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broflovski-brah · 7 months

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rant under the cut (about wendy and kyle and their fanon portrayals)

why don’t people portray wendy as smart

wendy is EVERY BIT just as smart as Kyle is and yet kyle is always the one in fanfic who gets into fucking yale or some ivy league school while wendy is jacking it off in san diego or some shit, like i’m not saying wendy is a female kyle. i’m just saying that wendy is every bit as smart as kyle is and should be portrayed as such in fanfics

and i don’t understand wendy haters who just call her a bitch like how is she a bitch? is she a bitch for having strong opinions? again, i guess kyle would be a bitch then too? like wendy is CANONICALLY CLASS PRESIDENT and in every fucking fic she is portrayed as some bratty spoiled snob who just mentally berates stan or is being a fucking piece of shit to everyone around her like she is not a bitch. she is smart and she has strong opinions! like i literally don’t get wendy haters who say ‘oh wendy is a bitch, wendy is opinionated’ and then like praise kyle and put him on a pedestal.

and just to clarify i am not a kyle hater, kyle is my favorite character (one of them anyway). but wendy and kyle literally are both smart and are both people who have strong opinions, just one is a boy and one is a girl. so why when a girl has an opinion is she a bitch? why when a girl is canonically smart she has to be portrayed as dumb in fanfic? like sure maybe she wasn’t the best for stan, but to be fair he wasn’t the best for her! like the justification of her ‘being a bitch to stan!’ or ‘being too opinionated’ is so fucking funny to me.

And another thing, why is kyle always portrayed as the stressed out workaholic ‘school is life’ kid? like…okay, i’m guilty of this. (not the school is life part but the kinda workaholic part) i do have my own headcanons that he is really busy in high school, but with sports and clubs. He doesn’t just do school. like…this is the way I portray him. (school wise)

he does basketball, maybe swims. He might work on weekends because his parents want him to have a good footing in the workplace to prepare him for college. He does tutoring and tries to help people out and he does take school somewhat seriously. he’s just kinda book smart. he doesn’t study all the time. he may forget a meal every once in a while because he gets busy and loses track of time but he’s not actively starving himself or depriving himself of sleep. he really only studies for big tests and tries hard on projects but he doesn’t dedicate his life to school. (I don’t know if that really justifies my headcanoning and i’m sorry if it comes off as offensive or promotes bad jewish stereotypes if it does i’ll fix it, i swear)

but like…wouldn’t wendy be the same way? wendy is very dedicated to school and stuff, she works her tail off as well and gets the short end of the stick on almost every fanon scenario. She’s portrayed as a bitch, and in fanfics with OCs she is the stereotypical mean girl bully who ‘stops Y/N from getting with whoever the fuck she’s pining after’ and it’s so fucking annoying. She would not be a mean girl, if anything she would be one of the most welcoming people in school. And in high school fics when her and Bebe are portrayed as people who bully freshmen and stuff like maybe Bebe would a little bit but Wendy would not. if anything Wendy would stand up for them.

bottom line is don’t strip wendy of her intelligence. don’t strip wendy of her strong willed personality and dress her up as some mean girl bully. she isn’t any of that. and if kyle can be a smart, morally inept person then so can wendy. there’s no reason she can’t be.

#wendy testaburger #skipper speaks #fanon sucks #kyle broflovski #south park #rant #south park kyle #south park wendy #wendy south park #kyle south park #sp kyle #sp wendy #kyle broflovski south park #wendy testaburger south park #south park kyle broflovski #south park wendy testaburger #literally if you’re anti wendy come at me for this like idc

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necbromancr · 4 months

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stan nervous young inhumans monologue animatic wip.. that i will probably next finish 2 i might aswell post...

