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teruthecreator · 5 years

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if you're comfortable, could you say what specifically you hated about the finale? i never got into amnesty but i liked balance so i would like to know how disappointed i should be ://

okay i’m gonna explain this in-detail exactly Once bc i’m trying rlly hard to just forget about the whole epilogue and keep it moving like that shit never happened, so for anyone else who is asking me why i don’t like the finale (and im not saying you’re wrong for asking, anon, it just seems that when you vocally do not like a thing there are hundreds of people who come out of the woodworks to ask you why and i think thats kinda Huh, Weird of everyone but like whatever) i’m gonna lay it all out here on the table and you can take this as you will.

i’m not gonna be getting into fistfights with people abt this so if you disagree please don’t try and banter with me. i am running on

also, CRITICISM OF ART DOES NOT MEAN CRITICISM OF THE ARTIST. I AM NOT CRITICIZING THE MCELROYS AS HUMAN BEINGS, BUT RATHER THEIR ARTISTIC DECISIONS IN TAZ: AMNESTY. MORE PEOPLE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS A SEPARATION BETWEEN ART AND ARTIST, AND ONCE YOU (AS AN ARTIST) POST A PIECE, IT BECOMES SUBJECT TO CRITICISM. I AM NOT BRINGING GRIFFIN, JUSTIN, TRAVIS, OR CLINT’S CHARACTERS INTO QUESTION; I AM SIMPLY GIVING A CRITICISM ON THE SHOW THEY’VE CREATED AS A WORK OF ART.

oh, this goes without saying, but i will anyway: SPOILERS FOR AMNESTY (IN GENERAL, BUT ALSO FOR EPISODE 36)

i’m gonna start off by saying, i don’t think the whole episode was a total disaster. there are two things mainly that have ruined the whole experience for me, but for the most part i thought the like first 2 hours of this episode were a lot of fun! the fight scene was a little bogged down in the rolls imo, but it didn’t deter me too much from the overarching boss battle. the intro was a sick concept, i enjoyed the callback bits spliced in w newly scripted bits from mentioned past encounters, that was all well and good. i loved beacon in the episode, and god do i wish he stayed for the whole thing.

my problem mainly sits with the epilogue, which is why i think the whole episode turns sour in my mind. because the epilogue is supposed to be what satiates your desire to know more, right? not to reference balance too much (bc these are two completely different stories w different premises, and for people to so readily compare them is kinda wack. that being said, they are two stories made by the same people that use an epilogue to wrap up the loose ends, so im gonna make this one comparison), but the epilogue told us, the listener, all the things we wanted to know about after the day of story of song. we got to know what they did, a little bit of their interpersonal relationships, and we even got a big group scene with the killarey wedding!

this epilogue, though, feels like it left so much still on the table. one of those things i will swing back to later because it is the largest part of my argument, but after all of this time we still don’t know why everyone at the lodge got exiled! no one talks about it! we don’t know how dani ended up there, or jake, or barclay, or moira, or anyone! they don’t reference the banishments at all, which i think is a huge shortcoming figuring that is the core premise as to why these characters exist in our pc’s world in the first place.

i also feel like the concept of the worlds being divided for a long time is kind of a dumb way to go about framing what they do After The Fact. like, they could have had those scenes happen without the looming concept of them being divided, especially when their big reunion scene is like 2 minutes long and basically does nothing. what would have been a cooler premise is if billy connected the worlds, and the worlds worked together in rebuilding themselves. we still could’ve had the same bits happen (for the most part), but i just think that whole separation bit kinda alienated the pc’s (especially thacker).

but everything up to aubrey’s epilogue bit is fine. i have some problems, but it’s fine. where i started to completely abandon the work itself though is duck’s bit, and i’m gonna get into it by saying this: I know Justin Mcelroy is not legally required to make all of his characters gay, but this whole scene was just a big reminder to me that this show is done by 4 straight white men

and yeah, my big problem with this scene is the fact that justin had to make Duck/Minerva a thing. because it adds nothing to the story while also being a very skeevy concept in-general, and it reduces minerva’s character down to the Hero’s Girlfriend trope and it’s so comphet and she doesn’t deserve it.

my first grievance with this: It adds nothing to the story.

