that one scene in devil wears prada where Andy says that she would have never betrayed anyone like Miranda betrayed Nigel at the end in order to save herself and her position on top in the fashion industry and Miranda Priestly is quiet for a beat before she whispers in that lilt whispy voice ”you already did”…..that was a better written psychologically dynamic scene between two characters than most modern hero/villain scenes you see today in cinema
the devil wears prada walked so shows like hannibal and succession could run no I won’t be taking any questions
also i wonder if the writers for this ““chick flick”” movie knew that they were going to be creating one of the best written female antagonist characters that cinema has ever seen like Miranda Priestly was completely ruthless but also nuanced and sympathetic that gave her character layers in a way that still floors me watching the movie today
honestly, what i think warriors needs the most right now is a total reset. like, world-wise.
it’s no secret that most of the clans (ThunderClan especially) have become heavily bloated - for lack of a better word - because the Erins introduce specific, named cats and then have to follow up on them and their family because of the way the arcs occur in rapid succession. that wasn’t so much of a problem in the first two or three arcs, but it certainly is now. and god knows these family trees are enough to drive anyone up the wall. and don’t get me started on how frequently characters and their personalities are drastically altered for no good reason other than to fill a narrative role. which is, fairly obviously, a big no-no for spinning a coherent narrative that relies on previous installments, if it even has to rely on them.
obviously, these aren’t the only issues the modern series has, but it’s certainly become a big one, and it’s probably caused a few other narrative issues, given that we pretty much know EVERY cat in EVERY clan, at this point.
which is why i say the world of warriors needs an absolute reset. perhaps not wiping the slate clean entirely, they’ve gone too far for that by now, but we know everyone. we’ve seen everything these past few generations have to offer. we can’t pull any twists without retcons (not that the Erins are above that, either) because we’ve seen those that would be villains already and everyone else that’s stood against them.
what i REALLY wish would happen to solve this problem (i say as if i’m invested in the actual stories at this point, but i’m saying this more from a writer/storytelling perspective) is a timeskip. a massive one. that’s what this series really needs.
the arcs happen too close together, is one of my biggest pet peeves. if a timeskip is gonna happen, it needs to be LONG. everyone we know in the current arcs/generations needs to be gone, save for maybe one or two of the younger ones as the eldest elders, but they can’t keep relying on the current cast. there needs to be a fresh slate.
new leaders and a new cast with new motives and beliefs (so they can stop butchering the current ones). basically the butchering of personalities and entire characters and retconning entire character arcs and pre-established backstories could so easily be avoided if they just. used entirely new characters.
new family trees. for the love of god, let those monstrosities of the current bloodlines rest. if the timeskip is long enough, they wouldn’t have to worry about them; they could forge relationships (familial and otherwise) from scratch. there could be room for a few references to new characters being descended from older ones, but the connection should end at that; there should be a gap of those missing generations in the family tree, no one should be able to draw an exact line back to that character/bloodline. this is honestly one of the easiest, if not only, possible coherent solutions to this issue at this point.
aside from solving some prominent issues, a long timeskip presents one of the more interesting opportunities for the series: show how the clans have changed over time. sure, there’s change happening in the current arcs, but again, everything’s so close that not a lot really is changing. if the skip is executed properly (read: they make it long enough), they can show not only how general beliefs have changed through the generations, but the actual clans and their capabilities. think of your favorite warriors rewrites (i know you have one) and all the cool little things they add to the clans: crafting, cooking, their own language; all of it could realistically be included in the series if a timeskip simply went far enough and implied that the clans developed these areas as time went on. it could pave a whole new direction for the series. and for the better.
it wouldn’t have the charm and engagement that the first arc had when the world was introduced, but it has the opportunity to be the next best thing. a complete refresh, yet a continuation of the same series.
the only way for this to work (assuming all the previous points were met) is to ABSOLUTELY NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, CREATE ANY SORT OF “PREQUEL”-ESQUE CONTENT. that means no super editions that tell a pre-established character’s backstory, no novella or whatever that bridges generations or covers these changes, nothing! the skip should be made and the entire series should move FORWARD from that point. to go backward would be to muck it all up and ruin the whole premise.
again, i really don’t keep up with the current story in-depth, but as someone who’s working on a long, multi-arc story of her own, this is my take on how to really “save” (or save as much as it can) the series or put it back on the right track. we know this won’t be what happens, but i really wish it was. it would fix so much. i wish it had been implemented already; that would save a lot of us so much suffering.
anyway, that’s my bi-yearly warrior cats essay. do with it what you will.
Squidward only ever makes artwork based off his visage, it’s all very surface level and lacks any emotional depth
Squidward should start making artwork based on how Squidward feels and not how Squidward looks yknow? I feel like he’s experimented plenty with self portraits, but none of them really say much about Squidward as a person yknow
got drunk last night and got really emotional over Squidward’s potential and how much he holds himself back
Sorry as someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically this completely resolved the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity and angry I never saw it before.
I saw a post a couple of days ago that said one of the most important things about Steven Universe, thematically, is that everybody in the core cast has done at least one completely morally unjustifiable thing, regardless of how likeable or sympathetic they are otherwise, and that this is important to understanding the show thematically. This is true.
But it also reminded me of one other thing I really like about Steven Universe, which is that it’s the emotional-toxicity equivalent of all those posts about how cartoons have to come up with unimaginably worse forms of death and violence in the course of avoiding getting censored for depicting plausible forms of death and violence. All of the ways in which SU characters cross those emotional and interpersonal lines are wrapped up either in their fantastic abilities or their bizarre life circumstances in a way that makes it all esoterically awful and often much more existentially horrifying than any of the real-life dynamics it’s alluding to. You’ve said nasty things to people in the heat of the moment but you’ve never shapeshifted into the guy’s dead wife to twist the knife a little more. No violation of bodily autonomy is ever gonna involve contriving a situation in which the other party will believe that it’s necessary to fuse with you, body and soul in order to do demolition work. The most toxic relationship in the world isn’t gonna involve imprisoning someone at the bottom of the ocean for several months and only emerging to participate in humanoid-sacrifice rituals. Your codependency will never last 8,000 years, be frontloaded with a faked death you’re biomechanically incapable of confessing to, and end with your partner’s suicide-by-childbirth. Your worst roommate situation will never end with one party stealing the apartment and taking it to the moon. Et al. Et al.
I don’t remember where I was going with this, precisely, (and I may have drifted sideways from the original discussion topic of crossed lines per se, but whatever.) I mean part of it’s funny because it exists in a series with tons of mundane, non-metaphorical examinations of interpersonal issues, like everything to do with Lars and Sadie, or Sour Cream and Marty. And there’s an extent to which I’m just describing how cartoons are written. But there’s something special about how Steven Universe does it. Something delightfully fucked up about it all. I think maybe part of it is that it’s a considered and embraced fucked-upedness, none of this is just an ill-considered fridge-logic by-product of something else they were trying to do. Like for every one of these, someone in the writers room probably went, “Man, this has some fucked up implications,” and then everyone would go, “Yeah!” and hi five and put it in specifically because of that. Great Show. Great show
my favorite part of people trying to write big long screeds about how jasper/lapis is So Toxic is that they’re also ancient fucked up rock aliens who only barely understand the concept of murder and pretty much spontaneously, independently reinvented psychological torture. but like sure do please continue to explain why one or the other of them was abusive. it’s really important that we don’t make a mistake and enjoy looking at Bad Guy tits.