#art #digital art #doodle #south park #kyle broflovski #stan marsh #sp style #csh #car seat headrest #the situation is that wendy called him a dick so hes just drunkingly ranting 2 kyle but kyle is fucking asleep #i feel like he would go on a rant explaining how hes actually a good person in canon anyway i swear thishappened but i dont remember #some of the drawings looks liek shit cuz theyre quick sketches i was planning on making it all look better DX #south park fanart #south park aged up #south park style #not my proudest moment

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theminecraftbee · 2 years

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so if you’re wondering how that one-hour hype stream went: about like this

#hermitcraft #joe hills #and also the lovely badgerspanner!#this was like the entire last twenty minutes there #he went on a rant about not getting the 'this is a wendy's' meme that turned into. this

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 27 days

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I’m forever going to be angry that ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’, Disney’s attempt at a live action Peter Pan from last year, portrayed Nana as little more than a pet. She’s in like maybe two scenes, one of which is Wendy in a brief flashback moment holding Nana as a puppy, and it just annoys me so bad as a longtime fan of the story.

Nana is so much more than a random pet dog - she is the Darling family’s nursemaid, she looks after the children, tidies the nursery, it’s mentioned that she’s the finest nursemaid on four paws etc. Nana not being in the nursery that one night is how Peter is able to get in, because she’s outside instead of in the nursery with the children.

It just really annoys me that the film didn’t appreciate Nana enough. I mean, to be fair, it’s not really an accurate adaptation of the story anyway but it just sucks to see. If pantomimes and theatres can bother to show Nana as a nursemaid by putting an actor in a dog costume, the least Disney could have done was give Nana a couple more scenes.

#anyway #random rant is random #peter pan #peter pan and wendy #disney #nana #nana the dog

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musashi · 1 year

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I’m Going to Change Your Mind About Manfred von Karma: An Essay

alright been a while since i was particularly autistic on here but I’ve been meaning to make this into a General Masterpost for a while so here we go.

Today on Autism: the twitter/tumblr AA fandom, manfred von karma, over-villainification, and why fanon manfred (fanfred) is in fact fanon and indisputably a freezing cold take.

alright, so first we have to define some things. first off: what the fuck am i talking about when i talk about “fanon” in relation to mvk?

specifically, i am talking about the interpretation of his character that i see mostly prevalent in tumblr, twitter, and AO3 as spaces. this interpretation pretty universally places him as an unrepentant child abuser. the extent of this abuse varies from fanwork to fanwork, most often it is verbal but occasionally it is physical instead or in tandem. usually this abuse is directed at miles but often bleeds into franziska as well, with some alternate takes proposing that one of them is the favoured child and the other is wholly disposable in manfred’s eyes. again, which is which can vary. i’m not going to go into explicit detail about this, but just for a quick visual aid, let’s utilize AO3′s tag filtering system.

as of this moment, if you go into mvk’s tag on ao3, there are 1102 total works that he features or makes an appearance in. ao3 allows you to filter out tags you might not want to see, so i’ve gone ahead and done that with all the child abuse tags i see used on the site, as well as a special custom tag the AA fandom has for mvk specifically. that should be the first indication that this particular interpretation about him is common. here’s my filters:

doing this knocks the work count down to 943. that’s roughly 150 works shaven right off the bat, and that is 1. only the works people bothered to tag him in and 2. only the works they bothered to content tag. there are countless fics about miles and franziska where he is not a central character, but his proposed abuse is a part of the narrative important to them as characters. so these numbers don’t even fully exemplify the problem.

having spent some time in multiple AA spaces, i have noticed this interpretation only really seems prevalent on tumblr, twitter, and AO3. in other fan spaces like discord servers, forums, on youtube, in twitch communities, i literally do not see this anywhere.

so. why is this the prevailing interpretation on these websites? well, that one’s easy for me to answer: miles and franziska are incredibly queer & nd coded. they are incredibly full of trans/gay swag and incredibly autistic, and miles isn’t just coded as neurodivergent, he very loudly very canonically has PTSD that causes him to struggle with everyday life. this is played straight and normalized in canon. there is no disputing this.