had justin not even mentioned the relationship part of their interaction before the scene actually took place, this scene would be like every other scene involving duck and minerva prior to this. duck says honey once, and even that could’ve been played off as duck just being affectionate to his friends (which is a thing, i call several of my friends “my love” irl and it isn’t a big deal). minerva doesn’t even use pet names, she calls duck by his full name, which is exactly how she addressed him in every other scene! duck’s speech is a genuine heart-puller, but it was completely soured by the fact that justin had to premise this entire scene by saying duck and minerva are a thing.

my second grievance: it’s a skeevy-as-all-hell concept.

this whole premise is nasty seven ways from sunday, and it is my biggest problem with duck’s bit as a whole. for starters, and i think more people need to mention this, minerva meets duck on the night of his 18th birthday. which means duck has literally just stopped being legally considered a minor before minerva appears before him. and honestly, i would still consider duck a minor in this case because he has literally just turned 18!!! his brain has not developed past one of a 17-year-old on the exact date of his birthday, and i argue it will not until he is at least in his twenties. keep in mind, your brain does not stop developing until you are about 25. so while in the legal sense, duck is an adult, in both the mental and emotional sense at that exact moment, duck is still a minor. AND he’s still in high school, as referenced in his response to her call to duty: “i got class tomorrow”. and minerva is old enough to have become the minister of defense for her homeworld, go through an entire war, and have several other chosen ones (including leo tarkesian, who is at least 20 years older than duck) before meeting duck. so that makes her much, much older than duck when she meets him. and i don’t care if they had barely any interaction after that first moment (though they did, as justin legit talks about when he introduces minerva as a concept to the show), that still establishes their initial interaction at a massive age difference. which, regardless of anything, makes their eventual relationship so genuinely messed up.

sure, you can argue that when you get older age doesn’t make that much of a difference, and i would agree. my mother is 53 and her husband is 63, that’s ten years. but my mother and step mother did not meet at 8 and 18, they met at 50 and 60. the initial interaction makes all the difference between “older people meeting and having a relationship” and “a very messed up situation”.

also, in this same argument, taking the mentor-student relationship and turning it into a romantic relationship IS SO MESSED UP!!!! GENUINELY AND HONESTLY MESSED UP!!! i feel like i don’t need to explain this because there have been so many examples already as to why this is a relationship you Should Not turn romantic, but i will anyway because it frustrates me so much that justin completely glosses over this!!! the power dynamic of a mentor-student relationship, in whatever way it is portrayed, displays a power balance that is heavily leaning to one side. there is not an equal distribution of power amongst the two because one person is teaching the other. the one person is weak to the others wills and whims because of lack of experience. think of your high school teacher or college professor; if you started a relationship with them, people would raise so many questions because you are not at equals to the teacher/professor. even if they treat you different, and even if they no longer teach you, it all has to do with the initial interaction. and minerva was still duck’s mentor up until either episode 34 or 35, when she handed off the title of Herald of the Astral Mind to duck. that means for nearly all of their interactions, there was a mentor-student dynamic. to have that turn into a romantic relationship is so sketchy and weird and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

my third grievance: it reduces minerva’s character down to a girlfriend trope, and it’s comphet as hell

my friend tin (@taako–waititi) phrased this so well in the big group chat im in w her, so imma just quote her on this and then go into the comphet stuff:

“i was dming max about it and they also mentioned, quote, ‘her story was never about romance. it reduced her down to ‘competent woman becomes endgame girlfriend’ trope’ and they are so right it makes me fucking pissed. regardless of any ‘mutual respect’ and ‘emotional intimacy’ kind of thing going on that some people are arguing for, it’s something that didn’t need to happen because minerva’s character becomes that. my thing is mutual respect and emotional intimacy between two people can. exist. without it being. romantic. like. friendship is. also valid. i personally don’t think that mutual respect and emotional intimacy are two buttons that you press to make the machine churn out a romance”

not only does it reduce minerva’s character to tropes, but it also is extremely comphet for a woman who is so heavily wlw-coded or lesbian-coded and it just angers me. you could argue that she could be bi, but if we look at canon for just its face-value, the only romantic interaction she ever has is with a man, which basically makes her straight. this isn’t like aubrey’s situation, where travis clearly states she is a bi woman who is just in a relationship with another woman in amnesty. griffin doesn’t state anything about minerva’s sexuality and then she’s paired off with a man right at the end. and you could argue that she isn’t wlw or lesbian-coded, but i am not the only one who is wlw and thinks this, so i feel like i have more of a ground to stand on in this opinion. and this just feels so, like, textbook compulsory heteronormativity it made me feel physically sick when i heard this bit in the podcast.

