKA the kingdom that's never heard of politics

• Disclaimer: I get that i am-
  • A. Not the target audience of this show
  • B. More interesting in worldbuilding and political structure than the average person
  • and C. Nitpicky AF
• BUT. COME. ON.
• You've got the two princes of an absolute monarchy and they. don't. ever. use. that.
• so i was pretty down with like the first three episodes
  • they have a reason to go on the run!
  • they have a reason not go to the authorities! on both sides!
  • they're giving us world building! wooooo!
  • and internal conflict!
• then they get to the winter lodge. 
• and they lose allllll that in half an hours
• GDI
• so imma talk about plotting for a minute, ignore me
  • characters need motivation and impetus to be interesting
  • motivation is easy, save the cheerleader egg, save the world
  • impetus though that's a bit more problematic.
  • up until they get to the winter lodge they are acting in the best interests of both themselves and the world. Ezran and Callum have been attacked by one of their friends- Claudia, have reason to suspect the motives of the adults around them, and believe that by returning the egg they can save their father and y'know, themselves. 
  • They also couldn't get access to their father, who is the only adult in the castle who they can explicitly trust. (which is a failing of the worldbuilding but also understandable because conservation of characters) 
• but once they get to the winter lodge, that falls apart. General Amaya is an adult that they both love and respect, a part of their family, and under their command as the heir(s) to the throne. 
• I REPEAT: she's under their command.
  • and maybe they live in a world where children get to be children and princes never have to do anything but I really sincerely doubt it. 
  • they've been a cold war with half the continent for a 1,000 years; a cold war that culminated in the murder of the dragon king. Don't tell me that things have been stable.
  • and that completely ignores the fact of the four other human kingdoms and their internal politics
• So the right choice would have been confessing it all to their Aunt. She could have provided them with an escort across the border, aware of the fact that things were about to change politically, and been in a position where she couldn't be manipulated by Viren.
• Would it have lead to her murder? probably. 
• Would they know that in the moment? absolutely not. 
• So it's a kids show right, and the problem with kids shows is that adults need a reason to be useless. Avatar, the closest analogue, lots of the same creative team, was very good at explaining where all the adults were- murdered, enslaved, the bad guys, or some combination of the three. 
• They didn't even need to stick with their aunt. The could have have been ambushed and separated in the first five minutes of the next episode. General Amaya could have held a pass for them as they escaped, and it would have been a good display of her badassery and given them the impetus to continue alone. 
• And everything that followed after was with the knowledge that the show. could. have. been. better. 
• So that was frustrating...
• Excellent animation though and the whole thing's got potential but i'm still hung up on the fact that nobody seems to have heard of politics in the entire world. 

Comments

[hebethen]

Hah, yess, I'm glad I'm not the only one who twigged the Buffy/Faith similarities. /fistbump

[opensummer]

oh hells yeah! it seemed really obvious as i was watching which makes their dynamic even more fraught. It's a good vibe for them

[silveradept]

I will keep that parallel in mind as I finish out She-Ra. At some point.

Hilda is gorgeous and fabulous and so tightly scripted and drawn. I think the title cards are the highlights of the episodes, with that little motif that plays underneath.

And yes, absolutely, I agree that a General Amaya could have been put to way better use, especially because Ezran is the crown prince. Maybe the only reason they didn't so that is because they were worried Viren had corrupted everyone? (Still a poor excuse.)

[opensummer]

Eventually, finishing things is hard

Yes, yes, and yes! Hilda is really a perfect show! I adore the creatures and the title cards and it's so cute I can't even!

They really didn't seem to have any plans at all which was incredibly frustrating. They'd just gotten caught with an elf and were like let's play to racist stereotypes instead. There's no signs that they suspect Amaya of being a bad guy. So the kind interpretation is that they panicked and blurted out the first thing that came to mind and I'm gonna go with that.

[silveradept]

Seems like a good thing to go with.