historically, queer and nd people are not treated very well by, well, anyone. including our own parents. we have sky-high rates of child abuse among us for perceived imperfection, and the rest really just writes itself. we latch onto characters that we see ourselves in, and we write what we know, and unfortunately what a lot of us know is heartbreak.

this is bolstered by something i noticed just anecdotally, having read through the entire mvk tag a million times: people who are attached to miles and franziska tend to write him as an abuser. people who are attached to any of the pre-DL6 crew (gregory, gant, & blaise) do not.

to get this out of the way, there is... literally nothing wrong with this. there is nothing in canon that contradicts that opinion about manfred. there is no problem if you want to write him that way, and if writing him that way is a form of healing for you, i want you to write it to your heart’s content. i want you to write and write and write until one day you feel better, and then i want you to write some more. listen. i love you. i feel you. i understand.

the problem is that this opinion has become SO parroted (hahaha, like the-- like in the game when--like wh--) that it has now been more or less canonized in the eyes of this swath of people. it is not canon. it is a headcanon. i will hereby be referring to this headcanon’s version as “fanfred,” because it’s fucking funny and my clown shoes honk and squeak as i move.

when challenged on this point (“what basis to we have for manfred von karma being abusive to his children?”) here is the one single piece of evidence that team fanfred brings to the table, these lines from case 1-4 of AAI:

here, manfred brushes off his daughter’s attempt to connect with him and calls miles worthless to his face. undoubtedly, and without question, there is no part of this that is not incredibly fucked up.

but... i do have some counterpoints, regardless.

point 1: AAI, imo, should be considered dubious canon. it was not written or directed by takumi and there are a lot of little inconsistencies in characterization that seem to fly over the AAI team’s heads--the biggest one for me personally is how in the AA trilogy, franziska never ever uses her whip on miles, except once in bridge when he’s having a trauma episode. this is a very small piece of characterization that means a lot to the people who notice it! but it’s ignored in aai, where she whips him nonstop like he’s an unruly showhorse.

all that to say, the aai team has their own interpretations of these characters. there are subtleties they miss, and choices made that might seem obvious upfront but fall apart under a microscope. this is kind of how i feel about mvk being kind of a shitty dad here, especially because...

point 2: this is ooc even for this game. reminiscence is a case i have memorized front to back, these lines come out of fucking NOWHERE. the tone set for miles & manfred’s relationship at the beginning of the case is not adversarial or unpleasant! they talk about the case with one another, very politely take turns proposing ideas and theories, and miles listens enraptured hanging on mvk’s every word. he wants to do good. he wants to be perfect. and mvk wants to see to it that he achieve that goal. if rell and faraday hadn’t gotten murdered, we would have gotten mvk as co counsel! every day i think about how we were robbed of that. nothing leads up to this line above. it is weird, confrontational, triggered by nothing, and way out of left field. not to mention directly contradictory to what mvk said at the beginning of the case, claiming to expect perfection from miles. it’s a weird fucking outburst, a sudden statement, which brings me to point three:

point 3: lead poisoning. more on that later.

[EDIT APRIL 2023: holy fucking shit. alright, nevermind, throw all this off the table: this line was a fucking mistranslation. as one of my youtube commenters pointed out:

‘The Investigations quote is actually a translation error. Karma didnt call Miles "Worthless" on the original JP version, he calls him "半人前" what means "an amateur / someone without experience" (what, for every single meaning of the word Miles actually IS in this case. It's literally his first case and he wasnt supposed to be anything more than a assistant untill like 5min before the game starting).