so that’s my first big issue with the finale, fully explained. my second issue with the epilogue is that ned’s death continues to be disappointing and his character arc is never completed, which just tanks the whole show for me.

i’ve talked about this several times since ep 28 about how ned’s death was stupid and did nothing for his character arc, but i’m gonna reiterate my main points for the people who find this post without knowing my whole blog:

1. ned’s main interpersonal conflicts are just brought to the surface and never fully delved into before his sudden death. ned doesn’t ever get to explain his history with boyd and why he had to steal shade tree to mama or barclay or really anyone besides vaguely to aubrey.

2. every character is just immediately expected to feel sad about ned’s death, despite the tension that still remains right up until the very end. aubrey shouldn’t have even known that the shapeshifter framed ned because that’s all explained once she goes to sylvain, but i think travis just assumed she did because he heard the interaction between ned, mama, and barclay. so she should’ve had Way more conflicting feelings about the whole thing, but ned’s death is just angst-bait so that doesn’t happen.

3. ned’s death doesn’t make roll sense because clint rolled a mixed success and mixed successes, by definition, are supposed to be less severe moves than a failed roll (which gives the gm the ability to make a hard move). there isn’t really anything harder to do to a character than kill them, but even if you wanted to argue that if clint failed the roll the hard move would’ve been ned failing and letting dani get shot, it still doesn’t change the fact that clint rolled a mixed success when slamming into the pizza hut sign at full velocity and came out of that alive (severely injured, naturally, but still alive).

so, yeah, there’s that. and then theres the fact that griffin doesn’t ever give us any other scenes involving ned directly. ned only becomes a reference from 28 on, which is so disappointing given ned’s importance to the other two pcs. and i understand that the mcelroys have a lot of trauma related to death, but griffin shouldn’t have killed ned off then if he did not want to talk about death in graphic detail. we all have trauma. we all want to avoid topics. but to kill ned off and then never talk about his death in great relation to the others is a genuine disservice to ned’s character.

the day episode 28 aired was the same day i buried my grandmother. i would have loved if death wasn’t brought up, but i don’t control the podcast. the mcelroys do; they had the ability to avoid this topic in a more servicing way to the characters and they didn’t. that isn’t to say they are bad people for not doing it, but it makes the finale even more disappointing because it means we never get the full rounding out of ned’s character arc. he becomes this like brief reference that is, once again, angst-bait or emotional fuel and i feel like he didn’t deserve that. he deserved a genuine reference, a genuine moment. even a dream sequence i would have appreciated!!!

griffin had sylvain directly point at ned in aubrey’s flashback in ep 35, and then did nothing about what that could have implicated in the finale. it sours the entire episode in a major way and disappointed me immensely. there should have been more done with that topic and there wasn’t and i will never forget how deeply it hurt me and turned me away from canon as a whole. not to be ned kin on main, but ned was the backbone of this show and the exact moment he left was the exact moment the whole thing went downhill. it turned less into a story about growth and adversary and amnesty and more into a waiting game for when this very loose end was going to get wrapped up.

i wanted to enjoy this episode. i tried so hard, y’all. but just the thought of ned loomed over me the entire time and i was waiting for a more proper completion to his arc, and it never happened. and coupled with that very bad and skeevy duck/minerva bit i was just so frustrated and hurt last night.

so, yeah, that’s my whole spiel. you are free to disagree with me, but keep that opinion to yourself because i’m not getting into it with anyone. i will just block you; it’s better for us both, anyway.

#taz spoilers #taz amnesty spoilers #ignorance cloud on #im not putting this into the main tag bc i dont want people to bitch at me abt that #so if this shows up in theres its bc tumblr has a terrible algorithm

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leviathiane · 4 years

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SHOW US YOUR WROR RAW UNPROCESSED WHOLE GRAIN ORGANIC NOTES

this is going to be a long-ass post i am so sorry to Everyone! i take a lot of notes.

