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courtofterrasen · 10 days

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Alright, clearly some of you guys are just not getting it. So no more emotion from me; I am simply going to write in factual terms.

It takes a VAST amount of work to go into creating a series like Bad Batch. You have to go through writing, scene painting, 3D modeling, rigging, lighting, SFX, voice lines, editing, final production, etc; just to name a few. It takes hours upon hours upon hours of work for those animators to create all of the nuances in a scene, let alone in Bad Batch where there is an extremely high level of attention to detail. It’s not like anime where a character and background are mostly stationary while they talk. There’s constantly stuff happening in the background and they intentionally make choices that provide extremely little to the overall story and, in all honesty, take up a significant amount of their time and can be argued that they’re wasting their time and money and effort (I don’t think so, but I’m sure people could argue it if they thought that effort should be allocated elsewhere). But they do it because it provides a deeper sense of realism to the story as a whole and make it feel like a living, breathing world. For example, when a character trips a little bit or they animated them doing something slightly harder than it would have been otherwise or eyes darting around and studying someone. These are all very little things that take them hundreds of hours to get perfect. And those are the kinds of things that go unnoticed by the vast majority of people watching the show. Either because they don’t noticed the little detail that was put in at all, or they don’t understand the level of work that goes into creating little minute decisions like that. And all of those decisions that they make, both big and tiny, are given to them in specific instructions by the directors. When you think about the insane amount of work that goes into creating a show like Bad Batch, you realize that every single little detail that they choose to add in is intentional and was given to them via specific instruction. It’s not like in live-action shows where the actor can choose to make a subtle decision on the fly. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of work that go into this and every choice that they make is intentional. The lighting dept. has even confirmed this for us, saying that all of the lighting that they did was done very carefully and intentionally and to pay attention to what’s happening in the scene. Because there’s an extremely high level of detail that’s put into the show, based off of very detailed instructions that were presented to them.

Now. Taken all of these points into account, it’s critical to look at all of the little choices that were made when it comes to her character and the way that both she interacts with the world and the people around her, as well as how they, in turn, respond to her. Because, like the lighting dept. has already made very clear to us, every design choice they has been made in the creation of the show is 100% intentional. Even if that’s not something that they had said or wasn’t something you were aware of, when you focus on the aspect of animation, it’s sometimes hard to get a clear grasp on just how long it takes them to do these things. And that every little choice that they made was carried out under specific instruction. And that’s not even getting into the nuances of voice acting and understanding the subtle distinctions in the way someone talks and being able to discern the meaning behind their words based on dialect and the instructions they were given. And for someone who just casually watches the show, absolutely none of these are important. They’re watching it to watch it and no further thought is put into it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. People are allowed to watch things at a surface level and get enjoyment out of it.

For every character, they can be broken up into various parts:

•Their visual appearance

•Their behavior

•Their interactions with others and the world

•How others respond to their character

•Their small, subtle behaviors (such as a particular twitch or repetitive body movement that can be used to convey a deeper meaning)

•And their internal motives

In that order from the least to most complex. And these topics can also be used to understand the complexity of a character. For someone like Cid, all of these topics are touched on in a variety of ways.

•She’s different from them

•She’s gruff and money hungry

•She speaks to the Batch like they’re a bunch of kids and she knows better than them

•They never fully bring themselves to trust her and, at times, they see her has a burden

•Towards the end of their time together, she gets snappier, and whenever she’s around them her movements slow ever so slightly and she furrows her brows slightly a lot more than in the past

•And in the end, she betrays them

And that’s putting her character into a single sentence for every bullet point, which, for well written characters like Cid or Hemlock or Rampart or Nala Se, cuts a lot of things out.

When it comes to the way that Phee is written and what she contributes as a whole to the show, she is not a very complex character. I’m not going to go into every single scene with her, but I am going to touch on a few. And if I need to continue the discussion further to cover more scenes, then I will. On multiple instances, she puts the Batch into very dangerous situations, and overall appears to care very little for them as people unless it gets her something that she wants. This is made very evident when, for example, she gets Omega, a child, excited about a big grand adventure and Omega then convinced the Batch to go along with it. Even though they were very adamant about not doing it. This is said with both their words and their tense body language. They don’t want Omega to get hurt and they know it’s a bad idea; but in the end she’s able to convince them. Then, when they get to the site, she shows clear lack for them or their safety and proceeds to put them in a very dangerous situation where someone could have gotten seriously hurt or killed. And she shows no remorse for it. Her language, both verbal and bodily, are very loose and nonchalant, assuring them that she had everything under control and that they were able to handle it, despite their very clear frustration. This type of behavior is shown again and again and again as they continue to interact with her. Her actions relay to the viewer that she does not respect their boundaries, or arguably, them as people. Her words are designed to be rocks with a pretty bow on them. And again, this is not personal opinion or speculation. Every single word and action was carefully designed by the team. All the tensed muscles were created by a team of people working very hard to convey that to the audience. Every thinly veiled word was guided by a director when the VA came in to record the sessions. Every single choice was intentional for a very specific reason.