The translation put a really heavy amount malice on Karma's phrasing that simply doesnt exist on the original (and I actually got my DS the first time on years to confirm this). Maybe because they knew so many fans had this vision of Karma (or are "Abusive Karma fans" themselves), because there's no way this kind of translation wasnt done on bad faith... It's the worst option you could take (as in: the only one that wouldnt work in the context out of 10 others) and seems like a proposital Character Assassination on the translators part.’

so, holy fucking shit. i was right. it WAS ooc, because that shit was thrown in randomly in english for no apparent reason]

but even if we DO decide to consider AAI indisputable canon. then that, i feel, opens up a whole new can of worms. if AAI is canon material, what else can we consider canon material? because i’ve got quite a lot of material of one manfred von karma from other dubiously canon sources, and uh. the fanfred crowd is not gonna like it.

from the mangas we have manfred keeping no less than 5 photos of franziska on him at all times and showing them off to his opposing counsel with little to no prompting. we have him screaming at badd to keep a careful watch on his kids, not wanting to deny them their time at a real crime scene investigation but being worried to the point of seething rage.

(a bit more subtle, but from this same manga we have him getting his feefees hurt because kay calls him scary. i really love this because 1. it’s a parallel to pearl doing the same thing to franziska in bridge, and 2. it’s just really funny that von karmas want little girls to like them and view them as heroes of justice so bad but are constantly dissuaded by their resting bitch face. manfred has two daughters, he’s so used to little girls thinking he’s cool.)

in the live action movie, we have a beautiful scene where mvk and miles talk about the importance of not losing yourself in the pursuit of courtroom victory. i really love mvk in this movie. my friend once described him as someone’s grandpa who’s just lost in the mall.

in the anime! oh! the anime! let me count the ways i love thee.

in the aftermath of DL6 manfred comes to move miles out of his empty childhood home. seeing him balled up and unresponsive on the couch, mvk takes off the scarf he’s wearing and wraps it, tenderly, around miles before escorting him out of the house.

by miles’ own admission, he considers mvk the only person who was there for him after his father died.

sound the turnabout melody, an episode about miles’ life growing up with the von karmas, is my favourite piece of ace attorney media in the history of ever. it contains:

mvk asking and outright encouraging miles on the prospect of being a defense attorney

franziska, age 8, who has noticed that the new boy living in her home has never once smiled. she spends the whole episode trying to figure out ways to fix this. she demands (demands!) mvk

take them to a trial

take them to the mall

take them to fucking IHOP

and mvk complies with all of this. he buys franziska build a bear, and when she’s too sad for pancakes because miles has run off after his dog, the two of them go searching.

by the way he lets miles keep his dog, too.

the reason miles ran off is because he happened upon a criminal and saw through her lies. franziska and manfred fall back around the corner, watching him seek the truth and corner her. when she begins to get unruly, they step in, presence imposing as they protect miles. there is a lingering set of shots on manfred’s powerful finger snap, his eyes burning into her, and franziska with her riding crop, ready to fight a grown woman three times her size. miles is a part of their family. they love him.

miles apologizes for all the trouble. mvk says, let’s get pancakes. miles wins several thousand dollars in reward money for finding a dog and says, can i donate it to an animal shelter? mvk says, of course you can. it’s your money.

mvk was intending on only looking after miles temporarily as a foster parent. he states, outright, that he suspects this impulse came from guilt. he says, in few words, that he regrets what he did, and views taking on miles as his karma for it.

the episode is about miles feeling lost and alone, like he has nowhere, like he has no future. he doesn’t want to be a defense attorney anymore--it reminds him of what he’s lost. mvk watches him corner this criminal, and thinks, quietly, are you a prosecutor, boy? at the end of the episode, after franziska and mvk have solidified his importance in their family, manfred ties a cravat around miles’ neck. miles understands this gesture means he is a part of their family and, for the first time in years, he smiles with his whole face. the episode ends with him finally feeling as though he’s found his truth, his place in the world.

many people interpret manfred as losing respect for miles, berating him, or being otherwise cruel and abusive to him when he loses his first case in turnabout sisters. in the anime, he just seems perplexed!

he gives him some advice about not having feelings. it’s cliche anime villain, but fuck’s sake, it’s not cruel and unusual. today i experienced a fanwork where manfred slapped miles in the fucking face and called him every horrible thing under the sun.