So, as You specifically know (as well as all of my lovely Soggers) I take a LOT of notes. Obsessively. I write fucking everything bc i have very little memory and very much paranoia. This results in literal Piles of notes. Raw planning, on paper, on my phone– doodles of scenes im brainstorming, bulletpoints, entire SCRIPTS– it’s all there but scattered (I’ve got scenes planned in the margins of my goddamn anthropology notes and deciphering it was a NIGHTMARE)

I won’t even upload all the photos of my writing notebook, because itd be like 50 pages of illegible nonesense. but heres a couple of planning phase pages. (may be hard to read, I dropped this notebook both into some tidepools, into a creek on campus, and accidentally leaked my waterbottle onto it in my backpack :/)

if you can’t tell already, yes they all look exactly like this. Some are even more illegible, because I wrote them with the notebook half under my actual class notes. Because i wrote most of them in class. During lectures. And pretending very badly that i was not doing exactly that. (pay attention in class please i got away with this bc i was filling up elective units)

I’m also flat out MISSING a large portion of my notes bc some of it? isnt even in the damn notebook. its on a sheet of binder paper, or on the empty back of an assignment. I’ve now lost most of those notes, but the ones i do still have are just as (even more, actually) indecipherable chicken scratch:

Wow, how clean and tidy and easy to follow! i am in hell.

and this doesnt mention the PAGES and PAGES of outlines that are on my laptop, and the pages of outlined scenes that are on the notes app of my phone. if i put them all, you would have entire chapter spoilers up to the very end of the story so i cant post a lot of them– and also theres just a goddamn lot of them. currently i have 16 pages of outlining. There are no spacing breaks. It is a solid 16 page block of text. Looking at it gives me a migraine.

some assorted notes which i have dredged up from the deleted parts of the main draft google doc go all the way back to when i started Wror in June and they are Barely more readable than my handwriting on sheer account of: articulation is not my strength. These include:

“Ch 8 plan: sabo gets trained specially, awakens his armament haki, beats ace in a bunch of spars and proves himself to be anything but vulnerable. The boys are like “we fucking recognize that technique ryu taught you before us!!” and goad ryu into finally starting them both on basic haki training, just to awaken it, since sabo already has. Also this is the chapter that ace finally confronts ryu for his devil fruit after ryu confirms that some devil fruit users can’t be hurt without haki and ace immediately catches onto that and tries to slam his pipe through ryus head. It doesn’t work, ryu catches the weapon with a haki covered hand, to avoid turning to flame with hit and ace just gets frustrated and accuses ryu of hiding his devil fruit, because he remembers what he saw in grey terminal and that now that he has seen haki he can distinguish it from what he saw and he’s sure no one could do what ryu did. He calls ryu a hypocrite for coddling them even after telling them to stop coddling sabo and ryu has to sit them down and explain that yes he does have powers and he has been hdiing it and explains his reasoning. However instead of understanding th eboys just get fired up and say they don’t wnt to be scared of fire, especially not when it means ryu isn’t taking them seriously in a spar. Ryu finally agrees to start them on desensitization training for fire trauma. Fire desensitization training happens on the beach, so that they have water nearby in case things get out of hand. At some point ace gives ryu a considering look and is just like “if you have a devil fruit that means you can’t swim either right?” and ryu is basically just like “lmao yeah” and then ace immediately attempts to drown him. Lots of murder attempts in ace’s department toget his older brother to be less of an idiot with little success lol(extra: ace tried to attack ryu earlier both to confirm that ryu has a devil fruit that would force him to use haki to hide it, and because he now knows that he CAN’T hurt ryu without haki and as thus can’t beat him and make him admit he’s awake without being good at haki.)” [chapter 8]

“Small sabo lost his hat and goggles in the incident and while he doesn’t remember having them future sabo notices he looks uncomfortable and keeps touching his hair and head. Ace yells at him for it thinking he bandaging are bothering him and that he can’t touch them but little sabo just comments that something about it feels wrong. Luffy blurts our that he had a hat, like luffy does, But he doesn’t now ace begrudgingly mentions that they can’t get a new one in town. Future sabo doesn’t even hesitate and just plops his own hat onto his younger selves head. It clearly too big for him, and almost falls over his eyes but he grins up at future sabo and is like “wow!! Thank you! I’ll take care of it till I have one of my own” and creates a paradox like Luffys own hat. The footsteps younger sabo has yet to fill. This HAS to happen AFTER the talk where they explain that future and past sabo are both the same person, to give little sabo that pressure.” [chapter 9]