Tech likes things in a very specific way. He likes his ship to be in a particular order and takes very good care of its maintenance and upkeep. He prides himself on being able to maintain a good ship. He spends a lot of time on his data pad. It’s how he was designed on Kamino. That’s his link to his role in the group. He can do everything he needs to from there and, in certain scenarios throughout the show, you can see it provides him with a sense of comfort and stability. You can see this, not only in his subtle body language, but also in his fairly obvious body language with how he hunches over it. It’s reminiscent of a child hunching over a toy to bring it closer to them and protect it. It comforts him. You can also see, when he interacts with the rest of the Batch, his aversion to touch. It’s not significantly often that you see it, given that the rest of the Batch knows him better than anyone, but there are still times when physical contact or even just very close proximity happens and he either has a reaction by tensing up slightly or leaning away from it, or sometimes he doesn’t react to it at all and almost seems to not register it; such as when he’s focused on his work. Every little reaction that he has with his brothers was scripted and orchestrated for a very specific purpose. It conveys the nuances of who he is as a unique and individual person.

Keeping that in mind, when it comes to the way she interacts with Tech specifically and the Batch, it’s very clear to understand the dynamic behind them when you look close enough. To recall a few instances, there was a time when she was recounting a story about finding a big treasure and Tech says something along the lines of “she changes this story every time she tells it”. He’s conveying to both the people in the show and us as viewers that she is a liar. She is either changing the story to make herself seem cooler, or maybe it didn’t happen at all and she’s making the entire thing up. Which, I will briefly mention again, are traits synonymous with narcissists. In another instance, Tech, Omega, and Wrecker were having a conversation where Tech is reprimanding them for bringing items back from a junkyard that they were in that they thought were cool instead of what he asked them to go find and bring back for him. I’m this conversation, Phee inserts herself and tells Tech that it’s not junk; also, in that same instance, not calling him by his name, which I will get to in a minute. Tech, in that moment, is trying to work, and his conversation with the other two was interrupted and fizzles out as Omega gets excited about the idea of a treasure map. A third is when the group is on Pabu and Phee is trying to get Tech to converse with her. His body language is hunched, tense, and he averts eye contact with her. When she prods him further, he is unsure how to engage in the conversation. And when he doesn’t respond in the way that she’s wanting him to, she talks about him to the rest of the Batch as he stands there around him and says to them how he “doesn’t know how to have fun”. And then they proceed to laugh at him. And again, you can see in his body language that he is confused as to why they’re laughing at him as well as uncomfortable being in that situation. And going off of that for another small fourth instance, there is another moment when they are getting ready to leave Pabu and she approaches Tech, who is working alone and trying to avoid contact with anyone, and says to him “So you’re just going to leave without saying goodbye?” His body language immediately tenses, he hunches further in on himself around his datapad, and his words make it clear he is both unsure and unwanting of the conversation. And when he does not respond in the way that she wants him to, she moves the datapad away from him to make him focus on her. She removes the item that brings him the most security to force him into engaging in a conversation he is uncomfortable with having. And again, these are all very intentional choices. They are not left up for interpretation. They are there to tell us what the character is feeling in that moment. They are trying to convey to us that he is uncomfortable. Not that he’s shy around a girl he thinks is pretty. And given on other scenarios that have happened throughout the show, it’s very clear that interpersonal relationships with anyone outside of Omega and the Batch is not something that he’s interested in. If they wanted to convey that he found her attractive, there are routes they could have taken to ensure that that comes across correctly to the audience, such as a faint little blush or rubbing a hand through his hair. But they didn’t do that, and instead chose for him to shy away and hide from certain situations or tense up and keep his head down in others. They are conveying to us that he does not like being around her. Because every single action they made him carry out took hundreds of hours of work to execute, and they would not go through all that trouble for no reason.