in every single canon i can think of, there is more evidence that manfred was exactly as he seems--a stern mentor, who is cold and calculating and precise, but who has a clear charisma and functions as miles’ rock. in every single canon, miles loves and respects him. miles wants to be more like him. miles views him as an irrefutable part of getting through the trauma of his father’s death. franziska, too, talks about him with stars in her eyes in every canon. he is everything she aspires to be, he is her hero. fanworks where manfred forced these children to be mindless prosecuting machines pale entirely in comparison to what is in these ‘dubious’ canons, where they choose what they do because they want to stand tall beside him.

so. let’s talk about what manfred von karma is instead of what i personally believe he isn’t.

manfred von karma is a despicable fucking human being. he robbed two men of their lives. he ruined the life of every single character in the OG trilogy. do you have a character you like in the OG trilogy? manfred von karma ruined their life. every single horrible thing that has ever happened in ace attorney’s og trilogy happened because of him. and it didn’t even happen for a good reason. it happened because he was a petty, vengeful, impulsive coward of a fucking man who could not process or face head-on one single, meaningless imperfection. it happened because there was a gun at his feet and no one around to stop him. and he almost got away with it. he was so close.

he is a murderer. and a cold, calculating manipulator. he is both a fucking idiot and highly intelligent in covering his tracks. he is all these things.

so... why does he also have to be abusive?

isn’t... doesn’t that kind of... blunt the tragedy of it all?

what is a more heartbreaking story to you--

a monster of a man, imposing and cruel to his proteges, controlling and vile and unconvinced of their worth, exposed for the murderer, for the criminal he is? or...

or manfred von karma, stern-browed but loving father, who leads them with a steady hand and holds them when they falter, who was supposed to be their guiding star, and who turned out to be the monster in the shadows all along?

what is more compelling? miles and franziska finding out the truth, and shrugging it off with a, well, that makes some sense. or miles and franziska, curled up in one another’s arms in an empty house in germany, desperately combing their memory in tatters trying to look for a sign, any sign, anything they could have pinpointed that could have clued them in on the fact that he--

but of course there wouldn’t be anything like that. von karma is perfect.

turnabout goodbyes is certainly interesting. there’s a lot of really unhinged shit going on there. herr turkey vulture is off his fucking rocker in goodbyes. the level of premeditation is a very interesting contrast to the impulsivity of DL6. not to mention it’s just a very fucking random thing to do, framing miles for murder. it’s the one reason i can kinda see where the fanfred crowd is coming from, because it is just... pointlessly evil. what revenge is there left to get? gregory edgeworth is dead. he cannot see his son be jailed.

this brings me back to lead poisoning. i don’t really have anything more to say on that, or a big analysis to give. i just think maybe we should talk about the very real possibility that mvk is lead poisoned to shit. he acts kind of crazy sometimes. calling his kids worthless out of nowhere when 2 seconds ago they were all just talking normally. screaming in the middle of court cause his routine got interrupted. framing miles for murder in excessive detail. just girly things. i feel like his brain just rotted and rotted and rotted as the years went on until eventually he was like YEAH sure whatever i’ll really stick it to gregory, the corpse, by framing his son. that’s just my onion, though.

some other things that annoy me are when people make him transphobic, homophobic, all the phobics, again it’s all just so... excessive. but i get REALLY pissed off when people make him ableist. if you want to write ableism, ace attorney has a billion able-bodied characters you can use for that agenda. manfred von karma is disabled. in canon. i feel like it’s kind of a slap in the fucking face to erase that about him.

again, i personally find the story less compelling if he was abusive. i find it shallow. i would much rather read about someone loved and revered exposed for the monster they are. i want to read stories about franziska shattering to nothing and sobbing in his room when she gets the call from miles, trying desperately not to think about the way her father used to sing her lullabies and bring her sweets and teach her calligraphy. i want miles to be trembling in the defendant’s chair while that metal detector beeps, i want him to be staring at his shaking hands unable to believe it, trying to find any other line of thought. i don’t want their reactions to ANY of this to be ‘yeah, that tracks.’ i want denial. i want heartbreak. i want screaming in the detention center.

