#plot issues

Ok Arcane season two is great and amazing and I have no problems with it… aside from two small itty-bitty really fucking important things.

Vi and Viktor’s characters.

Spoilers for episode 2-3

Most people have a general idea of the plot holes in their story, but many can have a hard time figuring out how to fix them. 

The main thing to know about plot holes is that they are inconsistancies in your story. Something is established in one way, and then manifests in a way that is not explained, or is made to seem like it’s been that way all along. 

When you boil it down like that, the problem becomes a lot more straight-forward to solve; you just have to figure out what the inconsistancies are and make them consistant!

Thing is, figuring that out can be fairly challenging. The first thing I like to do is write down what the plot hole is, and be specific.

For example, “The mayor of the town established when he met the hero that the dragon has been harrassing the town for over a decade, and both the villagers and the town show evidence of this. But the hero also showed that the dragon was easy to kill and escaped without getting injured. The village should have done something already given the wreckage left by the dragon.”

Yes, it’s kind of long, but it’s easier to brainstorm solutions when the essence of the plot hole is stripped to it’s bare essentials. Now, you can brainstorm solutions that make things line up. For example, maybe the mayor says the dragon just came and it’s first and only raid was devestating. Maybe there’s some kind of spell on the dragon that only the hero can bypass and that’s why they were chosen. 

(more details below the break)

One of the hard lessons I learned as an artist (especially as a writer) is that just because someone offers suggestions for improving your work (ie critique) doesn’t mean they hate it.

The best way to look at a crit is to see it as “I like this and adding this or developing this would make it more interesting.”

So long as it is a balance criticism and it is done respectfully, it is not hate.

I specifically want to address this in regards to She Ra and the Princesses of Power.

My own personal feelings on Catradora come from a couple things:

1. The writing left a lot to be desired. Catra’s arc was left unfinished and was rushed in Season 5. This further pushed away the possibility of C/A making sense from a storytelling standpoint.

Adora, by the end of Season 3 had already decided to move on. She had a fantastic climatic shift.

Yet, that was thrown out for the sake of a ship. In my book (as a writer and a visual artist) but mostly as a storyteller-this is not what you want to do. At the end of the day you are telling a story. The characters (like the art) are tools for telling a story.

If the story fails it is because your tools didn’t correctly depict your theme and therefore revisions and also critiques are crucial.

A good writer doesn’t just show their work in an echo chamber where everyone agrees. You will find those who don’t. And while you don’t have to take all those cricisms on, you should always be open to hearing them. Because again, the whole point is to grow.

2. This brings me to point two. She Ra is fantasy show about friendship and about change FOR KIDS. Kids will imitate what they see to the letter. If kids see that hurting people is okay then they will emulate that.

I am a big fan of art as education so when a show for kids portrays content that sends a bad message, it bothers me so much.

There aren’t a lot of LGBTQ shows out there to begin with so it is extra important that we show the best examples for kids to see. This is our responsibility as the older generation going forward. Behind us we have shows that literally call us “perverts” and other slurs.

This is why so many kids can’t come out: the media still shows us as being somehow messed up.

We need positive examples. Healthy examples.

3. If someone is taking the time to talk about a show or book, listen. You don’t have to agree. But you may learn something new.

Which brings me back to C/A. I don’t hate it. I am against how it was handled, but I don’t hate it.

I think the idea of juxtaposing two characters who are friends but are torn by their views is compelling and while it isn’t a new concept overall, it is still a fun chance to play with character development.

Catra’s arc is fascinating. She has a lot of things that make her multi-dimensional. She begins as kind of a neutral evil type character who turns chaotic evil and ends as neutral good (ish).

The issue of course is that the ratio of development shift is off. Most stories (see my personal favorite redemption arc example “Avatar the Last Airbender”) are done in a 3 act structure. ATLA has 3 acts, Kipo has 3 acts, and many other successful shows have 3 acts. Can you have more seasons than 3? Yes, absolutely. But, you have to consider the story in 3 acts, which will come out to the simple Beginning, Middle, and End of a story.

If Catra has been evil for 4 seasons and we are already at the end of act 2, it’s too late. This is what happened. So in terms of story-Catra’s drastic shift makes no sense and therefore A/C makes no sense because the last events show Adora is done with Catra’s actions and Catra hasn’t even begun to change who she is at her core.

Can she change? Absolutely! Another season or so could have given her plenty of room to do reparations for her actions. SHOW us that she has changed.

However, this is a) Not what happened and b) This doesn’t mean that C/A makes sense.

4. Criticism of Catradora in terms of abuse. Catra repeatedly showed she didn’t care/stated she wanted Adora to “Go away”.

The shot of her standing over Adora as Adora pleads is like the shot out of the Lion King where Scar is about to shove Mufasa off. Brilliant cinematography and it really pushes Catra as a villain.