“(Right after this older sabo takes them down to the ocean so that they can play a little and desensitize themselves and immediately fucks himself over when he goes weak in the water bc he somehow fucking forgot his own devil fruit again and now even younger sabo is on his case about not letting him near the fucking ocean that little goddamn HYPOCRITE—) )” [for chapter 9]

“Ch 9 plan: they finally leave dawn island. Starts with the boys getting a haircut after training and luffy mentions how long it’s been since they’ve last needed a haircut, giving sabo and ace time to point out that it’s been 2 months now since ryu joined them, and that sabo was completely healed by now. The boys are now aware of the basics of haki, and while luffy hasnt awakened either yet ace and sabo both have a little bit of weak armament haki. (sabo won’t awaken observational haki until he gets his memories back) ryu tries to sneak off into the city to steal a boat but his brothers refuse to leave him behind and keep sneaking out after him, not wanting him to go alone and saying that since he’s been training them they’re clearly stronger and he needs to let them do this. Ryu eventually just lets it go because why the fuck not it’s a dream and they make him feel better. They get the boat out on open ocean and finally fucking sail out, cheering loudly, ryu struggling to make them all calm down but also not really trying. He’s happy as shit, and they’re all so excited and happy and sabo dips a hand into the waves and then smiles so fucking wide and tackles ryu so violently they both nearly tip into the water and it’s just very very good. “ [also for ch 9]

** I flat out dont Have any outlining from before chapter 6, because i only started actually outling chapters after that. i tend to just sit down and Write up until i hit a plot point or writers block and then am forced to actually think it through and plan rather than letting it come naturally. thats also why the quality and editing is better in later chapters despite everything being written within the same time frame.

besides entire chapter outlines, there are the scene specific phone notes like:

“(ADDED) Right after they leave dawn, when sabo is sure they’ve gotten enough of a head start, he calls Garp. He doesn’t say who he is, but that all of the boys are safe and happy with him and has them all talk into the phone to assure him that they’re fine. Garp is honestly just pissed off he doesn’t know who’s calling and when he asks sabo just laughs and says a disobedient brat before hanging up. “

“(ADDED) TO EXPAND ON CH 3: sabo gets offered the chance to go with dragon, and he hesitates on the offer to go through with his previous life with the family he’s made in the revolutionary again. He almost agrees, because the bought of losing them in this lifetime is near excruciating but reminds himself swiftly that it’s no place for his brothers and not what they’d really want, and he wants selfishly to be with them as long as he Can until he “inevitably” wakes up. The boys are visibly relieved by this, especially ace. (Sabo gets asked who he is by dragon, who wants to know more about the stranger with his son, but dragon has always been quicker to make connections no one guessed and he just smiled knowingly at sabo and tells him he’s sure the other will have no trouble finding them if he’s in need. Sabo in turn warns him to keep Kuma close, and to look for a slave girl named koala.)”

I have…. many of these. I have Many of Everything.

finally, i have scene doodles. if i hit a bad writers block it usually helps me to sketch scenes or the character designs to regain my grip on what the hell is happening in the plot– Breach of Intention has character design sketches, pakcbond has MANY scene sketches, even some of my nsfw has some sketches. my wror skecthes arent Good of course, I am an art teacher for children and that means i am more often explaining the color wheel and brush techniques over drawing perfect human replicas– and i just dont really make a lot of fanart? ive never drawn sabo before but i sure have a bunch now. i wont include close ups because they genuinely suck but heres an example pic

So… yeah thats about everything. this is a VERY long post and yet i only included like maybe ¼ or 1/5 of all the notes i have dbskhjgfkjadns lmk if anyone wants more (or notes for my Other stories, which contain NO WHERE the same absurd amount of shit that wror does.)

#depths' ask #response #idk what to even tag this honestly?? this post is such a mess abhdsjfgdkjn #thanks mido love u dear 💕🎉 im gonna want some damn notes on second chances heads up #wror #wror stockpile #touchmycoat #i started this response at goddamn 3:52am and its now 4:40am #it took me. almost an HOUR #oh my god

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