it is fine if that is not what you want, but i am tired of the reception my take gets in fandom. people on this website have not only forgotten the rule about not tagging your hate, but they are insistent that their interpretation is the only one. they act as though fanfred is the only truth. they act as though it is canon, and they call us abuse apologists for disagreeing. i once saw someone in the mvk tag saying if you liked manfred or kinned him you were a horrible person. i rather like my mvk kinnie friend. all he does is cry over seals, talk about thomas the tank engine, and come into the group chat where he then proceeds to tell dad jokes in character. he’s really good at motivating me to do my laundry.

if you need to process some shit you went through growing up, i love you. if you want to write what you know, i love you. but please understand that i, as an abuse survivor myself, am not compelled by narratives of abuse. i am not compelled by torture porn about the characters i relate to. i was not given a happy, loving home growing up. it’s for this reason that i want to give the characters i love and relate to what i was deprived of.

i want to change the fandom’s mind about manfred von karma. i want to shift the narrative away from this my way or the highway mentality. if i didn’t, that’s okay. but if i did for you, maybe give me a reblog, or come talk to me abt him :] he is my favourite villain in any series ever, i think. i’d love to hear what others think.

#pwaa #ace attorney #karuma gou #manfred von karma #wendy rambles #wendy rants #simmering sapphire

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pencilofawesomeness · 1 month

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Was looking over your older art and noticed you wondering why Wendy has pink hair when she uses dragon force. I do not pretend to understand what all goes on behind the scenes, but I imagine it is purely because Porlyusica has pink hair, and since Porlyusica is a human Edolas counterpart of Grandeeny, if Grandeeny had had any hair it would be pink,(she is white but those are feathers I think), and thus Wendy inherits the dragon version of the gene for pink hair when she gets more dragon like.

See, then the question is, why does Porlyusica have pink hair? Why does Wendy's hair change at all? None of the others do, and I doubt Igneel would have have pink hair if you want to go the "they happened to match" route.

Nah, I was more ranting because I thought it was a dumb decision. That is what I meant when I asked "why pink?" not because I thought there could/should be an actual reason. The others get super on-brand elemental infusions and I think Wendy's should have gone harder on the multitude of the sky. My redesign was purely that: a redesign. Because sometimes I have fun and inconsequential opinions and implement them because why not? :)

(The art in question, in case people are curious, because I did my dragon force art a few years ago, I recount to my own horror of the passing of time. I should really draw dragon force stuff again lmao.)

#fairy tail #ask #dragon force #look look I am just so goddamn tired #of girl characters getting pink randomly #natsu has the pink covered we were good #its not that I hate the idea of it in principle #and I like Porly's design even though #I am mostly confident that her being edo Grandeeny was #100% a retroactive decision and not at all planned at her inception #that is just how mashima rolls #but yeah this is mostly me wanting better (my opinion) for wendy #and because I am a big sky nut and I wanted to make her eyes the whole scope #and not just light pink #which is neither porly's nor grandeeny's eye color on that logic #rant over byeeeee

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guardianoflightanddarkness · 10 months

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An unpopular opinion about Gravity Falls: Return to the Bunker fanmade episode

(SPOILERS)

Okay, first of all, I want to make perfectly clear that I fully respect the crew and the job put in this episode, seriously, it's a blast to have such passioned fans that keep the fandom alive after 11 years and more to come, and honestly, I would want to see more projects like these and The Woods and Tales of Weirdmaggedon returning.

I was honestly very hyped up with this episode since I found out it was in production, so of course having it full yesterday was an awsome surprise. The art, the storyboard, the staging, the editing and the cast was an easy 10 out of 10, and I have absolutely zero complains in the audiovisual part.