Branching off of that, we reach the topic of Tech’s name. When you watch the series as a whole, you can count on one hand the number of times that Phee refers to Tech by his actual name, while she refers to the others as their actual names. This is different from Cid in the way that Cid made that intentional choice to call them different things as a way to maintain distance from them. It’s clear from both her body language and her words that she did not want to get close to them. And really, wanted nothing to do with them unless they made her money. These are intentional choices. Phee’s character is designed to be flighty and unbothered. And she wants what she wants when she wants it. The choice to call Tech names and refer to everyone else by their names is an intentional choice. Him not understanding why she does that is an intentional choice. She does not respect him, which is why she does this. She can see that he doesn’t know what to do about it, so she keeps doing it. Like when a person presses on a bruise. These are all intentional choices made by the directors.

There was also a comment that said she behaves exactly like Crosshair does. And there are a few things I think did not entirely process when they made that comment. The first being that Crosshair was written to be one of the main antagonists for the first two season. I know they appeared in Clone Wars as well, but I’m talking specifically about Bad Batch. He was designed to be a bad guy that goes through a redemption arc; just like Zuko did in ATLA, for those who enjoy it. They both started out as antagonists, had horrible things happen to them, realized along their journey that maybe they were wrong, and are able to redeem themselves in the end and side with, or in Cross’ case, return to, the protagonists. In the beginning Cross was very sharp and defensive and thought he knew what was best. But he grew over time and learned how to care for people and share his weaknesses instead of putting on a facade all the time. And that’s the difference. We are reaching the end of the series and Phee has never had character growth to the level that Crosshair has and softens and opens up to the rest of the group. She hasn’t had any character growth at all. She is still the same exact person she was when we met her. There have been characters who have appeared for significantly less time that her, and if you pay attention to them, they have had significantly more growth than her as well.

The problem that I have begun to notice with people who are so quick to defend her actions is that they seem to be focusing more on her than on anything else. When you focus on just her, I can see how someone could mistake these interactions for being positive. Because all they’re focusing on is someone who’s having fun, and of course that would translate to something positive for him. But for the people who focus on Tech, it becomes very evident that these interactions are not positive. When you watch Tech, and I mean actually pay attention to him and not just watch him, you see all the subtle signs that you would otherwise miss. Him being annoyed and uncomfortable and confused and tired and generally not enjoying being around her. And this, unfortunately, happens a lot in real life too. People don’t take the time to absorb both sides of what’s happening. And since we as humans are quicker to pick up on people who are happy as opposed to people who are not, it’s so easy to miss the signals and just assume that what you’re watching is a happy interaction and put forth no further effort into making sure that’s actually what’s happening.

There is no other way to say that these things are all intentional. They wrote, designed, and sent out something that they have spent the past few years creating. When you understand the level of work that was put into it all, there are a lot of things that become very clear. And sure, headcanons exist and people can speculate what happens between the episodes. But headcanons can only go so far before it becomes ridiculous. We cannot confirm that Echo didn’t run off to go have a quiet life with Cid, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s true. Inferring things that are not within the realm of possibility is not conducive. Assuming that Phee spent a lot of time talking about her adventures that she may or may not have had with the Batch between the episodes? That’s conducive and we have clear evidence that would support that. Assuming that her and Tech had a very close relationship and she always listens to what he had to say between episodes? As much as some people want it to be true, it’s just not. There is no evidence that supports that line of thinking, and, in fact, there is a vast amount of evidence that would actually conform the opposite; such as Phee talking over everyone and commanding the conversation, not respecting things that Tech says, etc.

I’m going to wrap this up by talking a bit more personally now. There are plenty of people assuming that I’m a racist or a misogynist or that my literacy skills are lacking or whatever, but because you’re upset that someone is calling out the awful behavior of someone you like doesn’t make it any less true. And that applies to both this type of situation and in real life. I know who I am and what I stand for, and you trying to tell me that I’m otherwise changes nothing. And defaulting to assumptions like that shows that either you do not watch the show with a more attentive eye, or that’s all that you see Phee for. A black woman. Both of which are issues.

People are allowed to not like black characters, even if they are black.

People are allowed to not like Asian characters, even if they are Asian.

People are allowed to not like female characters, even if they’re women (or AFAB people).

People are allowed to not like LGBTQ characters, even if they are queer.

People are allowed to not like neurodivergent characters, even if they are neurodivergent.

People are allowed to not like characters that display particular traits or thought processes, even if they share those same traits or thought processes.

People are allowed to not like characters if they think that the character is bad.

Also, for the people saying I’m using my autism as a shield clearly don’t understand how autism works? I don’t say that to be an excuse. I say that to provide context and reasoning behind the things that I say. Like many other neurodivergent people do. You all are getting pressed about the wrong things. If you want to debate the time and study I’ve put into the show because I genuinely enjoy it, then be my guest. But don’t throw out petty insults and waste everyone’s time. At least put forth some more critical thinking behind it and try to figure out why someone could be saying the things that they’re saying

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