At the end of the day, that is what the show decided she was as a character: the antagonist. She is not a hero. And she is not written like a hero. Is this me saying “I hate Catra”? No. This is me looking at a character in a cartoon show for kids and going: “Okay, so this character who is hurting her ex best friend, kidnapping her friends, almost getting her memory wiped, killing her best friend’s new friend’s mother, and almost destroying the world is a villain/antagonist.”

Again, Catra is coded as an antagonist with potential for redemption. Or at least a complicated reconciliation. I would like to reference a favorite anime of mine as an example of this exact scenario that SPOP attempted: Mobile Suit Gundam Seed.

For those who have not watched it, the show follows two characters who are best friends but are divided by war. One, similar to Adora, joins the opposing side to protect his friends, and the other tries to bring him back. The plot escalates and literally comes to devastating blows (I won’t say what so if you want to watch the show you aren’t spoiled).

Storywise you want the attempts of your characters to resume their idea of “normal” to come to a peak (climax)-see SPOP episode “The Portal”. In the episode Adora finally realizes that Catra won’t change and decides to focus on her new life.

In Mobile Suit Gundam Seed the protagonist is forced to see (after a severe loss on both sides) that they will keep repeating the war cycle until something fundamentally changes on a larger scale.

SPOP tries to do this in too short a time and Catra’s goals don’t change or are too ambiguous because the show focused more on the romance. That is where it falls apart for me in terms of development.

Catra needed at least 1 (2-3 would be better) to fully change to balance with the first 4 seasons that made her into the complex antagonist she is.

If we look at Zuko’s arc in ATLA, he already wants to help people, but is blocked by the toxic ideals of his family/Fire Nation. The reason he split off was because he defended troops.

So, even though his methods are toxic and villain-esc, his ultimate goals aren’t. He wants honor and he wants to protect the people around him. It makes for a great rounded character and the show starts his redemption early enough to see it through.

He is also held accountable for his actions. Katara literally calls him out and he fucks up in trying to change. But we do see that he changes and the implication is that he will continue to change because his morals have changed.

Catra, to me, started to change but it was still not clear (outside of the supposed romance) why she did it. She hit rock bottom, which is a good climatic point in Season 4, but she plateaus in development afterwards because she doesn’t seem to think about what she did. She mostly just is shown to kinda regret almost killing Adora a bunch of times. Which wasn’t well written (again we’ve had 4 seasons of Catra trying to kill Adora).

What we needed were some episodes of Catra seeing the damage SHE did to all the towns, instead of her running around like she didn’t cause the Horde to destroy everything. She could have been shown to feel remorse if Mermista commented on her destruction of Selineas.

But we don’t get any of that. We get a season of romance that makes no sense and also forgives an abuser.

I don’t have a lot of energy thanks to my mental health issues but let me say this: I wouldn’t comment on something if I didn’t care.

I wouldn’t analyze this if I “hated” it. I like SPOP and I think Catra had a lot of great design and development.

I don’t hate her or Catradora. But I won’t defend her or excuse the abuse she represents. At the end of the day she is just a character in a show and I am commenting on her (not you-the viewer) as a writing tool.

I have done a lot of thinking about this and I think it bears repeating that you can’t take critiques as “hate” if you want shows to become better and if you want to be an artist.

Artists are always improving. You don’t have to agree with all crits, but interpretting all feedback as “hate” isn’t good.

Especially when the comments are telling you that something is toxic.

Catra is a terrifying character. That is why she makes a convincing antagonist. But it is also why I won’t ship her with Adora. Adora is shown to be scared of Catra in many shots.

Catra screams at Adora and to me, as someone who has had people scream at them in a toxic way, that reads to me as toxic and abusive.

If you are seeing this as “hate” I urge you to consider why. If there is something in Catra’s behavior you see as okay when someone else is scared, check yourself.

Edit: While I don’t feel blind hate is what I feel, I also actively don’t like C/A at all as a result of how toxic the ship is and how many fans will attack anyone who has any opposing opinions. So my already anti-C/A opinion is soured because I now see the scary truth that many fans will go after anyone who disagrees with the ship. That proves you don’t know what a toxic relationship looks like. And it’s scary.

AKA, that last episode with the near-lynching as the B (C?) plot to the dinner party and wedding will-they-or-won't-they storylines I found rather...jarring.

#amwriting

Okay, squiders. I’m still going through the feedback from the marathon, but I think I’ve figured it out. (Turns out there’s a lot of marathon feedback to go through, and some of it is just grammatical which is unhelpful in this particular instance.) Part of the problem I’ve had with the beginning of the story for God knows how many iterations is how to properly pace the beginning to give the…

Me: So, it's basically a crossover between Fire Emblem and The Duchess of Malfi, in the style of Rick Riordan...

Online form: ...

because they actually had to loose the baby?

Well, yes.