However, sadly, to me, the entire thing comes crashing down with the plot and the narrative, by basically changing and missunderstanding the main characters, specially Ford: yes, it's no secret that Ford has trust issues, I think that was pretty clear after he FELT (not saying they did, but that's his perception) betrayed by his twin brother (sabotaging his project and keeping quiet about it, accidentally trapping him in the multiverse for over half of his life during a fight he started it, stealing his house, his identity, mock his entire carreer for money and then starting the portal that almost destroyed the world), his best friend from college (who created the memory gun and used it against him after starting a cult), his pet (the Shapeshifter tried to kill him and Fiddleford) and his muse (who manipulated him, lied to him, possessed and tortured him for decades, not to mention unable to sleep in peace until he got a plate in his head, and being hunted down accross the entire universe for 30 years), alongside all the stress of re-adapting to his dimension, contain the rift and keep Bill at bay.

So yes, Ford has reasons to be the way he is, but the problem is, the Ford we see in this episode is NOT the same one we saw in the TV show or in Journal 3: Ford can be bitter, and like I said, has trust issues, but he is not an ass for the sake of it like they portrayed him here, specially towards Mabel: yes, true, they didn't spend that much time together, but the little times we saw Ford interacting with her or even just talking, or even his entries in the journal, he shows how much he adores her, he only has praise for her ("I like this kid, she is weird!", "She has a magnetic personality!", "You are a good person, Mabel!"), and openly trusted her with a crossbow and sent her to a mission to protect the Shack. This one is openly hostile to Mabel, refusing to wear her sweater because it's hot (WTF, you are LITTERALLY wearing one!), downright telling her he doesn't trust her when he did before, and even saying he likes Dipper because he listens and obeys blindly. Ford LOVES these kids and always showed it, and yet the man in this episode doesn't seem to give a crap about anyone's feelings by being a jerk without a logical reason.

Which brings me to the next point: his reunion with Fiddleford makes NO sense considering that we saw Ford BLAMING himself over and over for what happened to Fiddleford, we litterally see him thinking he hates him and actually displaying remorse, and Fiddleford showing compassion and forgiveness. Instead here, we see Ford treating Fiddleford like dirt just like he did before the portal incident 30 years ago. And Mcgucket doesn't act like Mcgucket himself either, not to mention how the writing ignores how unstable he can be, ("Dude, Mcgucket would never do that!", sure, let's ignore this is the same guy that creates huge terrifying destructive robots that reck the town on a wim like his son not paying attention to him, his wife divorcing and not getting invited to a friend's party).

The entire episode's narrative and characters bash Ford for his trust issues and traumatic experiences instead of tackling down his trauma propperly: I mean, the show EXPECTS Ford to ignore ALL his traumas for over 3 decades and trust not just Mabel, which would have been understandable, but Soos and Wendy, who he doesn't even know, with the rift, you know, the thing that can destroy them all, and then gets punished for not doing so, and paint him as an ilogical paranoid that puts down everyone around him. None of them show any empathy towards him, and they are quick to antagonize him over it and directly blame him for EVERYTHING that happened in Gravity Falls, and the narrative reassures that they are in the right, pointedly ignoring not just all Ford's trauma but everyone's own actions into all the mess that happened over the summer. For crying out loud, the narrative shows more compassion, understanding and sympathy towards the fricking Shapeshifter and blames Ford for the experiment's fate, the monster ACTUALLY having the gal to say that Ford can't change, that he promises to change but then backtracks and keeps going (ironic that this is accused to Ford, of all characters in this episode) and then getting a fricking REDEMPTION and romance partner that he didn't deserve while ignoring he tried to kill Ford and Fiddleford back in the day, traumatizing the latest one, and tried the same with Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Wendy. But hey, nevermind, he just needed some love, he deserves to be happy, NOT YOU, FORD!....I swear, I can't with this.

And that fricking final...WHERE do I even start with that? Ford was affected and TRAUMATIZED because of the ray gun, he was a victim of it, he was the one who tried to stop Fiddleford from using it on himself MULTIPLE times, and who struggled to do it with Stan and broke down after being forced to do so, to his own brother, and only felt a bit relieved after they got his memories back. And you're fricking telling me he would use it on his 12 year old NIECE and friends AFTER they patched things up and he came clear, breaking THEIR trust?! No, sorry, no, that's just so out of character from Ford I don't even know where to start. I know this was done by force in an attempt to make it fit with the canon story, but it just doesn't match not just because of being completely out of character from Ford, but because it still causes bigger issues: he didn't use it on Mcgucket, therefore Mcgucket KNOWS about the rift and about Ford, therefore it breaks the canon of their reunion in Take Back the Falls since in Ford's words, "Fiddleford, I didn't see you since we parted ways, you must hate me". And then the famous lines of "How am I gonna protect the rift?" Honestly, this entire scene, if not the entire episode, just felt like the writers were just trying so hard to take any accountability from Mabel in handling the rift and just blame it on Ford and screaming "SEE?! YOU SEE HOW MUCH OF A JERK FORD IS?! MABEL DID NO WRONG, IT'S FORD'S FAULT FOR ERASING HER MEMORIES, HE IS THE JERK AND THE MAIN ANTAGONIST OF THE SERIES, WHAT A JERK!". And sorry, this still doesn't fix it, because while Mabel didn't know what the rift was, she still KNEW it belonged to Ford (Blendin told her) and that it belonged to his expedition for, in her own words, "Save the world or whatever", and Blendin telling her to steal it ("your grunkle won't even know it's gone missing!") and she agrees. So yeah, while she didn't fully know what she was taking, the fact that she knew it was something that belonged to her grunkle and that he took to his expedition was enough for her to know to NOT to take away, specially without his consent. This episode just tries so hard to paint Ford like the biggest asshole just to place Mabel and the others in a better light and ignore anything they do, so much that it breaks canon.

And Dipper's and Stan's subplot...I dunno, it felt completely unused, and once again, placing the ball on Dipper, Stan accusing him of ignoring him for a month (which makes zero sense because, Ford came out of the portal barely 2 weeks before Weirdmaggedon, there's no way a month went by, and on the top of that not making any sense considering this happened POST Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons where these two had patched up, so this argument makes zero sense). This one specially dissappointed me because, the same way I wanted to see Ford and Mabel bonding, I wanted more scenes like that with Stan and Dipper, specially when we seemed to finally address the fact that yes, Stan and Dipper didn't spend that much time with him. The problem is that the narrative of the episode blames Dipper entirely and ignores whatever Stan has done wrong in regardless of their relationship that easily made Dipper distant with him: not the teasing, not the hard work to "tought him up", not his unfair treatment towards him in comparison to Mabel, not the fact that he LIED to him for the entire summer and broke his trust, nothing. In fact, just when Dipper loses his patience and actually starts to understandably tell him off putting ALL of these examples, Dipper's callout falls on deaf ears, litterally, because Stan doesn't pay attention to Dipper and is panicked due to the monster behind him. Then after that, ALL of that is forgotten, they don't patch things up, and Dipper is the one who has to apologize to Stan, after Stan, once again, not just kept him from hanging out with Ford, after he had promised he would let him go in Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons, but also lied to him and got them into a bigger mess. But no, Dipper is the one who apologizes and is supposed to trust Stan...because of reasons, even if they didn't talk anything out or solved anything really.

The jokes honestly also felt flat and I only honestly enjoyed the Shrek 2 reference.

So yes, while I think that from terms of art, voice cast and edition this episode is amazing, the narrative, the characterization of the main cast and the development is attrocious. Honestly, it feels more like a bad fanfic hating on Ford (and to some extent, Dipper) and portraying him as the biggest jackass on earth and the reason of everything going wrong. This is not how the characters behave. I seriously have to wonder if the writers even watched the show, let alone read Journal 3 and Lost Legends.

#gravity falls #return to the bunker #fanmade #Opinion #Rant #Ford #Mabel #Stan #Dipper #Mcgucket #Wendy #Soos #Why does Ford get all the hate?

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